Jennifer Bowen | Flourishing: Integrating Therapy & Spiritual Care
Join us for a spiritually attuned conversation with Therapist, Jennifer Bowen, as we explore the ways therapeutic support and spiritual care accompany us in our healing journeys.
Bio:
Jennifer serves as the Executive Director at Shalem Mental Health Services. The mission of Shalem is: to restore hope in the lives of people, organizations, and communities through professional counselling, restorative practices, education, and community programs enabling all to flourish. Prior to her 15 years at Shalem, Jennifer worked for 20 years in the field of marriage and family therapy as a psychotherapist, consultant and trainer.
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Transcript
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Wendy VanderWal Martin: Hello, and welcome to a new episode of the brand new Season of the Love, Henri podcast, produced by the Henri Nouwen Society. My name is Wendy VanderWal Martin, and I'm part of the team that encourages spiritual transformation through the writing and work of contemporary spiritual master Henri Nouwen. Now, whether you're a longtime lover of Henri, or you're just being introduced to his work, I encourage you to check out HenriNouwen.org, our website, where you'll get introduced to all the programs and initiatives of the Henri Nouwen Society and have the chance to sign up for our free daily meditations where you will be reminded every single day that you are a beloved child of God.
Now, it's my pleasure to introduce Jennifer Bowen. Jennifer is the Executive Director at Shalam Mental Health Services. She's been working there for 15 years, and prior to that, she spent 20 years also in the area of marriage and family therapy. Now, the mission of Shalem is to restore hope in the lives of people, organizations, and communities through professional counseling, restorative practices, education, and community programs that enable all to flourish. Jennifer completed her undergraduate work in Psychology and Religion at the University of Toronto, and did her Master of Divinity in Marriage and Family Counseling at Tyndale Seminary.
Thanks so much, Jennifer, for being with us today. I'm so looking forward to our conversation.
Now, let's begin by just hearing from you about what, what makes you passionate in your work today? What are things that just you're excited about and, you really see God moving in? Thanks,
Jennifer Bowen: It's great to be with you. I was looking forward to this conversation.
I have been at two conferences in the past two weeks, and, several times in the middle of conversations around a table, I found myself getting very excited, and found myself going on and on, and I thought, oh, that's a great way to add this, this is a subject that I should share with Wendy on this question. What I'm excited about, if I can give a little bit of context first, that may sound like a bit of a downer. Your listeners heard that I lead a mental health network. So we are very tuned into the realities of mental health, and they're terrible right now. The rates of mental illness are up and suicide and, and suicidal ideation and domestic violence.
We know that youth are really struggling since the pandemic. The Angus Reed Association did a, a poll of Canadians in last year, early last year, and they said, now, one in three Canadians, no longer one in five, but one in three were reporting mental illness symptoms. Which is profound when you think of your own family, when you think of your work and your colleagues, and if you're part of a faith community, you think about the pew and who you're sitting beside, one in three people is catastrophic. So that's the context. One of the things that we said that we do, one of our programs and you said a little bit of on a mission statement, we have a network of churches and faith communities and schools and nonprofits across Canada that look to us to equip them. So we, we find out what their needs are and we connect them with resources around, we have this network.
So we network people and we connect them, we equip and, one of the things I've been excited about is thinking about what would happen if these churches [if] we can help churches address suffering with mental illness. We can come alongside and match them with professionals and allow people to have access to mental health services. We can do a lot of those things, but wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't just prevent suffering? But once people started to get well, what would happen if we as Christians in these churches in this network became agents of change? What if we helped churches become sources of hope? But this is what we aspire to as a body of Christ? But the picture that got me excited at these conferences was, Hey, there are some great suicide first aid courses, kind of like if you're having a heart attack at a bus stop, you don't expect there to be a heart surgeon, but you hope someone knows CPR.
