So Dr. Edward Canda is a professor at the School of Social Welfare
at the University of Kansas and he's been specializing in the theory and
practice of spirituality in a sense of its social work.
And he has a master's degree in From the University of Denver of religious studies,
1979 and the MSW Ph.D Degree and Social work from the Ohio State University.
Where he incorporated a lot of various spirituality and
anthropology and religious studies into social work.
He's working with CSWE as a part of their religious and
spirituality clearing house for educational resources.
His focus on spirituality, focuses a lot on Southeast Asia, Hong Kong,
South Korea, Japan.
More than 150 publications.
And actually the thing that I have to be amazing, and I didn't know this
until last night it's in Cleveland, Ohio, which is also where I'm from.
[LAUGH].
So, until we're both from the home town.
So we had a chance chat a little bit about the unique things about Cleveland, Ohio.
Would know what I mean.
So I'm really pleased to have you here and look forward, the title of this talk is
Spirituality and spiritual Diversity in Social Work, the Heart of Helping, so
Doctor Canda welcome to the graduate school of social work.
>> Thank you very much, [INAUDIBLE].
>> [APPLAUSE] >> And I want to thank Eugene Williams for
your invitation and your hospitality, as well as for setting things up,
everything has gone very smoothly.
And Professor Benson has set up an evening event for me too,
and I appreciate that as well.
Coming back to DU is very significant to me.
Ike as you've heard I got my first master's degree here in religious studies
which used to be over in the building right over here I think, wasn't it?
And that was a big turning point for me because I was coming back from,
I'd come back from studying East Asian philosophy in South Korea.
And not quite sure where to go from there and
made a very fortunate connection with religious studies here.
That gave me a wonderful background for my career in social work, actually.
So after that when I went into the MSW and doctoral programs at Ohio State,
I was able to bring that religious studies background into social work and
that really helped me to fill a niche that was largely open in the profession.
So that's what I'm gonna talk about today, how to converge
understanding of spirituality and religion with social work.
And especially I wanted to also thank professor Will Gravelly who's here.
He was my teacher in the 70's and has been my friend and mentor since then so
it's really wonderful to have you here in the audience, so thanks.
As well as Doug Carrol who was a student with me back then.
So I have a good connection.
He's a social worker too.
So another religious studies social work connection.
So in this presentation I'm covering a huge topic area, really.
Literally for me it's been a lifelong, pursuit of study, but
I am going to do this in about 50 minutes, and then have discussion.
So this is the brief capsule version.
The way I want to do it then is give you an overview of major values, perspectives,
some practice implications, and touch on a lot of things quickly.
Today in the context of a large perspective to kind of expand awareness
around spiritually sensitive practice.
And hopefully that'll touch various different interests for you and
then in the question and answer period please bring up whatever you would like.
I can talk more about that.
For those who are in the evening session that'll be more of a workshop.
We'll have some discussion and exercises around dealing with stress and
personal growth through meditation and related practices for that session.
So, in the background of this slide, I have a mandala.
I like to compose mandala sometimes just because I enjoy the designs but mandalas
are very helpful to portray insights in more than just a linear thinking way.
In a nutshell, literally mandala is from Sanskrit, it means circle.
So it represents wholeness in connection
among many different aspects of the self or the universe.
Comes originally out of Hinduism and Buddhism but mandalas were,
have been adapted widely even in therapeutic contexts.
Carl, you'll like to use mandalas therapeutically.
So I used mandalas as a way of helping to represent the bringing together of
diverse aspects of oneself or different theoretical ideas and
how to converge them in a holistic way.
So you'll see some mandala diagrams that I have spread out through the presentation.
Especially around this topic I think it's important
not to be limited to only linear thinking.
Linear thinking and rationality are really important, they're crucial,
but they're necessary but not sufficient.
So using artistic ways of communicating also I think is very helpful.
[COUGH] So I'd like to start
out by clarifying how this topic relates to basic professional purposes and values.
My approach to the topic isn't theological, it's not religion specific.
It's attempting to provide a framework so that people of diverse religious and
non-religious perspectives can relate to it.
And also so social workers can connect with clients and
communities of diverse religious and non-religious perspectives.
So here's some ideas that we talk about commonly in social work but
I'm gonna link it to spirituality.
We often say the mission of the profession is to advance human fulfillment and
social justice for everyone.
That's in common with spiritually sensitive social work [COUGH].
The differences It's taking it a little farther, it's expanding that notion
beyond what has been common in conventional social work in the past.
So when we talk about fulfillment of the person it's common in social work to
say we want a holistic view, we wanna deal with the whole person in the environment.
Spirituality highlights the aspects of the person
that goes beyond just the bio/psycho/social.
And we'll talk about that some more later.
It also considers the whole person in relation with all people and all beings.
Of course, social work is dedicated to work with people, that makes sense.
But people exist of course in the total web of life on this planet.
So, more and more, spiritually sensitive social work is attending to
the ecological connections of all beings and the total planetary ecosystem.
Deep ecology and ecofeminism are good examples of that.
We also are very much concerned as a field with appreciating and
respecting diversity and engaging in culturally appropriate practice.
So spiritual diversity intersects with all other kinds of diversity.
That brings up many wonderful opportunities, and
also sometimes, complexities, ambiguities and conflicts.
So, this is a lot of what we deal with in spiritually sensitive practice as well.
Finally, I'm coming from the standpoint of our codes of ethics.
Any SW code of ethics expects us to work culturally competently.
It requires us to respect religious diversity and our CSWE educational
guidelines include those two principles but
also it says that students need to learn about spiritual development.
So this movement has really paid more attention
to those things than has been done in the past.
On an international level there's a lot of movements
to address spirituality and social work around the world now.
It started primarily in North America but there are movements in many countries now.
So I'll touch on that a little bit and
if you're interested I can give you more information later.
But the International Association of Schools of Social Work and
the International Federation of Social Workers.
Their statement of principals also includes respect for
cultural diversity and spiritual and religious diversity.
So the way I'm approaching this topic based
on all of those kinds of commitments.
[COUGH] When I started in social work, my MSW program in 1980,
coming out of the religion studies program and
previously my background was cultural anthropology.
I was taught that we wanted to look at the whole person in the environment,
which sounded great to me.
But there was no mention about religion or spirituality.
I mean literally zero.
If I looked hard enough I could find some articles here and
there in some important historical documents.
But I couldn't figure out why is it if we say we're looking at the whole person in
the environment, this area of human experience was omitted?
Especially because all human cultures include religious and spiritual features
in every person, is engaged in some way in a search for meaning and purpose.
So that's when I began to shift to advocate for
more attention to that, in effect I decided later,
when I was a doctoral student, that I would apply
social work principles of social change to advocating with the profession.
To help change the profession, and
so compared from then til now there's a tremendous difference.
We have in our accreditation standards recognition of spirituality and religion.
Now textbooks usually, at least briefly, mention it.
We have textbooks dedicated to the topic.
There's at least 40 graduate programs around the country
that have specialized courses on this topic.
There's a lot of movement around it now.
Not due simply to me, but as you know a major social work practice skill
is to network and create organizations so really building
a set of enthusiastic people around the country and around the world.
