No, that’s not a typo – the word is elpis. It was one of the easiest words to learn in my Biblical Greek class. Though it sounds remarkably like the name of a certain singer associated with Memphis, it has nothing to do with music. Originally inspired by Greek mythology, it means hope. But our professor stressed that its implications go far beyond our modern understanding of what hope is. It was never used in conjunction with a desire, or a wish that something might or might not happen. No, elpis means something that goes beyond a wish – it’s an expectation. Furthermore, it’s the expectation of something truly grand. It’s used over 50 times in the New Testament, in reference to the reward that awaits those who have faith in God’s promises to us. I used to think it refers only to the parousia – the End Times that Paul refers to so often in his letters. I’m not so certain anymore that it doesn’t include other things as well.
I was in the midst of a routine on-call shift. I’m not sure the word “routine” ever fits in chaplaincy, though – every person’s situation is unique, and that sort of undermines the challenges the patients, their families and the medical staff face. I was paged to the cardiology unit at 12:30am to cover the death of a patient who’d been here less than a day. Roughly seven minutes later, as I was walking toward the elevators to that unit, my phone rang. The house supervisor (the RN in charge of the entire hospital) was asking me to come to the ER because there was a situation involving a young car accident victim. I explained what I was doing (death is about the only thing that could preclude an immediate response), and that I’d be there as soon as possible. The wife of the gentleman who had died had been told to expect this; he was 80 years old and had suffered from dementia for years so it was one of the few times when one can actually say that death is a blessing. On average, when I respond to a death, I spend about two hours with a family as they process what’s going on and begin to accept how different their reality will be from now on. With this one, I spent about an hour, and part of that included talking with the nursing staff, who wanted to unload a little about some of their own frustrations.
When I arrived in the ER, there was a very tall young doctor talking to the family members of the accident victim Brent, a 21-year-old who had been thrown from the SUV in which he was riding when it blew a tire on I-10. Three of his friends had been killed instantly; all were wearing seatbelts. He was not, so when the vehicle rolled, he was ejected. The main injuries he suffered were to his head and his face, and his hips had been badly dislocated. It was tough to gauge from what the doctor said whether or not he held out any hope of survival for Brent. I spent several minutes hearing background from one of the nurses and when I went to see the patient in the room, his parents had disappeared. I was struck immediately by the sight of his face; half his lower lip had literally been ripped off. It made me realize how lucky I’ve been that I don’t often see the graphic reality that the ER staff deals with on a daily basis. They seemed calm enough in the face of his appearance, so I thought maybe it’d be okay. He’d have a very long road to recovery, of course, but in the end he’d go home. That happened a long time ago with the sole survivor of a helicopter crash; though we didn’t expect him to survive even 48 hours, he walked out of here four months later. Of course, the biggest rehabilitation for that guy was learning to live with the fact that his closest friends had all perished in the crash. I knew that Brent would have that to face, and wondered how we could address that.
One of the ER nurses led me down a side hallway toward a place where she thought she’d seen his parents go; in the open doorway of an unlit office I saw an X-ray lit up on the computer screen and gasped audibly. “That’s Brent, isn’t it?” and the nurse confirmed it. I’ve not been trained to read these pictures, but based on what the doctor had said, it was obviously the man in question. The spine and skull were fully vertical, whereas the pelvic bone and hips were bent at about a 45-degree angle. I gave a brief prayer of thanks that Brent was unconscious; I couldn’t imagine how painful that would feel to someone who was awake. The nurse and I traipsed all through the back of the ER before coming back up toward the family consultation room to find them huddled together – some in chairs, some sitting on the floor next to the others. There were enough chairs spread throughout the room, but I suspect the need for physical closeness to each other superseded that for comfort. Brent’s parents had long since divorced and both had remarried; all four parents were there, along with Brent’s younger brother Brad. The unity among the four really impressed me; I’ve heard so many horror stories about stepparents who can’t even tolerate each other’s presence that it was refreshing to see four who were fairly amicable. It was so obvious that I don’t believe Brent’s accident was what had united them; they were simply a group who managed to live without rancor toward each other. I spoke about hope, and at one point actually mentioned the young man who had miraculously survived a different accident. In retrospect, I don’t suppose many chaplains would mention something about someone else’s situation in the midst of this. Maybe it was a reassurance only to myself, a way of ignoring the fact that sometimes shit just happens. And that’s what it was: nobody had been drinking, nobody was speeding, it was just a tire that blew while driving on a highway. I mean, the worst thing was that Brent was not wearing a seatbelt. But was it the worst? His three friends died instantly. I’m not a parent, so I can’t imagine trying to choose between instant death or a slow and painful attempted recovery. As it is, Brent’s family wasn’t focused on the long term at that moment. His stepmother was crying nonstop, full of guilt because they’d had a terrible argument earlier that day and she feared that his last memory of her would be some horrible (her description) things she’d said to him. I was so drained, and the situation so dramatic, that there was really nothing else to say. After a prayer with Brent’s family, I retreated and let them have some time to themselves.
