Power and Reality

First, read this

http://www.prisonexp.org/

This is the classic demonstration of how people – you and I – behave in groups. 15 ‘healthy, intelligent, middle-class males’ who had passed rigorous psychological tests turned into sadists and victims within a matter of hours. That last sentence is worth re-reading.

Further, relatives and friends who came for ‘visiting hours’ absolutely accepted their role and the treatment which their loved ones were experiencing. Yet further, the study staff – highly respectable Ivy League psychologists and professional university researchers – were swallowed up by their own scenario. So was an independent lawyer. And so was a prison chaplain brought in to give his opinion on the realism of the environment. Instead of which he simply recreated his own institutionalized personality.

Each one of the researchers, the lawyer and the chaplain would have considered themselves well versed in ethics, having passed extensive training in them.

Only one person involved in the experiment actually managed to be aware of reality:

Filled with outrage, she said, "It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!" Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality. Once she countered the power of the situation, however, it became clear that the study should be ended.

I would suggest that any discussion of power also requires the discussion of what reality is and is not and that this far from being simple and straightforward. The majority of the time it is so complex that most of us don’t bother thinking about it at all.

Limits to Care

I had the un-nerving experience the other day of meeting with someone who caught my attention more than usual. As you know I have a principal of not wanting to know what patients have done or have had done to them and this particular meeting demonstrated how useful that can be. We were able to meet, person to person, without too much of my anxiety getting in the way.

But the meeting has stayed with me. Where do my responsibilities to the patient begin and end as a Pagan chaplain, and why?

Christian chaplaincy offers a good starting point; they have experience that we don’t. Their theology suggests that they have a duty to visit everyone, perceiving Christ in every individual. Sacrifice is important in Christianity in a way that it isn’t in Paganism which will have an impact on the way in which Christian chaplains are with people who have lived in ways that will be difficult to come to terms with. They have a duty to serve rapists and torturers. I’m not sure that Pagans do.

If we have a concept of the Sacred Feminine beyond something other than a symbol then we have to think about what happens when that sacred feminine is purposefully defiled. If we have a thealogically-based understanding that the abuse of power is wrong then how do we respond when we meet someone who has grotesquely and perhaps over a long period of time abused their power? Do we, like the Christians, hate the sin but love the sinner? Since we don’t have a concept of heaven or hell, of salvation or damnation, but tend towards ideas of the progress of the soul, do we have a duty to ‘save’ anyone, indeed, can anyone be saved? And is there some kind of unspoken trade-off in that dynamic where the more we sacrifice ourselves to save others the more saved we ourselves become?

Paganism doesn’t have a thealogy of forgiveness. Popular writing on the subject encourages us to forgive for our own wellbeing, so that we can feel better, let go move on: forgiveness as self-healing rather than a courageous act to make the whole world a better place. The Shadows of New Age understandings of forgiveness aren’t explored. Forgiveness can certainly be used as a punishment, it raises the forgiver above the person being forgiven, a necessary and useful first movement all round, but a rather manipulative and shady way of doing things if that’s where it ends. Do we ultimately want to meet each other as equals or always remain in top- and underdog positions? Punishment has its place, atonement can be healing and if we deny people the opportunity to atone we can do as much damage as if we were to punish them inappropriately.

Paganism isn’t yet a religion that many of us are born into, it’s a positive personal choice. Whether that choice is made as a rebellion against Christianity (which is no real reason to enter into Paganism, but one that many people take) or whether it genuinely feels like a homecoming it’s not something that you casually decide to do. We research it, even if that means reading just one terrible book and almost all of those books, no matter how dreadful, will discuss personal responsibility. So Pagans know that we can’t go all post-modern about life, that although there may be good reasons for people to behave poorly the buck needs to stop somewhere.

