PlainViews

APC Quality Commission on defining what we do

Standards vs. Best Practices

Professional chaplaincy is making significant strides as a profession. Our Common Standards (i.e., competencies) and Common Code of Ethics,[1] our research into and development of benchmarks,[2] and our discussions around “Best Practices”[3] all provide evidence of this. In an effort to continue this process of “professionalization,”the Commission on Quality in Pastoral Services is endeavoring to define “Best Practices”and “Standards of Practice”for professional chaplaincy more precisely.

Over 65 years ago, Russell Dicks wrote, “The chaplain can no longer wander from bed to bed, chatting agreeably, relieving distress occasionally as he [sic] discovers it.”[4] Harold Schultz, speaking of these early days, said, “Anyone who read the Bible and the like to 50 patients or more …was considered equipped to be a chaplain.”[5] Because we have no established nor minimal Standards of Practice to which professional chaplains are held accountable, the observations of Dicks and Schultz still hold true for many chaplains in healthcare settings today.

Susan Wintz and George Handzo recently defined Standards of Practice as follows:

“Standards of practice are those established principles and practices that represent the profession and include minimum levels of practice to which professionals are held accountable. They are articulated in observable and measurable terms and are the guiding principles by which professional chaplains conduct their day-to-day responsibilities within their scope of practice.”[6]

Critical in this definition is the phrase “established principles and practices that represent the profession.”Standards of Practice are principles and practices that all professional chaplains must hold in common regardless of setting. We use these Standards of Practice as “guiding principles”in helping us develop our own unique scope of practice within our own particular settings. For example, if spiritual assessment is a Standard of Practice, then a particular scope of practice must address spiritual assessment, but may vary depending on which kind and number of patients assessed, the time frame that is deemed appropriate, and the particular assessment tool that is used.

Our definition also refers to the articulation of Standards of Practice “in observable and measurable terms.”Continuing our example, if our assessment includes the patient’s ability to utilize religious resources for coping, then we need to observe directly or indirectly what those resources are and then measure if and how the patient’s condition changes through utilizing those resources.

Finally, our definition speaks of “minimum levels of practice to which professionals are held accountable.”This is important! Standards of Practice are our bottom line—not our Best Practice! Doing spiritual assessments and charting and providing spiritual care across the faith continuum, for example, should not be seen as extraordinary—they are ordinary. And for these ordinary and minimal requirements we should be held accountable.

Already our analysis indicates that the differences between “Best Practices”and “Standards of Practice”can be confused and confusing. In a follow-up article we will examine Best Practices, but we feel it is important that we first come to a clearer understanding of Standards of Practice. Our hope is that the larger chaplaincy community will respond to this initial article and provide valuable feedback through the “Talkback”section of PlainViews.

Footnotes:

[1] Common Standards for Professional Chaplains and Common Code of Ethics for Chaplains & Pastoral Counselors. Available in the “Reading Room”at: http://www.professionalchaplains.org.

[2] Larry VandeCreek, Eileen Gorey, et. al., “How Many Chaplains Per 100 Inpatients? Benchmarks of Health Care Chaplaincy Departments,”Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, v. 55, no. 3 (Fall, 2005), pp. 289-301; Susan K. Wintz & George F. Handzo, “Pastoral Care Staffing and Productivity: More than Ratios,”Chaplaincy Today v. 21, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 2005), pp. 3-8.

[3] See George Handzo, “Best Practices in Professional Pastoral Care,” Southern Medical Journal v. 99, no. 6 (June, 2006), pp. 663-664.

[4] Russell L. Dicks, “The Work of the Chaplain in a General Hospital,”(Reprint) The Caregiver Journal v. 12, no. 1 (1996), pp. 2-5.

[5] Harold P. Schultz, “Reflections on the Past,”Bulletin of the American Protestant Hospital Association (July, 1982), pp. 35-36.

[6] Susan K. Wintz & George F. Handzo, “Pastoral Care Staffing and Productivity: More than Ratios,”Chaplaincy Today v. 21, no. 1 (Spring/Summer, 2005), pp. 3. Examples of Standards of Practice may be found in the “Reading Room”at http://www.professionalchaplains.org.

