The Wayne E. Oates Institute is a Connected Learning Community exploring spirituality and health as a way to advance integrative care for the whole person. The Oates Institute is a non-profit educational organization made up of caregivers from the medical, spiritual and counseling communities providing a forum for joining together as an interdisciplinary dialogue toward understanding the relationship between spirituality and the healing process.

• A Personal Reflection on Clinical and Spiritual Truth by Allan Josephson
• New Articles in the Oates Journal
• Baseball, Ghosts, and Field of Dreams Seminar -- October 5-23
• Registration is Open for October Online Seminars
• In the WEOI Bookstore

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A Personal Reflection on Clinical and Spiritual Truth by Allan Josephson, M.D.

Make reservations online for the Annual Forum and Oates Award Dinner

New Articles in the Oates Journal

"A Dialogic Ethic: Supporting Grandparent Caregivers in the Family"
by Melissa Wood Alemán, Ph.D.
Like many parents, I have relied on my mother on occasion to help us in providing care for our son when we’ve been shorthanded or without childcare. Indeed I am not alone in this practice. At the turn of the millennium, 2.4 million grandparents were providing some form of caregiving support for their grandchildren, from daily after school care and daycare to custodial parenting (U.S. Census, 2000). This number continues to rise, while community and family provisions to assist those grandparents in their caregiving role remain abysmal, if at all. Indeed, grandparent caregivers are often the silent and invisible support system that provides the scaffolding for our family systems (Creighton, 1991) – a support system that many family members take for granted. As community members, social workers, pastoral counselors, and especially as family members, we need to give greater consideration to the ethical responsibilities we have for supporting our grandparent caregivers as they have supported us.
(Read more...)

"Psalm 49: Why should I be afraid?"
by Anne Ogden
Evil days seem to surround us—war, damage to our planet, profound poverty while others have wealth beyond measure. The news is deeply disturbing—and the nagging thought persists in my mind: I am a participant in the problem. Why should I be afraid? Why not? The image that this psalm brings to my mind is the one of people leaping from the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the wise and the dull, the poor and the wealthy, dying together. (Read more...)

Baseball, Ghosts, and Field of Dreams Seminar -- October 5-23

As we enter baseball's second season, we are offering a seminar that uses a baseball movie to explore life transitions and the journey toward wholeness. Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to refer to a “meaningful coincidence.” Such can be said of the film Field of Dreams, which was adapted from the book, Shoeless Joe, by J.D.Kinsella. Neither the writer nor the screen producer intended it, but the film provides a powerful dramatization of Jung’s theory of the mid-life transition and the process of “individuation,” which is the process of coming into “wholeness,” a mid-life journey of integration of our outer driven “ego” with the center of existence, the “self” or soul.

Click here for more information and to register

Registration is Open for October Online Seminars

Registration is now open for the October online seminars. These seminars will begin on Monday, October 5 and continue through Friday, October 23. Six seminars will be offered, with four of those being three-week seminars that provide 12 contact hours of continuing education credit and two being six-week seminars that provide 24 contact hours of continuing education credit. The seminars are: Baseball, Ghosts, and Field of Dreams: The Journey Toward Wholeness Care at the End of Life Fighting the Tiger: The Psychological and Spiritual Effects of Emotional Trauma Preaching and Pastoral Care Spirituality of the Ghost Story Working (and Ministering) with Net Gens 101

Click here for more information and to register

Have You Been to the WEOI Bookstore Lately? Check It Out:

Workaholic in Recovery Mug

The Struggle To Be Free

Care of Troublesome People

Please note: One easy way to support the Oates Institute is by making your Amazon.Com purchases through the WEOI Bookstore. When you do this, the Oates Institute receives a 6% referral fee from Amazon.

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