This past week I started classes in my M.A. in Professional
Mental Health Counseling at Lewis & Clark College here in Portland. This is
the story of my journey.
Almost two years ago I started the process of getting into grad school for counseling. There were many possible programs, many custom tailored to fit different schedules, budgets, and lifestyles. Yet I was looking for only three things: worldview, location, and intellectual rigor. I wanted a school that had a worldview that would both complement and challenge my own—more on that later. I wanted a school that was somewhere I would actually want to live. I’d lived in the Southwest a long time and was potentially looking for a change. Finally, I wanted a school that would have very high academic standards both for my efficacy in my chosen field and to help prepare me for my eventual further schooling in law/jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, whatever. As I said before, there were a lot of schools, but in the end there was only one that actually fit the bill: Lewis & Clark College.
If you know me the worldview piece was already severely limiting. Most schools’ counseling programs are overly practical and don’t want to rock the boat. They’d better rock my boat. Also if you know me, one of my mottos in life is “location, location, location”. I wasn’t going to live anywhere in the Midwest… or the South, and definitely not in Texas. Nor most of the East Coast and I quickly discovered the right side of the country is not big on rigorous counseling programs. I wanted to find one in Boston, but out of their many colleges/universities I only found one even possible program, which I eventually decided against. There were some choices in the Southwest but they were all Christian schools and I was still leaning more towards secular education. That left the Pacific Northwest (ie Portland as I’ve never been impressed with Seattle), which had a number of good programs. But after incredible amounts of study I realized that it was Lewis & Clark College or essentially nothing for me. I guess I secretly don’t believe in margin or I have that much faith in God and/or my own abilities.
Almost two years ago I started the process of getting into grad school for counseling. There were many possible programs, many custom tailored to fit different schedules, budgets, and lifestyles. Yet I was looking for only three things: worldview, location, and intellectual rigor. I wanted a school that had a worldview that would both complement and challenge my own—more on that later. I wanted a school that was somewhere I would actually want to live. I’d lived in the Southwest a long time and was potentially looking for a change. Finally, I wanted a school that would have very high academic standards both for my efficacy in my chosen field and to help prepare me for my eventual further schooling in law/jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, whatever. As I said before, there were a lot of schools, but in the end there was only one that actually fit the bill: Lewis & Clark College.
If you know me the worldview piece was already severely limiting. Most schools’ counseling programs are overly practical and don’t want to rock the boat. They’d better rock my boat. Also if you know me, one of my mottos in life is “location, location, location”. I wasn’t going to live anywhere in the Midwest… or the South, and definitely not in Texas. Nor most of the East Coast and I quickly discovered the right side of the country is not big on rigorous counseling programs. I wanted to find one in Boston, but out of their many colleges/universities I only found one even possible program, which I eventually decided against. There were some choices in the Southwest but they were all Christian schools and I was still leaning more towards secular education. That left the Pacific Northwest (ie Portland as I’ve never been impressed with Seattle), which had a number of good programs. But after incredible amounts of study I realized that it was Lewis & Clark College or essentially nothing for me. I guess I secretly don’t believe in margin or I have that much faith in God and/or my own abilities.
What really put L&C as the only real runner in the race
was the fact that it is CACREP accredited, which means that it’s an approved
program by the American Counseling Association and this bodes well for my
future professional life. There are very few CACREP-accredited programs and
even fewer that also share the worldview and location pieces. Furthermore,
people had sometimes referred to L&C as “the Harvard of the West Coast”,
which was compelling to me since I do plan on going to the Harvard of the East
Coast at some point in my life… So anyways I had chosen, now I just needed to
get in. So in January of 2011, after much wrestling with the injustice of 500-word
entrance exams (Grant Newman saving my life on that count), I put my application
in the mail—no small feat in my opinion. My two recommendation letter-writers,
Celestia Tracy (herself an L&C alum and experience counselor/author) and
Dr. Bill Simmons (then director of the MASJHR program at ASU) sent their letters
and the rest is history. Really long story short, I was accepted into the
program.
But my life somewhat fell apart in 2011 and I could not go to Portland that fall; I asked for a deferment, made a defense of that decision, and it was granted. I would now start in the Summer of 2012. Now I just had to get my life in order, have one final “mission trip”, and prepare to leave the dryness for the rain. The preparation to leave my friends, family, and community in Phoenix could not have begun too early. I was leaving everything behind.
