The Words of

Dr. Michael Cordner
on behalf of the IPCNSR

spoken at the Memorial Celebration for
Howard Clinebell

May14, 2005
Claremont, California

~

I am honored to be here today representing and speaking for the International Pastoral Care Network for Social Responsibility.  In 1982, in Nashville, Tennessee, Howard Clinebell invited persons of similar mind and persuasion, concerned not only about the emotional and psychological turmoil and suffering of the persons with whom we counseled but concerned also with the contextual issues that prompted an provoked that turmoil.  He was convinced, and those of us who gathered at his invitation, that our counseling would be remiss and inadequate if it did not also address the contextual issues of interpersonal violence, of intergroup and international violence, of the degradation of the world around us.

Very quickly, at that annual convention of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, the organization, Pastoral Care Network for Social Responsibility was born and very soon we gathered around us similarly concerned persons from the other pastoral care organizations.  Because of the international repute of this person, Howard Clinebell, it was not long before international gatherings occurred in Melbourne, Australia, Santa Severa, Italy, and Prague, Czechoslovakia, in India and Africa, South America and the Near East and Orient.

Throughout these 23 years Howard Clinebell has been our leader, our prompter, calling forth out of us skills and talents beyond our abilities.  That was the nature of our organizing and the purpose for which we gathered, in the International Pastoral Care Network for Social Responsibility to share with one another our concerns, acting, for peace, justice among all persons, respect for and caring for this world in which we live.  In these later years, always with the leadership and guidance of Howard, we recognized and acknowledged that our focus would be continuously on violence whenever and however it occurred, with nonviolence our goal and purpose.

And so we gather here today, at this Memorial Service  for Howard Clinebell to say with a clear and loud voice, "Thank you, Howard.  Thank you for calling us together.  Thank you for calling us out of ourselves to a task we had not faced before this day.  And to say, with the loudest possible voice, in response to  your everliving spirit among us, we with you are, in the famous words of Martin Luther King, 'Free at last, free at last, free at last!  Thank God almighty we are free at last!'

         

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