Two nights later, I was on-call again, and I saw that Brent was in one of the ICU units. It’s tough to admit it, because it makes me feel like a coward, but I avoided a follow up visit until after visiting hours were over. I couldn’t bring myself to face his family again; I felt like a charlatan, offering false hope through mentioning someone else. However, I’ve learned over two years as a chaplain to at least talk about it, so I admitted to his nurse that I’d avoided his family, and why, and how ashamed I felt of that. Brent’s nurse grew misty eyed as we spoke about it; apparently, every staff member who came in contact with the case and this patient and his family was affected in a way that we don’t often express. One might think maybe it was a maternal thing, but Brent’s nurse was a young man about 30 years old, with no children of his own yet. He said he understood completely, telling me how difficult it had been for him, too. Neither one of us could explain what it was about Brent that made it so tough; we both admitted to having seen cases more tragic, though I’m not certain if tragedy is something with various levels. It made me feel a little more human, though, to hear that others were reacting the same way. Over the next week, I worked three on-call shifts, and visited Brent each time, toward the end of visiting hours when the family often was not there. I knew that the day chaplain assigned to this ICU would have followed up, so there was no need to push the issue. Instead, I spoke to Brent, prayed for him and his family, and always followed up with the staff. To a person, every one of them was very emotional over this patient, more so than usual.
Eight days after the accident, Brent was declared brain dead by an extensive battery of tests. After much tearful discussion, his four parents and his brother agreed to donate his organs – a very healthy heart, liver, two lungs and two kidneys – to whomever might be able to have a better life with them. I was not present for the transfer of Brent to the agency that recovers organs, a fact for which I was profoundly glad. Not because of the emotional aspect, but because I still felt ashamed of the false hope I’d offered his family and didn’t want to face them. It was the doctor who relayed the news to me; a doctor I know fairly well after two years, who began to cry as she told me that he was brain dead. It’s only the second time I’ve seen a doctor cry. We spoke of the same things I’d discussed with his nurses, and the doctor admitted that she’d had the same reaction everyone else had. Not one of us could explain why this case was so tough, but the fact that we all felt it validated our emotions.
It was only well after the fact that I realized the other side of this whole situation: if Brent had been wearing his seatbelt, he’d have been killed instantly along with his friends. But because he wasn’t, he donated six organs to people who may not be alive as I write this were it not for the fact that he was ejected. The hospital at which I work is a national leader in organ transplants; people travel here from four states and even Puerto Rico with the hope of receiving a new lease on life though an organ transplant. The 63-year-old man who was aware that necessary procedure for the new heart he was getting would mean he had to cease certain activities, but at least he could watch his grandchildren grow older. The 53-year-old recovering alcoholic who had actually been approved for a liver transplant, and joyfully told me that she had lost all desire for alcohol. The 32-year-old young mother whose family knew since she was six months old that she would eventually need a new heart, and who received it on the first day of the New Year. I’ve heard countless stories from people like these. Each one of them was excited, full of hope that what had been relegated to a mere existence could be transformed back into a real life through someone else’s generosity. A hope like that is something most of us don’t really experience except when we encounter such extreme situations. It’s not just hope, it’s ELPIS. A great expectation, of something magnificent that was promised to us in advance: a new life. A better life. Because of Brent’s family’s unselfishness, that elpis was realized for at least six people. In the end, I realized that the hope I offered his family was not in the least false; it was just not the sort of hope they were expecting. Brent lives on in a half dozen people, and will continue to be a part of his family’s lives and the lives of others as a result. I like to think that elpis has indeed left this building, and has gone out into the world multiplied in the lives of Brent’s family and his organ recipients, to share the promise of a new and better existence in a multitude of ways.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Sermon for September 5, 2010
The Shaping of Evil (Jeremiah 18: 1-11)
I’ve been engaging in some fascinating discussions this week on a chat board I post to, about British physicist Stephen Hawking’s latest book, and his strong assertion that the universe created itself with no divine power being present. The board in question is full of mostly agnostics, a few evangelical Christians, one or two very vocal atheists, and a gentleman a few years older than I am who pastors an African Methodist Episcopal church out west. Much of our discussion has focused not on the debate over divine intervention, and whether or not God exists, but on how tragedy affects people, and how they respond to it. My pastor friend, John, pointed out that Hawking’s entire life has been wrought with trials that make him sound like a modern-day Job. He’s had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) for nearly 50 years, his first wife was unfaithful and eventually divorced him, his second wife allegedly abused him physically, and he’s needed 24/7 care for decades. As John put it, he’s known more than a few people who “quit God” in such circumstances. His former boss, a woman who was once a devout Catholic, is now convinced that God does not exist, because the breast cancer she had to fight at age 42 ‘cost her the man of her dreams’ – meaning, her boyfriend decided he couldn’t deal with it and broke things off with her.