My friends finally made peace with me leaving, the discussions were had, the wisdom of stay or go were analyzed critically, prayed over, and accepted. Africa was prepared for and finally conducted and then I was home for 5 days and then finally in a van headed North. The photos are up. It was a rush. I wouldn’t do it any other way.
Now I’m here in Portland, which I’m probably going to just keep calling “the land of myth and beards”. It’s an extraordinary city that does make me a little sad that 90% of cities in the US don’t even have half the interestingness of this town. I could hate it after 7 months of gray, but even on this rainy, moody May afternoon it is endearing at worst. I should be studying and reading copious amounts of material about research methods and counseling theory, but I want to do this first, so that’s what I’m doing.
“How is school”, you ask? Grad School has been challenging, but I love it. I know I’m in the right place.
The first thing you must know about Lewis & Clark College is that it is beautiful. Not “kinda pretty”, but breathtaking and grand. It sits high on a bluff over the Willamette River in between an extremely wealthy community known as Lake Oswego and a densely forested state park. The architecture of some of the older buildings is reminiscent of archetypal old (and large) English cottages, while the new buildings are tastefully refined contemporary—all of which are LEED certified for energy efficiency, of course. The whole campus is a garden with flowers, towering junipers and firs, lush ferns, and babbling creeks. Trails run throughout the campus’ forests and nature walks. There are countless beautiful and secluded spots to study and rest. Bridges cross a little ravine tucked on the East side of campus. The trees tower over you and you can hear the stream running below. It is something of poetry, to be honest. Even the beautiful library runs along the massive rose garden—replete with flower bushes, moss-covered stone gazebos, and a view oriented at the summit of Mt. Hood. Last year the L&C campus won “2nd most beautiful campus” in the United States and I am not surprised in the least. It’s a simply splendid place to be.
Yet even this is not the reason that I chose Lewis & Clark, although it surely didn’t hurt. The beauty was compelling, being in Portland was perfect, and the school’s intellectual heritage was encouraging, but what I was most excited about was this one thing (in two parts):
Their Critical Perspective and their commitment to Social Justice.
I wanted a school that admitted they had an agenda, refusing the intellectual and moral dishonesty of modernist notions of “objectivity”. Lewis & Clark trains counselors so that those individuals might make society more just and help humans heal. They are not vague in their endeavor, but explicit. This is more uncommon than you may think. Most counseling programs are not concerned with the societal implications of moving into another person’s brokenness. Lewis & Clark is. Granted, this is of course because of fundamentally humanistic beliefs, not Judeo-Christian beliefs, but that too was what I wanted. I’m a believer in Christ through and through, yet I realize that I’m a resident alien in this World. I had already decided some time back that I did not want to go to a Christian school. This was for a number of reasons, but mostly because I wanted nothing to be sacred. We live in a post-modern world in which nothing is sacred. If all I knew was a Christian perspective and used ideas and word that may be “true” but meant nothing in a deconstructed world I would never be able to reach in and love the person whose psyche is unable to conceptualize a loving God or love a person who cannot believe in Jesus out of intellectual conviction (and/or sin). This decision to eschew Christian education was ultimately one about what I wanted to do with my life—and what I thought God wanted to do with my life. It was almost theological in nature. Thankfully, these past couple years my whole theology of what it means to believe in a resurrected King had coalesced and produced vision for my place in an unbelieving world. Stanley Hauerwas, Shane Claiborne, Ron Sider, and Kevin Gage all played a part in that. Thanks guys!
So now I find myself in Research Methods class deconstructing (my favorite!) philosophical paradigms. This will likely not be popular with most Christians, but as with any liberal education grounded in critical theory, we approach everything from the post-modern perspective. It’s much more complex than that, of course, but essentially that is what it is.
But my life somewhat fell apart in 2011 and I could not go to Portland that fall; I asked for a deferment, made a defense of that decision, and it was granted. I would now start in the Summer of 2012. Now I just had to get my life in order, have one final “mission trip”, and prepare to leave the dryness for the rain. The preparation to leave my friends, family, and community in Phoenix could not have begun too early. I was leaving everything behind.
