To everything there is a season…
As a Peacemaker, I am most focused on Peacemaking within communities. It is rare for me to focus on a particular group. Recently, as a hospital chaplain, I was asked to have a second-year medical student shadow me as I went about my day. During that time, I began to suspect that, in the ways we teach our young upcoming doctors about their responsibility for curing patients how great a disservice we do them and ultimately the patients they will serve. I realized that my Peacemaking skills might be useful in supporting these soon-to-be practitioners. Let’s start before the students arrive.
As human beings, we are born and we die. Life is always in motion. It is both very fragile and incredibly fierce. The adventure of living is more precious because it is finite and humans are cognizant of that. We believe that we are the only species with an understanding of the finite nature of Life. This offers a responsibility to diligently practice Presence and Peace. Poet Mary Oliver once said, “I am a performing artist. I practice Admiration.” Given Life, let us all appreciate and admire the preciousness of this gift as well as the fragility of it. We’re born, if we’re lucky we will participate in a great bounty of experiences before we die.
As a hospital chaplain, I am very aware how ill-prepared we are as a people for Death to arrive. Whether this is a cultural issue or universally human, I’m not sure. One of the doctors agreed with me, saying that “in all the centuries of Medical Studies, we have not managed to move the percentage of mortality by one small percent.” This conversation happened at the end of a particularly harrowing weekend for me, tending to the needs of patients, families, and medical teams who had responded to extensive trauma codes for patients who had run out of any real options to support ongoing life.
In late January, two second-year medical students shadowed me on my rounds. I was the chaplain responsible for responding to trauma alerts and staff needs. One student accompanied me on three calls to patients at end of life. Even when almost running through the hospital, two patients died before we arrived. I could only offer comfort to families I had never met. This is an important, and unfortunately quite frequent part of my job.
These visits were jolting for these young soon-to-be doctors. It’s not always as busy as it was those two afternoons, nor do shifts only contain heartbreak, but it is not infrequent. One way or the other, it is always challenging. There are many occasions where we’re privileged to support and encourage patients who are learning how to live fully, even if differently, into the Peace of their lives outside the hospital. But that wasn’t the glimpse I was able to offer students on those days, because patient needs were driving our visits. I hope the students developed an appreciation for the empathy and presence that the spiritual care staff tries to bring to each encounter. We work to be a reminder of the Possibility of Peace in the toughest times.
The chaplains and students met later with the Manager of Spiritual Care for a discussion about what the students had observed and what the chaplains had been attempting in our visits. These exchanges led to intense conversations. Both days these conversations ended with questions about self-care and spiritual support for the young students. The chaplains shared how our passion for this work and our personal and collective Peace with the intensity was supported by our individual spiritual journeys.
Only after the second of these visits a different thought occurred to me. It wasn’t that my spiritual journey isn’t interesting, or that application of these beliefs and journeys to this chosen work wasn’t unique and informative or that I wasn’t well supported by those practices. Rather it is that our work as chaplains, while informative in terms of helping them use our services well, isn’t really relevant to the spiritual work they have in front of them. Their context is not ours simply because we spend so much time at the end of people’s lives. The chaplains are rarely called when all systems are go…
These young, highly-skilled, and well-trained medical staff were about to start their rotations. In a matter of days, they would begin to assume responsibility for the physical well-being of patients. I began to suspect that we hadn’t helped these students understand that any notions they had of “saving” lives might better be adjusted an understanding of their purpose as prolonging life, alleviating pain, and providing new tools to aid the navigation of the lives to which some patients may return — with levels of physical capabilities that might vary greatly from those they had just before they arrived at the hospital.
After chatting with a favorite ER doc to discuss my suspicions, he agreed with me, saying that “in all our centuries of Medical Studies, we have not managed to move the percentage of mortality by one small percent.” This conversation happened at the end of a particularly harrowing weekend for me, tending to the needs of patients, families, and medical teams who had endured extensive coding responses for patients who had run out of any real options to support ongoing life.
If everything falls into place, some deaths can be postponed. In other cases, the chaplains are called to bear witness and support the families in saying goodbye. Young doctors will learn from both of these. I hope that they can be trained not to carry an insistence on life in all situations.
I hope that our communities can learn to better balance their need for an expert with an understanding that life ebbs and flows, and when it is time to love and support one another as we make decisions to pursue life and when appropriate, to let it go. The Peaceful communities I envision cannot be created without an understanding of life’s rhythms, gifts, and limitations. If our young doctors come to medicine with the idea that they are responsible for changing the course of mortality, they are set up for failure and disappointment. Patients, Doctors, and Chaplains!) deserve clearer understanding of life’s strengths and fragilities for Peace to be able to play the supporting role it is prepared to offer. This is another way for us to give Peace the opportunity to work.
Salaam, Shalom, Peace, Blessed Be.