Overview
Donna Burske, Senior Chaplain for AdventHealth Medical Group, M.Div. grad, and current D.Min. student, joins the Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast today. She provides pastoral care to a 4,000 person congregation composed of doctors, nurses, physician assistants and staff. As she integrates her faith with her work, she provides a listening ear, a non-anxious presence and spiritual care for those who are working on the front lines to heal others. In today’s conversation, we talk about her calling, heart to serve others and explore her dissertation research that is finding ways to equip health care workers to become spiritual ambassadors, so that they can find a deeper meaning in their work, and provide whole person care to others.
Let’s listen!
*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.
Donna Burske, Senior Chaplain for AdventHealth Medical Group
Donna Burkse received her M.Div. from Asbury Seminary and studied on the Orlando campus. She is a long-time hospital chaplain and leader and was asked to move into a new role providing congregational care to a 300 practice, 4000 team member medical group that consists of physician practices of all types. She works with providers and team members to provide spiritual care to those who serve others.
Her parents were missionaries in Vietnam and the Phillippines for more than 30 years. While a lifelong follower of Jesus, she encountered Jesus in a new way during a difficult season and her spirituality became very personal. While her missionary background has framed so much of her perspective on life, finding and going deep in a personal way with Jesus, has been even more defining.
Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast
Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.
Show Notes
Guest Links
- Connect with Donna on Facebook
Transcript
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode of The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast. I’m your host, Heidi E. Wilcox bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders and people just like you, who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need. Today on the podcast, Donna Burske, senior chaplain for advent health medical group, Miv. grad, and current DMin. Student at the seminary joins the podcast today. She provides pastoral care to a 4,000 person congregation composed of doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants and staff.
Heidi Wilcox:
As she integrates her faith with her work, she provides a listening ear, a non-anxious presence and spiritual care for those who are working on the front lines to heal others. In today’s conversation, we talk about her calling, heart to serve others and explore her dissertation research that is finding ways to equip healthcare workers, to become spiritual ambassadors so they can find a deeper meaning in their work and provide whole person care to others. Let’s listen.
Heidi Wilcox:
Donna, thank you so much for joining me today. It is an absolute delight to have you. You’re the senior chaplain for Advent Health Medical Group and a current DMin student. So we have a lot to talk about today, thank you so much for being here.
Donna Burske:
It’s my pleasure.
Heidi Wilcox:
You grew up as a missionary kid in Vietnam in the Philippines. So unlike some of us you knew about Jesus your whole life. When did your faith become personal to you?
Donna Burske:
So some years ago it was before my first Asbury experience, when I got an MDiv I was diagnosed with a stage four cancer, and in the process of dealing with that, my marriage of many years blew up. And, I mean, like for most of us, against my will. And I found myself face down in the dirt, not knowing what the future was, I still had children at home and I was terrified for them, terrified for me and clinging to everything that I could for help. And a very good doctor and oncologist said to me, he actually held my hand and he said, “Donna, this is the moment. You need to go home and you need to drill down and decide what are one or two, at most three things that really matter in your life.”
Donna Burske:
And I realized, obviously, my children, but I realized my faith really mattered, but it had never been personal, I had the faith of my parents. And so a year and a half of cancer therapy, of divorce, of unknowns of every kind, emotional, financial would I live was treatment working. All of those things, my faith became very personal.
Heidi Wilcox:
Were you a chaplain prior to this? What were you doing before and how did this experience kind of change your trajectory?
Donna Burske:
Yeah, so I did a project development within the finance sphere prior to that, I was doing fine, but I was putting in time, I think. And ironically, I had felt a call to ministry when I first started college and my dad had said, “No, women don’t do that,” which he thought he was doing the right thing. So as I went through this just mind numbing reassessment of life, I realized a call to ministry. And of course at that time, I really felt called to the medical world.
Heidi Wilcox:
What year was this?
Donna Burske:
2001.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.
Donna Burske:
And I remember going through this treatment for a period of months and then they were going to assess whether it was working and whether to keep on. And I went in for all these imaging scans of various kinds, it took about five hours to do all of them, and I was cold and weak and tired, and I could tell that the person working with me, she was concerned about me personally, not just getting the scans done. And it was all done, her boss came over and he said, “We’d like you just to stay here. We’re calling your doctor because we want to be able to tell you what we see or have him do it on the phone and you not have to drive all the way across town to get the results.
