Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Her legacy will live on
Chaplain retires from Highlands Oncology
As a chaplain working in health care — most recently with Highlands Oncology Group — the Rev. Pamela Cicioni has had her share of tough days and tougher losses. She admits that sometimes that leads to tough confrontations.
“When I need to have those conversations with God, I get on my knees and dig in the dirt in my garden,” she says. “My garden has become my sanctuary. My neighbors keep an eye on me, but they know when I’m shoveling or troweling, I’m also weeping or I’m praying or I’m venting.”
It’s no surprise then that Cicioni has been instrumental in the creation of a project that will share her sanctuary with everyone in Northwest Arkansas. Healing Gardens “is a stateof-the-art garden space campus and will be located alongside the Razorback Greenway and designed to enhance the quality of life for Northwest Arkansas and beyond,” explains Rachel Cox, the executive director of what is now a stand-alone organization. “We are amid a $5.6 million campaign to bring this project to fruition by the end of 2020. We anticipate outdoor art exhibits that will rotate seasonally, weekly educational programming, wellness classes, musical and arts performances, and reflective and community spaces” all
open to the public but with a special emphasis during the weekdays to those being served at Highlands Oncology and their families.
Cicioni says the Healing Gardens idea was born during a conversation with one of Highlands Oncology’s doctors, Thaddeus Beck. They were watching a sunset together, having both suffered recent losses, and “Dr. Beck said to me, ‘Doesn’t God create beauty in the colors?’” Cicioni remembers. “And I just fell apart. Then he started talking about visions of the future in his research, and I said, ‘But you need to see more than buildings. This is the place we need a healing garden.’
“A week later, the doctors met, and they gave me 2.5 acres,” she remembers. “I will always have the healing gardens as one of my passions.”
But the time has come, Cicioni says, to move on — to leave the garden in Cox’s hands so she can “play, play, play.” Her stint as “spiritual director” at Highlands Oncology came at the end of nearly 40 years in the
Methodist clergy — and she is third generation, so she’s been serving the Lord her whole life.
Cicioni grew up in the
Little Rock/Hot Springs area until she was in eighth grade, when her father took a church in Houston. Her intention, she says, was to work with special needs children, and she finished her undergraduate degree in that discipline. Shortly after graduation, her church and her parents hosted a celebration dinner for her — and pitched an idea. She was planning to apply for teaching jobs. They offered to pay for her graduate school if she’d spend that time considering whether the clergy might in fact be her calling.
“The first night in chapel in my first semester of grad school, I heard the call,” she remembers. She took her first church, Tarrytown United Methodist in Austin, Texas, right after she completed her master’s degree.
As it turned out, that was just her first master’s. She also earned one in clinical pastoral education and then the third in spiritual direction. She was a chaplain for many years at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rogers, then at Mercy for a short time before joining Highlands Oncology. She said she had a revelation during that transition that stuck with her.
“Chaplaincy is in the fire, in the moment, in the ER, in heart surgery, all of that, when someone is in the worst moments of their life,” she says. “But you’re only there for maybe 10 hours or five days. Spiritual directors walk side by side with human beings when they’re wrestling with their relationship with God and their purpose in life. It’s an amazing calling.”
And even though she’s retiring, Cicioni says “once a clergy, always a clergy.” She’s already considering offers from two churches to become their spiritual director, and she pastors a couple of others when their ministers are on vacation. But more immediately, she’s adopting two German shepherd/Australian shepherd puppies, who just happen to be old enough to go home on Dec. 7, which is her last day at Highlands. And she has a sweetheart, who is going to be her playmate in her retirement.
“We are blessed.”