The Good Samaritan and Self-Care

I read an interesting perspective on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) for this week's Pastoral Care and Counseling in Context class. In "The Self-Differentiated Samaritan," Jeanne Stevenson Moessner notes that the Good Samaritan knows how to practice care for others and self care at the same time, noting a crucial part of the narrative that often is not emphasized:

". . . the Samaritan finished his journey while meeting the need of a wounded and marginal person. . . . He relied in a sense on the communal, on a type of teamwork as represented by the inn and by the host at the inn." (p. 66)

 
The implications? "As pastoral counselors, pastors, laity, and seminarians, we must sometimes take the wounded to the inn. The inn may be a battered woman's shelter, a Resolve meeting, a Bosom Buddies' support group, a round of chemotherapy. The inn may be represented by other disciplines in healing, such as the behavioral sciences. The inn may be the church." (p. 67)

In other words, we can care for others without sacrificing our needs and wants--and we don't have to be the only one involved in the process of caring for others. The burden doesn't have to fall only on one person.

The essay is in Robert C. Dykstra's Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings.