How's Your Courage?

If you saw my Dad in the busy San Diego area emergency room where he worked, his opening line was likely "How's your courage?"

If you were on the "knife & gun club"/accident/trauma side he wasn't there to treat you, but to help you deal with what had happened. It was shorthand for "How resilient and resourceful are you, and what spiritual/social/family resources do you have that could help you now?" If you were on the mental health/OD/alcohol side, he was there to assess your needs and resources and help determine whether you would be treated/released or need to be admitted for further care.

On the surface "How's your courage?" was timely and disarmingly engaging. Beneath the surface, it's a spiritual assessment question without being even slightly religious; the first spiritual assessment question I ever learned, in fact, without knowing it. My Dad was a hospital chaplain who specialized in mental health care. Like most acute care hospital chaplains, he also had his share of trauma duty. So he spent a lot of time in the ER, meeting people for the first time at some of their worst moments. Moments when they might benefit from remembering what had helped them get through tough times before.

Here's why "How's your courage?" is such a good spiritual assessment question:

• It is an open-ended question that usually elicits more than a one word answer.
• It is beyond religious boundaries, expressing no bias, preference or exclusivity;
• It acknowledges a difficulty without focusing in it.
• In acknowledging difficulty, it's more realistic than some forms of religious "helpfulness" which tend to provide religious answers that aren't connected with life's real questions. Remember Scott Peck's opening line in the phenomenal best selling book The Road Less Traveled? "Life is difficult." Any useful spirituality must at least acknowledge this reality; ideally it will even deal effectively with it. And perhaps one will discover, as Peck indicated further down page 1, once the difficulty is acknowledged, life isn't nearly as difficult as it is when pretending it should be easy.
• In acknowledging the difficulty without focusing on it, it implies hope, looking forward, beyond the moment and the situation. "How's your courage?" is a question in line with the Appreciative Inquiry model of consulting. Building on research at Case Western Reserve University AI practitioners have discovered that consultants get more lasting results when they ask "What's right here?" questions than "What's wrong here? questions. "What's wrong...?" questions lead to local identification with the problem, lack of identification with external suggestions, increased helplessness, and result in short lived follow up. "What's right...?" questions lead to local identification with resources and strategies that have been used and been helpful, decreasing helplessness and resulting in enduring change and resourcefulness that is owned by the participants. It's more solution focused than problem focused.

The greatest limitation of "How's your courage?" is that it isn't appropriate where a difficulty isn't obvious and acknowledged. "How are your spirits today?" fits better in this case.

So, how's your courage today?