(RNS) — Chaplain Margaret Kibben, now acting chaplain of the House of Representatives, has spent much of her long career as a U.S. Navy chaplain in camouflage. Often it has been the sailors and Marines she has ministered to who haven’t always known how to decipher exactly who they are meeting.
In a recent interview, Kibben recalled a day in the late 1990s at Camp LeJeune, in North Carolina, when she overheard a Marine ask a comrade, “Who the — was that?” Later in the day, after learning that Kibben was a chaplain, he asked, “Hey chaplain, got a minute?” It led to a chance for them to speak privately about his personal challenges.
“For me, that is quintessential chaplaincy,” said the Presbyterian Church (USA) minister and former chief of chaplains of the Navy, the 26th person and the first woman to fill the role. “You are where it matters, when it matters, with what matters. And sometimes the ‘when’ goes over a whole day, sometimes the ‘where’ takes you on a hike and into a camp post, but wherever or whenever you are, you’re there with what matters, and that’s an ear and …
