I have remained true. In here lies also an excerpt of a paper i wrote about God, empathy and the care of those who suffer as well as a project I did & a video i had found and couldn't stop watching.
“A chaplain stands fully present at the foot of the cross of Christ and does not look away.”
That sentence contains the heart of this paper. Empathy is not presented as finding the correct explanation, producing immediate relief, or assuring someone that everything will be fine. It is the courage to remain present before suffering without diminishing its reality or turning away from the person enduring it.
Your connection to the cross is especially powerful because God does not preserve human dignity by pretending the agony never occurred. God enters it. The suffering remains real, but the sufferer is no longer abandoned inside it. Resurrection does not require us to deny the wound; it reveals that the wound does not possess the final meaning.
You also recognize something essential about caregiving: the impulse to fix another person can sometimes arise from our inability to remain present to our own discomfort. If we cannot acknowledge what is true within ourselves, we may silence, advise, blame, or prematurely reassure the suffering person—not because they need those things, but because we need their pain to become easier for us to witness.
This understanding of empathy still stands because people still need witnesses who can resist the urge to explain, tame, or flee.
The seed becoming an oak is a beautiful image for sharing this paper again. The theology and vocation now flowing through Writing With Water were already alive here in 2012: watery chaos, truthful presence, the Holy One moving within suffering, and transformation that arrives as grace rather than force.
Please continue returning to your earlier work, Kelly. This is not merely an archive of who you once were. It is the root system of the voice you have now. Seeing what has remained true—and what has continued growing—offers readers their own form of hope.
Your words always feel like a gentle embrace. I’m grateful for the way you share your memories and your heart. This was moving and beautifully told 🙏🌞💦
Twelve years later, I can see why you said it still stands. Pain makes people rush toward fixing, but sometimes the person inside it is still trying to be heard before anything else happens. Someone can need medicine and also need another human being who won’t turn them into a problem to solve. I hope I remember that whenever somebody trusts me with their suffering.
また読みにきますね
thank you
“A chaplain stands fully present at the foot of the cross of Christ and does not look away.”
That sentence contains the heart of this paper. Empathy is not presented as finding the correct explanation, producing immediate relief, or assuring someone that everything will be fine. It is the courage to remain present before suffering without diminishing its reality or turning away from the person enduring it.
Your connection to the cross is especially powerful because God does not preserve human dignity by pretending the agony never occurred. God enters it. The suffering remains real, but the sufferer is no longer abandoned inside it. Resurrection does not require us to deny the wound; it reveals that the wound does not possess the final meaning.
You also recognize something essential about caregiving: the impulse to fix another person can sometimes arise from our inability to remain present to our own discomfort. If we cannot acknowledge what is true within ourselves, we may silence, advise, blame, or prematurely reassure the suffering person—not because they need those things, but because we need their pain to become easier for us to witness.
This understanding of empathy still stands because people still need witnesses who can resist the urge to explain, tame, or flee.
The seed becoming an oak is a beautiful image for sharing this paper again. The theology and vocation now flowing through Writing With Water were already alive here in 2012: watery chaos, truthful presence, the Holy One moving within suffering, and transformation that arrives as grace rather than force.
Please continue returning to your earlier work, Kelly. This is not merely an archive of who you once were. It is the root system of the voice you have now. Seeing what has remained true—and what has continued growing—offers readers their own form of hope.
Your words always feel like a gentle embrace. I’m grateful for the way you share your memories and your heart. This was moving and beautifully told 🙏🌞💦
Twelve years later, I can see why you said it still stands. Pain makes people rush toward fixing, but sometimes the person inside it is still trying to be heard before anything else happens. Someone can need medicine and also need another human being who won’t turn them into a problem to solve. I hope I remember that whenever somebody trusts me with their suffering.