Bereavement

Today we complete our election process and hopefully will elect Barack Obama as our next President.  I do not expect him to be a perfect President–something even he admits will not be possible–but I do trust his keen mind, compassionate heart, knowledge and revere of the Constitution, and his willingness to learn from others.  All of these are the beginnings of him being what Colin Powell rightly named as a “transformational figure.”  In considering Mr. Obama’s credentials, gifts and temperament to bring about lasting change here in the US, I could not help but think of another transformational figure–Martin Luther King Jr.  But do we ever really transform?

In pastoral care, we often speak of “then is now,” meaning that elements of the past are often brought right into the present moment.  Many times this relates to the pain of our lives, especially unresolved unhealed pain.  It can also speak to simple vulnerability and all of the feelings that impregnate any moment of emotional exposure.  I once spoke with a woman in the Rehabilitation Unit at the hospital where I served following her amazing recovery from a brain aneurysm.  She at first laughed the visit from me off, but then took my hands and told me her secret.  She said, “Chaplain, it is the funniest thing…I just cannot figure it out.  Ever since I woke up–I should have died you know–I cannot stop thinking about something that happened when I was just a little girl.  This was over sixty years ago!  Yet here I am thinking about it all day.  It is a secret–I never tell anyone about it–but see, I was molested when I was a little girl.  Why do you think I cannot stop remembering it now?”  I told her that when she was molested it was the most vulnerable she had ever been, and now she was that vulnerable again–even as she survived both.  Then is now.

I also believe “then is now” relates to the key lessons of history–ones we often do not want to learn.  Our bodies, our minds, our hearts all scream at us to pay attention to our personal histories and how our fears and pains get brought up into our present lives.  I see this in myself, and I see it in others.  I once dated a guy who said that his past was “over and done with” despite having an elaborate plan to recreate his own parents’ pilgrimage away from their abusive home and venture to another country for a fresh start to get away from his own abusive past.  Student of history he was not–despite the degree in history!  Jung would call this living to the shadows of one’s psyche.  And the tragedy of personally living to the shadows–whether they be of greed, power, control, fear, etc–is that they create individual bridges into corporate shadows like institutionalized greed, power, control and fear.  The Nazis capitalized upon this phenomena.  Jim Crow Laws capitalized upon this phenomena.  The Republican Party capitalized upon this phenomena in this election again and again with its incessant hate-filled advertisements, punditry, and candidates.

I needed some relief and hope, so I began my morning reading excerpts from Dr. King’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” and his “I Have A Dream” speech. I thought today of all days needed the voice of the past to again ring our Liberty Bell and toll for change.  Again and again then is now.

From “I Have A Dream:”

-This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.  Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of  racial justice; now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all God’s children.

-Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

-We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

-I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

-With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.  With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

My prayer for today is that Dr. King’s dream will be realized in the election of Mr. Obama.  This realization may not be its full expression–this I know–but I do believe we can come that much closer with his Presidency.  How so?  I went to see Mr. Obama in Miami two weeks ago, where a young mother and her three daughters stood in front of me.  She carefully lifted each girl to see both Michelle and Barack Obama.  She told her daughters, “See…there is Mrs. Obama.  She is going to be First Lady–a black First Lady–just like you.”  The dream is alive and well in the souls and imaginations of those little girls.  I find it alive in me as well, especially today.

May our soul force be strong enough to usher in a new age of equality and justice, which will then bring their sister peace.  Amen.

I often feel there is a ghost in the room when dating: the Ghost of Relationships Past. You know, the girl who broke his heart? He missed all the signs–the selfishness, the petty lies, the deep resentments, and prejudices–and gave her all of himself regardless. Now that the signs finally catapulted him to a place of recognition of who she really was, what she really was not capable of, and that indeed their relationship was doomed, he is adrift from his dreams for his life because they all included her. Her–not you. She looms over every exchange, every hope, every little moment where your heart cries out “God…he is so amazing.” He is amazing, and he is amazingly broken. He is broken beyond your repair. He must fix (i.e. heal) himself, which you want for him. You want it for him and in that small corner where you light a candle for him (birthday cake sized so as to not get your hopes up too much) you want it for your life as well; you want him for your life as well. In the meantime, strength requires that you do not get into a love triangle with the Ghost of Relationships Past. Strength to resist this love triangle is always easier said than done.

Being a young woman in my thirties, I know a thing or two about dating men who have tried to stuff their Ghosts in a closet. The funny thing about these Ghosts, they always escape the closet eventually. Slippery buggers! Their hazy smoke permeates moments. With one ex-boyfriend I was shocked to learn that he almost never reached an orgasm through sex. Without even realizing the severity of what I was asking I inquired, “What did your ex-girlfriends make of that?” He replied, “None of them cared. They were just happy to have me focus on them.” In one swift moment all his Ghosts began to swirl around us. What they did. What they did not do. The pattern of being with women for whom his needs were never a priority emerged, and I–the naive one–foolishly believed that by loving him and caring for his needs I would show him what real love was. I did. I did what they would not–could not–do.

He left me to go back to one of those Ghosts.

Is it not amazing how we feel so much more comfortable in the rut of horrible relationship patterns than we do in the uncharted territory of intimacy? Logic would dictate that if you put your hand on the hot stove and are burned, you learn to never put your hand on a stove that is hot again. I am learning–by looking at my own patterns in love–that logic rarely comes into play when we make decisions about whom we will be in a relationship with. This may seem an oxymoron–to make a “decision” about love when it certainly feels like it is not a choice but an emotional by-product of chemistry. However, we do choose. We have patterns where we are comfortable, and without even realizing it we go right for the person whom will fit our pattern. Of course the opposite is true too, we reject those who do not fit this pattern.

Our pattern seeking love-making leads the boy with the controlling alcoholic mother to the girl who will control him and be out of control themselves. Our pattern seeking love-making will lead the girl to the boy who will present one face to the world and have a private rage that leads him to sexual betrayal, just like her father from before–at least that was once my story. These patterns are just that–patterns–not destiny. They are emotional habits that have to be broken in order to be free from them. These habits relate not just to the type of people we feel drawn to, but also those “old tapes” we play in our head. The tapes that say we are not good at relationships. The tapes that say we are unworthy of love. The tapes that say all men are hateful and irresponsible jerks. The tapes that say women are needy bitches. So how do we make new ones? I believe new habits cannot be formed until we face ourselves–not in judgment but in the twin lights of insight (psychological understanding) and epiphany (spirit/love understanding). In addressing the places we attempted to get our root needs met through unhealthy patterns and broken emotional neediness, we open ourselves to allowing unconditional love to flow in us, towards our very own hearts, and then towards others. The old ways set aside through hard intentionality. New mantras of love for our minds to use even when our heart’s old longings for brokenness attempt to get us in trouble.