Heidi Wilcox:
That was kind.
Donna Burske:
It was spiritual care.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.
Donna Burske:
I had no energy left, I was afraid, I was tired, I was emaciated. And so I sat there and waited and they got the doctor on the phone and he sat there beside me and they told me that my scans were completely clear, and that what they were doing had not only worked, it had worked more than they expected. And then this person in imaging asked, “May I pray with you?” That’s where my dissertation is coming from, right there.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. Okay. So tell me about your dissertation because, well, okay, tell me about what you did next because you didn’t just jump from that experience to writing your dissertation.
Donna Burske:
Right.
Heidi Wilcox:
So take me through the journey of how you got to where you are now.
Donna Burske:
So after that, I reached out to several people who I respected and there was overlap in my work because I work in a faith-based healthcare system, there was overlap in my work between mission and what I did. And so I reached out to a couple of the people that I really respected and told them I was sensing a call to ministry, and one of them actually directed me to Asbury. And so I did a unit of clinical pastoral education first to kind of test the waters and finished that and enrolled at Asbury to do an MDiv.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.
Donna Burske:
And I was never the brightest student, but I was always the fully engaged student, every minute of Asbury.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So then were you preparing at that time to become a chaplain?
Donna Burske:
Yes. Once I do that unit of CPE, I had to have two to become a chaplain. I needed the degree done, but they actually hired me about midpoint in my degree to move into full-time chaplaincy and yeah, I’ve never looked back.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, and you were doing this on the Orlando Campus.
Donna Burske:
Winter Park.
Heidi Wilcox:
Winter Park. Okay.
Donna Burske:
Winter Park. I was there 17 years, I think full-time and part of the time I was split between Winter Park and [inaudible 00:07:47].
Heidi Wilcox:
But what I meant was that you were studying on the Orlando Campus.
Donna Burske:
Oh yes, definitely. Yes. 100%.
Heidi Wilcox:
So that was perfect because then you can study and keep working at the same time
Donna Burske:
And not move, be near my family. Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, yes. That’s awesome.
Donna Burske:
So it was a small tight close community.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So you started out at Winter Park Memorial Hospital being a chaplain for patients, how did you transition to being a chaplain for healthcare providers?
Donna Burske:
So at Winter Park through most of my years there, I was a lead chaplain, kind of directed mission for the hospital and vision for mission for that hospital which is a 400 bed hospital and built up a chaplain team. But through all of my time as a chaplain, my heartbeat was possibly more with the clinical team than the patient. I always felt like if I took really good care of nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists and lab people, that the patient receive that, and it impacted every patient that they cared for, not just the one I could see.
Donna Burske:
So I did a lot of patient care, but I’ve always been about team. So Athen Health Medical Group has been growing and they’ve had no real disciplined pastoral care. And it’s huge, there’s 300 practices in eight counties, all disciplines specialties, primary care, 1200 providers, doctors, and PAs, 1200 staff and no spiritual care. So I was asked to start a program for them, to build a program of pastoral care for them as a congregation. So what I do has nothing to do with the patients, my role is to begin to develop a process of spirituality embedded within everything they are.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow.
Donna Burske:
There’s one of me and almost 4000 of them.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, what a huge job.
Donna Burske:
There’s 3,800 people. So it became very evident that I had to do something more than one thing to extend by myself. So the first thing I did was we set up, first of all, a private email with no name on it. And twice a week, an email goes out, inviting people to send confidential prayers, and I write answers and prayers for all of them. And then the other thing I’m doing is this process that I’m embedding in my dissertation of what we’re calling spiritual ambassadors to train and equip people in the office from doctors, to people who do cleaning, to people at the front desk, to people on the phone to nurses, to MAs who step up and say, “I want to be a presence for Jesus in this place.”
Donna Burske:
So teaching them nonjudgmental listening, teaching them to find comfort with prayer and to be comfortable praying with people of different faiths. To teach them to listen and reflect. So all those things that they can do within the sphere of their work that can be what that man was to me that day in that imaging department. I care for you beyond taking this picture, I care for who you are and your soul.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I think it’s amazing. Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Donna Burske:
My goal is one in every office, one person in every office, it looks like, and I’d like to have people across all disciplines, but I’m already hearing from all kinds of people who want to…. “Are the videos ready? Can we start training yet?” So there’s going to be a difference.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, it sounds like people are really excited about it and that’s really awesome, especially right now. So how did you, because you’re a current DMin student at Asbury, what cohort are you in?