So there's a lot going on.
So spiritually sensitive practice
addresses the ways that practitioners, clients or consumers, and
their communities seek a sense of meaning, purpose, and connectedness.
As they strive toward their highest aspirations, maximize their strengths and
resources, and work to overcome personal obstacles and environmental blocks and
gaps in resources.
If that sounds a lot like typical social work, it is.
That's good.
But it's highlighting things that aren't so commonly addressed.
For example, the themes of meaning, purpose and connectedness.
There have been, for a long time, certain strands of social work that focus on that.
A major one being existential social work, and Don Krill,
who teaches a course here still, he's taught for
many many years, existential social work, is a good example of that.
[COUGH] But sometimes social work is delivered in a way that's focused on
practical goods and services or measurable outcomes.
That doesn't look at what is the meaning, purpose, context of that.
So if we're not careful even the delivery of needed services the worst
case is if we ignore this quality of meaning and purpose and connection.
People actually feel objectified and dehumanized in the process.
It also has to do with helping people strive to their highest aspirations.
In this case, highest aspirations can include,
what are their most compelling and significant life goals?
What conserve as transformative ideals in their life.
What kinds of spiritual practices and
community connections can help them deal with adversity.
[COUGH] Personal adversity, social injustice, oppression.
And this can even include people's experience of states of consciousness
that go well beyond an ego-centered understanding of self and world.
What helps people maximize their strengths and resources and
pay special attention to religiously and spiritually based strengths and resources.
Those can be internal and external in the community and the larger world.
And all of this to work to overcome personal obstacles environmental blocks,
and gaps in resources.
Another feature of social work that is congruent with the strengths perspective,
as it happens the strengths perspective was originally developed
at my university in the mid to late 80s, at KU.
So the strengths perspective doesn't look at clients in terms of
pathologies, deficits, diagnostic labels.
Of course those things can be pertinent to their situation but
it never reduces people to those things.
Instead it focuses on goals, solutions, possibilities, talents, skills,
resources and never limits the possibility for clients.
Always considers at any point in time no matter what the person's situation
there could always be an opportunity for something far more than what it appears.
So for many people, spirituality is a way to open up those unexpected and
transformative possibilities.
So before I go on too much farther with these kind of abstract ideas.
I wanna tell you a story that puts in a nutshell some of the main points.
In the 1980s, a lot of my social work
practice in research related to Southeast Asian refugees.
So one time, when I was at the university of Iowa I
was working with the refugee resettlement program for the state.
And a Methodist minister
gave me a call and said, there's an issue going on with two loud roommates.
Would you come to meet them and me, and talk through what's going on.
Okay, what's the situation.
He said well, they've been having a lot of arguments.
It's getting heated.
One of the roommates has a knife and has been threatening to stab the other one.
I'm thinking to myself that sounds like a lot fun.
Sure, I'll go right over there.
[LAUGH] See if, I've never learned martial arts so
I wasn't too confident [LAUGH] while I was dealing with possible knife play.
But, all right so, I was working with a Thai international student who
also spoke Lao, and then we had Lao interpreters who joined us.
So we had a team there, the two roommates, the Methodist minister,
myself, my assistant.
So as a group, we started talking through what were the issues.
We found out that the disagreements were
not really that significant but they were becoming just agitated with each other.
And a lot of it had to do with their post-traumatic stress.
So keep in mind the context [COUGH] they
had to escape Laos under conditions of grave danger,
genocide, mass killings.
Escaping on boats that were very difficult, dangerous.
Spent a long time in refugee camps
not knowing when they were gonna get out of it.
Finally, resettled in the US.
In the US, they encountered language and
cultural differences that brought about further stress.
Sometimes they experienced discrimination and racism.
And then in addition to that well,
it was great that there was this community based support system.
Once they were settled this Methodist congregation provided helped
them get housing.
Invited them to their worship services.
Helped with material needs.
Provided emotional support.
All that was great but some members of the congregation have the idea that if
they have come here and we're sponsoring them, they should become Methodists too.
So there was a further tension.
This was very common I found with Southeast Asian refugees who
frequently were Buddhist.
They were very grateful to the Christian sponsors.
And they were comfortable going to Christian services, but
they also wanted to maintain their Buddhist practices,
go to the Lao Buddhist temple, preserve their language.
So in other words, they wanted to construct a bi-cultural,
bi-religious system.
But some of the sponsors weren't cool with that.
It's one or the other.
So that brought about a further level of stress.
In the case of this minister, he did not have that attitude.
He had a both/and perspective.
So the minister was quite comfortable with this idea that the Lao roommates,
if they want to tap the Buddhist support systems, they can do that,
as well as connect with the Methodist support system and maximize both of them.
So with further conversation [COUGH] at one point it got pretty intense actually.
I was getting worried and
I realized I made one big mistake, if you do safety training and
you make a home visit, you don't sit the farthest place from the exit [LAUGH].
And that's where I and my assistant where I'm thinking that was a bad choice.
And so you could feel the emotional tone getting more intense, more agitated,
and I could tell there was a change in me.
As I became more anxious, my breathing changed, it was becoming more tight and
becoming a little bit scanning as to where was the exit.
Well, once I realized that, it occurred to me that if I let
this communication intensity escalate, and my internal
anxiety symptoms escalate, the combination was not gonna be good for anybody.
So and my assistant, who was mediating a lot of this,
linguistically, she was bearing the brunt of it.
Cuz it's not just the words going in between,
it's the emotional energy going through.
So it occurred to me I had to some way politely stop that dynamic.
And I was running out of water.
It's very polite in [COUGH] Southeast Asian cultures to offer
people food or drink when you visit so I asked for some more water.
Well that simple thing, asking for water, the roommate went out to the kitchen and
filled up the glass, brought it back, it interrupted that escalation.
Plus it showed instead of this escalating hostility,
it made a little occasion of friendliness and politeness.
So it shifted, and then I could also pay attention internally.
I could watch my breathing, I could let it flow more smoothly, I could
restore a kind of mindful awareness of what was going on in the moment [COUGH].
Once that happened, everything de-escalated.
We're able to talk through the issues, and
one of the big conclusions was there was one roommate who wanted to
go spend some time in retreat at the Lao Buddhist monastery nearby.
And actually, at that time these community Buddhist centers were very small and
informal because they didn't have a lot of money.
And so like this was set up in house and they set up an alter room.
But the way it's set up, it provides a symbolically protective space.
The monks have a routine out of ritual and meditation that he could participate in.
So he went there, that helped him into get re-centered.
We broke the conflict with the roommate.
[COUGH] And it affirmed a positive mutual respective relationship with
the Methodist minister as well because the minister was very comfortable with that.
So that to me a good example of spiritually sensitive practice
that respects diversity.
It shifts from an either or competitive approach to the differences towards
a both and complementary mutually respectful approach.
It taps the resources and insights on both sides.
It respects everybody involved.
But it's not only an external process at that, it's also internal.
What I said about having to become aware of my own anxiety and
the change of my breathing, and to intervene on that level too.
So spiritual sensitive practice is both internal work and
external in weaving those two together.
Here's a few other broad ethical principles to think about drawing on
spirituality and religion which by the way I haven't defined yet.
