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Translation from the german Neue Wege Gehen
by Heidi Davis, Murnau
Ulrike und Christian Dittmar, Martin Scholz
Going New Ways
A work report
Walking along new paths: The Adventure Based Pastoral Care of Health Resort Patients ans Tourists. Walk and hikes together with the pastor are descibed as providing an
excellent situation for pastoral care.
Adventure based counseling in the pastoral work for cure treatments, rehabilitation programs and clinical stays. -
How everything started - "Church under open skies and Partners“.
Only a short time ago combined parishes for pastoral work on clinical and health cure patients and tourists were established at Oberammergau 1 and at Bad Wiessee/Agatharied. From the beginning it was obvious with this combination of positions to combine offers for tourists and pastoral work at clinical (physical rehabilitation) institutions. The decisive impulse was made by dpa-journalist Harald Rettelbach when he said in an interview: "Vacation is actually also a physical rehabilitation program." His remark corresponded with the words of a female patient who said: "You know, this stay here, the physical rehabilitation program, is the most wonderful vacation I ever had."2 Many ways of the patients lead into the open air. To get in contact with the patients we accompany them as far as possible. With the specifcation "church under open skies" this project has found its name. We combine our pastoral points with the experience of walking together. Thus a connection between pastoral work and adventure based counseling could be established. Thus it was on hand for us as theologians3 to work together with pedagogues. Personal acquaintances and family ties provided with ideal conditions and connected us to the institute for sport - pedagogy at University of Augsburg. Nowadays, like a mosaic, new theological and pedagogical aspects develop during the walks with the patients and during the further education for th staff of youth work and pastoral work and for theologians.4 In the folowing we want to go into the spiritual aspects of walking and breathing. At the same time a baseline of the work of adventure based counseling should be described. With examples we will describe afterwards the connections to adventure beased pastoral care.
The requirements
Walking - a spiritual enterprise
A woman (25) outlines her experiences while walking and being on the way. In the figurative sense these are spiritual experiences: "When I feel that I brood over things all day, when thoughts turn over in my mind without reaching the goal, when I cannot decide on something, then I go walking. In the beginning I drag all this jumble around in my head. But while walking I notice that things calm down inside. And when the trail becomes steeper I have to concentrate totally on walking. Suddenly there are only my steps and my breath. And then sometimes it happens all of a sudden a thought turns up in my mind like out of nothingness. And sometimes it is just what I previously had been looking for." Walking and being in motion have a spiritual aspect and also play a fundamental part in many religious stories. The spiritual character of walking is the rhythm of motion and breathing. It comes close to what happens in prayer and meditation and sometime it is meditation itself. Walking - metaphor for life In the German language (eg. also in French) you can ask a person about the well-being by saying "Wie geht es" (gehen = to go).5 You don't answer "Ich gehe" (I go) but "es geht" (it goes) an this it means life. Life is considered a constant being on the way. This is a cultural and spiritual idea in Western Europe.s. The idea that every person in the world is on his way is very old7. It was absorbed in the
christian tradition and associated with the idea of final peace in God. The various descriptions of migration in the Bible made this idea easier understood: The people of Israel migrated from Egypt to Israel and thus wandered through the dessert for forty Years. This is a fundamental story of the ewish and Christian tradition. The disciples were constantly on their way with Jesus throughout Galilee and the first Christians travelled throughout the entire Mediterranean region like Paul..
Breath - the bridge to God
"And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being." In those words the Bible talks about th creation of man. Only
breath - God's breath - brings man to live. God breathes his breath into man. It is more than re-animation (as known from the emergency room). It is initial animation. Breath itself is life. The Greek word for breath is "pneuma" and this word comprises much more than the word breath: Pneuma - breath also stands for breeze and stream of air, also means airstrea~n, it means life and soul and spirit. God's breath - God's spirit is at the same time life.8 God's spirit is God's contact with us human beings. This contact between God and man, the breath, is not one sided. We only live when we breathe. After God's initial animation we are able to breathe by ourselves. And by breathing we ourselves
make contact with God. In the occidental tradition this not a new idea. In old pictures people are sometimes portrayed with a type of speech ribbon in front of the mouth. These flags depict breath and soul of man. Words are written on them - prayers. A person exhales and the breath comprises words. Nice and greatful words or words of burden or sad words, whatever, and these words are carried away with the the breath by exhaling. They are carried to God.
Metaphors go walking - the aproach of adventure based counseling
Walking - breathing - moving - connecting, these can be seen as metaphors. To start one's journey, to stand on one's feet, to change one's standpoint, to move one's centre of gravity all these words can be taken literally or metaphorically as well. Metaphors are not only games but of serious influence upon our thoughts and behaviour. Adventure based counseling tries to connect the literal with the metaphoric meaning of our words. Hiking, climbing, canoeing, cavegoivg, playing - in such activities are included
many metaphors.
