Monthly reflections from Kevin Keelen.
Each month, our bereavement minister Kevin Keelen shares a short reflection: a thought, a story, or a gentle companion for wherever you are on your grief journey. New writings appear here as they are published.
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Reflection, April 15, 2020
Dear Friends, I spent New Year’s this year in El Salvador and I am drawn to one of their national heroes, Oscar Romero. He was an archbishop who was assassinated while celebrating Mass for the poorest of the poor in his country. Before his tragic death, Romero had a ‘conversion’ experience in which his eyes…
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Reflection, April 14, 2020
Dear Friends, It is Easter Monday morning as I write this reflection. Outside a nor’easter is raging, and as the brutal winds batter the cold, hard rain onto my window panes, I can’t see too much through them because it is so dark and dreary. This is Easter? This is downright depressing. Ironically I am…
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Reflection, April 09, 2020
Dear Friends, I have mentioned that I, and others, are feeling a spiritual connection during this time of Corona isolation, and so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is Holy Week for Christians and the feasts of Passover and Easter are about to be celebrated among Jews and Christians throughout the world. Today…
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Reflection, April 08, 2020
Dear Friends, In his reflection for today in, “Grief One Day at a Time,” Alan Wolfelt talks about “this crazy journey we call grief.” It’s very much a journey that we have no idea where we are going or where we will end up. Right now, in the thick of the Coronavirus crisis we are…
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Reflection, April 07, 2020
In place of a written reflection today, we are sending out the guided meditation that I wrote for Stephy’s Place which is used at the beginning of every support group. It will be sent as an audio file so you can hear my pretty voice LOL. Feel free to save it and use it whenever…
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Reflection, April 02, 2020
Dear Friends, At the end of my le7er on Tuesday I mentioned briefly that we are powerless, and I would like to expand on that a bit today as we prepare for yet another weekend of lockdown and isolation. It took me many years of life and experiences of loss, heartache, and anxiety to begin…
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Reflection, April 01, 2020
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we found out that this whole Coronavirus was a big April fools joke? It would be just as fantastic to wake up and find out that all of our losses were just a bad dream. But alas, it is no joke, no dream, and here we are living in this…
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Reflection, March 31, 2020
Dear Friends, I have to be honest, I’m finding it rather difficult to write or reflect today because my brother Patrick passed away on Saturday and I am still in that early phase of processing and questioning. I do need, however to tell a bit of his story, as part of my own mourning, so…
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Reflection, March 26, 2020
Dear Friends, One of the most practical and helpful aspects of our support groups is when people share what they find most helpful, or not, in the experience of grief and mourning. Often this opens us up to try different coping skills that perhaps we had never thought about before. During this time of what…
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Reflection, March 25, 2020
Dear Friends, The world has suddenly become very small. Right now, for most of us our entire world is where we live and that’s it. Such is life in quarantine. It’s interesting how in this very small world, when all of our attention is focused in the right here right now, how we notice things…