wfn.org | [ENS] Out of Deep Waters: Louisiana clergy get time away to reflect

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Out of Deep Waters: Louisiana clergy get time away to reflect;
Gulf Coast parishes, clergy and staff get help with financial issues

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS092205-02

[Episcopal News Service] It might have seemed like a little thing but a
lunch of gumbo in the midst of a gathering of Louisiana clergy last
Friday
culminated with the chef of Galatoire's of the French Quarter arriving
to
make café brulot. Especially for the New Orleans clergy contingent,
the
blend of strong coffee, orange zest, cloves, cinnamon, sugar and liqueur
was
a taste of home, a touch of the familiar in the strange land in which
they
now find themselves.

As Hurricane Katrina bore down on Louisiana on late in August, clergy in
the
Diocese of Louisiana faced the same decisions as everyone else in her
path:
whether to evacuate, where to go, what to take along. And now in the
storm's
aftermath they, along with their parishioners, worry about their homes,
their families, and their jobs. They also worry about their parishioners
and
their parishes.

When 112 of the diocese's clergy, spouses and parish and diocesan staff
members gathered at St. Margaret's Church in Baton Rouge on Friday,
September 16, it was the first time most of them had seen each other
since
the storm hit.

Diocesan communications director Ann Ball said the diocese's clergy had
been
scattered all over the country by Katrina but some evacuated out of
state
managed to attend the meeting.

"They were all numb and shell-shocked by the events," said the Rev.
Gerry
Blackburn, a staff member of Episcopal Church's Office of the Bishop
Suffragan for Chaplaincies.

Blackburn, Bishop Suffragan George Packard of the chaplaincies office, a
number of clergy with experience in crisis counseling, and David
Knowlton, a
New Jersey psychologist with crisis-intervention training joined
diocesan
Bishop Charles Jenkins for the meeting they dubbed a "Day of Reflection
and
Preparation."

Blackburn and Ball said the experience that day was cathartic. Much of
the
talk that day was about parishioners being dispersed all over the
country
and clergy not knowing, in some case, where they'd gone to. Other clergy
who
had escaped Katrina's impact said they felt almost guilty.

"It's very difficult for them to know that their fellow brethren have
experience such tragic losses," Ball said from the temporary diocesan
offices at St. James Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge.

Knowlton said those clergy were especially concerned about how best to
help
those parishes that have been damage.

Knowlton compared his counseling of the Louisiana clergy to the work he
did
with clergy and others after the attacks of September 11. Then he worked
with people experiencing what he called "witness grief." They were
trying to
deal with what they had seen and heard in person or in the media. The
people
at the clergy gathering Friday were victims of Katrina. Most, he said,
were
displaced and about half were homeless.

He normally begins his counseling sessions with a short, meditative
video of
still images and soft music to help establish a common basis for people
who
will be invited to share their experiences of the event. Knowlton said
many
of the images he used had been shown repeatedly on television.

He assumed that the clergy had seen them but was striving to slow down
the
impact of the images to let people reflect on them. What he did not
anticipate is that most of the clergy present on Friday had, in fact,
not
seen much news coverage because they had been without televisions or
even
electricity.

The clergy had "very realistic" concerns such as how they would get
paid,
what would happen to their congregations if all their current and
historical
records were gone, how they might find their parishioners and whether
enough
would return to help rebuild.

Knowlton called their worries "very, very basic recovery issues," noting
that some clergy were also dealing with having lost their homes and
possessions. One person talked about what it means to lose of his baby
pictures.

One of the best ways to deal with this kind of grief and these issues
and
worries, Knowlton said, is to "gather and talk about them."

Ball commended Bishop Jenkins for insisting that the clergy do just
that.
Jenkins led the way, she said. "He was so full of strength, so full of
the
Spirit, so full of wisdom and also so full of grief," she said. "He's
not
been afraid to shed tears and weep and meet grief."

The diocese plans to offer another opportunity in October for clergy to
meet
again.

=====================================

Gulf Coast parishes, clergy and staff get help with financial issues

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Hurricane Katrina created an unprecedented set of questions for parishes
and
diocese in her wake as well as for the national church.

The Church Pension Group (CPG) is allowing any parish or diocese
affected by
Kathrina to defer making its required payments to the Church Pension
Fund
and for health and life insurance policies. There is no deadline for
resuming those payments at this point, according to Nancy Fisher, CPG's
communications director.

The Rev. Pat Coller, CPG senior vice president for pastoral care and
education, said "it's really new territory for us" to consider how to
deal
with so many parishes whose financial lives have been disrupted
simultaneously.
One question is whether those required payments might be waived entirely
for
a certain period of time but "at this moment they are simply deferred,"
said
Fisher.

CPG trustees began discussing the issue at their September meeting and
will
continue when they meet again in November.

Fisher said 80 percent of the payments made to retirees and
beneficiaries
are directly deposited in the recipients' bank account. Some people may
have
had trouble accessing that money and others who receive paper checks may
not
have had a place to receive them, Coller said.

The CPG office has been available to help those retirees and
beneficiaries,
Coller said. Diocesan staffs have been able to write checks to those
retirees on behalf of the pension group, she said.

Ann Ball of the Diocese of Louisiana said Thursday that all clergy and
staff
in the diocese are being paid. Some parishes have emergency funds for
such
times, she said. For those who don't "the bishop is taking care of that"
with assistance from CPG and Episcopal Relief and Development.

"We have made contributions to the relief efforts directly to the
bishops of
the dioceses of Louisiana, Mississippi and the Central Gulf Coast to use
as
the bishops need to during this emergency," CPG's Fisher said.

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