So you might be wondering what is he really talking about.
I'm gonna get to that in a minute.
So first of all, just like social practice in general,
we have to start where the client is.
So we focus on the consumer client's beliefs, goals, interests and
comfort level.
This isn't about the social worker's own agenda.
I think meditation is really great, I'm gonna make sure all the clients do that.
Or I think prayer is the best thing, I'm gonna make sure they all do that.
That's not the point, it's assessing understanding the clients
interest goals, resources, where they're at, what they would like to tap and
then you facilitate it [COUGH].
So as I said before it also means working in a culturally appropriate manner.
If we're engaging direct spiritually based helping practices,
such as meditation, or prayer, or ritual.
As I said, we have to start with assessment.
So even with assessment it's wise, just like in ethnography or
cultural anthropology, to begin with the least intrusive open ended assessment.
We have to be careful if the way we do assessment
isn't either steering people in a certain direction or cutting off possibility.
Place.
Many agencies don't even have guidelines for the practitioners how to do
basic assessment around spirituality and religion of the clients.
That's one problem, and if you don't inquire at all, that can be a message
to the client implicitly, you're not interested and you don't care.
But if you ask about it in a certain way,
it can be another message that you're imposing some assumptions.
Like some agencies will have an intake form that'll say something like here
are some options, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other.
Find that out.
To tell you the truth, that is useless.
If that's what you asked someone,
by the way what it's saying is we're not really very interested.
We're asking very broad questions and a lot of agencies will collect that
information it's checked off, it goes in a file somewhere and nothing happens.
Well what if the person is Buddhist or Hindu?
And among Christians, there are tremendous variation of denominations and
within that, then there's non-denominational Christians.
Similarly in Judaism, there's many different styles of Judaism.
So, Islam.
This kind of question is really narrowing and excluding.
Besides that, it doesn't yield much helpful information anyway.
Even if someone says, yeah, I'm a Christian.
Well, there's more than 900 Christian denominations in the United States and
many non-denominational Christian communities.
And even if you know, I'm a Roman Catholic, that's what the person says.
Within Catholicism there's tremendous variety,
including on some basic social justice and theological issues.
On the other hand, I don't mean with assessment we should be too intrusive.
So we start with a open ended, non-threatening,
exploratory question and then the client will cue us.
Is this relevant to them, do they want to pursue it or not, and
then we follow their cues to go further.
[COUGH] So, I could talk more about that later, if you want.
But the basic principle is starting with the least intrusive, open-ended approach,
identify the consumer's level of interest, and then move to a more
explicit spiritually based practices only if the consumer prefers.
And sometimes that means within the helping relationship with a social worker,
sometimes it means referral and collaboration.
Another issue that I think is a big one, much neglected,
is spiritually sensitive organizational culture.
Actually, it's kind of interesting to me, if you look at business research
literature, about the factors that reduced the likelihood of burn out and
turnover, and increase employee satisfaction.
Those businesses that attend to the spiritual qualities of the work
environment and the relationships there, tend to have lower burnout, turnover, and
higher employee satisfaction.
So there's more discussion about that in the business sector than I see in
the social literature which a little bit boggles me.
So in human service organizations the optimal would be a congruence
between spiritually sensitive administrative style and policies,
and the practitioners engaging in that way with the clients.
When there's a misfit between those, even if the practitioners are interested and
committed to doing this, they might have no support or
even find obstacles from administration.
Or the workers themselves are getting burnt out,
because their full human growth needs are being dealt with.
And so then it's hard to work well with the clients.
[COUGH] I'm
finally going to tell you what I mean by spirituality.
[LAUGH] I think you can get the sense of it from what I've said already but
this is a more formal definition.
I'm first gonna tell you what I mean by spirituality as an aspect, and
then give you more holistic ways of looking at it.
But what I'm going to describe now is the most common way it's looked
at in social work medicine, nursing, psychology, psychiatry.
By the way all of those fields have parallel movements to social work around
this now, and
there's a lot of interdisciplinary stuff happening around it.
So spirituality is a process of human life and development.
Spirituality isn't just a thing or an affiliation, it's a life process.
It focuses on the search for a sense of meaning, purpose, morality and
well being in relationship with oneself,
other people, other beings of the universe and ultimate reality, however understood.
It orients around centrally significant priorities.
It engages a sense of transcendence, experienced as deeply profound, sacred, or
transpersonal.
So some of these keywords here that I bolded,
you find across disciplines around the term spirituality.
There's no uniformly accepted definition actually.
But these themes are very common, meaning relationship,
centrally significant priorities, our ultimate concern, and transcendence.
[COUGH] With the concept of transcendence,
I've added a few possibilities there, because if you look at spiritual
traditions around the world, there's a great deal of variety about this.
For theistic traditions, transcendence is, can be,
often relate in terms of experiencing relationship with a personal God.
And sometimes that can be very deep, very transforming and consciousness changing.
But many religious traditions are not theistic.
Even the concept of the sacred is widespread, but it's not universal.
And for some traditions, the sacred and the profane are not a dichotomy at all.
That ordinary daily life itself can all become sacred.
And for many nonreligious people, even using words like holy,
sacred, divine, it just doesn't work.
I have a friend who describes himself, he's a social work professor,
he describes himself as a secular, scientific, humanist, Jew.
So, and we participated in some spirituality conferences.
And he would explain to people as a nonreligious, non-theistic,
cultural Jew, what is spirituality mean to him.
One time my wife and I were invited to his home for
a Sabbath meal and I was kinda wondering, how's this gonna work?
[LAUGH] Well, they had the Sabbath style prayers
and welcoming of people but the wording was, you might say, edited.
It was changed to remove any theistic references.
But it emphasized the community connectedness, caring, and
love and sharing.
And afterwards he had a gathering of other secular Jews and
they had hymns and prayers and told stories and talked.
All of those didn't have any theistic frame to them.
But they created an informal spiritual support group around these common
beliefs and styles.
So they were preserving Jewish heritage and concerns.
One of the main themes for them was social justice and
how to link your personal life to justice.
So that [COUGH], to him, made perfect sense.
But if I were to approach someone with his point of view with words like Religion or
sacred or god, it wouldn't connect, so we have to be careful about that.
Give another example, in the same town, I had another Jewish friend.
She was an Orthodox, a very devout Orthodox Jew.
So she was very observant.
Even to the point where when we went to lunch with her.
We had to find a restaurant that didn't just have kosher, but
kosher food approved by her rabbi.
And so she had a very different style from my other friend.
Both identify as Jewish, but quite different styles.
And she was also very open.
So she participated in many of our national spirituality and
social conferences.
Was very interested in outreach and
connecting with people of many different perspectives.
And that was a nice lesson, too.
Because it showed me that [COUGH] whatever the person's perspective.
If they have both a clear commitment to where they're at and
an openness to where others are at.
We can join and connect and collaborate and support each other.
The trouble comes in when people who are highly committed
to their own view see those as exclusive of others.
Or hostile to others and promote conflict.
And in the worst cases even violence.
So religion.
Will, forgive me if my definition doesn't measure up to religious studies' standards
but I'm gonna give it a shot here.