The circle of action and reflection in adventure based counseling activities serves the purpose to help people recognize how our ideas influence our doing.9 Thus the adventure based counseling activities serve the purpose of motivation by the means of emotional desire. And only voluntariness has a chance for openess, for getting involved, for changing ("Challenge by Choice"10 The examples (page 4) show the connection between motion, ideas, metaphors and activities. Conversion - adventure based pastoral care
Walking and talking - pastoral care on the way
For us theologians in various clinical and treatment institutions the connection between motion, physical experience and pastoral care which results from the physical emphasis of walking is of utmost mportance.
Walking together now is the basic form for contacts, pastoral care, dialogues and consultation. Walking and wandering activities are offered by the clinical institutions. We observe that while walking together quite a lot of factors change in the dialogue.
+ a common trail is arranged instead of a confrontal contact. Thus th contact is limited in
time. Pastor and client are together for a certain walking-distance and time, which once
being on the way is difficult to cut short.
+ experiences show that the threshold to a conversation is very low when two people walk side by side.
+ the length of a conversation can be an hour or more. Thus longer periods of silence can arise just walking side by side. But by making headway together this silence is not unpleasant.
+ the length of a dialogue on a hike in a group depends considerably an the group dynamics: eg. the slower walker have more time for conversation with the pastor, because the ones who bring up the rear in a walking group attract special attention.11
+ the rhythm walking - breathing often determines the topic: the physical experience determines the topic of conversation. Difficult topics sometime cause difficulties in breathing. The speed of walking slows down until the rythm of walking and breathing come together and speaking is possible again. Very important is the speed of walking, it should principly enable to speak.12 This could be regarded as
rule of thumb, so that patients are still able to take the stress, get through the walk without damage and still enjoy it.13
+ the relation pastor - patient becomes closer by walking together (much time together/walking the same way with perhaps the same difficulties to get out) than in the usual clinical pastoral work (not without problems though).
The internal experience
Adventure based pastoral care14
Sometimes while walking and talking a connection between the experience of walking and the situation in one's Iife develops and thus helps the patient to manage his everyday life. In the following cases the connection is clearly recognizable:
Case A
A patient (79) of a physical rehabilitation clinic comes to the weekly evening service. After the service he stays until I can say goodbye to him. His voice is husky and hoarse. When he speaks I can hardly understand him. He tells me that he feels very weak an that he doesn't believe that health cure is of any help. At the earliest oppotunity offered the man participates in a group - walk. He walks very
slow and the group has to wait again and again. He asks them to go ahead and just let him walk behind. The whole time he stays behind about 50 to 100 meters. Quite some time I walk beside him and he tells me about the hikes he had made in the past, about his working life and about his fatigue. After we reach our destination, a small waterfall, he speaks clearly with the others in th group. Afterwords he walks behind the group again. We talk about the experience of walking behind the others and
reaching the same destination (metaphoric: the same aim). At the next evening service he waits for me again. "I'm so glad we went along the other day. Do you notice something? The roughness of my throat is almost gone. And I had thought already that I wasn't able to manage anything anymore." In fact
the patient speaks almost clearly. Three weeks later he sends photographs taken during the walk. It is a picture of the group from his viewpoint: all the others are far ahead on the trail. And then a picture
were the man had cought up and taken a photo of the group in front of the waterfall.
Case B
I meet a patient (about 50) of the cardiological section of a rehabilitation clinic. He is in the park. We get into a conversation and walk together for a while. He says: "I have to get some exercise!" While telling me about his disease (suffering from heart condition/bypass operation), the demands of his job and the situation in his family he speeds up and runs almost out of breath. After a while I interrupt him and draw his attention to this correlation. He ist astonished, but confirms that the demands of his job and his family put so much pressure on him, that he always has the feeling everything has to be done faster and faster to manage it. I offered to speak with him about all these problems on a walk
together in walking speed. He agreed and we went on a hike another two times. During the conversation we succeeded to sort out the problems of work, to structure them and develop prospects. All this time we walked in a moderate speed. When the subject turned to other problems he fell into silence while walking slower. This resulted in a great impatience on his part. Only with increasing speed he continued speaking, but then again without approaching his problems constructivly.
A connection between pastoral dialogues and experience (walking/speed of walking) becomes apperent.
The adventure based counseling emphasizes rightly that these spontanious changes are not the prime aim of an experience. The most important about any experience is ist persistency and not the verifiability15.
Adventure based counseling and pastoral care meet in this point, open for any result: it is difficult to record if a pastoral dialogue or an experience have an effect on the further biography of an person. Adventure based counseling and pastoral care alsways find difficulties to accept this "open process".ls
Dialogues and experienced adventures get into a maelstorm of named or not admitted imagined aimes of pastors or educationalists.
Therefore the transference of new experiences into daily situations is not left up to possibilities and metaphores of the respective person but is overlapped by the ideas of the educational or pastoral companion. But the exciting point is that the further way of an patient is not predictable. Pastoral work can learn from adventure based counseling. In special situations metaphors can carry the new experiences into daily life.16
Case A shows thet "walking behind" is the metaphor that descibes the experience of this man - "I cannot reach the aim/the health cure doesn't help" - but is confronted with the fact that "walking behind" reaches the same aim (waterfall/successful health cure) the rest of the group (walking group/other patients) also wanted to reach.
