Francis Church and Us

Before joining Sound Community Services I spent many years teaching at Rhode Island College in Providence.  Rhode Island College is best known for its School of Education and its Master level Counseling Program.  As a faculty member in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology I taught the first course that aspiring teachers were required to take - Educational Psychology- as well as the first course in the professional sequence for aspiring counselors- Introduction to Counseling.  Since both of these courses were usually the first step students took as they entered teaching or counseling I always spent some time encouraging them to explore their suitability and motivation for choosing teaching or counseling as a profession.

While teaching these courses, and keeping in contact with my students after they entered the field, I had the opportunity to watch many counselors at various points in their careers. And as I taught new students and advised those who had graduated, I observed that  that the students who went on to become excellent teachers and effective counselors had certain personality characteristics in common.  The first and most important of these characteristics is optimism. Teachers and counselors must first believe that people can learn and change through the experiences that they [the teachers/counselors] provide.  The second essential characteristic I observed is a belief that most people are, at base, good- that not only people can change, but that they also want to change for the better.  Without these beliefs guiding practice, teaching or counseling is an empty exercise- it is play-acting, without real meaning or substance.

It has been a difficult year for us- funding has been in question for most of the year, the State of Connecticut has required radical changes in our case management program, and further funding cuts are projected for FY12, and with all the stress these things have caused-I had almost forgotten what I had learned about optimism and the belief in the underlying goodness of people. Almost forgotten until I ran across an obscure reference to the work of Francis Pharcellus Church, a 19th century writer and newspaper man.

Let me tell you a bit about Mr. Church.  Church served as a war correspondent reporting on the activities of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. I was so very surprised by his war correspondent experience that I spent a beautiful fall afternoon last October at The Library of Congress Main Reading Room researching some of the dispatches filed by the New York Times correspondents as they reported on the some of the most horrific battles of the Civil War including Antietam, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, Fredricksburg and Gettysburg. These were some of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War.  In each of these battles there was terrible loss of life and in the case of Gettysburg in particular thousands of soldiers, horses and mules went unburied for days in the unbearable July heat of a Pennsylvania summer. The report of the battle in the New York Times spoke of unbelievable horrors and one can only imagine the sights, sounds and smells that Mr. Church experienced as the Army of the Potomac engaged Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia in the summer the spring and summer of 1863.

It is very hard to believe that living through such experiences would result in anything but a totally demoralized and pessimistic individual.  But not so,  and despite the more than one hundred and fifty years that separate us, Mr. Church  must have been very much like us.  We, as did he, see and hear about terrible things every day.  We see our clients ravaged by mental illness and substance abuse.  We work with clients who have been subject to horrific trauma, we work with clients abandoned by their families.  And yet we continue on with our work- we do believe that the work we do, the skills we teach, the support we provide can and will make a difference in the lives of those we serve.  We share an important characteristic with Mr. Church- optimism and the belief that good resides in all people.   

Mr. Church’s most famous and most remembered writing is not the retelling of a horrific Civil War battle, but rather a letter to a little girl. His optimism and belief in the goodness of all seems particularly appropriate during the Christmas season.  Here is the  letter and his response to the letter Mr.Church received when he worked as an editorial writer for the New York Sun.           

           
Dear Editor,

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says,   'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O'Hanlon.

115 West Ninety Fifth Street.

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

My very best wishes to you all this holiday season!

Gail         

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