Founder and CEO of The Police Chaplain Program and law enforcement trainer at the US Department of Homeland Security, Gary Holden, talks about his experience of chaplaincy at Ground Zero after 9/11 in NYC, and as an instructor and director of various chaplain programs. He explains what a Chaplain does and how chaplaincy and resiliency are interconnected. Gary’s concept of ‘Ministry of Presence’. Gary explains his belief that by helping the community in need, one is actually helping law enforcement, and vice versa.
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Chaplaincy at Ground Zero: Experience & Insights with Rev. Gary Holden Transcript
Kelly Raths:
Well hello everyone, and welcome to another session on day four of the Global First Responder Resilience Summit. My name is Kelly Raths, and I'll be your co-host for this particular session. Today's theme is “Spiritual Fitness and Resilience,” and I'm very excited to be here today with Chaplain Gary Holden. So welcome, Reverend Holden.
Reverend Gary Holden:
Hi, Kelly. It's great to see you for the first time here since we've been corresponding, but thank you for the opportunity.
Kelly Raths:
Yeah, you bet, looking forward to the conversation. So I'm going to share a little bit of your bio, Reverend Holden, for our audience, and then we have some questions, we'll just kind of do some back and forth. Yes, so, Reverend Gary Holden is the founder, president and CEO of The Police Chaplain Program. Chaplain Holden’s training resume is lengthy and impressive and includes training certifications with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers and the International Critical Incident Stress Management Foundation. In 2015 Reverend Holden, you were awarded the prestigious Susan E. Hamilton, Ph.D. Award by the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation at their World Congress for your development of and work for police chaplaincy. Last Saturday, or actually now a couple Saturdays ago, was the anniversary of September 11, and that holds a particular poignance for you, as I understand, because you served as a chaplain after 911 at ground zero. In the last number of years, you've continued to actively counsel and chaplain with the New Jersey Department of Disaster Response and Crisis Counseling, and you served as a member of the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security and Interfaith Advisory Council, so still very active. I also see that you've been a leader providing chaplaincy for public school resource officers. So that's interesting, particularly interesting to me, and maybe the audience. You are a sought after speaker, particularly at patriotic events and other kind of significant memorials and timely kind of American democratic recognition of all those religious traditions and important things. And so it's a gift to have you here with your background. So looking forward to this conversation.
Reverend Gary Holden:
Thank you. Well, I appreciate that we just, you know we do what we have to do in the days in which we live, and I’m just thankful for the opportunities that have been given to do many different things,I guess you would say.
Kelly Raths:
Yeah, meaningful, good and meaningful work. Well, Reverend Holden, I wanted to start with just a little bit because, as we are recording here on the heels of, what is hard for me to believe is the 20th anniversary of September 11th. So that's just, you know, kind of getting our head wrapped around that, and as we talked about in the intro, that has a particular significance to you, and I think was just kind of a watershed moment for law enforcement and for us in many different regards. So wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how you spent the 20th anniversary this September 11th. I'm curious what you did to commemorate that time. And then I'd love if you can reflect a little bit on the changes that you've seen in your years of service since then, on spiritual resilience for first responders. So how does that compare now to 20 years ago, and any thoughts on influence that 911 had, on resiliency for this particularly challenging time that we find ourselves in?
Reverend Gary Holden:
Well, so every year, I think, for the 20 years, and like you said, it's hard to believe it's been 20 years. It really just seems like it was a short time ago. But every year, I believe, since that time, where there's been 911 services, I've been involved, one way or another, most of the time leading services. So this year, we had a special service at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, at the former Navy Chapel, which is now the headquarters for chaplains, and that's one of the organizations I work with. So the beautiful chapel that's there on the Philadelphia Naval Yard is where we had the 911 service on that Saturday morning, and the place was packed out. So it was really good to see that and so many chaplains that came. We actually honored some of our chaplains that served with us at the World Trade Center, and many other chaplains were there as well. So it was an awesome day to remember, and that's exactly what we tried to do. We even had one of the 911 flags, or the ground zero flag that flew over the medical morgue area at the World Trade Center, and that flag was presented to our chaplain team in honor of their service those many months. So we keep that flag at the chapel there, and we usually bring it out when there's a service, like what we had two Saturdays ago.
