ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the importance of resilience for good pastoral care, especially when it involves caring for people at the end of life. Pastoral care has a particular resonance with faith communities who regularly deal with bereavement and loss, but it is also offered by many other organizations, such as schools and colleges. It is far more than offering a shoulder to cry on; any organization offering pastoral care must have a basic set of principles and values to underpin the work they do and to ensure the safety and well-being of those offering, as well as those receiving, pastoral care. To offer pastoral care at deeply distressing moments of people’s lives is hugely demanding and requires a level of personal self-awareness in order to avoid the carer’s own “emotional baggage” intruding into the caring process. To achieve this requires resilience. The chapter offers two models to help pastoral carers understand their role: becoming “a wounded healer” (Nouwen) and “being a fellow traveler” (Holloway and Moss). Each of these approaches emphasizes the importance of “staying with people’s questions,” rather than “offering answers” to the big “why” questions that anguished people often raise.