Patients can learn from other people on the wards and the nature of institutions is that power is at the forefront of everyones behaviour. Paganism can be seen as the obvious way to get what you want which makes it an apparently simple choice for people who like to get what they want.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some people discover they’re Pagan soon after going to prison. The need to be seen as an individual; the need to be seen at all; the need to be different; the need to exert their difference may all feed this epiphany. My own experience suggests that being seen to be Pagan can be a way of demanding special treatment. In every case I’d say that every person should be given special treatment, it’s what our institutions tell us they’ll deliver, personalised care tailored for the individual. In almost every case, the Pagan patients I’ve met know very well that this is a load of nonsense; they’re very clear-sighted about abuses of power and rebel against cant.

In the lemniscate of complexity in people’s circumstances and motivations, and in our own, where do we find guidelines for ourselves around who we will and won’t deal with, safety considerations aside?

Personally, I don’t want anything to do with child or elder abusers or rapists. We all do things in moments of madness but rape and torture doesn’t come into that category. In the unlikely event of a Pagan vivisectionist ever finding themselves in hospital I wouldn’t want anything to do with them either. Child and elder abusers, rapists and vivisectionists have purposefully and for personal gain turned off their natural ethics and I dare say they can all give excellent reasons for doing so. I don’t agree with them. Since I hold strong opinions on the matter I’m unlikely to be of any use to them.

This is where my principal of not knowing can be both a help and a hindrance. Life being what it is I’m bound to find myself face to face with a deeply distressed child abuser, someone like Mary Bell who killed her first child when she was 11 having (inevitably) experienced abuse herself and didn’t leave prison until she was an adult. What happens then?

Who knows? My answers today may not be my answers of tomorrow. Looking outward for enlightenment has limited effect, we have to look inward, to our own resources and weaknesses, goodness and evil, light and dark, complexities that can be almost impossible to manage. Because, despite what the majority of druid and witchcraft authors may tell us, we all have within us the capacity to murder, rape, abuse and torture. When we deny our own dark we become as unbalanced as those who deny their light.

So I don’t have any definite and easy wisdom to pass on, other than, perhaps, to follow the Charge myself, to constantly seek answers inside and of myself as well as seeking for useful external help to guide my knowledge.

Serving Two Masters

Matt 6:24 "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Putting to one side the business about slaves Matthew has a point. Institutions, particularly caring institutions like hospitals, are notorious for their numbing effects where everything would work very well if only the ‘service user’ would go away. There’re a myriad of issues here: why people are attracted to caring in the first place, what purposes caring institutions actually fulfil, the deep seated (even if rebelled against) needs for leadership, control, hierarchy, personal responsibility and accountability, and who we are accountable to.

The first analysis is straightforward. As a chaplain I am accountable first and foremost to the Goddess, one percentage point above the person I’m visiting, and the institution comes somewhere further down the line. In my opinion, when this is not the case this is what can happen.

Mrs Waller and her husband Richard, 35, claim they contacted the hospital on several occasion but were refused permission to bring their daughter back in and instead referred to a child psychologist who told them 'not to worry'. She became so thin she could not walk on her own and was found dead in bed on December 2, 2005 - two weeks after leaving the hospital. She weighed less than four stone.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1139905/Girl-8-phobia-dentists-refused-open-mouth-traumatic-visit--starved-death.html

The parents hoped that the hospital would do something and felt powerless to act. The psychologist knew best. The nurse who rang to tell the parents not to come in took no responsibility and wasn’t expected to. No one felt responsible for anything and a child needlessly died. Now an inquest has begun and various policies will be tiddled with . . . you know the story, we heard it as soon as we became aware of the media and we’ll continue to hear it for as long as we live. A terrible inversion of purpose occurs again and again, the intent of the job is actually to tick boxes, fulfil policy and protect oneself and ones employer not just from litigation but also from adverse publicity. And yet anyone who’s ever spent more than a couple of days near a hospital knows that abuses of power, unkindness and thoughtless behaviours (as well as good practice) are fairly standard. Don’t pretend it’s not so! The very basis of institutions is the wielding of power.