[LAUGH] Within social work, given our professional context.
By the way since the early 80s
there has been a tendency to distinguish the term spirituality and religion.
For a lot of reasons, but one is because in our profession there was so
much allergic reaction to the topic of religion.
It's like pushing people's alarm buttons when you even say it in many settings.
[LAUGH] And they're worried, what does it mean?
Is this person gonna be trying to proselytize or to manipulate, or etc.
So it became common to distinguish between spirituality and religion.
And you find this in many other helping professions nowadays, by the way.
So religion is an institutionalized, I mean formally structured.
Systematic pattern of beliefs, values, symbols,
behaviors, and experiences that involves spirituality.
But, not limited to that.
It involves a community of adherents.
You can't have a religion of one person.
It involves transmission of traditions over time, and
community support functions.
For example, through organizational structure, material assistance,
emotional support, political advocacy.
So religious groups engage in many kinds of activities,
some of which are clearly explicitly spiritual and others are not.
But everything has a connection to their spiritual frame.
So spirituality can express through religious settings,
and outside of religious settings.
And for some people their spiritual way includes both religious and
non-religious expressions.
If you think about it like a Venn diagram,
spirituality is a large circle and religion is a circle within it.
And some people identify as simply their religious perspective is
their spirituality.
Others are non-religious but they're spiritual,
others are both religious and spiritual.
And actually surveys of clients in the US show that many people are identifying in
this variety of ways.
And in American popular culture this distinction has become common.
It's become more and more common for baby boomers and younger to say,
I'm spiritual but not religious.
So, in this slide, I wanna move towards a more holistic view.
If we start,
the definition I just gave you that spirituality is an aspect of the person.
Bio, Psycho, Social, and now many people add Spiritual.
Bio, Psycho, Social, Spiritual.
It's like a pie.
The person has four slices now.
Including the spiritual slice.
Some people don't include the spiritual slice.
I like pie so I want all four slices.
[LAUGH] But one very peculiar special thing about the spiritual aspect.
Since it focuses on the theme of meaning and purpose.
And the possibility of moving towards transcendent,
connecting modes of consciousness.
Spirituality can pay attention to and
infuse all of these aspects around the circle.
It's not an isolate, none of these are actually isolated,
this is just a simplification, to separate them out.
But, let me give you an example of how spirituality can connect
all the way around.
If you think about one of the most basic,
fundamental, universal things about human experience.
Hope this doesn't come as a surprise to anybody.
Death.
All right.
Everybody alive dies.
Because it's inescapable.
We know from practice when we work in medical settings or
hospice or palliative care or grief and bereavement.
We know that often when people are more closely
aware of their own mortality or their loved one's mortality.
It raises these big questions of meaning and purpose.
Maybe it's even why?
Why is that happening?
I had a friend whose four year old daughter developed a serious cancer.
He was very spiritual in a kind of alternative religious group
practice dealing meditation and healing visualizations.
So he brought all that to bear for his child.
But this was of course a terrible shock, and she didn't recover either.
So he would sit with his daughter and they wold meditate together.
In fact I had a quartz crystal that she liked.
I gave it to her.
And she said, I'd like to sit with my daddy and
mediate with this crystal and watch it.
And actually, she said a lot of really profound things at four years old
by her own facing her situation of illness and mortality.
She was, in many ways, very profound.
So the physical event of death evokes these deep spiritual questions.
And also beliefs like is there an afterlife.
If so what is it, where is it?
Is there even anything that exists, is there a separate ego, or should there be?
An ultimate goal in Buddhism is to transcend attachment to
a separate individual self.
So just being a kind of soul hanging around for
all eternity isn't really an optimal ideal in Buddhism.
[LAUGH] So there's all these different ideas.
And what the client's belief is is going to have a big effect
on how they prepare for death.
Their level of anxiety or hope about death.
And how that may affect their connection with their loved ones.
So in fact by engaging in spirituality, even death itself can be transformed
As an experience of growth and
[COUGH] further possibility.
Even for someone who doesn't believe there's any afterlife.
By living, dying, to its best way.
It can enhance the relationship with others and
the sense of how precious even the last moments of life are.
[COUGH] Well here's another way of looking at spirituality,
this is a different metaphor.
Spirituality as the center of the person.
In idiomatic English we have this expression to be centered.
For you, here's a little bit of audience participation,
when you feel centered what does it feel like?
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Calming.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> In control.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Peace.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Balance.
Okay, those are good, those are like feeling qualities.
What's happening in your body?
Yes?
>> Relaxed breathing.
>> Okay.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> Relaxed breathing, calm mind.
Right, so if you, when you feel centered and you're paying attention to that,
you're aware.
Your breathing is usually, it's a kind of smooth flow.
But even if you're centered while you're jogging or
doing athletics, your breathing might be accelerated but it's also smooth.
And your breath moves through your center, literally.
So many meditation practices, and
prayer practices involve paying attention to the breath.
Letting it move smoothly and
freely through your central chamber, and having your awareness focused.
Some traditions on the heart, some on the energy point below the navel.
So across many traditions it's recognized
that there's a physical component to centering.
There's an emotional intellectual component to it.
And when we feel more centered it's not egocentric actually.
It's opening to others.
So in social practice if you're talking with a client.
What happens if you're not centered and the client is telling you some story
that's kind of shocking, or upsetting to you, and you're not centered?
What's going on in your mind and body then?
Yes?
>> [INAUDIBLE] separate?
>> You're feel, okay, separating?
>> Yes.
>> And you might even be separating inside yourself.
Your thoughts are starting to run, my gosh.
Like when I was in that situation with the roommate who,
there was the threat of knife play.
My mind is starting to what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen?
So then to get
lost down that train of thinking can pull you away from the moment.
Your breathing might become too tight, or in panicky situations hyperventilating.
So when we're centered it actually enhances our sense of interconnectedness.
And when it's very deep,
when we go to a sense of our very deep most profound true center.
We might even have an experience of consciousness, which is joined or
unified with others, or with God, or with the universe.
So, all traditions have ways of talking about that as well.
Within Native American traditions, many people including
some Native social workers use medicine wheel diagrams.
Similar to the mandalas I'm talking about.
To help look at all these the connections.
And the center point Is sometimes referred to
as a sacred center in which all these aspects are joined and connected.
So when we can connect to that center within us,
it helps us connect with everyone else's and everything else's center.
I have up on there, on the left,
a depiction of the Chinese character for mind.
This is another good way of thinking about the center.
The Chinese character for mind is composed of an ideograph for the heart actually.
So in traditional East Asian thought the mind isn't up here.
[COUGH] Many years ago one of the first times I met a practicing Buddhist
monk in Korea.
At that time [COUGH] I was still in my hippie days.
I had long shoulder length hair and I met this monk who was bald.
And in conversation, and we were similar ages.
And I said it's really interesting about your shaving your head.
And he was remarking about my long hair.
So we were talking to, what is this no hair and long hair mean?
And we found out it meant very similar things to us.
[LAUGH] Both counter-cultural, and engaged in a search, and not wanting to conform.
And so in the course of that, we were talking about the mind.
In Korean the world is maeum.