Donna Burske:
Faith work and economics.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s a perfect fit for you, right?
Donna Burske:
Yeah. I’m right at the intersection of faith and work, I sit right there.
Heidi Wilcox:
How did you come to Asbury the second time?
Donna Burske:
Eric Currie.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.
Donna Burske:
I took somebody into the Orlando campus that was looking at their MDF program and Eric said, “Donna, we have a DMin you should do and we can help you, we can scholarship you a little bit.” By the end of the day I had applied.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, wow. That’s awesome. So you said that that moment in imaging was what gave you the idea for your dissertation?
Donna Burske:
Yes.
Heidi Wilcox:
And so your dissertation is studying the effectiveness of training frontline workers to do in the gap spiritual care. You’ve already started, but can you tell us a little bit more about your dissertation?
Donna Burske:
So grounding my dissertation in Nehemiah, I think Nehemiah on the wall is a classic example of extending yourself. Nehemiah was a lay person, Ezra was clergy, and they put this plan together to pull everyone together to get the job done, to rebuild the walls, and also, Paul. I think Paul was an example of extending himself through his colleagues who he poured his attention into and sent them out.
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s great. Why is it so important that people who take care of other people are equipped to do spiritual care as well if they want to do that?
Donna Burske:
So one of the things, and this comes from my time in the hospital because I haven’t been gone from inpatient care very long, doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, all those frontline clinical caregivers get worn down.
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), especially now.
Donna Burske:
Especially right now, even when it’s good, so really right now. They work hard, they’re getting pushed from above, they’re getting pushed from patients and their families, they get pushed from every direction, save money, don’t do this, do that, don’t do this, do that and they burn out if they don’t have meaning. And for so many people, if they can bring spirituality into their work, it then gives them a deep sense of meaning and the hazards and the things that come along don’t matter as much because my purpose is deeper. I want you to be happy, I want you to be comfortable, but my purpose is that you’re well in soul and body and spirit, that’s a deep place of meaning that really helps us deal with a cranky doctor or a cranky spouse or a cranky administrator.
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So If you’re in Florida right now, and we know that COVID is still pretty rampant everywhere, but as you’re caring for these almost 4,000 healthcare workers in the midst of this crisis, it’s a big job by itself before COVID, but what is it like right now in your area as you guys have been dealing with this for the last 18 months and you are caring for people who are worn out and tired, but still committed to caring for other people?
Donna Burske:
People are reaching me under their commitment. So again, as I meet with them and talk to them and try to encourage, there are several things that are an answer and one is prayer. Rarely do I pray with anyone either individually or in a group that everyone doesn’t end up crying because it goes right down into their soul to those places that they’re trying to avoid the pain, and in prayer, you can’t.
Donna Burske:
And one of the big things we’re dealing with right now is hostility, people are acting out in actually criminal ways, patients and coworkers as there’s disagreement and fear, fear is under that. So I have done some debriefs with teams after difficult situations or where they’re not all getting along to try and find places of understanding that they can work from. So I recently worked with a team that one person came to work with COVID and knew it and thought it would be okay because she had a mask on and she gave it to the whole team, and there were some difficulties as they gave it to family members, some people that got very sick and the anger was immense.
Donna Burske:
So my role was to sit with them a few times with coffee and cookies and try to help them hear each other, because she was coming to work partly not realizing the depth of how serious COVID is as unimaginable that is, partly because she’s a single mother of three small children with no dad support and she was terrified of loss of income, she was terrified of being homeless. So when placed in the threat of having her children homeless or going to work wearing a mask thinking that she was covering her germs, she made that decision. Well, when people really started to listen to her heart, they’re still not happy, but they could work with her again and they’re mending their fences slowly.
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Wow. That’s a rough thing to heal from, but conversation is so important for many areas of our lives. Tell me what does the rest of your role look like especially during COVID. Is it more difficult to meet with people and things that?
Donna Burske:
So I’ve been vaccinated and I’ve had COVID and I’ve had monoclonal infusion so I feel indestructible and I do. So I mask up and glove up and go visit in the office. Again, I don’t see patients, we’re all being tested regularly and I always ask people if they’re vaccinated because I’m a vaccine believer, but if nothing else, we don’t get it as badly if we’re vaccinated, I get the fear factor but… So I visit practices part of the time, I spend a lot of time on my laptop doing virtual visits.