I used to work in a psychiatric hospital in the 1950s. After having studied philosophy, I wanted to see what madness was: I was free to move from the patients to the attendants, for I had no precise role. It was the time of the blooming of neurosurgery, the beginning of psychopharmology, the reign of the traditional institution. At first I accepted things as necessary, but then after three months (I am slow-minded!), I asked, "What is the necessity of these things?" After three years I left the job and went to Sweden in great personal discomfort and started to write a history of these practices [Madness and Civilization]. It was perceived as a psychiatricide, but it was a description from history. You know the difference between a real science and a pseudoscience? A real science recognizes and accepts its own history without feeling attacked. When you tell a psychiatrist his mental institution came from the lazar house, he becomes infuriated.

Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault - October 25th, 1982.

From: Martin, L.H. et al (1988) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock. pp.9-15.

(Practices have changed in hospitals, psychiatry and even in prisons yet their basis’ remains the same, it cannot help but do so: if they were to change they couldn’t continue to exist. In turn those practices are founded on basic human impulses, including yours and mine, which also remain the same. The classic demonstration of this is the Stanford Experiment

http://www.prisonexp.org/

where a group of students were randomly allocated 'prisoner' and 'guard' roles. You can guess the rest. I've often wondered how life would be if our police, prison guards and traffic wardens uniforms were a light pink and they had to wear flower wreaths rather than caps.)

So. I am personally responsible for not reporting the abuses of power I may witness, from terminally disinterested staff to 4 large adults piling on top of a frail childs body. If I was to report everything I’ve seen in the decades I’ve been involved in hospitals I’d be admitted to psychiatric care myself. I don’t report everything because weighing up the benefits and detriments of doing so I’ve concluded that more often than not it will cause more trouble than it’s actually worth. I take responsibility for that which means not only that I trust I will stand in court and admit my failure if needs be, but also try to remain alert to the likelihood that I am losing interest in giving a damn.

I have the luxury of not being a member of staff employed by an institution and so am less institutionalised. As a visiting chaplain I’m very clear that beyond answering to managers or following policies I’m ultimately answerable to the Goddess. For me, the Charge is the first written source I look to for guidance, stressing freedom, love and balance and particularly personal responsibility.

Let there be beauty and strength,
power and compassion,
honour and humility,
mirth and reverence within you.
And you who seek to know me,
know that the seeking and yearning
will avail you not,
unless you know the Mystery:
for if that which you seek,
you find not within yourself,
you will never find it without.

But it's not always easy to be certain who benefits from my seeking for balance . . . my life is easier all round if I ignore bad practice on the ground that nothing will be done in any case, or that staff will learn not to trust me and so make access to patients less straightforward, or that patients may use me to manipulate a situation. We just try to do the genuine best we can. Knowing what's genuine is harder than it seems.

Image of Hekate by Robin M. Weare, 1995.

Gritting your teeth.

People are unreasonable, illogical and self centred; a lot of them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives, do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies, succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow, do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable, be frank and honest anyway. The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be cut down by the smallest people with the smallest minds, think big anyway. People say we are underdogs but follow top dogs, fight for the underdog anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight, go ahead and build it anyway. People often need help but will attack you if you help them, help people anyway. Give the world the best you've got, you could end up getting kicked in the teeth but you go ahead and give the world the best you've got anyway.

Julius Irving.

Abortion

A decade ago, in a field in Wiltshire, three of us sat listening to a friend. She had made an appointment for an abortion in a couple of days time and was working through her doubts and feelings witnessed by three other women. I’ve no strong feelings about abortion other than women bear enough responsibility for the existence of children in the world and so can generally manage the responsibility for stopping a child coming into the world. I’m pro-choice and pro-responsibility. What mattered here was the conscious preparation of this woman for the intentional killing of her child.