Chaplain Mark LaRocca-Pitts, BCC, Athens Regional Medical Center, Athens, GA; The Rev. Jon A. Overvold, BCC, Chair, Commission on Quality in Pastoral Care Services, Director of Pastoral Care & Education, North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, NY; Chaplain Harry Burns, BCC, Community Chaplain, Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, N.C.; Rev. Dr. Martha R. Jacobs, Managing Editor, PlainViews, The HealthCare Chaplaincy, New York, NY; Rev. Dr. Marcia Marino, BCC, Regional Director of Pastoral Care, Aurora Health Care, Milwaukee, WI; Rev. Steven Spidell, Executive Director, Presbyterian Outreach to Patients, The Texas Medical Center, Houston, TX; Rev. Pam Washburn, BCC, Cottage Health System, Santa Barbara, CA.

Do you have thoughts about professional practice you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail info@PlainViews.org.

Editor's note: More responses to the two articles about volunteer chaplains warrant the continuing of this discussion within the context of Advocacy. The original articles were in the August 16 (vol. 3, no. 14) and November 1 (vol. 3, no. 19) issues in case you missed them.

The discussion about the role of volunteers has been interesting and important. However, in my opinion, what volunteers should and shouldn’t do in a pastoral care program misses the real issue, which as Marshall Scott and Neville Kirkwood have noted, is the continuing lack of understanding about the role of professional pastoral care.

In almost all of our consulting engagements with hospitals around the county, we see sophisticated hospital administrators who do not understand the contributions that professional chaplains should be making in their hospitals. Again and again, we see hospital administrators, and even their chaplains, who do not understand that the chaplains can be fully integrated into the strategic directions of the hospital. All too often, the chaplains are working very hard, but their work goes unnoticed –they are, to use an old line, “doing things right, but not doing the right things right”–“right”being those activities that have been established by their hospital’s leadership as directly connected with the hospital’s mission and path to success, and assigned to the responsibility of pastoral care.

Most hospital administrators in the United States struggle every day with communications breakdowns causing patient-staff and staff-staff conflicts, lapses in patient safety, gaps in patient-centered care or cultural competence, and other issues that lower their patient satisfaction, increase their staff turnover, increase the likelihood of litigation, and eventually cost them real money. They all too often don’t hear the voices of their clinical staff –particularly their nurses –who are feeling the stress from dealing with disruptive families and tragedies that could have been addressed by their chaplains.

Professional certified chaplains (but not volunteers) can make significant contributions to all of these everyday hospital problems. However, when most administrators look for solutions to these problems, chaplains rarely come to mind. Worse, we are often seen as irrelevant to these concerns –because we are irrelevant if we aren’t integrated into the accountability and responsibility for patient care! However, when these same administrators learn to understand the substantial contributions professional chaplains can make to issues that are central to their everyday practice, they are often enthusiastic about maintaining even increasing their pastoral care resources.

Thus, the task before professional pastoral care is to clearly and convincingly demonstrate the real contributions we can make to our hospitals’mission and margin, and then insist on being held accountable for the results of our efforts. When we are successful, our efforts will be recognized. Then we can let the potential contributions of volunteers find their own level of success.

Rev. George Handzo
Associate Vice President, Strategic Development
The HealthCare Chaplaincy
New York, NY

While I understand that Chaplain Donovan's concern about volunteer chaplaincy is a real-world anxiety occasioned by the quickness of some hospitals to go for spiritual care on the cheap, I want to propose that he and others who are defending the world of professional chaplaincy from the incursions of voluntarism are, in fact, barking up the wrong tree. I think the premise of Barry Glasner's The Culture of Fear: Why American’s Fear the Wrong Things fits very neatly into the reasoning that says volunteers are a threat to health care chaplaincy.

