Publication Date: March 18, 2012
Book Description A Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of
Humanity tells the stories of patients who represent the diversity of divinity
and the divinity of diversity-- and the commonality of humanity. Patients who
reveal a hospital is actually a global neighborhood that calls for a chaplain
to embrace diversity of belief—“without exception.” Chaplains without
theological blinders. Thus pastoral/spiritual care begins with the humanness
that prepares a chaplain to enter into and honor this global neighborhood. The
inward journey where one becomes self-aware, and is in touch with and accepting
of oneself. Such self-awareness prepares one to understand and accept patients
and their loved ones as themselves, and to experience their reality not
interpret it. Chaplains have to know where we-- and our god-- are coming from
in order to know where patients and their families—and their god—are at.
Pastoral/spiritual care, therefore, is not about the chaplain but about the
patient. It is about the chaplain in terms of his or her awareness that it is
about the patient. Self-awareness is key-- whether one is a chaplain or another
kind of caregiver or a concerned citizen. Chaplaincy is about empowering
patients and their families not imposing any belief or value system on them. It
is about empathy not evangelism. This emphasis on the patient is not to minimize
the identity and faith of the chaplain. Rather, it is to stress the
pastoral/spiritual care qualities of self-awareness and inner emotional
security that enable the chaplain to allow patients and their loved ones to be
who they are. The patients’ stories reveal their commonality as well as their
diversity. Illness confronts all people with their mortality and hence their
vulnerability, their humanness—their oneness and connectedness with each other.
In a hospital there is the pronounced human sharing of struggles with life and
death, hope and fear, pain and anguish, love and anger, joy and sorrow. And it
is these very struggles that bring out the tremendous wisdom patients and their
families possess. The role of pastoral/spiritual care is to affirm these common
human struggles and the wisdom they elicit by giving them air and reverence. A
hospital is a global neighborhood that brings into sharp focus the humanness
everyone shares: a precious insight, the embracing of which facilitates
competent patient care by all staff, and, likewise, the understanding that
makes possible truly democratic and just relationships between people and
nations. Patients’ come together at the hospital’s exceptional crossroads of
humanity and remind us of what our global neighborhood looks and feels and is
like—like everyone of us.
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