I’ve not spoken to pro-choice Pagans (there are a few anti-choice Pagans) who seem able to get to grips with this though I dare say there are some out there. Pagans talk a lot about the cyclical nature of this and that, and we say we have a loving respect for the Dark Goddess, She Who eats Her own children, but there seem very few of us who don’t need to smother the dark and difficult in the sparkles from unicorns hooves. There is nothing nice about abortion. Its purpose is to cause death, to exert power over something that is entirely vulnerable. That’s what women have to contend with, that’s exactly where the Dark Goddess steps in.

So it’s not a matter of “There, there, you poor thing, there is nothing else that you can do, you have no other choice,” because of course there is another choice. This situation calls for unswerving honesty, loyalty and clear sightedness. When you can look into the void and endure the horrendousness of what looks back at you you have stepped into your own power. Be careful you remain a decent human.

The evening before she went to hospital the four of us met in the wellbeing bender. The burner was chugging out heat, we had a guardian, a man who made sure no one walked in by mistake, and we’d all come personally prepared. Our intent was to prepare the pregnant woman for her abortion; to acknowledge the enormity of what she was going to do; to attempt to prepare the mystery that is a foetus for her death. We gently stripped the pregnant woman and lay her on cushions and sheepskins, covering her with blankets. One of us was at her head, one at her feet and another doing the physical acts of the magic. The pregnant woman shivered and cried a little and we all altered our consciousness so that we were able to say what needed to be said without recourse to paper, allowing words to come through our mouths from who knows where.

A calla lily was placed in a white shallow ceramic dish and we made it the focus of our attention as the bowl was balanced over the pregnant woman’s womb. We’d collected some menstrual blood throughout the day and when the time was right we poured the blood onto the white lily, staining it and spilling red into the white of the dish. It was surprisingly dramatic, speaking to that unconscious place which responds to symbol and meaning. The pregnant woman gasped in shock, sobbed and was moved to speak to her foetus and the Goddess which took however long it took. In the end, she was able to be impassive with the stained and bloodied image of wrecked purity.

A small stream flows close to the site and a large bottle had been filled with its water. As she remained held, we moved the lily and the bowl from her belly to a patch of earth from which we’d folded back the groundsheet and carpets and poured this water over the lily into the bowl, which overflowed so that the blood washed away into the Land. The bowl was again placed over her womb and first one woman and then the next drank from it, with the lily still in it, knowing that invisible traces of blood remained. Finally the pregnant woman drank from it. Her purity would not be the same as it had been but it remained intact.

In time we clothed her and led her back to her bed, tucking her in to dream, purposefully not grounding or making a formal end, allowing her unconscious to speak and be heard clearly. The three of us returned to the bender, tidied up and didn’t say much; it felt deep, powerful and fine.

Perhaps the central aspect of this work was equality. We knew each other very well, which is not to say we spent massive amounts of time together or even that we are close friends. But we had shared years of experience and possess the individual ability to work in a way that allows others to function as true equals. When one steps forward it doesn’t mean that others must stand back. That fundamental equality allowed us each to serve and be served with no covert power-focused intent.

This kind of ritual isn’t absolution or justification, something to be done routinely or lightly. We didn’t cast circles or invoke the elements because what are we trying to contain, to erect barriers against? We were 4 women working on behalf of a woman who had chosen to kill her child, on behalf of a child that was going to be killed and, I hope, in service of the Dark Goddess. With that clear at the front of our minds we also knew we were taking a risk in drinking from a vessel that held the mixed menstrual blood of a number of women, whether it be HIVAids or other blood-borne problems. I don’t recommend it and I don’t not recommend it. You’ll make your own choices over the kind of things you want to do, but be clear that if you want to do things properly and well you won’t always be able to perform a health and safety assessment.

