Fall Harvest Festival
Recap of Dr. George Fitchett’s Remarks
After three years of not having a live face-to-face event, it was a treat to welcome friends of Bishop Anderson House to the 19th Century Club in Oak Park for cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and a brief talk from Dr. George Fitchett, professor emeritus and the director of research in the Department of Religion, Health & Human Values at Rush University Medical Center. (He’s been at Rush since 1975 so deeply knows the history of the house and was one of our Marion Faldet Volunteer of the Year Award Winners in 2022.)

Dr. Fitchett began by tracing the history of professional chaplaincy and how it is still relatively new – going back about 80 years – Bishop Anderson House will be 75 years old next year so roughly the same amount of time as Bishop Anderson House has been in existence!

He talked about how initially the interdisciplinary medical team didn’t quite know what to do with chaplains. Many times the chaplain was only called when there was nothing more a physician could do. Other times, the chaplain was called in and the medical team could tell a difference in a patient’s countenance but had no clue what interventions the chaplain had made that supported the patient in coping with their hospitalization or diagnosis.

As medicine has become more evidence-based, so has chaplaincy. Through chaplaincy research interventions are being reviewed to see what the expectations of patients and family members are when a chaplain enters the room and what interventions have the greatest impact in supporting patients and families.

Dr. Fitchett also highlighted a groundbreaking article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) July 12, 2022. The article reports on two systematic reviews of high-quality research. One review address research about religion/spirituality in community populations. The second review examined the research about religion/spirituality among people with serious illness. This second review, based on 371 high quality articles, reported “strong evidence” to support the following statements:

  • Spirituality is important for most patients
  • Spiritual needs are common
  • Spiritual care is frequently desired by patients
  • Spirituality can play a role in medical decision-making
  • Spiritual needs are infrequently addressed in medical care
  • Unaddressed spiritual needs are associated with poorer patient QOL
  • Provision of spiritual care is associated with better patient end-of-life (EOL) outcomes

An expert panel reviewed the research and in the article they described implications of the research for clinical practice. The top three implications of the research about spirituality and serious illness were:

  • Routinely incorporate spiritual care into the medical care of patients with serious illness.
  • Include spiritual care education in the training of all members of the interdisciplinary medical team caring for the seriously ill.
  • Include specialty practitioners of spiritual care (e.g., chaplains) in the care of patients with serious illness (emphasis added).

Dr. Fitchett complimented Bishop Anderson House on its work ensuring professional chaplains were at Stroger Hospital of Cook County – Deacon Rose Cicero and The Rev. Dr. Micheal Smith and the work the spirituality & wellness leg of the strategic plan is doing to address moral injury and resiliency of healthcare workers.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday, May 7th for our 75th Anniversary – hold the date. More details to come soon!
Healthcare Equity Begins With You
By Rev. Dr. Ebony D. Only, Community Chaplain Fellow
On September 9, Bishop Anderson House sponsored a Healthcare Equity Forum to discuss the impact of the lack of healthcare equity and how it was exacerbated by COVID-19. This Forum was an opportunity to hear directly from healthcare professionals and healthcare equity advocates about how we might engage in closing the healthcare equity gap. Our panelists included:

  • David Ansell, MD, MPH, the Michael E Kelly Presidential Professor of Internal Medicine and Senior Vice President/ Associate Provost for Community Health Equity at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago
  • Mawusi Arnett, MD, MPH is a physician-entrepreneur with a background in health disparities research and board certifications in Family Medicine and Obesity Medicine.
  • Dr. Ulysses W. Burley III is founder of UBtheCURE LLC, a consulting company on the intersection of Faith, Health, and Human Rights who studied Medicine and Public Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where he went on to train in Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. Dr. Burley is currently, the Project Director for the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) Faith Initiative to connect with diverse faith communities to share evidence-based information regarding HIV and vaccines and antibodies being developed for its prevention.
  • Elizabeth Lynch, PhD, a health equity researcher focused on development and implementation of effective community partnerships to conduct behavioral intervention research to promote health equity across a wide range of health conditions. Dr. Lynch is the Director of the Section of Community Health in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and is co-lead of the Research arm of the RUSH BMO Institute for Health Equity.
  • Rev. Kerri N. Allen, Vice President of Mission and Spiritual Care, serving Patient Services for the Wisconsin Region of Advocate Aurora Health. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), a womanist and Reformed theologian and ethicist.

