"The Joys of parents
are secret,
and so are their
griefs and fears"
Francis Bacon
For the past seven months I've been actively engaged in ministry and continued pastoral formation through Clinical Pastoral Education (C.P.E.) in an acute care setting. My assigned units include women and children's services. Sadly, chaplains aren't called to Labor and Delivery for the multitude of joyous healthy deliveries. We are mostly called to attend at the times of sorrow.
The challenge for myself in this ministry area is that I am blissfully and perhaps naively living without having any personal experience with miscarriage, stillbirth, or death of a beloved and dearly desired baby. To become attuned to the unique grief experiences has been a privileged place of observation as well as self examination.
Every family has some hidden story- some secret(s) and some unspoken rules. My CPE peer group spent our last unit working on genograms and using that to further our understanding of family dynamics.
As a chaplain, it is not uncommon to have a patient share the places of their deepest long unspoken pain, their deepest fear. The confessional nature of the conversation is most sacred. The healing that the patient experiences in the process is sometimes immediate.
More often the transformation occurs gradually and without obvious markers of change until reflected upon much later by the speaker.
This is most priestly work of which I am engaged in, with peers and with patients. The work begins with personal assessment and reflections on my own life narrative and flows outward from that awareness.
My offering learned from this work flows as poetry, not prose.
Who tells the secret of our lives?
Why do we hold the secret
and why do we reveal it?
What purpose achieved?
What power imparted?
What alliance formed
or thwarted?
Does it bear witness
to love
to fear
to bitterness
to desire
Does it bear witness
to hope
to desire
to despair?
Does it bear witness
to faith
to fidelity
to kindness or cruelty?
The most difficult work of the chaplain is resisting the urge to "solve a problem". The truly difficult work is to remain present, open and attentive to the emotions which have been bottled up, sometimes for many decades. The chaplain often must resist the impulse to rush to judgment, or condemnation. To truly allow the patient to give voice to the secret of the self which has so long been concealed is the act of emancipation, liberation, and healing the prophets spoke of and Christ enjoined his followers to mimic.
One C.P.E. Supervisor enjoins students with the aphorism "conversation is medicine".
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