Donna Burske:
And again, I do those prayer emails, I’m averaging 200 to 300 a week which really takes time, and I’m writing the scripts for these spiritual ambassador training videos, which I expect to end up with 10, and getting ready to videotape those and working on the plan to how we’re going to process all of that. And I’m training some basically Steven’s ministers to do grief groups, we’re going to start grief groups in November.
Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. Yeah. All of that is so needed. What does the spiritual ambassador training program, what are you envisioning it to look like?
Donna Burske:
So the first video just talks about the why, the value added of why we care, why we bring compassion. Compassion is the action, empathy is the feeling, why do we bring those into the workplace and what difference does it make for us and for the other person? And how do we encounter the person we’re working beside or the person on the phone, anyone. And I’m talking to them about learning to listen deeply and listen without judgment in one, which is big. So I stop for a little time of practice and then I’m asking them to email me their experience and I’ll write back.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. So I want to dig deeper on that one because that’s something that we all need. I know I need it because it’s easy for me to hear or talk to somebody that thinks differently than I do, and it’s easier right now for me than it has ever been to write them off as I literally cannot be friends with you because we don’t think the same way. So how can I learn to listen without judgment?
Donna Burske:
Every single person that exists is a child of God.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Donna Burske:
Every single person is a child of God, deeply loved by God, put together by God. And if we knew their understory, if we knew what’s behind what they’ve experienced and they’ve lived, we would not pass the same kinds of judgment. I am flawed to the core, but I’m comfortable with my flaws. I know them, I know where they come from, well, sometimes.
Heidi Wilcox:
Or we’re learning to know where they come from.
Donna Burske:
Yes, and I look at someone else and they have those same stories. So how can I listen to them, and one of the hardest places right now, I have a woman who I’m working with, she is a nurse, an anti-vaxxer. She convinced her husband that because it’s an RNA process, they should not be vaccinated. She texted me a couple of weeks ago. She said, “Chaplain, my husband has been in the hospital on the vent, they gave him 48 hours to live.”
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, that’s so sad.
Donna Burske:
“Pray that I can forgive myself because if he’d been vaccinated, he might’ve had a chance and it’s my fault.”
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, no.
Donna Burske:
So we begun this long journey that we’ll be on for a very long time of self-forgiveness, of non-judgment. She thought she was doing the best thing and we all as humans were human.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. And I think all of us, we make the best that we can most of the time.
Donna Burske:
Trust that even if it maybe it doesn’t look like it, yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I think that’s what we’re all trying to do.
Donna Burske:
Yes. And trust that, that person that you don’t understand, if they could have known then what they know looking back wouldn’t have made the same decision probably.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good. Thank you for sharing that. I will try to put that into practice in my own life a little bit too. Tell me about the rest of the spiritual ambassador program, I think we were on video three.
Donna Burske:
Respecting silence. So a few seconds of silence and people will often come up and begin talking about things they otherwise wouldn’t or sometimes need a space of learning in dialogue with someone to be comfortable with silence is very hard, maintaining confidentiality. When you are a spiritual ambassador, you’re taking on a missional role and it is absolutely critical that everything that comes to you is completely confidential unless someone’s safety is at stake, and that’s easier for some than others. But every one of us is called to be missional, that’s not a clergy thing.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right, right. For sure.
Donna Burske:
Yeah, and part of that is I will honor you by maintaining confidentiality around anything that comes out.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, that’s so important.
Donna Burske:
So balancing, listening, and reflecting, looking for feeling underneath words, very important, and what I’m going to tell them is often when you end the conversation, if you ask somebody to say, what one feeling word would you put on this? It will even surprise them.
Heidi Wilcox:
Really? Yeah. Because I think so much at the time. I know for me, I go through my day, I talk to people. I don’t think about how I’m feeling about at all and that’s interesting, that would be a good self practice, I think, as well to kind of get in tune with what’s really going on with us and maybe inform some of the words that we are saying or not saying.
Donna Burske:
Yeah. So I’m going to cast back a bit to a previous podcast but in centering prayer. That’s what you’re doing with God, is allowing God the space to say to you, what have you been feeling? What’s going on underneath? What’s the overarching theme here? That comes out in centering corner.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. And then to be able to release that for healing as you… Yes. That’s beautiful, that’s beautiful.
