The three men at the forefront of the grief counseling, team chaplains Lee Corder, Brett Fuller and Jerry Leachman, did their best to ease sorrow and make sense of the tragedy. Yet this cadre \u2013 most teams have one not three chaplains \u2013 was not enough to alleviate the organization\u2019s collective ache.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have felt completely inadequate because there are things that man just can\u2019t do,\u201d Fuller said<\/p>\n
Fuller, whose full-time job is senior pastor at Grace Covenant Church in Chantilly, is a volunteer chaplain with the team. Normally he spends 10-15 hours a week with the team leading Bible studies and counseling players and coaches. This past week, he practically lived at Redskins Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can give wisdom where I think it can apply,\u201d Fuller said. \u201cI can help out with perspective and how we need to look at things in order to heal better rather than bitter or maybe [when players are] accusing God of being out to lunch or neglectful of his responsibilities by allowing such a tragedy to happen to a guy who is on the way, I flip it and talk about how wonderful it was we had 3\u00bd years [with Taylor], how nothing is promised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corder conducted a Bible study Friday morning with about 10 members of the coaching staff. Using the Old Testament story of Ezra, he talked about how the coaches can provide leadership during traumatic times.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat lessons can we learn on how do you manage crisis as a person of faith in a way that makes good out of what is so painful,\u201d said Corder who has been with the team for 20 years. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen these moments come, you go, okay, now in the times of pain is the time when people of faith can say \u2018Let\u2019s stand up and demonstrate our faith by the way we honor those who\u2019ve gone.\u2019 We think of Sean fondly. We remember him. I will tell you personally in my opinion he\u2019s the greatest story the last two years at Redskins Park in terms of what was going on with him in terms of his own faith. He was a young man who was changing and I saw that. No question.\u201d <\/p>\n
Many of the players are having a hard time understanding Taylor\u2019s death. No matter how strong or weak their faiths are, they question God\u2019s role in the tragedy. Fuller understands this challenge is part of the grieving process. <\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, the whole earth just shook here,\u201d Fuller said. \u201cEverything upon which they trusted has been shaken. When everything you\u2019ve known is not as stable as you thought it should be, yet there are people who have been through the same earthquake and are calm, then that becomes a why? No longer are they asking about God why? They\u2019re asking why are you like this? How are you so stable? How do you make it? What I try to be is who God would be to them even though they don\u2019t believe.\u201d<\/p>\n
As team chaplains, the men say they aren\u2019t around the locker room only for those with strong religious backgrounds. They are there to counsel everyone whether they believe in God or not. <\/p>\n
\u201cNumber one, it would be a poor chaplain who wouldn\u2019t also recognize this is a time of real pain,\u201d Corder said. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a wonderful young man. It\u2019s a tragic and senseless loss. And now you\u2019ve got to make sense out of the senseless loss. I think we become part of that anchor, where guys can go, okay, let\u2019s start pulling on the rope together….You respect others place but you try to give hope in what you believe. Let\u2019s cling on and go together. Let\u2019s all row together and maybe if some of us can pull harder on the oars at this point, others can be blessed by it as well so we all can pull through together.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There’s more<\/a>, with a lot of wisdom into the grieving process, wisdom that may be able to help others who find themselves suddenly coping with loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death of Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins was a shock to fans and friends — and to the other players on the team. How do you cope with a loss like that? The Washington Post spoke with the Redskin chaplains: The three men at the forefront of the grief counseling, team chaplains Lee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\n
Grieving for Sean Taylor: "The whole earth just shook here" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grieving for Sean Taylor: "The whole earth just shook here" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The death of Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins was a shock to fans and friends — and to the other players on the team. How do you cope with a loss like that? The Washington Post spoke with the Redskin chaplains: The three men at the forefront of the grief counseling, team chaplains Lee…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-03T13:20:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Deacon Greg Kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Grieving for Sean Taylor: \"The whole earth just shook here\" - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Grieving for Sean Taylor: \"The whole earth just shook here\" - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"The death of Sean Taylor of the Washington Redskins was a shock to fans and friends — and to the other players on the team. How do you cope with a loss like that? The Washington Post spoke with the Redskin chaplains: The three men at the forefront of the grief counseling, team chaplains Lee…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2007-12-03T13:20:00+00:00","author":"Deacon Greg Kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html","name":"Grieving for Sean Taylor: \"The whole earth just shook here\" - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-03T13:20:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-03T13:20:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/grieving-for-sean-taylor-the-whole-earth-just-shook-here.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Grieving for Sean Taylor: “The whole earth just shook here”"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee","name":"Deacon Greg Kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","caption":"Deacon Greg Kandra"},"description":"A Roman Catholic deacon serving the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, Greg Kandra is News Director for the diocese's cable channel, NET (New Evangelization Television.) Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}