“Otherwise” Inner and Outer Worlding

Anthony Cruz Pantojas, MATS, MALS, BCC

Associate University Chaplain, Director of Humanist Life and Africana Spiritual Life – Tufts University

In the book Wisdom Traditions in Spiritual Care: Integrative Explorations on Normativity, edited by Daniel Schipani, PhD, I contributed a chapter entitled “Otherwise” Inner and Outer Worlding. It explores a conceptual framework of existential care and responsibility grounded in a humanist orientation. This orientation is informed by my positionality as well as genealogies of Humanist practice that emphasize decolonial, pluriversal, and embodied epistemologies or lifeworlds. Through case vignettes illustrating the multifacetedness of existential care across cultural, philosophical, and generational lines, the chapter also frames the challenges and possibilities within intersubjective encounters, asking: (1) What is our response-ability as existential care providers? and (2) How can providers facilitate existential care that empowers directees/patients/clients/staff to exercise greater agency and articulate their sense of self? Ultimately, the chapter underscores advocating for a more capacious and critically responsive praxis to meet the existential needs of the Other in the contemporary social and political moment.

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