Art Lucas has died.

I received an email yesterday from the "Shared Prayers" person at the Conference Office. It said, "It is with great regret that the district shares that Art Lucas has died." The message then gave the details of his funeral arrangements. Art was the Director of Spiritual Care at Barnes Jewish Hospital, but for me Art was the voice of God.

I traveled with Art and a group of other health care professionals to Riga, Latvia in 1997. The purpose of our travel was to bring the program/idea/institution of Hospice to this eastern European country. In those years, the USSR had not been gone all that long, and Jewish Hospital had a sister hospital there that they were mentoring into the 20th Century. We were introducing the idea of team health care, as well as dealing openly with death. The social norms of that time were to not tell the patient that they were dying and to keep it from them, the family was told and was aware and"protected" the patient from all "difficult" or "painful" information. Of course, hospice is 180 degrees the other direction. This was the first time I had traveled to Europe, I had two small children at home, but when I was invited to go, very much as a reward for a job well done, there was a stirring in my spirit that I HAD to go.

We traveled the long trip and stepped back in time. Riga is an ancient city that began in the 1400's. They have a history of fighting off the Vikings and surviving many assaults from other powers. (And they survived the USSR) Art's role was as a chaplain and he was meeting with the local seminarians. The Lutheran church has a history there. Their question to him was, "What does a chaplain do?" In our group he was sharing how the meeting went and how he answered the questions. He said, "Your pastor leads you and tells you what to believe, and a chaplain meets you where you are and walks with you in that place." The moment those words left Art's mouth and hit my ears, - the best way I can describe it, is that my heart was squeezed. It was in my chest, and there was a hand on my heart and it gently squeezed it. Well I thought, "that's odd" "You're way too excited girl, get a grip." and pretty much dismissed it as a blip.

Returning to the US, my family, Barnes-Jewish and Physical Therapy, everything had changed, I was different, and my experience of working as a PT at a skilled nursing facility was different. I became less interested in my middle management position and more interested in the patients dispositions and their souls. Not too long after that, I remembered this moment in Latvia, and I began to understand God was calling me to work in new ways for him and for his kingdom.

I shared this with Art and in his quiet way he smiled and said, sometimes you just don't know when God will use you. I visited with him a couple of other times and reminded him of the impact his ministry was to me and my life. Thank you Art, good and faithful servant. Rest in peace.