Veterans Day

We observed Remembrance Day at Church this morning. We transfered it from last Sunday for various reasons. But last Sunday since I had a service at Belmont House (a local retirement home) I went ahead and observed Remembrance day with them, too. I found myself getting more emotional than I expected as I preached to a room-full of old ladies. Among other things, I noted that they had much more to say about war and sacrifice than I did.

Anyway, I saw this remarkable photo and thought I would post it. When's the last time you saw a U.S. President allow himself to be photographed with the remains of a fallen soldier? These repatriation ceremonies are really difficult for everyone involved, as I heard first hand from a Canadian Chaplain a few weeks ago. They have to rotate the responsibility among the participants because it's so emotionally difficult.

"From left, U.S. President Barack Obama, Assistant Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Daniel V. Wright and Brig. Gen. Michael S. Repass, commanding general of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, render honors as a team of Soldiers carry the remains of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin during a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware on October 29, 2009. Griffin, who was assigned to 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, was killed in action on October 27, 2009, by a roadside bomb in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. UPI/Jason Minto/U.S. Air Force" (source)

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Hospice Chaplaincy

There is a good article about Hospice Chaplaincy in the NYTimes today. It reminded me a lot of my very rewarding service as a Hospital Chaplain in NJ and then CT.

Apparently, the demand for Pastoral Care for patients is on the rise:

In the quarter-century since Medicare and some private insurers began picking up the bill for hospice care, it has become a common recourse for the terminally ill. With doctors, nurses, social workers and ample supplies of pain medication dispatched to their homes or nursing facilities in the final weeks and months, about 1.3 million Americans died last year in hospice care.

Spiritual counseling has always been an optional part of the service. But recently, the proportion of patients choosing to receive it, and the number of new chaplains entering the field to meet the need, have risen sharply.

Chaplain services in New York City have nearly doubled since 2004: About 65 percent of the city’s 4,000 hospice patients accept visits from chaplains today, compared with about 35 percent four years ago, according to the two major hospice providers, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York and Continuum Hospice Care.

Nationwide, a study released two weeks ago by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control set the proportion of patients accepting a chaplain’s care at 72 percent in one sampling, as compared with the 59 percent another group found in 2000. (source)

I think the author of the article was somewhat surprised how "non-religious" chaplaincy looks. Perhaps he was expecting more talk about "saving your soul" and Jesus around the bed sides of the dying. Perhaps he assumed this was a modern phenomenon, part of the secularization of North American culture. But actually this is just the result of one of the first rules of chaplaincy, learn the patient's language! In a parish setting you teach people to use a religious vocabulary, but at the bed side you just have to use what is at hand. Thus talk about a tree that needs to be cut down in the back yard becomes the way to talk about the patient's upcoming death.

Two things really struck me. One was this excellent example of pastoral care...

The chaplains listen, mainly; and sometimes, like jazz musicians, pick up themes and try to bring them to new levels.

“I talked to my mother yesterday,” said Robert, an 83-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, whose mother died in the 1960s.

“How was she?” said the chaplain, Tom Grannell. “You haven’t talked to her in a while.”

“Pretty good,” said Robert. “She agrees with my father: I’m laying here too long. Time to get back to work.”

“Your mother always believed in you,” said the chaplain.

“Yes, she did,” said Robert.

Just a text book example of good Pastoral Care. Showing someone something that they always knew to be true, but they just didn't know it.

I was also impressed with the end:

As he hurried along, checking phone messages, scanning a subway map, he was asked if the daily encounter with other people’s deaths was ever too much. He paused, and said a chaplain’s own distress and sense of vulnerability to death were, in a way, part of the job. “It is my first bond with my patient,” he said.

In the best of worlds, he said, a relationship based on that helps a patient make peace.

“But many times, this never happens,” he said. “We are there to be there. That is the point. It is my job to stay when there is no answer.”

Yep, this particular Chaplain is definitely the Real Deal! God Bless the Chaplains!

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Interfaith Dinner

Last night was the Annual Interfaith Dinner put on by the Neighborhood Interfaith Group that includes many of the synagogues and churches in our area. Mostly it has been just Christians and Jews in this group, but now we are beginning to engage Muslims in the community. The speaker last night was Imam Hamid Slimi, who is chair of the Canadian Council of Imams as well an academic and a leader in various other contexts. He gave a good, if long, talk about the common ethical convictions of the "People of the Book."

A couple of things we interesting to me. One is that we both formally toasted the Queen and we sang the Canadian National Anthem at the start of the dinner. Is patriotism a religion? BTW, I have no problem participating in these civic rituals of allegiance: the Queen is a nice lady and I'll drink to her health as I would to anybody else. And since Canada is my home, I find nothing objectionable in the Anthem--it's really a sort of prayer for the prospering of the country.

Another thing I noted was the role of humor in the proceedings--virtually every speaker had to tell an interfaith joke involving Rabbis, Priests, and Imams. I realized that humor was essential, for some reason, in the how the event functions. My next thought was that perhaps next year they should formalize this with an item on the agenda. Perhaps hire a comedian to do a 5 minute schtick, or have a religious joke contest or something like that. Something could be done to take advantage of this.

I ended up sitting across from a local Rabbi who came up from the states three years ago to work on the staff on one of the big conservative synagogues, here. His wife is also a Rabbi--she works for an organization that does Youth Ministry at a Regional Level. So we talked about New York and New Jersey (yes, they know Dover). I also discovered that the husband is a Navy Chaplain in the Reserves (he did four years of active service) and his wife did CPE once upon a time! So we spent some time talking about their experience in the military and chaplaincy. They had the good fortune to be stationed at Pearl Harbor, which they loved. We also swapped stories of what it's like to be an American in Canada. Interestingly, many of the same differences I've noted between the American Episcopal Church and the Church of Canada are also present in the contrast between American and Canadian Synagogues.

The evening wrapped up with a group photograph, and I came home, still wired, at 11 P.M.!

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Hospital Visits

Flashbacks to chaplaincy.

A friend of ours was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. A few days ago she went in for he first of several surgeries/procedures. Betsy and I went with some other common friends to visit the hospital on Saturday. Then I went back on Sunday to bring communion. I think she was happy that I did that. It's amazing how powerful the sacrament can be.

Once I read an essay about how the experience of illness can be compared to travel to distant lands. Once a person is diagnosed with an illness they must travel to the "Land of the Sick." Once there, they must learn the language, culture, customs of this land. The essay went on to analyze the attendant feelings of being lost and "other" in this place. It's a useful metaphor. That feeling of being "lost" or dislocated is part of the spiritual zeitgeist of this age, IMHO.

George Packard, the ECUSA Suffragan Bishop for Chaplaincies once told a meeting I attended that he sees a population of people who are increasingly isolated from "mainstream" society and yet have disproportionately large amounts of interaction with military, healthcare, and law enforcement institutions. Thus chaplaincy has a crucial role ministering to this population that is only getting more important.

Here's a picture of the ECUSA's Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, wearing a bad-ass "Chaplain" hat with the Episcopal Church's Seal on it. I have one of these hats. They were given to priests that requested them as part of the lessons-learned from 9/11. It also came with a DVD training video for crisis stress response. Anyway, seeing her wear the hat makes me proud.


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