The metaphor "breathless" in case B connects the experiences made by walks, dialogues and the prospect onto the further way. It is directly connected with the possibility for the patient to look ahaed and walk ahead17.
That's how we continue...
Since 1998 we pastors of "church under open skies" (Kirche unter freiem Himmel) and pedagogues in a research project (EPOS) of adventure based counseling at the faculty of sport pedagogy at the University of Augsburg work together to describe our works and extend and review them.
We offer joint events and further education based on physical experiences and adventures. We want to examine if the attempt of adventure based counseling can find room in church and especially in pastoral work. The aim of the further education of (EPOS) and "church under open skies" is to reflect perception of one's own body and person, the attitude towards a group and the possibilities to convert this to the accompanying groups of parishioners. Adventure based counseling elements (especially in the field of walking and mountaineering) self experience in the actions, reflecting adventured actions and getting concrete models for one's own work help to convert our ideas. Adventure based counseling can perhaps be a new partner for pastoral care and counseling. Our results up to now certainly lead to the
conclusion: Let's go on - it's an open prosess...
Bad Wiessee, Augsburg, Oberammergau - September 1999
This essay was published in German language in the journal "Pastoraltheologie", issue 90 - year 2001.
Notes
1) "Church under open skies" (Kirche unter freiem Himmel) at Oberammergau was financed only by
donations without means from the established church. Various cure institutions, clinical hospitals, parishes, privat persons and associations of Bavarian pastors participate in the financial support up to
now. This is very special for German church system where a tax system exists and pastors normaly are paied from church central administration.
2) Where we mention patients in physical rehabilitation programs in the following we also mean tourists and people on vacation.
3) Ulrike Dittmar is pastor for clinical and treatment patients at Bad Wiessee and at the clinical hospital Agatharied. Christian Scholz is pastor for clinical and treatment patients in the Ammertal and at the clinical hospital for rheumatism at Oberammergau. Dr. Martin Scholz is assistant for sport-pedagogy at the University of Augsburg and adventure based counseling pedagogue for the
German Alpine Association (DAV). He made his Doctor of Philosophy in research over the meaning of
the learning process in activities of experientional education (German: Erlebnispädagogik).
4) The further education in adventure based counseling within the framework of "Church under open skies" are recognized by the Lutheran Church of Bavaria as further education during the first years of pastors work.
5) Wolfgang Wiedemann points out this correlation in: W. Wiedemann, Entspannung für Einsteiger, Seelische, körperliche und spirituelle Wege, Göttingen 1997, S.76 f. In this book many aspects of walking and running are described, p. 86-104
7) Therefore we want to confine what is said here to Western Europe and eventually Northern America. That life is considered a constant being on the way we understand in the cultural and spiritual context of Western Europe. f. eg. Seneca, De vita beata (approximately 58 AD)
8) The German word for breath (Atem) has ist origin in the Sanskrit word 'atman' which also means breath and soul.
9) Hovelynck, J.: Handlungstheorien erkennen und entwickeln, S.48, in: e&13 und 4/99, S. 42-51.
in Simon Priest: Research in Outdoor Education, 5.15, in: F.H. Paffrath et al. (Hrsg.): Wissenschaftliche Forschung in der Erlebnispädagogik, Augsburg 1999, S. 12-23.
10) Wiedemann describes similar observations with running groups (W. Wiedemann, Entspannung, p 94).
12) Möckel F., Prochnow Th. descibe running and walking as a kind of oxygen shower for the body, Art. Hot socks, in: Klettern 3/99, p. 76-80.
13) Normal walking times as described in trail desciptions can be extended with patients. Eg. a walk planned an hour can sometimes come up to 4 hours!
14) Erlebnisorientierte Seelsorge - can be a German translation of Adventure Based Counseling. For our work adventure based work in the clinical area is Jim Schoel, Dick Prouty, Paul Radcliffe: Islands of Healing, A Guide to Adventure Based Counseling, Project Adventure, Inc., Hamilton, 2. Aufl. 1989.
15) The former roman catholic Bishop of Insbruck/Austria Reinhold Stecher speaks about deep experiences (Tiefenerlebnissen) in this respect which later can be retrieved again. Reinhold Stecher, Die Botschaft der Berge, in: Schödlbauer, C., Paffrath, F.H., Michl, W. (Ed.), Metaphern - SchnellstraBen, Saumpfade und Sackgassen des Lernens,
16) the financing and support of adventure based counseling activities suffer especially from these
imponderable results. During the election campaign for Lord Mayor of Munich in 1999 the Christdemacratic party (CSU) crusaded against adventure based counseling for young criminal offenders, critisizing that this would reward their crime.
17) compare: publication of the international conference "Erleben und Lernen" (experiencing and learning) that published under the title Metaphern - Schnellstrassen, Saumpfade und Sackgassen des Lernens, ed.
C. Schödlbauer, F.H. Paffrath und W. Michl, Augsburg 1999.
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