Kelly Raths:
And just listening to you talk about that, there's ritual, there's symbols, there's locations, there's, you know, just gathering and words and things like that. Why is that, as a person who's worked with law enforcement, why is that so important to law enforcement? And how do you think that kind of ties into chaplaincy and resiliency?
Reverend Gary Holden:
If you remember back in the day, police, fire, EMS, everybody, certainly that was involved there at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, you know, what happened out in Shanksville. They were thought of as being heroes. everything was, “You're a hero.” There was so many cheers and and I don't think that that's what, in knowing these folks very well, I don't think that's what they were looking for. That wasn't why they did what they did. They did what they did because they were called to the job they were given. And I look at that the same way as a chaplain, to be a Police Fire EMS Chaplain especially, is a calling, and there's no question in my mind that I was called there, and I was called these last 20 years to do the work that we've been doing. And it's changed, it's varied. But I think some of these things go in cycles. And we know that there's been certainly incidents, anti-police incidents and these things occur, and I just see the majority of those who are first responders continuing to do the job that they're called to do, without accolades. They're not looking for accolades. In fact, when we were completing the effort there at the World Trade Center the last week, one of the Port Authority police officers that I had gotten to know pretty well, and I said to him, “What do you think about all this hero stuff?” And he said, “I just wish they'd raise my pay a little bit, you know, I don't care about the hero part. A little bit more pay would be helpful.” So they're doing it because they're called to do it. And I see a lot of changes though, that have taken place since 911 positively. An incredible amount of good things that have come out of that experience. Our program, the Police Chaplain Program, was born out of that experience, and I didn't realize how much it would grow, but the need was very evident. And especially in the last four or five years we've seen the need grow incredibly and we're so many departments, including police, fire, EMS, corrections, we're working with corrections too. We're training chaplains for corrections, and you know, they want it. Chiefs are calling us. Our phone rings all week long, with departments all over the country wanting to be able to have trained first responder chaplains. So that's what we do. And it’s very exciting to see this. And now, I was going to say, with the new Resilience Program, or the idea of resilience, resilience has been around a long time, but more people are talking about it than ever before, and especially the last couple of years, in light of COVID, you know, how to bounce back, how to rebound. And we like to say it's not just, you know, bouncing back or rebounding, where the ball goes up and down, but it's ongoing. It's ongoing down the road, rebounding. So we started “Resilient Minds on the Front Lines” as a part of the Police Chaplain Program to be able to teach resiliency to everyone, and we brought that out to students and health care. And that's really catching on like crazy, teaching what resilience is. So just to give an example, I wrote this down: through our New Jersey Resilience Program that we instituted before COVID, and we have a hotline of peer to peers here in New Jersey that people can call. And in 2019 there were 11,000 calls to that line. That's a lot of calls. So whether people are suicide or stressed out, whatever they're going through, they can call that line, they can talk to a peer, they can talk to a chaplain. And in 2020 there were 19,500 calls. So, increased substantially, and I think a lot of that is because of our launch of the Resilience Program in New Jersey and other places. And people wanted to know, how do I handle the stress? How do I bounce back? How do I rebound? What is this thing called resilience? How do I become more resilient? And so they're crying out for it, and I'm very excited about that.
Kelly Raths:
So a lot of change, good change, in a variety of things. I was thinking as you were talking about the calling to the work, which was true for me in my observations as well. There's a calling to the work. So whether it's cloaked in a heroic, you know, like 20 years ago, the heroics of that, or now maybe less so, right? That's not an expectation that our law enforcement folks have, is that they'll have that heroics cloak.
Reverend Gary Holden:
Firefighters can always have that.
Kelly Raths:
We get a little jealous of them, in correction, yeah. Yes, but yeah, that calling is kind of what carries through. Anyway, I'm just appreciative of the connection between, you know, 20 years ago, your work, and 911, you know, just the idea that we have a human fabric. You know, there's an injury beyond that visible injury and thank goodness we've been able to build on that for the last 20 years for this time. I noticed there just doesn't seem to be quite as much shame or cultural norms that hold people back from talking about mental health and other things.
