2 minute read
Congregational Care
By David Witman
Some months ago, I wrote in this column about the role of Stephen Ministers as being spiritual guides for people who are inbetween major events or periods in their lives. For example, upon the death of a loved one and the various stages of the mourning process, upon a debilitating accident through recovery, during the recovery process for an addict, and during many other such transition periods with which we are all too familiar personally. A Stephen Minister is trained to help care receivers regain or retain connection with God during these transition periods of challenge. God is the only true care giver, but we, as Stephen Ministers, try our best to be care givers, tools of God on Earth. Since God is within each of us, our comfort and help is always present if only we can recognize, accept and draw on God’s presence in our heart of hearts. With the help of God, we can all make it through the valley of Psalm 23.
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During this pandemic, the entire world, or at least much of it, is going through its own inbetween time. We move away from what was and transition into what will be, perhaps a new normal, perhaps a return to the old, but the transition is in process right now. Richard Rohr, a noted contemplative, calls periods like this one “liminal” time and space. The word liminal is derived from the Latin word meaning “threshold,” and with this pandemic we have clearly crossed a threshold from a known way of life into an unknown way of life.
Much has been written and discussed about what we all need to do to move through the pandemic. It seems to me that this is one of those times when Christianity needs to shine, to show what it is all about. The Stephen Ministers serve individual care receivers, but in times like these all of us need to be Stephen Ministers, recognizing and serving the needs of others on a micro level in our own daily contexts and on a macro level of all our brothers and sisters. Both the micro and macro levels are human communities in which we live and form relationships. Jesus’ covenant with us is to love one another as he loves us, especially when it is not all that comfortable to turn our attention away from our own needs and concerns and refocus them on the needs and concerns of others.
Richard Rohr’s May 5 daily devotional relates all this to the existence of the Trinity. Please take a moment to read a part of what Rohr has to say and then reflect for a bit on how all this can be applied to your own life.
“The 12th-century mystic Richard of St. Victor (1123–1173), wrote about the Trinity as a mutual, loving companionship of friends—a community, if you will. In my book The Divine Dance, I summarized some of his thinking: For God to be good, God can be one. For God to be loving, God has to be two, because love is always a relationship. But for God to share “excellent joy” and “delight” God has to be three, because supreme happiness is when two persons share their common delight in a third something— together. [1] All we need to do is witness a couple after the birth of their new baby, and we know this is true.” –R. Rohr
In Memoriam
