Dear Friends
I am writing on behalf the Board of Directors and the entire membership of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. We join with you -- as members of Phyllis Roe's diverse, loving, extended family to mourn her death and to celebrate her life.
Please know that many of us long to be with you at your memorial service. Although we might be far away, we join you in Spirit and in love. Like you, we are moving through our own sense of disbelief, devastation, sadness and gratitude and we are comforted in our grief by an awareness of our place with you in the loving community which has been Phyllis' network of care an awareness that comes by being part of the "friends of Phyllis" e-mail network and through the memorial tributes on the AAPC web page.
We would like you to know that the American Association of Pastoral Counselors has had an important place in Phyllis' heart AAPC has been her professional home. And for many years she has played a very important role in AAPC's leadership. At the time of her death, she was on the Board of Directors of AAPC. She was also the Chair of the Pacific Region and was busily planning the Pacific Region's fall conference that will meet in Honolulu in October. Phyllis was an inspired hostess and we know that at the Conference her spirit will be sensed as an infusion of hospitality even in her absence.
It will not surprise you to learn of the pastoral counseling profession's high regard for Phyllis: she personified the pastoral counselor par excellence. As a Fellow in AAPC she was widely respected as a gifted clinician, educator, supervisor, and mentor. She was esteemed as a leader who not only envisioned pastoral counseling and consultation that integrates clinical compassion, theoretical sophistication, and spiritual groundedness, but as the director of the Samaritan Center, she led her staff as they delivered these services to your inter-faith, richly diverse community. But most importantly, Phyllis was known by us to be a minister of deep faith and profound wisdom We know, because she ministered to us. We love and miss her.
Many have described Phyllis as an "old soul" a woman of wisdom, wry wit and clear eye. Her Hawaiian name gets it right! We learned from Phyllis' friend, Maile Loo, of the plan to bestow on Phyllis the name Ka'onohiokalani, "the eyes of heaven." Maile says, " The eyes are not only literal, but figurative. She was a spiritual leader, and heaven on earth to so many. Through her seeing', we learned and lived better because of it."
Thank you, dear Hawaiian friends of Phyllis, for discerning the right name. Phyllis, indeed is Ka'onohiokalani, We have been blessed though her seeing. We are grateful. May her memory last for ever.
And may we now take to heart the promise if we mourn, we shall be comforted.
Margaret Kornfeld, D. Min., President
American Association of Pastoral Counselors