I thought I’d offer a bite of what I’m working on in my upcoming book, which is tentatively titled “Sacred Texts: Stories of Living With the Dying”. This is still very much a work in progress, but at least progress is being made. I welcome your comments!
528Hz
“You know that the universe vibrates at 528 Hertz, right?”
This was part of the first conversation I had with Neil, who had just come on hospice and was living at home with his mother. It was my initial visit with him, and it was already off to an interesting start. When I arrived at the time we had set up, he wasn’t available. The neighbors who were sitting outside his apartment building in Pittsburgh’s South Hills said that he had just gone out to the local Rite-Aid with his girlfriend. I waited on the patio until he arrived.
Neil right off the bat struck me as an interesting guy when he arrived. He was in his mid-50’s, and his long white hair, thin build, pale Hawaiian shirt and straw fedora made him look like a wandering beachcomber. He carried a portable oxygen concentrator, the only visible indicator of his end-stage lung cancer. “Hey man! Sorry I’m late. I had to go get my meds and some toothpaste.” He introduced me to his friends and then escorted me inside, chatting the whole time.
“Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. He said:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Matthew 5:1-12
As I was preparing a message for an upcoming series of memorial services coinciding with All Saints and All Souls Days, I decided to look at the lectionary to see what the assigned passages for those days to help me get started. I don’t come from a liturgical tradition, and am a bit more familiar with the practice of having a theme in mind and then finding a passage or passages that fit that theme. Not the best practice, I know, which is why I diverted from it in this case.
I was a little surprised when the Beatitudes came up as the reading for the day, even though I shouldn’t have been. After all, the passage specifically calls to those who mourn, calling them “blessed”.
After months of working with others to try and halt or at least slow down CPSP’s descent over the past year, I’ve decided to hang it up. The organization is hemorrhaging members, and I’ve talked to many who aren’t renewing their membership after this year, which is what I’m doing. I’ve stepped down from my leadership roles and have gone from trying to steer the Titanic away from the iceberg to getting people to lifeboats.
Rather than rehash a bunch of stuff, I’m going to simply include the text of my resignation letter which I sent to Raymond Lawrence and the Governing Council of CPSP this past weekend, July 20, 2023.
To The Executive Chapter and Governing Council of CPSP,
Colleagues,
I have been a member of the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy for several years. Since initially joining, I have served as a member, a Chapter Convener, an alternate Representative for Region 2, and served as Co-Convener for the Chapter of Chapters alongside Rita Bakr. I have been a certified Clinical Chaplain and Pastoral Counselor since 2016. I have seen and experienced amazing growth personally and professionally, and have come to treasure and appreciate my fellow chapter members who have shepherded me through so much, as well as the tireless leaders I’ve worked alongside in the Chapter of Chapters and Chapter of Diplomates.
However, I feel I must now vacate my position and resign from CPSP. This has not been a hasty decision and has been made through consultation with my chapter and other members of CPSP. My reason for this is that CPSP is no longer a viable, healthy and functioning organization. Therefore, I will be vacating my position effective July 23, 2023 and will not be renewing my membership any further.
Problems within CPSP have always been present, as they are with any major organization. However significant issues were raised in 2022 regarding the behavior of Raymond Lawrence towards members of the community. Two very important members of the organization resigned in November of 2022 because these issues were not addressed. Since that time, efforts by members of the Chapter of Chapters and the Chapter of Diplomates as well as key committee members to address these issues and others, specifically whether the current General Secretary should continue in his position, have been intentionally sidelined by members of the Executive Chapter and Raymond Lawrence. This avoidance of responsibility and accountability continues to this day. Yet this is not the only reason why I believe CPSP is not a functioning organization.
There has been no actual vote regarding current roles as set out clearly in the CPSP By-Laws (i.e., Article V, Section 5.02). The fact that the General Secretary has in effect ignored what the currently ratified and approved By-Laws state in favor of an autocratic style of governance is a significant concern and sign of dysfunction at the highest levels. Efforts to follow the By-Laws at Governing Council meetings in order to approve leaders have been subverted on multiple occasions.
