The Rev. Katherine Frederick '23 is a CDSP alum from the Diocese of Northern California and serves as hospice chaplain at Providence Hospice of Napa Valley. Her interview with Crossings Conversations is the second in a series with students who worked full-time in ministry positions while completing the Hybrid Program. She spoke to us about meeting people where they are, theologically; serving patients' families, and sometimes her home church community, during the pandemic and 2020 wildfire season; and how her chaplain job benefitted her studies and contextual education experience.
The Rev. Katherine Frederick '23 is a CDSP alum from the Diocese of Northern California and serves as hospice chaplain at Providence Hospice of Napa Valley. Her interview with Crossings Conversations is the second in a series with students who worked full-time in ministry positions while completing the Hybrid Program. She spoke to us about meeting people where they are, theologically; serving patients' families, and sometimes her home church community, during the pandemic and 2020 wildfire season; and how her chaplain job benefitted her studies and contextual education experience.
Kyle Oliver: This is Kyle Oliver from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and I'm here with the Reverend Katherine Frederick, a 2023 graduate from the CDSP Hybrid Program and a hospice chaplain at Providence Hospice of the Napa Valley. Katherine, thank you so much for being here.
Katherine Frederick: You're welcome. I'm very glad to be here.
KO: Great. Well, we are going to have a conversation about the opportunities that emerge from the experience of being someone who is working full-time in ministry, while also completing the CDSP Hybrid Program. Before we get into too much detail about how those two things spoke to each other, first of all, tell us a little bit about what drew you to the hybrid program in the first place.
KF: Well, first of all, when I started, which was in June of 2020 I think, my children were both still in elementary school, so I think like second and fourth grade, something like that. Actually, younger, I think it was first and third grade.
I had two children, I am married. We own a home here in Napa, which is granted not very far from the Berkeley campus. It was really nice for me to be able to stay here, be able to work through the program, focus on my children, not have to uproot their lives as they were already pretty established in their friend groups at school. Just not having to move and go to Berkeley was a really helpful thing, even though I could have been a commuter student, but then I wouldn't have been able to work and the traffic is not necessarily fruitful for reflection.
KO: I almost wonder whether [chuckles] moving is less bad than having to do that commute four times a week. I could definitely see that being really challenging. Am I hearing you right that you were not working as a full-time chaplain when you first started, but that happened shortly thereafter, to set up the job side of this?
KF: I took two classes. I took Old Testament and New Testament from CSPD in the 2018-'19 academic year. Then in the 2019-'20 academic year, I did a unit of CPE, which I loved. As that was winding down, my supervisor and I had a conversation where she said, "You seem to really like it. What do you not like?" I said, "Well, I don't like [how] in the hospital, you have these great interactions with people and then you never see them again." She said, "Well if you want a longer relationship, you should look at being a hospice chaplain."
It so happened that the hospice in my town was hiring for a part-time chaplain. I started in April of 2020, working 20 hours a week, working halftime as a hospice chaplain. That was a really interesting time to start anything in healthcare.
KO: Oh, goodness. Yes.
KF: We started off being able to do in-person visits, and then that ended because of COVID. Then in August of 2020, the then-full-time chaplain left, so they offered me the full-time position. I've been full-time since August of 2020.
KO: Got it. What's it like to be a hospice chaplain during COVID? How did those encounters go?
KF: It was really interesting. The chaplains and social workers were not allowed in most of the facilities during that time. There was a woman who I had this really wonderful connection with who was in one of the skilled nursing facilities here. I adored her and then in July 2020, that facility had their first big COVID outbreak, and I wasn't allowed to see her again. Then I think she died later that year and I never got to see her. I didn't get to say goodbye. I did check in with her daughter.
One of the interesting things for us was it moved the spiritual care for the people in facilities from the patient to the families, which especially for people, again, whose loved ones were in facilities and they weren't allowed to visit either, that was really hard. In general, I did a lot more work with the family members than the patients.
KO: That makes sense. Can you think of a time when something from your studies came together with your day-to-day ministry practice and your role, and talk about what the interaction and experiences of doing these two experiences alongside each other, what that was like?
