What is Literary Chaplaincy?

Literary Chaplaincy is a support service developed by Vanessa Zoltan. Inspired by traditional chaplaincy, our literary chaplains listen with the care of a good friend, but with the remove and fresh perspective only a well-trained counselor can provide. In each session, they approach your concerns with an open heart, asking clarifying and probing questions to help you find resolution about complex dilemmas. Where traditional chaplaincy would use a religious text, we instead use secular books, demonstrating their sacred power by applying sacred reading practices to them.

Why Literary Chaplaincy?

It can be hard to have a direct conversation about a difficult thing. Having a text to grapple with gives you a third element through which you can talk about this difficult thing. From our years of experience with Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and Common Ground Pilgrimages, we have observed firsthand how a shared text can accelerate mutual understanding and facilitate profound conversations. We are so excited to share this approach in a more private and accessible way through Literary Chaplaincy.

Our current offerings (all are virtual)

• Stand-Alone Chaplaincy (75-minute single session): This option is best when you are struggling with a single big decision, such as: Should I move home to care for my aging parent? Should I invite my sister to my wedding? In both of these examples, you may have already done therapy around the relationship, but you’re still struggling with how to handle a specific situation. Our chaplain will help you reach a values-based decision, instead of one based on fear, guilt, or any other emotion you don’t want guiding your actions. 
  
  
• 8-Week One-on-One chaplaincy (8 consecutive weeks of 60-minute sessions): This option is ideal for navigating a shift in mindset. For example, what role do I want friendship to play in my life now that I’m married? What kind of relationship do I want with my sister? With your chaplain, you will use a text that is sacred to you to isolate the values that are in conversation with one another when answering your question. When there are competing values, which ones do you want to live into? We will help you work through your question using the text as a guide. 
  
  
• 6-Week Group Chaplaincy Circles (6 weekly sessions): These chaplaincy circles of 6-8 participants focus on a specific topic like parenting, transition, grief, etc, tracing their unique and shared experiences through close engagement with a central text. Facilitated by one of our chaplains, each circle offers a non-judgmental space where participants listen to one another and use reflective reading practices to interpret their collective experience. As a group, they will identify their values and imagine what a life more closely aligned with those values might look like.
  

What is chaplaincy?

Traditionally, chaplains were representatives of larger religious institutions who provided spiritual care services in non-religious settings. For example, if you were a patient in hospital, going to church would not be an option for you, which meant you didn’t have your community or the rituals that you’d typically rely on during difficult times. Chaplaincy was designed to address that need, sending chaplains to places where spiritual practices and rituals were not accessible: chaplains would bring your religion and your practices to you. (This is why you often find chaplains in places like hospitals, prisons, the military, university campuses, etc.)

In recent years, there has been a significant decline in the number of people who belong to organized religious communities and even those who participate often do so with a great deal of ambivalence. For many of us, we don’t have a community where practices and rituals can help us live into our values and get us through difficult times. This lack is what we hope our literary chaplaincy can address: our literary chaplains come to you, using a text you know and love to teach you about the tools and resources that can help you navigate a difficult time. They lead you in using sacred practices and rituals to make meaning of your experiences and access your own spiritual resources.

Chaplaincy vs. Therapy

Chaplaincy is not therapy, and we don’t recommend using chaplaincy as a replacement for psychological evaluation or treatment. We do think, however, that spiritual care and chaplaincy play a role in addressing the current mental health crisis and epidemic of loneliness. Additionally, chaplaincy can be complementary to psychotherapy: it can give you connection, community, and reflective practices, all of which are valuable tools for getting well and staying well.