by Pat McCaughan
Disasters like the Los Angeles area January 2025 fires cause damage beyond the obvious charred buildings and devastated landscapes, including emotional and spiritual challenges that an upcoming Oct. 6 webinar, “Tending the Aftermath: Spiritual Caregiving in the Wake of Disaster” aims to address, according to the Rev. Payton Hoegh, Chaplain for Disaster Relief and Recovery, a featured webinar speaker.
“As part of the Disaster Resilience and Recovery team, I’ve been so moved and encouraged by the way clergy and lay leaders at impacted congregations, spiritual leaders in the communities touched by these events, have gone above and beyond to tend emotional and spiritual hurt” often while carrying their own grief and trauma from the devastating events, said Hoegh. “It’s also been so clear that these amazing caretakers need space, time, and resources to be cared for.
“That care is something we’ve been working hard to address in our local ministry as we’ve developed a framework of pastoral support for those on the frontlines of pastoral care in impacted communities,” he said.
Information about the work of the diocesan Disaster Recovery and Resilience Team, led by Grace Wakelee-Lynch, and about how to offer support for survivors of disaster, may be found here.
The diocesan community is also invited to share their prayers and practices for difficult times here, said Hoegh, who is compiling contributions into a shared resource, to be made available at the upcoming Nov. 13-14 diocesan convention.
“We hope this empowers folks to document their essential prayers and practices, and to share them as a balm or source of strength to their fellow EDLA siblings as we walk alongside each other while facing our own challenges.”
The Oct. 6 webinar will also feature guest speakers Wakelee-Lynch, and the Rev. Canon Melissa McCarthy, priest-in-charge of St. Matthew’s Church, Pacific Palisades, which was heavily damaged by the fires.
The webinar is hosted by the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, which sparks practical innovations that enable chaplains to nurture the spirits of those they serve and reduce human suffering and by the Portland, Maine-based BTS Center, which offers educational opportunities to nurture spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.
“This program with CFI and BTS is an opportunity for us to celebrate the work these communities have done, the resilience they’ve shown, and the loving care they’ve offered in the face of unimaginable loss and upheaval,” he said. “And it’s a way for us to share what we’ve learned about the layers of resourcing and support needed to care for the caretakers and affirm those rebuilding the firmaments of their communities.
Through programs like this, we get to be part of a crucial conversation about what it takes to offer a holy and holistic response to disaster. To ensure that we are offering all that is needed so that we rebuild towards wholeness in every sense. I believe this will be a program that can be useful for every person of faith whose heart breaks at news of disaster and who feels called to offer meaningful care.”
All are welcome to register for the webinar at:
https://thebtscenter.org/tendingtheaftermath/