Building new patterns may seem utterly impossible when we first start out. Not only to us, but also to those who we call friend. A dear friend of mine is just beginning this journey himself to re-write his heart patterns, and in so doing excise the Ghost of Relationships Past. His circle keeps encouraging him to sleep around a bit as the way to expedite this exorcism. I find this to be the relationship equivalent of when a couple looses a baby through miscarriage or still birth and are told by “loving” folks that they are young and can have another baby–as if another baby will “fix” the terrible grief of losing their child. In general, moving on seems to be our modus operandi, but we never really do move on if our patterns are any indication. What my friend’s inner circle fails to realize is most assuredly he will end up dating someone exactly like his ex. He will become involved with someone who will not only leave him devastated but also further sunken into his own fears that he is indeed unlovable. This is the main problem with these terrible patterns informed by the Ghost of Relationships Past–they reaffirm our worst fears about ourselves, our lives, and the impossibility of our dreams coming true.

I have this image of the Ghost of Relationships Past as an elephant chasing you down in the forest. The first instinct–the pattern–is to run away from the elephant. Your gut tells you, “If you do not run, it will kill you.” Really? I cannot believe running is the only choice we have. I believe in healing. Sometimes the only healing available requires facing down the elephant, killing it, and then eating it. The elephant–the pain of the past–must become part of who you are. Take in the lessons, and let the shit go. Otherwise, we will just be destined to be chased by those elephants the rest of our lives–they travel in herds after all. For me, that is one pattern I cannot afford to live within.

I know a great deal about these patterns because I am daily working daily to re-write my own. (Eating my own elephant, so to speak.) Out of compassion, I want to be close to those who are hurting. I also know that a smart lovely boy in the throws of pain will never be healthy enough to deserve my love or truly love me back, even as my heart strings might want to pull me in that direction. I learned the hard way–the very hard way–that you cannot make up for the pain inflicted by the Ghost of Relationship Past. He has to heal himself before you can be with him. Just as you must heal your own heart before he can be with you. Healing allows for true intimacy, the goal of all relationships. And healing–sweet beautiful healing–has one of the most amazing gifts to give us when we embrace it. Healing gives us the gift of freeing those Ghosts once and for all so we are free to love fully present in this moment.

Bon appetit!

In The Screaming 7 Year-Old I wrote:

I cannot help but wonder: Why do I feel so creative, capable and strong and also feel so stuck, inadequate and fragile sometimes?

This question rattles around my whole being these days. I feel the fear of not being good enough seeping into my pores. The anxiety it brings tingles and makes my heart quicken. Hedged in on every side, again I feel both hopeful (creative) and stuck. A coup at my former employer where the one who lies and manipulates was rendered fully empowered has placed me and my co-workers on the unemployment line. I would never have been able to stay, yet I am still profoundly grieving being let go. I look back over the last seven months and wonder at times if making the move there from hospice was really worth it? I also know it gave me so much–I know I was meant to be there. (Even as I do not believe in destiny.) But for such a short period of time? That was it? More than once, I find myself shaking my fists and crying out to God, “But I am on YOUR side!!!”

The last three weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions. Grief. Loss. Pain. Shame. Fear. But these are not the only feelings, and in many ways they are the lesser ones. Mostly I feel hopeful. I feel on the verge. I feel my life spinning in a new direction. I feel ready to take a quantum leap–to move like those ancient reptiles who left behind walking and running for flying! I have absolutely no idea where I will go, what I will do, what will happen. I am fraught with excitement. I just want to read, meet new people, explore, travel, talk with strangers! I do not, however, want to be a chaplain out on the edge with people any longer.

My professional life has been all about walking out onto the edge with people. Trauma, death, disease, crisis, terror, homicide, suicide–these were the daily staple of my work. I dealt in terror. Again and again I walked out to the precipice and met people. I could not “save” them. I could not pull them back from the edge, but I could stand beside them while they teetered on the brink. I could make sure they were not alone. I could make sure God showed up for them because someone came. I could fill in the gaps where it felt God could not be trusted.

I know a great deal about who God is not. God will not rescue you. God will leave the woman to be raped and set on fire. God will not untangle the chord from the baby’s throat–or the parent’s hands. God will not prevent a parent from losing all three of his children in less than five days. God will not stop you from marrying an abusive spouse. God will not make cancer go away. God will not ensure that while you are facing one crisis other ones will not befall you much like dominoes balanced precariously tumbling again and again. God will be silent while the one who works hard never has enough. God will be silent while the one who is mean and destructive wants for nothing.

I know about how God is not a puppet master. I know first hand that loving God does not guarentee you that your baby will live, that you will find the love you seek, or that you will grow up in a home where you are safe. I know God is not in control.

I went to the edge again and again. Why? For one thing, I needed to prove to myself I could go out there and return. For another, I did not want anyone to feel alone there–alone as I had so long ago. I went to learn about how God acts in suffering, and I learned overwhelmingly how God does not act. This knowledge emboldened me. Something had to be done! So, I stood where I thought God ought to be and could not be counted on to show up. I tried to make up for God’s failure–both with me and with others.

Of course, making up for God is not the only story. I found love and peace out on that edge. I found no one ever died without Love making her grand entrance and embracing her child. I found Emmanuel–God with us. I found you can laugh even with the precipice’s jagged rocks cutting your hands, your feet, your side. I found humanity. I found my step-father wanting only the best for me and letting him go into the deep sleep where he can no longer hurt me or anyone else. I found peace. I found understanding. I found hope. But I did not find God.

This may seem odd. To find God’s presence but not God. I can only describe it as feeling the wind on your face, but not actually seeing the storm front that pushed the air upon you.

So now, I am looking for God. I no longer want to pour myself out so completely for others to the point I feel bereft. I want to acknowledge my deep need–my deep longing for others. I feel so terribly isolated these days. The life I dream for myself has a table of friends gathered around it eating, drinking and talking. I eat alone. The life I dream for myself is full of embracing the world I live in and soaking up the creation into the marrow of my bones. I feel landlocked. The life I dream for myself is full of love and family. I am working on accepting that I am more than enough just as I am and look for opportunities to love without abandon.

The funny thing is holding onto these dreams too tightly squeezes the life out of me completely. I feel called to letting go of fear–this is my truest calling. To give up not only the deep anxiety rooted in me from years of scarcity, but to bring it to my core where God is and let God speak to it. To deal with these fears–to draw close to them–I began praying “The Welcoming Prayer” after my Spiritual Director suggested it to me. Here it is:

I let go of my need for safety and security. Welcome.

I let go of my need for power and control. Welcome.

I let go of my need for love and esteem. Welcome

Now, when I feel the horrible panic of “Where do I go from here?” “Who will love me?” “Will there be enough?” “Am I ever good enough?” I pull that fear close in to my heart. I accept it as part of me. I welcome it. Well…I practice welcoming it into my very center. The most amazing thing occurs when it gets in really close. I find the fear dissipating. As I go to sleep the pain, shame, and loss all crowd into bed with me–taunting me. I say, “Welcome.” I rest. My hands are soft and my fists unclenched more these days. These days I find myself whispering to God with anticipation, “Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

Many of you are familiar with Dr. Randy Pauch’s Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. For those of you who have not seen this amazing lecture, informed by his journey with terminal pancreatic cancer, here is the YouTube video of the lecture:

In his book, he ends it with a request for information from those of us whose own parents died when we were young. My mother suggested I write to him; the letter follows. I do not expect him to read it, for I am sure he is deluged with mail of all kinds these days. I did, however, think the letter was a good summation of my own thinking about how to help children who face the death of a parent.