Amid the sad stories that were shared, the comment that stuck out to me came from Doug, who observed “I’m pretty much an agnostic, but anyone who would quit God after this never believed in the first place.” It caused me to wonder, how do we see the presence of evil in our lives? Is it a proof that there’s no God? If we don’t accept that, if we believe that in spite of the presence of evil, God exists, then why does it occur when the Scriptures state that God loves us? What is its purpose in the life of the Christian?
Let’s consider what we see as evil. Merriam-Webster defines it primarily as “the fact of suffering, misfortune or wrongdoing”. Their second definition is “something that brings sorrow, distress or calamity.” It strikes me as notable that only ‘wrongdoing’ is really an action word here. Every other word is a neutral word. Sorrow and misfortune aren’t something we actively do; they’re something we experience. These things are experienced by every human being, regardless of whether or not he or she believes that God exists, so it’s really pretty useless to use its existence as a testing rod of the existence of a divine being. However, its existence can be used as a testing rod in another way: how it shapes those who experience it.
Some of the greatest Christian thinkers in history suffered terribly; one of the strongest examples is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theological boy wonder who earned his doctorate at age 21 with a groundbreaking thesis. He came to Union Seminary in New York in 1930 for further study only to be disappointed that it wasn’t up to the exacting standards of his seminary back in Germany. He was radically changed through his participation in the worship life of a Black Baptist church in Harlem; he later claimed that it was here, in worship with those suffered oppression on a daily basis, that he “turned from phraseology to reality” and where he began developing his ideas about the cost of discipleship. Ultimately it led him to leave the US, against the advice of others, and return to Nazi Germany to help fight the Third Reich, which eventually imprisoned him and later executed him at age 39 – only three weeks before the fall of Berlin. On the other hand, we have Stephen Hawking, who has been through trial after trial as mentioned already, and apparently is convinced there is no God. The fact that he’s an atheist has nothing to do with what he’s suffered; in fact he credits his illness with helping him to focus solely on what he was researching, with no distractions. The evil itself seems to be less the deciding factor in these men’s lives than how they responded to it.
I believe that’s really what God is saying to Jeremiah through this passage. It bears noting that the prophet is told specifically to go to the potter’s house in order to hear God’s message. The prophet observes the potter working with the clay, which is completely reliant on the potter and the wheel as to what shape it will take. I read a little online about what a potter does; he stated that there are three types of clay with which he cannot work: clay that is completely dry, clay that lacks moisture, and clay that has hidden air in it. The first two made sense to me; it was the description of the third I found fascinating. He explains that a pot may look perfect, but in fact have a hidden pocket of air in it. When the potter puts the clay in the fire and heats it up, the air trapped inside expands and explodes the pot. I’m certain the prophet saw a beautiful metaphor in these facts as he observed the process and then heard the Word of God speaking to him about it. It’s a good and wonderful thing to be saved by God’s grace, yes. It’s a good and wonderful thing to know the love of Christian fellowship and the joy of discipleship. But keep in mind that our statement of faith in the United Church of Christ also says that there is a cost to discipleship. Bonhoeffer learned this so well that it became the title of his magnum opus, published when he was only 31 years old. Evil shapes who we are as people because, like the clay pots being fired, it perfects us. It’s not without trial that we learn how to be better people and better Christians.
It’s rather an odd idea, that evil would have a good purpose in the life of a Christian. But God DOES promise that those who turn away from evil will be heard, and saved. When I was in my first year of seminary studies, all incoming students were required to take their first course together; it was called Pilgrimage in Faith. We spent four hours together every Monday evening, beginning with lecture, then a communal dinner, then small group discussions, and finally ending the evening with a brief worship service. During that class, a fellow student wrote a beautiful poem in her native Spanish about the seminary process; she shared it with us at the end of the academic year. It includes a directive from God to the student: vas a llorar porque dentro el fuego debes pasar…vas a sangrear. You’ll cry because you have to go through the fire. You’ll bleed. You won’t get through this without some pain. But I’ll be there with you, the entire time, supporting you. I feel your pain as keenly as you do, because I’ve been there myself. And I, too, had God there with me, the entire time, supporting me.
The final verses of this passage deliver the good news in the midst of the talk of using evil to teach the message: that if the evil does not consume us, that if we do not allow ourselves to bend to it, God does intend good. One might ask, but then how do you explain how evil shaped the woman who had cancer and lost her boyfriend and her faith as well? How do you explain the physical deformity in a man with the mind of a genius who is so focused on reason that he has no time for faith? Evil is not a tool that God uses to test people and how much faith they have; if that were true, I don’t think any of us would be sitting here now! Evil is a barrier to be conquered regardless of the eventual outcome in our personal lives. It is not evil that shapes us and our faith; it is in fact our faith that shapes us and how we respond to evil. Bonhoeffer wrote, “If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence…we…have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.” We would never fully understand the grace of God without also understanding the pain of God.
So I’ll boldly assert here today that evil can actually be a good thing in the life of a Christian. It brings us closer to God, and closer to understanding God’s purpose for us. The question is, how will you respond to it? Are you completely dry? Do you have too little moisture? Are there hidden pockets of air in you that will cause you to explode when you’re tested in the fire? Which type of clay are you?
I’ve been engaging in some fascinating discussions this week on a chat board I post to, about British physicist Stephen Hawking’s latest book, and his strong assertion that the universe created itself with no divine power being present. The board in question is full of mostly agnostics, a few evangelical Christians, one or two very vocal atheists, and a gentleman a few years older than I am who pastors an African Methodist Episcopal church out west. Much of our discussion has focused not on the debate over divine intervention, and whether or not God exists, but on how tragedy affects people, and how they respond to it. My pastor friend, John, pointed out that Hawking’s entire life has been wrought with trials that make him sound like a modern-day Job. He’s had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) for nearly 50 years, his first wife was unfaithful and eventually divorced him, his second wife allegedly abused him physically, and he’s needed 24/7 care for decades. As John put it, he’s known more than a few people who “quit God” in such circumstances. His former boss, a woman who was once a devout Catholic, is now convinced that God does not exist, because the breast cancer she had to fight at age 42 ‘cost her the man of her dreams’ – meaning, her boyfriend decided he couldn’t deal with it and broke things off with her.
Amid the sad stories that were shared, the comment that stuck out to me came from Doug, who observed “I’m pretty much an agnostic, but anyone who would quit God after this never believed in the first place.” It caused me to wonder, how do we see the presence of evil in our lives? Is it a proof that there’s no God? If we don’t accept that, if we believe that in spite of the presence of evil, God exists, then why does it occur when the Scriptures state that God loves us? What is its purpose in the life of the Christian?
Let’s consider what we see as evil. Merriam-Webster defines it primarily as “the fact of suffering, misfortune or wrongdoing”. Their second definition is “something that brings sorrow, distress or calamity.” It strikes me as notable that only ‘wrongdoing’ is really an action word here. Every other word is a neutral word. Sorrow and misfortune aren’t something we actively do; they’re something we experience. These things are experienced by every human being, regardless of whether or not he or she believes that God exists, so it’s really pretty useless to use its existence as a testing rod of the existence of a divine being. However, its existence can be used as a testing rod in another way: how it shapes those who experience it.
Some of the greatest Christian thinkers in history suffered terribly; one of the strongest examples is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theological boy wonder who earned his doctorate at age 21 with a groundbreaking thesis. He came to Union Seminary in New York in 1930 for further study only to be disappointed that it wasn’t up to the exacting standards of his seminary back in Germany. He was radically changed through his participation in the worship life of a Black Baptist church in Harlem; he later claimed that it was here, in worship with those suffered oppression on a daily basis, that he “turned from phraseology to reality” and where he began developing his ideas about the cost of discipleship. Ultimately it led him to leave the US, against the advice of others, and return to Nazi Germany to help fight the Third Reich, which eventually imprisoned him and later executed him at age 39 – only three weeks before the fall of Berlin. On the other hand, we have Stephen Hawking, who has been through trial after trial as mentioned already, and apparently is convinced there is no God. The fact that he’s an atheist has nothing to do with what he’s suffered; in fact he credits his illness with helping him to focus solely on what he was researching, with no distractions. The evil itself seems to be less the deciding factor in these men’s lives than how they responded to it.
I believe that’s really what God is saying to Jeremiah through this passage. It bears noting that the prophet is told specifically to go to the potter’s house in order to hear God’s message. The prophet observes the potter working with the clay, which is completely reliant on the potter and the wheel as to what shape it will take. I read a little online about what a potter does; he stated that there are three types of clay with which he cannot work: clay that is completely dry, clay that lacks moisture, and clay that has hidden air in it. The first two made sense to me; it was the description of the third I found fascinating. He explains that a pot may look perfect, but in fact have a hidden pocket of air in it. When the potter puts the clay in the fire and heats it up, the air trapped inside expands and explodes the pot. I’m certain the prophet saw a beautiful metaphor in these facts as he observed the process and then heard the Word of God speaking to him about it. It’s a good and wonderful thing to be saved by God’s grace, yes. It’s a good and wonderful thing to know the love of Christian fellowship and the joy of discipleship. But keep in mind that our statement of faith in the United Church of Christ also says that there is a cost to discipleship. Bonhoeffer learned this so well that it became the title of his magnum opus, published when he was only 31 years old. Evil shapes who we are as people because, like the clay pots being fired, it perfects us. It’s not without trial that we learn how to be better people and better Christians.
It’s rather an odd idea, that evil would have a good purpose in the life of a Christian. But God DOES promise that those who turn away from evil will be heard, and saved. When I was in my first year of seminary studies, all incoming students were required to take their first course together; it was called Pilgrimage in Faith. We spent four hours together every Monday evening, beginning with lecture, then a communal dinner, then small group discussions, and finally ending the evening with a brief worship service. During that class, a fellow student wrote a beautiful poem in her native Spanish about the seminary process; she shared it with us at the end of the academic year. It includes a directive from God to the student: vas a llorar porque dentro el fuego debes pasar…vas a sangrear. You’ll cry because you have to go through the fire. You’ll bleed. You won’t get through this without some pain. But I’ll be there with you, the entire time, supporting you. I feel your pain as keenly as you do, because I’ve been there myself. And I, too, had God there with me, the entire time, supporting me.
The final verses of this passage deliver the good news in the midst of the talk of using evil to teach the message: that if the evil does not consume us, that if we do not allow ourselves to bend to it, God does intend good. One might ask, but then how do you explain how evil shaped the woman who had cancer and lost her boyfriend and her faith as well? How do you explain the physical deformity in a man with the mind of a genius who is so focused on reason that he has no time for faith? Evil is not a tool that God uses to test people and how much faith they have; if that were true, I don’t think any of us would be sitting here now! Evil is a barrier to be conquered regardless of the eventual outcome in our personal lives. It is not evil that shapes us and our faith; it is in fact our faith that shapes us and how we respond to evil. Bonhoeffer wrote, “If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence…we…have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.” We would never fully understand the grace of God without also understanding the pain of God.
So I’ll boldly assert here today that evil can actually be a good thing in the life of a Christian. It brings us closer to God, and closer to understanding God’s purpose for us. The question is, how will you respond to it? Are you completely dry? Do you have too little moisture? Are there hidden pockets of air in you that will cause you to explode when you’re tested in the fire? Which type of clay are you?
Friday, February 26, 2010
To Live as a Good Man
I mentioned in a previous blog that actor Leonardo DiCaprio is one of my favorites, though if I’m being honest I have to confess that I’m no big fan of “Titanic” (I thought the characters were too shallow & the script rather silly at times; so sue me!). I first noticed him in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” as Arnie Grape, the mentally challenged brother of a young man who struggles to do right by his family. It wasn’t until I was just finishing seminary, though, that I really took notice after seeing “The Departed” and “Blood Diamond” only five days apart. I was struck by the theme common to all these films: a man who is haunted by memories of family, and how we human beings deal with personal tragedy. Does it consume us? Or do we live with it and through it? After nearly two years as a chaplain, I thought I knew the answer. If there’s one lesson I’ve needed to be taught repeatedly, it’s always expect the unexpected – because the moment you feel smug, you’ll get knocked on your ass.
Tuesday morning February 16 dawned sunny, but very cold. But hey, who cared – it was Mardi Gras! I was out early, enjoying breakfast with a fellow chaplain at a favorite spot (Riccobono’s Panola Street Café); then we went to watch the Krewe of Rex parade down Napoleon Avenue to St Charles Avenue for the 139th consecutive year. I caught four beads and a doubloon, which left me in a good frame of mind for the rest of the day. Came home & slept four hours, feeling satisfied that the on-call I was scheduled for that night would be a good one. After all, I’ve grown a lot as a chaplain, I’m far more able to open up to people and in turn help them to cope. I checked on several patients and then went to bed just after midnight. I’d had a feeling that I wouldn’t get called at all in the night, so it was sort of a shock when the phone rang at 4am. I’m a light sleeper, so it did nothing more than rouse me out of a doze when a nurse told me that one of the patients in the ICU had just died. His mother told me that he’d always said he would die young like his daddy, who went from a heart attack at age 53. He was indeed a young man, with health problems that kept him in and out of the hospital for the past 7 years. During his last hospitalization, he told his mother “Daddy came for me, but I told him I wasn’t ready yet.” This time he was, and he died six months before his own 53rd birthday. I got back to the office at 5:30am, and figured it was pointless to go back to bed since I had just a few hours left. I could get sleep at home; in fact, I had to – because Wednesday evening a friend and I had free passes to a pre-screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest film, “Shutter Island”. I’d planned to grab some breakfast when the cafeteria opened at 6am, but instead wasted an hour puttering on the computer. The chaplain who’d shared a meal with me the previous day arrived at 6:30 in order to be ready for the Ash Wednesday Service early that day. We talked for only a few minutes when the pager went off; this time the ER told me to come immediately because a 6-week-old baby was coding and the family needed support.