Complexity

It seems to be an aspect of human nature that our perceptions are most often in terms of black and white. We’re aware that shades of grey exist but it’s usually considered too unproductive to consider them. We may have to sit back, listen to different arguments, hear other, often diametrically opposed opinions and then attempt to find our own place in them. Listening to any talk radio and reading almost any newspaper demonstrates that we’re not very good at nuance and that whilst we may appreciate a moments reflection what our debate usually comes down to is: Somebody Should Do Something.

In Paganism we’ve learned to avoid linear thinking in magical terms. We know that time doesn’t simply move through the present via the past towards the future. We know that in a world that is interconnected nothing can remain static, which is the very basis for magic: if we tweak something here then something over there will change. This is most often described as the Web or the Spiral Dance.

When I began training as a psychotherapist I had a vision of a related but different model of the movement of energies, the lemniscate. In the Ryder Waite tarot 4 cards show the lemniscates, the magician, strength, the world and the two of pentacles. My understanding of the symbol in these contexts is that they demonstrate flow, everlasting change, and particularly the balance between opposites: they exemplify paradox. If I had the faintest idea how to create a computer image of one it would be in the form of a ribbon, thickest towards the ends and thinnest where they cross, made of flowing colours that never quite merge, maintaining their integrity. The most interesting place on the lemniscate is at the centre, the closest point of encounter, the place where opposites meet but do not merge to become one. This is the point of paradox, of greatest friction and energy, the place in other words, where the greatest magic can be done and the most learned. Simply, the Goddess can hold two utterly contradictory views at once.

The broad curves of the poles are easily understood; they’re the absolutes, night vs. day, joy vs. sorrow, life vs. death. Here, the flow of energy is steady and easy to negotiate: “I am for this and against this.” When we move closer towards the narrow centre pressure increases just as water under pressure becomes more difficult to handle. When we reach the centre we have to remember the poles we started from in case we lose the ability to determine our starting points, to know what it is that we hold dear in order to be able to recognise it in what can be a maelstrom of conflicting and often apparently very similar points of view and action. But we also have to attend to what is here, now.

In the meeting place of the lemniscates, opposites look very similar but they’re actually diametrically opposed.

So, life is complex and humans have a tendency to want simplicity.

Being a Chaplain, like any other person who’s interested in being of genuine service, is to enter into a struggle with contradictions. The impulse to become a nurse or therapist or any kind of carer is often our own unmet need for care. That’s a world of trouble if we remain unaware of it or refuse to deal with it. We’re also very interested in other peoples business. We want to get involved and do it better. Just as the best poitician is the person who least wants the job, I’d say the same is largely true for people who’re attracted to caring for others. We have to be profoundly aware of the complexities and paradoxes in our own natures.

Hospitals exemplify these problems: they’re places where it’s quite legal and proper to cut people open, to use drugs and radiation to kill, to make people do things that they really do not want to do, like get up and walk about soon after surgery, or eliminate somewhere other than a toilet, or stay when they’re deeply afraid of staying. I don’t believe there’s a nurse or doctor who can honestly say that they’ve never abused their power, never made someone less powerful than themselves do something simply to make their own life easier. That’s life, the impulse is in-built, and it’s built into us as Chaplains too. We will make shocking mistakes as well as doing no harm, as well as occasionally doing some good.

Patients have a different kind of power. They’re vulnerable but not always weak. They can do and say all kinds of things because they’re unwell which can affect our work, anything from complaining about us to falling in love with us – another paradox when these two things occur together! There can often be a tangible fear of patients, especially with the oft-invoked Magical Word of Fear and Command: Litigation!

All hospitals make policy about never being alone with a patient. I tend to ignore it because I’ve found that patients are rather more like people than they are a ticking bomb and prefer to be treated that way. Me too, I’m not comfortable with the idea that I have paedophile or rapist tendencies. I find that intimacy is the bedrock of healing and being authentic with one individual almost impossible with an audience.