Dear Dr. Pausch,

I am writing to you because I understand you seek first-hand reflections from those of us who lost our father at a young age.  I was six when Daddy died from a MI following a year of being in the hospital off and on due to viral myocarditis.  I can remember my mother coming and taking me on Fridays to see him at lunchtime.  We would stand outside of the ICU in the grass, and the nurse would open the window so I could see Daddy and talk to him.  Thankfully, the ICU was on the first floor!  In 1977, children were not allowed into the ICU proper, but my mother wanted me to see Daddy with my own eyes.  She is a nurse, which I think helped inform her understanding differently than the prevailing wisdom of the time.  Now, unless there was an issue of infection, we would never keep a child out of the ICU.

You may wonder how it is that I know this fact.  I grew up to become an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and have worked as both a hospital and hospice chaplain.  I did my Residency in Clinical Pastoral Education at RUMC in conjunction with the JMSHCC.  My clinical rotation was as the first chaplain for their stand alone Trauma Unit.  Prior to that, I worked at the UNCH and with CDS, where I helped families facing the brain death of a loved one.  In January, I left Hospice and became the Support Services Director for the CCA.  I offer to you my credentials for two reasons: 1) I want you to know I understand grief and bereavement issues as both a mourner and as professional; and 2) I want to spark your imagination about the potential to use the deep shit of one’s life for good–even if that shit happens as a young child.

Daddy’s death taught me some very fragile, yet important lessons, at six.  Freud would call it my “primary narcissistic trauma.”  I call it the moment my DNA changed.  Whoever I might have been without his death at that moment, ceased to exist.  The only potential future before me included the loss of my father.  I would travel without his presence.  Period.  Every moment of the time of being told about his death is real to me still, but so is Daddy.  In today’s grief lingo we speak of “continuing bonds.”  Even death does not end our relationships with those most dear to us.  One need not believe in an afterlife  in order for these bonds to exist. (I dream of one, but I do not know one exists.) The way I put it to the families I care for is this: The love in our hearts keeps them alive within us.  Nothing can separate us from that love.  It never dies as long as we remember.

Remembering is the greatest gift.  I know your children are young, but I remember more of being 0-6 than any of my peers.  Why?  My mother was keen to ask me to continually retell my Daddy stories.  Even as it broke her heart, she listened and cajoled.  I am 37 now, but I still remember being on a National Airlines flight at 3 months of age.  I cannot, however, remember what I did last Friday night!  Why?  My theory is that my young memories became reinforced by the storytelling so much they became marked within my mind and saved as permanent not temporary.  When I was six, it was not a big deal to think back two years and remember playing with Daddy at the park.  Now, I would be hard pressed.  So, my first thought is your wife needs to be committed–even when she cannot breathe or hardly get out of bed–to ask your children to tell her stories about you.  The whole extended family would also need to be encouraged in this regard.

Secondly, leave for your children as many personalized letters and videos, etc. as you can and make them age appropriate through college and young adulthood.  I know this will be the most devastating thing, but I suspect you have already begun this process.  My father did not do this at all.  In fact, I have a rock in my living room with his penciled “Jack” on it as my only reminder of his handwriting.  (He sent the rock to my Grandmother as a joke because our dog kept bringing her rocks as tokens of love when she visited.)  I often ask Mother if he would be proud of me…what he would think of my work…if he loved me?  Although in my heart I believe these things to be true, how much the better to have them before me.  You come across to me as a man of good humor and realism–don’t forget that in these remembrances.  Your children will look to them to decipher who you are, and who they are that is you.  They will be both mirror and guide, so set reasonable expectations for their life coupled with a humor-filled dose of “Daddy was a human being, after all.”  Losing a parent at a young age immortalizes the parent–Daddy died and climbed onto a pedestal in short order.  Some of this is inevitable, but I also think you can show your tender underbelly.

So many parents I have worked with as they are dying want to protect their children from the inevitability of the pain of their loss.  They want to delay it as much as they can.  This is not helpful, because then the death appears as a trauma.  When someone is sick and dies–as in your case and in my own story–warning shots can go across the bow so as to make the death (loss) expected and not a surprise.  Children over the age of four can usually handle some form of warning shots, especially reinforcing that you are indeed sick.  Depending on emotional maturity, the ages of four to six may be able to handle the possibility of death.  Over six, in my opinion they need to know death is not only a possibility, but also a likelihood.  I often use the analogy of giving your child Motrin for fever: You never give the whole bottle, but a dose at a time helps them to heal.  In the same way, I suggest dosing out these warning shots.

Lastly, I urge you to write letters to your children for when they are 25.  In these letters you need to say one very important thing: Goodbye.  I wish I had been able to say that to Daddy.  My father was healing at the time of his death, and as a result, we went on a little vacation before he was to go back to work July 5th.  He died on that trip the morning of June 28, and so I went from seeing him leave with Mother for a few private days one morning (I stayed at my Grandmother’s.), to having Mother tell me of his death the next.  Most of the 400 deaths plus I have attended afforded some opportunity for the family to say goodbye, which our death rituals do as well.  But the opportunity for the one dying to say it rarely is taken, if even there is the time and space for it.  “Goodbye” is powerful and healing.

You know, there really is no “right” way to do things here.  This totally sucks!  At the same time, there are things I learned as a child that helped me become a tender and intelligent woman and chaplain.  Truth and kindness go a long way–for yourself and for others.  I do not know what will happen when you die, for you or for them.  What I do know is that healing, which is coming to that place where a loss is integrated into our lives, and a rich and full life is possible with great and terrible loss.  Your death will change their future, their DNA.  The loss is that profound.  And with that change great potential will open for them to use that loss to make their lives more, not less.  This will be their choice, just as it was mine.  May the teaching and loving you do now and the legacy you leave them help inform this choice.

In kindness and solidarity,
Jacqueline Hope Derby

Mother has a favourite Cynthia Clawson song that she is unable to find anywhere. She only remembers one line and sings it regularly, “I am on a journey Lord.” Over and over again I will hear her lilting and crackled voice sing this line to me. She longs to hear the song again. Where does the longing come from? Does she feel like she is perpetually on a journey? Is she clinging to God when the going is hard and tough? Is she asking for understanding as she continues to grow (and grow up), even at 70? Is she letting God know she loves the process more than the destination? Is she staking her claim?

I do not know what it means to mother–this song, this line–but I do understand what it means to stake a claim on the journey of life. I feel I am there too. Life is change, but it often comes with pain. In order to grow up or morph, we have to tear down the old and bring in the new. I find myself in the tearing down phase right now, which feels amazing and hard and painful and hopeful–all at once! I feel pulled in, introspective, jumbled, lost, searching. Not unlike the butterfly in its pupal stage, I find myself a pupil at the feet of those who are teaching me now. Some teach me through interaction; others through reading. I am also being taught by my memories. “I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me; to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes,” is how the group Sweet Honey in the Rock put it in one of their songs.

