Ordinary

One of my chaplain colleagues arrived at work yesterday with her right middle finger in a splint. The slight pull of her dog’s leash, the cause of the injury, made the situation even more infuriating. Worse yet, the digit might require surgery. Thankfully she is left-handed.

My colleague is also a pianist and plays to help her process the time she spends with patients and families. I’ve been thinking about how she has been enduring similar frustrations and limitations as the people we see each day. Her predicament also got me thinking of a wonderful concerto by Ravel for the left-hand that had been commissioned for a musician who had lost his right hand in World War I.

Oliver Sacks, who is a brilliant mind, doctor and author, crushed his leg in a mountaineering accident and barely recognized his limb following his hospitalization. Interestingly enough he learned to claim his leg as part of his identity and walk again through the music of Mendelssohn.

A patient I saw today has endured 6 months of pain, weight loss, and unanswered questions when a routine gall bladder surgery went array. A simple knick in the bile duct and his insides soon became his outsides.  Now he’s holding on to prayers and wanting rest, strength and answers, all which have eluded him for too long.

During devotions this morning with the group I shared some of my photography as we engaged in visio divina, a meditation practice to see at a contemplative pace and see deeply. I chose an image I’ve looked at so many times and yet I somehow the ordinary road in the left corner or red flower in front of the dark trees caught my eye.

Today’s reflection is that of the ordinary changing our lives. The gems in our individual circumstances offer beauty. The inner resources we carry, even of hope, possibility, pleasure in lovely things and creativity, allow life to exist, strive, and even thrive.  My colleague is bound to recover, and perhaps this concerto will be an outlet for a while. Sacks connected the unfamiliar with the familiar in music. My patient may learn a strength in suffering or gain a hope to share with his wife. I realized the message of being present in a photograph. 

These ideas come from the ordinary, the very essence of God’s daily bread and abundant love.

Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand  

The first task…possibly ignored

At the beginning of everyday at the hospital, the group of us chaplains (there are two staff chaplains, 2 resident chaplains, and 3 summer interns) must complete morning work.

Enter the Broadway soundtrack of Lion King with “The Morning Report.” It always comes to my mind.

Morning work is a main administrative task which informs us about who is here, who we connected with previously, and who might want to see us today. Each one of us visits the patients on a unit (eg. ICU, Labor and Delivery, Emergency Room, Surgical) to offer comfort and care as desired. We also provide information about Advance Directives, prayer, and coloring books for the bored.  While the morning work is semi-complicated and takes one person about 30 minutes to comb through the 60+ names on average, it is the guide for the rest of the day.

That is, it is a potential guide.

Twice in the last week the morning work went unused, by the way side.  The priority of caring for a family and friends while a patient is actively dying trumps any other plan for the day. This time with families and a patient is sweet, tortuous, calm, and wrenching all at the same time. Logistics have to be tended to while the chaplain also cares for and supports the grieving people left behind to live.  Such connections are not complete in a typical 30-minute visit, but can instead fill an entire afternoon.

This past Friday, only three of us were at work and I scrambled all morning to take care of the admin pieces. I made sure morning work was wrapped up before a meeting only after to run right to ICU for rounds to find out about each patient to report back and complete the morning work information. Then after a service celebrating the Feast of St. Anthony (patron saint of St. Anthony North Hospital), a quick bite for lunch and a single conversation with one of the patients on my unit, I got a page to attend to a family and their dying mother/grandmother. All the scurrying and preparation of the morning felt for not as I spent the next five hours with the family and dying patient.

When I pray in the morning for the day, I sometimes get tongue tied, because as much as I can anticipate what the day will look like, I really have no idea.  But maybe it is in that tongue-tied, speechless moment that the vital prayer exists: Let me be present to you, God, and present to your people.  These are the most important aspects. The preparation for visits and efforts to provide intentional care are not to be thrown out. But a clingy-spirit to such things must be; in the end we are only allowed and able to cling to sacred space where God needs us most.

flower perfection

My new neighborhood in Broomfield can’t be beat if one is a walker.  All the streets have beautiful, well-maintained sidewalks tucked in from the road with groomed lawns and luscious deciduous trees lining the edge. But still more walkways and trails can be found intersecting the land behind the houses, winding their way beyond traffic into worlds all their own. I’ve especially enjoyed these paths this week while Mac visits from Washington. Though his stay is just a week, we’ve made the most of our time to walk, talk, and inevitably get lost, grateful for the GPS in our phones.

Along these walks I’ve come across a lovely assortment of flowers blooming over people’s white picket fences and brushing us on our way by.  I don’t having ever encountered these particular plants so they are all that more sweet to me. They have become a symbol of true perfection.

