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PASTORAL CARE
May 14, 2018
Find tips and resources for self-care, material to assist you in providing pastoral care, and general information to help you in your practice of ministry. Information will be updated every two weeks concurrent with the East Ohio E-news. Archives Here ...
Community and the Spiritual Journey
by Richard Rohr
The goal of the spiritual journey is to discover and move toward connectedness and relationship on ever new levels, while also honoring diversity. We may begin by making connections with family and friends, with nature and animals, and then grow into deeper connectedness with those outside our immediate circle, especially people of races, religions, economic classes, gender, and sexual orientation that are different from our own. Finally, we can and will experience this full connectedness as union with God. For some it starts the other way around: they experience union with God—and then find it easy to unite with everything else.
Read more ...Celebrating the Life of James Cone’s, Founder of Black Theology
by Elizabeth Palmer
James Cone’s theology is easy to like but hard to live. James Cone, author of God of the Oppressed, who died April 28th, said “Two important realities shaped my consciousness: the black Church experience and the sociopolitical significance of white people.”
Palmer writes, “I grew up knowing nothing about the black church experience, and I was so immersed in the sociopolitical significance of white people that it never crossed my mind to think there was any other way of experiencing life in the United States. In other words, I’m exactly the kind of person with whom Cone was angry for much of his life. And I believe that his anger was justified. But my biggest sin, I’ve now come to realize, wasn’t the fact of my identity as a white person who grew up oblivious to my privilege. My biggest sin is that when I first read Cone’s writing in graduate school—and for years thereafter—I thought his theology was easy.”
Read Palmer's entire blog post ...
Who Was James Cone?
Memorial from Union Theological Seminary -- Rev. Dr. James Cone, who founded Black Liberation Theology, died Saturday, Politics and Faith reporter Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons tweeted. The Union Seminary professor was 81 years old. According to Cone, the basis behind black liberation theology is to show how the gospel relates to people of color in a world that is dominated by whites.
Tuesday, June 12 at Noon
Annual Conference Spiritual Formation Gathering and Luncheon
Upper Room of the Pavilion . Watch for more details
Meditation for Listening to Your Many Selves
by Julie Peters
An audio meditation to open our understanding of our different voices.
This meditation is loosely adapted from the Zen Big Mind meditation practice. The idea is that we have different selves, different voices or perspectives within us that may not always agree with each other. Rather than trying to ignore or focus on any particular one, we try to compassionately listen to each voice and understand its purpose, working towards an integrated company of voices that can tolerate difference and communicate with each other lovingly.
Calm Racing Thoughts with this Energy Practice
by Jill Leigh
Racing thoughts are so challenging. Mindfulness is supposed to be an antidote for monkey mind, but when thoughts are racing, tracking the breath or finding an inner sanctum proves impossible.
Your energy dictates your experience. When something is running amok, evolving your energy can expedite behavior change, especially with a tough pattern like racing thoughts.
Here’s a simple energy practice for you to apply when the monkeys are loose and running the show. As you train your energy, your mind will learn that you’re operating differently. The monkeys will surrender to presence, balance and grounded awareness. . . .
As you compassionately apply the practice, your heart will take its rightful place as the fulcrum of your energy body and the monkeys will recede.
Here’s to balance, composure, meditation, presence, alignment and gravity!
The Program in Pastoral Care and Counseling encourages the spiritual formation of our pastors believing a strong spiritual base is the greatest resource a church leader can possess. It helps us weather the many storms of ministry and deepens the incredible joys ministry provides. Following is a list of Spiritual Directors in our area. We encourage you to take advantage of this rich resource. This listing will appear in each edition of our bi-monthly webpage updates and new names and contact information will be provided as we learn of them and have permission to include them. If you are a director or know of a director that is not included here please let us know.
Spiritual Directors:
Debbie Baker - connectingministries@gmail.com
Bruce Batchler-Glader – brucebg@yahoo.com
Harry Finkbone - Finkbone1@gmail.com
Joyce Gordon - joytgordon@roadrunner.com
Karen Hollingsworth - karenj.hollingsworth@gmail.com
Liz Nau – mlnau2002@gmail.com
Hazel Partington – lakehavenministries.com
Jennifer Olin-Hitt – jolinhitt@gmail.com
Judy Ringler -- jringler77@gmail.com
Sharon Seyfarth Garner – spiritualdirection@att.net
Valerie Stultz - vstultz704@gmail.com
Carol Topping - cptopping@gmail.com
Laura Tradowsky -- ltrad@earthlink.net
Laurie Tucker - ltfriendship188@gmail.com
Train Your Nervous System for Calm
by Kalia Kelmenson
Recently, on a very good day, I was talking to a friend about the experience of feeling fantastically alive, and also having a deep sense of calm. My well of patience felt bottomless and I was able to handle all of the twists and turns the day handed me. A few days later, however, I was operating on less sleep, more caffeine, and markedly less calm.
Turns out, we can all cultivate this sense of ‘still waters run deep’ within ourselves. Rick Hanson, senior fellow of UC Berkley’s Greater Good Science Center, describes how the ability to regulate our sense of inner calm has great bearing on our ability to bounce back from life’s inevitable setbacks. In his newest book Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness he describes key capacities we can “hard wire” into our nervous systems so we can better handle the stresses of living in our fast-paced modern world.
Hanson writes that we can meet our basic needs of safety, satisfaction and connection, by “recognizing what’s true, resourcing ourselves, regulating our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and relating skillfully to others and the wider world.”
Here are two ways to access this calm strength within ourselves ...
The One Relationship We Can Never Leave
by Julie Peters
Relationships are hard. . . .
Fortunately (and painfully), we are all born in to one relationship that we can never get away from, no matter how we try: our relationship with ourselves.
The choices we make about how we treat our bodies, what we do with our time, how we talk to ourselves, and who we spend time with matter—a lot. The world is a difficult place to live in, and sometimes the things we do to feel better in the moment—eat, drink, have sex, binge Netflix—can have longer term consequences when we stop using them for pleasure and start using them to escape our inner world.
It’s natural to want to escape ourselves from time to time, and we all do it. Sometimes we do need to take a quick break from the voices in our heads. There’s nothing wrong with that—until we go past the point of pleasure and into numbness. This can work for a while, but a joylessly numb life can get pretty boring, and even if the mind can take it, the body will often rebel against its neglect after a while. . . .
So we have a choice: do the work of being in a loving, healthy, committed relationship with ourselves or suffer the rest of our lives with an internal roommate we hate. . . .
It’s certainly not always easy to choose to turn love, presence, and compassion towards our own selves. But when we choose the path of loving commitment and turn it inwards, we end up meeting the truest, most lasting love of our lives.
If you have any questions or issues you would like for us to address or would like to get email alerts when new resources have been posted please contact Howard Humphress at hkhumphress@gmail.com or use our quick contact form.
Or contact our office at pastoralcareeoc@gmail.com or call 330-456-0486.
The East Ohio Conference Pastoral Care Office:
Howard Humphress, D. Min.
Executive Director
E-mail
Office Administrator
Lynn Smith
E-mail
Address:
1445 Harrison Avenue NW · Suite 301
Canton, Ohio 44708
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