We heard from these experts that improving health and healthcare requires a focus on equity — equity of access, treatments, and outcomes and that health equity can only be realized when every person has a fair opportunity to achieve their full health potential.

We discussed that the differences in access, treatment, and outcomes between individuals and across populations are systemic, avoidable, predictable, and unjust. The panelists gave concreate and real time examples of how inequities and disparities are linked to the complicated history and reality of racism, classism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and other forms of oppression.

Some of these examples of social and environmental factors that were described as limiting access to and continued use of good health practices and healthcare discussed included:

  • Racial, gender, gender identity and ethnic discrimination
  • Agesim and ableism
  • Lack of access to quality education
  • Income and wealth gaps
  • Inadequate housing or lack of housing
  • Unsafe environments
  • Other forms of oppression

We concluded by acknowledging that by reducing, challenging, or overcoming these obstacles, we can achieve health equity. However, this is not something that any one person can do for themselves. Instead, it requires adaptive changes from community, healthcare organizations, insurers and governments.

I was grateful for the participation of our panelists, moderator and participants. But even more grateful that we vowed our participation would not end on September 9. We were each given and accepted a charge. That charge was to determine how we can make an impact by calling out inequities and disparities when we see them, calling on our elected officials to make healthcare accessible and affordable and by checking our own biases.

Alleviating stark disparities in health coverage, chronic health conditions, mental health, and mortality across racial and ethnic groups in the United States will require deliberate and long-term efforts. We at Bishop Anderson House believe our community to be an integral part of the solution! We hope that you too can join us by taking on this charge and donating to help support our continued efforts. We can indeed all make a difference.
"A Change is as Good as a Rest"
By The Rev. Thomas S. Rogers, III
“A Change is as Good as a Rest”
– Old English proverb

As I was preparing for sabbatical this Spring, I read the book Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devon Price (a professor at Loyola University of Chicago’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies). This might sound like a crazy book to read, but having a lot of the Puritan Work ethic in my DNA I needed to read this book to give myself permission to be “unproductive” for an extended period of rest. How do I define myself when I’m not striving towards a goal or leave behind my professional identity as an Episcopal priest, a chaplain, a Certified Educator with the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education? What would it be like just to BE for three months and to be open to new and surprising things?

Believe it or not it took me about a month to truly unwind and to stop thinking about Bishop Anderson House. Sometimes it was worrying about how the staff and board were doing in my absence. Sometimes it was feeling guilty when something would pop in my mind that I forgot to do before stepping away. Sometimes it was worrying about fundraising and if we would hit our fundraising goals with me away for three months.

When I was finally able to let go and to just BE I found myself engaging the world and those around me differently. I noticed what it was like to wake up at sunrise without an alarm; to start to wind down at sunset and to spend 15 or 20 minutes sitting outside to watch the sun set and to say goodbye to another day. Many times it was praying one of my favorite prayers from The Book of Common Prayer: “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick . . . give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.” There was something powerful about surrendering the day that was past and letting go.

Traveling in the Southwest and West (New Mexico, Arizona, California) I was surprised by the environmental degradation caused by human beings, that in turn has led to severe drought. While sitting in church in Santa Fe I heard special prayers for the firefighters and for the residents who had been displaced by a wildfire. In Arizona there were some places I stopped where I literally could not breathe when I got out of the car. In California, while staying in an Airbnb there was a sign over the toilet inviting guests to “let it mellow if it’s yellow” rather than repeatedly flushing the toilet. But amid these signs was a glimmer of hope. In the West some dams are being removed, and salmon are beginning to spawn again. Also, the new director of the National Park Service, Charles F. Sams, is inviting Native Americans to co-manage federal land – land that they have been taking care of for 10,000 years or much longer.[i]

There were artists giving voice to the environmental destruction, particularly a moving exhibit by Nick Brandt entitled “This Empty World”. – If you would like to take a virtual tour of this exhibit, you can click here: https://www.thisemptyworld.com. Some of these images are hard to look at, but if you can go slowly through each one, they truly bring to light the impact we are having on the world we inhabit together.

