Vital Posts / Pastoral Care

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  • El cuidado y la alimentación de los sacerdotes ✓
    En mis 14 años de haber estado casada con un sacerdote, fui testigo de todas las maneras posibles en que una feligresía cuida a su sacerdote. No me malinterpreten, sé que la feligresía le paga a su sacerdote y que es tanto un empleo como …
  • Gifts from God: Passing them on ✓
    Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 17:11-19), tells the story of the ten lepers healed by Jesus and the one who said ‘thank you.’ In response to this act of gratefulness and humility, Jesus said, “Rise and go your way, your faith has made you we…
  • Everything...
    I'd like to share James Lee's story with you: a story of a young boy, devastating circumstances, and how a community - of children and adults - pulled together to help. It is a story that speaks for itself and exemplifies the importance of immediate,…
  • Love in the Midst of Suffering
    I had a blog post almost ready to post before I went to church on Sunday evening. Perhaps that’s what a sacrament should do: engage and disrupt. At St. Lydia’s on Sunday evenings we prepare a meal together and participate in a simple and ancien…
  • Church Secretaries are Saints
    Over the sink in our office kitchen is one of my favorite cartoons by priest and Church Pension Group calendar-creator Jay Sidebotham. A church has added three new stained glass windows. One depicts the church secretary. The tagline: the real…
  • Communication is Mission
    Author's Note: Last week I was at the Episcopal Communicator’s Conference at Kanuga. Our conversations, plenaries, and workshops celebrated communications as mission with the goal of sharing this message throughout our Church. On March 24, Kerry …
  • Suddenly Single: Cooking for One
    A warden heard it on CBC radio, how a northern community took the needs of the bereaved seriously. Men seemed to suffer nutritionally when a spouse dies. “We are of a certain age, “said Douglas. “where we would barbeque but mostly we had a sp…
  • Prayer: A Spacious Place
    The last few months my girlfriend has been dealing with nerve pain and I’ve been only intermittently employed. It’s been difficult for both of us, filled with uncertainty and frustration. There were sleepless nights and weeks during which we had …
  • Gift of Presence
    I realize, as I get older, that one of the best gifts is the gift of presence. Last night I visited a friend, in part to drop off Christmas packages for her kids. This past year I’ve had a habit of spending many Tuesday nights at their house.…
  • Offering Hope and Healing: Stephen Ministry
    On November 19, 2011 a service of Hope and Healing was held at The Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas Texas.This holiday prayer service provided a place of meaning and comfort for those experiencing the loss of a loved one.The parish’s Steph…
  • Veterans Day: 11.11.11
    Veterans Day: Is there a better time for congregations to ask how they might support returning troops and their families?  In today’s Huff Post Religion, G. Jeffrey MacDonald explores some of the ways faith groups…
  • Vacation with a Difference
    Here was my job this week. On behalf of the diocese, I led Vacation With a Difference, five days of relaxation at our diocesan retreat center, the St. Andrew’s House Conference Center. A dozen people came to the most beautiful place on earth …
  • Sharing Time
    It's not easy to share my husband. The call came about an hour before we planned to leave for a short-but-much-needed vacation. An elderly parishioner died, and the family wanted the funeral on Thursday, smack dab in the middle of our four-day …
  • Administrator as Minister
    When I called Gwen at 9:15 Monday morning the parish office was already abuzz. Gwen, our parish administrator, had just returned from a week vacation yet still took time for a long conversation with me. The purpose was a bit unusual – an intervie…
  • T.R.U.E. Stories (True Relief of Urgent Emergencies)
    Have you ever found yourself urgently needing cash assistance? Did you turn to your Episcopal Church? Last week, I found myself wondering about the major forms of outreach ministries taking place in Episcopal congregations. After reviewing the fol…
  • Editor's Letter: Caring for Each Other
    Our congregational life is a common life, complete with the joys and challenges that come from being in relationship. As congregational leaders, our role involves managing the sometimes ‘sticky wickets’ of relationship that hamper our work of b…
  • Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Harvard Minister, 68
    While driving outside of Boston on Tuesday morning, I heard the bad news: Rev. Peter Gomes had died. I was saddened by the news, but I also knew that I was not mourning alone. Like thousands of people in the communities of Boston and Cambridge,…
  • Refresh and Renew
    On days when life gets overwhelming, I dream of leaving it all behind and going somewhere to nurture my soul and my dreams. A place where responsibility to family, work, and home can be forgotten; a place where I can explore and try on new identiti…
  • Final Affairs
    My 96 year old father-in-law passed away recently. Or, as the woman who called us at midnight said to my husband, "Your dad expired." Bob died the way he lived: on his own terms. Fiercely independent, he resisted recent attempts by family to se…
  • Care and Feeding of Priests
    Click here for a Spanish translation of this blog post. In 14 years as a clergy spouse, I’ve witnessed the gamut of how a congregation cares for its priest. Don’t get me wrong – I know that the congregation pays its priest – and…
  • A New Program Goes Old-School
    My church is going old-school with a new visitation program. Like many Episcopal congregations, we have a growing number of elderly people and shut-ins who can no longer attend worship services. These are folks who have been faithful members …
  • Of Waiting and Ivory Towers
    I love Advent, now, but that hasn’t always been true. For almost my entire life, I described myself as impatient. “I hate waiting,” I used to say with a self-deprecating smile, as if this somehow made me a more productive person. Waiting. …
  • It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas . . .
    I remember the day I was flying home from the east coast on Halloween and as I was getting off the plane I heard on the muzak the first Christmas carol of the season. Living with a retailer (my wife runs the Cathedral Shop at St. Mark’s Cathed…
  • Three stitches. All better.
    Head wounds bleed.
 A lot.    
In Friday's contest between gate and girl, the gate won.
 When I picked up my 9-year-old, she hadn't cried yet. The tears hung on her lower lids until we left the school. Away from the sympathiz…
  • Writing from the 'None' Zone
    I’m Peter Strimer, rector of St. Andrew’s, Seattle, and I write this my first blog from my Berkeley/Yale 30th seminary reunion in New Haven. Back in 1976 as a 22-year old first-year student in my first week on campus I heard a report back from …