Is it difficult for sacred listeners to hear a dying person’s story?
When I work with a person facing death, I find my role filled to overflowing with grace as I sit with this person, to listen deeply to the story unfolding at the end of life, to listen and listen, even when there is an end in sight, and into that ending when it happens. Pastoral Counselors are people too, with many of the same existential dilemmas we all face. Working with the dying often presses us into facing our own death, within the context of the other’s death. But Pastoral Counselors, as professionals, know how to access help for themselves. The best clinicians are in supervisory relationships in which they can talk about their own emotional responses. It is generally only in the safety of a confidential, trusted relationship that one can voice the fullest depth of feelings, face them and then “come to terms” with life as well as death. Would you like to speak confidentially to a spiritually trained psychotherapist or counselor? If you live or work in or near the New York City me