Donna Burske:
So recent conversation with a surgery scheduler who has lost three family members to COVID in the last couple of months and I was visiting with her and she was tearfully telling me her story and we got all done and I said, “What one feeling word sums everything up?” She expected it was grief or fear. What she realized was she was more stressed, right now it was stress. So it’s a completely different thing then to begin to deal with that and to acknowledge, “Man, I am so stressed. I can’t deal with my grief yet.”
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for real. I’ve lost count. Did we get to all 10 videos because I definitely want to hear about them before we move on.
Donna Burske:
I don’t know that there’s 10 topics, advice free one, not giving advice, it’s really important when you’re sitting with somebody. This goes back to no judgment, we want to give advice, but be with them, don’t fix them. So [inaudible 00:27:54] versus fixing.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, yes. And I know you’re doing this for healthcare workers, but I just see that all of us can learn from these practices if we want to incorporate some of this into our everyday work life, our home lives, things like that. So thank you so much for sharing that and for doing this. We’ve talked about the intersection of faith and work and you are doing it, you are right in the middle of that intersection, but I’d love to hear from you what you see as the intersection between, or the relationship rather between faith and work.
Donna Burske:
It goes back to meaning. So for example, pre-cancer I had a job that I was doing well, supporting myself well, fit my family life well, but there wasn’t a lot of meaning. I moved into something that for me just pours meaning out and a day can be ever so difficult. But if it brings you meaning, if you can look back and say, “This has really brought a lot of meaning to my life,” it takes away so much of the stress and strain, the tired. So often, I’ll come out of a conversation with someone like that surgery scheduler who has lost family members and you would think, “Man, you must be exhausted.”
Donna Burske:
No, I saw a glimmer of faith and hope come into her eyes, and that’s where my meaning comes from. When I can see hope done, it motivates me and energizes me. And so I think meaning is at the crux of faith and work, that bringing our faith and personal spirituality without being evangelical, if I can say that, into the workplace gives our work meaning.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. What are some ways that you would suggest whether we’re in healthcare or another type of field that we can go about being spiritual ambassadors wherever we are?
Donna Burske:
Empathy, kindness and compassion. Prayer even if it’s only silent. Often if you say, “May I pray with you?” And someone will say, “No.” If you say, “May I pray for you after I leave?” Rarely is that refused.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Donna Burske:
That’s spirituality in a healthy way in the workplace. Again, we are all missional. If you go back to Nehemiah story, everyone’s involved. As followers of Jesus we’re called to hoar kindness and empathy and compassion out, that’s who we’re supposed to be.
Heidi Wilcox:
So as you’re dealing with 4,000 people plus your own family and people that you know, and I know from just talking to you, you provide spiritual care, it’s just who you are, how are you, because everybody is exhausted right now, especially if you’re trying to give care to other people in any way, how are you being rejuvenated and revived right now so that you can go on to provide care for others?
Donna Burske:
So I rejuvenate outdoors.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yes. I’m the same.
Donna Burske:
Sunshine, trees, water. I live in Florida, there’s plenty of water, plenty of sun. Before COVID I was a jogger, right now I can’t jog, but I can walk. And outdoors, I talked to a counselor yesterday who was deeply suffering from secondary trauma and her employer said, “Four hours a day outside until you feel better.” And she said it took her about six weeks. So for me, it’s outdoors, it’s prayer, and I have a couple of friends who are accountability partners who hold my feet to the fire, it’s really important.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, we all need community.
Donna Burske:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned this and so I want to get into it just a little bit because what is secondary trauma? Because I think we all kind of know firsthand trauma, but what is secondary trauma?
Donna Burske:
So watching you go through trauma and you are my friend causes me trauma. Working in a physician office, losing patients that you know is firsthand trauma, but there’s also the secondary trauma of all the things going on that you’re observing or participating in that affect your psyche. So observing and participating in other people’s trauma is a secondary trauma.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, and I think we’ve all had that.
Donna Burske:
Yes. And there’s moral injury where this is nurses sustaining somebody knowing they’re suffering because their loved ones don’t want to let them go and you know your participating in their suffering is moral injury, similar issues.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How do we navigate through those? How do we know when we need to reach out for spiritual care? How do we find somebody for either spiritual care or mental health care? They kind of go together, but can be two separate people.