There are courses that teach every person, any person in the walk of life. You don't need to be a mental health professional, but they teach people on how to respond. If you hear someone talking with some suicidal ideation, with some suicidal thoughts, how do you respond? How do you walk them off a bridge? How do you make them feel safe and secure and have a plan? The, the course I'm thinking about is run by a group in Calgary called Living Works. The course is called Assist. And I've been thinking, “What would happen if we got assist training into as many churches as we could in Canada? Would that impact or stats with that? What would happen to Canada if the body of Christ were the light of God? We're bearers of hope, or if we could love our neighbors in that way to say, “Let's become equipped so we can bring hope to communities in that way.” So it's not technically my program. I don't have that up and running yet, but that's the kind of stuff that gets me excited. Not just “Let's relieve suffering.” Let's bring hope, and how do we bring hope to the wider community with this network? So that's the stuff that, that gets me going around a table when I'm when I'm talking over tea.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, the mission statement of Shalem indicates flourishing for all. And of course, we know that that's going to require systemic change. How do you change the systems? Well, certainly there's that education and training piece, and then living it out, enacting it. And the vision to see faith communities more engaged, I think is just wonderful. And, you know, Henri talks so much about not being productive or successful, but being fruitful. And those kinds of visions and dreams, and the step-by-step implementation that can actually affect systems is the seed sowing and the bearing of fruit that will yield harvest for generations to come. So I've been a long time fan of Shalem's big vision, not just to be a counseling center, but to be part of really seeing things change. I love that idea of restoring hope, but then also connecting it to flourishing.
Jennifer Bowen: I think what I'm learning is it's not just church leadership that are stepping in, that when people learn about us, it's always one champion, maybe with a family member who has mental illness, and they hear about us and they get excited, and they go back to their church and they tell the story. And we start engaging in conversations. And they're not pastors or priests, or rectors. These are the teachers, these are the soccer coaches. These are business owners who care passionately about this. And wouldn't it be great to equip that population to be then the soccer coach getting trained in suicide intervention and impacts so many lives? So that's what I'm excited about, is how God has built our communities and how God has built these beautiful relationships and that being the pathway of change.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, and this podcast, of course, is reaching an audience far beyond Canada, where we both reside. And so I'll do a bit of research and make sure that in the show notes, we have resources for people in other contexts for mental health first aid. Now, Henri, of course, was one of the early voices integrating psychology and religion, and, I like to say he was a forerunner in inviting people into an emotionally healthy spirituality. Tell us how you've encountered Henri Nouwen through your journey and what are some ways that Henri was perhaps formational for you?
Jennifer Bowen: I'm happy to tell this story… And At Tyndale, there was a professor, his name's David Sherbino. He's still there teaching, and he runs the Spiritual Formation Program. It wasn't my first year, it was my second year that someone said, you have to take that course. If you're in seminary, there's a silent retreat. They introduce you to these beautiful traditions and spiritual practices. It'll be life changing. And it was. That was my first glimpse of the contemplative life. And it was it was spiritually life changing. And in that course, my first official, introduction to Henri was in my syllabus that the Genesee Diary was the first book that was compulsory reading. And honestly, I heard that it was about a priest in a monastic experience, an autobiography, and I had zero interest in it, Wendy, I'm embarrassed to say. And the people can be angry at me for that. However, soon I, I whipped through that book from the first of the chapters to the end. I inhaled it. And it was like oxygen. I remember hearing someone articulate stillness and encountering God in the quiet.
It was like oxygen coming in the room. It was so exciting to me. And kind of quenched a thirst I didn't know was there. I sound like I am exaggerating a little bit, but it made, it left a massive impression. And the second book on the syllabus was something called Brother Lawrence's, Practicing the Presence of Jesus, Practicing the Presence of God. A tiny little book, if your listeners haven't read it, they would really enjoy it. Which is kind of in practice, what Henri was talking about in Genesee Diary, right. Of imagining God with you throughout the day and praying as if Jesus is beside you all day, having a running conversation with him. And that one two punch set me on a very different path in terms of what does it mean to be a Christian?
And was, you know, Paul talks about different stages of our development, and that was me encountering God as an adult of, “Okay, we're going to have a different hands-on relationship now.” And it's not just, God is not Sunday morning, God is throughout my life. I will say one more little story about that class, and Wendy, you might know about this. David Sherbino, that professor who I reached out to anticipating this conversation, he was delighted to hear that Henri's being talked about still in podcast. David was friends with Henri, this professor, and invited Henri to come to this class every year that I was in to come and talk to the students about his experience that he described in Genesee Diary and to talk about relationships with God and, and I think health and community.
And he passed away in 1996, the, the term before I was to take the course. So I missed him by one class. And I remember this because David, our professor, spoke about him and was clearly still feeling the very present loss. It was the first time he was teaching without Henri beside him for some of those lectures. And I remember stories that he talked about, which I reference, pretty regularly in my professional life. The story that I'll share is David describing how one lecture, when Henri would come, my understanding is he would always change the lecture hall to become a circle of chairs rather than there being lecture style. You're nodding. Did, do you know these stories about Henri? Is this, does this familiar to you?
