not praying

Hospital chaplains, in a ministry of presence, hope, lovingkindness and prayer, meet patients and families of every shade. Most are welcoming, appreciative, seem glad you have come. Now and then someone is hostile, rarely even viciously, perhaps less to the human who shows up as chaplain than to the idea of God who seems to have let them or a loved one down. When that happens, any ministry that is possible becomes one of listening, or sometimes of letting them have the satisfaction of driving God out of the room, I’ve had it happen. Among ministers, only fools feel called to defend God who either is big enough for selfdefense, or who does not exist, or who in his model of humility and silence at his trial and on his cross calls us to follow with our own cross. I can testify, that being shouted and hounded out of a hospital room by an angry patient or patient’s husband or child's daddy is a cross of its own. 

Not requesting the chaplain’s ministry, nor wanting it, some are nevertheless courteous and hospitable, some atheist, unbelieving. I remember a woman at Hershey Medical Center, Pennsylvania, who warmly welcomed me into her room but made clear that she did not believe in God and asked that I not pray with her or for her. She was an intellectual, may have been a college professor it’s now over thirty years ago and I don’t recall. I’m thinking her name may have been Ellen. 

During her hospital stay of serious illness and treatment leading to surgery, I visited her and her husband several warm and friendly times. They always seemed glad for a smile, friendliness and best wishes. The evening before her OR appointment she did kindly suffer me to let my God into her space via a non-prayer that came together something like this. 

Remember, as a chaplain at Hershey I was still a seminarian at Gettysburg. There, I had recently been taken with German scholar and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and his 1799 writing, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. His issues are my issues, and he’s probably still my favorite of all I met. At any event, a non-prayer.

If I were to pray, I might pray that faith aside, we do not know for certain who or what you are, God. Or even whether, if. The Divine may be but a longing planted deep within us, perhaps at our creation, for something more than we are alone. Whoever or whatever you may be, love seems greater than power to you, present among us in our love for each other. May that love be present in the skill and wisdom of the doctors and nurses who care for Ellen here in our hospital. And be present as in time she returns to a life of health with those who love her. And I would say Amen.

Not my usual Christian prayer, I still think about it now and again, and about Friedrich.

TW+

And I remember Ellen as delighted.