I seek transformation and transcendence. I seek love unlike I have ever known it before. This love flows to me, in me, around me, beyond me. I do not want to be the same Jacqueline–not because I do not see the beauty of my being and life to this point, but because I see it and its innate potential for so much more. I see how I step away from extraordinary for good enough. I do not seek perfection. However, I do want more from myself than to simply get the deep connections, I also want to put the plug in the wall and let the juice flow! I see all the time I invest into understanding, but not into the actual living out of my dreams due to the cesspool of fear left behind by those who broke my heart and my own frail ways of coping at times. I keep unwinding the spool of thread, but I feel I put it back on the shelf neat and tidy. I live to the fear of it all falling apart, coming undone, getting painful and messy too much of the time. I need to hurl the ball of string off the bow as a streamer of joy in my life!

I find myself in the stillness of my own quiet temple, yet with an ever present messy messy mind. I have such a messy mind! I unwind the spool, and cringe at how I need to let it go free. The only reprieve or solace I find is in the quiet. I do not watch television. I do not listen to music. I hate talking on the phone. I avoid friends and family. I play quietly with Emma. I delay at answering personal emails. Not completely–for when I need them, I draw them all close, but for the most part I find these days rather isolated. I find I need so much time to think and to heal, for this is my ultimate treasure now.

In the stillness I find healing. Not a panacea, where everything has been righted and the planets aligned again. No. Healing where the tilt exists, but I know how to lean into it now and not lose my balance healing. For some reason, when I received this photograph my friend sent me from his time in the woods of France I felt I was IN the photograph. No, not there physically, but in my heart. In the stillness of the stream. In the stories hidden beneath its loam. In the fold of the branches. In the seeking of the leaves for a bit of light. In whisper of woods. In the heartbeat of nature. In the strength of the root. In pride of the tree trunks. I am in the song, in the breath, in the scurry, in the ache of life right now. I am in that place of chaos and clarity. I am in love–with my own heart, with life, with others.

I am on a journey Lord…

PHOTO CREDIT: Philip Brooker

As I have been pondering the strange working of my inner child, who at the moment seems to be more of an “outie” than an “innie,” I began to wonder what she looks like. In my mind’s eye, I do not have me at age seven fixed. If anything, I would tell you how I was so much taller than everyone else, awkward, not as pretty, frumpy, and that I had big feet. I set out all my picture boxes and began to look for this girl, only to find a sweet looking beautiful seven year-old with hair the same colour I pay to achieve these days. She looks no different than her friends, although her smile is often more genuine. She seems to laugh from the heart. She does not look frumpy, and by today’s standards rather cute. She does have big feet though–some things never change! Mostly, what I notice about her physically is her eyes. When I was little people would often comment about what big eyes I had–Red Riding Hood style. Here is my formal Seventh Birthday Photograph, where my big eyes really are noticeable:

This is also the same little girl who met a man who would molest her for the first time when he asked her if it was ok to marry her mother. Accepting the molestation went hand-in-hand with the proposal–”I will be your Daddy, and you will let me touch you.” The deep earth shattering need to be loved and accepted by a father after my own real Daddy’s death was met with this bittersweet promise from John. Here are Mother, me and John running through a deluge of birdseed on their wedding day:

Looking at these photographs brings the tears–they flow so easily right now–but these photos also evoke in me a sense of my own strength. I am just a little girl. A sweet lovely child who would write to her Grandmother letters about how her Grandmother was a “doll” and her “very best friend.” This is also the same little girl who stood before her whole congregation with her hands clenched around the microphone and prayed her friend would not die, who laid close to death in the Intensive Care Unit, because she just could not take one more person she loved dying. This little girl ingeniously went away to Summer Camp and made her mother a ceramic dog, given her Mother swore to ANYONE who would listen that her next dog would be ceramic. Jacquie Turner gave her present to her mother, accepted the bestowed gratitude, and then asked, “Now that you have your ceramic dog, can we please get a real one for me?” The Lhaso God would bring her–Mindy–would become her companion and confidant. They would hide together in the closet away from John and snuggle. Is it any wonder having a dog represents life to me still?

gratuitous photo of Emma

This little girl also survived. Can you imagine that? I think now of being harmed in some way, and I do not know how I would make it through except that I know I can because I already did! Somehow–luckily–the gifts of the happy accident of my birth, combined with my lifelong desire to listen to the Still Small Voice of Love inside me, have given me the courage to fight for my life again and again. The most vulnerable and youngest version of me was assaulted in the most vile and vicious ways. And that child–she lived! She fought her way out with the hope–the imagination–that things would change and not always be the same way. She found beautiful ways to express herself, mostly through art. The same love and imagination about God and God’s creativity and love for humanity still beats in my own heart today. She was full of gifts–so am I.

When I look at these photographs of little seven year-old Jacquie Turner I am in awe. This child survived so I might have this precious life I now live. This child survived so I might thrive. This child survived because love is stronger than death–or all of the other ways we seek to destroy ourselves and others. This child survived the best way she knew how, including eating ice cream to try and make John go away and to make the bad feelings go away too. I owe her my very life, so when she is running around on fire and screaming for cupcakes, I understand. I just owe it to her to comfort her with compassion and with honesty, and only every so often a yummy dessert. I owe our future better than just hiding in the closets of my life with Emma, hoping the bad men won’t come and hurt us.

She survived so I could have a real life. I owe her living mine to the fullest.

Working as a hospital and hospice chaplain over the last eight years, I can trace certain themes I repeatedly hear from my patients and their families. These themes include: questioning of why bad things happen to “good” people; the meaning in suffering; the timeliness or “out-of-time” sense when someone dies; trust issues with the medical community; causality; God’s intervention (or lack there of) in our lives; and the meaning of hope/feelings of despair. You know…the light stuff! The most common spiritual intervention I provide directed at a single place of spiritual suffering centers on the popular myth: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

I write the word “myth” intentionally because indeed this is just that–a myth. We human beings created this idea out of our own hope that it might be true, but not based on any ancient sacred text we might hold to within either the Jewish or Christian traditions. There is a text in the Christian Scriptures that does have somewhat similar language, so the popular consensus is that it has been misquoted just enough to get the other idea into our popular lexicon. The text comes from I Corinthians 10:13 where the Apostle Paul writes, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” The part that is interesting four our discussion is where he writes, “[God] will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” I guess we could call this “Biblical Telephone!” One person after another tweaks it just enough that over time we ended up “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

The problem comes from when we go around spouting off this myth as Biblical truth and live our lives by it!  Worse yet, we often tell this to people truly hurting as a way to try and assuage their pain.  Would you feel better to know that when the most horrible pain of your life is upon you–and you feel like you are going insane from not being able to bear it, yet having to anyways–to know that God had allocated this pain for you knowing you could handle it?

Just recently I spoke to a woman on the Helpline I answer who struggled with this notion. She had just been diagnosed as Stage IV, and she was shattered. She endured more grief and loss in the last twelve years than most, and now with hardly any emotional, physical, spiritual, or financial resources must wage war on this horrific disease–after being Stage Zero a couple of years ago and given the “all clear.” In our conversation, the issue of why would God be “giving” her the cancer came up. Why? Because she had been taught (most likely at church!), “God never gives us more than we can handle.” The implication is that God is giving the cancer for some higher purpose. She told me she believes in a loving God, which led me to ask, “Is a loving God then the creator of your heartache?” I reminded my caller–who is a Christian–of Jesus’ own words on the cross, in which he quoted the Psalmist saying, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” I believe those words are the cries of someone who intimately knows what it means to endure much much more than they can handle.

