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| A.Hanson, Denver, 2015 |
At the start of my year of residency, I was quite timid in
my pastoral caregiving. I did not want
to be too Lutheran or too Christian or not Christian enough or step on anyone’s
toes or assert authority that I did not have.
I struggled a lot with the question, “what does a chaplain do that is
different from a social worker or a particularly compassionate nurse?”
While still evolving, my pastoral theology centers around
the conviction that pastoral care is an essential part of reuniting the whole person
who is experiencing un-wellness with the social environment of which they are a
part. Our discipline as chaplains is not concerned with treatment or
therapeutic support, but rather, to meet another person where they are, using
all of our humanity to meet their humanity. We have tasks that are therapeutic
and we have tasks that are supportive of wellness, but our primary role is not
wholly that. Perhaps more than anyone else in the hospital, chaplains are a
link to the outside world and to a world of health and wholeness and a reminder
of the hope that a person will rejoin that world outside the hospital. In the
case of a patient’s death, we serve that function for family members.
Another core aspect of my pastoral theology is incarnational.
I believe that God is in all people.
This might be seen as foolish, because it means that I tend to see
people in the most affirming way but I think I will go on celebrating it
because I would rather be foolish and see people as good than be suspicious and
always be looking for evidence to the contrary. With this aspect of my pastoral
theology, I do not think that I “bring God” to my patients, but rather, because
God is in both of us, our time together is a fuller realization of the Kingdom
of God. I view the hospital as a sort of communion table. We all bring ourselves to the table, we are broken and Christ is
broken for us. The Lutheran understanding of the sacraments is that the most
ordinary of things (such as water, wine, and bread) can carry the presence of
God. So the most ordinary of things in
the hospital, one person sitting with another, already carries the presence of
God. Pastoral visits are
sacramental and sacred.
One of the parts of my theology that has been challenged is
my conviction that “God is always present.”
Because there are many, many times where I feel like this is not true. I
have not found an answer for this question, and why my greatest discovery in my
work as a chaplain has been the depth of mystery that exists in this work. Why
bad things happen. Why patients with the same condition have vastly different
outcomes. Why children die. Why parents die. Why sheer luck saves someone when
all the knowledge in the world cannot. Why prayer seems to work. Why prayer
does not seem to work. Why it is possible to feel the presence of God so
clearly at times, and yet, at other times, God is so far away. I have no
answers. When I started this residency I was searching for answers. I knew that
explanations of faith healings and miracles and fervent prayers did not hold
for me, but I was searching for the elusive answer that would somehow tie it
all together. And the answer has been
revealed, and it is, “trust the mystery.” Patients frequently ask me what
happens after death, and express their existential anxieties about what will
happen to them, and the most truthful answer I have is “I have no idea.” And I am settling into being okay with the
mystery. My progressive Lutheran theology does not have the answers, neither
does Christianity, nor does science. The only answer is, “I am willing to be
with you in your suffering as you ask those questions.” Where I have landed in
this particularly difficult part of my pastoral theology is to come back to
Christ as seen on the cross, and God being willing to descend to hell and
death, and I come away knowing, “There is no place that God is unwilling to
go.”
A final conviction that shapes my pastoral theology is that
of, “I see your suffering and I am not repulsed by it.” I do not take a medical model approach to
suffering (diagnose and cure) or flee from suffering as the world is wont to
do, but rather, an accompaniment model. I stand alongside my patients in their
suffering and bear witness to it and provide a hand to hold and an ear to listen
and a mirror to reflect.
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