Kate Braistrup is a chaplain to game wardens in the parks and forests of Maine.

These are law enforcement officials in the wild, called in to respond to danger and disaster.

And her work with them takes her as she describes it to hinges of human experience, moments

where some lives are altered or ended, and others swung in wholly unprotected directions.

Kate Braistrup calls this her Ministry of Presence to life and death lost and found.

Her life had its own unpredictable hinge in the sudden death of her state trooper husband

at the age of 39.

She learned then, she says, about the finality of loss and the human capacity, nevertheless,

to cope and to care.

And from this, her sense of God emerges.

I don't look for God or God's work in magic or in tricks or in, you know, saying this

is what I want and then I get it.

I look for God's work always in how people love each other, in just the acts of love

that I see around me.

I'm Chris DeTippert.

This is on Being from APM, American Public Media.

Kate Braistrup met Drew Griffith when they were both students at the Corcoran School of

Art and Design in Washington, D.C.

After graduation, they moved to a small coastal town in Maine, Drew went into law enforcement

and Kate became a writer.

They had four children in eight years and found a spiritual home in Unitarian Universalism.

In fact, Drew Griffith made plans to enter seminary and to embark on a second career as a

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