On the incarnational nature of chaplaincy

A.Kumm-Hanson, Iceland 2016

My work as a chaplaincy is intensely incarnational.  By this, I mean I continually encounter God in the flesh.

"Incarnate" has latin origins, "in" mean into and "caro/carn-" meaning flesh.  It has theological connotations in the Christian belief system, but we usually only speak about a God incarnate around the time of Christmas, with Jesus as a newborn baby. It is uncomfortable to think about God as a human body. A body that sweats and eliminates and requires food and water.

As a hospital chaplain, I am never removed from humanity in all its bodily manifestations.  I see what the body is capable of doing to repair itself, and all the ways that it can fail. I smell the sharp metallic smell of fresh blood. I smell bodily odors of every kind.  I smell the earthy smell of birth and the earthy smell of death. I hold the hands of patients who are swollen with IV fluids, with a gentle touch so that I do not exacerbate their edema. I stroke the foreheads of newborn babies, with skin so soft they don't yet seem made for this world. I use my brain, certainly, but chaplaincy is primarily the use of my body.

Walking into a room and meeting another person wherever they are. To show up and shut up and be present. To move through the human desire to say something to make it all okay and just be. To be a reflection of God-in-flesh to those who are suffering.

Also, my patients reflect God to me. People who are dying share visions of angels and whispered messages from the hereafter. Patients who are undergoing intensive rehab therapies after a stroke speak of wrestling with God in the dark hours like Jacob and emerging with a limp, but having touched God.

Chaplaincy is not a cerebral ministry of long hours spent in a pastor's study in preparation for preaching. It is holding hands through bed rails and wearing isolation gowns and being willing to literally stand in suffering with God's beloveds. It is not about translating Hebrew or Greek from ancient texts, but about translating scripture into something now that matters to the mother who is delivering her stillborn child or the son losing his father to cancer.

The theology of the cross is particularly apparent to me in my hospital work. This theology holds that God's love for all of creation is most clearly seen in the act of dying on the cross.  That God did the most human thing of all, which is to die. The theological conviction that shapes my ministry as a chaplain is that God knows what it is to suffer and to die, and there is no place that God is unwilling to go, even death. This is good news for all of us who feel immersed in suffering, our own or that of others.

Because to be human is to be made in God's image and to carry God's likeness.  We are the incarnate God to one another.

Getting my feet moving again

So I know I don't live at near a beach.  In fact, I live pretty darn far from a beach, but I selected this photo because it shows my feet moving while running barefoot on the beach.

This last year has been not one that was particularly healthy for me.  I worked more than full-time at a Level 1 trauma center while completing my CPE residency.  Working at a hospital alone is stressful, aside from the constant critical self-examination of Clinical Pastoral Education. Additionally, I was in a long-distance relationship, and I got married two weeks before the end of my residency.  Needless to say, exercise was not a huge priority.

My health suffered.  I ate pretty much all my feelings.  I frequently felt tired and sluggish. My sleep suffered. My asthma was dangerously uncontrolled. I was in a car accident that injured my back and prohibited exercise for some time. I ate junk, with just the intent of filling my stomach and moving on to the next thing.  Lack of exercise also did no favors for my mental and emotional health, particularly while working in such an intense environment. And because your thirties are not the same as your twenties, I just can't do that sort of thing to my body anymore and expect to feel good and bounce back.

So, I recently got my feet moving again.  I joined a gym, and have been enjoying immersing myself into physical activity and in breaking a sweat.  I know that a gym is a luxury expense, but I am putting it into a "necessary" expense now, so that it does not have greater costs later in my life.  There is something about the ritual of the gym that helps me to keep regular exercise part of my life.  I have a yoga mat and hand weights and resistance bands at home, and yet, I always manage to find something else to do instead of working out.  The dogs love walking, but that is more of a leisure activity for us, because there is lots of investigating and sniffing that happens when we walk.

Another side effect that appears with exercise is that I feel more connected to my body.  Sometimes I feel like I am an extremely powerful mind unfortunately attached to a body. My mind seems to be running about 10 steps ahead of my body and I rarely connect with myself.  The pure physicality of exercise forces me to be in my body.  Because otherwise I might fall off the treadmill or drop weights on myself.

So here I am, back to slogging it out at the gym most days.  I am not approaching this return to regular exercise as a form of weight loss (although I certainly hope that happens), but rather as a way to return to myself. For the last couple years I have been part of an online group of clergy types and friends who work out and post our encouragement for one another and share our triumphs and our sorrows.  I have been thankful for this group of friends who celebrate with me as I make this return to health.