Latest from the Wayne Oates Institute
Explore Issues of Ecology, Water, and Suicide in a May Reading Seminar
In About A Mountain, John d' Agata shares his observations, experience and conclusions based upon time living in Las Vegas with his mother. Key issues that provide material for group reflection and discussion are the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Respository (now a non-issue after many years of work and wrangling from Nevadans who didn't want in their back yard what no one else did), the very high comparative rate of suicide in Las Vegas, and Las Vegas as a microcosm that, in some ways, may be symbolic of the nation. Ecology, suicide, water, and the desert (and more!) all resonate in this study. The seminar, Reading as a Pathway to the Spirit, presented by Jan Olandese will run from May 6-24.
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- Published: 25 April 2013
We Are Making Progress
Progress! We are making great progress with getting names entered into the online database. If you are a member of the Oates Institute, you most likely have received an email message from us in the past week with your membership information. It is because of the database transfer. Just a reminder, please do review the various emails and watch (in particular) for errors in email, user name, or password. We have all the 2013 renewals in (as of today, Tuesday), and hope to complete work on January through March of 2014 by Wednesday, April 24. If you login, you will find that you can make some changes to your profile, and upload a photo. Be careful with that as your user name and password on the main system still do not control the classroom environment. (So if you change it one place, it is not automatically changed in the other.) We hope to work on that later in the year.
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- Published: 23 April 2013
Homage to an Urban Pioneer—Grady Clay
Reading the obits and accolades published at the death of journalist and urban-ecologist Grady Clay sends me back to 1968. Mr. Clay posted on the seminary bulletin board a request for a seminary couple to house-sit and teen-sit their son while they were away for several weeks. We met them, were offered the job, and we spent time in their home and sort of tended the young man of the house.
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- Published: 23 April 2013
Envisioning the Future of Spiritual Care topic for Fall Online Conference
When we started exploring topics for this year's fall online conference, we discovered that a lot of questions are being asked by chaplains, counselors, and congregational leaders regarding the future. In the midst of significant changes happening in healthcare in light of the Affordable Care Act and efforts to reduce the costs of health care, we encountered anxiety about future budget allocations and jobs for chaplains, counselors, and social workers. As we looked at pastoral care in congregations and ministry extended into communities, we encountered more anxiety. Both areas of concern are being fueled by the need to trim budgets and be more cost effective at the same time that our population is growing older and being able to live longer with serious illness, trauma, and injury. However in the midst of the anxiety, we are seeing all kinds of opportunities and possibilities. We decided this would be a good year to focus on bringing people together to talk about what the future looks like for pastoral and spiritual care.
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- Published: 22 April 2013
Wanted: Storytellers, Artists, and Sponsors Revisisted
I continue to have the most fascinating conversations with people involved in various aspects of health and spiritual care. There is such creative energy as they retell stories of people’s experience with spiritual caregivers and stories about their experience as caregivers. I hear stories about challenges faced, things tried, and creative approaches discovered. Some work, some don’t, and all them provide great learning opportunities. I often hear myself saying, “I’d love to have an article on that for the Oates Journal.” So I am revisiting this invitation I issued a year or so ago.
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- Published: 22 April 2013
Moving the Oates Journal
In light of new opportunities offered within the new content management system that we are using for the website, we have the opportunity to bring the Oates Journal back to the main site. Since 2008, when we started to renew the publication of the Journal, it has been located on a subdomain (journal.oates.org) where it could have its own design and look. The primary complication was that it also required a separate member database that added to password complications and confusion. With the new platform, we have not only much better security but a lot more flexibility in design between sections of the site—or as we look at it, the different parts of our virtual campus.
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- Published: 22 April 2013
Pastoral Care for Bereaved Parents Topic of May Seminar
After the Newtown and Aurora shootings, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon, many of us are reflecting on what we say to parents whose child has died. We may be ready to talk with grieving children, or spouses, but parents are not supposed to survive their children. The fact is that many do and it is a difficult and terrible grief to endure. Through writings and movies this seminar explores this experience and some avenues for providing pastoral and spiritual care to bereaved parents. This online seminar will be offered May 6-24 is for chaplains, counselors, and pastors. It is a seminar about how to provide care for a lingering grief that requires an informed and sensitive approach.
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- Published: 20 April 2013
Barbara Brown Taylor book featured in May Seminar
How often have we heard the phrase, "I'm spiritual, but not religious"? Episcopal priest (and writer) Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her memoir, Leaving Church, of losing her faith with the church and much of religion, but not with God. In her very down-to-earth way, Taylor shares what many of us have felt, and perhaps struggled in guilt over, as we seek to reconcile our work, faith, and church affiliations. In the May 6-24 online seminar on Spiritual but not Religious: Leaving Church, participants have the opportunity to reflect on Taylor's perspectives and their own experiences with others who are no longer seeing church as the avenue for meeting their spiritual needs.
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- Published: 20 April 2013