CPSP’s financial standing and current balances are speculative at best. The issue of CPSP’s financial standing was raised in a March 5th, 2023 town hall, and it has not sufficiently been addressed as of this date. Members of the Governing Council are uncertain about our finances, how much we have and where those funds are. Meanwhile, requests from Raymond Lawrence for members to pay dues have continued, in spite of folks being unable to find out how to do so or if they are paid up in a timely manner.
The current web site is still barely useable. It is impossible to find other members’ contact information, and what information is available is at times outdated or incorrect. This poses a major problem not only for our leaders and members to be in touch with one another, but to those on the outside looking for chapter information. It also has hindered the work of the Chapter Certification committee and CPSP’s own communications efforts. To have a non-functioning, out-of-date and inaccurate web site tells the world that you are not to be taken seriously. Members have reached out to Raymond Lawrence offering to fix the site, but the problems remain. Current efforts to solve the web site problem by the Executive Chapter come too little and far too late.
The current Communications Chair has not had access to the means of communication through CPSP’s email services. As a result, she has not been able to pass along important information to the CPSP body in a timely manner. Emails to the CPSP body have had to go through alternate channels such as personal email lists, other than those coming directly from Raymond Lawrence.
The General Secretary has not implemented recommendations from committees, including the Succession Committee and By-Laws committee. This has caused confusion regarding roles and authority in critical situations, including who is even on these committees, and has led to stagnation and lack of direction.
There has been a significant lack of accountability and transparency on the part of the General Secretary to the overall body of CPSP. There have been months of listening sessions, letters demanding accountability and the raising of significant concerns regarding the viability of CPSP in the future. All of these have been met with no accountability and no real action.
This organizational breakdown, as well as current and former actions of the General Secretary, have significantly impeded the work of CPSP among other professional groups. It is becoming a second-rate body when compared to newer groups such as SCA and CPEI. Many members have left CPSP entirely, or have detached from the larger body while remaining with their chapter. Others have sought dual credentialing in an effort to ensure that they can maintain certification and, in some cases, their jobs.
To summarize, the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy is not able to follow its own system of governance, the By-Laws, and its spiritual foundational document, the Covenant. It is not a healthy, functioning organization. I can no longer recommend membership or certification within CPSP to members of my community and to those looking at professional training and certification as long as the status quo remains the status quo.
The College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy runs on the blood, sweat and tears of its volunteer leaders. I have come to know many during my time in CPSP, and their commitment to this organization and to its members is beyond anything that I have seen in other organizations. Over the past several months we have spent valuable time over weekends and evenings to try and right the ship and bail the water out as fast we can. I commend all of them in their ongoing efforts to make CPSP a healthy and relevant organization. They have tried to foster accountability and address the many needs that have been brought up by its members around the country and around the world. Unfortunately, the failures of a few at our highest levels of leadership have hindered any resolution to these concerns. Right now, for my own emotional and spiritual health, CPSP is not an organization I can continue to be a part of. I’m deeply saddened in that others must now shoulder what had been my responsibilities, and I ask for their forgiveness.
Hi everyone! I thought I’d keep the site active and update folks on my writing and some other significant news.
First, writing has proven to be quite a challenge. I’ve never been the most disciplined writer, or most disciplined anything for that matter, so writing tends to come in fits and starts when I have time. Even when I do have time, I often find it interrupted by something, either a dog needing to go outside or my own brain working overtime on something else. But I have begun looking at publishing options, so we are at least reaching that stage. More to come, including maybe some sample chapters!
Second, I’ve been strongly reconsidering my membership in CPSP. As I’ve worked more and more in leadership positions, I’ve seen more and more dysfunction. Over the past year, things have really come to a head to the point where I don’t believe I can continue on in CPSP much longer unless things change drastically at the national level. Because of this, I’ve taken off a few articles that I had written about certification through CPSP, because I don’t think I can recommend it right now.
Finally, on a better note, I recently got back from a trip with my wife to Colorado. It was a wonderful time to reconnect and simply relax in nature. We’d never been there before and it was a great experience, although my wife would also add “terrifying” to that description. The term “road” in Colorado is applied very loosely.
Thank you everyone and I will try and keep things updated more often.
Colorado Springs from an abandoned railway. I wasn’t driving, which made my wife happy.
