Experiences of Pastoral Care

Experiences of Pastoral Care

Joe Volk in Friends Bulletin, October 2001, pp. 3-7

By the early spring of 1968, I was a light weapons specialist assigned to A Troop, 4th Brigade, 12 Battalion, of the 5th Mechanized Army at Fort Carson, Colorado, not far from Denver. We were scheduled for deployment to Vietnam in something called Project Red Diamond that summer.

I knew that I would refuse to go with them to Vietnam, and I told my buddies, my sergeant, my platoon leader, my First Sergeant, and my Commanding Officer that I wasn’t going. I appealed to them to refuse to go, too.

Don’t be misled. I was convinced but not confident…. My parents disapproved, my brother disagreed, my friends were astonished, my church asked me to reconsider…. I was young, inexperienced, seeking truth but not knowing it, and VERY alone.

At that moment, when I had so little support and facing a not very important but very personal abyss, Quakers appeared to me. A Methodist pastor in Denver told me, ‘I can’t help you, but the Quakers might…. ‘

Sure enough,…. [The Quakers] listened to my story. They asked me questions. They never tried to lead me in a direction. They wanted to understand my direction and how they could support me….

[They] explained that I would receive a general court-martial. On the basis of the experience of others, [they] thought I would get a sentence of six months at hard labor….

As I thanked [them] for their advice and prepared to catch the next bus to Fort Carson to be arrested by the military police, [one of them] said, ‘One more thing. If you like, we could ask a local Quaker in Colorado Springs to call the Commander of the Guard at the stockade once a week to ask how you are doing. A simple phone call might help to protect you while you are confined. Would you want someone to make a call?’

At the time, I thought, ‘That’s a no-brainer; of course, I want someone to make the call.’ I learned later that it is the Quaker way not to presume to help where it might not be wanted. ‘Yes, please,’ I said.

…It all happened just as he had said it would. About once a week, an officer came to the ‘back forty’ of the stockade looking for Soldier of confinement Volk.

He said to me, ‘Are you Private Volk?’ Yes, sir. ‘How are you doing?’ OK, sir. ‘Anybody giving you any trouble?’ No, sir. He would then say, ‘Good,’ and walk away. I assumed from those periodic visits that someone on the outside was making a phone call on my behalf.

I thought the phone call probably took a minute or two to make. Someone who didn’t know me and who might never meet me was calling. They probably thought it was trivial and too simple a thing to make a difference in the big scheme of things….

Yet, someone was taking it on faith that such a little thing would make such a difference that it was important to do. Someone I didn’t know put that into their weekly schedule.

British Friend Thecla Geraghty shared the following stories with me:

Meeting for Inebriation
Three old codgers in our meeting were good friends and went frequently to the pub together for years. But then Ron died and Fred became ill and was moved to a nursing home leaving Leonard alone. He was lonely and needed people so our Pastoral Care team created a monthly Meeting for Inebriation that would go to the pub with Leonard once a month. Someone objected to the name and it was changed to Meeting for Imbibement and then just MFI.  We kept this up until Leonard also passed away.

Craft Club
Ann began showing signs of dementia. She was also often in the shadow of her outgoing partner. When I suggested to Overseers that Ann might benefit from some support they said “That’s why we invented the Craft Club.”  Ann was a dedicated crocheter and came as long as she could and then we started meeting at her house.  Her wife would be there but didn’t participate and Ann knew we all came to see her.  Now that she is in a nursing home we sometimes take a laptop to her on Sunday morning and sit with her in Meeting via zoom.

From a Facebook post by Elija Walker:

Just like millions of others in our country, my friend’s medication is out of stock at nearly every pharmacy. They don’t have the capacity (spoons!) to make phone calls to multiple pharmacies, but I’m pretty good at making lists and repetitive phone calls for yes/no questions, so I just called 10 pharmacies until I found one that had their medication in stock.

As for me, I’ve struggled with moving bags and boxes of things out of my apartment to the trash or new places as I’m preparing for my move (always a hard task for me with my regular limitations but especially right now while I recover from pneumonia.) So the same friend came over this morning and helped move 9 bags and boxes out of the apartment. What would have taken me days took about 20 minutes.

Show up in the ways you can. Release shame for the ways that you can’t.

And if you don’t have the kinds of people in your life who love you (and who you love) like that, I hope and pray that they’re waiting to move into your life any second now.

You are worthy of love, and so is your neighbor.