What we chaplains ought to fear is our poor record in demonstrating the effectiveness of comprehensive programs of spiritual care. With all due respect to the anxiety that arises when some health care institutions seek the absolute minimum in spiritual care, I really believe we are violating our noblest selves when we duplicate the curious and sadly mistaken human propensity to protect one's position by blaming those in our midst who don't have the "proper papers."

I'm the director of pastoral care in a large, faith-based health care system in which spiritual care volunteers have increased the reach AND the quality of pastoral care that our chaplains provide to the patients and family members served by the 16 hospitals in our health care system. Furthermore, repeated research in the a wide variety of helping disciplines that offer services MOST like those which chaplains offer has demonstrated conclusively that, for about 80% of individuals in need of care, nonprofessional helpers are as effective as professional helpers.

I cite this statistic to every new group of volunteers who train in our system –as I did when I developed a large volunteer program in a regional public hospital in the East.

I do so for two reasons –one is to affirm their capacity to successfully carry out the divine call we share with them –to offer themselves in compassionate service to the spiritual needs of others. The second is to stress to them how MUCH they assist our chaplains to increase the effectiveness of their ministry by focusing on the approximately 20% of individuals who desperately need the services of a professional chaplain. Volunteers cover ground our chaplains should NOT be covering, and they help us more quickly to find the people who can most benefit from our care. While they are doing so, they become the most passionate and effective advocates of professional chaplaincy precisely because they see first-hand the difference professional chaplains can make.

Respectfully,

Mark Grace
Director, Pastoral Care & Counseling
Baylor Health Care System
3500 Gaston Ave
Dallas, TX

It was interesting to read the various responses to the articles(s) on volunteer chaplains. I have, I believe, a slightly different take on the subject. I am a "second career" endorsed candidate for chaplaincy, a single woman, and will soon be 61. After five years of seminary, including a change of denominations and six units of CPE, I am $70,000 in debt and, it seems, without job prospects. Because I am a member of the United Church of Christ, I cannot be ordained until I am employed (that's polity). It is indeed a rare position posting that asks for less than three years of experience and certification, or being in the process of certification, and ordination. At this point, volunteering with a hospital or hospice looks to be the only way for me to begin my certification process, get at least a year of experience, and, hence, improve my prospects for employment. Frankly, I don't know what else to do, and I wouldn't mind some input.

Let me add that I have used crutches for the last 32 years (I am a bone cancer survivor), and that keeps me on the west coast, which is also where my family is. The preponderance of job postings on the APC site seem to be in the mid-west and north-east, and I cannot negotiate ice and snow. If someone had advised me of the great difficulties I would face in finding employment, I might never have entered seminary, and would never have had the many rewarding experiences I have had working with patients and families during my six units of CPE.

Thanks for giving me an outlet to blow off a little steam.

Gail A. Williams, MAPS, CTS
Willits, CA

I have read the ongoing dialogue regarding Volunteer Chaplains with great interest. I believe the use of volunteers by the healthcare industry is motivated, in part, by budgetary concerns. The Pastoral Care Department is not exempt from these fiscal issues. In fact, I would not be surprised to see a growing trend by healthcare facilities in moving toward a multiple volunteer pastoral care staff overseen by a professional Chaplain-administrator primarily for economic reasons. As professional Chaplains, are we prepared to adjust?

One observation I had regarding the comments on the subject was the apparent consensus that volunteer Chaplains are untrained and unqualified to provide the same quality of pastoral care as a “professional”Chaplain. However, that is not always the case.

I am aware of “volunteer”Chaplains who receive no remuneration for their services (as opposed to a “professional”who gets paid for what he/she does), but they are still highly skilled pastoral caregivers. Many of these individuals have completed 1600 hours of extensive and intensive clinical pastoral education. They have been certified by a professional chaplaincy organization that has established and maintains high competency standards and a code of ethics for their “professional”(here I am using the word to define someone skilled at what they do) Chaplains. However, these Chaplains are not employees of the hospital; they serve as volunteers. Some do so because they feel they have more freedom of ministry and schedule as a volunteer than as an employee. Some do so because they want to focus on providing pastoral care rather than on writing in a patient’s chart, or attending administrative meetings, or completing monthly reports. Some do so because the hospital has no intention of including a Chaplain in their budget and this allows the Chaplains to still provide quality pastoral care to that facility. Some do not need a salary because they are retired and have a pension; others raise support like a missionary to meet their financial needs.

