Chaplaincy Innovation Lab — Year in Review
This is the first annual report the Lab has published; last fiscal year represented enormous change for the Lab and we are eager to catch everyone up on the many things we’ve accomplished and the direction we’re taking now.
Introduction from Lab founder Wendy Cadge
Friends and Colleagues,
I write with continued gratitude for all you do as chaplains and spiritual caregivers to support people wherever they are, as they are, and in the midst of whatever burdens them at that moment and in that place. This year has been full of challenges – many beyond our wildest imaginings – and your work of patience, presence, and quiet encouragement remains for me a beacon.
As the Lab grew this year, more and more reporters called. Many asked me about chaplains running towards death rather than away from it during the pandemic. I reminded them that the work of chaplains is not new: at the bedside, in prisons, with the unhoused, veterans, the young and the old, chaplains have long worked with those suffering, often at the edges of society. It is the media noticing the work of chaplains and spiritual care that was new this year. As so many die of COVID-19, including a disproportionate number of people of color, and systematic racism is (again) laid bare by the death of George Floyd (and others before him), it is hard for the media to miss the presence of healthcare chaplains, police chaplains, protest chaplains, and others seeking to love in the midst of overlapping crises.
We have worked, in collaboration with so many of you, to support chaplains and spiritual care providers this year at the front lines who are loving and caring for people in the throes of so much suffering. Through webinars, phone calls, emails, and social media we have done our best to care for you as you care for so many others. We have learned how much chaplains in different settings have to learn from one another, how much research there is to do, and that many of you are eager to partner with us in these efforts.
None of what we do at the Lab is worth doing if it is not helping to reduce suffering in the world around us. I’m grateful every day for the work of chaplains and spiritual care providers, for the work of Lab staff and advisors who worked harder this year than any team I have ever collaborated with, for Brandeis University that houses us, and for our foundation and individual funders whose grants and gifts make this work possible. If you have been helped, moved, or changed by any of the Lab’s offerings this year, I ask you to make a gift so we can continue to offer all of our resources and services at no cost to anyone. We raise every penny that makes this work possible, and every dollar helps.
Love is the spark that the Lab hopes will ignite through practical innovation. Thank you for the love you have offered so much this year, for the support that has sustained me and Lab staff, and for the friendship and collaboration that makes this work worth doing.
As always,
Wendy