Wendy VanderWal Martin: It just resonates with who I know Henri to be.
Jennifer Bowen: Yes. So he would change the course or the classroom from being a lecture style with rows to a circle. That was the first thing that he would do. And it would be a conversation. And of course, he was towering he was somewhere way over six feet tall, I don't know how high, over six feet tall, but he was Dutch right. And what David described to us in that class that I took, was that during one lecture that he came in and was talking, someone in the class reacted quite strongly in a negative way to what was happening. A woman was in a lot of pain, some type of pain. I don't know. It's been 20 years since I heard the story, and I've thought it, and I've retold it many times. So I don't know what he was saying or what the woman responded to. I remember that David though, described that immediately Henri dropped what he was talking about, ignored the class and folded himself in front of her, kneeling down. And for the remainder of that hour or two, had a gentle conversation with this woman reminding her of God being present and God loving her, and how precious she was. And giving her those affirmations that are that are Henri's kind of ABCs of how do we make sense of the world? And where is God in our pain? And I've thought about that image dozens and dozens and dozens, if not more than times, since being in school and thought about how good it is when we stop the press and when we are in the moment when there's pain in the room. And it's informed my leadership. It's informed how I am with clients that occasionally we're talking about, but there's a flash of pain. And I think I'm not going to kneel in front of my client, but we are going to stop everything to be with that pain in the moment. So I think of that in the humility and the beauty of that and how I never met him, but that it's a ripple story that hit me a year later, maybe several years since that story happened. But it was so counter-cultural so different than how most of academia works, most of how we treat each other, and how leadership, traditional leadership is. It was so different that it really shaped me. So, , I'm happy to tell that story. I'm glad that we're starting with that.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Thank you. Well, this podcast is called Love, Henri and the reason it's called that is based on a book that is a collection of Henri Nouwan's letters. Now, there's over 16,000 letters in the archives. Henri was all about responding to his mail before, really the hot, happy days of email. And so the concept behind this podcast is that we take a letter of Henri's as a catalyst for our conversation together. And so today's letter is all the way back from May 15th, 1986, and Henri's writing to a friend. So it's someone that he knows who's struggling to care for some very troubled family members. And so this is what Henri writes.
Dear Barb,
Thank you so much for your letter. The mystery is that God does need us. God became a weak, broken, agonizing, lonely, rejected human being so that we could be with God as we are with people who need us, do not focus so much on the powerful God up there, but on the God with us.
Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus always, and you will find comfort and consolation. God does not leave you alone. He sent Jesus to you to live and feel fully your struggle. You are not alone in your anger, frustration, and desolation. Look at the cross and be there as John and Mary. Do not allow guilt feelings to take over, guilt feelings. Do not come from the spirit of Jesus. Just live your life day by day and try to say thanks whenever you can. Do not trust your feelings. Trust your knowledge that God loves you, Edmund, Robert, and Andrew, and act according to that knowledge. I pray for you with fervor and love. Know that you are loved and that the Lord is much nearer than you can feel.
Peace and love, Henri.
Now tell me for a letter that was written in 1986, what resonates with you as, as we listen to it afresh today?
Jennifer Bowen: I was going to make a joke of it. Wow. He really raises the bar for how to write letters,
Even reading it again, it strikes me in preparing for the conversation, what stuck out at me, and I may laugh a bit as I say this, I've had a running dispute with some friends theologically over what's more important, Christmas or Easter. Back at seminary, I used to get in the niche. You remember in seminary, there are places where you drink coffee and you debate. And that would've been one of the debates that I would've felt strongly about. I've told my spiritual director recently, I need to work on Easter because it still hasn't quite, the full magnitude of it has not rested with me. I continue to be blown away and moved by Emmanuel, God is with us. And the reality of advent and the choice of God to join planet Earth as a baby, as a human, I think is the story.
