A Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of Humanity

Book DescriptionA Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of Humanity tells the stories of patients who represent the diversity of divinity and the divinity of diversity-- and the commonality of humanity. Patients who reveal a hospital is actually a global neighborhood that calls for a chaplain to embrace diversity of belief—“without exception.” Chaplains without theological blinders. Thus pastoral/spiritual care begins with the humanness that prepares a chaplain to enter into and honor this global neighborhood. The inward journey where one becomes self-aware, and is in touch with and accepting of oneself. Such self-awareness prepares one to understand and accept patients and their loved ones as themselves, and to experience their reality not interpret it. Chaplains have to know where we-- and our god-- are coming from in order to know where patients and their families—and their god—are at. Pastoral/spiritual care, therefore, is not about the chaplain but about the patient. It is about the chaplain in terms of his or her awareness that it is about the patient. Self-awareness is key-- whether one is a chaplain or another kind of caregiver or a concerned citizen.Chaplaincy is about empowering patients and their families not imposing any belief or value system on them. It is about empathy not evangelism. This emphasis on the patient is not to minimize the identity and faith of the chaplain. Rather, it is to stress the pastoral/spiritual care qualities of self-awareness and inner emotional security that enable the chaplain to allow patients and their loved ones to be who they are. The patients’ stories reveal their commonality as well as their diversity. Illness confronts all people with their mortality and hence their vulnerability, their humanness—their oneness and connectedness with each other. In a hospital there is the pronounced human sharing of struggles with life and death, hope and fear, pain and anguish, love and anger, joy and sorrow. And it is these very struggles that bring out the tremendous wisdom patients and their families possess. The role of pastoral/spiritual care is to affirm these common human struggles and the wisdom they elicit by giving them air and reverence.A hospital is a global neighborhood that brings into sharp focus the humanness everyone shares: a precious insight, the embracing of which facilitates competent patient care by all staff, and, likewise, the understanding that makes possible truly democratic and just relationships between people and nations. Patients’ come together at the hospital’s exceptional crossroads of humanity and remind us of what our global neighborhood looks and feels and is like—like everyone of us.