|
by Chaplain Reggie Rowell
Pastoral Care
Since 1985, Pastoral Care Week has been observed and has grown into a
national and international recognition of the work of chaplains,
pastoral counselors, and spiritual care providers.
This year’s theme is Supportive Presence. The work of clinically
trained chaplains at MUSC represents and implements MUSC’s commitment
to the holistic care of the spiritual and religious concerns of
patients, families, and staff as well as those with no professed
religious preference.
This year’s theme emphasizes that “chaplains offer a supportive
presence that serves to remind patients and caregivers that people are
more than just their medical conditions or their current collection of
concerns.”
In this most Southern city by the sea, where religious beliefs and
practices are tightly interwoven with cultural contexts, chaplains, by
their presence, their listening, and their caring, constitute a
powerful reminder of the healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling
power of religious faith.
Hospitals are a “luminous web,” borrowing from a phrase from
Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest and college professor and a
former hospital chaplain. Patients, families, and staff are
interconnected by the ancient desire to cure and to care for the sick.
Interwoven in this web are a myriad of physical/medical,
emotional/psychological, and religious/spiritual concerns. Chaplains
respond to these concerns in unique ways, drawing on the historic
traditions of spirituality that contribute to the healing of body,
mind, heart, and soul.
Pastoral Care Services represents and implements MUSC medical center’s
commitment to the spiritual/religious concerns of patients, families
and staff and strives to foster a community that values personal
wholeness, interpersonal reconciliation and human dignity.
To learn about MUSC Pastoral Care Services, visit http://www.musc.edu/pastoralcare/index.html.
Friday, Oct. 23, 2009
|