I think some people would say it's half the story. There's the cross on the other side of the story. And I think, yes, there is the cross. I'm one of these crazy people that has a Christmas countdown, and I don't love Christmas like kitsch but it's this high point of the year for me, spiritually and emotionally, and I have this countdown on my computer of it's coming and looking at it, I get a little hit of happy dopamine to say, ooh, Christmas is coming. One of the things that I look forward to is the Christmas light starting to go up when it gets dark in November. And people can't wait until December to put Christmas. We put up Christmas lights in Canada early in the year when it starts to become dark early. And I think of that like even the rocks will cry out, praise of God, that creation can't help itself but be moved by God and their Creator and its creator. And I think creation, we in Canada, dwelling in darkness can't help ourselves. We long for the light. We long for the hope. We long for this. And that's something beautiful and spiritual is playing out, is we are longing for this. And this magical sacred stuff starts to light, start to appear. I find it very sacred. So , I, the peace of God needs us and is in it with us, and that he was born and vulnerable and experienced discomfort and pain and betrayal. And that, that translates into our prayer life where we can say, “God, you understand this.”
One of my thoughts was it brings an intimacy to prayer knowing that God understands the moment and has been in human form. It’d be so different to pray to a God who that wasn't the reality, right. So that's what jumped out at me.
As I'm reading it now, there's so much more there. I love that. I love that he's naming the family members and clearly is holding the complexity of the situation. Although he's not addressing the whole complexity. He's saying that's not what's important. What's important is focusing on God and pulling compassion out of that to deal with this, which I think is a beautiful, simple way of addressing it.
I don't have the luxury of responding that way as a family counselor. I need to think slightly differently about that. And we can talk about the family themes that jump out at me, but certainly the Emmanuel piece is what immediately grabbed me in the letter. Now I want to ask you what jumped out at you in this letter.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Thank you. I wasn't expecting to be asked questions, but I, but I welcome it. I think this notion that God needs us is. Is so out of the frame. For many of us in traditions that have emphasized God's glory, God's power, God's majesty - God needs us, and not just needs us to worship, but needs us relationally? Needs us to accompany. I think the depth of mutuality and solidarity that Henri touches on in this letter. If I think about Barb, and I don't know what her original letter said. Actually, I only have Henri's letter. But I've tried to care for troubled family members, and I know how exhausting it is. I know how much you can feel like a failure, and that you're just messing it up. You're missing the mark. And, so not only is Henri saying God loves you, God's with you, but in God is that same feeling of need. That's mind blowing, really. But I think the energy and just the sheer reality of that kind of solidarity, that kind of relationship with God, avoids a sentimentality in that place of exhaustion and uncertainty that I think is a different kind of comfort than the myriad of self-help, you know, to-do lists of, “This is what you do when you're tired of caring in, in tough situations.” I think Henri goes to a theological place that is incredibly humbling, vulnerable, but incredibly empowering for us as very much limited human beings.
Now, Henri writes as a pastor, so this is a letter that just shimmers with pastoral care and a profound spiritual guidance, which is Henri's sweet spot, even though he studied psychology and he had a tremendous sensitivity to therapeutic realities. You're a person of faith, but who primarily works in the therapeutic context.
So tease that out for us. How might you write this letter a little bit differently, or engage the conversation a bit differently if it was a therapeutic context. And, you know, how do those two sit side by side? When do they meet? Tell us a bit about how those two arenas, that are both resources to us in our pain, how we can navigate discernment to understand when do we need therapy, when do we need spiritual guidance? When do we benefit from both? Unpack that a little bit for us.
Jennifer Bowen: So a dear friend, there are two or three questions in what you just said.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, two or three, probably seven, but I know you're brilliant.
Jennifer Bowen: Okay. So I'll start with, if this were a therapeutic letter, would it be any different? That was one of the things that you asked. So I don't know if everyone caught it, but there's one sentence that jumped out at me when I read it and I thought, “Oh, Henri, Henri, Henri. What were you thinking, dude?” But then I've done some thinking about it ever since you shared the letter with me. So the one sentence that jumped out a no surprise,
Wendy VanderWal Martin: I know which one it is.
Jennifer Bowen: Right.
“Don't trust your feelings.” That should not go on a T-shirt. It's not, there are many Henri Nouwen quotes that should be on T-shirts. Not that one. I did some thinking about this, and it, and it twinged an old thought that I had about CS Lewis. Because CS Lewis says, in, I think The Four Loves maybe, but also in Mere Christianity, I haven't actually, I'm sorry that I didn't look this up before we met, but he in several places says, “Hey, you know what? This is not about emotion following God. You have to make sure that your head is in charge because emotions come and go and they change. And love comes and love shifts and changes. So there needs to be something more that's a bit deeper. So I'm going to, I'm assuming that if this was in 1986, that they was coming out of a similar place of not necessarily understanding emotions the way I might relate to them today as a psychotherapist.