My friends finally made peace with me leaving, the discussions were had, the wisdom of stay or go were analyzed critically, prayed over, and accepted. Africa was prepared for and finally conducted and then I was home for 5 days and then finally in a van headed North. The photos are up. It was a rush. I wouldn’t do it any other way.
Now I’m here in Portland, which I’m probably going to just keep calling “the land of myth and beards”. It’s an extraordinary city that does make me a little sad that 90% of cities in the US don’t even have half the interestingness of this town. I could hate it after 7 months of gray, but even on this rainy, moody May afternoon it is endearing at worst. I should be studying and reading copious amounts of material about research methods and counseling theory, but I want to do this first, so that’s what I’m doing.
“How is school”, you ask? Grad School has been challenging, but I love it. I know I’m in the right place.
The first thing you must know about Lewis & Clark College is that it is beautiful. Not “kinda pretty”, but breathtaking and grand. It sits high on a bluff over the Willamette River in between an extremely wealthy community known as Lake Oswego and a densely forested state park. The architecture of some of the older buildings is reminiscent of archetypal old (and large) English cottages, while the new buildings are tastefully refined contemporary—all of which are LEED certified for energy efficiency, of course. The whole campus is a garden with flowers, towering junipers and firs, lush ferns, and babbling creeks. Trails run throughout the campus’ forests and nature walks. There are countless beautiful and secluded spots to study and rest. Bridges cross a little ravine tucked on the East side of campus. The trees tower over you and you can hear the stream running below. It is something of poetry, to be honest. Even the beautiful library runs along the massive rose garden—replete with flower bushes, moss-covered stone gazebos, and a view oriented at the summit of Mt. Hood. Last year the L&C campus won “2nd most beautiful campus” in the United States and I am not surprised in the least. It’s a simply splendid place to be.
Yet even this is not the reason that I chose Lewis & Clark, although it surely didn’t hurt. The beauty was compelling, being in Portland was perfect, and the school’s intellectual heritage was encouraging, but what I was most excited about was this one thing (in two parts):
Their Critical Perspective and their commitment to Social Justice.
I wanted a school that admitted they had an agenda, refusing the intellectual and moral dishonesty of modernist notions of “objectivity”. Lewis & Clark trains counselors so that those individuals might make society more just and help humans heal. They are not vague in their endeavor, but explicit. This is more uncommon than you may think. Most counseling programs are not concerned with the societal implications of moving into another person’s brokenness. Lewis & Clark is. Granted, this is of course because of fundamentally humanistic beliefs, not Judeo-Christian beliefs, but that too was what I wanted. I’m a believer in Christ through and through, yet I realize that I’m a resident alien in this World. I had already decided some time back that I did not want to go to a Christian school. This was for a number of reasons, but mostly because I wanted nothing to be sacred. We live in a post-modern world in which nothing is sacred. If all I knew was a Christian perspective and used ideas and word that may be “true” but meant nothing in a deconstructed world I would never be able to reach in and love the person whose psyche is unable to conceptualize a loving God or love a person who cannot believe in Jesus out of intellectual conviction (and/or sin). This decision to eschew Christian education was ultimately one about what I wanted to do with my life—and what I thought God wanted to do with my life. It was almost theological in nature. Thankfully, these past couple years my whole theology of what it means to believe in a resurrected King had coalesced and produced vision for my place in an unbelieving world. Stanley Hauerwas, Shane Claiborne, Ron Sider, and Kevin Gage all played a part in that. Thanks guys!
So now I find myself in Research Methods class deconstructing (my favorite!) philosophical paradigms. This will likely not be popular with most Christians, but as with any liberal education grounded in critical theory, we approach everything from the post-modern perspective. It’s much more complex than that, of course, but essentially that is what it is.
This, for me, is a breath of fresh air.
I was going to get into why this is a great thing for me,
but I will need to develop my thoughts in time because Christianity has had an
idolatrous love affair with modernist thought for so long that to critique it
raises the ire of the Christian establishment. I think modernism, while
pointing towards some “truths” is fundamentally a distraction that keeps the
church watered down and worshipping science, the State, the legal systems—and
trying to “prove God”—instead of worshipping a King and Kingdom whose, for
example, concepts of Justice don’t fit inside Western legal systems. This
Kingdom isn’t premodern, modern, or
postmodern. I am just convinced that postmodern thought is the (un)belief
structure that is most conducive to the growth and expansion of The Church.
