Doris Zagdanski will be taking a seminar on youth and grief in Brisbane on July 15. For only $5 you can register for the grief awareness training day at Canon & Cripps Funerals in Kelvin Grove Road. Included in that cost is training, morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea and all materials. What a gift!
Doris is a gifted, compassionate communicator with more than 20 years’ experience in this field. As General Manager of InvoCare, she currently trains her own staff in helping grieving people. The training will examine the complexities of caring for those who are grieving. Doris has written & published some extremely helpful material on grief & loss which will be available to purchase &/or order on the day.
In the 20+ years that Doris has spent working with grieving people, she has been asked hundreds of questions on grief & loss. Many of the same themes keep recurring. In this informative & entertaining day, Doris will address a wide range of grief-related questions including:
* How should I bring up the subject of their loss? I don’t know what to say!
* Why do people avoid me, do they think my grief is contagious?
* How do I handle their guilt & anger?
* What do I say to the children?
* In my job I spend all day caring for others, but who looks after my well-being?
To register for the training day contact Cheryl Howatson at Scripture Union: 3632 2239 or cherylh at suqueensland.org.au
Today is September 15 - the day back in 1992 when our daughter Kristen died, aged 18 months. She would have been 14 now.
I’m reminded of Kristen whenever I hear Eric Clapton’s song, “Tears in Heaven” which played at her funeral.
Or when I see daffodils. I was on my way to pick up the family to go to the church daffodil festival when she walked onto the road and was hit by a car.
Or when I cook frozen peas. She loved them.
Or when I see an 18 month old blonde learning to walk with confidence.
We’ve adjusted our lives to the terrible gap she left behind. And mostly left behind the horror of having her life snatched away. I remember the look in the driver’s face as he told me that his own daughter was the splitting image of Kristen. I remember the support of a multicultural community who came to grieve with us. The sobs of a friend on the phone as he expressed the grief of God.
Spent five hours yesterday with a group of church leaders coming to terms with a declining membership and the loss of ordained ministry. We used the Jeremiah 29 material throughout the day to work through what it might mean to walk through the transition from denial through to acceptance and adjustment for the future.
As we read through Jeremiah 29 we used two resources:
1. Grieving for a lost world - the need to develop honest sadness
2. Rootlessness -permission to express hunger for roots
3. Despair � doubting God’s faithfulness & power to save - a resolve to find hope together
4. Profaned Absence - become aware of God’s presence in new environment
5. Moral incongruity - face up to chaos
6. Self-preoccupation - find strategies for shaping the environment
We sang - “Rivers of Babylon” - and we prayed. We mourned. We took another look at the new environment of an increasingly multicultural community. We touched base with the passions for shaping the community that were already there. We considered the exhaustion of singles in their fifties and sixties and considered the options of shared living. Maybe these people could consider engaging with a new form of monastic life that energises people in mission.
At the end of the day a dazed group of despairing church members emerged as a hopeful band of mission agents.
1. Grieving for a lost world - the need to develop honest sadness