Reverend Gary Holden:
And even in certain departments where there may be the old school way of thinking, you know, “suck it up, go back to work, you'll be okay.” A lot of that is changing and, you know, the other operable word a lot today is “wellness”, of course. So as I work with the Department of Corrections here in New Jersey, incidentally, we're training the chaplains for the officers. They already have chaplains for the inmates, but here they've never had them for the officers, so they're thinking wellness more than ever before and and that's been a wonderful thing to see. It's still, you've still got to break down some of those barriers, of the stigma of sharing; you know, bearing your heart, to being transparent. And one of the things with resilience that we teach is that it's important to be transparent; but to be transparent certainly to the right people who are, you know, willing to listen and can help. And I think that's part of, you have to build that trust, especially law enforcement. You have to build that trust, and that's one of the things that chaplains learn as they go along, I think.
Kelly Raths:
Yeah, well Reverend Holden, you've somewhat spoken to this, but the next question I've had, because again, the pleasure of being able to interview you, beside myself, have been a chaplain for many years, and not everyone seems to know, still like, but it’s changing, but understanding a chaplain’s purpose. Sometimes, when they think they know the role of the chaplain, it's often a mistaken role like, right? They’re still like, “why are you here? Are you here to pray with me?”
Reverend Gary Holden:
What is a chaplain? Right?
Kelly Raths:
Yeah, educate the audience, just what is a first responder chaplain? And connect that role to resilience, if you will, just what isit that you do?
Reverend Gary Holden:
You know, it's amazing in our classes that we teach, we show a video of a man who goes into the streets and the parks in New York, and he interviews people, and he asks the question, “What is a chaplain?” And the responses are absolutely incredible, because most people do not know what a chaplain is, and if they do know, they don't, like you say, they don't really know what a chaplain does. Some of them think of hospital chaplains. They kind of get a picture of that. But when it comes to first responder chaplains, you know, what do you do? That kind of thing. So and, you know, it's clergy, certainly, but one of the things we teach is that we don't go in with a religion. In fact, no one would even know what religion we were in our cases and what we teach, unless they ask, they usually wear a shirt, a cap that indicates they're a chaplain for a certain department and they have the identification that way. So they go in as a chaplain. And so what is a chaplain? And what we teach our chaplains is that you're first and foremost there for the officers and their families. That's your first responsibility. So whether it's helping them with the stress they’re going through, a crisis that they might be going through the crisis, some of the things that they've had in their lives in the past. You know, unless we're trained in mental health, we don't do mental health. We do a lot of referrals out to people who, you know, can help in another level of help for them, and we don't even usually ask, “Can I pray for you?” We may, depending on the situation, but I've been amazed at how many times, for example, when I do a death notification, and I've done over 50 death notifications, which is a lot of death notifications. And you know, they never get any easier. But sometimes the first reaction of a family is anger. You know, they might even indicate anger at God. And so it's important for them to show, to let them show their emotions, so they might even be cursing God. You know, I run into that sometimes, but two hours later, by the time you're ready to leave, they'll say, Chaplain, can you say a prayer first? And that is often the case. So I found more often than not, once they get to know us and what we're there for, they will ask us to pray. I don't necessarily have to say, “Let's pray,” although I do that, certainly, sometimes. It all depends on the person, the situation, what you encounter. So we're very careful about that, but we go in first to help the officers and their families, to be there for them. It's what we call, I'm sure you're aware, of The Ministry of Presence. So many times, it's just being there, and especially when there's a crisis, when there's a death, what are you going to say? And I teach out chaplains, “You got to get away from the fact that you think you're in the FIX IT business.” This is nearly not about fixing it. Yes, we can help people. We can do some counseling, we can answer some of their questions, but we really can't fix a lot of this. It's more just being there for them. And so that’’s what we call The Ministry of Presence. And that can be difficult, you know, that where you're in a room with somebody for two or three hours, and what are you going to say after you've said the initial things? If they're not talking, if they're not opening up, it can be awkward; but again, it's just being there for them, being a good listener, certainly, and that's huge. So as clergy, sometimes we think we got to talk all the time, like I'm doing right now. You know, like we got to talk all the time but we can't fix so many of things. I had a father tell me a few years ago when his daughter was killed by darting out into the traffic, waiting for a school bus, and then I went to the hospital to be