So when he used the word maeum, he was gesturing like this, automatically.
When I was using the word mind, I was going like this.
And after awhile I thought wait a minute, we're pointing different places.
What does that mean?
So then I learned that the mind is understood as centered here.
Actually that's true in Europe, in the Middle Ages and earlier as well.
So that is recognizing that kind of the root of our
feelings and thoughts arise here.
We process through thinking up here.
But there is a deeper level of connection in here.
This logo, by the way, is from the Center for
Behavioral Health at the University of Hong Kong.
This is one of the most creative centers for holistic social work that I think.
They incorporate eastern and western approaches to therapy and
social work as well as evidence based practice research in a very creative way.
So if you're interested to find out about that you can check out their website.
This last metaphor is spirituality as wholeness of the person.
That's the outer circle.
This is the metaphor that Carl Jung emphasized, the Swiss depth psychologist.
So he talked about the lifespan, especially in adulthood,
as potentially being a process of movement towards wholeness.
In which we connect up our different aspects of ourselves and
our relationships so that they're all brought into a kind of harmony.
And we have a sense of ourself that encompasses all of that.
So when that kind of developmental path is diagrammed
you could think of it like a spiral.
Moving towards a whole circle that ends up including all of yourself and
your relationships.
This earlier way I mentioned of spirituality of center,
if you think theologically, it's a more eminental way of looking at it.
The experience of the sacred or the ultimate within.
This is more of a transcendent way of looking at it.
Through expansion of consciousness, you can come to a point where
your experience of who you are embraces all of your components,
all of your relationships, even the entire world or universe.
But it's not limited to any part.
So transpersonal theory addresses These kinds of experiences a lot.
Transpersonal theory developed in the 60's, and
has began influencing social works since the 70's.
It's became more prominent in the 90's.
It looks at how people are, may have powerful experiences of changes of
levels of consciousness in world view, that become more embracing of diversity.
So we're no longer the little ego-body limited self.
That's one aspect.
But the total, or whole self includes and transcends that.
So many spiritual perspectives emphasize compassion as a key cardinal virtue.
And I think it's very significant for social work.
Compassion very simply can mean engaging with self, and
others, and with life with passion.
So from Latin literally means with passion.
Spiritual traditions that talk about the way of cultivating compassion,
especially in a helping process, emphasize that real compassion, or
the most helpful kind compassion is not egotistical compassion.
It's not pity.
It's not sympathy.
It's not projecting your own ideas about how it should be for the other person.
It's a capacity to really engage empathetically and
genuinely with the other in their situation.
[COUGH] It's engagement empathetically but it's not enmeshment.
That's a really tricky distinction, but that is important for social workers.
Because when we get enmeshed in the social workers sense of anxiety, life problems,
or hopelessness and helplessness, it's easy for us to get pulled down that way.
It's like emotionally going down a drain.
So we have to be really careful about that.
And we'll talk more about that sort of thing in the afternoon.
So it's also non-judgmental clear awareness.
And a skill for reaching out.
It's a careful, caring, non-attachment to the fruits of actions.
If any of you have read the Bhagavad Gita from the Hindu tradition,
it's really powerful about this lesson.
Arjuna is on the battlefield with the chariot ready to go into battle.
Unfortunately, the enemies are his relatives.
Lucky for him Krishna, incarnation of God, happens to be the charioteer.
Wow, that's lucky, I can ask you some questions.
At this terrible situation what do I do about it.
So the book is conversations between Krishna and Arjuna.
So, one of the messages that comes out of that is,
engaging in necessary action with clarity and with non-attachment to results.
And that's hard.
And, by the way, in social work nowadays, evidence-based practice is all the rage.
Does this mean we shouldn't care about the results of our actions?
No, I don't mean that.
That's why I added caring on attachment.
But of course we don't wanna injure people, and we wanna help them.
But even in that we don't wanna be egoistically attached to the result.
My wife is a medical social worker, and for
recent years she's been working mainly in the emergency room.
So every day she's encountering people with disasters.
Maybe decades long patterns of self destructive behavior.
Inadequate resources.
If she was attached to the idea that somehow she's gonna fix or cure everything
or she knows how it should be for that person and she's gonna make sure they get
there and if they don't she's gonna be upset, she would be devastated.
So it doesn't make sense for the client,
it doesn't make sense to the social worker.
So, this kind of caring non-attachment is very important but
a little tricky to cultivate.
I'd like to give a couple images to symbolize that.
On the right is the sacred heart of Jesus.
This is a kind of informal street mural I ran across in Chicago once.
I grew up with this, my tradition is Catholic.
So I grew up with portraits
of Jesus with this exposed heart on fire,
and drops of blood coming from it, it's pretty intense [LAUGH] actually.
But what that means is Jesus lived and
died with compassion and is committed to love and care and help for others.
So when I learned the expression bleeding heart liberal,
I thought that's what they're talking about.
Although people often use that in disparaging meaning,
this kind of bleeding heart liberal I think is a positive ideal.
But it suggests some difficult things.
It means sometimes compassion carries you into some dangerous situations.
It means stretching beyond your own self
comfort and your own personal goals.
It can involve sacrifice.
Some people don't like that word.
But actually from Latin, sacrifice means to make sacred.
So being able to engage in helping in a way that connects with the other and
transcends egotism can be very powerful in the helping process.
And notice again,
like the concept of the center in Maum as rooted here in the heart.
I think that's depicted very strongly there.
On the left side this is a Korean Buddhist painting of Kwan Seum Bosal in Korean.
You may have also heard of this as Kwan Yin,
is common word representing the Chinese.
So Kwan Yin is the bodhisattva of compassion.
A bodhisattva is an enlightened being who chooses to stay in the realm
of existence rather than simply dissipating into Nirvana,
in order to continue working for the benefit of all beings.
And in particular, Kwan Yin is the bodhisattva of compassion.
Kwan Yin has such profound compassion that it reaches out to all beings everywhere.
That's why in this depiction, it might be a little hard for
you to discern on the picture, but there are hands and
arms coming out all the way around in all directions, reaching out.
Every hand has a tool, different kind of tool.
On top of the main head there are 11 other heads looking in all directions.
Actually each face has a different expression.
That means with compassionate awareness of other beings
there are many different compassionate responses that you may have.
Love, commiseration, anger, even anger.
But compassionate anger is anger for the benefit of the other.
Not anger because you're trying to impose your will on the other.
[COUGH] So the different tools in hands,
[COUGH] means that with the compassionate vantage,
you reach out skillfully, adapting to whatever the situations,
whatever the person or the being needs to help.
And on top of the main head there's another
figure that represents Amitabha Buddha.
The Buddha of infinite light.
That means this kind of compassion is coming out of a kind of universal
consciousness, not egoistic consciousness, but it's connected with each moment,
each person, each situation, and reaches out with skill.
So some Buddhist social workers in East Asia use Guanyin as a kind of symbol of
good social work.
Well, actually that would be like a super social worker if you can achieve that.
>> [LAUGH] >> Wow, that once I was,
When I was teaching in Japan on this topic,
I had visited a famous Japanese shrine in Kyoto called Sanjusangen-do.
