The Rev. Kate Braestrup, bestselling author of the award-winning Here If You Need Me, named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best books of 2006, will serve as chaplain-in-residence at Chautauqua Institution for Week Five.
Since 2001, she has served as chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, joining the wardens as they search the wild lands and fresh waters of Maine for those who have lost their way, and offering comfort to those who wait for the ones they love to be rescued, or for their bodies to be recovered.
Braestrup will preach at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title is “In the Country of the Gerasenes” and the scripture reading is Mark 5:1-20.
She will also preach at the 9:15 a.m. morning worship services Monday through Friday in the Amp. Her titles for the sermon series include: “Pain and Paul,” “Baby Henry Meets Diablo,” “The Satanic Algorithms,” “How You Practice is How You Play ” and “Jesus’ Temptation … and Ours.”
As the daughter of a foreign correspondent, Braestrup spent her childhood in Algiers, New York City, Paris, Bangkok, Washington D.C. and Sabillasville, Maryland. Educated at the Parsons School of Design/The New School and Georgetown University, Braestrup originally thought of herself primarily as a writer.
She married James Andrew “Drew” Griffith in 1985. Shortly after the birth of their first child in 1986, Griffith joined the Maine State Police, and the family moved to midcoast Maine.
Braestrup published a novel, Onion, in 1990, and occasional essays in national publications. More children arrived, but she expected to be able to continue combining motherhood and the writing of fiction and non-fiction for the foreseeable future.
Griffith was killed in a car accident in 1996 while on duty. Braestrup was left a widowed mother of four children between the ages of 3 and 9.
“As it happened, Drew Griffith had spent the last year of his life thinking about, researching and finally committing himself to becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister, a plan that was naturally discussed extensively with his wife,” Braestrup wrote on her website. “In this way, unwittingly, he had prepared the way for (her) to recognize and develop her own vocation.”
She entered the Bangor Theological Seminary in 1997, and was ordained in 2004. Braestrup divides her time between her service as chaplain to the Maine Warden Service and writing. In addition, she is a popular public speaker, and has given a TED Talk and contributed several stories to “The Moth.”
Braestrup’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, and she’s the author of Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, published in 2009; Beginner’s Grace, published in 2010; and Anchor & Flares, published in 2015.
