Chaplains: Stewards of the Heart

Chaplains help people find their interconnection with spirit and how it intersects with their life in the world.

 Chaplains spiritually accompany people through all and any of life’s transitions. Chaplains understand the truth of impermanence and the truth of suffering. They know how to be a spiritual companion, how to be fully present to another’s needs.

 In former times, chaplains were an extension of whatever their mostly-Christian affiliation was. They would be called on by parishioners, patients, and people struggling to make sense of their spiritual landscape through trying times.

These days, there are many chaplains who have been trained in Interfaith education and understanding. Their training has been an immersion into the sacred texts and practice of all the worlds’ great traditions, including indigenous beliefs, paganism, even 12 steps, and my favorite, those for whom their faith has been broken or who identify as having no faith.

 An Interfaith chaplain is someone who has been called onto the path of serving others through recognizing the common threads of light, love, healing and interconnectedness at are ALIVE in all spiritual traditions and religions.

 In these very unique and challenging times, times when lines between cultures and traditions are blurring, sometimes crumbling, times of the macro-connectedness of the internet, there is a micro-connectedness that wants to happen in the deepest part of our collective souls.

I became a chaplain in response to the  recognition these trying times, these times of disconnection from self and nature. It is my greatest wish, in alignment with the Bodhisattva Vow which I first took 45 years ago, to be of service to all sentient beings.

I like to think of chaplains as Stewards of the Heart.