Hospital Chaplaincy

Thoughts on hospital chaplaincy

Thomas Moore writes in Dark Nights Of The Soul:

"Go to a hospital, and you will see people abandoned in a hall, waiting for an X ray, or sitting in a bed, staring as though catatonic or blankly watching a television screen that has been fixed onto the wall. You would never know that these are people with intense relationships, intelligence, talent, a work life, ideas, strong emotions, and unsettling fears and hopes. For the sake of convenience and economy, they are being fed unimaginative food, nothing like the food they know from home or restaurants. Their families can visit them, but there is no place for visitors to sit. Everything is arranged for the flow of technicians and technology. Whenever I see someone in a hospital wearing a plastic bracelet identifying who they are, I think of the way we brand and label animals. It’s an expedient practice, but the image is dehumanizing."

Just as the spiritual motif of prisons might be control, the spiritual motif of hospitals seems to be science. Our system of health care is based on science, objective monitoring and analysis of data. Medical treatment relies primarily on carefully determined dosages of powerful chemicals and the high technology and skills required for surgery. The system seems driven first by the funding decisions of the insurance industry and second by the burgeoning scientific and technological capabilities of the health care industry.

What can we as Pagan clergy uniquely bring to hospital chaplaincy? We can bring a holistic approach and attitude to our presence with patients, families, and medical staff. Thomas Moore suggests that care of the soul should be a significant concern in times of illness. In the face of a system based upon the dueling concerns of technology and cost control, we can advocate case-by-case, person-by-person, for the mind/body/spirit connection.

Disease, or “dis-ease” may reflect a disconnection between our selves and our own biology. Pagans may serve as examples of groundedness, of the vital connections we have to Nature and the natural cycles of life. Even within the hospital setting, we can encourage healthy life styles, good attitudes, love, and attention to diet and exercise. Many patients end up in hospitals because they have been disconnected from the soulful care of their own bodies.

Perhaps we can help patients to identify the irrational forces that tie people to their bad habits. I remember, many years ago, advocating for an asthmatic patient whose roommate was a lung cancer patient; the nurses “bribed” this person into taking his medications by letting him smoke a cigarette in the room! The staff’s problem-solving with one patient exacerbated the health issues of another. Fortunately, most hospitals now recognize the irrationality of allowing smoking in and around a healthcare facility. But there is still much more to be done to promote wellness as the primary mission of hospitals.

Pagan clergy can serve not only patients and their families, but hospital staff as well. Too many healthcare professionals are overly stressed by the constant pressures of their jobs, the suffering that they see, and the cool, scientific detachment that seems be glorified in the workplace. We need to encourage health care professionals to be spiritual, soulful human beings. One interesting program I’ve been involved with through the Maine Humanities Council has been literature & medicine discussion groups; the soulfulness of doctors, nurses, administrators, and patients can flourish through sharing poetry and prose (see for example, Judy Schaefer’s The Poetry of Nursing: “both nursing and poetry are ways of practicing the art of attention”).

Poem of the Week
A friend’s sage advice:
Just do what you can do
on a given day.
So on days I can’t pray or pick up the phone
I send a poem.
Poem of the Weak, I once accidentally called it.
I’ve sent Carver, Frost Sarton, Levertov Pastan, Olds and others—my emissaries my cloud of witnesses.
Let these poets earn their keep.
Let them speak for me.
Let them enter the house haunted by illness.
Let them open the doorsshut against fear.
For in trouble the poem is strong medicine
like the wind that blows where it wills,
like the serpent of brassset upon a pole
in the wilderness.
---Veneta Masson

We can serve as a constant reminder in hospitals that spirituality is fundamental to the process and practice of healing. In Still Here, Ram Dass distinguishes between healing and curing: “while cures aim at returning our bodies to what they were in the past, healing uses what is present to move us more deeply to Soul Awareness, and in some cases, physical ‘improvement’”. Our mere presence in hospitals as joyful, calming, caring human beings may help the healing process of all who inhabit those spaces.
By this merit, may all living things be healed.


Here are some resources for Pagan hospital chaplains that I have found useful over the years. Feel free to add your own:

Thomas Moore, Dark Nights Of The Soul http://www.careofthesoul.net/
Ram Dass, Still Here (conscious aging) http://www.ramdass.org/
Christiane Northrup, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom (required! Men too!!)
http://www.drnorthrup.com/
Deepak Chopra, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
Julia Ross, The Mood Cure
Deb Soule, The Roots of Healing (herbal medicine)
Michele Longo O’Donnell, Of Monkeys and Dragons (Christian-oriented but still good)
Mona Lisa Schultze, Awakening Intuition (good intro to intuitive medicine)
American Holistic Medicine Association http://www.holisticmedicine.org/