News
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Pulse CheckMar 30, 2022
Chelsea May LaRue is a Chaplain Resident at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, MO. In this resident year, Chelsea May is specializing in working with pediatric patients, their loved ones, and staff. Chelsea May uses journaling and poetry as a way to reflect on experiences in chaplaincy and CPE.
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Soulful Presence WelcomeMar 28, 2022
Whither pastoral counseling … or spiritually integrated counseling … or ACPE psychotherapists … or whatever the myriad descriptions (both adjectives and nouns) that we use to describe who we are and the work that we do? I have enjoyed participating in the formation of a Commission and membership within ACPE named “Psychotherapy.” I was a Fellow in AAPC for many years even though my primary livelihood and identify were much more connected to ACPE education. As a staff member for ACPE I supported the transition task force that made initial decisions about how to receive AAPC members into ACPE and how to shape the initial work of that group. Later I was elected as a Commission member. Through these iterations, I have frequently wondered, how do the various names and adjectives that we apply to our work matter? Undoubtedly, they matter, but how?
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Call for ACPE Service Award Nominations – Deadline Extended!Mar 28, 2022
The Foundation for ACPE Service Awards Committee invites you to nominate yourself or a colleague for recognition of outstanding contributions or service to ACPE, the field(s) of spiritual care, pastoral counseling and/or psychotherapy. We are blessed as an association with an abundance of talented, smart, and generous members. Who do you think deserves special recognition?
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Anti-Ableism Task Force: An Opportunity for Prophetic ChangeMar 24, 2022
Ableism is all around us. The Disability and Philanthropy Forum defines ableism “as a set of stereotypes and practices that devalue and discriminate against people with disabilities. It assumes that the bodies and minds of non-disabled people are the “default”, placing value on them based on society’s perceptions of what’s considered normal.” Healthcare settings are one of the primary places where ableism shows up. Even though significant percentages of patients have one form of disability or another, health care workers often lack empathy, experience, and understanding of the specific concerns of people with disabilities.
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Leveraging Spiritual Resources for RenewalMar 21, 2022
Leveraging Spiritual Resources for Renewal Life has seemed ‘stretched thin’ for us and for many we have encountered these last two years of pandemic and strife. As Bilbo told Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring, “I feel thin, sort of like butter scraped over too much bread.” The perfect storm of diminishing self-care and increasing demand for the services of psychotherapists has left many of us with too much bread for our butter!
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We must engage in this work every dayMar 15, 2022
Sunday, March 20, 2022, marked the vernal equinox, the day we celebrate the beginning of spring. It is a time of various religious and secular festivals, a time when we begin to delight in the possibilities of new life. And in some ways, it seems almost trite considering all that is happening in the world.
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MindfulnessMar 14, 2022
Learning to practice and implement mindfulness in your daily life will benefit not only the psychotherapist but the client as well. The practice is easy, simple, and free to do. It will enhance not only the caregiver but the receiver. It can be completed in the office, at home, in the car, or any place where privacy can be maintained for a few moments of the day.
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ACPE Signs Reciprocity Agreement with Australia/New ZealandMar 9, 2022
In a world filled with so much conflict and polarization, one of the joys of this past year was the passing of a reciprocal agreement between the Australia and New Zealand Association for Clinical Pastoral Education Ltd (ANZACPE) and ACPE. We first met on May 3, 2021, with six supervisors/educators from Australia and New Zealand and three from ACPE’s International Relations Committee to test the waters of this possibility. Everyone expressed hope to move towards reciprocity and to build greater collegiality.
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A Model for Organizing a CoPMar 9, 2022
Communities of Practice (CoP) offer both rich opportunities and challenges for our CPE work. Opportunities include networking, support, and consultation for educators around specific interests or clinical contexts. The challenges faced by some CoPs include figuring out how to organize and leadership succession. For the past four years, I have been in leadership with the East Central Community of Practice (ECCoP) as it’s Convener-Elect, and then Convener. In this brief essay, I am sharing with you how we have organized. I offer our example of how one CoP addressed these concerns.
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I AmMar 8, 2022
Jim Rigsbee is a Chaplain Resident at WakeMed Health and Hospitals in Raleigh, NC. In this resident year, Jim specializes in working with patients and staff in some of the Covid-19 units at the hospital. In his reflections, Jim likes to write poetry to express his inner and outer experiences of CPE and chaplaincy.
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An Invitation to Join the Work of the Psychotherapy CommissionMar 8, 2022
Recently, the ACPE board shared a response to APC’s withdrawal from merger discussions. In that statement they said “But the world still needs what we believe we can offer. How best to do that now? We have landed on ‘where do we go from here?’”
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Imagine What We Can Do TogetherMar 4, 2022
About this time two years ago, front-line responders faced the heart-breaking new pandemic reality. Refrigerated trucks lined up outside hospitals in New York because morgues exhausted their space to store the bodies ravaged by COVID. ACPE compiled a list of chaplains and psychotherapists who would donate their time to support the first responders in NY hospitals.
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Lifelong StudentMar 3, 2022
Shawn Moore Israel is enrolled in Wesley Seminary and is pursuing an MDiv. She finished her first unit of CPE at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana in April 2021. Shawn can be reached at shawnisrael49@gmail.com
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For your professional ethics edification in MarchMar 3, 2022
Once a month the ACPE Professional Ethics Commission (PEC) posts a couple of statements from our Code of Professional Ethics for ACPE Members. Each posting is accompanied by a brief personal reflection from a member of the PEC discussing some ways this person lives these commitments
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Improving Access to EducationFeb 25, 2022
Our Foundation Board met in January to begin the work of prioritizing new funding opportunities. We discussed how to meaningfully use the expanded available endowment income of $175,000 annually to support our work, especially following through on our commitment to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
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Bits and PiecesFeb 25, 2022
We are experiencing a minor thaw in my area. Chicago has been in the midst of a normal winter, with occasional snaps of cold bluster but nothing like I remember from my childhood when winds snatched children up, spun us around, and placed us back on the sidewalk with tears lining our eyes. Winters seem stronger from back then.
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Un-numbingFeb 24, 2022
Rev. Miguel Santamaria is a Certified Educator at Morton Plant Hospital and wrote the poem, "Un-numbing"
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Hell, and Held
Feb 21, 2022
Rev. Miguel Santamaria is a Certified Educator at Morton Plant Hospital and wrote the poem, "Hell, and Held"
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A Better LifeFeb 21, 2022
In the United States, you and I are more likely to have surgery in the last week of our lives than at any other time in our lives – A time in our lives when we are less likely to see its benefit. At an Institute of Medicine Conference recently, Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, shared this fact and noted that between 1988 and 2010 “the experience of people at the end of life is that they have more pain, more depression, more difficulties and confusion … they are all increased at the end of life without evident benefit.” And so, he says, what we have seen is a 50 year experiment with medicalizing mortality”.
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Taking a Moment for Poetry
Feb 16, 2022
Each week, a “poem for reflection” is included in “This Week,” the ACPE newsletter. I am often asked where we find the poems that are included. I thought it might be helpful to share several of the resources I use to identify those poems, hoping they might prove helpful to you in your work.