If the ancient Hebrew and/or Christian Scriptures are important to you, let me direct you a gem from Proverbs 18:14: “A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?” I do believe that feeling supported, loved and cared for while we battle the diseases within (and the dis-ease without) help us to heal in body, mind and spirit. This is why it is so important to surround ourselves during our healing journeys with those who can listen and hold the most fragile of moments–those times of despair, anger, hurt and loss–and celebrate with us the moments of life, hope, love and laughter we will experience even with disease. No one can bear our pain or illness for us–in that we are totally alone–but they can carry us while we bear it by carrying our spirit close to their own. Without that, our spirits will be literally crushed, and that is too much to bear.

My encouragement to you today my dear friends is this: God is not the author of our heartache or our broken bodies. We are fragile and live in a fragile world where brokenness is par for the course. God (or Love, if that fits your spirit better) is, however, always wanting to be part of the circle of support cheering us on, believing in our power to create goodness and beauty in a place where there is pain, and encircling us with comfort in the living we are doing right now…even when it is truly more painful than we can bear.

I wrote the following prayer for “Seminarian Sunday” at my home congregation,

Coral Gables Congregational Church.

Today we come together to not only draw closer to the Source of Love—God—but also to one another. Inspired by this love, some of us have made the journey from the pew to the pulpit. For me, it was one of the hardest and loneliest journeys I ever made; it was also one of the most significant, beautiful and amazing journeys. I can remember being on this very chancel surrounded by more love than I had ever experienced in my whole life–many of you were there. Isn’t it amazing how life is like that? The bitter makes the sweet all that much more meaningful and rich.

Maybe you too have been on a journey like this—from student to teacher, from child to parent, from employee to employer, from caretaker to the one cared for, from married to single or single to married, from healthy to ill, or experienced the renewal of your body following an illness. All of us move from moth to butterfly. The ebb and flow of life continually has us in its grip, smoothing out our rough edges, sloughing away our dirt and grime, shaping us. So, as we pray today, let us pray for all of those on the lonely road of transition and transformation.

Loving God, you know us by heart. You know when we rise and when we fall. From far away you see our hearts and tenderly cradle us in your arms of comfort and rest. Even when we long for touch, connection, and love—we are not alone. You are with us. Hear our prayer.

We pray for all those who hear you asking, “Whom shall I send?” Help us to bravely venture forward and say, “Here I am Lord, send me.” May we hear you whispering in our ears to love your children more fully today.

We pray for all those who sacrifice the prestige, wealth and comfort they see their peers obtain in order to humble themselves before the hurting world. Be with them and all who sacrifice their comfort for your good.

We pray for those who fear paying their bills, feeding their family, getting the car fixed, or losing their home. You have given us enough resources and the creativity to take care of one another—help us to let go of our greed so everyone has what they need.

We pray for those who feel isolated and alone as they struggle to transform their body, their mind, their heart, their spirit. Change is never easy, but it is always constant in our lives. Change hurts, and pain is so isolating—even from you dear God. May your hand place a healing balm in our lives and may we feel carried by those who love us.

We pray for those facing a spiritual crisis today, trying to sort out the facts from the mythology, the truth from the minutia, the hope from the despair. May your cloud by day and fire by night illuminate our path and help us come to a place of imagination in what is possible and acceptance in the beauty of the questions.

We pray for those who are looking today for the face of God—waiting expectantly for just one person to listen, care, be tender, forgive, understand or hold. May we be your face of unconditional love in the world.

We pray for transformation, sweet Jesus. We pray to be made new. Come and see the deepest part of our hearts, and revive us so we might be strengthened to love again today. Hear our prayer.

Amen.

My Dear Faithful Reader,

We have come to the first anniversary of my blog. First of all, thank you so very much for the affirmation of reading my blog (some of you more than my own Mama!) and sharing with me the places my writing touched you and your story. I must say I am rather surprised by all of this! What started as a way to post photos of my then six week-old puppy Emma–who was still living with her Birth Mother at the time–transformed into something I never expected. I grieved the loss of a meaningful relationship. I worked through much of what it meant for me to work as a hospice chaplain. I highlighted the hilarities of my dating life. And, most importantly, I educated you on men in tank tops!

Given Top Ten Lists are so passe I say, “Nine is Fine!” Here are my favourite nine posts from this last year:

9. I Heart Atheists! This post is dedicated to my patient “Hank,” of whom I wrote. I am glad he is no longer struggling to breathe or to find love.

8. Posting My Big Secret This post received the most private email because people were worried about me. In many ways it was the hardest to write. I reveled an important secret, and in so doing found a way to tell my closest and dearest just how much despair (my definition of anti-hope) I felt following the break-up. This post continues to have meaning for me due to my continuing love of Post Secret, and because I hope by exposing my pain–even as a minister–others fearing the only way through is out might feel comforted.

7. I’m Coming Out: Jesus Know About My Vibrator The year’s most embarrassing and second funniest post. I still cringe when people ask me for my website address thinking about them reading this particular post. Of course this is exactly why it is on this list–I am a glutton for embarrassing myself on this blog with the bitter truth. For the record–and thankfully–I have had sex since I wrote this post! (Once.)

6. The Whispering God Where is God when bad things happen to good people? In part, this post contains my answer to this question and my own thinking about God’s intervention–and lack there of–in our lives.

5. 40 Reasons I Make A Great Girlfriend (and her evil twin 40 Reason I Will Drive You Crazy & Am Not Perfect) This was so much fun, and I met my friend in Austria through putting up the “Great Girlfriend” list on craigslist.

4. A Rose Garden Relationship I continue to think about what I wrote in this post. If there is such a thing as your own writing being a gift to you, it would be this post. I feel it helped me clarify what relationship values continue to remain important to me and also what I ultimately have to offer all of my relationships, including the one I have with myself.

3. You Play, You Pay This post about my prayer for my Aunt Charlyne to come to terms with her cancer and still remains at the forefront of my thinking about her. She finished her second round of chemo, and she will find out next week the results of her latest PET scan. She told us at Christmas she feels the cancer is spreading.  All my work with patients has taught me our bodies tell us the truth–even long before the tests and doctors do–so I cannot help but wonder if hers is telling her a truth now. I do not know what will happen with her body, but I know she will be surrounded by love regardless of the outcome. This is what matters most.

2. Tank Top Wearing Man Candy? The single funniest thing I have ever written! I cannot see a man in a tank top without thinking: “Baby, if you only knew how I felt about THAT!” If you love it too, please go out to Urban Dictionary and suggest “The Tribble Factor” for a word/definition.

1. The Mango Tree My homage to my father and the continuing bonds of love death cannot separate us from and how these bonds continue to inform our present and propel us into our future.

Here is to a wonderful Year Two!

I quit my job.

