"Struggling in Public:
Clergy Families and Mental Illness"

 

A Conversation with
Sarah Griffith Lund

When

Monday, December 6, 2021 from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM EST
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Where

This is an online event via Zoom. 
The webinar link and instructions will be emailed to those who register. 

Contact

Julie Lytle 
Pathways for Baptismal Living at Bexley Seabury Seminary 
617-669-8411 
jlytle@bexleyseabury.edu 

 

 

 

 

December’s episode of Conversations on the Partner’s Path will explore what happens when the work of maintaining spiritual and mental wellness gives way to the work of engaging mental illness on a crisis or chronic footing. For families living in the clergy fishbowl, the ordinary difficulties of identifying the problem, seeking care, and supporting a loved one through difficulty, can be magnified by the dilemma of how to balance privacy and transparency, and at times the loss of control over that balance.
What does it look like when the ordained person, their spouse, or their children encounter a period of profound mental health difficulty?

How do we navigate the tensions?

What would it look like to model a compassionate imperfection?

How do we seek essential support in a way that protects our emotional safety?

Rev. Dr. Sarah Griffith Lund has engaged these questions and more. Her first book, Blessed are the Crazy: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness, Family and Church, is a memoir of growing up in a clergy family marked by severe and persistent mental illness. Her more recent work, Blessed Union: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness and Marriage, brings together stories from many clergy couples about living with mental health challenges.
Sarah is the senior pastor of First Congregational UCC in Indianapolis. She also serves the wider church on the National Staff of the United Church of Christ as the Minister for Disabilities and Mental Health Justice. She is the Open and Affirming LGBTQ Consultant and a member of the Mental Health Ministry Team for the Indiana-Kentucky Conference UCC. Sarah received the Bob and Joyce Dell Award for Mental Health Education from the United Church of Christ Mental Health Network for "her outstanding authorship and leadership in breaking the silence about mental illness in family and in church and offering healing and hope."  
She blogs at sarahgriffithlund.com.

 

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Cathy has been a clergy spouse for 40 years, and a priest for 14 years. Currently rector of St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Williamsburg VA, she has served in lay and ordained ministry in the dioceses of Texas, Lexington, and Milwaukee.


 

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Conversations on the Partner’s Path is a new series of web conversations designed to provide a place of connection, spiritual nourishment, and gifts discernment for spouses of Episcopal clergy. Join us the first Monday of each month at 8 pm ET/7 pm CT/6 pm MT/5 pm PT as Cathy Tyndall Boyd welcomes different guest for 60 minutes of deep conversation engaging the challenges and gifts of being a clergy person's partner.  

These live, interactive, heart-to-heart engagements are the brainchild of Laura Jackson, MDiv, MA-C, Ardelle Walters, LPC, and Cathy Boyd, MDiv. They are presented cost free by The Partner’s Path (https://thepartnerspath.com) and Pathways for Baptismal Living at Bexley-Seabury Seminary (https://bexleyseabury.edu/pathways).

Recordings of the most recent program are posted on the Pathways website and an archive of all our recorded programs can be found on the Pathways for Baptismal Living vimeo site.