by Marilyn Washburn How do we care for those who grieve? Specifically, how can and should pastors do that care? Moreover, how do we pastors care for ourselves when we are so frequently mourning the deaths of people we have come to love? In the decades since I was ordained as a chaplain of a hospice associated with a large inner-city hospital, my thoughts about how to care for those who grieve have changed a lot. I suspect that is true for many others who have tested all that we were taught in classrooms or even in CPE. Indeed, my convictions and suggestions will probably come as little surprise to many of my colleagues; the surprise may come in realizing how many of us now share them. Perhaps articulating new insights will trigger conversations, and our changed thoughts may be both claimed and refined. Caring for those who grieve, and for myself, begins with caring for those who are dying. I now think that the best ministry to those who grieve (and the way to experience the … [Read more...]

poetry by Paul Hooker In memoriam, Rev. O. Floyd Hooker  (1922–2014) We sat for ninety minutes in the room where he lay as though asleep and talked about things he said and did half-expecting him at any time to rouse and correct the memory or tell his own until they wheeled the velvet-shrouded gurney in, the folded body bag respectful at the foot, we said our last goodbyes beside his bed, and reluctant shuffled out to greet a strange new beginning. Rising, I saw his hair, not grayish-white but dark, not tousled, straying on his forehead (which he’d have absently brushed back into place), but combed in ordered rows, a straight-plowed field where, beneath, a fertile soul still nourishes still offers up the nutrients of faith and understanding. I saw his arms, not flaccid but outreached to drive a nail or shake a hand or bless or carry a baby dripping from the font out into the midst of her new family, or pick me up when I fell off my bicycle, or embrace me … [Read more...]

by Alex W. Evans The words of Psalm 46 are familiar to most of us: God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble … The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. We affirm these words often, perhaps as a “call to worship,” or read them at a memorial service, or sing them or say them in other moments of our common life. Those words may roll off our tongues as a rote, even mindless, affirmation of faith. But what about when the unthinkable happens in our community, or in another community, as it did recently in Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, or the horrific shootings at Sandyhook Elementary School, or in the movie theater in Colorado, or on the campus of Virginia Tech? On the first Sunday following the shootings at Virginia Tech in April 2007, where I served as pastor at Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, I was interviewed on CNN prior to Sunday morning worship. The newscaster asked me, “Pastor, what will be the first words that you … [Read more...]