Yes, this might sound cliché, but it only occurred to me as I passed by several times what wisdom I can find in a flower. Lately I’ve been pondering the idea of perfection and right and wrong. I don’t believe these necessarily fit in tandem with each other, but such are the terms and realities society and my personal reflections have landed on. If the choice isn’t good it must be wrong. Right decisions are to be sought and wrong ones avoided.  But when I look at flowers I don’t see right or wrong blooms.  Some might be bigger or fuller or brighter, but these qualifiers do not make them right or wrong. They simply illustrate difference in beauty for so bud is anything but lovely. What generosity in judgment! Flowers inherently have beauty as a quality and cannot be called right or wrong.

My ah-ha moment tells me to do the same with myself and others. People are inherently beautiful, loveable, and a thing to be admired. My decisions and actions might be off the mark, but my being, ME, is not right or wrong. It’s different variations of lovely.  With this perspective of who I am and then the rest of humanity, I might be able to look with more generous eyes.  First I can put away judgment. Then I can take closer peeks into the created perfection of each individual.    

Quickest Friend

Last week I approached a room with some legal information to share with the patient and gingerly knocked on the door, not really wanting to bother the family members during their visit. Yes, this is an area I want to work on this summer- the idea that disrupting might actually be a delightful distraction or calming presence. Anyway, my light knock not only made my presence known, but is also made a little girl turn in her chair and with new energy and play and smile at me.  J happened to be the great granddaughter of the patient, but to me as I walked in, she was my angel, unaware.

My cohorts and I are studying some literature that discusses the term “intimate stranger.”[1] This phrase captures the closeness chaplains gain with patients and family and yet the perfect anonymity in order to release words and emotions with some amount of comfort.  In the Bible, the Hebrew word ger or gerim usually translates into the English word “stranger” and is used alongside the command of caring for the orphan, widow, and poor. In my context, “intimate stranger” helps protect people and also allows them the support they didn’t know they needed or couldn't ask for.  The hospitality I provide the patient/stranger is space and listening.

Yet, when I entered the room to J, her sick grandpa, mom, and siblings, that 8 year-old girl was anything but a stranger.

“Hey, you’re not in school anymore! What do you like to do in the summer?”

“Swim!”

“Oh yeah. Where do you swim?”

“At my grandpa’s house.”

“It sounds like he’s a good one to keep.”

We became the quickest of friends. Honestly, I felt at ease to talk to her all afternoon, but the booklet in my hand and the other eyes gazing at us turned my attention away. The next day I saw J in the hall looking for our comfort cart with its hot chocolate.

“How’s your grandpa?”

“Not very good.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“Sad. And my mom is sad which makes me sad, too.”

“Here’s a mandala to color. You can pray for your grandpa as you color.”

“And I can give this to him?”

“Absolutely. That would put a smile on his face.”

Maybe in another place and time, J and I would never connect and forever be strangers.  But today I can imagine getting an invitation to her birthday party in the mail to come swim at her grandpa’s pool once he’s better.  I know I’m partly seeing this serious situation the way that softens my heart rather than leaves it heavy with grief. But walking through the door, offering a welcome and connection to what matters to those present, and remembering a face, a friend can be the balm necessary to endure.  I pray for the health of J’s grandpa for his sake and the continued connection he has with his family.  I also pray that one of my quickest friends ever will be no stranger to wholeness and comfort in her life despite the suffering she might encounter along the way.

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[1] Dykstra, Robert C., “Intimate Strangers: The Role of the Hospital Chaplain in Situations of Sudden Traumatic Loss,” in The Journal of Pastor Care, Summer 1900, Vo. XLIV, No.2.

a sweet beginning

With some trepidation but also bolstered courage and rest from the long weekend, I began my first day of patient visits. In ICU I met "D" who shared her dreams of heaven and hell.  “I’ve never know that kind of love,” she whispered with tears in her eyes.  This encounter with the Mystery and God of Love had been bathed in warm cream-colored light, and I imagined the sweetness as if it were a gourmet cupcake and smooth frosting.  On the 3^rd floor I talked with many people who had a great deal of hope despite the incredible hills they had already overcome in their lives and the challenges still facing them. They spoke softly of their losses, tenderly petting a lap as if a beloved dog still rested there or wishing for another chance to make better choices as an example to grandchildren. The rich faith oozed out of all these patients, a sustenance thick as honey that could no longer remain the cookie-cutter picture once learned in Sunday school.

As I reflect on my day, I realize that had looked forward to my “Death by Chocolate” ice cream throughout it all. No, I wasn’t drooling on patients, but the knowledge that a sweet treat would accompany me after dinner popped in my head once or twice.  This first intentional encounter with patients fulfilled long awaited expectations I thought about, prayed for, and dreamt about since January. Finally, this day came without disappointment, just as sweetly as a bowl of ice cream this evening.  I experienced a few moments of hesitancy and uncertainty.  How would I answer questions about forgiveness? How might I show care to one who is in the last days of life? Will we move beyond the inconveniences of surgery? I let those questions linger with me and somehow they found resolution or just the sweet space for mystery.  I look forward to tomorrow, not just for the sweet, pleasing ice-cream experience of it, but for all as I know now that I won’t be disappointed.