So I don't love that sentence, I'm sorry. Henri Nouwen fans, and I'm, and I'm sure I'll get some, emails about this, but I think what he was thinking is that guilt is a distraction and stay fixed on God. Like, don't let anything distract you from it. And our feelings can be unhelpful. And I agree. Some big feelings, especially negative ones, can really throw us. And when we can lose our bearings and kind of lose our north and our compass and, and get derailed. So I appreciate where it's coming from, and I think it was coming from a good place. If I were writing this therapeutically, I might say something like, God made our feelings. And most feelings do bear some type of helpful truth to them. So guilt is a big one. And it can be, if this person is feeling, if Barb is feeling overwhelmed by guilt - for me, it signals you're longing for repair in the relationship. You're longing for closeness in the relationship, and something might have gone awry. And so it's, I often think of emotions like a car dashboard in front of us. There are these strange internal cues or these light cues that come up that say, “Warning, warning, there's an injustice. You need to stand up to that. Warning, warning there's been a loss. No wonder you're feeling sad.” Something really important has just changed for you, and you've lost something, whether it's a move or a death or a divorce, that these feelings signal to us something important. And guilt usually says, something might have happened there that you need to attend to. And you clearly care about this. We don't have guilt over things that we do that are a mistake if it doesn't mean something to us. But there's love here and something's gone awry. So I would probably frame it a bit differently. That's one thought.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: When I was thinking about the letter, I wondered too about, in some pastoral settings, one might talk about true guilt and false guilt. Or a true guilt that has truth to it, a false guilt that is telling us a story about ourselves that isn't true. And it seemed to me when I was reading Henri's letter that he was saying, “You're telling yourself a story about yourself that isn't true.” That isn't true.
Which might be the way we would frame it in 2024. Rather than saying, “Don't trust your feelings,” we might say, “Attune to the story you're telling yourself, and gently inquire if it's actually true or not.”
Jennifer Bowen: That's beautiful. I think in the field of mental health, there have been different authors and different models over the years, some that talk about good guilt, bad guilt, some that talk about shame is good, and guilt is bad, or shame is bad, and, and guilt is good. But you're right. There's an indicator light that tells you there's been a wrong done that needs to be repaired, and that's a healthy mechanism. That plus empathy is what keeps us on the straight and narrow. If we didn't have that line, then we can hurt people without knowing or caring. But then the other side of it is, “I'm a bad person, and because I've done something bad, I'm terrible and I should feel horrible.” And that my language is calling that shame, and it's immobilizing and useless. It causes harm, and I would say is one of the mechanisms of pulling us away from God and other people. It's an isolating feeling. So, I agree. It's a murky place. I try to join other people's language, but there is a whole lexicon of how we talk about these things to try to differentiate them. But I agree with you. So that, that sentence jumped out, and of course you knew what it was.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, tell us a little bit about the resources of pastoral care or spiritual guidance and therapy. And sometimes people are engaging with both, sometimes they're unsure which would be most helpful? Especially if the counseling is sensitive to and in a way connected to the person's spiritual journey and perhaps even religious faith. How does one discern what's needed when?
Jennifer Bowen: So as friends it's fun to talk with you about this stuff. And you just asked me a bunch of questions. I'm going to try to answer the second one that you asked, which is, when do you talk to somebody a member of clergy, a pastoral caregiver, a pastor, a rector, a spiritual director. When do you reach out to someone for spiritual care? And when do you reach out to someone in mental health? And I'll be honest, Wendy, it is actually a complicated answer. And it used to be the younger version of me had a really tidy answer, which was, well, we define mental illness as problems with your thoughts that are unruly and thoughts and difficulty with your emotion or difficulty with behavior. And when that sticks around for a long time, when it's more days than not during a week or more weeks than not during a month or more months than not, during a year when it's that bad.
and it's impacting your ability to be safe, your ability, your friendships, your work life, your ability to join in your community responsibilities. When that happens then it may qualify as mental illness. And then you should get mental health. That's the younger Jennifer that would've said it's very tidy and you cross that threshold, go to professionals in that field. As we're talking about in this conversation, it's actually much more muddy than that because we know as Christians that we are spiritual, mentally more mental, physical, emotional. We have so many parts of self. And sometimes talking to clergy is deeply helpful. We also know that research says people are more likely to trust clergy, more likely to trust friends and family than they are mental health professionals in many cases. And I would say that what's important is that you get help.
