From featuring in blockbuster movies alongside some of Hollywood’s A-listers to becoming the first Buddhist chaplain in the Australian Defence Force, Chaplain Simon Edds has truly lived a remarkable life.
Chaplain Edds is posted to HMAS Kuttabul and aims to inspire kindness and compassion, with an initiative to develop a regular group meditation practice for the members on base.
Health leaders, researchers, educators and people with lived experience of spiritual care gather to discuss the proposed draft model designed to improve the quality of spiritual care for people in hospital in Australia.
It’s hard to forget your first time in the ICU. Strangers obscured by masks and gowns, beds surrounded by wires, constant beeping — it can feel like you’ve stumbled into a warped, disorienting alternate universe. It’s true for patients — and it’s true for their loved ones.
A Still Small Voice follows Jewish Chaplain Mati Esther Engel’s yearlong residency providing spiritual care during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
An independent evaluation of The National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP) has found there are benefits of having chaplains in schools, but has endorsed plans to broaden the scheme to include secular support staff.
On 18th May, Associate Professor Amanda Walker, Clinical Director at the Australian Commission for Safety & Quality in Health Care and a specialist in Palliative Medicine, officially launched our much-anticipated research report The Future of Spiritual Care in Australia: A national study on spirituality, wellbeing and spiritual care in hospitals.
(RNS) — Years before he became Yale’s first full-time Muslim chaplain, Imam Omer Bajwa was a graduate student and aspiring journalist who had little idea of what a chaplain does.
Then came September 2001.
“Our phones started ringing off the hook,” said Bajwa, who was involved with Cornell’s Muslim Student Association at the time. “We’re in Ithaca. There’s no mosque, no local Muslim leadership. All these high schools and public libraries and radio stations and college campuses are calling for panels on Islam and understanding 9/11… that was a pivotal moment.”
When I was ordained as a Buddhist pastor, I took the bodhisattva vow. The vows begin with: Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them all. This was daunting. “I vow to save everyone?” I thought. “Everyone?”
I could commit to the other vows: Dharma Gates are endless, I vow to enter them and Enlightenment is impossible, I vow to achieve it. But the vow to save the more than seven billion people on earth seemed over the top. The number rises exponentially if you consider animals “sentient beings,” which I do.
“I vow to save them all?” I asked.
“Start with a small circle, like your family,” the Abbot advised.
In a rapidly changing world of Covid-19 and education, education has had to conform to restrictions and often – lockdown. This has forced students into online learning, and collaboration and peer learing in tutorials have had to find a new perch in the learning environment. How does one do pastoral care for students in this situation, and what has been the enduring effects of this pandemic on the life of the University student?
Contemporary spiritual care, as practiced in health care contexts, is very different from the way many healthcare professionals and patients perceive it. The Transforming CHAPLAINCY series aims to thoughtfully address strategic gaps in the literature about contemporary spiritual care.