Back in November, just after Teri’s husband was murdered I gained focus about the abusive nature of the hospice I work for. Needing some time off–even just one day–to breathe, regroup, grieve and find my spiritual center, I asked for some comp time. In the past, the company has given comp time when staff suffered through a major crises and led their team through it. My Social Worker and I definitely qualified, but after I approached the subject with our covering Team Manager we received a text message (no conversation, mind you) stating, “Be strong for the patients.” I could not help but wonder, “With what?”

I reached a breaking point following a week unlike any I experienced in all of my time as a chaplain. I have blessed the parts of a baby girl in an emesin basin, held the hand of a man hacked by an ax, comforted a father about to bury all three of his boys, led a procession with a dead armless/legless baby out of the NICU in a satin box, watched a man die shackled to his bed, had the stench of burning flesh in my nose so bad I had to put toothpaste above my lip to breathe, and been hunted down by reporters following a colossal medical mishap–and that was just at work! My personal life losses also possesses quite the body count as well, and more than once I wondered if my own body would be added to the count at the hand of John or myself. Never, however, had I entered into the gruesome world of murder and known the victim and their loved ones. Never had I loved the one so closely affected and devastated.

After I received the text message, I looked for a new job and found one. I start on Monday.

The first of June last year I wrote “The Cost of Being A Chaplain.” The piece focused more on the financial stresses involved, but originally contained a whole litany of just what two days of working in hospice looked like for me. I pulled out the emotional cost side and began a different post (never completed or posted) called “What It Takes.” That piece began…

Paparazzo said to me on Sunday, “I really do not know what it takes to do your job.” I think it is hard to explain to anyone who does not work with crisis situations, but even sometimes our co-workers just do not get it either. Being a chaplain is unlike most jobs. On the surface, we may seem to have it easy. I go to people’s homes and listen to their stories about their lives. Beneath the surface, I map these stories, looking for places where the support is not present to help them navigate in a healthy way the pain before them and offer comfort, guidance and ways to pick up their own coping skills to shore up those tender places. In so doing, I see the terrible weaknesses hid from most, and must gently place a healing balm there without disturbing the person’s sense of self or fracture their hope/imagination regarding God or love. In order to be a chaplain, you must embrace the painful places, ever be on the lookout for shitty theology trapping someone in a prison of despair, and bear witness to the fragility of humanity. What others flee from, you must draw close to and absorb. We also do a lot of apologizing for the so-called “religious” and teach about what it means to be a spiritual person. And we do this without equanimity with those we care for, without much support of any kind, with a smile and sense of humor, and while being as less threatening as possible–unless we must kick some ass to help our care receivers. Trust me! I have kicked some ass when needed!

Pastoral Care is a wonderful profession, but as caregivers we need certain supports to continue to give of the sweet milk of our own lives to those we care for. My employer did not understand this, nor did they want to. I wrote a “Manifesto” for my exit interview. Here are the basic bullet points:

• Implied and explicit Corporate expectations change and do not always reconcile with one another.
• Unreasonable expectations regarding time allocation (leading to requiring a minimum of a 50-hour work week, on-calls added), especially on a Home Team with high turnover.
• Paperwork in triplicate but no computerization.
• Unequal compensation for company employees in the same job, based on age of program not cost-of-living. (For example, the counties above and below my own have chaplains being paid $5-10k more than in my county for the same work and the same cost of living. Chaplains in the GA program make more, but they have no on-call responsibilities unless a chaplain is specifically requested because unlike us, they do not have the legal right to declare someone dead.)
• Inadequate compensation creates stress and grift. (The starting Chaplain salary is almost $17k less than what the average Associate Minister in my county makes. Both Chaplains and Social Workers are shortchanging on their visits to “make-up” for the disparity…at least emotionally. I have a real problem with this from an integrity standpoint, not to mention it is illegal.)
• Company policy changes that decrease company loyalty and shortchange pay. (They decided to put out 9 of the Social Service staff on holiday–with pay if you still had PTO, without if you did not–two days before Thanksgiving because they “did not have enough money.” The company is publicly traded, so the information about their cash flow is readily available. The truth? Their net revenue was up 32.8% for the Third Quarter from where it was in 2006. The profit was to the tune of $13.8 million! Not enough money my ass!)
• Death attendance visits counting against productivity requirements. (It is a FUCKING HOSPICE!!! How can going to a death be counted against the Psycho-Social Staff? They consider the day a “loss” given the person died–although they did get paid for the day. Some weeks I would go to as many as three deaths on my team. Unproductive my ass!!! )
• The way in which on-calls are handled. (Too long to bore you with here, but needless to say…sometimes I felt it was a choice between my life or my job.)
• A corporate culture of fear and urgency.
• Patients and families come behind shareholder profits. (Hollowing out services to the dying to make a profit is immoral and will eventually bankrupt the company. I am going to send the CEO a copy of The Divine Right of Capital.)
• We are not prepared for RN staffed Continuous Care or Pediatric Continuous Care.
• Not enough emphasis or time for true staff support and emotional care.
• Questionable charting practices, which I believe to be illegal.

I am ready for a change and for renewal in my professional life. I want to work where I am valued, and where I can use my gifts. I want to help individuals, and I want to contribute to the way in which we think about how to care for those suffering at the macro level as well. I never want to be on-call again!!!! I want to write more for a living. I want work to be work and home to be home again. I want to be paid a living wage. I want my creativity to be blessed not questioned. I do not want to feel I need to dumb myself down because it is threatening to some of my colleagues.

The new chapter begins on Monday! YEAH!!!!

This is the Eulogy I wrote for my patient I called “My Love.” Maybe you will see a small part of yourself in times of great struggle when you read this:

As I began to think about what I wanted to say about my dear patient—whom I loved greatly and who I know loved me as well—I kept hearing the song from “The Sound of Music” in my head where the nuns sing: “How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” “Maria” was definitely a firecracker and a moonbeam! In all honesty, I did not meet the same Maria her family describes because in many ways that version of her never existed in the same way after she after her hospice admission in April of 2005. Maria never could fully accept the myriad of her life changes or heal into the person who rose from those ashes. And yet, her spirit—that “moonbeam”—could not be stopped by COPD or hospice…even if Maria struggled to see that for herself at times.

I once asked her to describe her life before she took that long last final terminal turn. She told me how much she “enjoyed her children” and how they had “always been [her] heart’s desire.” Children and animals…Maria drew close to her the tiniest and the most tender. She described herself as being handy, artistic, creative, fun, funny, and “a pleasure to be around.” She also felt like the disease not only was choking the life out of her body, but also that the process had stolen all the life out of living in the here and now. This was the Maria—“My Love” as I usually called her —whom I met in September of 2006. I met a woman ravaged by a disease and full of dis-ease as a result.

It was love at first sight. You may find this so odd given I am standing here breaking the cardinal rule of Memorial Services and talking about the tough stuff! Knowing My Love as I did, I think she would be proud of me for being willing to be honest about just how “shitty” this was for her these last few years. And no, she would not mind one bit that the Minister said “shitty”—it was a favourite word of hers after all! (She also had a way with the f-word, something I appreciated, but let’s have a tiny bit of decorum here.) I also know she would be proud of me for seeing into her—into her deepest most beautiful and hurting heart—she liked to say to me, “Intimacy means “into-me-see.” And I did see her intimately—broken, anxious, hurting, longing, suffering, grieving, wanting, hoping, searching, funny, smart, creative, insightful, wise, kind, loving, honest—brutally honest. I heard her laugh, rubbed her back as she cried, kissed her cheek, had her frail arms embrace me, and her hand cup my face—not to mention I have been the recipient of her pointed right finger on more than one occasion! I am so sad that I will not see her again…and I am so happy for her that she finally has the peace she sought and needed so desperately.