there with the family, and I said to the father and the family, “What can I do for you? What else can I do for you?” He knew I was there for them. He said, Chaplain, what I'd like you to do you can't do; you can't bring my daughter back.” Of course not. We absolutely can. But in the days that followed that, I was able to be there with them, and mainly just be there. You know, if they needed to talk, I was there for them to talk. If they didn't want to talk, just being there. And I don’t know how many times I've been in a restaurant or in a store over the years, and somebody will come up to me and they'll say, “I don't know if you remember me, but you came to my house when my son died, or my son took his life, and you were there for us. And I want you to know how much we appreciate that.” So that's not just the first responders. That's also the community. But I always say this, “If we're helping law enforcement, we're helping the community. If we’re helping the community, we're helping law enforcement.” And we need to bring those things together in light of everything that's going on in our world. And I think chaplaincy is incredibly good at doing that, to teach people. So that we teach our chaplains where law enforcement is coming from, we teach law enforcement where chaplains are coming from, and both entities are working with the community. They're both doing that. But oftentimes they're not brought together. And I've been in some of these volatile places around the country where often that was not the case. First of all, sometimes there were no chaplains at all. Didn't have chaplains, law enforcement. And if they had chaplains, they were not really proactive. They were more ceremonial. And that's not what we promote at all. We promote being on call, be ready to go, train to do whatever needs to be done. But mostly, just being there. So that's been a real blessing for me, not always easy, but certainly a real blessing to see how that works. And I think that works with all kinds of chaplains, even in a hospital: what are you going, you know, what are you going to really say after a while, if somebody is dying or somebody's going through something? You can be an encouragement, absolutely. But I think just being there is more than anything else, what people need. So that's my thought on that.
Kelly Raths:
Yeah, and being there, I like the way you described it, it’s almost as building a bridge, so kind of holding people, being present to people, when they are in, you know, particular times; that coming in with that silence is powerful to observe. In the observing, it’s, you know, with a loving glance, a compassionate glance. Being able to then mirror back, and all those things.
Reverend Gary Holden:
And Kelly, they don't forget. Like I said, I run into people out in public, and it comes back to you. You may not remember right away when you see that face, because you have maybe hadn't seen them for, maybe only saw them for that day, that night, but it comes back to them. They don't forget. And if you were there for them, they remember. And to me, that's always a blessing when I hear that. And even young people now, years go by, right and now they're adults,and you had an impact somehow in their lives, as a chaplain; being there for their family, sometimes when it's a domestic call or something like that, but all that is included in the first responder community, because they have families. They have their struggles. Again, once they trust you, they're certainly willing to open up and and and be there and allow you to be there for them. I'll give you a great example of that. We had an officer when we first started the program in our department here in our town, and, you know, he didn't understand. And I didn't know this till months later, but he was a bit vocal about the fact that, “Why do we need these chaplains, wanting to ride in our cars and being around our station? What we need them for?” So months, you know, a while goes by, and then his mother dies, suddenly. She lived with him and his wife, and he was devastated, and he was just so hurt by that within minutes after he heard about it. And, you know, the first thing he did? He called for a chaplain. First thing he did. And one of our other chaplains, when I was able to minister to him later, later on, he became a tremendous friend, and he would come to our trainings and say “the very best thing we ever did was to start a chaplain program.” And there again, you know, I use the expression I've heard this so many times before, “You don't really need a chaplain til you really need a chaplain.” And that was certainly the case with this man. And unfortunately, sometimes it takes a crisis for people to see that and with law enforcement; but when they see us in operation, what we can do to help a family or to help them, you know, just going, when they have a child who's in the hospital, or a loved one in the hospital, I'm talking about the office. We go, we go to see them, and boy, they appreciate that so many times. “I don't even have a pastor, a priest or rabbi, and you came. You came to minister, to be there for us.”So that's another blessing, I think, that we'd see.
Kelly Raths:
That's a great story about the “You don't know you need until you really need it.”
Reverend Gary Holden:
Yeah, no, you don't. You don't. Unfortunately, it's crisis. You know, like we call on God when we're in crisis, right? So, but calling the chaplain, and once they realize what we're here for, they begin to think, “Chaplain, oh yeah, we got a chaplain. I can talk to the chaplain.”