I am also aware of professional Chaplains who have a dynamic volunteer Chaplain Assistant Program. As was indicated by Chaplain Scott, this means the professional Chaplain spends more time in an administrative role: recruiting, training, overseeing and evaluating the volunteers. But it also means that his or her ministry at the hospital is greatly multiplied without overtaxing the budget of the hospital or the Chaplain’s time and energy in trying to meet all the spiritual needs at the facility.

The keys to a competent volunteer Chaplain Assistant program are dependent on several factors:
•The Director. This needs to be a person skilled in doing administrative work, but especially in supervising pastoral caregivers. Not everyone who is already a professional Chaplain is able to or even wants to do this.
•The screening of all candidates. At my former facility, these were all Pastors, who had theological training and pastoral care experience.
•The basic training of all new volunteers. At my facility that involved 400 hours of clinical pastoral training, focused on basic listening and assessment skills, as well as the provision of appropriate pastoral care. In addition, there was continuing education that was required for all volunteers.
•The supervision of the volunteers. In the same way we allow students to visit patients during a unit of CPE, we allow volunteers to visit under the supervision of the professional Chaplain.

Yes, there is often a difference academically and experientially between the professional Chaplain and the volunteer Chaplain. However, let’s not forget that this is a spiritual ministry, even though it is in a specialized setting. And because it is a spiritual ministry, there are people God has gifted and called to this ministry who are highly capable at what they do, yet may lack the “credentials”(like Moses or the New Testament Disciples). The basic training plus supervision adequately qualifies them to provide effective pastoral care at the bedside.

So clarify the difference between the professional and the volunteer by educating the healthcare staff and the religious community, but go ahead and use them to expand the spiritual care ministry at your facility.

Chaplain Jeffrey Funk
Executive Director
Healthcare Chaplains Ministry Association
Anaheim, CA

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“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you …before you were born I set you apart …”

Jeremiah 1:5

Any kind of perinatal death is a devastating crisis for parents, most of whom are unaware of their own needs at the time of their loss. Spiritual care at this time is more than a protocol to support and guide grieving parents; it’s an essential presence, an outward manifestation of the healing power of compassionate love. It is encountering the black hole of emptiness, of shattered dreams and hopes. It is acknowledging anger, bitterness, and confusion, and not running away from the wrenching postpartum agony of labour pains in vain. It is comfort, not so much through words, but through the sacred privilege of being with another’s pain.

The “healing circle”of spiritual care is the powerful presence of each person in the room united in care and support for those who have just lost a child, and a significant part of themselves. Parents are grieving multiple losses. Where is hope in the face of such darkness? And, what might spiritual care look and feel like in this situation?

I have attended upon numerous perinatal losses. It is always a draining and heart wrenching experience. People look to me to help them not only express their pain but to pray through the moment, the experience, in a meaningful way.

Therefore, I must listen attentively with the heart and soul. I must help everyone to have this “life ending”acknowledged with dignity. A child has come into the world and left the world through no will of its own.

This is not a time for theological musings about angels and God’s will. It is a time to draw upon the profound love which is manifesting itself in excruciating grief. It is the time to validate each person who is bonded by the experience. It is time to renew the strengths of family, friends and care providers. It is time to draw upon the commitments made in the past –in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer.

Most people at the time of their deepest despair need others to be the compassion of God, to pray for them when they simply cannot, and to be reassuring.

The healing circle of spiritual care is about
our warmth, when people feel abandoned;
our closeness, when they feel so very sad;
our peace, when they feel anger, resentment and bitterness;
our strength, when they feel afraid;
our patience, when they feel anxious;
and our assurance that God is in the midst of our pain and that this experience will eventually have meaning.

