Being hard to impress, critical, and impatient are traits that serve editors and columnists well. Those who are easily awed, who drop their guard, who recommend everything they publish too enthusiastically can lead readers to become suspicious or weary, and hurt their publication's cause.

With that in mind, I am somewhat embarrassed to say: I really like the short articles that make up this issue and commend them to readers who have no room or inclination to file everything that crosses their desks. I have a hunch these pieces will be consulted, put to work, and reused as time passes. Here's why.

Their counsel to publics, especially those made up of people of faith, is to be a presence in the face of death and dying. Being a presence does not mean they will never have anything to say. But their narratives and their verbal counsel will more likely come in the context of urgings, as in wisdom attributed to Saint Francis: "Preach the Gospel. Use words if necessary." Being a presence may mean that silence rules. But Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was on to something when he reminded readers that "a presence is never mute."

I like this May/June issue also because it is practical. Earl E. Shelp, who shares a patent on Care Team ministry, one of a number of lay-directed presences, tells the story of organized efforts to enlarge the bedside presence of religious groups by moving beyond clergy involvement. The Second Vatican Council said somewhere that the laity carries the Catholic church into places that are beyond the clergy's reach. The laity outnumber clergy, in any case, hundreds to one. And many of them, retirees especially, have more time to be with people who face death than do agenda-bound clerics. Trust them.

Pat Fosarelli offers good counsel in a zone where many of us are tongue-tied and tactilely challenged—the wards where children are coming to terms with terminal illness. Fosarelli shows great respect for the young. A friend once dedicated a book to his children with the words: "Like genius, simple; that is why they are the great teachers." So children have difficulty envisioning what is ahead? From the snippets and snatches we get in this article, it is clear that the young do not really know less than do their elders when they face what theologian Karl Rahner called "the abyss of mystery." They simply stumble and mumble in different ways than do their elders. They are worth listening to, and being addressed—again with patient presence.

Though it has considerable historical precedent, the modern hospice is in a way a fresh invention by means of which people can minister to the dying. Paul R. Brenner takes up another invention often connected with hospice: spirituality. Where he differs from many talkers about the spirituality that is often so individualized is this: he sees the value of the communal efforts that back those who minister with presence in hospice circumstances.

I spoke to a Chicago-area version of Care Teams, lay ministries, and chaplaincies and at one point turned somewhat critical of such spirituality. "What's wrong with it?" came a question. Answer: not everything. There's much right with it. But ordinarily, and here let me read like a bumper sticker, "Spirituality Doesn't Make Hospice Calls." It does, or people devoted to it do, in Brenner's world.

Poet Donald Hall, author Kirsten Peachey, and the Center's own Ed DuBose reinforce these themes, in the latter case by providing historical perspective. This whole issue is not a noisy one; its authors unite quietly in their support of the value of presence. But, as Teilhard reminds us, in the world where people crave an empathic person at their side, a presence is never mute.