Kelly Raths:
Wow. Well, thank you. Yeah, another question. And again, we were already kind of discussing some of these things, but as this already goes without saying, these last couple of years, 18 months, couple of years, have been particularly hard for all of us, especially the first responder community. I know in my agency, the Oregon Department of Corrections, I think we, as leaders and just as peers, can honestly say we've never seen our employees and our families more challenged in their physical, mental, emotional, just spiritual, all those dimensions. So when I talk to them, different employees, when I have the chance to be out and with a variety of them, they can all acknowledge the weight of overtime, right? So we've, you know, we've asked incredible hours of them. They all acknowledge the weight of sleep loss. Because, you know, that's just another part of over time, in this reality, they know what they're up against. You know, with various perspectives around the pandemic, COVID-19, the Delta virus, you know, all of those sorts of things, they're aware of. But one of the harder things for them to put into words, and again, we've touched on it a little bit, but is this identity crisis. I'll call it kind of, the lost understanding of what it means to be a public servant. So their rethinking this. What does it mean to be a public servant, to risk one's life and well-being, to disease exposure? And that brings it to their families in different ways. You know? What does it mean to do that in a public servant way, this kind of moral crisis, if you will? I was wondering if you could just, you know, with that kind of particular layer that maybe, as chaplains, you know, it's our bread and butter, right: moral crisis, other sorts of things, can you speak to how are you and your chaplains, you know, are addressing or coming alongside our law enforcement folks at this time?
Reverend Gary Holden:
I do think you're absolutely right. The question comes up, is this really worth it? Is what I'm doing really worth it? And they know their life is on the line anyways, in many cases, and then COVID hit, and, you know, many first responders ended up getting very sick or even ended up dying of COVID. And I know in our Department of Corrections, we're volunteers, they closed it down. Anybody from the outside couldn't even come in to the Department of Corrections. And in law enforcement, ia lot of times, there couldn't be ride-alongs. You just couldn't do that anymore. So it's from a chaplain's perspective, it was more difficult to be able to help those that needed, needed that help, to be an encouragement to them along the way. But we did it, you know, we did Zoom, we did phone. In fact, we probably got more opportunities. You know, even though we couldn't see them in person, it seemed like they wanted more help. And as I said, those calls that came in here in New Jersey to that hotline went up substantially. So in the midst of us starting our Resilience Program here in the state of New Jersey, incidentally, every police officer in the state of New Jersey is required to take the Resilience Training, every one of them. And then each department has what is called an RPO, a Resilience Police Officer, who does training and is that officer that's there for the other officers. And then chaplains are in that loop as well. But I think we were busier than ever before in light of that, because the need was so great. One of the things we teach in resiliency that I always tried to get, you know, those that were especially really going through it, or even those that weren't, but needed a touch, and that was to focus on gratitude. That's one of the big things we teach in resiliency, is gratitude, how to be thankful, or to think about the blessings that you have instead of all the other stuff. Because, you know, we tend to be negative by nature. You know, we just always focus on the negative. Well, there's a lot to be negative about, especially with what's been going on in our world with COVID and everything else. So it's so easy to dwell on the negative, but that doesn't help us to grow or help us to bounce back. So we heavily emphasize the importance of sharing a blessing. Think about something today that you could share that's a blessing, something positive, not negative. And every time I would either do a Zoom with officers or do a meeting, or one-to-one, or wherever it was, we would talk about that. And we do that right in our resilience training. We take the whole first day, and these are mostly first responders, and we only have, like 18 to 20 in a room, because that's all we want. And the first thing we do is to talk about gratitude. Share with us a blessing. So you got 18 to 20 people, and I'm telling you, it goes on for hours because they begin to see it, they begin to open up to it. And, you know, we'll ask them a question about something they share. And I mean, it goes on four or five hours, people are blown away when they first see that. They don't think that something like that's going to happen, but they're ready to share, you know, they want to share because now they're thinking about it. And it usually starts, usually with family members: “I'm thankful for my son and what he's doing,” You know, it starts out kind of general, and then it gets a lot more transparent and a lot more specific and really, in a way, they're bearing their soul, you know, they're really opening up. That's what spiritual resilience is really all about. You know, reflecting upon the light that's in your life. And everybody has a light there someplace, reflect on that and then share it based on what you have in your life, the blessings that you receive from that. So that's a huge thing, that I think that we have done another thing. Another thing, even though first responders are used to helping people, that's what they do. You know, they're out there doing those things. We also encourage them to do what we call a “spontaneous act of kindness, practice an act of kindness, just, you know, along the way and and then come back and share with us, you know, share what you did. What was that random act of kindness, is really what we call, or a RAK: random act of kindness? And that opens up another whole door, another whole door. One of the things I've done is, when I go into a restaurant and I'm ready to pray for my meal, for example, I’ll say to the waiter or the waitress, “I always pray for my meal. Is there anything I can pray for you about?” And it kind of catches them by surprise at first, and then they'll say, “Oh yeah!” The other day I did this, I was in a restaurant, and the man said, “Pray for my three kids. You know, they're back in school, and there's been some COVID issues, and just pray that they won't get sick.” So I said absolutely. And he perked up, and a big smile came across his face, because he knew I was going to pray specifically for that for him. So that's an act of kindness, you know, and it's simple things that we can do to do that. So getting their minds off themselves and what they're going through is very, very important in this whole thing. And I think that opens up a whole lot of other doors. And I know they leave our times together, I mean, they learned how to be more resilient, and it's all like they're gonna go home so enthusiastic to do acts of kindness, to build on gratitude in their life. Every day, to think about what they're thankful for. When do we usually do that? Sitting around the table at Thanksgiving, right? That's when we do it as a family. Well, bring it back to your family, and have your kids start doing that too. So they do that; we hear testimonials come back and wow, it's really incredible how that simple thing like that really works. So that's one of the things that we encourage.
