Disaster recovery programs can rebuild and repair homes and replace physical losses, but they will be unsuccessful unless the they meet the spiritual needs of survivors and their communities.

In fact, disaster recovery is ultimately a spiritual matter -- helping people accept their losses and positively begin life anew.

Pastoral or spiritual care helps people:

• Find meaning in the events that have occurred.
• Transcend those events to a "realized resurrection" and new life.
• Discover the redemptive possibilities present in the experience.
• Find peace, new meaning for life, and new anchors for living, and concrete symbols of hope.

The work is evangelical in the sense that it is about proclaiming Good News. However, it should never be evangelical in any sense of convert-winning or pew-filling.

Spiritual care is about providing hope. It conquers three major enemies of hope:

• Silence. Civility and repression that says "don't complain."
• Fulfillment. The "we have everything," "we can manage" attitude.
• Technique. The "we can solve everything" attitude.

Spiritual care involves guided listening that stimulates both personal reflection and expression within a variety of contexts including retreats, worship, study. It meets needs of survivors and caregivers alike.

SPIRITUAL CARE VS MENTAL HEALTH CARE

Spiritual care enhances traditional stress management techniques of mental health in addressing actual reduction of stress causers -- the losses in the disaster.

Disaster survivors confront spiritual issues concerned with transformation of community.

They need the active listening of mental health care that helps them address issues of coping, but they also need the guided listening of spiritual care that helps them in the midst of a call from the source of life to transformation. Retreats, spiritual counseling, Bible study, and worship are important in helping disaster survivors come to a new relationship with:

• Themselves
• Their property
• Nature
• Their community
• Their God
• Their past, present, and future

There needs to be a high degree of cooperation between mental health workers and the religious community. Mental health outreach workers are highly skilled and make important contributions. The religious community can help them gain the trust of disaster survivors. It can -- and should -- be a lobbying force for getting them into the field and keeping them there.

CARING FOR CAREGIVERS

As important as spiritual/pastoral care is for survivors, clergy and other caregivers also gain strength to continue their response work and avoid burnout through pastoral care.

Frustration comes with disasters. Things just do not go right most of the time. Obvious and easily changed things don't get changed. Supplies don't arrive and when they do, they are the wrong ones. Things are not planned, started, delivered, finished, or evaluated on time. Tempers grow very short and fault finding is raised to an art form.

Frustration can be a killer to an organization, a recovery effort, and to individuals and families. Caregivers who burnout feel exhausted and less confident about themselves. They expect the worst -- and get it. Their job performance deteriorates. Their troubles at home with family increase.

Caregivers need support, a friendly ear, some time off, contact and encouragement from friends and bosses, and prayers.

Mini-vacations -- three or four weekend overnight events a year -- can also make a big difference for caregivers. In the early days after a disaster, they might take the form of meetings focused on organizational, financial, and physical rebuilding issues with spiritual care, refection, and relaxation/recreation components.

Later, special retreats and respites should be scheduled with rest, reflection, and spiritual care as the primary objectives for participants. They should be accessible to family members. They do not necessarily need to have a subject focus, although that can sometimes make the event more attractive.

Denominational leaders and agency executives should be involved in support of clergy and caregivers. Their support can take several forms:

• Calls or letters saying "I am thinking about you, praying for you."
• Special support for clergy/ staff/caregivers and encouragement to get away for rest and recreation.
• Special recognition of the importance of their ministry/service and what they are learning about the dynamics of ministry/service in disaster recovery.
• Opportunity for the clergy/staff to share their learning and experience with the church/agency.
• Recognition that clergy/staff are going through a very intense, exhausting and life-changing event

COMMUNITY-FOCUSED CARE

Effective pastoral/spiritual for both survivors and caregivers occurs within the context of community. Individuals and families can only be healthy in healthy communities. The community -- carrier of so much of the people's memories, traditions, hopes, and healing power Ü ultimately sustains the dreams, visions, and the life of the people.

When a community is disrupted, people exhibit varied behavioral problems. The ties that provide important psychological support to individuals in times of stress are not available.

Pastoral/ spiritual care appreciates the value of community symbols --a building, tree, or church, for example. When the symbol is gone, there may be a sense that the town is gone. When the symbol is restored, there may be a feeling that the town is back. A disaster may also create new symbols about the town's ability to recover. Pastoral/ spiritual care helps a community restore its old symbols and recognize and incorporate new symbols into its history.

SABBATHING: THE ESSENCE OF PASTORAL CARE

Pastoral care or spiritual care, in the final analysis, is sabbathing -- affirming that the real meaning and purpose of life is enjoyment of creation by all humankind, all creation, and God. In the midst of a disaster, when chaos seems to be overwhelming, the image of the Sabbath rest is a reminder of the goodness of creation and that God is in control of creation. Creation will not fall apart. This fact is important for survivors and disaster care-givers to remember.

