IIRC, whenever I used to read Ann Landers, or Dear Abby, or whoever, she would advise the person with the problem to consult their rabbi, priest, or preacher (I believe she said clergyman, or something). I am a Christian, but the last person that I would ask for advice from would be any of them. Excepting spiritual questions, of course. But, OTOH, I know that, if they’re doing their job, they would just refer me to their Bible/Torah, whatever, and I can do that, so, I don’t need them.
I had a friend that was fairly liberal/progressive, hippie, semi-pagan, feminist earth mother type, and, yet, she told me that she had received some advice from one of them. That boggled my mind. I’d avoid one of them like the plague. ]
So, have you ever asked advice from one of them? Can you tell us what it was?
Was the advice sound? Do you feel like a chump?
Yes. There have been several, both directed to me personally and on more general terms; there have also been times when the priest didn’t give me specific directions but just acted as a sound board when I really needed one.
The one that came to mind reading the OP was one of my parish priests telling me, paraphrased: “at this rate, your mother is going to kill you - get the hell out of Tucson yesterday!” It was shortly after Dad’s death and Mom was strangling me in any way except by actually grabbing my neck. Note that the parish priests were actually among the very, very few people who could see that there was something seriously amiss in her attitude; a different one had warned her shortly after the funeral to “not try and replace your husband with one of your children, your children didn’t marry you.” So, it wasn’t advice from a stranger who happened to have been ordained; it was advice from someone who knew us and happened to have been ordained. I could have gotten similar advice from the only non-priest who saw things were wrong.
Yes. Just one. They can be remarkably kind and I’ve always said so, even being a staunch anti-religionist.
I prefaced my remarks right off the bat by saying I was not a Christian. Being much less brave back then, I didn’t tell him I didn’t really believe in God at all. It wouldn’t have mattered. He was a very kind man and talked to me very honestly.
Here’s one place where I’ll actually criticize Hindu priests. They don’t seem to realize, most of them anyway, that part of their job is also speaking to the masses and comforting them. But in our religion, the priests really are the “keepers” of the religion - most of the masses don’t even speak Sanskrit. This has slowly been changing with the more liberal temples, but most of our priests have kind of a superiority complex.
However, that being said, I also knew a very kindly Sikh granthi (priest) who was also very understanding and benign.
I don’t want to go into detail about the advice I got either. Not because it was a big deal but because it wasn’t - it isn’t germane to the discussion.
Yes, but only from one and she is my current priest in the Episcopal church. She is a very smart woman who quit a high-powered law Washington D.C. law practice to serve others. She doesn’t just give good advice. She can make things happen as well like a good project manager. If you need help in any way, you can tell her and she will do the best she can to make things happen and she always does in very concrete ways. She also notices if she thinks there may be something wrong and will ask you for an individual appointment to see if there is anything she can help with or advise that she can give.
Absolutely, even discounting the two members of my family who are rabbis (especially my aunt, who was always good for relationship advice when I was growing up). My current rabbi is a good friend and has given me great advice on the following:
sudden unemployment – “Get drunk with your flatmates for a week, but after that, it’s a good idea to be out of bed by 9am on weekdays, even if you don’t have anything planned”.
my uncle’s murder – aside from knowing what to say to me, he gave me good advice on how to help my aunt and cousins both emotionally and logistically.
book recommendations – we have the same taste in academia
moving in with a boyfriend – he said it might be useful to talk/agree about X, Y and Z first. We’d only talked about X and Y, and it turned out Z was a very good thing to have discussed beforehand!
hangover prevention – the importance of keeping a glass of water by the bed for waking up thirsty in the middle of the night
telling me it was all right to not want to have children, that I shouldn’t feel weird or guilty – but that it’s an important thing to talk about, and if my boyfriend or husband does really really want kids, it is extremely likely be an incompatible relationship. It’s all right to end those.
I’m sure there are loads more, but those made the biggest impressions on me. He’s very good at helping me figure out the right questions to ask, or the right sort of conversation to have with people, which I think is better than “here’s what to do” advice.
Advice, not so much. But a couple have offered me really enlightened and interesting perspectives. One of them I would definitely take advice from. Her not so much as a spiritual leader as a really smart friend.
That is absolutely not true. Some priests/ministers/rabbis server as good counselors because they know your whole family and situation before you even ask them about something. Even professional counselors don’t have that same context or information. They may also be able to get someone that has been in a similar situation to help or it could be something as simple as arranging meals or childcare after the loss of a loved one. The don’t just sit there are look up religious passages for you to read.
Our local vicar once gave me some tips on controlling the green fly on my roses. Does that count? He was delivering the parish magazine while I was busy pruning. He knows I’m atheist but still stops and chats quite often.
It sounds like you may be operating under a misapprehension. At least in many denominations, part of a clergyman’s training is in personal counseling (not just theology or Scripture); and for many people, their clergyman is the only, or at least the most accessible, person they know who has such training. Not to mention that many clergymen have managed to pick up a good deal of wisdom over the course of their lives/careers dealing with people.
I’m not sure if this ends up going against the OPs intentions since this was technically religious advice, but it was the most important religious idea I’ve ever been given.
I attended a Jesuit high school, and I’d been raised a hard core Catholic with borderline fundamentalist tendencies. At some point, through random conversation with one of my high school priests, he told me that I really needed to let go of the idea of believing in a specific denomination (or even religion at all) because that’s just the way I was raised and that’s what I was used to. He told me that I needed to learn to think for myself and to understand what feels true in my heart. It was the first time in my life I’d been exposed to the idea that my beliefs were allowed to be my own, and not dictated to me by whatever religious authority I was following.
Ultimately, that advice caused me to abandon Catholicism (and, really, Christianity as a whole), as I found that too much of it made no sense to me once I began thinking openly about it. But I remain grateful to that priest to this day for giving me “permission” to make that decision for myself.
