Today I am at the hospital for my third 24 hour on-call. One of the joys (?) of summer chaplaincy. I was sitting in the on-call room thinking to myself that it might be about time to start that blog I was always thinking about starting. To my surprise, I came to this site to find I had started the blog more than a year ago and forgotten all about it! Better late than never!
CPE has been an eye-opening experience in so many ways. I'm only one month in, but I've already learned so much--mostly about myself. Specifically, I've learned that some of the assumptions I had about myself and my own beliefs are in fact full of hot air.
I always thought that I had faith that God was in control. I always felt confident that I could rely on God's wisdom and power-- that though I might not always understand God's will, I trusted it.
Then CPE began.
I found myself relentlessly frustrated by the fact that in almost every situation I encountered, there was nothing I could do to make things better. I was powerless. I couldn't fix things. Most of the time, the most I can do on a practical, concrete level, is get someone a glass of water. I was overjoyed the other day when a patient asked me to call their pastor for them. Something to do! Something to make me feel needed and useful!!
Of course, I know full well, and knew going in, that my role here is not to fix anything. It would be pretty prideful of me to think that I could, really. Chaplaincy is, more than anything else, a ministry of presence. I need to get over all my own bullshit (or at least leave it at the door) and make myself fully present to each person that I see. I always talk about how we are all called to be the hands and feet of Christ... and this is a very real opportunity to live that out. Now is the time for me to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
Realizing how powerless I am in the face of disease, tragedy, and death, I have become keenly aware of just how much I don't trust God. In every situation, my gut reaction is always, "what can I do?" Which may not be so bad all of the time, but it may also get in the way of my ability to simply be present with people. If I'm always trying to find out what I can do, I may just miss out on the opportunity to really listen, to really be present. Now is not the time for me to be an activist. Now is the time for me to be still. To listen. To pray. And to trust in God's power- rather than my own.
The stories in the revised common lectionary for today are the story of David and Goliath in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the story of Jesus calming a storm in the Gospel of Mark. What an interesting juxtaposition. On the one hand is a character who trusts so completely in God's power that he goes up against a powerful military enemy with no armour and nothing but a sling shot. On the other hand are a group of Jesus' very own disciples, panicking in the midst of a storm at sea despite the fact that God was right there with them in the boat. I was reflecting on these stories as I started my on-call rotation this morning. I was thinking about the fact that the point of these stories may not so much be that God is some kind of cosmic "fixer", even though in both of these cases, God provides miraculous outcomes. I was thinking that the point may actually be that the real miracle is that through all the storms we face in life-- including disease, death, tragedy, and loss-- God is right there with us, in the boat. So maybe that's what hospital ministry is about, in a way. As the chaplain, it's not my job to "fix" anything, but to climb into the boat, in the midst of the storm.
No comments:
Post a Comment