Student Chaplain Z

The quote from Student Chaplain Z illustrates the chaplains' wish to grasp the complexity of the student's situation in the world through eyes, voice, and bodily attitude that are open, caring, and calm. As the students enter the chaplains' rooms they are exposed to "unusual" or everyday objects, such as small cards with prayers lying on the table, chocolate beans which are on offer, ecological coffee and tea to drink, natural water poured from the tap, small cookies to crunch, plants on the floor, a Jesus-figure wearing boxing gloves on a bookshelf, posters on nature lectures, a chaplain's cyclewear on a chair in the corner, trees, or a dozen tiny birds in a big cage outside the window "participating" in the conversations. The senses are activated by all of the materials—a wealth of human/nature hybrids creates the surroundings for the pastoral care talks/conversations.

With reference to the repertoire of psychology, the first step of the therapeutic process seeks to offer a coherent, closely reasoned, and continuous framework that enables the student to explore their issues in a safe and relatively low-arousal context. That is, a communication is taking place which is personally suited enough to make the student able to feel recognized. The contact provided by the chaplain to the student is to be experienced as personally relevant (Fonagy et al. 2017; Bateman and Fonagy 2019).

The basic contact provided by the professional has, in classic psychoanalytic literature, been compared to a "good enough mother"'s ability to provide "a holding environment" (Winnicott 1965). In McFague's model of the first person in the Trinity, God resembles a mother, not only because she gives birth to the whole universe but also because she is not distant from creation. On the contrary, she is coming near the world, as incarnate God is in the flesh (McFague 1987, p. 110). God as Mother refers to a parent's love—deep and unprejudiced, caring for life in all its manifestations and on all levels, saying: "It is good, that you exist" (ibid., p. 120). It is wishing growth and fulfilment for all, caring for

the weak and vulnerable, as well as the strong and beautiful. In her action, Mother God is the life-giver, she is creative power. The metaphor of God as Mother does not build on stereotypes of maternal tenderness, softness, pity, and sentimentality but on women's experience of pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding (ibid., p. 113). God as Mother is imaging a presence of God signifying a force of action.

Relating this to pastoral care, the above quote reflects Student Chaplain Z's use of maternal mirroring. If the student looks worried, the chaplain feeds back to the student that they are admittedly in a context that is different to what they are used to. Z mirrors the student's bodily reaction with bodily action, meeting the student's expressed feelings of powerlessness with an understanding, maternal voice. The chaplain sends "ostensive cues" to the student, including eye contact, exaggerated facial expressions, use of voice tone, and turn-taking—in a "playing" manner, as Winnicott would have put it (Bateman and Fonagy 2019, p. 16; Winnicott 1971). These cues show that what the caregiver is trying to convey is significant and should be remembered (Bateman and Fonagy 2019, p. 16).

If the student is to ge<sup>t</sup> the sense of being understood, the mirroring is to match the student's own experiences of her or his own mental states: the mirroring should be "marked" (Fonagy et al. 2002). There is to be a difference between that which is mirrored and the mirroring itself. At the same time, the mirroring is to be recognized by the student. The chaplain mimes the student's affects. Simultaneously, the chaplain mimes affects that the student does not have. As the chaplain undertakes marked mirroring, the student is capable of relating as a mental actor to the chaplain's mental states and thereby is able to relate to her/his own mental states. The quote indicates how Student Chaplain Z mirrors the student's sobbing by simultaneously reflecting the student's worry and maternally holding her, using calm breathing, and mothering words. Herein, the student gets the feeling that the chaplain really begins to sense how it is to be the student. In short, the chaplain is to recognize the feeling that the student experiences and expresses and mirror it as marked. In this way, the chaplain can appropriately regulate, that is, scale up and down, the feelings expressed by the student and by the chaplain herself. In other words, if students are stressed then this stress needs to be regulated.

In McFague's model of Mother-God as life-giver, that which is most ordinary and close is taken as central. Coincident with the creative force, God as Mother holds justice. As a force involved in the world, she establishes justice and liberates creatures from oppressive structures (McFague 1987, pp. 117–18). This was imaged by Student Chaplain Z too, who was aware of the pressures exerted by escalating climate change insofar as they may be linked to the student's feeling of powerlessness. In this way, the image of Mother-God expands love's different shapes and their meaning—internally, but also beyond our closest family, society—connecting nature and Earth (ibid., pp. 120–21).

It is the contact with the student that always comes first, and it needs to be worked on a lot. If the chaplain gets too occupied with what the problem is or what is to be talked about before establishing personal contact, learning cannot take place. The student who learns is the one whom the chaplain really sees and shows genuine interest in. The chaplain is seeking to form a connection and holds the connections by basic bodily and emotional expression and with the world as the body of God.
