July 02, 2008 
by David Paul
I don’t know about you, but July has come around more quickly than I had anticipated, and I see that the date of the last entry here on the Chaplain’s Blog is more than three weeks old. We apologize for the delay and hope you haven’t given up on us.
At the end of today’s blog, I’m going to ask you to send us some thoughts, ideas, or questions to help us focus on future blog topics on matters that concern you. But first, here’s an update on Craig’s most recent activities.
Craig spent most of June on the road. He began the month in Houston, where he met with local church leaders and gave a workshop at Christ Church Cathedral. He returned home to Seattle for a workshop at St. James Cathedral and a reading from our book, Souls in the Hands of a Tender God, at Seattle University.
Then he hopped back onto a plane to Los Angeles to deliver the keynote speech at the “Embracing Recovery” workshop for clergy, sponsored by the L. A. County Department of Mental Health. Next he attended the annual conference of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council in Phoenix, where he again gave the keynote address and conducted a workshop on providing outreach services. From there he flew to Orlando for the annual convention of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and gave a workshop, together with Susan Gregg-Schroeder of Mental Illness Ministries, on creating caring congregations. Here’s proof (or at least photographic evidence) that Craig was with Susan, along with several other people associated with FaithNet NAMI, in Orlando.
To cap it off, toward the end of the month Craig delivered a paper at the first annual conference of the Society for Spirituality and Theology held at Duke University in Durham, N.C., where he says he rubbed elbows with a number of interesting people who are doing research on the subject matter. Whew! — it was a busy month.
All of this is not meant to toot Craig’s horn. Those of us who know him well know he would not be one to toot it himself. His itinerary, however, gives an indication of how the interest in mental health ministry is growing and capturing the attention of people of faith around the country. We think it means something, and we hope it all builds into a movement that brings together those who struggle with brain disorders, those who care for them, and those in our faith communities who feel called to take action — action to educate the public about the realities of mental illness, the possibility of treatment and healing, and the need for creating communities of care across this country and around the world.
We’ll be talking more about all of that in blog entries to come. Meanwhile, we’d like to call upon you to make use of the “Comment” feature and send us your ideas for topics and issues of concern. We want to know what’s on your mind and in your heart. We’ll try to respond. We want to see a real dialogue develop here, with you as an important part of that dialogue.
To send us a comment, scroll up to the heading of this blog (”Back to the blog”) and click on “Comments.” It might say “No comment” or “2 comments” or however many comments people have already added. By clicking on that, you will see any comments left by others and, if you scroll down through them, you’ll find a box under the heading “Leave a Reply.” Please type your comment inside that box — never mind the advice that you can use XHTML tags (you can, but if you don’t know what they are or don’t feel an urge to use them, you don’t have to) — and when you’ve finished writing your comment, click “Submit Comment.”
Thanks. We hope to hear from you.
Peace,
David
