PHILADELPHIA (March 28) - More than 100 health care professionals, most of them nurses, explored the relationship between faith and healing during a daylong workshop March 25 at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. The event was co-sponsored by the Seminary and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The event’s key planners included parish nurses from throughout the Synod’s 184-congregation territory.

Motivational speaker Helene K. Nawrocki urged her health care listeners to achieve a balanced lifestyle by first being benevolent to themselves. “Forgiving yourself, being kind to yourself first, can be an important key to being in the flow of the day,” said Nawrocki, the Chief Executive Officer of the Potter County, PA, Educational Council.

With such a mindset of self-care and compassion, helping to heal others can create a “circle of exchange” contributing also to self-healing, said Nawrocki, who studied at La Salle University to earn her RN and MSN degrees. She has also taught at the La Salle School of Nursing and is a native of Philadelphia.

Nawrocki based her presentation on the theme, “Lessons from Oz,” in which the scarecrow, lion and tin man all were seeking something they did not have. “Each of us in our own place is pushing against a lot of energy,” she said. To achieve a desirable balance in life, she urged the workshop attendees to set goals and practice lifelong learning. She advised her audience to study in order to learn more about the essence of what rings true in their lives. And, she challenged her listeners to reach out to others, gaining wisdom from others’ experiences in order to add to their own perspectives. With a depth of background, they should finally be in a position to discern effectively and make good judgments, she suggested.

Balance is crucial to health professionals, she said, because if one is totally caught up in taking care of others, one can ignore personal issues. But with balance, health professionals “can facilitate the growth of someone else, whether it is toward recovery or toward a peaceful death. You have much more to give when you are also committed to self-care,” she advised.

Signs of inner peace include being able to act spontaneously rather than acting on the basis of past fears, enjoying each moment and not being preoccupied about judging others. Other such signs include a loss of interest in interpreting the acts of others, losing interest in conflict and losing the ability to worry. She encouraged her audience to be “susceptible to love extended by others. Enjoy connectedness and attacks of smiling. Let things happen rather than always thinking you need to make them happen.”

Workshops for the day focused on Hospice Debriefing, led by Pastor W. Dean Bickel; Legacy to healing led by Lamont Satterly; Humor and Ministry led by Nawrocki; Sharing the Vision, co-led by team ministry partners Pastor David Shaheen and Parish Nurse Bobbi Castellan; Parish Nursing led by nurse/author Judith A. Shelly, and The Ministry of Healing, Biblical, Theological and Current Concepts led by Pastor Suzan Farley.

Planning Team for the day included Bickel, pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Perkasie; Shelly, Resources Director and Editor of the Journal of Christian Nursing; Karen Bergey, Director of the Becoming Center at Artman Home in Ambler; Ann Farley, Coordinator of the Parish Nurse Program in the Holy Redeemer Health System; Elizabeth Franco, a parish nurse at God’s Love Lutheran Church, Newtown Square, PA.

Also on the team were the Rev. Edward Oswald, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Drexel Hill; the Rev. George E. Keck, Director of Lay Theological Education at the Seminary, and Janet Topper, parish nurse at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler.