Collide

I’ve been a sports fan my entire life. I grew up just outside Detroit, so my teams have always been the Detroit Tigers (baseball), the Detroit Red Wings (ice hockey) and the Detroit Pistons (basketball). I’m not particularly a fan of American football, but if the Detroit Lions win I’m happy. Now that I have lived half my life in Arizona, I tend also to be a fan of the Arizona Diamondbacks (baseball) and the Phoenix Suns (basketball) when they aren’t playing Detroit teams. I vividly recall the wonderful 7-game World Series in 2001. When Luis Gonzalez hit a little looping single in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the game and the title, I jumped up screaming and accidentally slammed my hand into a ceiling fan; it was sore for a week. Yesterday while searching YouTube for random sports videos, I found the outstanding HBO documentary “Nine Innings from Ground Zero” about that World Series – and, more to the point, about the resiliency of the people of New York City after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. While many quotes stuck out to me, what inspired this blog was the comments from two of the Yankees – third baseman Scott Brosius and manager Joe Torre – when they met with people at the Armory. Most were still waiting to find out if their loved ones were alive -and, if not, would they have any physical remains. Brosius said, “I felt completely out of place….what am I doing here? What do I have to offer these people?” These words really resonated with me, because in my training as a chaplain, I found myself asking those questions at least once a day. Then Torre shared the moment that sticks out in his mind. Outfielder Bernie Williams had gone up to a woman, and said, “I don’t know what to say, but you look like you need a hug.” I thought, now there’s a guy who would make a great chaplain. We spend so much of our time doing that we often overlook how important simply being is. It is a lesson I continually learn as a chaplain.

We want so badly to be able to fix things, to make things better. The first and most difficult lesson to learn in chaplaincy is that This. Will. Never. Happen. Of course it’s also true that it’s not my job to fix (this is sort of a peripheral part of that first lesson). Over time, as we encounter crisis after crisis with different people, different situations and different places, we learn how to mine – very carefully – the entire scenario in front of us, searching for precious pearls to hang onto and share at the opportune moment. Something as simple as a hug from a stranger – be it a chaplain or a famous athlete – can help a person going through trauma. Other times it is something far less tangible.

It was 5:15 in the afternoon and I was making rounds in the ER. A woman in her mid-80s was on a stretcher in the hall awaiting a room; she and her best friend (both widows) shared that her legs had been giving her problems, and her friend had insisted they go to emergency. She’d resisted, and her friend all but dragged her to the hospital. The doctor had made it plain to the patient that she owed her friend her life; apparently she had life threatening clots. While she spoke of how she valued this friendship, suddenly the overhead blared: CODE BLUE. FIVE. ROOM 19. CODE BLUE. FIVE. ROOM 19.” The number five was the indicator that the code was occurring in the ER itself (so a doctor was already present). The patient looked at me somberly and said, “that’s bad, isn’t it?” I didn’t feel comfortable being fake; I simply acknowledged that it was and bid farewell since I was the on-call chaplain and headed around the corner and down the hall to room 19. Amid the flurry of activity, I saw that the doctor present was every chaplain’s favorite doctor. I’d taken to calling him JD due not only to his dedication to medicine, but to his strong resemblance to actor Zach Braff, who gave delightful life to the character John “JD” Dorian for nine years on the television show “Scrubs”. One of the RNs came over and led me down the hall toward the family waiting room, explaining the back story: the patient was a 3-year-old girl who had chased the family dog out of the house, through the backyard and down into the Colorado River. I was the first to arrive in the waiting room; within a few minutes I was joined by two Hispanic females: a 20-something woman and a girl about 14, both of whom were soaked from the waist down. Their jeans were caked with sand and mud. As time passed, I learned that they were the mother and the aunt, respectively, and that they’d dredged the river as long as they could trying to find her. We sat together for about 15 minutes before the RN came and spoke with me first, then beckoned Mom and Aunt. The medical team was still coding the little girl, but they were not receiving a response. One thing I always respected about “JD” was his belief that parents needed to be aware of what was going on. He asked that the mother be brought in so that she could see for herself that efforts to revive her daughter were fruitless, so that she would better understand that the course of action to follow was to allow the medical team to cease treatment. She did so, then collapsed next to the gurney.

The next hour was a blur; during that time, her father and her stepmother (the child’s grandparents) arrived and both were tremendous sources of support to the mom and her younger sister. The poor aunt was so young she appeared overwhelmed by it all. When we had to explain that due to the circumstances surrounding the girl’s death, Mom would not be allowed to take her home, she really broke down. She and her family reverted to Spanish as they grieved and comforted each other and interacted with me. Until two weeks ago, she told me, she’d been living in San Diego with her common-law husband of nine years. He’d been abusive to her the entire time, she admitted. She had always been afraid to admit that he’d been a mistake and that she should not have left Arizona. But when the abuse extended to their child she finally got up the courage to leave him. Now she started fearfully wandering down that road….”if only I’d stayed in San Diego”, she began, but I would not allow her to continue on that thought. Instead we spoke of her relationship with her stepmother (the mother of the teenage aunt); it was clear that the two were close. I said I was glad to hear that. After about an hour and some, the RNs finally had to tell us that the family needed to leave since the coroner was coming. Mom was unable to walk without assistance; her father on her left and I on her right, we helped her out to his white Ford pickup. Along the way, I kept asking myself those questions. What am I doing here? What do I have to offer these people?

In the end, it was spontaneous, as it often is. As she sat down on the passenger side, I held her arm, looked into her eyes and said firmly in Spanish, “You’re a good Mom. You got your daughter out of a horrible situation.” I could see that the words hit their mark; there was acknowledgment in her face. I knew that it would not last and that the grief would return in tidal waves, but I also knew that she would remember those words in the future. I wanted to be there to remind her of this again and again, but it doesn’t happen like that. The second tough lesson we learn as chaplains is that we are rarely or never around to see the outcome of these situations – we’re only present for a short time, so we try to find those pearls and offer them as solidly as possible and then move on to the next person, the next crisis. Our lives collide briefly, as lives did on September 11, 2001. When we have the privilege of offering hope and the possibility of a life after all this, we strengthen our community – and in doing so, we strengthen humanity.

In Spite of Everything

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart" - Anne Frank

What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can heal you? Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen oracles for you that are false and misleading. All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at daughter Jerusalem; ‘Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?’ All your enemies open their mouths against you; they hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry: ‘We have devoured her! Ah, this is the day we longed for; at last we have seen it!’……the LORD has done what he purposed, he has carried out his threat; as he ordained long ago, he has demolished without pity; he has made the enemy rejoice over you, and exalted the might of your foes.

I have kept this blog for over eight years. In all that time, I have never addressed politics. Like death and taxes, they are an inevitable part of our existence and I just assumed that like a posterior, every person has a specific type. For my international readers, I am a US citizen and was raised by my parents to be an intelligent, thinking voter. No party allegiance is listed on my voter registration card; I am what is termed an Independent. Prior to the 2016 election I always had a candidate I clearly supported and, win or lose, I felt good about my choice and the fact that I had a say in the government’s leadership. This time, though, I struggled to find the positive in both major parties’ candidates. While I detested the xenophobic comments that vomited out of Donald Trump’s mouth, I also hated that Hillary Clinton directed the democratic party to blackball an independent candidate for president. It felt like I had to choose between having a root canal or an enema – either way, it would be pretty painful.

Most of my friends know that though I identify as centrist, my progressive views on social justice brand me a “lib’rul” in the eyes of conservatives. It’s because of my social justice concerns that late that Tuesday evening, as the electoral college votes kept rising steadily in support of a person who has said derogatory things about several major ethnic groups, I felt compelled to sit and pray. Pray for my nation. Pray for the winner. Pray for the loser. I felt a level of fear I have rarely felt in my life. For the first time ever, I had an inkling of what daily life must be like for those people who live in the restless zones of the Middle East and other areas where warfare is a way of life rather than an occasional interruption of privilege. Because I knew what would happen if we elected the one whose running mate is clueless enough to believe that homosexuality can be ‘cured’ through therapy. It was not a surprise when the protests began. I could only sit and watch numbly as the nation we always touted as the ideal for any person from anywhere to come and make a good life began to crack.

Cry aloud to the Lord! O wall of daughter Zion! Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite! Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street. Look, O LORD, and consider! To whom have you done this?.....the young and the old are lying on the ground in the streets; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; on the day of your anger you have killed them, slaughtering without mercy. You invited my enemies from all around as if for a day of festival; and on the day of the anger of the LORD no one escaped or survived; those whom I bore and reared my enemy has destroyed. The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.

In the aftermath of the election, I was appalled that we are divided so clearly. That we would have no qualms voting for a man who degrades women and the disabled. That we would mourn not having elected a woman who by her own admission has done unethical things to clear a path to the presidency. But what bothered me most is that so many people with the same progressive views were truly stunned – that they believed this could never happen. What does that say about our level of awareness as a nation? Nothing positive.

And yet, I see a glimmer of the future….those who were convinced that they would never need to fight for their rights, those who said they would never take to the streets to protest, have been doing so. Those of us who were born and raised with privilege are realizing for the first time that freedom truly does come at a cost, and that we are responsible to every citizen of this nation for every action and its consequences. The day I saw a video of US military veterans on their knees at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota begging forgiveness of the Lakota people there for all the evil done them by the US government, the heaviness in my chest lightened slightly. Perhaps this extreme situation is what we needed to teach us about real interconnectedness. All is not lost.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’

To Live as a Good Man, Part Three: The Power of Memory

It’s been almost seven years now since I wrote a blog about a baby girl who died the day after Mardi Gras. I’d been rather airy about working an on-call shift on Mardi Gras evening, convinced that a whole two years of experience (!!!) had prepared me for anything I might face. To be called to the ED at 0630 to provide support to the girl’s parents was the very definition of being blindsided. I recall so vividly how I tried to put it aside, compartmentalize it, get on with things….I’d planned to go to a sneak preview of the film “Shutter Island” that Wednesday evening with a friend, so I walked to the nearby CVS to stock up on candy and treated myself to ice cream at the Creole Creamery afterward. I had hoped that the richness of the treat would numb the pain; instead it brought my rage and grief roiling to the surface.

How clearly I remember looking at all the people walking around as though it were all normal, and wanting to scream at them for acting as if nothing had changed when it seemed as if everything had changed. At the time, writing about it was a balm for my soul, a way of processing the grief that I inadvertently internalized and held onto. Over the next two years while I continued growing as a chaplain and moving toward ordination, I realized that writing about it made it such a powerful memory that it became indented in my mind. The Creole Creamery is an ice cream shop that attracts people from around the entire USA, and perhaps the whole world, given the number of tourists that visit New Orleans every year. The richness of the treats it offers should always be a positive thing. However, it became apparent to me that every time I went there, I always recalled that Ash Wednesday in 2010 when I allowed grief to consume me. I moved on from New Orleans, spent time at another hospital in chaplaincy, and then moved to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles to serve as a hospice chaplain. This was the position that afforded my church congregation the opportunity to approach our denomination and formally request that I be ordained to the ministry. With delight I returned home to New Orleans in February 2014 to celebrate this milestone with my church home here and with my family, who all came to New Orleans for the first time and fell in love with “The Big Easy” as easily as did I. My father in particular was seduced by the Creole Creamery, so much so that the family requested we visit the place for dessert every night they were here. The evening after I was ordained, we all sat here enjoying a treat, I with my “A Chockwork Orange” and my dad with “Chef’s Perfect Chocolate”, and as I stared at the CVS across the street, I looked upriver at the Chase Bank and the Thai restaurant on the corner and the memories returned. I wondered if they would ever change.

My life has taken some rather bizarre turns in the past eighteen months. I spent two years with that wonderful hospice in LA, then moved to Arizona to care for my aging and infirm parents (who needed elevated care) for about four months. Once they began improving, I started seeking another position and, lo and behold, discovered one in the very hospital in New Orleans where I’d received so much training and learned so much. I have been back here almost exactly one full year, and while much has changed in the past five years, much has stayed the same – until this afternoon.

After church, I went to make groceries (note: this is how it is expressed in NOLA: one does not buy groceries, one ‘makes’ groceries) and decided on the spur of the moment to visit the Creole Creamery just downriver from Whole Foods. The shop accepts only cash, which I have always known, but I have a change purse filled with about $10 in change so it did not concern me. I waited patiently while a family of about six decided what they would buy (“are you sure, Jimmy? You want Red Velvet AND Creole Cream Cheese?), then decided on a scoop of Roasted Pistachio after a taste test. A cone is $3, so I reached into my shoulder bag to get out my change purse….and found it missing. I realized that I’d left it on the kitchen table this morning when I removed it to make room for my checkbook so I could pay part of my pledge to the church. The young woman offered to keep it in the freezer for me, but I live a good 10-15 minutes away now, so I apologized and jokingly said, “this must be God’s way of telling me I don’t need it!”. With no hesitation, the woman behind me in line said, “I’ll pay for it. Don’t worry about it.” Flabbergasted, I said, “are you sure?” and she said of course. For some reason, I felt compelled to explain that I really hadn’t realized I did not have my change purse with me but she was not the least bit bothered. As I looked at her face, there was such a serenity that I immediately ceased protesting and offered a very sincere and what I hope was a gracious thank you. Walking out the door, I looked across the street at the CVS; then, as I always have in the past, up at the Chase Bank and the Thai restaurant. And for the first time in seven years, instead of the grief I’d had to process on that awful day, I felt humbled by the kindness of a person I’ve never met, and joy filled me at the realization that now this memory will always share space with the other. I often tell my patients’ families that it’s all our memories, both good AND painful, that taken together make the framework of our existence, and that the diversity of memories is what makes it a good life.

Seven years ago, I wrote these words in response to that awful day: “Putting others first…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.” I will add the addendum that weaving together the results of bringing life to ALL our moments into one secure tapestry offers us a beautiful landscape as the base for our existence. It is my hope and prayer that with such a solid base, I will find it that much easier to picture a beautiful future.