August 1, 2022
Author and change facilitator adrienne maree brown often speaks about trusting the process and trusting the people. Brown points us toward the natural world and what it teaches us about the mystery and chaos of change. The reality of change can be both terrifying and liberating. Our strategic planning process has been set up intentionally to invite the multitude and diverse voices of ACPE into the conversation about where we are headed and what we need to get there. ACPE is an organization that has committed to fundamental change as an anti-racist organization amidst the ever-changing landscape of healthcare, theological education, and the more diverse organization that we have become.
New Mailing Address
mail
The ACPE national office is now virtual! Effective immediately, our new mailing address is:


ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care and Education
        We Work, Floor 4
        120 West Trinity Place
        Decatur, GA 30030
It’s that time of year again…time to submit your CoP’s budget and funding request to the Professional Well-Being Committee.  We are excited to see 2023 bringing us all back together after such a long pause.

The Professional Well Being Committee is pleased to again have the opportunity to see the excellent work and plans that our Communities of Practice are planning for 2023. While it would be our dream to fund every single effort you have designed, unfortunately, we know that funds are limited.  The committee will make every effort to support all qualifying requests to the extent possible.
The Leadership Development Committee (LDC) invites you to consider serving in one of the open leadership positions in 2023. Nominations are open now for ACPE’s fall election. The deadline to submit a nomination is September 23, 2022.


The following positions are elected by the membership:

Board of Directors:

Director (3 positions)
Certification Fall Docket Dates 2022
  • August 31, 22 – Deadline to Declare Intent to Meet Certification Subcommittee
  • email Sheilah.Hawk@acpe.edu
  • October 3, 2022 – Deadline to Submit Electronic Materials
  • November 7, 9, & 10, 2022 – Subcommittee Docket Dates
Once the Letter of Intent is received in the National Office by email, the Aspirant will be invoiced for the $100 meeting fee. Payment of meeting fee must be received on/before October 3rd.

Contact Sheilah Hawk at Sheilah.Hawk@acpe.edu with questions.
In Case You Missed It
This is a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . The increased numbers, variety, and potency are staggering. Read more
Transforming Chaplaincy is pleased to announce a new online Research Literacy course designed for students in CPE residency programs. Transforming Chaplaincy is pleased to announce a new online Research Literacy course designed for students in CPE residency programs. Read more
We invite all ACPE Certified Educators who are working with Certified Educator Candidates to join us for informal consultations and conversations via Zoom. The drop-in meeting (no RSVP required) will take place on the first and third Mondays of the month, from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm ET. Read more
Weekly Highlights
This Week's Reflection
What does one say in the face of the unthinkable? Tragically, these events are all too thinkable in this day and age. Deborah Paredez searches for words and finds many of them empty in this moment. She writes, “I turned to the sestina’s frenetic repetition and Gertrude Stein’s line, ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,’ and the estrangement from resolution and language that both offer as a way to dwell within my grief and rage. The state has emptied words like ‘door’ and ‘security’ and ‘mental health’ and ‘thoughts and prayers’ of their meanings as relentlessly as an AR-15 empties its bullets. A door is a door. A gun is a gun.”


“Uvalde Shooting Highlights Role of Doors in Security Plans”
 
Deborah Paredez
—AP News headline

The teacher remembers pulling the door
closed. She thought the door
would lock because that door
is always supposed to lock. The door
failed to lock. They say when god closes a door
the shooter will fire through the door’s

windows. At first they said she left the door
open and the shooter got through the door.
She remembers she had opened the door
to carry in supplies, propping the door
open with a rock. But she closed the door
when she heard the shooter just outside the doors.

I ran back into the building. I still had the rock in the door.
So—I opened the door—
kicked the rock—and then locked the door.
Later, they verified she had closed the door
and the door
did not lock. Later, there will be a closed-door

inquiry at the state Capitol. It’s through the closed door
that all the men with guns will enter. The classroom doors
have windows above the knobs. The glass on one door
shatters from gunfire and a man walks through the door-
frame and fires more than 100 rounds. A thin blue door
connects one classroom to another. He shot the door,

a girl in the classroom tells the 911 dispatcher. Through the door
bullets graze two officers and they retreat farther from the door.
No other men with guns will go near the classroom door
for another forty minutes. They said they needed the door’s
key from the janitor. It remains unclear if they tried the door
to see if it was locked. The girl calls again and watches the door

and covers herself in her dead friend’s blood and this is how the door
between heaven and hell cracks open. The door-
way is a thin blue line. The men with guns unlock the door
and shoot the shooter who shoots back from the closet door-
frame. The governor orders all the schools to check their doors
each week and all the doors everywhere come unhinged and every door

is a door is a door is a door is a door
is a door is a door is a door is a door
is a door is a door is a door is a door.

Part of the thrill of an amusement park is the speed, the craziness, the just out-of-control feeling that so many rides give us. Of course, it’s a whole different thing if the rides really are as dangerous as they appear. For a generation who grew up in New Jersey, there is one park that still makes people wonder why their parents ever let them go!

This Week on the Calendar
As a part of ACPE’s commitment to anti-bias practices in all dimensions of our work, a subcommittee of the Anti-Bias Work Group has recommended we stop publishing a “holy days” calendar, recognizing that all efforts will be inadequate and may unintentionally reinforce privileged perspectives for some while inadequately representing others. Instead, ACPE will focus on:

  • Promoting educational inclusion and exclusion,
  • Deconstructing the Christocentric history of the ACPE,
  • The impact of how our US context is also predominantly Christian,
  • the intersections among racism, xenophobia, and religiously based oppressions, and
  • the implications of the increasing secularization/shift to pluralism and spiritual but not religious (SBNR) values in US society.

We encourage you to reference these and additional resources as both educational tools and when planning programs and events (note: careful reading of the tools at these links will illustrate the above points, but as such could foster good conversation within your programs and practices):
Memorials and Milestones
  • No news to report this week.
Visit the ACPE Memorials and Milestones page for more details. Please email webmaster@acpe.edu to add someone to our thoughts.
CAREER & RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITIES
Baptist Health South Florida is seeking a Director of Pastoral Care & CPE Educator
Join our dynamic CPE program nestled in the majestic bluffs along the Mississippi River in La Crosse at Gundersen Health System View more
Other Educational Opportunities
ACPE: The Standard for Spiritual Care & Education
ACPE is the standard for spiritual care and education. Our diverse membership includes Certified CPE Educators, Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapists, Spiritual Care Professionals and Practitioners, Pastoral Counselors, Chaplains, Faith Communities, and Seminaries. Our multi-disciplinary, multi-faith, multi-racial community of professionals provides education, connection, and formation through continuing education, networking, and leadership development.
 
ACPE is the premier, Department of Education recognized, organization that provides the highest quality CPE programs for spiritual care professionals of any faith and in any setting. We do this through a rigorous accreditation and certification process for centers and educators that provide CPE.
 
The depth of our training enables students to realize their full potential to strengthen the spiritual health of people in their care as well as themselves.
 
ACPE members are actively engaged in a wide variety of professional development activities including communities of practice, conferences, spiritual care research, and informal networking. We are more than just an association: we are a movement committed to the transformation of the human suffering.Our opportunities for formation and community enrich our member's work of healing and transforming people and communities in the US and across the globe.