KF: The first thing that comes to mind was the year that I was taking theology and learning about these various strands of theology. Because I wasn't working with only Episcopalians, I was working with people of all faith traditions and spiritual traditions, some of them are very different from what we see in the Episcopal Church.
In getting to see the practical consequences of people's theology-- There was one patient that I had who was Pentecostal, who very, very much adhered to penal substitutional atonement theory and also believed in hell. He had a near-death experience where, unlike most people’s near-death experiences, he believed he went to hell. So he was afraid of going to hell, and getting to see how much that fear of going to hell again affected his dying process.
KO: Wow.
KF: [chuckles] That was actually a very difficult case for me because theologically we were so different. To come in and try to move him along into God as a loving God and find scripture passages that backed that up and read those to him, but really getting to see that the theology that we have, it really does affect our lives, and especially as we are experiencing illness and facing death.
KO: I think I hear you saying that it was alongside the academic study, this experience of encountering these real-world theologies, as it were, gave you a perspective on your study in the classroom. Did you feel it cycle back? Did it change your coursework?
KF: Oh, yes. [chuckles] There's a joke in my cohort. We played a bingo game where we have little squares of things that you hear often at CDSP. And “hospice chaplain” was one because I so often said “In my work as a hospice chaplain, I see this.” And it was amazing how often that happened.
Even in one of my last courses that I took was a course on reading the Book of the Twelve, which was the minor profits. You think, "Well, this doesn't have much to do with hospice chaplaincy," but because there's such an eschatological vision within the Book of the 12 and those minor profits, it came up that, no, this is what people think.
I think just being able to bring back into what is in the popular imagination out there and to cycle that back into the class. I think one of the things that happens in seminaries, we're this Episcopal theology echo chamber. It's helpful to know what's out there and also a reminder that the people in the pews haven't taken Dr. MacDougall's theology course. A lot of these things that are on the periphery of good Episcopal theology are what people in the pews believe, which is that people go to hell, that there's a judgment where the sheep go to heaven and the goats go to hell. Being able to talk about how that's alive and well out there was really informative for the class.
KO: Well, and then going in the other direction, I think you've touched on this a little bit, I think I heard you say something like this person who had had this experience of a near-death experience and a negative association with that. I think I hear you saying that in the context of hospice chaplaincy in particular, where there is accompaniment toward a known end, how did you balance encountering other traditions in a respectful way and working with people's own spiritual resources, all the standard chaplaincy moves? I'm curious how those were shaped for you in the context of hospice chaplaincy in particular.
KF: There were times that I had to stop myself from saying, "There are other ways to think about this." Generally, my rule of thumb is, I don't correct other people's theology unless it's causing harm. Whether that's harm to others or harm to themselves. The gentleman I spoke of that was Pentecostal, I think his theology was harmful to himself. It's often harmful to oneself more than to others, especially on an individual level of private people.
Our teaching assistant in theology was a yoga instructor. We had this conversation in one of our forums about how theology can be a little bit like a yoga instructor where if you come and just tweak this one part of your body, you can make a big difference in the pose and what it's doing. Using that as a metaphor, I found that helpful in chaplaincy to talk about we're not completely changing their theology. We're just tweaking a little bit to open up other possibilities.
KO: I like that, that's a beautiful image. We were talking a little bit before we started here about your experience recently of being ordained a priest and having been on this years-long journey and the strangeness and wonderfulness of arriving in a new place. I'm curious how the continuity built into your chaplain job has perhaps been shaped by your transition into the role that you were preparing for. Are you experiencing chaplaincy differently now as you've been ordained?
KF: [chuckles] One of the things that's been really interesting is the difference between when people ask about my spiritual tradition and beliefs and what my role in the church is. There's a big difference between saying, "I'm in the process to being an Episcopal priest," to, "I am an Episcopal priest," and just the credibility that that lens has. Most chaplaincy organizations want you to have an ordination or some ecclesiastical backing. We hear ordination doesn't really change who you are, but there's a difference in credibility, I think.
KO: How do you experience that coming from other people?