Going through the main entrance to the ER, I checked with the nurse at the desk, who indicated the room where about 15 medical staff were still working on the infant, & told me that her parents were in the Family Consult Room on the other end. On my way down the hall to see them, one of the maintenance crew looked at me gravely & said, “What a way to start a morning.” I asked what he’d seen; he said that some time earlier, he’d heard a lot of yelling from the front of the unit, then a nurse came running down the hall with the baby in her arms. I said I’d do what I could, and went to meet Mom and Dad. They were huddled together on a small couch; instantly I was struck by their disheveled state. Mom was wearing a ratty nightgown and slippers; Dad was actually barefoot. I introduced myself, and asked what happened. Mom told me that she’d found her baby not breathing, and they rushed here. She prayed aloud repeatedly, insisting that God wouldn’t take her baby away. Meanwhile, another woman who barely acknowledged anything, sat across from the couple, next to me, praying aloud in a whisper I couldn’t hear. I stared at Dad’s bare feet, thinking of the love of a parent for a child, one that puts such emphasis on another life that he doesn’t take time to grab a pair of shoes before heading out in 35-degree temperatures. I got Mom speaking briefly, about her two older children, and how they spoiled their baby sister, but the other two were too tightly wound to do much talking. Baby girl was born on Epiphany, I was told, and was six weeks old the day before. The phrase “the end of carnival” ran through my brain, but without significance. After about 30 minutes, two doctors came in; one sat next to Mom while the other stood at the door, as if wanting to leave but knowing she had to be there. The one looked Mom in the face & said how sorry she was; they’d tried everything they could, but were unable to save her baby girl.
There aren’t words sufficient to describe the grief process, and I have found that this is especially true when a young person dies. Some people can’t express; some people express very boldly. The woman next to me remained silent. While Mom wailed a denial, Dad began to cry, and in his pain actually smashed his head against the wall several times. At first he refused to go and see his daughter with his wife, who begged to see her baby. We encouraged him and he relented; I accompanied him back down the hall, at the ready if he should fall. Three nurses joined us in the room, quickly pulling the door closed behind us as the parents began to yell their grief again. We all stood there helplessly, witness to their grief and absolutely powerless to do or say anything to comfort. Mom wavered back and forth between English and Spanish, muttering about her ‘princesa’ and begging for a wrap or a blanket because her little girl was so cold. I was immobilized, but finally one of the nurses leaned down and said quietly, “she IS wrapped.” Two more nurses went to get the other woman, who I later learned is the maternal grandmother. As they opened the door and she took in the scene in the room, her legs collapsed beneath her and they rushed to grab a chair for Grandma. Then Mom began insisting that her little girl was only asleep, repeatedly assuring her husband that it was okay. This will stand as one of those indelible memories for me: Mom rocking back and forth, muttering her mantra: “solo esta durmiendo. Solo esta durmiendo.” After a time, I leaned down myself and said gently, in Spanish, that her daughter was indeed sleeping, for a time, but would be waiting for Mom and Dad until they were all reunited by God. The nurses looked at me expectantly; I knew they were waiting for a prayer. What on earth could I say? As if God were listening, the loudspeaker suddenly began playing “Lullaby and Goodnight”. For those not familiar with hospitals, this is the signal that a child was just born. I glommed onto that, put one hand on each parent and gave thanks to God for the gift of life, and especially the life of this child, and asked for God’s presence in the days to come as the family learned to let go of their baby girl for now, until we’re all raised to new life. The prayer seemed to bring a brief sense of calm. Then Dad (who had been stroking his daughter’s tiny hand), took the miniscule breathing tube in his mouth and began to blow air gently into it, as if he himself could somehow resurrect his baby girl. All the nurses, as well as me, had to look away.
I spent about an hour with the family, leaving just before my shift was finished. Went through all the motions, wrote notes, reported to the chaplains coming on duty, and left. Getting home at 9am, I promptly went to bed and slept for five hours, needing every minute since I’d gotten only two the previous night. In preparation for the movie, I walked down to the CVS to buy some snacks, then crossed the street and entered the Creole Creamery, with the firm intent of indulging in food as a form of self-care (something I’ve only done once before). I bought a big scoop of Chockwork Orange ice cream, and delighted in every lick of the deep, rich chocolate and bittersweet chunks interwoven with citrus. I’d hoped it would help me move past the numbness permeating my being, but it didn’t. It didn’t stop tears from repeatedly forming in my eyes as I thought of that father, trying to blow life back into his daughter. I watched a kid with his mom walking across the street by the Chase Bank, heard a radio blasting out Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” from the Thai restaurant on the corner, and wanted to scream down the street, “What the HELL is wrong with everyone?!? You’re all going on as if nothing has happened. Don’t you realize that this little girl is DEAD?! DEAD! – and now her family has to deal with that!” You’re a chaplain, I quickly told myself. You’ve seen it happen before, been witness to it more times than you care to recall. What was it that made this one so difficult to process? I didn’t know, and given my state of mind, was rather less than exuberant about seeing a film with such a dark theme. I kept my concerns to myself, not wanting to burden my friend who’d gone to the trouble to secure us the passes.
I found escapism of a sort in the film, but not the escape that Teddy Daniels experiences. In the end, what made the biggest impression on me was the very last line in the film: would you rather live as a monster or die as a good man? I considered those words in light of the ministry I do with patients and their families, and indeed in light of what it means to be a good human being. Can we not die to the monsters and live as good men? Is it a monster who warns his mother for years that he will not live a long life? Or is it a good man, a caring son, who wants to prepare his mother for what will be a painful thing? Is it a monster who tells a family that their baby girl is gone? Or is it a good man who grieves with them, prays with them, and cries for them as genuinely as if this girl were his own? The phrase runs round and around in my brain. When I envision it, what I see again in my mind is a father with no shoes on, concerned more for his child than for his own comfort. Waking to what he thought would be a pleasant day, only to find that Carnival is over in every conceivable way. Putting others first, even to extreme personal discomfort, and doing everything possible to bring life to the moment, to share in that life, to be a part of that life as long and as deeply as he is able. I believe that’s what it means to live as a good man.
Tuesday morning February 16 dawned sunny, but very cold. But hey, who cared – it was Mardi Gras! I was out early, enjoying breakfast with a fellow chaplain at a favorite spot (Riccobono’s Panola Street Café); then we went to watch the Krewe of Rex parade down Napoleon Avenue to St Charles Avenue for the 139th consecutive year. I caught four beads and a doubloon, which left me in a good frame of mind for the rest of the day. Came home & slept four hours, feeling satisfied that the on-call I was scheduled for that night would be a good one. After all, I’ve grown a lot as a chaplain, I’m far more able to open up to people and in turn help them to cope. I checked on several patients and then went to bed just after midnight. I’d had a feeling that I wouldn’t get called at all in the night, so it was sort of a shock when the phone rang at 4am. I’m a light sleeper, so it did nothing more than rouse me out of a doze when a nurse told me that one of the patients in the ICU had just died. His mother told me that he’d always said he would die young like his daddy, who went from a heart attack at age 53. He was indeed a young man, with health problems that kept him in and out of the hospital for the past 7 years. During his last hospitalization, he told his mother “Daddy came for me, but I told him I wasn’t ready yet.” This time he was, and he died six months before his own 53rd birthday. I got back to the office at 5:30am, and figured it was pointless to go back to bed since I had just a few hours left. I could get sleep at home; in fact, I had to – because Wednesday evening a friend and I had free passes to a pre-screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest film, “Shutter Island”. I’d planned to grab some breakfast when the cafeteria opened at 6am, but instead wasted an hour puttering on the computer. The chaplain who’d shared a meal with me the previous day arrived at 6:30 in order to be ready for the Ash Wednesday Service early that day. We talked for only a few minutes when the pager went off; this time the ER told me to come immediately because a 6-week-old baby was coding and the family needed support.
Going through the main entrance to the ER, I checked with the nurse at the desk, who indicated the room where about 15 medical staff were still working on the infant, & told me that her parents were in the Family Consult Room on the other end. On my way down the hall to see them, one of the maintenance crew looked at me gravely & said, “What a way to start a morning.” I asked what he’d seen; he said that some time earlier, he’d heard a lot of yelling from the front of the unit, then a nurse came running down the hall with the baby in her arms. I said I’d do what I could, and went to meet Mom and Dad. They were huddled together on a small couch; instantly I was struck by their disheveled state. Mom was wearing a ratty nightgown and slippers; Dad was actually barefoot. I introduced myself, and asked what happened. Mom told me that she’d found her baby not breathing, and they rushed here. She prayed aloud repeatedly, insisting that God wouldn’t take her baby away. Meanwhile, another woman who barely acknowledged anything, sat across from the couple, next to me, praying aloud in a whisper I couldn’t hear. I stared at Dad’s bare feet, thinking of the love of a parent for a child, one that puts such emphasis on another life that he doesn’t take time to grab a pair of shoes before heading out in 35-degree temperatures. I got Mom speaking briefly, about her two older children, and how they spoiled their baby sister, but the other two were too tightly wound to do much talking. Baby girl was born on Epiphany, I was told, and was six weeks old the day before. The phrase “the end of carnival” ran through my brain, but without significance. After about 30 minutes, two doctors came in; one sat next to Mom while the other stood at the door, as if wanting to leave but knowing she had to be there. The one looked Mom in the face & said how sorry she was; they’d tried everything they could, but were unable to save her baby girl.
There aren’t words sufficient to describe the grief process, and I have found that this is especially true when a young person dies. Some people can’t express; some people express very boldly. The woman next to me remained silent. While Mom wailed a denial, Dad began to cry, and in his pain actually smashed his head against the wall several times. At first he refused to go and see his daughter with his wife, who begged to see her baby. We encouraged him and he relented; I accompanied him back down the hall, at the ready if he should fall. Three nurses joined us in the room, quickly pulling the door closed behind us as the parents began to yell their grief again. We all stood there helplessly, witness to their grief and absolutely powerless to do or say anything to comfort. Mom wavered back and forth between English and Spanish, muttering about her ‘princesa’ and begging for a wrap or a blanket because her little girl was so cold. I was immobilized, but finally one of the nurses leaned down and said quietly, “she IS wrapped.” Two more nurses went to get the other woman, who I later learned is the maternal grandmother. As they opened the door and she took in the scene in the room, her legs collapsed beneath her and they rushed to grab a chair for Grandma. Then Mom began insisting that her little girl was only asleep, repeatedly assuring her husband that it was okay. This will stand as one of those indelible memories for me: Mom rocking back and forth, muttering her mantra: “solo esta durmiendo. Solo esta durmiendo.” After a time, I leaned down myself and said gently, in Spanish, that her daughter was indeed sleeping, for a time, but would be waiting for Mom and Dad until they were all reunited by God. The nurses looked at me expectantly; I knew they were waiting for a prayer. What on earth could I say? As if God were listening, the loudspeaker suddenly began playing “Lullaby and Goodnight”. For those not familiar with hospitals, this is the signal that a child was just born. I glommed onto that, put one hand on each parent and gave thanks to God for the gift of life, and especially the life of this child, and asked for God’s presence in the days to come as the family learned to let go of their baby girl for now, until we’re all raised to new life. The prayer seemed to bring a brief sense of calm. Then Dad (who had been stroking his daughter’s tiny hand), took the miniscule breathing tube in his mouth and began to blow air gently into it, as if he himself could somehow resurrect his baby girl. All the nurses, as well as me, had to look away.
I spent about an hour with the family, leaving just before my shift was finished. Went through all the motions, wrote notes, reported to the chaplains coming on duty, and left. Getting home at 9am, I promptly went to bed and slept for five hours, needing every minute since I’d gotten only two the previous night. In preparation for the movie, I walked down to the CVS to buy some snacks, then crossed the street and entered the Creole Creamery, with the firm intent of indulging in food as a form of self-care (something I’ve only done once before). I bought a big scoop of Chockwork Orange ice cream, and delighted in every lick of the deep, rich chocolate and bittersweet chunks interwoven with citrus. I’d hoped it would help me move past the numbness permeating my being, but it didn’t. It didn’t stop tears from repeatedly forming in my eyes as I thought of that father, trying to blow life back into his daughter. I watched a kid with his mom walking across the street by the Chase Bank, heard a radio blasting out Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” from the Thai restaurant on the corner, and wanted to scream down the street, “What the HELL is wrong with everyone?!? You’re all going on as if nothing has happened. Don’t you realize that this little girl is DEAD?! DEAD! – and now her family has to deal with that!” You’re a chaplain, I quickly told myself. You’ve seen it happen before, been witness to it more times than you care to recall. What was it that made this one so difficult to process? I didn’t know, and given my state of mind, was rather less than exuberant about seeing a film with such a dark theme. I kept my concerns to myself, not wanting to burden my friend who’d gone to the trouble to secure us the passes.
I found escapism of a sort in the film, but not the escape that Teddy Daniels experiences. In the end, what made the biggest impression on me was the very last line in the film: would you rather live as a monster or die as a good man? I considered those words in light of the ministry I do with patients and their families, and indeed in light of what it means to be a good human being. Can we not die to the monsters and live as good men? Is it a monster who warns his mother for years that he will not live a long life? Or is it a good man, a caring son, who wants to prepare his mother for what will be a painful thing? Is it a monster who tells a family that their baby girl is gone? Or is it a good man who grieves with them, prays with them, and cries for them as genuinely as if this girl were his own? The phrase runs round and around in my brain. When I envision it, what I see again in my mind is a father with no shoes on, concerned more for his child than for his own comfort. Waking to what he thought would be a pleasant day, only to find that Carnival is over in every conceivable way. Putting others first, even to extreme personal discomfort, and doing everything possible to bring life to the moment, to share in that life, to be a part of that life as long and as deeply as he is able. I believe that’s what it means to live as a good man.
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