Author: Rev

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God…” (Step 11)
Prayer and meditation sound like huge tasks. For some they present a big burden, a tough requirement, or a boring chore. Many addicts struggle to figure “this God thing” out. Using the Enneagram to unearth your most basic spiritual needs can help make your spiritual life less intimidating.

I wrote another piece for the United Church of Christ’s Center for Analytics, Research & Development, and Data (CARDD). This time it’s a little bit about my church journey and some takeaways for leaders: How to Embrace Church Shoppers

This booklet helps hospice patients and their caregivers / family members make the best use of the spiritual care that is offered to them. It can help hospice agencies improve their CAHPS score and increase retention. Hospices are usually very fond of their chaplains. This booklet helps them and their marketers to express with greater specificity the benefits that your spiritual care program has to offer.

This booklet is a must read for patients, families, hospice chaplains and staff because it provides the perfect spiritual care prescriptions for five vital horizons in which persons experience hospice care. A proper application of these prescriptions, will lead to a proper end of life care.

Dr. Saul Ebema, President of Hospice Chaplaincy

גמר חתימה טובה

Scapegoating has a bad rep in our day and age because it usually involves falsely blaming someone else for one’s own shortcomings. Also it is done in hiding or maybe even unconsciously. Today, the Jewish tradition celebrates Yom Kippur. This holiday is based on Leviticus 16 and formalizes that process and places it in the community in the form of a public event. Letting go of guilt together is a good and healthy thing. Here is what happens to the literal and original scapegoat:

When he has finished atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.

I invite you to look at your 9/11 remembrance from a grief perspective. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross defined five stages of grief and here is how they apply to our communal response to the 2001 terror attacks:

• Denial
  That moment you sat in front of the TV and couldn’t believe your own eyes. The following weeks and months when planes were grounded and everything felt surreal.
• Anger
  The phase of externalization. Now the energy goes outward and focuses on “them”: Terrorists, countries that harbor terrorists, but also people who look and believe differently from me. This is how to start a war.
• Depression
  Protracted war slows down and leads to frustration: How do you even begin to define victory in a seemingly endless war on terror? Does anything make a difference anymore?
• Acceptance
  Fully embracing the factual reality what happened while being able to acknowledge your feelings that go along with it. You are in charge of your reaction: You no longer need to run away from the fear through denial. You no longer need to project it on innocent bystanders. You find a new meaning and a new purpose.