Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook

Those who seek to recover from oppression or care for those who are unable to, can turn to this collection of fact-based calls. They call for action.

Blaine-Wallace piece on "Lamentation as Justice Making". He notes that depression requires isolation, while sorrow seeks communion. He condemns the United States where a "culture" pretends that the individual is sacrosanct and makes the illusion of self-sufficiency an eschatological aim. He asks hard questions.

As America was led by the greed of its leadership into two Wars, and witnessed its Pentagon under-reporting and even hiding the casualties, he asks: "Who has the presence of heart [!] to establish a community for broken and bound-up hearts?" [185] The tears speak, who listens?

He diagnoses a society curious about the Superbowl, "while Pennsylvania Avenue has its hand deep in the cookie jar of our future, eyeing Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks" that our elders were proud of providing as their legacy of work in the mills. "...Society has calcified sadness, leaving us as the living dead". [185].

"Shared suffering is doxological." [186] I respectfully disagree until Cheney is in jail and his estate disgorges the no-bid no-accounting war-profiteering of Haliburton. But I appreciate Blaine-Wallace's view of the trifecta of the Eucharist, an open wound in three acts: wailing, lamenting, rejoicing. We must be dangerous to the plutocracy to be so bent on pouring grief upon the poor. The grief is now political. The billionaires who stole our public resources and then Our Government must be set aside.

The articles are well-written, based on facts not faux fear-mongering, and well-chosen to address the injustices which must be and can be prevented before they occur, and redressed after.… (plus d'informations)

This is a book that needed an editor. The first chapter outlines the essence of pilgrimage as a vital spiritual practice across traditions, and even brings up the provocative option of the Internet as an option for pilgrimage in our times. The book ends with practical considerations that anyone planning a pilgrimage should take into account. In between the opening and closing, however, the book is a muddle. It loses its focus on pilgrimage per se, and roams into topics from spiritual disciplines in general to short travelogues.

Ironic, when the emphasis is made that pilgrimage (as all spiritual disciplines) is all about focus.

Confusion is partly due to the fact that the book confuses "journey" with "pilgrimage." Everyone is on a journey. But not everyone is on a pilgrimage, as pilgrimage requires some degree of intentionality. Evidence of the problem offered by the book: it uses The Wizard of Oz as a prime metaphor for pilgrimage. But Dorothy did not end up in Oz due to any act of intentionality on her part.

A full chapter is devoted to labyrinths. (The author obviously has a fondness toward labyrinths.) And while walking a labyrinth can legitimately be seen as a way of doing pilgrimage, the book is too brief to explore that notion in very great depth.

A big disappointment.… (plus d'informations)

Contents: Introduction / Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen Brown Montagno -- Context, community, and pastoral care -- Midwives and holy subversives : resisting oppression in attending the birth of wholeness / Karen B. Montagno -- Love and power : antiracist pastoral care / Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook -- Engaging diversity and difference : from practices of exclusion to practices of practical solidarity / Brita L. Gill-Austern -- Pastoral care with African American women : womanist perspectives and strategies / Marsha I. Wiggins and Carmen Braun Williams -- Pastoral care from the Latina/o margins / Miguel A. De La Torre -- Pastoral care in the context of North American Asian communities / Greer Anne Wenh-In Ng -- Pastoral care from a Jewish perspective / Howard Cohen -- Light at the end of the tunnel : pastoral care for Muslims / Ahmed Nezar M. Kobeisy -- Developing a Buddhist approach to pastoral care : a peacemaker’s view / Mikel Monnett -- Oppression-sensitive pastoral practice -- The tasks of oppression-sensitive pastoral caregiving and counseling / Donald M. Chinula -- Never at ease : Black, gay, and Christian / Cheryl Giles -- Addiction, power, and the question of powerlessness / Joel Glenn Wixson -- Flowers and songs : a liturgical community approach to pastoral care / Eric H.F. Law -- The politics of tears : lamentation as justice-making / William Blaine-Wallace -- Pastoral care with persons living with HIV/AIDS / Altagracia Perez -- Ableism : the face of oppression as experienced by people with disabilities / Carolyn Thompson -- Pastoral care with transgender people / Sarah Gibb Millspaugh -- Problems or partners? : senior adults and a new story for pastoral care / Janet Ramsey -- Pastoral care and gay men : the amazing and true story of the life and death of one good man / Christopher Medeiros -- The time of no room : changing patterns in responses to homelessness in Britain / Kenneth Leech -- Loss, death, and dying from a hospice perspective / Webb Brown -- Making (ritual) sense of our own lives / Elaine J. Ramshaw.… (plus d'informations)