Kelly Raths:
That's lovely, tapping into that servant's heart. Again, most people that come to this work, there's a calling, there's a servant’s heart, kind of at the core of that, and tapping back into the ways that, that's still under their control, even though so much is not under their control. And still, I was thinking Reverend Holden, as you were talking about, it really rang home for me, because I was out walking tiers, talking to staff. And boy, you walk in and you ask the question it's a loaded question, you know it's loaded. You ask folks on the tier, like, “How you doing?” Because in Oregon, we have, our vaccine is going to be mandated for our staff, and it's taken what's been challenging for many and added to it. And so you get an earful, but then I just appreciate what you're talking about, because the ability to go, “Okay, time out. Tell me something good.” And it's amazing that switch, and everybody just “boom!” One guy was like “God is good. My wife is pregnant and I can’t wait.” You know, just the whole world changed.
Reverend Gary Holden:
That’s beautiful. Here's what I always tell in our teaching, too, and those that I work with on a one-to-one basis: “When you're around somebody who's negative, say something positive. So when they say something negative. Again, say something positive. And again, when they say say something negative, say something positive.” And it's amazing how sometimes they'll come back with something positive. And you try that with your kids or your grandkids, and it's amazing how that works. But it all goes back to where our focus is when you get right down to it. And again, first responders got to deal with negative things almost every day, right? And so they can take that home with them, too, and that's why it's important to recharge, rebound, refocus. That's how I look at it.
Kelly Raths:
Yeah, that's great. Well, I have another question here for you, and we just, kind of, you know, dialogue and anything else that you want to share, but you lead a lot of training. So for your resume, the different things that you’ve done. You get to kind of be with groups, and in front of groups quite a bit. So you lead a lot of training, seen a lot of training in your years, and I know some incredibly skillful, so thinking about kind of my exposure to folks like yourself, incredibly skillful peers and chaplains who embody their training but have difficulty influencing or even accessing first responders and their culture because of organizational challenges, right? So, you know, one of the things, I know, I've got some amazing resources that see in the world that the organizational challenge is literally getting through the prison door, right? Getting access to that. Any kind of thoughts or reflections for you in your time about, you know, it's not just the training, but organizational help; and what role, if any, a chaplain has in kind of influencing that.
