Public Safety Ministries Inc.

This has been a roller coaster weekend for me, my family and our community.  It started late Friday afternoon with a drive to Hudson WI for a 6th grade confirmation retreat with my 11 year old daughter and about 50 of her Mt. Calvary church-mates.  Pastor Scott has a great strategy to get these kids to understand and appreciate Life and the wonderful relationships it brings.  The kids are teamed up in small groups, apart from their parents and with kids they don’t usually hang out with.  New friends, new relationships, new perspectives….new life!

Then I got the call from my 18 year old who is a senior at Minnetonka High School.  Two of her classmates had just died in a car crash.  I was not familiar with the names,  but my daughter knew them through school activities that exposed her to new friends, new relationships, new perspectives….new life and now….death.

For those of us in the public safety professions, we learn that death is a inevitable part of life.  In most cases we cannot prevent it, but we are simply asked to be there and do what we can when it happens.  My son, the student and firefighter now living in Alaska learned this early in his firefighting career.  He has embraced his calling to “be there” and also learned how to deal with the death, then move on with the life.  My prayer for him, and the rest of those in the profession,  is that they never forget to “deal with the death” and the impact it has on their lives, on their body, mind and soul.

So now we have Monday morning.  For an 11 year old it is back to school to continue the celebration of new friends and experiences.  For the 18 year old it is back to school to continue grieving the loss of new friends and experiences.  For the 21 year old it is simply back to work to continue living the experiences of the profession.  And for mom and dad?  We start Monday sharing the celebration, the grieving, the living, the death…..but most of all the “just being there” that comes from being parents.

Thanks for listening, sharing these stories is one way I find the strength and peace to continue “being there” at home and on the job.  So, how do you find the strength?

So often we are the recipients of the phrase “Take Care” as a good-bye message. It’s a lot like, “See you later”, “How’s it going?” and “How are you?”. Those rhetorical questions and comments that we all say and hear but never really think about. Well, “care” is a word that has often made me stop and think, made me feel, a word that often touches my soul…..and not always in a positive way. One of my first “spiritual” experiences with the word came when someone told me “I realize you really don’t care, but would it kill you to act like you do?”. The reason that this statement had such a big impact was that I really did care. I evolved from that experience and was hit with “I realize that you really do care, but wold it kill you to show it to other people?”.

As I venture off into this new career of ministry, pastoral care and chaplain care are not only nice thoughts, but actually identifiable job responsibilities and duties. There are classes dedicated to professional “care-giving”. As I give this more thought (and this whole post is just coming off the cuff wihtout edits) The Comment “Take Care” isn’t something someone does for you, it is something you do for your self. And in our profession it is a critical job responsibility because if you don’t care for yourself you won’t have the resources to care for others…..and that’s what you are getting paid to do.

So I’m going to end the wandering with that thought since it’s time to get Sophie to her softball game. You will get more on this in the future, it is evolving as a critical idea in the retirement and transition training I’ve been doing. So, Take Care!

Well, it’s been a year now since this website went live and getting close to a year since I posted my first “About Dan”:

Dan Carlson is currently serving as Police Chief for the City of Eden Prairie Minnesota. He has announced his retirement from police service, effective January 2007, to pursue a second career in the ministry. His 25 year career in law enforcement and his passion for the concept of spiritual fitness training have led him to found Public Safety Ministries Inc. PSMInc is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is “Promoting Spiritual Fitness in the Public Safety Professions”.

It’s probably time to update the information a bit, so here we go:

Dan Carlson retired as Police Chief of the City of Eden Prairie Minnesota in January of 2007. After serving 25 years in the law enforcement profession as a police officer, he has transitioned to a new role serving the profession as a police chaplain. He currently serves as the Chaplain for the Hennepin County and Minnesota Chiefs of Police Associations. Chaplain Carlson is also the founder and president of Public Safety Ministries Inc. a nonprofit ministry with the mission: “Serving Those Who Protect - Promoting Spiritual Fitness in the Public Safety Professions.”

Dan is also pursuing ordination as a Lutheran Pastor through The Minneapolis Synod of the ELCA and Luther Seminary in St. Paul Minnesota. He is “entered” as a candidate for ordination and participating Theological Education for Emerging Ministries (TEEM) program. TEEM is a program run cooperatively between Luther Seminary and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkley California.

So there you have it. I am starting to do quite a bit more speaking and training so it’s probably good to have an updated bio for my presentations. And besides, an old FBI National Academy friend from Maine just contacted me and I felt inspired to update the info.

I was searching the web the other day and came across this website as I googled “spiritual fitness”. Click on the title below to visit the site. Here is the site intro:

Richards Deployment to Afghanistan

LTC Richard Phillips’ deployment to Afghanistan from January 2007 until ????. I’m Commanding 42 of the finest Soldiers and Airmen in the world here at the Salerno Hospital at FOB Salerno in the Khowst Province of Afghanistan. We have the privilege of providing healthcare to Afghan and US forces as well as Host Nation Civilians/Afghan Nationals.

Here is the entry that talks about spiritual fitness. I was going to post this and provide some of my commentary and perspective. As I read and re-read these simple words I discovered just exactly what I could say to add to this message……..nothing.