The task in helping people recover from disasters is always theological and evangelical in the sense that we are to remember and live the good news of God's love for creation and God's continuing call for us to care for the earth and all that dwell therein.

• Sabbathing reminds us that creation is not ours but God's.
• Sabbathing reminds us that God is at home in Sabbath.
• Sabbathing reminds us that all of creation and not just humans are created to be with God and praise God.
• Sabbathing reminds us of our bounties, our relationships, and our limits.
• Sabbathing reminds us of our hope and is a taste of creation's future with the Lord of the Sabbath.

Sabbathing requires an understanding of the mind set of disaster survivors who confront critical questions about good and evil, are entrapped by culturally and socially conditioned thought patterns, and experience anger. Pastoral care recognizes and deals with these things.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WORSHIP

Worship including preaching, liturgy, and prayer just naturally is an important component of sabbathing. Worship affects the shape, character, and hopes of a community. It embraces an alternative future -- world-making done by God through human activity. Worship affirms that God is still operative, that the world is still open and that we are not fated, that human agents as creatures in God's image share God's imaging activity.

Prayers can promote healing in lifting up feelings and concerns that people may not be able to express directly. Preaching and liturgy can encourage disaster survivors to express their feelings of anger, fear, doubt, and even hatred of God and move them to rebuild their lives and community with God. They can encourage and allow disaster survivors to lament just as the ancient Jewish people did in Psalms during the Babylonian exile.

Lament, which gives authentic expression to the real experiences of life, summons God away from the throne and back into human life.

Worship can also help disaster survivors advance necessary individual and community transformations through:

• Remembering. Scriptures about God's presence and care for people. Stories of how God helped them and their communities go through hard times. A sermon or meditation on God's care.
• Doxology. A time for praise. Stories of God's goodness. Signs of God's presence now. Hymns of praise and thanksgiving.
• World-changing. Sharing plans, ideas, and announcements about coming events. The offering Ü including an opportunity for people to make and renew commitments. Reaffirming baptism.

DEALING WITH THE HARD QUESTIONS

Sabbathing helps people come to grips with the hard questions of good and evil and a loving God.

After a 1985 flood in Virginia and western Maryland, a man of faith was surveying the devastation of his town. A local atheist said in a jeering manner, "Well, you Christians must have been really bad, look what your God has done to you."

The man of faith replied: "What God has done to us? God didn't do this. We did this. We were the ones who built here and stripped the land. We did this -- not God."

The man of faith was a person of courage, conviction and good sense. The atheist, however, is more typical of both believers and non-believers in the immediate aftermath of disaster. Some of the typical questions: "Why us?" "Why is God doing this to us?" "Why is there evil in the world?" "Why does God permit this?" "How have we sinned?"

Among conclusions philosophers and theologians have reached about the problem of evil:

• Evil is a myth: if we really understood the workings of this world, we would understand that it could be no other way. Therefore, evil does not really exist, human experience aside.
• Evil, in the Platonic tradition, is part of our real world below but not part of the ideal world above which consists of pure forms.
• Evil is a consequence of human behavior.
• Evil is part of the fabric of the world and can be overcome only in some afterlife.
• Evil is the result of a continual battle going on between the ideal and the material, between God and Satan, between light and darkness, between order and chaos.

Today science raises the problem of corporate sin. Since we now know at least something about plate movements, earthquakes, hurricane seasons, tornado alleys, and 50 and 100-year floods, corporate sin becomes a reality as we continue to live and force people to live in dangerous areas.

Similarly, unsafe dams are the result of corporate negligence. The lack of appropriate regulations and enforcement of laws are the result of society's failures.

Disasters are, indeed, a time of corporate and individual sin. However, because of a loving God, recoveries can also be times for individual and corporate redemption and new life.

Questions regarding sin and evil, will not go away, but pastoral care shifts them from ideas of punishment (eg. "Why did God?") to the management of the consequences (eg. "How can we?").

It is appropriate for people of faith to struggle with the hard questions of good and evil and a loving God. Pastoral caregivers should not so much seek to answer them as to feel the struggle and pain of the survivors.

ENTRAPMENTS

Sabbathing also deals with the feelings of oppression and intimidation in people who have been marginalized by society and culture.

We live in a world that still defines "blessing" and "curse" by the outward well being of people and by certain cultural beliefs about color, sex, and class. Some people may view their situation as a mark of their failure as human beings or as the judgment of God. Some are taught that they are not as good or as capable as other people. They experience a kind of guilt that prohibits them from seeking help and encourages them to believe that they do not deserve assistance and will waste or misuse anything they receive. Caregivers and helping organizations, too, may mistreat, mistrust, misunderstand, and ignore marginalized populations.

