Perplexity as Sacred Ground:
Apophatic Pastoral Care

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“He didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t quote scripture or give me reasons. She just sat with me—quietly, fully. And somehow, in that silence, I felt seen. Not solved, not saved. Just... held. It was the first time I realized that maybe God is in the not-knowing too.”

— A Grieving Daughter

"After my miscarriage, I didn’t need someone to explain God to me or offer answers. I just needed someone to sit with me in the not-knowing. My pastor didn’t try to fix my pain or give me a theology lesson. She just listened, really listened, and honored the silence. And in that quiet space, something shifted. I began to sense tiny, tender possibilities—what process theology might call initial aims—bubbling up inside me. Not solutions, but directions. Not clarity, but movement. That sacred not-knowing became the place where I started to heal."

— Lena M., teacher and mother of two
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"I am pissed! Pissed about what's happening in my country, pissed about the divisions, the cruelty, the lies. I walked into that pastor’s office ready to explode. I expected her to try and calm me down or quote scripture at me. But she didn’t. She just let me be mad. She made space for the fire without trying to smother it. And in that space—without pressure or agenda—I started to hear something beneath the rage. A question I hadn’t asked in a long time: 'What kind of world do I want to help build?' That was the beginning of something new. Not a solution, not a strategy. Just a whisper of an initial aim."
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— Derrick J., retired veteran and community organizer

Open and Relational Pastoral Care

​There may be a temptation, in a pastor enthusiastic about open and relational theology and its understanding of God, to want to “share” the open and relational way of thinking with those receiving care. Sometimes this may be appropriate—when a person is seeking theological reframing, or when words about a relational, non-coercive, compassionate God truly offer comfort.

But sometimes, it is not. The deeper pastoral need is not to teach a theological system but to offer a healing presence, one capable of entering into two distinct but complementary modes of care: the apophatic and the cataphatic, relative to the context at hand. .

Apophatic care honors silence, mystery, doubt, and the limits of language. It sits with not-knowing and affirms that confusion is not failure, but part of the sacred unfolding of a soul. Cataphatic care, by contrast, names, blesses, encourages, and sometimes proclaims. It offers guiding words, images of God’s nearness, and the hopeful truth that we are not alone.

Pastoral care in the open and relational tradition must draw from both—not rigidly, but fluidly, intuitively, compassionately. It must be willing to speak when the moment calls for speech, and to refrain when silence holds the deeper truth. It must affirm that sometimes people need the light of theological articulation—and sometimes they need someone to walk with them in the fog. It will be in the fog, not in verbal guidance, that a person becomes open to the initial aims - the fresh possibilities for growth - that help a person take next steps in life. The care giver, the pastor, cannot know what these next steps are. That is the hidden truth of the person who receives the care.

Thus the pastor needs to recognize that sometimes the fog itself—the state of being perplexed—is sacred ground. The God who loves us, the God of open and relational theology, is 'in' the perplexity, and the perplexed person is responding to the divine lure by being perplexed. 

​In such moments, the goal is not to clarify but to accompany; not to explain, but to remain. The open and relational vision of God—as One who feels with us, responds to us, and never coerces—offers a powerful framework for this kind of care. God is present in the ambiguity, present in the pain, present even in the silence. To practice pastoral care in this spirit is to live the theology, not just speak it—to become, in one’s presence and posture, a reflection of the divine: gentle, attentive, loving, and free.

Perplexity as Sacred Ground

​In Adventures of Ideas, Alfred North Whitehead notes that Plato and Aristotle each offered distinct yet equally valuable contributions to the foundational ideas connecting science and philosophy. Aristotle's legacy is one of systematic clarity and categorization. Plato, by contrast, offers a different kind of insight in his later works--Theaetetus, Sophist, Timaeus, and the fifth and tenth books of the Laws—alongside the earlier Symposium. Plato does not always strive for consistency and often embraces ambiguity, allowing his philosophical inquiries to remain open-ended and exploratory. As Whitehead puts it:
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​“He is never entirely self-consistent, and rarely explicit and devoid of ambiguity. He feels the difficulties, and expresses his perplexities. No one could be perplexed over Aristotle’s classifications; whereas Plato moves about amid a fragmentary system like a man dazed by his own penetration.”

​While few, if any, of us possess the philosophical penetration of Plato, there is nonetheless a lesson in Whitehead’s observation. It is that we ought not make a god of self-consistency, nor dismiss ambiguity or intellectual perplexity.

These qualities, too often viewed as flaws to be overcome, may in fact be signs of a deeper kind of insight—one that refuses premature closure and remains open to the complexity of experience. Plato’s dazed movement through a fragmentary system is not evidence of weakness, but of a mind engaged in the difficult work of thinking honestly and receptively. In this light, perplexity becomes not a weakness but a virtue: the mark of a thinker willing to dwell in the tension between clarity and mystery.

