Time Before Time And Overtime
In the time before time, the earth is covered with water. A vast expanse of water that lies under endless, endless space.
On the water there floats a flower.
The only flower.
Bee takes Mantis from endless, endless space. He carries Mantis across the water as if he is seeking… seeking…seeking…
What could he be seeking in a vast expanse of water?
A flower.
The only flower, and when Bee finds it, he places Mantis on its petals and returns to endless, endless space.
Mantis is the maker of fire, keeper of the dream.
On this flower, it begins.
It all began in Dreamtime.
In the time before Time…
Stories, like the one above, alert us to the possibilities of imagination, Creation, the ideals, hopes, and mysteries of the past, not because they have happy endings necessarily because often, they don’t. But when a story evokes an ‘if only’ response, it jolts us out of the ordinary into a new awareness. Life could be different. Stories can remind us of alternatives, new, different ways of being, thinking, loving, and living.
Glen Colquhoun’s essay, Late Love, about his fight between medicine and its straight lines, old beliefs about the professional/ethical relationship; timed sessions that fit the budget better than they allow us to connect well with patients/clients, to understand the complexity of health issues, wrestle with his love of poetry and his imagination, and the way he can bring this into his work, crystalised my dilemmas regarding what is considered to be ‘professional counselling practice, in these times.’
I struggle to find a bridge between what some consider to be ‘professional counselling’ practice with rules about dependency ‘thou shalt not make people dependent on you.’ To counter this dreaded tendency, we were advised to see ‘clients’ for one hour (or even 50 minutes) only and to contract to have a certain number of sessions, even before one had come to understand them and the realities and perceptions with which they were struggling. It was and is, also deemed unprofessional to touch a client, a touch on the shoulder or hand, at the end of a painful session is deemed unethical because it might be misinterpreted by the client, or the counsellor and may increase dependence, might serve the needs of the counsellor more than that of the client, and even lead to other less appropriate actions. Such expressions of humanity are no longer professional.
To be driven by emotional/psychological pain to talk to a complete stranger, puts a person into a very contrived one up, one down situation. Two people in a room, one in dire need and the other appearing at least, to be ‘together’ enough to offer some kind of assistance and receiving a fee for being present to offer one hour to create a humane climate. Telling a personal story, warts and all, to a stranger, is not common practice in New Zealand or any other western societies, I suspect. An hour may possibly be long enough for some traumatised, stigmatised or otherwise disadvantaged people but for the people who come to see me, the settling and the conversations can take up to ninety minutes to come to a natural conclusion or to include a myth or folktale I think contributes to the conversation, so it’s good to have the time when you need it.
However, whenever I have allowed a troubled student to go ‘overtime’ into that extra thirty minutes because the session feels unfinished. There’s a need to settle after strong emotions have been expressed, or to resolve a question or dispel concern about someone with whom they are working, these students have expressed their worry or apologised for ‘going overtime.’ When I laughingly suggest that the responsibility for time is mine, they are somewhat aghast and remind me of what they have been taught. They leave smiling though when I claim my long, long, years of practice give me the courage to slough off the ‘rules’ in the interests of meeting the need of the moment.
I’m reminded here of a verse from David Whyte’s wonderful poem, Start Close In:
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.
I like to think of counselling as conversations, conversations of the realities, dreams, past wrongdoings, hurts, failures, and triumphs in the lives of the people who come to see me, which is my preferable and longwinded way of saying clients. . Conversations that often lead to changes in perception of the self, understandings of their family relationships, the conditioning of the society in which we/they live and their spiritual selves. Conversations which might lead to those beautiful questions of Mary Oliver’s,
The Summer’s Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean
the one who has flung herself out of the grass, .who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings and floats away,
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down,
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing, all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?