At the same time, the experience of disaster is in itself an experience of intimidation. The recovery process can be even more so. For the poor, the old, women, and the non-white things are even worse.

Rural people are less likely to seek institutional help than urban or suburban people. People of color and the poor are less likely to receive institutional help than others, even when they have incurred more damage.

Asking for and receiving help is very difficult for some people and cultures. All of the "isms" of an area come into more forceful play shortly after a disaster. Long lines, complex forms, and unfamiliar surroundings also intimidate. (Because some parts of any community experience the government as the enemy, some people will be afraid to go to the places where "the government" may be "trying to get them".)

Rumors about what the people will be asked and what they will be subjected to will be rampant. Because these people are hypersensitive to intimidation, an insensitive intake worker can intimidate without intending to intimidate.

Intimidation can take many forms. Intimidation is determined by the receiver. For some, the impersonal telephone is intimidating. For others, the crowds at a Disaster Assistance Center (DAC) may be too much.

In its pastoral care, the religious community must seek out marginalized communities and find trusted people within these communities who can be advocates and who can communicate effectively to their constituents.

The poor and less powerful are often ignored even when they are visible and loud. Even when they are seen and heard, they still may get a smaller portion of assistance than the rich and powerful. The poor and powerless are also much more dependent on help beyond the family's resources, but much less likely to get that help unless the religious community lends its power and prestige to their cause.

In its pastoral care, the religious community must also know marginalized groups well enough to ensure that the necessary information gets to all the people who need it. In many places, information is communicated by informal networks of people and organizations rather than through mass communication systems. Some people may be unable to read, for example.

ANGER & FEAR AS ENERGY

Finally, sabbathing helps disaster survivors use their anger and fear.

Anger needs to be understood as potential energy and thus a useful resource. Unfocused anger, held and denied anger are unhealthy. As the poster says, "When I hold my feelings in, my stomach keeps score." Uncontrolled and unfocused or poorly focused anger is destructive. This is often expressed as I (we) versus him (them). It comes out as unproductive blaming of others, seldom producing solutions.

Pastorally and spiritually, anger can be understood as an energy resource for justice and redemption. Angry people need to be encouraged to think first and then use their anger productively. Anger at a disaster response agency can be used to promote better service. Anger can generate new programs and agencies within the communities.

Generally people understand anger as negative, uncontrollable and irrational. Overcoming this view is not always easy. People need to be taught that they are always in control of their anger and responsible for their behavior.

They need to know that anger is an energy source much like food and can be used helpfully or harmfully.

PRACTICING THE PRESENCE OF GOD

All the doubts, fears, angers, and questions about God which disaster survivors have Ü all the questions they may have around their faith Ü are not new. They all can be found in the lives of the saints Ü great men and women of the scriptures and in the person of Jesus. These people found some pretty good answers to their questions Ü and so can disaster survivors. HereÍs a useful exercise that can help people begin to discover the presence of God:

1. I experience the presence of God in:

__ Nature

__ Personal problem situations

__ Problems extending far beyond my personal life

__ Problem of others for whom I care

__ Joyful situations

__ Other people

__ The news

__ Social situations

__ Socio/political situations

__ What I hear

__ What I see

__ What I touch

__ What I taste

__ What I smell

__ The hustle & bustle of life

__ Quiet times

__ Active times (gardening, jogging, etc.) Specify:______________________

__ Inactive times (reading, resting, etc.) Specify: _____________________

__ Worship services

__ Prayer

(Rank above: 1-never, 2-rarely, 3- sometimes, 4-often, 5-always)

2. I experience the absence of God in ___________________________________________

3. I learned _________________

4. I realize __________________

5. I wonder__________________

6. I hope ____________________

7. I experience God as (rank 1-5 as above):

__ Judge __ Kind Father

__ Loving Mother __ Conscious

__ Comforter __ Limit Setter

__ Confronter __ Initiator

__ Enemy __ Push over

__ Destroyer __ Shaker

__ Savior __ Freedom Giver

__ Liberator __Guiding Force

__ Part of me

__ Part of everything

__ Responder __ Tyrant

__ Distant watcher

__ Creator __ Mover

__ Uninvolved bystander

Other: __________________

8. I learned _____________

9. I realize ______________ 10. I am glad _____________ 11. I want _______________ 12. I will ________________ 13. I am _________________ 14. When people have faith in God they are (rank 1-5 as above):

