Hope Haven at St. John’s

We asked Cathy Baxter, Executive Director of Hope Haven, to write about this new respite ministry at St. John’s for caregivers of persons with dementia. Cathy will be manning a table outside the church after the 11 a.m. service on Sunday to answer any questions you may have about this new initiative.

As Christmas approaches, many of us long for family. For some, this is a joyful time when generations gather together. For others, it is a reminder of family that is no longer present. Often for the families of the 55 million people living with dementia it is both, as they have loved ones who are physically present, but mentally far away. Our hearts are drawn to help those who are lonely and isolated, but it is not always clear how. A single visit or a meal provides connection and comfort, assurance that they are not alone or forgotten, but the impact is fleeting. How can we give that comfort and encouragement on a consistent basis? That’s where Hope Haven comes in. Beginning in February, this new ministry at St. John’s will provide a place where those living with dementia can be surrounded by caring individuals whose only goal is to be present to them and engaged with them, sharing games and meals, making music and art. It will allow caregivers, who have so many responsibilities on their shoulders, a moment to breathe and time to take care of themselves. A recent Stanford study found that 40% of dementia caregivers die before their loved one, and caregiver stress is a major factor in this sad statistic. We can provide these stressed caregivers with time, support and a loving place to which their loved one will want to go. As the holidays come and you ask how you can bring hope to those that are suffering and isolated, please consider making a commitment to volunteer at Hope Haven once a month, or once a week. Not only will it bring joy into the lives of families dealing with dementia, but into yours as well. When we give of ourselves, we too find a much-needed connection and end up benefiting the most of all.

– Cathy Baxter

Children of Hope

The late P. D. James was highly regarded as a writer of literary mystery fiction, but in 1992 she came out with a dystopian novel, The Children of Men. Set in an imagined near-future United Kingdom beset by mass infertility and depopulation, it explored what dissent might look like in a culture in the grip of despair. At the time, the novel’s premise seemed a bit ‘out there’: thirty years later it looks prescient. Birth rates are falling in almost every country in the world, and in the more advanced countries have fallen well below replacement rate: societies are aging very quickly, and the number of able bodied and productive adults is falling dramatically. This development is likely to put an unprecedented strain on societies, and policy-makers have been seeking to boost the birth rate with parental leave, public investment in child care, baby bonuses or tax breaks for parents, yet these measures have had little impact on the birth rate. With the mass entry of women into the workforce, they may well be needed – but clearly they are not sufficient to budge the needle. My guess is that the issue is not simply social and economic, but cultural and spiritual.

Only yesterday, it seems, we were taught to be afraid of overpopulation, and many still talk as if that’s still the case – and still sneer about parents with lots of children. But now the fear is directed to the world into which parents would be bringing children, one beset by myriad threats, real or imagined: economic hardship, nuclear proliferation, climate change, major wars, partisan polarization, global epidemics, resurgent terrorism, mass shootings – to which we may now add aging of society and its depopulation! Ours is now a culture of anxiety, in a society that stokes its fears, and feeds itself on them. With fear, of course, comes anger (at the other, perceived as a threat), despair (for the future, perceived as bleak), and a turn further to the self and away from the commitments of family, church, and state, those communities constituted by the unspoken covenants between the generations. It is conventional to think of children as bringing hope for the future: what we need to recognize is that the bearing of children is itself an act of hope, a decision and choice to live in hope. As such, in this present culture of anxiety and despair it is – as P. D. James saw – a revolutionary act.

If this is half-ways right, the path forward requires a renewal of hope. It seems plausible that such renewal will involve a revival of religion. To choose to live by hope, in the face of hardship and threat, requires something more than generic optimism, or ‘faith in progress’ (since it is “progress” that has brought us these problems.) It requires some sense that the course of this world is in the hands of an allgoverning good will, which does not fail of its object.

This is where the reading of the prophets – like Isaiah, in Advent – is such an important part of developing a Christian outlook. The prophets are no Pollyannas. They are brutally realistic about the dire consequences of human folly; yet they also show us the hope that lies on the far side of judgment, and the way there.