A Season of So Many Feels
Mental health crisis. It's all over the news. People are exhausted and leaving their positions. Nowhere near enough counselors to meet all of the needs. No real pipeline to bring new people into the field. The tracks that people used to follow have broken down, and it will take years to rebuild them. Suicide rates are off the charts with several different subgroups.
With this in mind, I had the opportunity to spend four days of training with Navy chaplains (two on the east coast, two on the west coast), focused primarily on reducing suicide rates among sailors, getting upstream, and addressing the issues. I also spent time on the phone last week with an educator working with a team to help develop spiritual care professionals' role in workplace violence. Y'all, it's been a minute.
And yet, and yet….
Last weekend I went to Texas for my in-laws' 60th anniversary. 60 years! What an incredible testimony to the sacrifices required to hold two people together for many years and endure as a couple despite so many odds. Next week, my wife and I will head to Scotland for two weeks to celebrate our 30th anniversary. I marvel at who we were, who we are, and all that lies ahead. I cannot be more grateful for my life partner, this person who loves me because and in spite of myself. And I am all too aware of the privilege of such a love in such a time as this.
I've wondered about the bonds of human connection, especially after so many months of separation that COVID imposed on us. Beginning next week, committees, commissions, and communities of practice will start to meet face to face again. The staff gathered in May 2022 for the first time since March 2020, and the feeling at the table was so powerful. We found each other as colleagues and teammates, rekindled friendships, and re-membered who we are as the group that serves the administrative functions of ACPE. I do not doubt that as our members gather, similar feelings and processes will unfold in the coming months.
Amidst all this re-membering, our board and members will share in planning the future of ACPE. The board will gather face to face in September and again in November, working to synthesize all the feedback from the membership. The work you have entrusted to them is great, and it is a privilege to serve with such dedicated volunteers as they strive to discern our direction as an association.
In such times, I look to the wisdom of poets like David Whyte. The spaciousness of poetry helps me find my way, helps me listen better to our members, and helps me trust there are forces far greater than we know imagining the future with us. Let me conclude with a brief piece:
Just beyond
yourself.
It's where
you need
to be.
Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you'll meet.
- from THE BELL & THE BLACKBIRD
and DAVID WHYTE: ESSENTIALS
Trace Haythorn is the Executive Director/CEO for ACPE. He can be reached at trace.haythorn@acpe.edu.