First, I remain totally amazed and humbled by all those who stumble upon my site and find it helpful. I always want this to be a free source of information (pardon the ads, but I get none of it) to help the pastoral care community, and I’m glad that it has been.
Second, I haven’t written in a while because I am working on a new project which will be a book expanding on some of the stories I’ve posted here. My hope is for this to be appealing to lay folks and everyday readers as much as to those doing the hard work of pastoral care every day.
So pardon my lack of output for a while! This may result in a reworking of the site but I really have no idea what will happen.
It had taken me a long time to get through Frank’s* door. He had cared for his brother at his home until his symptoms became unmanageable and he had to go to a skilled nursing facility. He wasn’t on service for long though, as after his admission he died within a short time. Prior to this, we hadn’t had much contact with Frank. He wasn’t making medical decisions for his brother, and he often came across as gruff and reserved over the phone. He had declined a chaplain for support as well as our social worker. However, after the death our staff raised concerns about Frank, given how close he and his brother were and his own health problems.
“Helen” is an elderly woman who lives in one of the nicer nursing homes in my area. She had an extremely difficult life growing up, which caused her to deal with addiction and its after-effects for many years. While she has remained a staunch Catholic, the “big book” of Alcoholics Anonymous holds a place in her heart as well. Helen is quite crippled and is in bed most of the time. While this leaves her rather isolated, whenever she is up she becomes quite anxious and often asks to be put back in bed. She is in almost constant pain from arthritis, which aggravates her anxiety, which in turn aggravates her pain. However, she is remarkably pleasant to visit. She treasures her Catholic faith, watching Mass every day and often talking about her faith with me.
On a recent visit, as I was leaving, she called out “thank you so much for coming, dying is very lonely.” This statement struck my heart, as it’s the most direct someone has ever been about their own dying experience.
“Do you realize / we’re floating in space?”: The Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize?”
During one of my recent calls to a patient I have, Louise*, she quite literally began our conversation with, “you know Sam, I don’t think God loves me anymore.”
This was a rather remarkable statement and took me by surprise at the time. Louise and her husband live in an assisted living community in a local suburb. Both are strong Catholics and maintain a daily spiritual practice that is almost monastic in some ways. They both get up early to read their devotions together, pray and sing hymns. Throughout the day they will stop and pray together as well. She also is an avid reader of Christian literature from Protestant as well as Catholic traditions. She is tremendously warm and open, however she’s declined visits for now as she finds that her cancer wears her down so quickly that phone calls are more welcome than visits.
When Louise told me how she felt, I wasn’t so much taken aback as I was curious. I asked her to tell me more. Very matter-of-factly she told me of how much she had struggled with pain over the winter. Many days she was either in too much pain or physically sick to get out of bed. Several times I was only able to talk with her husband as she was too ill to talk. It was on the heels of a long episode of significant illness and pain that she told me that she wasn’t sure if God loved her.
We often think of faith as a kind of shield in difficult times, absorbing the arrows of the world’s distress and our own weakness. Yet I find that it’s not those with the weakest faith that struggle most with death and suffering, but those with the strongest. Dr Ken Pargament recently spoke at a CPSP regional conference I organized on the topic of working with those in spiritual struggles, taken from a recent publication (which I highly recommend). He stated that faith and spirituality can act as sort of an inoculation against some spiritual struggles and challenges, but that same faith can be beaten down and even shattered by others. The differences he found between cases was not a matter of magnitude, but rather in focus. Spiritual distress affects those with broad, liberal views of God as well as those with narrow, conservative ones. He found that when core personal beliefs about the world as well as how one relates to it are threatened, spiritual distress is heightened. Paradoxically, this happens more in those who may consider themselves strong in their faith as well as those who consider themselves agnostic.
