Chaplain's Corner

This is my 322nd article. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 418,600 words. I guess Solomon knew what he was talking about when he wrote, “of making many books there is no end”. This business of communicating is part of God’s creative design.

Now we all have different capacities. I am not the greatest talker and would much rather communicate on paper. Others couldn’t be bothered with writing but are very comfortable with speaking. We all speak more or less, some of us write and others never do, but communicating is part of the way we were created. It is part of our spirituality for we all have the longing to connect with others and one of the primary means we have for connecting is with speech.

Some of communication is idle chatter, some is weighty, philosophical pondering, and most of it falls somewhere between the two. These articles are hardly what I would call weighty or philosophical. Oh, I may have my moments of philosophical pondering but for the most part these articles are my mental meanderings about subjects that relate, closely and sometimes not so closely to my work as a spiritual health care provider, a chaplain.

Communication is a matter that often arises in my work. Many physical maladies impact a person’s ability to send and receive messages effectively. We are all aware of the impact a stroke can have on a person’s ability to communicate. Any brain trauma, from injury to seizures can impact our capacity for communication. Dementia, a common disease in nursing homes slowly impacts the capacity for communication until in some situations it completely silences its victim. Not long ago I was caring for a woman who had a stroke and she was very frustrated by the fact that she had all these thoughts that she wanted to share, but the words just got all balled up when she tried to take though thoughts and speak them. This is a common effect of having a stroke but a very frustrating one for all involved.

One of the professionals that work in a hospital and in some personal care homes is a Speech Language Pathologist. These folks are highly trained people who understand communication and are trained to help restore a level of communication to people who have lost their abilities due to disease or accidents. I am grateful for the skills they bring to the team of those who work together in health care and the quality of life they can often bring to people who have lost their normal means of communication and must learn new ways.

In my work, I find that beyond the medical challenges that     impact a person’s ability to communicate are the cultural, family, personal factors that impact communication. Spirituality, the area of human experience I deal with in my work, has a language all its own. Because many grow up in homes and follow pursuits that are largely related to just getting on in this world, they do not learn or develop a vocabulary to talk about matters of the spirit.

Because I have been trained in this area and spend my entire life working in this area, I need to be very careful I don’t assume that each person I am caring for is able to communicate about their own spirituality. Just as Physicians who train and work in the field of medicine have their own language and vocabulary that few of us understand, when you work in the area of spirituality there is a language and vocabulary that you develop over years of training and work that may not be familiar at all to those you work with.

This is even true among different “specialties” of spirituality. A  Roman Catholic Priest has a language and vocabulary that is pretty foreign to me even though I have a masters degree and 36 years experience working in pastoral ministry. Why? Because that expression of Christianity has traditions that are centuries and centuries old with special words and expressions that are pretty much only understood by “insiders”. Even many life-long Catholics are puzzled by this language and its vocabulary; as are many life-long Baptists, Mennonites, Lutherans, Pentecostals, etc., etc., etc..

A while back I was asked to come see a patient in our hospital. She was a life long Catholic, attended Mass weekly, but in many, many years of exposure to the language of this church, had never understood what the Mass was all about. We spent some time together and this person shared that recently a friend was talking to her about Jesus and sin and salvation and for the first time ever, she understood what it was all about. The friend was from a different Christian tradition, spoke of the core of the faith in language this woman understood and because of that she, for the first time in her life she embraced the faith in a personal way.

You see, just because we hear the words doesn’t mean we understand them and in the realm of the human spirit, many of us haven’t ever learned to talk about those longings that comprise our spirituality.

I know I have shared this definition before, but it isn’t normally the way we think about our spirituality so I think it bears repeating. Human spirituality, something every one of us and every person on earth possesses, something that we share in common. It involves four universal longings. First of all the longing to find purpose and meaning in life; if you keep this in mind as you talk to others, it doesn’t take long before you can discern what gives the other person’s live meaning and purpose.

Spirituality also involves the universal longing that people have to be connected to themselves, others, the world in which we live and the Divine. This longing often gets distorted by relational disappointment and pain. In extreme cases this longing is subdued by the person’s unwillingness to risk pain in relationships. The person becomes a “loner” pulling away from relationships and social connection.

Spirituality involves the universal longing for live with faith and hope in the face of life’s uncertainty. Again, if we are aware of this and we talk with others about the craziness and unpredictability of life, we can discover where their faith is anchored and what it is in their life that gives them hope.

Finally, spirituality involves the universal longing to make a contribution of the world in which we live, to leave a legacy, to connect to the bigger human endeavors that swirl around us. Some do this by volunteering at the Thrift Store, or giving rides to seniors who have doctors appointments or delivering meals on wheels or sitting on the Board of a Foundation or Church or participating in a community organization.

Every day we communicate about all that is spiritual, we do it without even being aware of it, which is how intrinsic spirituality is to be human. Every day we have the opportunity to communicate with others about their spiritual longings, most of the time we will do it unconsciously. Can you imagine what would happen if we would bring that into the realm of our own consciousness? Could you imagine what would happen if we developed a greater appreciation for the spirituality people around us? I wonder what things would be like we could all discover our “spiritual selves”?

322 article – I hope that a few of them have helped you develop a clearer sense of who you are as a spiritual person. If my plans unfold as I think I have about 130 articles left to write before I retire. Thank you for reading along as I have written. I’m looking forward to another good year.