Care is Contextual

I think of myself as a good writer, a good student, a good test taker… in English.

“In English” is likely not a caveat I would have noticed or named before coming to Garrett. It’s now one of my favorite things about this place, though, that I am so often in a classroom with people whose minds were first shaped by a different language than my own — different sounds, different multiplicities of meaning, different idioms from different contexts — and whose minds are continuously stretched and sharpened by the task of translation.

This idea — that all our minds are shaped by our particularities—is central to Garrett’s curriculum as I’ve experienced it in the Pastoral Theology PhD program. Like every PhD program at Garrett, it began with Biblical and Theological Hermeneutics, which asked us to consider how our interpretations of sacred texts are shaped by our own intellectual heritage and social context. My postcolonial theology class offered a powerful case-in-point as it examined how the historical realities of colonialism continue to shape culture and systems of power. My class in intersectionality and theology explored the interplay and implications of the many identities we all carry.

In fact, every course I’ve taken here has invited me to think deeply about my own identities, as they inform my experience, highlighting certain aspects and leaving me unaware of others. At Garrett, this reality has both ethical and theological implications: the more voices we hear and perspectives we consider, the closer to truth and justice we come, and the more of God we begin to understand.

Last semester, I served as the teaching assistant for my advisor, Dr. AHyun Lee, in her class on family therapy. I’d taken the class as a student several years earlier, but far more international students filled the class this time. That meant that when we discussed concepts like family structure or the expectations placed on certain familial roles, we were reminded that family means different things, looks different ways, and carries different expectations—even as we all have a story about what family is for us.

As a class, we were challenged to navigate nuance and grapple with complexity in a way that we otherwise wouldn’t. In doing so, our conversation highlighted differences to which we must attend in our work as counselors and pastoral caregivers, differences that might otherwise have gone unacknowledged. When so much of counseling and caregiving is about helping others feel seen and heard, being able to recognize and acknowledge those differences matters. Being a part of conversations like those in our family therapy class helps me to be a better pastoral caregiver and a better pastoral theologian.

As an academic field, pastoral theology brings psychology and theology into conversation with each other, often for the sake of providing care. One thing the two fields have in common is that they are both sometimes taken, explicitly or implicitly, as absolute truth, one in the name of science and the other in the name of God. Both are sometimes treated as though they did not develop within contexts of their own.

In recent years, pastoral theologians, among others, have increasingly written about the risks of treating psychology as though it is objective and morally neutral when it often functions in ways that are anything but. Think, for example, of diagnoses that are applied in ways biased by race, gender or class and used to discount people. Another major critique is that there is a cultural tendency in the United States to frame problems solely through the lens of mental health when advocacy and justice work are also clearly needed. This frame stifles analysis of the systems in which we live and how they contribute to our collective mental health crises.

My teachers and fellow students — international and from the U.S. — in the counseling programs at Garrett insist on a different framework, one that doesn’t avoid issues of class and of culture, one that recognizes a fuller breadth of the realities in which people live. That’s made possible by an unwavering commitment to compassion and by the wisdom that this community brings, each person speaking from their own context, in its own particularities.

As a student, I am grateful for that wisdom. I’m grateful to have an advisor who invites me to consider identity, culture and power dynamics as I learn to be a TA. I’m grateful to have teachers whose own contexts position them to critique the culture I grew up in as a white American, a culture that I may or may not be able to recognize and critique myself. I’m also grateful for the moments when I realize a conversation is happening in English because I am in the room, grateful for the kindness my colleagues extend, and for the reminder that I have work to do and languages to learn.

I’m grateful to be in classrooms with people who humble and inspire me. Humbled and inspired, it turns out, is a great way to learn.