Naming the baby, blessing the baby, handing the baby back to God - these are significant rituals of the healing process.

Respect, above all else, the wishes of the parents, even if this means being shut out from the intimate moments of their spiritual struggle. This, too, can be part of the healing circle of spiritual care.

The healing circle of spiritual care is all about what we do, why we do it, how we do it, and who we are in this reality. The way we cuddle the baby, dress the baby, take photographs, notice the beauty of tiny fingers and toes. It is the time we take to comfort, to get to know and to commit to care into the future.

All of this continuum of care from the birthing experience to the leave taking is spiritual care because it emanates from our souls, the place of our authentic love. It is what makes all of us one whole and holy people.

Do you have thoughts about education & research you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.

Facing the field of marble and granite,
we stood—my brother and I.
No grain waving in this place
nor any stalks tall
with sagging ears ready for harvest.

Grass neatly trimmed…
a friendly man carrying the trimmer
touched each stone ever so slightly
as if to tip his soiled ball cap
in honor and memory.

Rows of stones…
all sizes and shapes.
Some worn with age
daring the eyes to decipher the script…
single words: Mother, Father, Daughter, Son.

Names and dates,
months and years,
poems and words,
scenes etched in laser,
loving epitaphs cast so clear.

A walk in time—
long ago: 1771-1844
William Griffin:
Grandfather great times two;
off in a corner, a silent presence.

Pleasant View,
the sign gate read!
This stroll with a mission
cast new meaning
on this field of stone.

Not just names and dates…
ancestors and descendants,
old and young.
Real people alive
in my brother’s heart and mine.

Do you have thoughts about spiritual development you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail of any length to info@PlainViews.org.

EthicsWalk addresses spiritual care as an ethical enterprise. It explores why relationships between spiritual care providers and those they serve need protection, and examines what that protection entails. PlainViews invites our readers to share their responses to each EthicsWalk column, which will be published in the following issue.

If you’d like to respond to EthicsWalk, please send a comment of no more than 100 words. You can use the e-form below (click on "hearing from you," link) or submit your commentary to the editors in the body of an e-mail (or as a Microsoft Word attachment) sent to Info@PlainViews.org. Please put the phrase “EthicsWalk” in your subject line.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Ben, age 56, married father of four adult children, remains on life-support three weeks following a bicycle accident producing massive head injuries. Ben had executed the following Advance Directives: a Living Will, a Health Care Treatment Directive and a Durable Power of Attorney designating his brother Health Care Proxy.[1] A week ago the medical team told the family brain damage was irreversible. Ben would never regain consciousness.

Ben’s family is split over withdrawing life-support. His brother and two of the children argue for immediate withdrawal; his wife and two other children have hired an attorney and are visited daily by their local church minister and hospital chaplain. The clergy both say, “beneficence dictates giving them more time to accept this. There is no rush to withdraw.”The attorney is questioning whether the younger brother is a valid proxy when the wife and adult children are “closer kin.”She threatens to sue if supports are withdrawn before she determines the validity.[2]

The medical team consulted the hospital ethics committee who raised the following points:
•Who is the patient?
•Are there Advance Directives that articulate the patient’s wishes?
•If so, are those wishes being honored?

These are matters of respecting patient autonomy. Beneficence and nonmaleficence accrue to the patient, not the patient’s family, although the latter must be treated with kindness and respect. The technological (and skilled personnel) resources keeping Ben alive are locally limited and extraordinarily costly. There are justice issues involved in prolonged use when the medical team deems further recovery impossible.

Situation analysis: Ben is the patient. Because he cannot communicate and his family is vocal and emotionally charged, their presence is subsuming Ben’s. Ben’s Living Will specifies he does not want “extraordinary measures”to keep him alive but is not dispositive because Ben’s state, like most, limits Living Wills to “terminally ill”individuals.[3]

Ben’s Health Care Treatment Directive follows a popular form available on-line.[4] Ben noted what procedures he never wanted (most of which he is receiving) “when there is no hope of significant recovery, and I have a condition, disease, or injury…without reasonable expectation that I will regain an acceptable quality of life; or substantial brain damage …which cannot be significantly reversed.”

