Laura Simmons

Laura Simmons, a member of West Hills Friends Meeting, is currently serving as an on-call chaplain for Hillsboro Medical Center. She began her chaplaincy training during a 2007 sabbatical from George Fox Seminary, where she taught for 17 years. Laura also has a freelance writing and editing business, Simmons Creative Communication. She has edited multiple Pendle Hill Pamphlets and often works with graduate students, editing their theses and dissertations. She appreciates the opportunity to continue learning through what she is reading and writing.

Laura has done full-time or on-call chaplaincy on and off for nearly 20 years, responding to what she calls the “sacrament of the late-night phone call.” Laura’s mother lived in Oregon for the last 10 months of her life, and Laura notes, “Whenever the phone rang in the middle of the night, something awful had happened: ‘Your mother’s in the hospital.’ ‘She fell again.’ When I am doing on-call chaplaincy and the phone rings in the middle of the night, I get to go help the people who are receiving one of those awful calls. Not everybody experiences the phone ringing in the night as a holy thing—I’m glad I get to.”

Laura’s favorite class to teach at the seminary was a course on reconciliation. “I got to watch God move in the classroom, which was an amazing thing to experience over and over again each year.” Laura’s primary metaphor for teaching was ‘hospitality,’ following Parker Palmer’s contention that “to teach is to create a space for the community of truth to be practiced.” She sees her work in chaplaincy as another form of creating and holding space in which God moves—in hearts and hurts, through whispers and wonder.

Laura spent many years engaged in a back-and-forth with God about leaving the seminary: “Is it time for me to leave?” “No—I need you back there.” When she finally departed in 2018, she found herself moving from a vocation focused on doing to one centered around being. “In the academic world, it’s all about what tools you have in your toolbox—and believe me, with my broad assortment of classes, I left with a rich and complex set of tools. In the chaplaincy-training world, I am the tool being developed and honed for God’s purposes.” Laura came to the Quakers because she felt led to be part of a more contemplative community, and also one in which her now former vocation was not the primary way in which people knew her.