A large part of my Call to clergy, and my vocation, is focused on caring for others. I have felt myself drawn to this kind of work across the story of my life. Growing up, all the way through high school and college, I was often the confidant for friends going through a hard time. In my first profession teaching high school, that vocation of caring for others dovetailed with my other primary vocation of teaching & mentoring others. Then, while working on my Initiate work, the Call to priesthood hit me like a freight train, and I came to understand that I could blend those vocations, caring and mentoring and teaching, together in my priest work. I continue to lean into that blend in my current occupation and education as a chaplain working towards board certification.
Continue reading “When Caring for Others is a Calling”Chaplaincy
Perseverance is Making Sure You’re a Success Story, Not a Statistic
As I continue working as a prison chaplain, I’ve found not only is it a deeply fulfilling part of my vocation, it is also allowing me to re-examine my own spirituality and add depth and subtlety to my understandings of the cosmos. I teach weekly using Rev. Dangler’s Dedicant Path Through the Wheel of the Year as a base, and recently we were discussing the virtue of perseverance. Beyond definitions, I like to ask them to think of a person (real or fictional, historical or modern, famous or not) who they believe embodies each virtue. For perseverance, it was thinking of who has the drive to continue towards their goals, even when the whole world seems to be conspiring against it. They acknowledged each other as fully embodying perseverance.
Continue reading “Perseverance is Making Sure You’re a Success Story, Not a Statistic”Beltane Behind Bars
Yesterday was amazing. I had coordinated to bring three of my Grovemates, Joe, Jeff, and Mike to ORW as volunteers for Beltane. I wanted to make it kind of like a mini-festival day for the inmates. So we had a morning of workshops and then an afternoon ritual.
Continue reading “Beltane Behind Bars”A Winter Solstice Reflection: Passing the Light
I wrote this brief reflection/working for the Winter Solstice Rite I’m running at ORW this year. I really like the imagery of passing the light. It gives us time to honor the holy dark, but also look to finding hope. If you’d like to do this working, you’ll need a candle (or electric candle) for each person present, and the overhead lights turned off.
Continue reading “A Winter Solstice Reflection: Passing the Light”“Reflections on Prison Chaplaincy”
It’s amazing how serendipitous life changes can really affect your spirituality and the ways that you interact with the world. Since becoming ordained in 2015 I’ve had an interest in pursuing professional chaplaincy, but as a minority religion there are even more barriers in place that there would be otherwise. Even then, I thought I’d like higher education or hospital chaplaincy, and was pretty sure that prison chaplaincy was not for me. But then this opportunity to work at the local women’s state prison fell into my lap, and I have found myself spirituality reinvigorated and deeply humbled in this work.
Continue reading ““Reflections on Prison Chaplaincy””Teaching Chaplains About Paganism
I had the amazing opportunity to teach a class of Chaplaincy students doing CPE with OhioHealth this week. Their instructor had reached out to me to see if I could help give them some perspective on what types of things pagans belief, and what would help them in times of crisis. The talk went really well, the students were engaged and had good questions. Hopefully I get the opportunity to go back with each new cohort.
Here’s the outline that I sent along to the students:
Continue reading “Teaching Chaplains About Paganism”
Mist to Open. Mists to Bind. 