On that form, Ben named his brother as his “agent.”Himself a lawyer, Ben took the added step of executing a separate Power of Attorney for Health Care appointing his brother surrogate decision maker and referencing the previous documents. It instructed his brother to follow those documents and “take any legal action necessary to do what I have directed.”

Ethically and legally, Ben’s clearly stated wishes must be honored. As loving husband and father, he would want his family to have the comfort of professionals sensitive to their grief. But his autonomous choices preclude further extending his life to accommodate family closure.

[1] All designations are forms of Advance Directives. Each has a separate and differently limited purpose and all are subject to the laws of the particular states in which they are drafted and/or applied. Spiritual care providers cannot responsibly confuse the terms and use them interchangeably. It is every provider’s responsibility to read and understand what each term conveys in his or her state and how it is applied in his or her health care institution.

[2] When a proxy or guardian is clearly named by a competent individual, degree of kinship has no bearing on appointment. Probate codes rank relatives and relationships for purposes of appointing surrogates or guardians in cases where there is no one named. This is a spurious argument to “buy”more time for the family.

[3] While the Living Will cannot provide instruction in this situation, its contents provide clear information about the patient’s wishes in medically futile situations.

[4] Sample Form: Health Care Treatment Directive provided by the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association and its foundation, the Metropolitan Medial Society of Greater Kansas City, Midwest Bioethics Center and the Missouri Lawyer Trust Account Foundation.

We post an ethical or situational concern that has arisen in a facility where one of our readers works. It has no identifiers included. It gives you only the facts of the case. Then, you can respond to that concern. This is an ongoing dialogue, with comments added as they come in. In the following issue, assuming it has been resolved, we give you the outcome from the facility where the incident took place. Please send any cases that you would like considered for inclusion to: info@plainviews.org

We hope that this new addition will help to inform not only those who are dealing with the issue, but will enable all of our readers to learn from the experiences and perhaps mistakes of others.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to unanticipated continuing responses to both the case and the resolution of the case, added responses can be viewed in the archives. Click HERE.

Prior to meeting the daughter in the hallway, the chaplain had several conversations with the patient, her family and with the staff. The chaplain had been an advocate for the patient, knowing that the patient had the right to say no as long as she fully understood the implications of her decision. Following a team meeting, a psych consult was ordered to ensure that the patient was not “clinically depressed”and understood the consequences of her decision. The psychiatrist found her both competent and not depressed. However, he felt that she should still have the surgery and would be “grateful afterwards.”

The staff used this recommendation by the psychiatrist as their rationale for trying to continue to “convince”the patient that she was making a mistake. The daughter was following through on her mothers’wishes when asking the chaplain to have the staff support her mother’s decision stop trying to change her mind.

The chaplain initiated a conversation with the patient’s doctor and together, at the next team meeting, informed the staff that the patient’s wishes were to be honored. The staff was to begin discharge planning based on her wish to go to a nursing home where she would be kept comfortable with pain meds. The chaplain then spent quite a bit of time with the staff individually, helping them to understand why the patient’s wishes were to be honored.

An ethics consult was not necessary because the patient’s doctor eventually agreed with the wishes of the patient. This was a matter of staff being educated about the right of a patient to say “no”and to have that right upheld.

A 94-year-old woman falls and breaks her hip. She is brought to the hospital and refuses surgery to repair her hip. Mrs. S has been an independent woman, who lives by herself, still drives and her ADL (Activities of Daily Living) level is very high. The staff, believing that she does not understand that she could return to her home and have a meaningful life after surgery and rehab, continually try to convince Mrs. S that she should have the surgery. Mrs. S keeps saying that she wants to go to a nursing home, be given adequate pain medication and allowed to die. Her 69-year-old daughter is furious at the staff for trying to "convince" her mother to have the surgery. She meets the chaplain in the hall and tells the chaplain what is going on. The chaplain, a member of the Ethics Committee, wonders if this should be referred to that Committee.