But, I’ll get into that in a later post. For now I’ll avoid that minefield and
simply say that I’m very thankful that every belief in my classroom will be
equally picked apart and that I won’t have to listen to foolish, intolerable
notions of “common sense”.
My cohort is a relatively diverse group of around 18 people
that I’ll be doing the next three years with alongside. This irreverent
deconstruction and critique is already challenging my whole cohort; it’s
beautiful. None of us get to walk into the room and pretend that anyone else on
the planet believes the exact same things we do; none of us get to believe that
our beliefs are objective or unbiased. It makes you really, truly understand
what you believe and why you believe it. In being so close to the ultimate lie
that is relativism the truth of my faith seems all the more stronger and more
beautiful. That paradoxical statement no longer is an enigma to me. What we
believe, brothers and sisters, faces no special or new challenge under the
intellectual violence of deconstructionism. And I’m excited to go through this
process with my cohort of gay and straight men and women, Native Americans and
upper class white folks, yuppies and hippies, former Marines and current
activists, ecopsychology adherents and those who believe ecopsychology is
crazy. The program is meant to be diverse and to challenge every person who is
in class. There is no dominant belief in the classroom (past postmodernism of
course, but that’s a conversation for another day, and even that gets
critiqued). Everything is up for exploration and discussion, my Christianity as
much as the sexuality of every member in the class. It’s honest for a change. We are to know one another intimately, the
good, the bad and the ugly. I’m excited for that! I’m the only Christian in my
cohort too from what I can tell. In my Intro to Counseling class we are to find
a place that we need to go that would contain the people we most dislike or
would be uncomfortable around (I’m thinking KKK meeting?). For many of the
people in my class that has already been stated as being “conservative churches”.
Maybe it’s because they don’t want their sin called out or maybe it is because
they’ve truly been hurt by Christians who failed to love them in profound ways.
I don’t know. I do know it is not my job to judge, but it is my job to move
into relationship with the folks in my class and be a light set upon a hill. I
know what I believe and it is not in danger of being fundamentally altered. I
would hope to take even the most jaded to a church where they can see what
Jesus is all about. Ultimately they have to make decisions for themselves, that
much I know. But I know that as our lives become interwoven I will have to
truly learn to give grace and remember who it is that I serve because it is
going to be tough. I’m excited though.
The program director who did my entrance interview—who is
also my advisor—I just found out is a lesbian woman married to her female
partner. When she did my entrance interview we talked extensively about my
beliefs concerning homosexuality and she made sure I could defend my worldview
but never asked me to change it. She wanted to know whether I could still
operate in a world that simply didn’t share my convictions. I reminded her that
none of us are objective, neutral observers and we come into every situation
with biases, beliefs, subjective interpretations, and different previous
experiences; I told her that I still believed what I believed concerning my
faith and sin nature, etc, but I told her I would actually love to counsel
people whose sexual orientation is “homosexual”. It’s obvious she and I have
fundamentally different perspectives on something as crucially important as
human sexuality is, but still she chose to have my perspective in the cohort. I
don’t “owe” her anything, but if I put myself in her shoes as a “conservative”
(theologically speaking) Christian I am an inherent threat to the other
homosexuals in my program who have universally been hurt by the modern
Christian AFA/700-Club hate machine. So I am thankful to be given the
opportunity to show that Christianity is not fundamentally about pointing out
the “sin” of others (although that definitely plays into it), but instead to be
the salt and light in a dark world.
It’s going to be a great, challenging year. I’ll learn about
Social Justice and serving the oppressed in somewhat of a different way amongst
people that make my intellectual ability seem quite average if not slightly
below the bar. I’ll be stretched and I’ll get to know these 3 guys and 14-ish
girl in new and exciting ways.
I appreciate your prayers as I learn to love my cohort and try to excel in my studies. Licensure feels like forever away, but before I know it I’ll be a therapist in this state or perhaps another. This will open up many new and exciting opportunities for future ministry both here and abroad.
I appreciate your prayers as I learn to love my cohort and try to excel in my studies. Licensure feels like forever away, but before I know it I’ll be a therapist in this state or perhaps another. This will open up many new and exciting opportunities for future ministry both here and abroad.
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