Rick Clayton Moving Spirit
photos by Cindy Steele
~ by Lee Edgren
We sat in the newly created meditative prayer circle just outside Rick Clayton’ s house. Sunlight filtered through the leaves. Now and then a bird had a little to say, but the woods was largely silent.
Rick was kneeling on the ground, planting, when I arrived. He had placed a guitar in one of the chairs in the circle and his Celtic harp in another.
We talked until late morning turned into early afternoon. Finally, he took the harp up and offered to play. As the strings began to vibrate, it seemed that every bird in the neighborhood also offered its song— harp and birds and humans all falling silent together again at the end.
And this, Rick assures me, is how it often is for the people he serves as the full-time Hospice Chaplain for Southern Care Indiana, covering seven counties in southern Indiana.
Although he is The Reverend Richard Clayton, with a long history of conventional ministry behind him, nothing about him now fits into any of the stereotypical images of protestant pastors that I can bring to mind.
In addition to being a minister, he is a rock and roll guy, playing with a band in Indianapolis for 30 years. He leads drumming circles, is a Reiki master, and has a strong belief that excluding people from churches on any grounds is a practice not filled with the holy spirit.
20 Our Brown County • July / August 2015