Reverend Gary Holden:
Over the years, I've heard first responders, they would say to me, “I can handle the streets. I've been trained to handle the streets. I can do a lot of things physically. You know, the stress of the streets, the stress of my job certainly is there. I'm better at handling that, but stress in the department, you know, politics and all that kind of stuff, you know, they get really stressed out with that. And I'm glad that more and more departments are recognizing, as we said, the need for wellness and teaching resilience and being there more one-to-one. It's not just about doing the job, because if your officers don't have wellness, if they're not where they need to be, physically, certainly, and emotionally and spiritually, then it's going to create all kinds of problems later. And so it's not just about sucking it up, go back to work, suck it up and go back to work. It's, you know, management, crisis management, dealing with things so it doesn't become PTSD or those kind of things. So I think departments are doing better with this. They certainly need to do better. There's no question about that. I think the desire is there more than ever before, I really believe that. But it all comes back to learning how to take care of the inner person. So we do good about taking care of the outside most of the time, most of the time; not so good about taking care of the inside. And, you know, I saw that after 911, there was not a lot of help after the fact. You know, there was some help in the midst of it; I mean, we were there, chaplains were there, people were there, but not after the fact. And one of the men said to me at the last day, almost the last day, he said, “Now I’ve got to go home and repair my family. I've neglected my family for 8 months.” So I'm glad there's more things in this area, but we have to show people the importance of dealing with what goes on internally, so it doesn't become a huge problem, you know, down the road. Letting the light shine is what I think. Will Jimeno was one of the two Port Authority police officers that was in the rubble of the World Trade Center. And the Movie “World Trade Center” came out in 2009 I believe it was. And so he was pulled out. He was a rookie cop and Will saw light in the midst of all that darkness, of everything, all that rubble and everything going on. He saw a light, and he wasn't sure he was ever going to make it out, but it gave him, it gave him a little hope. Well, that light was a Marine, first of all, who was in there looking for people that might be survivors, and then the first responders and they pulled him out. Will Jimeno is part of our team now, he's part of our Resilient Minds on the Front Lines team and the Chaplain Program Team. I was just with him last week, and he was severely injured, but he talks about faith, hope and love. That's his talk, faith, hope, and love. And he had a little bit of that faith, and the hope was dimming, but then there was that light, and he saw the love of those who were willing to come and pull him out. And that's what all this takes, and that's what chaplains are able to do, and other first responders that are there for other first responders. It's a beautiful picture when you see all that. And I'm excited about having Will on our team now. And you know, in light of what just happened 20 years ago, he's now part of this and tells hisr story. But it really goes back to all of that. It's pretty simple when you get right down to it, but we make it hard. It's really not hard: faith, hope, love, and that light that needs to shine, that we allow it to shine. And we can help others to have their light shine. I call that pretty simple.
Kelly Raths:
Yeah. Well, maybe we'll kind of round out on those phrases, because I'm struck, you know, in thinking it is pretty simple. You know, it's not that it's not hard work, but thinking about the presence, the Ministry of Presence, right? That there's no, there's nothing to memorize. There's something about the spiritual resilience, which is today's theme in the conference, that there is some simplicity, returning back to that simplicity. That maybe this is not about, you know, walking away with five steps to, you know, XYZ, but it really is coming back to the gratitude to The servant aspect, the calling. Those are all percolating for me.
Reverend Gary Holden:
It all goes back to heart. You know, what is that? Right? Well, physically, it's a blood pump, but we're not going to say to somebody, “I love you with all my blood pump.” No, it’s: “I love you with all my heart.” So we look for that. We look, especially those first responders that are really down, they're really depressed, and we appeal to their heart, and that's where the gratitude comes in. That's where the blessing comes in, and the light comes in and zero in on the heart. And again, it’s simple, it's really simple, but it's hard for people to open up and be transparent and to realize they have a heart, they have that inner person that needs to grow and be cultivated. And to me, that's not about religion. It certainly can be a huge thing about faith. Faith can be is really a huge part of that, spiritual resilience, but it's other things too. You know, it's the love of others. You know, it's the love of others. So, I mean, I'm a chaplain, I'm a pastor, I teach all that kind of stuff when I put the other hat on. But this is another thing where we can zero right in on the individual and whatever they're really personally going through, and see the big picture in their lives, and do that holistic approach to their whole life. And that's what we try to do in the work that we do.
Kelly Raths:
Well, shall we say, Reverend Holden, to all those law enforcement folks that may come across this video, that may they be blessed by the words and that we hopefully have touched some hearts. I know that you have touched mine and I really appreciated the time together and so just want to thank you for what you do and what you're continuing to do and all those that you work with.
Reverend Gary Holden:
I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity, I hope to get to talk to you again sometime, Kelly. Thank you for the work you're doing. How many years you've been doing that now?
Kelly Raths:
Like 20 years, I was counting.
Reverend Gary Holden:
We’re in the same boat, but it's awesome. You know, it's not an easy thing. So thank you for the work that you're doing. and. And I know you're a blessing to others, and I'm glad I got to know you a little bit in this time that we've had together.
Kelly Raths:
Right back at ya.
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