Should the chaplain suggest to the daughter that she ask for an Ethics Consult?

Her name means "keeper of the rituals," and Sobonfu Somé tells us in this 7-hour, 6-CD set, that ritual is considered by members of the Dagara tribe of West Africa to be the key to connecting with one’s spirituality.

Sobonfu Somé is an author, teacher and authority on African women’s spirituality. Through colorful anecdotes, lively discussion and quiet reflection, she leads the listener to a better understanding of a world in which plants, trees and animals are revered as elders and the connection to nature is considered divine.

The Dagara tribe values women as the source of the world's wisdom and Sobonfu Somé is the first woman chosen by the tribal elders to share their beliefs with the West.

She poses many questions in this audio series as she ministers to women, among them: “What are your unique gifts?”“What were you born to contribute?”and, most important for Chaplains, “What can your community do to assist you?”

Sobonfu Somé is author of The Spirit of Intimacy, Welcoming Spirit Home, and Falling Out of Grace: Meditations on Loss, Healing and Wisdom.

Completed: 2004
Running Time: 7 Hours
Music: Hamza El Din
Distributor: Sounds True

If you are interested in purchasing this CD series, you can do so at www.hartleyfoundation.org. Just click on “Sages of Our Age”on the homepage, then Sobonfu Somé for more information. The cost of the 6-CD set is $69.95.

Sarah Masters is the Managing Director of the Hartley Film Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to cultivation, support, production and distribution of the best documentaries and audio meditations on world religions, spirituality, ethics and well-being.

This is an intensely personal and emotionally intimate book on being a widow. Written by Jane J. Parkerton, Anne Winchell Silver, and K. Jeanne Person, they offer a gentle invitation to discover the realities of being a widow.

The book grew out of a Ruth & Naomi Circle, a support group for widows at Grace Episcopal Church, Brooklyn Heights, New York. Not surprisingly, the book’s perspective is from the perspective of Christianity, but the central themes of loss, grief, and (re-)learning to live in a new way are universal.

They have subtitled their book ‘Gleanings…’and have structured it to help the reader to glean as much as she or he is able to at one time –and to go back frequently for more. Each chapter begins with a story of a biblical widow - Abigail, Tamar, Anna, Judith, and others—re-told by the Reverend K. Jeanne Person. Each of the biblical widows was chosen to illustrate some part of this new condition of being widowed; through each story, one gains a fuller understanding of what it is to have been half of a marriage and to have to adjust to having the other half taken away.

Jeanne follows each biblical story with questions and/or meditation topics to pray and/or reflect about for widows, and then different meditation topics for all readers. Then, Jane and Anne talk openly and frequently movingly about an issue or topic raised in the story, using their own lives as illustrations.

For example, after Jeanne tells the story of the widow with two coins (Mark 12:38-44; Luke 21:1-4), Jane and then Anne each share the issues about money that each has had to work through.

As one reads the chapters, one gains—or gleans—a fuller understanding of what it is to be a widow, because Jane and Anne share moments of their lives with the reader. Soon, the reader is invited into their lives as a family friend trusted to hear the truth. Through Jane and Anne’s courage and clear writing, one is moved at their strength and by what each woman has gone through.

The end of their prologue reads, “In gleaning, may you who are widows find yourselves becoming members of a wider circle of sister-widows who understand, support and love one another. And whoever you are, may you discover, as we have, the astounding richness of the Bible in revealing both the concerns and the life-giving friendship of widows.”(xviii)

For widows, chaplains, and clergy, this is a practical and useful book. The material is authentic, genuine, and helpful. It is a resource for chaplains and clergy for their own work with widows; it is a resource for widows themselves, and it is well done.

Parkerton, Jane J., K. Jeanne Person, Anne Winchell Silver. Where You Go, There I Shall: Gleanings from the Stories of Biblical Widows, (Cowley Publications, Cambridge, 2005) pp. 129.

Do you have thoughts about these reviews you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org