In that shrine, there's a huge statue of [FOREIGN] kinda like this form.
On this side 500 [FOREIGN] statues, on that side 500 more.
So it was literally a thousand golden statues in this huge expanse.
It was very peaceful, but very powerful.
In fact, when I was there, it happened that a typhoon moved through.
Outside it was windy like crazy.
Luckily, we got into the building just before the typhoon and we got out just
after the typhoon, so I thought, that was very fortunate thanks to Guanyin.
But then it occurred to me, in social workers and community members and
other disciplines, when we all connect and cooperate we're all collectively Guanyin.
When we put all of our compassionate caring and skill together,
that's when we really can be like this enlightened
powerful being that reaches out to help all beings.
So this is just a couple of minutes, as I talk, think about these questions for
yourself, [COUGH] some of you maybe recent to social work,
some of you may have been in the field a very long time.
But if you, sometimes need to regenerate your sense of why are you doing this,
it can help to go back to your personal development roots in the profession.
So think back to why you decided to become a social worker.
What motivated you?
What compelled you?
Were there certain relatives or mentors or friends or
exemplars of spiritual ideals that motivated you to do this?
And most of us don't go into social work because we think we're gonna become rich.
Hopefully we can subsist on the salary, but
that's not a really good occupation if your goal is simply to become wealthy.
And we're often working in stressful and difficult situations.
So why would we do that?
What motivates you?
What's your kind of core life purpose for doing that?
Was there any key event that triggered your sense of compassion and a dedication
to serve, and how can you keep that sense of inspiration and motivation now?
How can you re-enliven it?
So we'll talk more about this sort of thing in the afternoon with
the student group.
Okay, I'm gonna finish up the last part of this without too much longer so
that we can have questions and answers.
I mentioned evidence based practice.
Actually, this area of spirituality and
religion has exploded as a research topic in the last 15 years.
Within social work, there was very little 20 years ago, but
the pace of work on it has accelerated tremendously.
So there are dedicated journals, there are many articles in mainstream journals.
National, international conferences, all kinds of stuff going on.
And if you look beyond that to medicine and psychology and
psychiatry and nursing, it's just huge.
I can't even keep up with it.
So I'm just mentioning a few key findings.
One thing that fits very well with social perspective,
if you look across at all different kinds of therapeutic modalities, and
what factors contribute to clients' sense of positive outcome.
One of the biggest is the quality of the therapeutic or
helping relationship, not just the skill used or the theory frame used.
But was the relationship one of empathy, rapport, trust, caring and hope?
When that's there, the outcomes are more often report as favorable and
there's a higher satisfaction.
Instillation of hope and sense of meaning has also been found to very important.
Referral and collaboration for support of effects of religious involvement,
if that fits the client's point of view.
So these are like big surveys of religious populations into looking
at impacts on health outcomes.
One that's very popular in social work and mental health field is mindfulness.
So, there's two versions that are kinda common in social work,
one is from Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
Mindfulness is a major component of that, which originally came out of Buddhist,
some Buddhist meditation techniques and became extracted from that and
kind of turned into a method without a religious frame
that anyone can learn to practice centering mindful awareness of the moment.
And the point of that is to reduce suicidal ideation,
symptoms of anxiety and depression and such.
It's been shown to have a lot of positive impact for
many people at mental health diagnoses.
There's also in the health field dialectical behavior, I'm sorry,
mindfulness based stress reduction from John Kabat Zinn.
There's a lot of medical research around this.
So meditation has to do with intentionally focusing our attention,
letting go of ordinary preoccupations and ruminative thinking, deepening insight and
experience of consciousness.
That's critical for social workers in some way, even if it's not formal meditation
but some way to keep ourselves centered and focus in the helping process.
And for some clients, benefit from learning to practice meditation.
But actually there are many, many different types of and techniques of
meditation that have important differences, so you have to be sure.
If you're using it, first of all, that you are well-qualified and experienced in it.
And that whatever particular technique matches the beliefs and comfort and
interests of the client.
Mindfulness is paying attention in the present
moment with a clear mind that acknowledges but doesn't judge.
I've given examples of that already today.
We'll be talking about this more later for people who are coming to the afternoon or
evening event.
But so we have to pay attention to our own situation, our own personal experience and
development as social workers.
On one side so that our engagement in social work itself could
be part of our spiritual development process.
And by the way, there are some religious traditions that make that explicit.
A good example is karma yoga in Hinduism.
Karma literally means action.
Karma yoga means the yoga of social action, of helping.
So in that type of social service, people are conscious and clear that
the process of helping is also the process of engaging in their spiritual growth.
But even without a formal religious frame to it, anybody, if they want to,
can link their professional lives and their personal lives so
that everything is fueling their growth.
So, on the other hand, we have to worry about our own stress level.
So we know that social workers and other helping professionals,
unfortunately, were more at risk for
stress related physical and metal disorders and suicide.
So if we're not paying attention to ourselves, we can place ourselves at risk,
which isn't good for ourselves, but also not good for clients.
In the Confucian tradition, it said that the noble minded
person takes care of oneself in order to be of service of others.
If you are not taking care of yourself, you can't help others.
But, stress can become eustress.
Often when we say stress, what we really mean is distress.
The kind of stress that involves harm,
discomfort, depression, anxiety, frustration.
But stress can be positive.
Like there's the stress of engaging in an intense activity that you really like.
If somebody loves to jog, there's stress involved in jogging, but
the stress is a free-flowing energy that actually strengthens the body.
If somebody's a musician and is involved in a very intense kind of performance,
that performance is stressful, but it's eustress.
So eustress, from Greek, eu means good, or good or positive stress.
If we pay attention to the nature of our stress and what's behind it,
we can convert distress into eustress.
So, I'd like to ask you to think about for later, maybe after this,
reflect on yourself, what activities do you engage in regularly
to decrease your stress, increase your eustress, and keep
yourself centered in your personal lives, and in your work as a social worker.
If you think about that and
can't come up with any, I'd like to suggest you [LAUGH] find something.
Or maybe you say, I used to do this thing back five years ago, that was wonderful.
But I got so busy, my caseload is so high, or my teaching load is so heavy, or
I'm trying to publish so much.
I could then next week [LAUGH] go through these stress things too.
And I forgot about that, I stopped doing it, so then it can become like a battery.
A battery is a closed energy system.
If you just keep draining the energy out of that battery,
at some point that's gone.
So how do we keep recharging our batteries?
I just wanna mention this.
I focused more on a micro-level in my examples so far, but
this has many macro implications.
One of them is the importance of social work going through faith based
organizations.
.And of course that's always happened.
But in the, [COUGH], since the Bush and
Clinton administrations, there's formal policy around trying to increase and
encourage social services to the faith based organizations.
So NASW has a policy recommendation around that.
So on the constructive side,
NASW recognizes that those kind of partnerships with community organizations
can be very powerful, very helpful, and that's encouraged.
But if that means that the state simply
passes its responsibility onto non-government organizations and
expects them to take up the slack, that's not realistic.
In fact many faith based organizations have protested against this trend.
Rather than it simply being, this is a nice partnership, if it really means
dumping work on organizations already with scarce resources, that's not so good.