Go in peace. [heart emoji]

Hannah and Laura MacNorlin are members of Atlanta Friends Meeting. Hannah is an immigration lawyer and Laura is a teacher at Atlanta Friends School and student at Columbia Theological Seminary. In 2014, Laura gave birth to triplets. Needless to say, this turned their lives upside down. When I put a call out on Facebook asking for folks to share stories of great pastoral care, Hannah phoned me to share their experience. [I’m not a great note-taker so everything here is paraphrased from what she told me.-MLM]

We knew Louis from Atlanta Friends Meeting and were friends and he was part of our life. When the babies were born, they were all in the NICU. Louis was the first person to meet each of them. He was the one to tell the nurses the babies’ names and to count their fingers and toes. He was at our house every day for months and has become so much a part of our family that we can’t imagine not seeing him at least once or twice every week. He even goes on vacation with us now.

The babies left the hospital one at a time so Laura and I were always torn about where we could be and how to be there for each baby. Baby Peggy was the last to leave and I was distraught at not being with her while Laura and I got Charley and John settled at home. I rushed back to the NICU to find that Louis and M.J. were there with Peggy.

AFM Friends came into our home and basically did everything for us after the babies were born. They set up a chore schedule and did it all: cooking, mopping, laundry, dishes, feeding the babies. At least one person a day would come over and they’d look at the schedule and do whatever was next on the list.

There is such a feeling of vulnerability in letting people care for you like that. I didn’t want anyone else to wash my underwear! That was my underwear and I should be washing it! But I couldn’t. Folks from AFM were so kind and caring. They would wash, dry, fold and put away every bit of it. Georgia came over and cleaned out our fridge at least twice. She’d get all the old, rank food out of the very back and dump it, take all the containers home and clean them, and then bring them back to us. She was one of my mentors as I went through law school and it was hard for me to feel comfortable with her doing that chore but she did it with kindness and we felt so cared for.

The babies had to be fed every 3 hours. Two of them had reflux and would throw up after every feeding so their clothes would need to be changed and usually the floor would need to be mopped. There was always someone for our community to help us care for our family. I didn’t have to call or ask. The community ensured that someone was there for us when we needed them.

During the babies’ first winter, everyone in our family came down with a virus that progressed to a bronchial infection for two of the babies and they had to be hospitalized. For some reason, the hospital put the babies in different rooms far apart. Laura and I were both sick, and the other baby had an eye infection. We could not be in all the places we needed and longed to be. Friends made sure that someone was with each of the babies 24 hours each of the 4-5 days they were in the hospital.

We could not have done everything that needed to be done. It would have been absolutely impossible. Atlanta Friends Meeting carried us and in doing so, they created for us a true piece of the Beloved Community. We experienced intimacy and spiritual connection that we had never known before. And the connection remains to this day. Our children are known and loved by our community and have many adults they are bonded with. 

Viv Hawkins shared this in a comment on Facebook about pastoral care she has experienced or witnessed in her Philadelphia meeting:

During early COVID pandemic, Member Care Committee at Green Street Friends Meeting offered a winter on-line art journaling series to assist people in having contact with others during those dark lonely months.

My partner has visited a meeting member with a public ministry in her senior care facility recording her memoirs.

Our Reparations Committee has offered legal clinics to Black neighbors needing legal assistance to obtain title to their homes and ensure family members will inherit cleanly upon their deaths. At least $12mil of family wealth was impacted this way.

A small group from a distant meeting met with a lesbian couple who had been unable to marry in their own state before federal laws changed to allow same-gender marriage and married them practices legally under the care of that distant meeting. They had previously been found clear and married jointly under the care of their two meetings.

A meeting secretary who was not a Friend was provided with financial assistance, after a clearness committee, for her sick newborn.

An employee of the yearly meeting, who was restructured out of a job, due to unacknowledged and much denied racism, gathered a care committee, with membership from a few monthly meetings, to meet with her throughout her ordeal.

Mutual accountability groups support Friends who are white and seeking to be antiracist, white and Black Friends learning about and making reparations, Black Friends serving Quaker organizations, and Friends of various races seeking to be as faithful to Spirit as possible with community support – financial, material, and spiritual.

A public minister traveling in a culture far different from her own among Friends previously unknown to her received a telephone call from a beloved and deeply respected support committee member during an especially trying time in the ministry.

Numerous members of a small worship group supported members in countless ways: eldering during plenaries, co-facilitating program, attending workshops and performances, assisting with housing needs, storing possessions, ride shares, funding ministries, sharing spiritual practices and spiritual lives, cleaning and cooking during convalescence…

From a Facebook comment by holly lu conant rees who was a long-time member of Nashville Friends Meeting and is now a member of Chestnut Ridge Baptist Church in Mt. Airy North Carolina:

when sam was in traction for a month as a baby: first day school made art for him to look at; friends came by for sweet company, sometimes with a meal (families had no access to kitchen facilities back then), sometimes to sing for sam. a friend gifted with needle & thread labored to make a baby carrier which could accommodate a baby in a body cast. another left a $5 bill and much love in an envelope.
the collective pastoral care of the meeting led me to request birthright membership for him, which began a long, deep threshing process.