[Magdalen] Pastoral care

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

My experience is that there are people involved in the pastoral care who
have or develop a close tie to one or more of the people being visited. If
they were friends before, these folks just take that friendship home to the
person who can't get out, and these folks would visit quite often, just to
visit.
I think it also greatly depends on the personality of the ill person. I
still fondly remember bringing communion to a lady who did not really
strike me as old, although she had been an adult when James Pike was our
rector, which goes way back. Probably she simply had a lot of positive
feelings and a lot of energy despite not being able to get out as much as
she would have liked. I recall we talked about Bishop Pike and his times
for about an hour, and then we had communion.
People of this type will have others wanting to visit them.
The pastoral care folks met informally and talked about who might need more
visits, who was not comfortable now seeing anyone, etc. They were a very
caring and sensitive group.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 4:36 PM, Molly Wolf <lupa at kos.net> wrote:

> Question for the pub:
>
> Aside from home communion as requested and the inevitable “thoughts and
> prayers,” what support should a parishioner who attends church regularly
> reasonably be able to expect from his or her parish during a time of major
> illness?
>
> Molly
>
> The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no
> other way. -- Mark Twain
>