The other problem is that if volunteers and
other workers within faith based organizations are not properly trained and
prepared to deal with serious issues like substance abuse or
family violence, just to mention two.
It can be very dangerous if they're meddling wIth it.
So this is a tremendous opportunity for collaboration.
But if it's not done right, it can be a risky.
So, one of our major ethical manages for cultural competence.
[COUGH] This is pretty much my last piece here.
If we re-envision
cultural competence from the framework of spiritually sensitive practice,
it can open up some other way of looking at it, I think.
So if these four colored circles represent four different cultural contexts, or
they could be religious contexts or
spiritual perspective contexts just to make it simple.
If a social worker is originally from the red circle, that's their culture or
religion of origin, and they learn to connect with the blue circle.
If they learn to do that in a way where their comfort, their value of respect,
and their skill becomes fluid to move between both,
and to work within both, and to live within both, that's a bi-cultural.
If it's moving across the four, that's multicultural.
Now that's already a big task.
That even means basic things like multlinguilasm So
we are advocating for bi-cultural, multicultural competence in social work.
To do that requires not just skill training, but
consciousness in lifestyle transformation, I think.
If we're really meaningfully engaged with people from different worldviews and
cultures and spiritual perspectives, it means we're gonna be changed through that.
Mutually, we're transforming each other.
That means our perspective, our worldview, has to become open and fluid.
So this may be still respecting our roots, but also being able to
be comfortable in other contexts, then we can become bridges and mediators.
But as I said, that's difficult.
If you go to the center point, like centering as I talked before,
when you have that sense and that's the basis you're relating.
You're aware of both differences in the client systems you're working with and
yourself, and the commonalities.
The common connection as human beings.
And [COUGH] so if you're from that center point,
that is the one spot in which all of the diversities are connected.
So how can we train ourselves in centering?
That kind of awareness to enhance cultural competence.
If he go to the outer circle it's like the outer circle of the spirituality
model I gave before.
When our consciousness, And our behavior,
and our teamwork, include diversity and
transcend each of the different contexts,
then we can embrace all of that.
So like I said before, I don't mean it's realistic for
one social worker to become fully multicultural,
multilingual, multi-religious, multi-spiritual, and everything else.
But when we're working together with others, we form teams,
partnerships, inter-agency collaborations.
Network with community support systems, with spiritual leaders and
mentor all together that becomes trans-cultural.
So by trans-cultural I don't mean ignoring culture, or any differences.
It means embracing them, connecting them, recognizing common connections and
a perspective that embraces all of that as well.
Well that's my last, [LAUGH] my last point.
If you're interested in additional resources,
a lot of stuff can be accessed free through my web site, which I put up there.
Also, CSWE has a new clearing house on religion and
spirituality in social work with some teaching resources, and that's expanding.
So, questions, comments.
I kind of covered a huge territory.
I feel like I flew around the globe, and so
I'd like to hear particular things you're interested in and wondering about.
Yes.
>> Talking about organizational culture?
>> Yes.
>> And I think that social work so
hard for so long to not be spiritual or
religious showing preference.
>> Mm-hm.
>> That we have have any [INAUDIBLE] sign of spirituality really,
within [INAUDIBLE] educational process or
[INAUDIBLE] organizations that [INAUDIBLE].
So I'm wondering if you say an organizational culture
that supports spirituality.
What does it look like?
>> I wish we had more examples to know.
[LAUGH] But, well, let's start with very concrete.
You've mentioned there might not be signs of spirituality within our organizations.
That can be literal.
I remember talking to some social workers in a state based agency, and
they were instructed, you're not permitted to wear any kind of religious symbol.
Even in your own personal desk you're not allowed to have anything that's
religiously explicit.
Well, I understand the caution of that.
Because especially if you're in a place where clients are entering,
if you have a particular religious symbol,
say, someone who resonates with that, that might help with a connection.
But somebody else for whom that doesn't, that could really turn them off,
it could alienate them.
So, there needs to be some caution about that, but
that would depend on the setting.
Let's say if I was, when I was doing work with the southeast Asian communities, we
did referral and collaboration with monks, with shamans, with traditional healers.
Of course, they were fully expressive of their
particular religious practices and symbols.
So I wasn't taking out, okay, here's I'm gonna put my Buddha statue over here so
the client sees that and know, but they could tell from our interaction that
I was very interested and open, and make those links.
If you think about it,
let's say if you have a situation where clients come to an office.
What's sitting in your office?
What kinda books?
What kind of paintings?
You can choose those in such a way that they're giving messages
of kind of openness to spiritual themes without being religiously limiting.
So that's a very concrete way.
Another is within the administrative policies.
Does the agency set up a clear spiritual assessment set of guidelines?
And there's a whole lot of them out there.
In my book on spiritual diversity in social work practice,
I've explained some spiritual assessment tools.
If there's no guidance even provided,
usually social workers feel like they're floundering with that.
I'm working with a lot of mental health settings.
Within the strengths model of case management, we try to assess many
different life domains, one of them being spirituality culture.
But that domain, I found, in talking with the consumers and
providers, doing some qualitative research, is the most neglected,
[COUGH] and least understood domain.
A lot of workers aren't sure how do I get into that?
A lot of consumers are saying, that's crucial to me, but
my worker's not comfortable with it.
So we're working at even how to clarify some assessment guidelines within
the strengths model, and we're starting to disseminate that to publications and
we're gonna put up some very user friendly,
simple guidelines to providers and consumers soon.
So anyway, whatever the agency situations,
they might have to tailor the type of assessment tool.
But do they have any?
If they do, does it work well?
Have they talked with consumers to find out is it working well?
And a broader thing is just the humaneness quotients in the agency.
Some operate top-down executive authoritarian control.
And the workers, they're kinda doing all the ground level intense work,
but they have no input to changes of practice and policy.
They just have to follow orders.
That's not what I mean by a spiritually sensitive organizational culture.
Even like I say in the business world, it recognizes that the more humanistic,
interactive, participatory styles of decision making not only can help with
what you'd come out with as guidelines for practice.
But the process itself is more affirming and supportive to the staff.
Yeah?
>> In some ways, it feels more clear to me about how to do that in an agency
setting where it's a client and social worker.
Unless we can understand how to do it in an educational setting like we have here.
Where there's been
such a long standing vision of not talking about sexuality.
>> So that would mean I'm not comfortable
talking about it in classroom or [INAUDIBLE] really.
How do you change that structure?
>> Well your Dean invited me here.
[LAUGH] There's a good signal.
I'm not speaking for the dean, but that's one way, right?
So I've gone to lots of social work programs over the years.
Somebody says, well the students have been talking about this,
faculty is starting talking about it, or,
CSWE says we have to help students learn about spiritual development.
My gosh, how are we supposed to do that?
So even just having someone come in and talk and
stimulate ideas, that helps, but then what's next?
Is there a next?
Just like we all know, when we do trainings anywhere.
If there's not a next, people say, well, that was interesting.
Now we go on with the usual stuff, forget about it.
So if there could be set up an ongoing group, like you mentioned,
there's students who are meeting around this topic.
Let's say curriculum.
