Hospice Chaplain Week

I have written before about using hospice chaplain skills at work, most recently here and here.  This has been a humdinger of a week for my hospice chaplain self:  colleagues having various stresses, students in distress, all the rumors of worse days to come.

Along the way, I've been reminded that things could be worse.  I listened to interviews with David Rakoff who died this week (go here), who suffered with a tough cancer before succumbing to it.  And he's my age.  Yikes.

Suddenly, my complaints about my physical self seem whiny.  My worries about my spouse's sciatica shrink into perspective.

I've had other reminders of my good fortune this week too.  I've been working with a student who comes from a severely disadvantaged background.  Once again, I'm staggered to realize how much the simple things I took for granted are not a given, even here in the U.S.:  having parents who will buy you glasses, having an elementary school who will make sure you leave equipped with basic literacy, all those sorts of items that shoot a child so much further down the road to adulthood.

I weep at the unfairness.  As I told my colleague, I've been weeping at this injustice since I was old enough to realize that these inequities exist.

I so often want to sit down to have a conversation with God.  I might be brave enough to say, "This free will?  Do you really think it's such a good idea?  We make such bad choices!"  I might want to say, "Why isn't the world redeemed yet?"

But I would never say that last thing to God.  I know that God would say, "It's not up to me alone.  Get to work, gal."

This week, I'm weary, so weary.  The work of transformation seems so large.  I want to believe that I can be the yeast, that small seeds will sprout and grow into mustard plants.  I miss the weeks where I actually see the sturdy trees that have grown from seeds we sprouted long ago.