KF: I think in some ways, people take me slightly more seriously. I have mixed feelings about that, obviously, because again, how we think about ordination that we don't want to say that. Nothing has changed in my academic knowledge between the middle of July and now.
What's changed is people see that I have the backing of the Episcopal Church, which again, that shouldn't matter so much but it does.
KO: This may or may not be directly related to this experience of doing full-time ministry and full-time chaplaincy, but I wonder if you could say a little bit about your experience of community during your studies. Maybe that's community with your cohort, maybe that's community in your work context. But how were you supported, challenged, nurtured, connected to people in your life at this time?
KF: First of all, again, we were the cohort that started in June, 2020. Our first two summer intensives were on Zoom, and I believe our first two Intersessions were also on Zoom. We are not there in person to get that camp-like bonding experience. We'd tried to have some Zoom meetings but we all had Zoom fatigue. We didn't want to be on Zoom more than we had to.
What ended up happening is we communicated through text messages. We had a big group text message that we used a lot. We were in conversation almost every day. Whether it was about a class, an upcoming intensive or something going on at the school, we were in very regular contact and conversation with each other. That was just really helpful to have the support of the people also going through this experience with me.
Then my hospice coworkers. You can't do hospice work alone. You really need the team. I'm on the team that visits patients at Napa State Hospital. It's a state-run hospital for the criminally insane and then people who are conserved with severe mental illness. There's a nurse, a social worker, and I'm the chaplain that go there. We go once a month. Those visits are particularly hard and we always reward ourselves with Starbucks afterwards and just being able to relax together.
There's a such thing as hospice humor, where we're not making fun of people but you have to find the things to laugh at. If you're just in our situation where it's people dying all the time, you have to find things that are funny.
KO: Yes, I can imagine. How about your experience with congregations during this time, either in the context of field ed or possibly in the context of a continuing relationship with your local church, if that was possible for you?
KF: In both of my field ed experiences, everybody knew what I did. My first year of field ed—because I was at two different congregations—in my first year of field ed, I was at the Church of the Epiphany in Vacaville. Their rector at the time had also been a chaplain, he was a home health chaplain.
We worked together. We did a couple of workshops. We did an advanced care planning workshop with their parish nurse. We did a book study on the book Being Mortal. Then during the Easter season, we did a funeral planning workshop. Really, we drew on my strengths and knowledge from work and bringing that into the parish.
Then at my second year of field ed, which was at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Benicia, again, everyone knew what I did. If there was a Katherine sermon bingo, hospice chaplain would also [appear]. [chuckles] I think especially in my Good Friday sermon, I told a story about working in hospice.
I would offer healing prayer sometimes in the chapel during communion, and just that experience of being able to pray with people and using my chaplaincy skills. I have honed—and this is a controversial term, but—a sermon prayer, where people always want me to pray. I use the prayer to ask God for what I've heard that they need during the conversation. I found myself doing that in the healing prayer, too.
KO: You say everyone at field ed knew what you were doing. Do you think that lent you credibility in the parish context, knowing that you were also doing this quite intense, sophisticated ministry elsewhere?
KF: Yes. I've never thought about that, but yes. Absolutely. I think it changed the way the parishioners saw me. Now that I think about it, it absolutely did because it wasn't Katherine who's a full-time seminarian that was going to school full-time and doing nothing but studying. It's Katherine that's also doing this really intense pastoral care work, and she knows a lot about what's happening out in the world.
KO: [chuckles] My wife and I, she's also a priest, we have a running joke about whether such and such a person is the kind of trustworthy person that you'd want them in your hospital room. [chuckles] I can imagine that there is a certain amount of like, "Well, a lot of people are trusting her with this very special moment." I could see that that might come out and how they relate it to you.
KF: Yes. I think it made people-- They were more willing to tell me about what's going on in their lives, especially. There is a guy that was fairly new, who he had started at St. Paul's. He'd started going there—he might have been there the first time my first Sunday. It was right around when I started, he started going to church, and he was a musician. That church has a contemporary music service, and he was interested in playing with their band. He joined the band. He was a longtime musician that can play several different instruments.
