[CS-FSLUG] OT: What people talk about before they die

[Fred A. Miller]

IMHO, a humanist perspective. Nicie nice, politically correct almost as 
far as it can be taken, and all that. Unfortunately, she FAILS MISERABLY 
in offering what the dying truly MUST understand about Christ before 
they take their final breath!! ANYONE who really cares about people can 
do what she does, as well or better. I know....been there and done it! 
Chaplaincy has become a joke because so many who get involved are 
theologically liberal knuckleheads, and most chaplaincy organization 
management are so far left they forbid chaplains talking to patients 
about Christ unless the patient asks, and I understand that some 
management still have some limitations in that situation!

Fred

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/28/my-faith-what-people-talk-about-before-they-die/?hpt=hp_c2


  My Faith: What people talk about before they die
  <http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/28/my-faith-what-people-talk-about-before-they-die/>

/*Editor's Note*: Kerry Egan is a hospice chaplain in Massachusetts and 
the author of "Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual 
Renewal on the Camino de Santiago."/

By *Kerry Egan*, Special to CNN

As a divinity school student, I had just started working as a student 
chaplain at a cancer hospital when my professor asked me about my work.  
I was 26 years old and still learning what a chaplain did.

"I talk to the patients," I told him.

"You talk to patients?  And tell me, what do people who are sick and 
dying talk to the student chaplain about?" he asked.

I had never considered the question before.  "Well," I responded slowly, 
"Mostly we talk about their families."

"Do you talk about God?

"Umm, not usually."

"Or their religion?"

"Not so much."

"The meaning of their lives?"

"Sometimes."

"And prayer?  Do you lead them in prayer?  Or ritual?"

"Well," I hesitated.  "Sometimes.  But not usually, not really."

I felt derision creeping into the professor's voice.  "So you just visit 
people and talk about their families?"

"Well, they talk.  I mostly listen."

"Huh."  He leaned back in his chair.

A week later, in the middle of a lecture in this professor's packed 
class, he started to tell a story about a student he once met who was a 
chaplain intern at a hospital.

"And I asked her, 'What exactly do you /do/ as a chaplain?'  And she 
replied, 'Well, I talk to people about their families.'" He paused for 
effect. "And /that/ was this student's understanding of  faith! /That 
/was as deep as this person's spiritual life went!  Talking about other 
people's families!"

The students laughed at the shallowness of the silly student.  The 
professor was on a roll.

"And I thought to myself," he continued, "that if I was ever sick in the 
hospital, if I was ever dying, that the last person I would ever want to 
see is some Harvard Divinity School student chaplain wanting to talk to 
me about my family."

My body went numb with shame.  At the time I thought that maybe, if I 
was a better chaplain, I would know how to talk to people about big 
spiritual questions.  Maybe if dying people met with a good, experienced 
chaplain they would talk about God, I thought.

Today, 13 years later, I am a hospice chaplain.  I visit people who are 
dying *--* in their homes, in hospitals, in nursing homes.   And if you 
were to ask me the same question - What do people who are sick and dying 
talk about with the chaplain?  -- I, without hesitation or uncertainty, 
would give you the same answer. Mostly, they talk about their families: 
about their mothers and fathers, their sons and daughters.

They talk about the love they felt, and the love they gave.  Often they 
talk about love they did not receive, or the love they did not know how 
to offer, the love they withheld, or maybe never felt for the ones they 
should have loved unconditionally.

They talk about how they learned what love is, and what it is not.    
And sometimes, when they are actively dying, fluid gurgling in their 
throats, they reach their hands out to things I cannot see and they call 
out to their parents:  Mama, Daddy, Mother.

What I did not understand when I was a student then, and what I would 
explain to that professor now, is that people talk to the chaplain about 
their families because that is /how/ we talk about God.  That is /how/ 
we talk about the meaning of our lives.  That is /how/ we talk about the 
big spiritual questions of human existence.

We don't live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories.  We live 
our lives in our families:  the families we are born into, the families 
we create, the families we make through the people we choose as friends.

This is where we create our lives, this is where we find meaning, this 
is where our purpose becomes clear.

Family is where we first experience love and where we first give it.  
It's probably the first place we've been hurt by someone we love, and 
hopefully the place we learn that love can overcome even the most 
painful rejection.

This crucible of love is where we start to ask those big spiritual 
questions, and ultimately where they end.

I have seen such expressions of love:  A husband gently washing his 
wife's face with a cool washcloth, cupping the back of her bald head in 
his hand to get to the nape of her neck, because she is too weak to lift 
it from the pillow. A daughter spooning pudding into the mouth of her 
mother, a woman who has not recognized her for years.

A wife arranging the pillow under the head of her husband's 
no-longer-breathing body as she helps the undertaker lift him onto the 
waiting stretcher.

We don't learn the meaning of our lives by discussing it.  It's not to 
be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues or 
mosques.  It's discovered through these actions of love.

If God is love, and we believe that to be true, then we learn about God 
when we learn about love. The first, and usually the last, classroom of 
love is the family.

Sometimes that love is not only imperfect, it seems to be missing 
entirely.  Monstrous things can happen in families.  Too often, more 
often than I want to believe possible, patients tell me what it feels 
like when the person you love beats you or rapes you.  They tell me what 
it feels like to know that you are utterly unwanted by your parents.  
They tell me what it feels like to be the target of someone's rage.   
They tell me what it feels like to know that you abandoned your 
children, or that your drinking destroyed your family, or that you 
failed to care for those who needed you.

Even in these cases, I am amazed at the strength of the human soul.  
People who did not know love in their families know that they /should/ 
have been loved.  They somehow know what was missing, and what they 
deserved as children and adults.

When the love is imperfect, or a family is destructive, something else 
can be learned:  forgiveness.  The spiritual work of being human is 
learning how to love and how to forgive.

We don't have to use words of theology to talk about God; people who are 
close to death almost never do. We should learn from those who are dying 
that the best way to teach our children about God is by loving each 
other wholly and forgiving each other fully - just as each of us longs 
to be loved and forgiven by our mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

/The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kerry Egan./

-- 
"Socialism is so bad a system that not even the Germans could
make it work".

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