You will make your own choices about how you are with individual patients and these choices will change with time, as will mine. Chaplains enter liminal space, we set foot on the lemniscate knowing that it will sweep our feet from under us, that we will be squeezed and buffeted as we reach the centre where things that can seem identical are in fact diametrically opposed. Life is complex and meaning is what we make it. It’s good to know that at times, there is no meaning to be made. We need do nothing other than Be With this person in the best way we can, unmystical, inexpert, and always, always remembering that at the end of our meeting we can leave but they will stay.

Some Thoughts On Visiting.

It’s most likely that you’ll come into the hospital one of two ways, either by invitation from a particular patient or via the chaplaincy office when they discover a Pagan patient is asking for specific spiritual help. In either case it’s wise to make your first visit to the hospital via an appointment with the Chaplaincy office, for several reasons.




You will discover who the lead Chaplain is and she will discover who you are.
She can introduce you, the ward and other staff to each other which will facilitate your work no end.
You and she can discuss your work so that she finds out more about Paganism and you have someone to pass questions by.
If you don’t already have one she can advise you about getting a Criminal Records Bureau check (CRB)
http://www.crb.gov.uk/
which you will need if you’re going to do more than one
or two visits.

Here’re some pointers to consider.

1. Spend some time thinking about the purpose of your visit. Talk with a trusted friend or group of friends about it, people who’re up to more vigorous discussion than “Oh you’ll be great, you’re such a good person!” Get your intent really clear.

2. It’s important to hear, from the patient, what they think the purpose of your visit is.

3. Consider how you’re going to present yourself. Please don’t wear ritual clothing and kilos of Pagan jewellery. Personally, I’ve never felt the need to even wear a pentagram to draw attention to the fact that I Am A Pagan Chaplain. You’re there to quietly and unobtrusively be of service to a vulnerable person; drawing attention to them in a ward of strangers is not being of service to them. Also, don’t wear perfume, which can make ill people feel more ill.

4. Always phone the ward office first to let them know you’re coming and to negotiate a good time for you, the patient and the ward.


5. When you arrive on the ward, always go to the ward office first to let them know you’re there and to make sure that it’s still all right to visit. You don’t want to embarrass a patient who may be in the middle of something intimate. Never ever walk through closed doors or pulled curtains before checking and re-checking with the nurses.

6. You’re a guest of the patient. Be grounded, sensitive, polite and unpatronising to them and to other patients around them. Make gentle eye contact.

7. Think about where and how you place yourself. It’s almost never good to sit on the bed and you may just have to pull the chair around so you and the patient can see each other’s face.

8. Don’t touch any equipment, but do consider touching the patient at some point. People in hospital are seldom touched at any time other than to do something medical. Get over the ‘sexual assault’ paranoia, and just touch or hold a hand (that doesn’t have an IV in it) in a centred, reassuring manner without making a fuss.

9. Every visit will require a different amount of time. I’ve spent 2 or three hours with some patients and at times just going to the bedside, saying hello and asking if they need anything will be enough.

10. Listen, listen listen. Some of what you hear may be distressing. You’ve chosen to enter into a potentially distressing role, so contain it without withdrawing from the situation. Avoid frivolity.

11. If a patient complains about their care they may be right. But don’t undermine the staff. If you’re any doubt, talk with the lead Chaplain.

12. You may well be interrupted. Don’t assert your right to the patient but reassure them that you will visit again.

13. Wash your hands before visiting and after. If you find yourself with nothing to do, wash your hands.


Things to consider after a visit.

1. Timetable in a period of reflection after the visit. The multifaith room or chapel is an excellent place to do this. Talk with Deity. The purpose of this time is to be mindful of the importance of your meeting, to remember and even write down anything that you’ve been asked to do, and then to put the meeting to one side.

2. Maintain confidentiality. This is particularly important when talking with other Pagans and people outside of an official role beyond the hospital.

3. Where do you get your support? In this context support means a safe and supportive, professional meeting where you can express and experience your feelings in depth. It doesn’t mean being surrounded by people who think you’re great. Having a trusted person or group of people who will be loyal and honest is central to your continued good practice.