Towards Liberated Spirits Communing
Daily, I willingly enter into conversations with people who are facing some kind of suffering.
This doesn’t mean I offer hope. In fact, my role in most of those conversations is not to. Instead, it is to be “in the pit” with them. To invite them to express what they fear. To guide and support them as they put words, feelings and non-verbals to what lies beneath. To be with them in pregnant pauses as they muster the courage to admit aloud the thoughts and questions that storm inside their body, mind, and spirit along the journey of their crisis. To explore and engage practices that have significance for them.
Empathy, not sympathy. Compassion is even better.
Co-creation, not paternalistic problem-solving.
Respecting and having curiosity about an individual’s agency, experiences and outlook.
Getting inside what makes them tick, what they have internalized from their experiences.
Learning how that shows up in their response during the sacred moment of our fellowship.
Witnessing someone experience a type of integration is liberating.
As a healthcare chaplain in a Westernized medical system, it’s an uphill battle focused on assessments, documentation, justifying our role, competing with clinicians for time with patients instead of experiencing collaboration, but…
The moments of integration I get to experience…
The folks who energetically engage my facilitation as a catalyst for digging into their own toolbox…
Those who are hungry for contemplation and shared meaning-making…
The moments of soul connection between humans who are virtual strangers that remind me how real the Divine is…
All point to why the work of Still Harbor is essential.
We all have a Spirit. And it longs for communion. We are they who know and must nurture this need. We are the voices of the Spirits living to be unbound, unignored and integrated into the daily experience of every human, not just tended to in moments of crisis.
Toward Liberated Spirits Communing,
Kimberley Gordy
Still Harbor Board of Directors