THIS MONTH
Involvement in Ministry
Lynn Baker
BEING a Chaplain
I’ve had the privilege of being with patients and families and staff as a Chaplain at Community Medical Centers over the past ten years. I also assist in training and supervising Volunteer Chaplains and serve as mentor for interns from the seminary.
Chaplaincy as a discipline is counter-intuitive to our culture. It is an invitation to being in a doing-oriented world. One of my first lessons on being instead of doing was taught by a woman whose dear husband of over fifty years had just died. “Mrs. Smith” asked for a prayer of blessing by his bedside. I gave her the gift of a listening ear and an open heart as she recounted stories and memories of their life together. Then we sat together comfortably in silence for a long time, and I gradually became aware that I really didn’t know if she would prefer to be alone, or to be accompanied, until she was ready to leave the hospital. I quietly asked her preference. Mrs. Smith’s request, “please stay” became the doorway to more silent accompaniment, after which she expressed gratitude and her readiness to go home. So much of my work is as simple and gentle as that evening’s “class” with my teacher, Mrs. Smith.
Sometimes being a Chaplain means accompanying people when their former ways of understanding of how the world works and who God is crumbles in the face of tragedy. Listening is the bulk of what I do. And sometimes, if I sense there may be any openness, I metaphorically ask folks if just for a moment, they might walk with me to a different window, to look out at an alternative view. There, just maybe their eyes will able to rest on the vision of a God whose face is streaming with tears of deep compassion and embrace instead of punishment or abandonment.
I am often moved by the beauty of the love I witness. I see tender care given to aging parents and grandparents. Spouses who have walked together for many years walk with each other as far as they can into the valley of the shadow of death. I listen to people as they tell their stories, making meaning of their lives and sharing their particular experiences of the complexities and joys and sorrows that weave their ways through each of our lives. Sometimes patients or families or staff and I pray together and cry together; sometimes I call a pastor or priest or imam or rabbi; sometimes we laugh or read scripture or simply sit and breathe together.
We can see the stars best on the darkest of nights. Perhaps that is part of the reason that in the midst of the sickness, suffering and dying that happens in hospitals, the beauty of love shines with particular brightness. As a Chaplain, I am honored to be in a place where I can be a star gazer, and on occasion to point to the Morning Star which shines in the darkest part of the night.