*6.2. Loving Engagement*

"I experience how students stress out about climate change—about eating vegan, food production, recycling—the social control that goes on. It lies implicitly as something stressful, but is expressed directly by saying: 'I am not good enough— because I am not good enough!' It is very difficult for them to be in here. I tell them 'down to Earth'. We wonder if it is okay to put our feet on the ground and live this life. Climate changes are not stopped by not seeing and not living. Creating a peaceful space in the pastoral care room, I attempt to let the student's inner voices be heard so that we can talk with their inner voices, wonder about what the voices are saying. Let voices that control, what they can't stand about

themselves, come out. There are voices they are scared of. We try to find out if some of the voices also contain some good. On the positive, the voices are concerned with the climate, but they may have prevailed in the student's mind, shouting too much. Together we wonder about how the inner voices tell us to sustain life—socially and earthly—but wonder if, maybe, the voices need to be calmed down. We say to the shouting voice: 'You are good enough, but now you must lie down a bit'. We treat stress and anxiety a little like a guard dog that needs to be calmed. The voice is to be heard, but needs to be let off a bit sometimes. By doing this we express our trust in it, that there is also something that holds us in the middle of our stress. To have trust in life. To ge<sup>t</sup> from control and mistrust—daring to take a few steps and see if it holds. Have faith that life holds us. 'And if it doesn't?', some students ask. There are no guarantees. But the alternative is a life with hands clenched and mistrust. To have faith that something holds me up, that is deeply Christian. We cannot take responsibility for it all. I say sometimes (with a caring smile): 'You don't have that much power'. Otherwise, we must think that we ourselves are God. As chaplain it is about stopping 'private metaphysics'."