Donna Burske:
You know, it’s a good question because counselors are so busy right now, they’re actually telling some people, “I have people that are in so much worse shape than you are, and I can’t take you on,” that’s actually happening. And I have a spiritual director in my life that I meet with once a month, I’ve bumped that up to twice a month recently, everyone needs a non-anxious non-judgemental prayerful place where they can sort their feelings, the personal call them back when they’re all done and say, “Now, what one feeling would you put over all of that?” It draws us up short.
Donna Burske:
So someone that’s not a friend or family member that you can be honest with and that will keep you self-aware. So much of dealing with our stress is staying self-aware, and if we’re not honest with ourselves, we’re not self-aware.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s true, that’s true.
Donna Burske:
So somebody somewhere in your life, if you can’t get a counselor which I know is going on right now, if you can find a spiritual director, a member care pastor, somebody that you can process with to kind of pull you outside of your life and look in.
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, that’s so important. It’s a little scary, but the fruit of that is very rewarding. As you come to in the past 18 months, what do you know about God now that you didn’t know about him in March of 2020?
Donna Burske:
The hardest things in our life make faith more real. I’ve gone through this once of my faith becoming my own and not what my parents gave me because of hardship. We have lived in community the deepest of hardships. In community, we have lost family, friends, coworkers, colleagues, people we didn’t know but maybe listen to on the radio or whatever, and in community, we heal. In community, we heal, and in the community of faith, we should find our solace.
Heidi Wilcox:
Definitely
Donna Burske:
God resides, we never invite God in. God resides with us. And when you’re in a community and you’re in pain together I think it’s a thin place where that residing God is so visible and so touchable.
Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and you’re doing that for her, for so many people. You’re trying to do that. Yeah. You had mentioned before we started recording that you had a text that had been important to you, would you mind sharing that with us?
Donna Burske:
Yeah, Psalms 107, talks about observing the Lord’s power and action, and his impressive works on the deepest of seas. He spoken the winds rose stirring up the waves, the ships were tossed to the heavens and plunged again to the depths. The sailor’s cringed in terror. They reeled and staggered drunkards and words there with sand. “Lord help us,” they cried in their trouble and he saved them from their distress. He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves. What a blessing was that stillness as he brought them safely into harbor. Let us praise the Lord.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. We have one question that we ask everybody before we wrap up the podcast, but before we do, especially in your line of work, as the chaplain for people who are on the front lines of this pandemic who stand in the gap for us every day even when we’re not in a pandemic, how can we be praying for you and how can we be praying for them as well?
Donna Burske:
So my heart beats right now, I’m sorry, for doctors and nurses. They are exhausted, there aren’t enough to go around. They hardly have the energy to put one foot in front of the other anymore, and they’re trying to hold their own lives together. And really, the gifts that we give them is to pray that they’ll have the endurance and the strength, that God would relieve some of their suffering because they are suffering.
Heidi Wilcox:
I speak for our listeners that we will be praying for that. How can we pray for you as you’re working with them?
Donna Burske:
It’s the same.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.
Donna Burske:
And Lord ranks increase. May there be so many people that will sign up and say, “I want to be a presence for Jesus in this hurting world.”
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Well, we will be praying for you, for those you care for, and just thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Before we go, I have one question that we ask everybody, because the show is called The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast, what is one practice, you can have more than one, but just one, that is helping you thrive in your life right now?
Donna Burske:
Centering prayer and nature. Nature world.
Heidi Wilcox:
They kind of go together, don’t they?
Donna Burske:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. Very much.
Heidi Wilcox:
Very much.
Donna Burske:
Very much.
Heidi Wilcox:
Donna, I said this was the last question, but I always like to ask everyone too if there’s anything else they’d like to talk about that I didn’t know to ask.
Donna Burske:
I would just say to everyone today find somebody who works in health care and share the love. Where you stand on the political issues, they’re in the center of the storm. So find someone, anyone who works in healthcare and share the love.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s a good word. That’s a good word. Donna, this conversation has been a delight. Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about your story, your dissertation work and how that’s affecting your work now. Thank you so much.
Donna Burske:
My pleasure, thank you.
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Donna Burske. Just so grateful for her time and for the work that she is doing to help those who are helping us. I hope that like me, you might have learned something today and trust that you will be in prayer, not only for Donna, but for the team of folks that she is working to care for as they stand in the gap for you and for me that they will find the strength and courage to continue.
Heidi Wilcox:
Thank you again for joining us today, thanks to Donna for being part of the show. And as always, you can follow us in all the places on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @asburyseminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.
