Active Companionship: Mental Health Chaplaincy

What does it mean to be a companion? What behaviors, practices, and actions are involved? And who is most in need of our companionship?

These were some of the questions that surfaced and that were given important answers at a training on March 16th for St. Anthony’s staff. The training was led by Craig Rennebohm, a pastor in the United Church of Christ and founder of the Seattle Mental Health Chaplaincy. The session helped us think about ways to better understand and serve our guests.

It’s our task as staff to meet guests where they are, even when a guest’s situation and outlook on the world might be difficult to relate to. It’s our responsibility to exercise all of our imaginative capacities to try to understand what life is like for our guests, and to strive to interact with them not as authority figures, caretakers or service-givers, but as partners with them on their individual journeys—as companions.

We all learned to think about the word ‘companion’ as a verb. To companion another person is to act in a certain way to build a relationship with them. Rennebohm highlighted key components of companioning: Hospitality (creating a safe space in which to interact with a person, being welcoming and treating a person with dignity and respect), Neighboring (introducing ourselves as equals that share a common ground), “Sharing the journey side by side” (looking out at the world from the same place, from the same perspective), Listening (hearing a person’s story, beginning with their present situation), and Accompaniment (offering support, “building a circle of care”).

We also discussed the way that companionship calls for acknowledging our limits: admitting when we might not understand something, or when we’re unable to help someone in a certain way. And we learned that companionship is necessarily a process, and becomes clearer, and easier, through a commitment to companion another person over an extended period of time.

To learn more visit: Pathways to Promise; Craig Rennebohm’s website: www.mentalhealthchaplain.org.