Spiritual struggles are not just questions about God or one’s own faith. They are foundational challenges to core concepts about the world, how it operates and how one relates to it. Pargament calls this one’s “orienting system”. It encompasses more than the idea of “world view”, as it includes one’s notions of ultimate purpose and meaning. While religious systems and beliefs often are the source for orienting systems, non-theists also have orienting systems that are grounded with similar senses of ultimate importance and significance. Astronomer Carl Sagan for example approached the cosmos with a sense of awe and wonder that many would consider spiritual:
“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
Carl Sagan, Cosmos
What Louise was experiencing was a dramatic blow to her orienting system. Her “north star”, the idea that God was good and loved her unconditionally, had been shaken by her ongoing illness and the feeling that her prayers were going unheard. She felt abandoned in her time of greatest need. Her pain – emotional, spiritual and physical – called other patients’ stories back to mind. I remembered the patient I had years ago who proclaimed with a feeling that was almost joy that she was ready to die and be with her Jesus, only to ask months later as her body withered and bled from cancer why God hadn’t taken her. I remembered the woman I had just seen who, confined to her bed, wonders every day through tears what God’s purpose is for her.
These same stories and struggles also take me back years to another patient I had who dealt with her own struggle of faith. Grace* was bed-bound, frail and emaciated, blind and almost deaf. Yet she transformed this suffering into purpose in the most wonderful way. She saw that even though physically she was completely dependent on others for care and could do almost nothing for herself, she could pray for others. She turned this into a calling. She told me she began to pray for the staff that would come in to see her and care for her. Soon, the facility staff as well as other residents started coming to her room to receive prayer. In my visits with her, after we prayed together, she always prayed for me with joy and enthusiasm. It was hard not to leave her room feeling in some way touched by God.
Grace’s story is one that I share often with patients who are struggling not because she is some pillar of strength or faith, but because it shows how one person dealt with the questions they themselves might be asking: what is my purpose? what can I do? where is God in my suffering? It encourages fellow sufferers to continue to press on with those questions rather than fall into a pit of despair. When one’s spiritual compass is no longer trustworthy, I ask “what gives you hope?”
I’ve spoken with Louise several times since that call I spoke of previously and thankfully she is feeling quite a bit better since then. She noted several reasons for this. Her pain and weakness, while still significant, are better controlled and managed than before. The celebration of Easter helped renew the sense that, as Christ overcame suffering and death, she may overcome it as well. She even commented, “you know, I don’t think about the resurrection enough!” I also see a renewed sense of hope for the future, something which had been shattered before by her spiritual struggles. Last we talked, she spoke of looking forward to her husband’s birthday and their anniversary, and also being outside with her beloved plants and nature. She told me about the white squirrel that shows up outside from time to time, as well as the many birds outside their patio home. She told me how much she looked forward to seeing the trees lit up by fireflies on summer nights “like pixie lights on Christmas trees.”
It can be tempting to give my own prescription for meaning in someone else’s life. It’s so hard to watch someone struggle spiritually and it’s hard not to try and take that pain away. Recognizing and affirming that struggle though is one of the most important things we can do for our fellow sufferers. Many feel the struggle itself is a problem, maybe the problem. However spiritual struggles are often simply part of the cost of having faith, whatever that faith may be in. We can help by pointing out strengths, including that the struggle itself is a sign of strength. We can focus attention on what one can do rather than what one can’t do. We can listen and bear witness, lending strength through the telling of our own struggles as well as those of others who came out on the other end of them, not in the sense of “go and do likewise” but to give hope that struggles are common and can be worked through.
In the same way that Grace’s story has helped others many years after her passing, I hope Louise’s can provide hope and healing as well.
*all names have been changed to preserve anonymity
I’m sitting down to write now because I finally have a bit of time to do so. I’m recuperating from orthoscopic knee surgery (it’s going very well, thank you), which overall has not been as big of a deal as I thought it would be.
I started having problems with my right knee about a year ago. It would pop and snap a lot, and eventually it started flaring up while I was walking. At first I would walk my dog for about a half mile walk. Then I could only go for about a quarter mile before my knee would start to stiffen and burn. Then I could barely walk down the cul-de-sac. When I first went to the orthopedist, he asked, “how’d you injure your knee?” I turned out that I had a slightly torn and ragged miniscus, and while PT could help (it did for a while) a clean-up would help significantly.
From time to time I’ve been asked “so how do I become a Chaplain?”. While I usually answer with a laundry list of things to do to prepare, train and ultimately become certified, the real answer is – it depends. It depends not only on what you do to prepare to be a chaplain but also on what employers expect from a Chaplain. And sometimes these two areas are quite different from each other.
The Chaplain's Report 