Part of why I love her so much relates to the tenacity she showed to stay her course no matter what. We all suffer in prisons of our own making, but even in those places where we are literally marking the days on the wall, life is possible. I read about how Nelson Mandela kept a garden on Robbins Island, where he was a prisoner for 27 years. He said it was his lifesaver. Maria kept a garden of her own in many ways. From little rituals that defined her life, to meaningful friendships where the introduction was based on her decline, not her beauty, wit or brains. She tried to sort out the story of her life, to try and find meaning with the terribly unfair thing that had happened to her. She tried to grieve all she lost on the way to losing her life. She sought peace. Maria showed unparalleled strength and courage in the face of devastation. She held on—tightly, mind you—for so much longer than most of us could even imagine doing if we were in her place.

Like all of us, she would often ask me why this had happened to her. She blamed herself for ever smoking, but I am here today to promise you that none of us “deserves” to have our breath taken away from us by a terrible disease. I know it is such a normal human desire to try and make sense of things by figuring out the cause-and-effect. Let me tell you the universal truth of why we suffer: We suffer because we do…it is part of what it means to be human. Human beings break—mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The Blame Game never leads to healing, and when we break, to have courage to try and heal in the face of that brokenness—well that is true bravery. Maria had a brave spirit because she tried, and she held on, and she continued to laugh for as long as she possibly could—even when it was through her panic and tears. Yes, even this last month of her life when she became too weary to talk most of the time, she would carefully spit out each and every word of a zinger and make her family laugh!

Maria was not a superhero; she was just a woman…a human being like all of us here. She never walked on the moon. She never received a miraculous healing and lived to tell about it on Oprah. She never won the adulation of the masses or had her words or artwork revered. But she was a ray of light—a moonbeam to those of us here—and that was something her disease never stole from her. As each of us carries some part of her humor, her love, her life, her mischief, her spirit, her story in our own hearts, she continues to live on and bless us. I don’t think she would want it any other way.

Closing Prayer for Maria’s Celebration of Life:

God, we possess great imagination about who you might be, and we cling to the ideas about you our brothers and sisters share. Our brother David said you know everything about us…that you examine our hearts. Do you know each moment we sit or stand? Do you really count the hairs on our heads? We need you to, for we suffer and need to know you are with us even in the darkest place or the deepest valley. Find us and comfort us with your tender embrace.

God, we wonder if you know our thoughts when we are far away from you? Come quickly and hear them now sweet Shepard. We are full of love, remembrance, humor, and longing for our dear beloved Maria. We are so grateful she can breathe deeply now because her lungs, spirit and mind are at peace, and we are so sad that we will only hear her laughter in our memories. Comfort each one here—especially her family—and may the promise be true that if we ride the wings of the morning or dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide us and your strength will support us. And help us to hold tightly to all of our stories, memories and love of Marsha, so we might speak of her and keep her spirit alive within us for as long as we live. Amen.

Sometimes I fall in-love very easily and shamelessly with my patients. I do not mean to speak of romantic love, but instead of how a special spark will exist and you just love instantly as a result. I recognize how common threads from my life and theirs act as catalysts, but sometimes I am at a total loss for why I feel so compelled by them and their stories, loved ones, life, illness, etc. I had two different “Jacquelines” this year, so I think we can easily trace why they were special to me right from the start! My nurse Wendy and I fell in-love instantly with “Yoda” and for no other reason than the man was a complete gentleman. I also think the way he would speak of his wife and how he longed to see her again touched me deeply–both in my understanding of how death does not end love and in my own longings to have a man feel that way about me. And then there is my patient I always referred to as “My Love.”

Whenever I would come into her home I would say, “Hello My Love, tell me about you today.” If I said, “How are you?” she would always reply, “How the hell do you think I am?” I always met that with a snappy, “Shitty for sure, but better now that I am here!?” (smirk included free of charge) She would snarl and laugh all at the same time! My Love suffered with COPD and with the horrible box of living with a terminal disease. Dis-ease all around her, I felt from the very beginning of our time together in September 2006 that she suffered from Complicated Mourning. The DSM IV (the psychological diagnostic Bible) basically says one suffers from Complicated Mourning when after a year from the initial time of the loss one still experiences the loss in the same way as when the loss first occurred. In other words, one never moves beyond the initial grief reaction. Imagine if you learned of the death of your closest friend…hold that thought, feeling, body trauma for just a moment. Now imagine never letting that feeling morph and heal, but instead staying exactly the same always. Complicated Mourning occurs most commonly after sudden traumatic losses, including but not limited to: homicides, death of a child, multiple losses or concurrent losses, and/or suicide. In the case of My Love, the person she saw herself to be died when she entered hospice in April of 2005, and she never could fully grieve the myriad of her life changes or heal into the person who rose from those ashes.

I can remember feeling intimidated walking up to her large home for the first time…what turned out to be a very pretty prison of her own making. I greeted the most beautiful woman. In her mid-sixties, she could have passed for being in her forties but for her hands, which belonged to a woman thirty years her senior. Her hands told the story of her weakened lungs, weakened resolve, weakened resilience. I always notice people’s hands–even as a child I would compare my own to my Mother’s and Grandmother’s all through the church services. Her hands continued to tell her story in that they were most often clenched. She would sit in her recliner, leaning back to her left with her left hand tight and her right arm locked out straight to her seat. She would wag her right index finger at you to make a point, but the rest of her hand stayed firm. Her hands never lied about how desperately she was holding on, and they never lied about how desperately she was living.

I think of my “Patient Zero” as a mother from when I served as a Youth Minister in North Carolina. She and her husband–both lawyers–engaged in one of the bloodiest divorces I ever witnessed, and I only saw the aftermath. She also had Breast Cancer with mets to her liver. I visited her at Duke after a surgery to help with the spread of the cancer in her liver. Her goal simple: Live until her 10 year-old turned 18. God forbid her former husband raise her or interact with her more than the bare minimum the court ordered! She too held on tightly. She told me as I stood by her bedside following the surgery how she prayed God would help her to let go of holding on with such vigor and desperation. She did not pray for her whole hand to unfurl, but instead she asked God to come and loosen just the tiny tip of her pinkie finger so she might breathe a bit easier. With this image in mind, I often find myself praying the very same thing–for myself and for my patients.

When I left My Love’s home after our first visit, I leaned in close to her and said, “My prayer for you is that you will have just one minute of peace each day. I am not naive. I do not think a feeling of peace will just overtake you out of nowhere. But I do believe one extra minute per day is possible. This is my prayer.” She gripped my hand with her right hand and said, “You understand. Thank you. Yes; pray for that for me.”