__ Obedient __ Secure

__ Adventuresome

__ Rewarded __ Respected

__ Saved __ Forgiving

__ Other worldly __ Judging

__ Involved __ Accepting

__ Humble __ Dependent

__ Responsive __ Fools

__ Self-assured __ Wise

__ Peaceful __ Troubled

__ Directed __ Self-directed

__ Connected to life __ Loving

__ Disconnected from life

__ Distant __ Religious

__ Independent __ Brave

__ Interdependent

Other: ___________________

15. Prayer is ________________

16. Prayer is not ______________

17. Being spiritual is __________

18. Being spiritual is not _______

19. I am aware of the presence of God when I _______________

20. I can increase my experience of God by ________________

21. I seldom experience God in __________________ or when ___________________

22. I want to experience God in these times and place and I can do the following to help that process: ________________________________

23. I will begin by ____________

24. I am afraid ______________

25. My fears can be over come by ______________________

26. I want the help of and prayer of _______________

27. I stop myself from finding God by___________________________________________

28. The disaster has affected my faith negatively by ______________________________ and positively by _________________________________

PREPARING FOR PASTORAL CARE NEEDS

The religious community can prepare a pastoral care team before a disaster happens:

• Identify and establish relationships with community agencies that will be key to successful outreach efforts (eg. schools, churches)
• Pre-designate an outreach team
• Include multi-cultural, multi-language capability to reflect the makeup of the community
• Include special population workers (children, older adults)
• Train the team in disaster mental health outreach techniques and disaster resources
• Train the team in personal and family disaster preparedness.
• Provide the team with identification cards recognized by emergency management and law enforcement officials
• Acquire cellular phones or make arrangements with local amateur radio group to provide communication linkage
• Prepare and distribute a resource directory
• Prepare brochures and fliers on common disaster reactions, ways to cope, and where to call for help (may leave blank space for disaster hotline numbers); in multiple languages, if needed
• Assemble needed supplies and equipment for immediate use by team (distribute to team in advance or keep in accessible location)
• Prepare sample data collection forms to track services delivered, funds expended, and to collect needs assessment data for crisis counseling grant
• Prepare sample public service announcements (PSAs), news articles, and sample interviews for radio and television

WORK OF A PASTORAL CARE TEAM

When disaster strikes, a trained pastoral care team will:

• Identify sites where groups of survivors are likely to congregate (shelters, food kitchens, community centers, hospitals, casualty collection points, the morgue, in lines at roadblocks, etc.)
• Connect with agencies providing direct services to survivors (emergency medical services, law enforcement, fire department, public health department, etc.)
• Designate a public information officer. Provide information to the media about reactions to disaster, ways to cope, where to call for help. Distribute brochures
• Deploy outreach team to appropriate sites with identification and needed supplies & equipment
• Meet person in charge at site & clarify role & responsibility
• Tour site & assess needs particularly related to mental health and pastoral care
• Consult person in charge at site about needs related to mental health & pastoral care Ü particular individuals requiring assistance, disaster worker stress management
• Use formal and informal "key informants" to obtain information about needs of individuals and special population groups
• Use "aggressive hanging out" and "over a cup of coffee" methods in informal assessments of needs & intervention with survivors & disaster workers
• Support & assist survivors with specific, tangible problems Ü locating family members, child care, transportation, medical care, temporary housing, etc.
• Refer people in acute psychiatric distress Ü those with extreme emotional responses or exacerbations of prior problems Ü to clinical mental health staff
• Use established chain of command within mental health to communicate in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) about field conditions & resource needs
• Complete data collection forms for fiscal tracking & needs assessment for grant application

Ongoing spiritual/pastoral care following a disaster will also:

• Identify individual survivors by using damage reports & lists of people who applied for assistance
• Contact survivors via letters, phone calls, or door-to-door visits to conduct informal assessments & provide education, support & resources
• Establish & maintain contact with agencies, caregivers, key community members, and businesses used by survivors
• Conduct a public education program geared to community at large on common reactions to a disaster, coping strategies, where to obtain assistance
• Use print & electronic media for articles, interviews, public service announcements, paid advertising, call-in radio shows
• Provide public speakers for civic groups, PTAs, churches, etc.
• Attend community gatherings, meetings, fairs,other events to circulate & talk with survivors to assess needs and provide education, support, resources
• Hang posters on bulletin boards, buses, at bus stops, in waiting rooms & other public places
• Distribute brochures & fliers door-to-door, in shopping bags, on literature racks, in churchbulletins, and via community groups
• Develop activity books or coloring books for children
• Train & educate community professionals, caregivers survivor support groups in mental health recovery & survivor assistance
• Consult with community professionals and caregivers to facilitate their work with survivors
• Help community organizations and informal resource groups in their efforts with survivors
• Advocate on behalf of clients or population groups in appropriate situations where mental health issues or needs are involved

Edited from material developed by Rev. Richard Krajeski, CWS volunteer Disaster Consultant