Friday, August 06, 2004
Spiritual Verbatim
For those of you who do not know, half of the CPE experience is taken up by discussion time in your small group. The majority of that discussion time is spent delivering clinical presentations, or, verbatims. Now, there are a variety of styles of verbatims: the clinical presentation (pretty standard), the figure/ground report, the critical incident report, the theological story, and the spiritual verbatim. Having two clinical presentations to make this past week, and give that nothing extraordinary occurred during the week, I was having difficulty coming up with material for a second verbatim. So, I decided to do a "spiritual verbatim", which is basically a verbatim between you and God. It sounded weird to me too. But, I thought, I'd give it a try. It actually went pretty well. I felt weird writing it at first, but once I got going, it seemed to flow. Did God actually talk with me and I record His divine words? Who knows. Maybe I did. Maybe I heard the voice deep within me, which is God, and let it bubble to the surface. Again, who knows. But, God came out to be an extremely personal God to me. As my supervisor put it, "Your God seems like a cool God." And indeed He was. I did the verbatim on feelings and how to experience them. The following is an excerpt:
R: Hmmm. Ok, well…the purpose of this is so that I can try and talk with you about emotions and feelings. It’s my second goal in this CPE program – to learn more about my feelings.
G: I know.
R: Of course. Well…I even lit a candle.
G: It was supposed to be a bush, but ok.
R: At least you’ve got a sense of humor about all this.
G: I’m a funny guy.
R: Yeah, I’ve noticed. So funny you put me smack in the middle of this group in this program where all they wanna do is talk about feelings. I don’t do that so well and I guess I need to learn how. I’m doing this all for you, you know.
G: You’re doing this program because your bishop and your seminary asked you too do it. Do you think I limit ministry to those who have been through CPE?
R: Well, no, but…well, why do I have to do CPE?
G: Do you think that you would make just as fine a priest without it?
R: Well, I wouldn’t have a lot of experiences that I have had now. And that, I think, would affect the way I minister to your people. But, that doesn’t involve the group stuff.
G: So, you’ve not learned anything from the group?
R: No, I suppose I have. I just don’t like it. Sometimes it feels really silly and sometimes it hurts.
G: Try a cross someday.
R: Ok, I’m not sure if that was really you, but it was kinda funny.
G: That’s an emotion. Humor.
-R
R: Hmmm. Ok, well…the purpose of this is so that I can try and talk with you about emotions and feelings. It’s my second goal in this CPE program – to learn more about my feelings.
G: I know.
R: Of course. Well…I even lit a candle.
G: It was supposed to be a bush, but ok.
R: At least you’ve got a sense of humor about all this.
G: I’m a funny guy.
R: Yeah, I’ve noticed. So funny you put me smack in the middle of this group in this program where all they wanna do is talk about feelings. I don’t do that so well and I guess I need to learn how. I’m doing this all for you, you know.
G: You’re doing this program because your bishop and your seminary asked you too do it. Do you think I limit ministry to those who have been through CPE?
R: Well, no, but…well, why do I have to do CPE?
G: Do you think that you would make just as fine a priest without it?
R: Well, I wouldn’t have a lot of experiences that I have had now. And that, I think, would affect the way I minister to your people. But, that doesn’t involve the group stuff.
G: So, you’ve not learned anything from the group?
R: No, I suppose I have. I just don’t like it. Sometimes it feels really silly and sometimes it hurts.
G: Try a cross someday.
R: Ok, I’m not sure if that was really you, but it was kinda funny.
G: That’s an emotion. Humor.
-R
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