In Canada, I was impressed by the work the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is doing through telling the difficult stories of what happened to indigenous communities, particularly the boarding schools where indigenous culture was torn away – students couldn’t go by the names given them at birth, couldn’t speak their language, couldn’t play the games that were familiar to them – and of course, from the news we also know of the horrors that happened in those schools, including sexual abuse and even murder. The pope’s visit and the work of the Canadian government around truth and reconciliation has been in the headlines repeatedly this summer in Canada.

So who am I now as my sabbatical is over and what do I believe is next for Bishop Anderson House?

First, I feel energized and recharged. As a friend who is a therapist notes, most of us are suffering from nature deficit disorder. After spending an extended amount of time outside in nature, soaking up all the sunshine, the green grass, the leaves on the trees, and the smells of summer, my body feels rested and recharged. Before leaving on sabbatical, Nancy Flowers, our board president, and I met, and we are clear it is time for the board do revisit the strategic plan. Is the plan reflective of who we are now and how we have all been changed during COVID? Do we need to discard our plan altogether and start from the ground up – have things changed that much – or do we need to look at the four legs of education, chaplaincy, social responsibility & racial justice, and spirituality and wellness to revisit, expand, or deepen our goals?

Second, I know some people become anxious when a leader goes on sabbatical – they think they might not return. Let me assure you that I feel called to fulfill the commitment I made to the board when I took the helm of Bishop Anderson House June 1, 2015 – to be here 10 years. In an agency like Bishop Anderson House, I believe it takes time to build relationships with donors and stakeholders, and to shift the culture of an organization. Bishop Anderson House is very different than when I arrived in 2015 – our board is much more diverse and inclusive as is our staff.

One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” I believe our world has changed quickly during these last few years, and as an organization we want to be ahead of the curve and not behind it.

I would love to hear from you if there is something in this article that spoke to you -- taking time for deep rest, a renewed focus on environmental justice, truth & reconciliation, or wanting to be a part of reviewing and revising Bishop Anderson House’s strategic plan. You can reach me at Thomas_Rogers@rush.edu or at 312-563-4824. I look forward to connecting and hearing about your passion.
Happenings around the House
September Caregiver Retreat
Deacon Laurie Michaels led a retreat for a group of spiritual caregivers in late September at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Park Ridge. We plan to host both an educational opportunity and a self-care retreat in 2023. We look forward to seeing you at these events. 
Spiritual Care Visitor Training Program - Fall, 2022
In late September/early October, our latest cohort of participants gathered via Zoom to start the journey of becoming Spiritual Care Visitors. We are planning to host two live retreats and one virtual retreat in 2023. Watch upcoming newsletters for more details and how you can begin on this transformative ministry opportunity.
Resources & Thanks
Grant Awarded
We are pleased to share we have received notification that Bishop Anderson House is being awarded a grant of $80,000 from the G. A. Ackermann Memorial Fund, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee. This grant will be in support of our chaplaincy services.
Monthly Resiliency Calendars

The Rev. Dr. Ebony D. Only is providing a monthly calendar with daily realistic actions for your emotional well-being along with some words of wisdom and encouragement. Please go to the Spirituality & Wellness / Resiliency page on our website to get the current calendar.
Gifts of Time, Talent and Treasure
How grateful we are to have received an abundance of support for our ministries. Here is a list of recent donors:

Joan Barry from Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills for hand knit comfort bears and a special thank you to Sharon Bullion for tagging all the recent teddy bear donations which will be distributed to our partners throughout the Illinois Medical District.
Chaplaincy // Social Responsibility & Racial Justice
Spirituality & Wellness // Education
Bishop Anderson House is an interfaith agency rooted in the tradition of the Episcopal Church,
providing pastoral services and education programs for faith and health care communities.