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Contents:
1. Executive Director’s Reflection
2. Thanks for Your Help to the Care Services/Staff Development Task Force
3. Keep Watch for the Fall Certification Interview Schedule
4. Check Your Mail for Your Board Election Ballot!
5. We Keep Working on State Liaison Calls
6. Healing Tree: A request for prayers
7. Recent job postings
8. Please go to the NACC website for these local gatherings
Just one year ago, August 1, 2007, I began this position of Executive Director. I am very grateful to God and you for this ministry of leadership and ad-ministry-ration. The NACC mission to support your participation in the healing ministry of Jesus in the name of the Church drives our staff’s service to you. Again, thank you also for the many expressions of prayer and support for me and my family since the death of my Mother.
An important spiritual guide in my life has been Charles de Foucauld, who was drawn back to God through the reverence of the Muslims in North Africa among whom he lived. His spiritual tenets offer some food for thought for the healing ministry. They include being a universal brother/sister, respecting the culture and faith of those among whom one lives/ministers, shouting the Gospel with one’s life, fostering a contemplative appreciation of life’s Nazareth (hidden and ordinary), and living in a way that people would ask, “If such is the servant, what must the Master be like?” Little Sister Magdeleine (Hutin), who founded the Little Sisters of Jesus in 1939 to follow the footsteps and live the charism of Charles to be contemplatives at the heart of the world, counseled the Little Sisters to live the “extraordinary ordinariness” of life and to “keep your eyes wide open so as to see the suffering and misery of the world as well as the beauty of life and of the entire universe.”
As I listen to your ministries of healing, you truly are living out daily so many of the charisms that Brother Charles sought to live a hundred years ago! Many of you work among populations that are so-called “unchurched” who encounter profound religious/spiritual issues as they struggle with their suffering and loss, and cannot (and most likely need not) express these issues in common religious language. In those settings, how important is your gift to be present to them, to respect and reverence their life situations with “your eyes wide open” to their suffering, yet also to be able to notice the “beauty of life” in how they live with, and are supported by, others in what they are undergoing. This ministry is truly being a “contemplative at the heart of the world.” Wouldn’t it be a blessing if those who encounter us can say, “If such is the servant, what must the Master be like?” Thank you for your ministry.
Thanks for Your Help to the Care Services/Staff Development Task ForceIn the last NACC Now the Pastoral Care Summit Care Services/Staff Development Task Force requested the names of Pastoral/Spiritual Care leaders in non-Catholic institutions to review a draft of Pastoral Care Standards for Chaplains that can be used by healthcare entities. We had a great response. Thank you! Also, a question was raised, “Are we changing the certification standards again?” No, these are standards of practice, i.e., what professional practices are expected of a certified chaplain in a healthcare setting, versus the certification standards that articulate what is expected of a person to become certified. Hope this explanation helps.
Keep Watch for the Fall Certification Interview ScheduleThe Interview Team Educators and NACC staff are busy finalizing the interview schedule for the October 4-5, 2008 certification interviews. This information should be sent to you within the coming days. Please watch for it. Thanks to all who have been working on this important project.
Check Your Mail for Your Board Election Ballot!This week the NACC office will be mailing to you the board election ballot. Please be part of building our NACC board. Please vote. We have an excellent slate of candidates for one at-large board position. Again, we appreciate the willingness of the following members to be considered for this position: James Castello, Blair Holtey, Rev. Baaju Izuchi, CSSp, Rev. Dean Marek, and Marie Polhamus. More information here.
We Keep Working on State Liaison CallsWe have been working on setting conference calls with state liaisons. Cindy Bridges is trying to set conference calls in August for the following four groupings of NACC state liaisons: Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana; West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware; New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah; and Texas and Oklahoma. The goal is to help get organized communication strategies and gatherings for the coming months. Two of these groupings already have fall meetings scheduled, as you will see below in the listings.
Healing Tree: A request for prayersPlease continue to keep in prayer Sr. Hilda Mallet, MHS (Undergoing cancer radiation treatments which followed Chemo), Sr. Joyce Troyer, CSC. (Recovering from surgery), Sr. Albertine Kramer, CSC (Recovering from extensive surgery, is in rehabilitation, and is in transition after serving for 18 years at St. Joseph Medical Center in South Bend, IN), Sr. Paula Jacobs, SSM (terminal cancer), Dennis Eldridge (Kathy’s husband, for cancer treatment), Sr. Mary Skopal, SSJ (recovering from back surgery), and Sr. Mary Anna Euring, OP (bout with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma).
Recent job postingsThe following positions have been posted in the last two weeks. Please go to our Positions Available page for more information about them.
DIRECTOR OF PASTORAL CAREOur local gathering list is growing. Therefore, we ask you to use our NACC calendar for more information on:
Portland, OR, September 19-20, 2008