He and I started talking at the very beginning because I think he knew that I was new there, too. Then he ended up telling me one day that he had prostate cancer. He hadn't told the rector that before. He was telling me all about his cancer treatments. Then I was able to go back to the rector and say, "Oh, this person has cancer." I don't think we would have known that. I found that people would tell me, and they would open up to me, in ways that they might not have if I wasn't working as a hospice chaplain.
KO: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking about an experience-- This must have been 2020, the intense experience that on top of all this other stuff that was happening, there were wildfires happening in your community. [chuckles] We've talked a lot about your church experiences and various work experiences, but aside from while "Well, it was great not to have to move, my kids were young," there's a logistical dimension to being able to study in a hybrid way, [etc.]
I'm wondering about the emotional dynamics of being able to remain rooted where you are. For some reason, that experience of the wildfires is what put this question in my head, but I wonder if that brings anything up for you.
KF: Yes. The rector at my sending parish, Amy Denney Zuniga, she was such a really foundational mentor for me. To be able to stay close to her was really helpful and grounding. I would run into her because I also serve patients that are at Valley in St. Helena, so I would see her often. Having that close mentor and that pastoral connection in the fires that you're speaking of that was in August of 2020, so we were on a break between the summer intensive work ending and our fall classes beginning.
I was able to help out with my sending parish. We did a calling campaign, and listening, and just checking in on people. I helped do a training for that. Yes, being able to remain rooted in that community and not just in my church, but I have a pretty strong friend group that are mostly not church people.
I find, especially now that I am helping out at a church twice a month, it's really nice to have friends that aren't church people. That's one of the things that you hear about is the people who go out to be rector somewhere, their only friends are people that go to their church. To stay rooted in my friend group here and have that emotional support, especially during the fires and COVID, that was a stressful time also.
KO: Yes. That whole part of the world has such a distinct culture and ethos, and configuration of religious practice as you've been exploring here a little bit. Are you hoping to continue to serve in that North Bay, Napa, wine country, whatever the right words are? [chuckles] Are you hoping to stay rooted in the future?
KF: That's a really good question. I'd say for now, I am looking forward to what opportunities are coming my way as a result of the CDSP / Trinity Curacy Program. I will stay somewhere nearby for that. Then after that, I am open to doing a national search and just seeing what's open at the end of two years. My children are less open about that than I am. They would like me to stay, but I don't know what will be open at that point.
I also recognize that the ethos that's here would also be transferrable to a lot of other places that being in a vacation area and a place where there are a lot of second homes. That's certainly a dynamic that we have in our community that changes the nature of the community and the nature of church. I think there [are] a lot of places around the country that have this similar ethos, whether it's other wine-growing regions or somewhere like Colorado.
KO: As we wrap up, I'm curious if you have any advice for other people who are working full-time in ministry as they pursue their studies. What did you learn that you would want to pass on to others?
KF: I think, first of all, look for where you can double up. When I took ethics, for example, we had to do a problem or a project where we interrupted injustice. What I did was I did the injustice that's closest to me which is ageism. I did a series of TikTok videos on ageism
In one of the videos, I was in the cosmetic store, Ulta, and had taken pictures of all of the beauty products that are anti-aging like Fountain of Hope in a bottle, and these names like that, that are like “we don't want to get old.” Then I tied that to what I see in my work. I think that doubling up is really helpful.
There were times that a paper would end up being a sermon or vice versa. I think also in ethics or from ethics, at work, I did a presentation about anti-racism. You find ways where you're blending the two together and you're killing those two birds with the one stone.
I think also, one thing that was really helpful for me was that my job is flexible. We'd have a huddle call at 8:15 that goes to about 8:30, and then nobody wants to talk to the chaplain until about 10:00.
[chuckling]
I was able to use that hour and a half or so to do schoolwork and just finding the time. I am really grateful that I had a really flexible working schedule where I could squeeze in time to write the papers and do all the posting and the reading.
KO: That makes sense. Katherine, thank you so much for taking the time to reflect on your experience, sharing your wisdom, and sharing your story. We really appreciate you joining us here on Crossings Conversations.
KF: Yes, wonderful. Thank you.