When Perplexity is Sacred Ground

Sometimes, I suggest, perplexity is sacred ground: the place where the sacred, however named, is most immanently and immediately present in our lives. Perplexity slows us down. It interrupts the rush to conclusion, the habit of certainty, the illusion of mastery. In doing so, it opens space—space for deeper thought, for empathy, for creative imagination. When we are perplexed, we are no longer in control, and this loss of control can be a grace. It reminds us that reality is more complex than our concepts, more layered than our labels, more fluid than our frameworks.
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Examples abound. In moral life, perplexity invites humility: it forces us to sit with tension rather than impose a simplistic solution. In relationships, it softens judgment and deepens our capacity to listen. In theology, it honors the mystery of the sacred. In art and beauty, it lets awe speak.

In his appreciation of Plato, then, Whitehead understood that to be “dazed by one’s own penetration” is not a failure but a sign that one has touched something vast, something that does not yield to full comprehension. In open and relational thought, the lure of God is not always toward clarity or resolution. The more general lesson is that, in many circumstances of our lives, perplexity can be good because it keeps us human—unfinished, seeking, capable of being surprised, and quietly open to what we do not know and may never know. Perplexity is, in its way, apophatic.

Apophatic Pastoral Care

In the Christian mystical tradition, apophatic theology—the “way of unknowing”—names God not by what God is, but by what God is not. God is not this, not that, not graspable, not containable in any system of thought. The apophatic path does not end in doctrinal clarity but in silence, reverence, and a relinquishing of control. It is a form of spiritual humility, grounded in trust that what we cannot name may still be known in love. The spirit of apophatic theology can inform pastoral care.

Apophatic pastoral care draws on this tradition not as a theology of abstraction, but as a practical and relational mode of being-with. It is the kind of care one offers when words fail. When the mourner does not want an answer. When the soul in crisis needs space to breathe. When the grieving parent, the doubting minister, or the disoriented young adult doesn't need solutions but companionship inside the mystery.

This kind of care:

• Does not rush to explain suffering or resolve theological confusion.
• Honors silence as a sacred space where the Spirit may speak or simply be.
• Welcomes questions without needing to answer them.
• Affirms presence over prescription—“I’m here” instead of “Here’s why.”

In this mode of care, perplexity is not something to be solved but something to be shared. The pastoral caregiver becomes a witness to unknowing, a midwife to mystery, a fellow traveler through the fog. It is care without coercion, theology without certainty, love without conditions.

This is not to deny the value of clarity, hope, or reassurance. But apophatic pastoral care knows that even clarity must come gently, in time, and not always at all. It resists both triumphalism and despair, offering instead what open and relational theology understands as a deeply relational God—a God who accompanies, receives, listens, and lures gently forward.

Thus, to practice apophatic pastoral care is to embody the grace of being perplexed:
to walk with others not despite the unknowing, but through it--
as if the very path of perplexity were sacred ground.

​Ten Qualities of Apophatic Pastoral Care

1. Does not rush to explain
   It resists the temptation to offer premature answers or spiritual clichés. It allows confusion, sorrow, and silence to exist without resolution.
2. Honors silence as sacred
   Silence is not awkward or empty—it is a spacious field where something deeper may be present. The caregiver trusts that healing can happen wordlessly.
3. Welcomes questions without needing to answer them
   Doubts and questions are not threats but sacred expressions of a soul searching honestly. They are received with openness, not anxiety.
4. Affirms presence over prescription
   Instead of offering advice or solutions, the caregiver simply is there—attuned, grounded, and available.
5. Practices non-anxious accompaniment
   The caregiver stays present without urgency, pressure, or the need for visible progress. Their calm makes room for the other’s process.
6. Tolerates mystery
   Rather than explaining away suffering, the caregiver honors the unknown and the unexplainable as part of the sacred journey.
7. Listens deeply without agenda
   Listening is not a prelude to fixing. It is a form of reverence—a way of honoring the other’s unfolding story.
8. Trusts the inner wisdom of the other
   Apophatic care does not impose. It trusts that the person being cared for carries their own connection to meaning and mystery.
9. Shows compassion without interference
   The caregiver does not need to take over. Their compassion allows the other to remain the subject of their own story.
10. Does not take confusion as a failing
    Confusion is not treated as a spiritual or emotional deficiency. It is honored as part of the path—often a necessary step in the deepening of wisdom, trust, or healing.​

A Note on Balance: The Role of Cataphatic Pastoral Care
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These ten qualities describe a way of caring that honors mystery, silence, and not-knowing. But they are not the whole story. There are times when cataphatic pastoral care is equally needed—care that speaks, affirms, names, and proclaims. The cataphatic tradition emphasizes what can be said about God: that God is love, that God is present, that healing is possible. It offers words of hope, stories of transformation, and rituals of meaning. Where apophatic care reveres silence, cataphatic care blesses speech. Where apophatic care dwells in the ache of not-knowing, cataphatic care offers guiding light.
True pastoral wisdom includes both modes. There are seasons when a person needs the quiet companionship of someone who will not rush to explain—and other times when they long to hear a word of encouragement, to be reminded that joy returns, or to see their dignity named out loud. The art of pastoral presence lies not in choosing one or the other absolutely, but in discerning which is needed now—when to be still, and when to speak; when to hold space, and when to help shape it.