And what's important is you find someone you can trust. And so reach out and find someone. And if you are finding that you're not making progress and you're working with clergy, then maybe reach out elsewhere. But it's possible that talking to clergy is what you need. I will say that it's important to make sure that the person you're seeing has what you need, that they're able to address the problems that you have. Asking someone is really important. I'll also say lots of folks ask me over coffee, “How do I find someone? And a really great trick is to ask someone that you trust, who they trust. Do you know of someone that I can lean on? And word of mouth is a really great way of finding a professional that you can trust.
Jennifer Bowen: Something that we've learned... So we have an agency with about 10, 15 therapists at different times of the year. And something that we appreciate is that not every therapist is the right fit. Not every clergy is the right fit. That there may be folks at your church that are easy to talk to and some that might be a little more uncomfortable. And the same goes with professionals. Many professionals now will offer free consultations. So you could meet someone, size them up, ask them, “Hey, this is my problem. What would, what do you recommend or what would it be like to work with you?” And I would recommend that give yourself - unless it's a crisis, if it's a crisis, reach out immediately to make sure that you're safe -but if it's not a crisis, give yourself some time. Think of it as a collaborative relationship.
I was working with a couple recently that needed some care around credit counseling. Money had always been scary to them, and they found, they worked with, I think, three different accountants to find one that didn't make them feel afraid and shamed and that was able to work with them to problem solve and create budgets. It took a while to find, but then when they found the right person, they were off to the races and they could let their guard down, they could be vulnerable and make massive progress. So I think giving yourself permission to find the right person and to speak up because this is your life, your health. yeah. And we're all different from each other. We all have different needs and fits.
So if someone were trying to decide, “Who should I see? Do I go to see a pastoral counselor or a spiritual director, or do I see a psychotherapist?” I think my short answer would be, I think you should go where your heart's telling you to go and try someone. Meaning if there's someone trusted and you need to confide, then I would reach out to them and I would talk to them, and ask them how would they address the problem? And to see if that feels like it would, it would help.
Jennifer Bowen: So I would say get help and, and don't be alone in your pain. Go to somewhere you trust. And if you're stuck and you're not making progress, try someone else go somewhere else. I do think, trusting your gut's really important. Because if you know, “I'm seeing a mental health provider, but I do not trust them, I do not like them, I'm not comfortable sharing what's going on.” It's, you're not going to get anywhere. And if there's a spiritual caregiver who you can listen, who you can talk to, and get some relief, and then maybe pick a plan of, “What do I need? Do I need some mental health care? Should I talk to my family doctor about meds? Should I reach out and go to the community care practice or the local therapy group to get some supports? What, what do I need that's better than keeping it inside?”
Wendy VanderWal Martin: I think what occurs to me is that an important aspect of this is the caregivers’ awareness of what their expertise is, what they've been trained for and what isn't their arena. And having really good referral lists, whether it's a clergy person who has a list of trusted mental health professionals or a mental health professional who knows some local area spiritual directors that, again, are trusted so that referrals can be made appropriately. For my years in ministry, I'm always reminding leaders, don't try to overreach what you're trained and qualified to offer - because we can cause harm inadvertently in our, very genuine efforts to try to be helpful.
Jennifer Bowen: Oh, you, you said that beautifully. And the word that we sometimes use is scope. That mental health professionals and clergy, knowing your scope, knowing what you're qualified to do. Most clergy are taught how to offer some counseling and support. In many areas in North America, there are some clear lines of when does that crossover into mental health care. And so they know what their scope is, and they should be trained on how to know and to direct people. But I agree, I think we are at our best as clergy or mental health professionals if we have a long [referral] list. “Eating disorder? That's a tricky one. I'm going to send you on to, so-and-so who knows how to do that down the street?” And they will offer some great care.
