This series of six sermons by Rev. Lynn Casteel Harper originally aired during week eight of the 2021 summer assembly.

Lynn Casteel Harper is a minister, chaplain, and writer. Author of On Vanishing (Catapult, April 2020), a nonfiction book that explores the dimensions of spirituality, social justice, and dementia, Lynn received a Barbara Deming Fund grant for women writers for the project.

Lynn’s work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Catapult, The Huffington Post, North American Review, CALYX, the Journal of Religion and Abuse, and elsewhere. She received the New Delta Review Nonfiction Prize in 2013 and the Orison Anthology’s 2017 Nonfiction Award. She was named runner up for the Torch Prize in 2016.

An ordained Baptist minister, Lynn completed her M.Div. at Wake Forest University and her chaplaincy residency at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Lynn served as the nursing home chaplain at a continuing care retirement community on the New Jersey shore for seven years. She is currently the Minister of Older Adults at The Riverside Church in the City of New York. Originally from southeast Missouri, Lynn lives in New York City with her spouse Ryan Harper.

This program is made possible by the Edmond E. Robb-Walter C. Shaw Fund and the Randell-Hall Memorial Chaplaincy.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.