When a friend loses a job or when there’s a death in the family, what do Lutheran women do? We bake something, take it over to our friend’s house, and sit and listen. We pray for our friend too. Well, your churchwide staff is no different.
Yesterday over 60 colleagues, many of whom are friends as well, lost their jobs with the ELCA. Your churchwide staff, having known what it’s like to experience loss, turned our meeting room into a sacred space to which we invited our colleagues. We baked cookies, served up lots of chocolates, offered fresh fruit. We turned off the overhead fluorescent lights and turned on a couple of lamps. We added soft music in the background, and filled the room with plants, quilts, prayer shawls, and candles (battery-operated). We went back to our desks and offered up prayers for our colleagues, for those who lost their jobs, for those who remain, for those who made the decisions. And when a colleague asked, we sat with them in our meeting room turned sacred space.
We simply did what was needed.
Linda Post Bushkofsky is executive director of Women of the ELCA.
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