Chaplain's Corner

As you may well know, connecting is at the heart of human spirituality.  Our capacity to truly connect with God, with others and with ourselves sets us apart from all the other wonderful creatures that populate this world in which we live.  This capacity and drive to connect accounts for all the talking and writing and communicating that we do.  We can’t help ourselves, we were designed to connect and when we can’t, it frustrates and angers us.  The nature and blessing of the various relationships we have in life is directly related to how well we connect with the various people we consider important in our lives.

Unlike the other professionals that work in a hospital or personal care home, my work depends almost completely on how well connections can be established.  Some times connections between myself and another are mysteriously instantaneous, they just happen with little or no effort.  Other times, despite concerted efforts to establish a connection, I fail, we fail.  In these failed attempts it is impossible to provide spiritual care, for spiritual care is about nurturing and respecting and upholding the connections that sustain a person in times of personal crisis, in my work that is usually a health crisis of some sort.

And we all connect differently.  Many different books and approaches have been posited to reflect on the different ways we connect.  Maybe some of you are familiar with the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis.  This is one of many popular means developed over the years to assess how our differences either enhance or inhibit our ability to connect with others.  In my training another tool called the Enneagram was used.  Like the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis the purpose of the Enneagram is for individuals to develop the kind of self-awareness and an awareness of the other that assists in making connections.  These tools also give us some assistance in understanding why connections may be difficult when the connections do not come naturally or easily.

But most of us do not have a means of assessing our connections.  We may have been exposed to, but we do not really use the tools mentioned above or any of the many others to assess why connection in our particular relationships might be difficult.  Most of us are content just to blame the other for the disconnect.  Blaming is a handy, albeit, not very useful or healthy way of deflecting responsibility for the connection difficulties we experience in relationships.

You and I have all employed many different kinds of blaming techniques that allow us to walk away from relationships that are not working without feeling any sense of responsibility for why the connections are so strained or impossible to establish.  I have used and heard many, here are just a few:  “He’s just not a very friendly guy.”  “She’s stuck up.”  He’s too into himself.”  “It must be a cultural thing.”  “She makes me feel uncomfortable.”  “He’s weird.”  “She’s got some pretty strange beliefs.”  “There’s just something about him that gives me the creeps.”  “She’s so quiet, she hardly says a word.”
 
We have these and many other reasons that we use to blame the other person for why we don’t connect with them.  Most of us end up isolated by these excuses relating to just a small circle of people that we feel comfortable with.  The sad reality is that many of us are lonely, deeply and tragically lonely, even though we live among many, many people.  Our capacity for connection (our spirituality) is choked off by finding fault with those we have around us to connect with, leaving us isolated and alone spiritually.

Might I be so bold as to suggest a better and more productive and responsible way of understanding why we struggle to connect with so many of the people that we live among.  Please forgive me, but it is a four letter word – FEAR: my fear, your fear, our fear.  Oh yes, it is easier to blame the disconnections, the spiritual emptiness in our life on others, but the reality is it is fear that keeps us pulled back from connections.  Fear of the very things we use to blame others for the breakdown in these connections.

We are afraid of being rejected, judged, looked down upon for being who we are.  We are afraid we will not be able to live up to what we believe or what may truly be some standard set for acceptance.  We are afraid of the differences that exist between us, afraid of our own inadequacies, and our own uniqueness.  For all the talk in our culture about being “individual” we are almost hopeless locked into some form of conformity, and so much of this is related to our own fear of being rejected for being just who we are.

If the health of our spirits is all about the quality of our connections, with God, with ourselves and with others, then fear becomes a major enemy of spiritual health.  There are many devoutly religious people who are terribly sick spiritually.  For many, religious traditions, religious observance, religious piety and devoting become mechanisms of self-protection, bolstering our fears instead of calling us to abandon our fears for authentic love.  So, what’s the solution?  Well to be honest, there will be many solutions offered and many would even disagree that fear is the primary culprit that destroys our ability to connect in a spiritually healthy and meaningful way with others.  But, as far as I understand these things, the solution to fear is love.

Not the mushy, gushy, sexually charged stuff that the movies and TV and romance novels calls love.  Not the sentimental, “I love you because you make me feel so good,” feelings that drive us into relationships and then leave us high and dry when the reality of the relationship finally comes into view.  But the love that makes the choice, time and time again to act in the best interest of the other, regardless of what feelings of discomfort such a decision may generate in my own soul.  It is only this that can conquer our fears and move us deeper into connection with God, ourselves and others.  It is only this that can see through our pride and prejudice and that can help us celebrate each others differences instead of using those differences as excuses to be separated and spiritually barren.

Love is hard, it is work, but it is also productive and when persisted in, yields a harvest of spiritual health that is reward in itself.  A wise pastor’s wife once said to me, “people pursue material possession when they give up on relationships.”  The oft quoted passage in 1 Corinthians seems appropriate at this juncture, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  The point, nothing really matters, nothing really counts, nothing really has value unless it is establishing, nurturing and supporting real authentic connections.  This spirituality is an impossibility as long as fear is directing our lives but becomes a wonderful possibility when we chose love.  For the sake of your spirit and the spirits of all those you are seeking to connect with, abandon fear and choose love.