If many programs have looked at their course objectives and
to see where the things around religious diversity and spiritual development,
which are accreditation issues, appear in their objectives.
Some schools have electives that focus on the course, on this topic.
Also, many practicum settings are in faith-based organizations.
How do we pay more attention to the fact that those already are there?
And we can draw on that as a more powerful resource in the school.
So, further, what's the dynamics in the faculty meetings,
or the next sort of agency?
So creating that kind of humane interactive environment.
Giving explicit support to addressing the topic, through course objectives.
Through what kind of courses exist, through having organizations.
Those are some ways.
Yes?
>> Thank you.
>> You're welcome.
>> [CROSSTALK] Graduated this program, and so
I definitely understand what she's speaking of.
And it kind of segues to my question is, what I find in the work I do now,
I'm a chaplain at a treatment center.
But I was also a dual student in social work.
>> Great.
>> And even at school here it's kinda the social theological experience
>> Mm-hm.
>> I wonder, [INAUDIBLE] do you just avoid that theological work, or
can kinda focus on positive, or do you actually go after those experiences?
>> Can you give me an example of a dilemma like that?
>> Yeah, like in religion class, I think that one of the biggest ones that
we got is how religion responds imperfectly.
So the theology between good, whatever, and salvation or around that.
You have some students who may be on either side, or you have, in my facility,
how I respond to that.
Just, what would you do in that setting?
Well, I just say that I think some of the tension comes
when the conflictual stuff comes up.
And that's something that no one really wants to talk about.
Cuz I don't- >> And
I think that's one reason why the topic in general has been
neglected a lot in the profession.
So yeah, those kind of tensions and disagreements definitely come up.
So if an organization sets up kind of a safe environment to really
process it, including educational settings, I think that's important.
So let's say specifically around the issue of sexual orientation diversity.
Just one concrete way that I've tried to help promote dialogue around it.
In this book Spiritual Diversity in Social Work Practice,
there's a section about religious perspectives on sexual orientation.
And it explicitly discusses and it presents different,
it uses Christian traditions as an example, but
then talks about their parallels in other religions as well.
So it lays out a range of theological
positions from complete rejection and
stigmatization to the position which is kind of common,
that so-called accept the person, reject the sin.
That's a common one out there [CROSSTALK], to complete acceptance and affirmation.
To many people saying just this religious tradition's vantage sexual
orientation is so oppressive and unfit with me, I'm getting the heck out of it.
So there's a range of this, right?
And so then I suggest that the social worker reflect on that range and
where its fits with whatever their own perspective is.
And how does that play out partly with social work ethics?
Can they come to a point where they can harmonize and
connect their theological position and the social work ethics in context?
If they can't, I mean frankly, if someone is determined
to maintain a hostile attitude towards people who have
non-heterosexual orientations, I think it's valid to question,
is that really a profession that fits for the person?
On the other hand, I don't think it helps when an educational setting
creates an atmosphere with people who have theological questions and
concerns about sexual orientation diversity or anything else feel like
they're not allowed to talk about it, to process it, to engage around it.
Cuz if that happens, that's not gonna help their growth around it.
I've found many social work students, when they're engaged in a process of reflection
and dialogue around this or other kinds of dilemmas, they really do grow around it.
But I also don't assume everybody has to come out with the exact same
conclusion, either.
But it has to be one, I think, that is congruent with professional ethics.
And if that doesn't work for
some people, there can be other professions that would work for them.
There's a bigger question, though, the social work profession as a whole
is advocating for nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation, right?
So on the policy level, that's one issue.
And then the other level is a social worker individual growth.
So it's complicated.
I don't know, does that- >> Yeah, I just didn't know,
cuz when you came up, you said this is not theological discussion.
I totally understood that.
I find myself trying to split between, is this a theological situation
that I should engage with this client or this person?
Or do I do the whole kinda facilitated development and treatment side of it?
And I just didn't know if we could do that back and forth, or
if you think [INAUDIBLE].
>> So that's a good question, because what I meant was,
the framework I'm taking is not theological.
But it is intended to embrace diverse theological views.
So let's say, within a particular religious frame,
it can be entirely appropriate, and that's the only way that's culturally appropriate
to work within that particular theological set of beliefs and symbols and language.
But to impose a different frame onto someone over here, that wouldn't work.
So what I'm talking about is kind of an inclusive,
embracing perspective that includes diverse religious and
nonreligious spiritual perspectives, isn't limited to them, but respects them.
And also is willing to grapple with tough things, like you said,
including the macro level.
These are social, nationwide conflicts that we engage in
around religious and spiritual values, and global.
People are fighting over this stuff.
So to grapple with that is not easy, but I think we need to.
>> Have a question, probably one more quick question,
then we'll have to call it.
>> Okay, you've had your hand up for a while.
>> Thanks, [INAUDIBLE].
I think you addressed half of it.
But the other half is that, so I know that a lot of religions and
spiritual beliefs can kind of, accepting one another and work together well.
But in the case when there is a belief that there is very absolute and exclusive,
and let's say that your client is based on this belief system.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And ethically, it's something that may be based in guilt and shame, and
that sort of sinful nature.
Something like that, that is really impacting them in their life and
the way that they think in the way that they do.
To me, it feels like a conflict of interest to be supporting them in
their spiritual belief.
And it kinda feels to me like colluding with the oppressor, or
something that feels like their beliefs themselves are oppressing them.
>> Okay. >> And of course, that could be my bias,
obviously.
And maybe I'll just have to work with that, but.
And there's [INAUDIBLE], but how do you support somebody if you feel
like that thing that you're supporting is actually oppressing them?
>> Yeah, that's good.
Well, and like empowerment theory says, a lot of oppression is not just out there,
it becomes internalized.
I mean, that's a very good way to control folks.
If you can get them to control their own behavior through shame and guilt, or just
behaving, or just believing there's no other alternative, that's very effective.
[LAUGH] So I'm not saying we just go along with that stuff.
But I think it's probably, I'm not certain.
But I think probably all religious traditions make some distinctions between
inappropriate and appropriate shame and guilt.
That doesn't mean that all members have clarified that, or
that all religious teachers make that clear.
But that is a legitimate thing to explore.
So what are the effects of the person own belief?
You don't have to even take
a sophisticated theological critique with the client.
[LAUGH] But what is the impact of their way of shaming and
blaming themselves, and where does it come from?
And are there alternatives congruent with their beliefs and values?
Yeah, maybe there's even a kernel of truth in whatever's about the shame and
guilt, but not to get stuck in it, crushed by it.
How can they transform that through, for example, many religious traditions
probably all have some kind of rituals and practices around forgiveness.
Forgiveness is another, by the way, that's another area of research being explored.
I don't mean that you set yourself up as the granter of
forgiveness in a religious specific way, but you can help them with that journey.
So many times when we feel like there's a either/or conflict between what's good for
the client and what they're engaged in.
If we loosen up and explore, even within their own perspective,
there may be some resources and possibilities to transform it.
And that's where referral and
collaboration can help, especially if you know who you're referring to.
It means someone who's congruent with that client,
who also can be a partner with you in the helping process.
Cuz you have to be careful,
sometimes you send somebody from the frying pan into the fire.
>> All right, thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]