One of the things that I wrote down for this, for this question is I don't think it's either or. Some of my favorite conversations in past years have involved pastors accompanying their members to appointments, or family members, or beloved friends coming, because someone said, “My anxiety is so bad sometimes I can't remember what you've told me in those moments, and I need someone close to me who's able to hear those strategies and remind me what they are in the moment.” Sometimes I think it's not either/or. And isn't it beautiful if someone's really struggling, to develop a team around them? That's collaborative, of course with consents, of course with a person's permission to share information. But, when it comes to mental health, I think it takes a village sometimes. And, and that's a beautiful and very godly approach in how God has built this.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: I so appreciate that. I think an integrated approach, really using all of those resources helps also the individual to not, feel isolated or stigma or some of the other unhelpful stereotypes around mental health support.
Now, you mentioned a few things already about the guilt question. I wonder, though, very practically, this was a letter to a woman who was worn out in trying to care for troubled family members. Again, we don't know the whole context, whether that was addiction, whether it was rebellious young adult children or teens. But tell us a little bit more maybe about guilt in the therapeutic context, because, if you've grown up in a religious tradition, a term like guilt might have just a wee little bit of baggage attached to it, and it might be hard for us to sort it out ourselves. What's really going on with that? So what might be some things that in a therapeutic context would be really helpful for people from religious context to understand some of the guilt they're experiencing?
Jennifer Bowen: You know, what's funny is there have been some people in my office struggling with guilt. And I've recommended Life of the Beloved to them. I've recommended Henri Nouwen. And because he, I think worked and lived in Catholic faith and Catholics and many other denominations come by guilt very honestly. That message of we are unworthy and we need to prove our love to God. And we're terrible if we don't live up to those expectations. We come by guilt, honestly, and many faith traditions. And he's this wonderful anecdote to bring hope into that conversation. I would say therapeutically, when I hear, if I heard this story from Barb - if Barb had called in and said, I'd like an appointment, and the front desk says, Barb is experiencing some guilt related to family, what I would probably do is say, let’s grab some tea in the waiting room. Barb, let's, you and I both have some tea, and I would love to hear what's going on. I think I'd ask to hear the full story, and I'd be leaning in and I'd be working really hard to make sure that she felt heard. Because one of the worst parts of guilt is feeling isolated and feeling like you're terrible, waiting to feel rejection from other people, waiting to hear condemnation from other people. So in the story, I'd be listening for the echoes of her love for family members and her longing for reconciliation. I'd want to hear what was going on. I'd be listening for, is it possible there was some harm done? Is the guilt a healthy guilt related to some harm? And then I'd have a whole truckload of tools in my toolbox around what does she have control over to bring about some restoration in the relationship?
I'd be listening for what you were referring to in terms of unhealthy guilt or shame, maybe what Henri was reacting to, that might be pulling her away from her family and pulling away from God - that she is bad. Something she did was bad, and so she is bad. I'd be listening for that to see if there was a way to address it. We would call, we use strategies from the cognitive behavioral tradition - let's identify the thought, let's identify the feeling. Let's correct it. Let's get some accurate real evidence of your value and correct that assumption and try to live into some of that peace that can come with a correction.
There were a few other things that came to mind. if there was harm done, there's a beautiful book that was written years ago by an Australian.
It's this beautiful approach to, yes, you've done something dumb, you've done, you've caused harm, you've hurt somebody, you're not garbage. Let, let's pause and think, who do you want to be? Who, what is your value system? Let's explore what happened. Let's explore how people have been impacted, and let's think through what needs to happen to make it right.
It's this gentle, dignified, compassionate care of folks that may have caused harm and inviting them into reconciliation by being part of a solution. So when you asked about how would I manage guilt? Those are some of the frameworks that come to mind, that offer a pathway out of that paralyzing feeling. Guilt can feel really paralyzing. I'm stuck that guess this is me for the rest of my life. I'm the terrible parent. And it can define us. And you think, Nope, nope. That's, that's not who you want to be. That's not how you've been created to be. Let's figure out some solutions. Let's make peace with the feeling, figure it out, and let's figure out what's needed in the relationship. The flavor of psychotherapy at our agency is very much a hopeful one, very much a strength based one, very much feeling like humans have the capacity to reconcile, have the compassion, have the capacity to heal. That's how we've been built by God. And, it's a hopeful way to work, for sure.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: It just strikes me in listening to you how thin the distinction is between that sort of practice and contemplative spiritual practice. One of Henri's most well-known affirmations is, “You are beloved. You're a beloved child of God.” And since I first read that as a hurting teenager, has been absolutely a core and a consistent spiritual practice for me. And it has the same impact, I think, as a reshaping narrative. Because it goes beyond the thinking, the knowing into that deep place of your being - where truth can bear good fruit, as Henri would say. So, what strikes me about this conversation is that more and more discernment is really about the tools in the toolbox. And finding trusted, safe people who know about the tools and can help us, really recognize what tools are going to be most helpful at a given time in the reality that while we may have times of crises or times of acute suffering, we are created to be accompanied and accompany others. So we're created to really do this life together. And both spiritual guidance and therapeutic support are part of that village we take with us in becoming fully human and flourishing.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Now, Jennifer, my final question, okay. Is going to be the same for every podcast guest, and it's simply this, you are a mom, you are someone who offers care and leads an organization and is juggling many balls. What are some of your spiritual practices that help you experience just wellbeing and periods of flourishing and periods of sustainability? What are the spiritual practices that keep you hopeful?
