This week's selections are my pastoral care and counseling books. Each of these has had a special role in my development as a pastor (FYI: The APA Publication Manual is Kendra's for school -- both the BS Emergency Management program she's completing this year and the crisis counseling Master's program she's probably starting this fall). It's honestly difficult to pick just one of these. But the book I've chosen to highlight is Martin Buber's I and Thou.
Pastoral care and counseling and the biblical tradition are so interwoven in the pastor's work, for whom the central task is healing that leads to wholeness with God and others (you'll notice that I intentionally shelved my counseling textbook from school with the classic Kirwan work, Biblical Concepts for Christian Counseling). Buber's book is one that interweaves the Jewish biblical tradition of relation with that wholeness. In Buber's I and Thou wholeness is understood in relational terms. Healing is accomplished through "meeting" each other in genuine encounter. Buber's I-Thou dialogical philosophy has influenced a relational approach for my practice of pastoral counseling. Buber taught that the biblical text is "a dialogue between heaven and earth" that encourages our active participation by engaging the whole person with its "living voice". Bringing these two elements -- dialogical counseling and dialogical text reading -- together in the counseling process introduces an understanding of pastoral care and counseling that focuses on wholeness -- or shalom.
While plenty of psychologists have focused on Buber's work in developing psychological theory, very few pastoral counselors have found his work as influential as I have.