See My Love was so terribly stuck. She was near death when she came onto hospice in 2005, but after a drug allergy diagnosis and correction she rallied. When the old version of herself died, so did all her dreams of  this being something she could and would beat. Imagine a plane circling the airport–which in this case represented death–day-after-day but never flying anywhere either. She was terrified of getting sick, and subsequently her precious grandchildren represented the kiss of death. She also missed them terribly and longed to hold them, play with them, and witness the intricacies of their growing up. This is just one example of the ways she held onto her life but never really lived. My Love was so terribly stuck.

My Love never could consciously release herself from her ritualistic hovering over death. A fall a few months ago, and a series of events began to unravel her desperate hold onto a life she hated and hated to have any change to. At the beginning of December her husband moved her to an inpatient facility when her death became more imminent. I visited her there often, and would look painfully upon her still clenched hands. After her death this past Thursday, I sat in the same Family Room where she lived in isolation for these last two and a half years…a room without her chair, hospital bed, commode, mirror, eye brow pencil, pashmina, blush, and oxygen. A room without her. Her family looked at me excitedly and her daughter related something they just had to tell me: “Her hands were at peace the last two days. We noticed it and thought we had to tell you because you would be so glad to know she stopped holding them so tightly. She died with her hands open and at peace.”

Why her? Why did I fall in-love with her? She was a bright, enthusiastic, funny, creative, sarcastic, honest, lonely, hurting, broken woman. I do not know what to say beyond that I loved her deeply because I did. She never “earned” my love…in fact she tried it more than once. I just know I loved her right exactly where she was–clenched hands and all. Her husband asked me to officiate at her funeral. He knows the day of her funeral is also my last day with hospice, so he called it “poetic justice” that my last responsibility for hospice is her funeral. I fully agree, but even if I had already left I still would have done it for her…anything for My Love.

I am applying to Vanderbilt’s Graduate Department of Religion, and today finalized my application. W00T! (Which, is now officially a word.) Here is my Statement of Purpose, a.k.a. why the heck I would want to subject myself to more education and debt:

In order to understand why I am applying to Vanderbilt’s Graduate Religion Department’s program in Religion, Psychology, and Culture, I must first paint for you the two important intersections of my life these last eighteen months. The first road began when I started dating an atheist. Yes, once upon a time an atheist and a minister met and fell for each other. Despite the curious rumblings of friends and family, he proved to be the one person (thus far) most similar to me when it came to the questioning the role of religion in society, the individuality of the faith story/existential quandary, and the core essence of spirituality, namely curiosity. We asked similar questions, and while we fell to either side of a dividing line due to differing conclusions, we could easily reach the other one over that line.

Our conversations awoke a deep need and desire in me to discuss the fragile and hurting world through the lenses of Pastoral Care, with its tenets of “being” and “healing,” and logic. I had already read Rabbi Lerner’s The Left Hand of God, but he pushed me to read Neo-Atheists such as Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins, as well as the economist Naomi Klein and philosopher Jamie Whyte, among others. We began a blog reflecting the core issues we felt must be addressed for the future of humanity. He wanted his voice to be one of reason and science in the face of religiosity and mythology. I wanted mine to be the voice of a servant to the hearts and minds of hurting people with a strong commitment to logic. After we parted ways, I struggled to find ways to continue this conversation. I began my own blog and reworked the one we started. I kept reading. I volunteered and started a chapter of “Drinking Liberally” in order to meet other people to talk with about these things, but these actions are not enough. So, on one hand, I am applying because of a post break-up intellectual void. I need the conversation, discipline, exposure and mentoring only a graduate program can offer me at this point intellectually.

The other trajectory of my life unfolded for me by working as a hospice chaplain. I currently serve as a Home Team Chaplain in a middle to upper-middle class area. My typical patient is over sixty years of age, most likely Jewish or Roman Catholic, married, and retired. Repeatedly I heard the same story of faith narrated to me, and I began to call my patients and their families “The New Agnostics.” [1] I described them as such because regardless of what faith tradition they report historical and familial roots to, their descriptions matched one another. I see three distinct characteristics in this group: 1) A move away from the precepts of their historical religion, while still keeping some limited rituals from the tradition; 2) The centrality of a benign and altruistic God, who is best exemplified by the love of their family and/or friends; and 3) An co-opting of language, ritual, belief, and values specific to traditions other than their own seen as being coherent with their own spirituality. On the whole, they eschew attendance to services, with only some Catholics wanting a ritual visit from a priest—one they almost always have no connection with whatsoever. For example, I provided care to a woman who left Reformed Judaism for Kabbalah, only to not be connected at all but who reported that the two most important factors of her faith were “The Golden Rule and Karma.” Often to my surprise, they have read, seen or otherwise been influenced by the writings of the current Neo-Atheist movement. [2] They disagree, and still believe in “a higher power,” but they keep reading them and report to me the “good points” raised. Paradoxically, when they move away even from this kind of agnosticism and completely abandon their faith, or spirituality it is almost without fail due to the love of family or friends no longer being available to them. The larger systems of community or congregation based social interaction no longer provide “back-up” to their individualized spiritual belief.

By comparison, when I worked in Chicago as the Pastoral Care Resident for the Trauma Department, I saw young men of colour replace their family of origin with their family of choice—namely their gang affiliation. The search for meaning so great, that even in the face of the failure of society as a whole to address the needs of persons of colour—whether that be by the modalities of education, employment, access to services such as healthcare or training—another type of connection was found without regard for its inherent destructive nature. I saw a whole generation eschewing the spirituality of their mothers and grandmothers and a kind of unidentified atheism within them. This was in sharp contrast to the agrarian based spirituality I encountered in North Carolina regardless of economic or educational background. In other words, the types of spiritual crises I minister to has been largely dependent on geographies, economics and education. And within these larger structures of society, fractured, discarded, or amalgamated religious belief emerges.

I firmly believe humanity is at a crossroads where the potential for radical change—if not total abandonment—of our religious systems is imminent. The rise of fundamentalism across the globe speaks to a deep spiritual hunger, as well as an economic and educational famine the whole of humanity must contend with, but especially those of us in the One-Third World. I fully own that my own practice has thus far been limited to those living within the luxuries of the One-Third World, even as they are sometimes impoverished within it. What I see as opportunistic from a Pastoral Care standpoint is the types of interventions we offer as providers are more needed now—on both the individualistic and societal levels—than ever before. While at the same time, I also see a need to rethink these interventions outside of the systematic hermeneutics most seminaries ascribe. I want to be a part of this re-tooling and creation, and I want to be able to both research emerging spiritualities and teach how to provide essential spiritual care that creates an opportunity for genuine healing even in places where traditional religiosity has been abandoned. Let me be clear: I believe religion on the whole has failed, and I want to be a part of the phoenix of faith rising from her ashes.

The esoteric and existential questions posed to me now by my patients and their caregivers require me to “sit Shiva” with the failures of the religions of my patients. As a result, I provide care to people whose spiritual needs are much more difficult to map than ever before. I know my Spiritual Assessment skills are excellent. I even surprised one of my supervisors in Chicago—the inimitable George Fitchett—with the depth of information I garnered from my patients during my Residency! I can see all of the intersections, but my studies have not always prepared me for these emerging spiritualities, and what to do when they are in-fact in crisis. What interventions can be offered when the replacement spirituali