And for our spiritual fitness, we have a nice chapel.

All faiths share the same building, so the services are coordinated throughout the weekend.

Lots of people find religion here; maybe it’s the danger, the boredom, or the loneliness. Whatever it is, the best church services I’ve been to have been in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is strange to go to church with weapons racks in the back of the chapel, and handguns visible everywhere. But it’s nice to go to church without any pretension; no worries about what to wear or what you drive or who you are in the community.

There is a purity and simplicity to worship in a combat zone.

I usually don’t pass these on, but it is about a minister and a sermon and how to live your life and mostly about perspective. I got it from my cousin and for those of you who know my family I’m sure you know which cousin it was……

Four Worms and a lesson…..

A minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon.
Four worms were placed into four separate jars.

The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
The fourth worm was put into a container of good clean soil.

At the conclusion of the sermon, the Minister reported the following results:

The first worm in alcohol - Dead.

The second worm in cigarette smoke - Dead

Third worm in chocolate syrup - Dead

Fourth worm in good clean soil - Alive.

So the Minister asked the congregation - What can you learn from this demonstration?

Maxine, who was sitting in the back, quickly raised her hand and said,

‘As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms!’

That pretty much ended the service…..

I was reviewing some of my old posts today, trying to see what needed to be updated and maintained. I came upon this previous post and thought it would be a good re-run for those new to the sight. Enjoy!

“A House With Four Rooms”

By Dan Carlson

Yesterday Father Tim, a friend and adviser, gave me the following story adapted from “A House with Four Rooms” by Rumer Godden.

A house with four rooms

Imagine a house with four rooms:

One room is a fully equipped kitchen, stocked with every kind of delicious food and wine.

Another room is a quiet library, furnished with comfortable chairs and lined with shelves of the best books written.

A third room is a work room or studio. It houses a work shop for carpentry, a garage for automotive maintenance, or a studio for painting, pottery or sculpting.

The forth room is a high tech media room, with the latest in audio-video hardware and a state of the art computer set-up.

You become so interested in one of the rooms that it becomes the room you live in: you become so immersed in cooking that you never avail yourself of the treasures of the library; or you become so engrossed with all the toys in the media room that you never sit down and enjoy dinner with you family; or you become so immersed in projects and gadgetry that you forget how to connect with other human beings. Our lives are houses with many rooms. Yet we tend to live in only one room: whatever room we find most comfortable and safe, whatever room is most fun and satisfying, whatever room is least stressful and demanding.

There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone of us is a house with four rooms - a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual room. And most of us tend to live most of the time in one of those rooms. Unless less we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired out, we are incomplete.

There are lots of stories out there that hit on the mission of Public Safety Ministries. As I spread the message, people see the Spiritual Fitness idea and share it with me. One of my goals with this website is pass those sightings along to others. So enjoy and feel free to contact me with your Spiritual Fitness sightings and I’d be happy to pass them on

The following is the invocation I presented at today’s Hennepin County Chiefs of Police Association Meeting:

Dear God,

We thank you once again for this opportunity to gather in the spirit of Public Safety leadership. We ask that you bless the food we receive today as nourishment for our bodies, the information presented as nourishment for our minds and the fellowship we share as nourishment for our souls.

Specifically today we ask for blessings on the new chiefs and other new members of our association. We ask that they feel welcome and enjoy the relationships and fellowship that membership in this association can bring. Also, help us as an association provide resources and guidance to our new members as they take over their new leadership responsibilities.

Again we thank you for this time together. Please guide us as we lead those who protect and serve our communities.

Amen

It’s 8:55 AM and the start of the new fall season is upon us. Yesterday was a very eventful day in the Carlson household. Sophia started middle school, Amy started her first day as a senior in high school, we put Pete on a plane back to Alaska after a three week visit, I took my 83 year old dad to the hospital for prostate surgery (very successful!) and I started sorting through how I spent the last three weeks as well as how I was going to spend the rest of my life. A pretty full day. But from talking to people, a day filled with events that are very common, in substance and quantity. We live very full lives.

I accomplished the travel I wanted, spent a lot of family time as predicted, but I didn’t get around to the study, reading and reflection that I hoped to. Several work/career transition projects popped up and were very productive, yet very time consuming. The abundance of family time, just time spent together and hanging out was very spiritually refreshing. I learned a lot about what was going on in my kids lives just by being with them. But from a study standpoint, I did do some reading, some recreational reading that turned into study.

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”

My daughter had it as assigned reading over the summer and said I needed to read it since this guy talked about a lot of the things I talk about. So she gave me a copy (due to a redundant purchase) and I was going to make it my recreational novel reading. Well if any of you have read it, it is NOT recreational reading, at least not for me. I’m about two thirds through, I quit twice, and now I have difficulty putting it down. I could, and probably will share some of my thoughts on the book, but now is not the time. If you are interested, google it and you will get more opinions than you could imagine. There is even a full version of the text on-line, click here.

But I will give you a short excerpt from the book that gave me a lot to think about, and is something I think everyone could gain some insight from:

“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.”

 So I’m back on-line, talk to you soon!