A Chaplain's Work

The lifeblood of a Chaplain's work consists three things: Communication, Presence and Impression. This is a subtle and artful thing. I don't consider myself to be good at these, but I feel like they are things that I don't think about anymore. There is a flow to the hospital and it has little to do with social order or small talk. It is a strange configuration of bodies in the hospital, between the many interdisciplinary groups and the many many patients. It's often too much for me to handle, and a Chaplain is often in between these, both the teammate and the advocate. And so, how are are and come across is the essence of what we do. A favorite quote from a predecessor chaplain is "Don't just do something, stand there!" Truly a strong reflection on the role of the chaplain.

These essential manners are intangible, temporary, fleeting. The Chaplain is a demonstration of what the Bible means when it reminds us that life is but a vapor, a temporary breath. We arrive, we assess, we intervene, and we leave. With this is a model, what is the long term impact of the chaplain? We often don't even see the impact we make. We take what we see and we try and see it with the person who is in it. And so it is difficult to find what the long term sense of this work is.

Someone told me to consider how I want the world to look in 1, 5, 10 and 30 years. This is the scope of your life. I have decided that the short answer of all of this is Unity. I want to see unity increase and commonality decrease. The sameness of life is such a critical error. Diversity of viewpoint is the only way to step into the river of humanity. We settle for commonality and mistake it for unity. It is simply not the case. This principle of unity vs commonality is what has driven people apart through history, it is the tribal and deferential nature of humans in small groups. It is our duty to overcome it.

We have taken pains in our historical habit to commemorate this tension, and often towards the common. Why are their statues of people, anyway? We are living in the blink of an eye. Jason Steele put it best when he wrote "In 100 million years, the universe will descend into entropy and not even Shakespeare or Coca Cola will be remembered, so what chance do you have?" The spirit of chaplaincy is to live to be forgotten, to live into our core experience and so to embrace the ethereal other. We are called to be people who remember, and conversely live into this forever forward posture. We must sail to our destination, burn the ships and begin anew. One hospital room at a time.

Ink and Magic

Lines on a page that hold together all the rage and harmonize the sharpest tones and reveal the future from the perspectives of our own experience. Richard Rohr said “Love is saying yes to what is”, and that desert father never had truth engraved into his dermas, needing hours of self-appointed pain to commemorate the pain of self-inflicted life.

The ancient and lost arts flow wildly through the afflictions, and remind me of the inglorious why. Suffering and dying well, aspiration to live to be forgotten, and hope to find that work is prayer, all hold sway in calculating this enigma that is chaplaincy. If it ain’t the years but the mileage, like old Indie said, then the stars for navigating are the milestones on this old Roman road. And those are carved in permanence.

So I pray for a good harvest, and I weed the garden, and hopefully discover that Clive was right and they’re the same thing, and even though there’s nothing new under the sun, the sun rises and the rains fall on us all. The words of the Barbarian ring most true to me lately, “For us there is no spring, just the wind that smells fresh, before the storm.” 

Postmodern Voyager, Overly Dramatic At Times

Seeking, Experiencing, Overcoming,

I struggle and stride amidst the tide
And wade through streams and swamps
Born on a rainy day, perpetual mist, personal thrift, unexpected downshifts
Went to the Desert to be born, emergence baked in harshest rays, 
Testing on the desolate, dying earth.
Memories and footsteps traced backward through the desert sands, 
The terrains and frames of mind and time
Like scenes and lines on a silver screen
Or wild American landscapes, strange
Trails made by unknown hands, The mysterious and sublime
A scholar and a gentleman,
Like Sir Isaac Lime, distilling all things
In the Laboratory of contemplation 
Decanting droplets of visions and wisdoms,
New Postulations, expanding as the sky
Assembling a microcosmic engine of grace,
To traverse the secular and sacred now through the meaningless beyond.

A collage of some art.