PBS program to feature Camp Ray of Hope

WINTHROP – A Maine camp will be featured on this week’s episode of “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly” on Maine Public Television.

Correspondent Ray Faw will provide a behind-the-scenes look at Camp Ray of Hope, a weekend retreat that helps grieving families cope with the loss of a loved one. The camp was founded in 1995 and is run by the Hospice Volunteers of Waterville.

The retreat is held one weekend a summer at Camp Mechuwana, the United Methodist Church camp in Winthrop. The program offers grieving families and individuals opportunities to learn coping and self-care techniques.

“Grief is hard work. It is exhausting,” camp founder Dale Marie Clark, who lost her husband and son in the space of 10 weeks, told Faw, “and it takes really hard work to be able to be willing and able to share whatever those feelings are or whatever those words are that you need to share. If you work through those intense, intense feelings in the beginning, then you are letting go a little piece of that intense pain. And that’s really the only way that you can let go.”

The program will be available on the Public Broadcasting System’s Web site after 8:30 p.m. at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics. It will be aired at 12:30 a.m. Monday on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.