{"id":18475,"date":"2022-05-21T01:59:01","date_gmt":"2022-05-21T01:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=18475"},"modified":"2022-05-21T01:59:02","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T01:59:02","slug":"buddhist-chaplains-on-the-rise-in-us-offering-broad-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2022\/05\/21\/buddhist-chaplains-on-the-rise-in-us-offering-broad-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"Buddhist Chaplains on the Rise in US, Offering Broad Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>PORTLAND, OREGON, May 15, 2022 (AP News): Wedged into a recliner in the corner of her assisted living apartment in Portland, Skylar Freimann, who has a terminal heart condition and pulmonary illness, anxiously eyed her newly arrived hospital bed on a recent day and worried over how she would maintain independence as she further loses mobility. There to guide her along the journey was the Rev. Jo Laurence, a hospice and palliative care chaplain. But rather than invoking God or a Christian prayer, she talked of meditation, chanting and other Eastern spiritual traditions: \u201cThe body can weigh us down sometimes,\u201d she counseled. \u201cWhere is the divine or the sacred in your decline?\u201d<br><br>An ordained Sufi minister and practicing Zen Buddhist who brings years of meditation practice and scriptural training to support end-of-life patients, Laurence is part of a burgeoning generation of Buddhist chaplains who are increasingly common in hospitals, hospices and prisons, where the need for their services rose dramatically during the pandemic. In a profession long dominated in the U.S. by Christian clergy, Buddhists are leading an ever more diverse field that includes Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan and even secular humanist chaplains. Buddhist chaplains say they\u2019re uniquely positioned for the times due to their ability to appeal to a broad cultural and religious spectrum, including the growing number of Americans \u2014 roughly one-third \u2014 who identify as nonreligious.<br><br>More at source.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/health-portland-prayer-meditation-b700bfe52805676859b1eee8475deea2\n\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/health-portland-prayer-meditation-b700bfe52805676859b1eee8475deea2<br><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PORTLAND, OREGON, May 15, 2022 (AP News): Wedged into a recliner in the corner of her assisted living apartment in,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18486,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18487,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18475\/revisions\/18487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}