Jennifer Bowen: So I mentioned at the very beginning, Henri and Brother Lawrence, practicing the presence of God, I think characterize the stillness, chasing stillness. And, that all day prayer is probably the majority of my contemplative life. Meaning, my day starts with Psalm 18, this is the day that the Lord has made. It's kind of how I greet the sun and I breathe it in. And I thank God for the sunrise. And, I'm of that age where as soon as it's light outside, I'm awake, unfortunately, and I pause and think about the day and God and I talk about the day. And I try my best to put things, to give things to God at that point and at the end of the day. I always, since the pandemic, my new prayer has been, “Dear God, thank you for the air in my lungs.” And just thanking God that I'm alive and that I'm physically well and then is a prayer of thanksgiving. And I try my best to give things to God. Sometimes I physically will try to - the gesture I'm using with my hand if people are listening to this is I'm moving things off my plate and to God's plate. And that's a really helpful ritual. Those the ritual of morning and evening. And during the day, sometimes the kids will hear me in the other room, but I will hear something on the news and laugh about it with God. Or I will have a moment where, as a single parent, I will say, there are so many moments of meaning and beauty or purpose. That's, it's, it could at first be quite jolting when you find yourself single, to not have anyone to share it with. Because you want to turn to someone and say, “Did you get a lot of that? That was wild.” And Jesus is the person, God is the person that I have those conversations with during the day. And when I'm driving home from work, when I'm on my way to work, we're talking about, what I'm about to face. Since grad school, inviting God into my life that way has been really meaningful. Well, obviously it's been pivotal. I'll also say that my small group at my church, I attend an Anglican church, which would be an Episcopal church in the States, I think. St. John, the Evangelist has been a beautiful community. And my small group has been a place of solace. I do feel like it's this little home church like first century of people gathering together. And for the most part, we will read a letter of Paul's, or we will read a minor prophet or read something that all of us have been around the block so many times as Christians that we want to take a fresh look at it and not just play, you know what I'm talking about, Bible poker, like we don't want to one up each other, but let's be humble and curious together about how can God can be with us in the moment. There's so much to a loving community. It's very, it's very Henri Nouwen. There's lots of practical care of each member to the other. We've lost a couple members who passed away in recent years, and we've walked each other through illnesses. And it's that community of love is Christ for me, and is beautiful. So I'm deeply grateful, right, for finding that kind of place.
Wendy VanderWal Martin: Well, I think you've described a beautiful rhythm, of solitude into community, into care. And those three movements, Henri taught, just so consistently that we begin with that deep communion intimacy with Jesus, that we then share in the context of relationship, and that energizes us to offer care or ministry. And you pour out so much through care and in a helping profession that, you know you're living Henri's rhythms. So, grace to you.
I just want to thank you so much.
Listeners, if you're not watching this, Jennifer and I have been friends for some years, so it's just been really fun to have a conversation together. But you've just shared so beautifully this integration of the therapeutic and the spiritual. And, we'll add some of the resources that have been mentioned in this conversation in the show notes. If you are listening and you wanted to watch it, you'll be able to access it on our YouTube channel, which again, you can find at HenriNouwen.org. One last plug for the Daily meditations, they're free. They're such a, a brief but moment of meaning to start your day. So I encourage you to check those out. If you've enjoyed today's episode, leave us a little review or a thumbs up. Don't forget to share it with friends and family. Thanks so much for listening and never, ever forget that you are a beloved child of God.
