Love as Protection

To become a Unitarian Universalist fellowshipped minister requires doing at least one unit of CPE - Clinical Pastoral Education. During that time, you're learning and working as a chaplain.

We had regular chapel services that included the communion ritual of bread and grape juice. Not being a Christian, I did not partake, but I appreciated the ritual, especially one part that is not the norm, unless you are in a hospital setting. There would be two chaplains in their priestly role. They would say the traditional words, serve each other communion, then invite those who wished to come forward.

But right before that, the two of them would pause at the communion table for the hand sanitizer. They made it part of the ritual, so that patients could see them cleaning their hands for the safety of the patients.

And I was just entranced by that. Something so ordinary, becoming a visual symbolic act of love and care. Before the words for the breaking of bread, "this is my (Jesus') body, broken for you," they silently said by their actions, "these are our hands, cleansed to keep you safe, hands that will bring the bread of life to you."

It gave a holy significance to the act that I never stopped seeing. When I witnessed doctors and nurses washing their hands before entering a patient's room, it was as if I was watching a religious ritual. During the chapel service, the chaplain-priests would murmur over and over the words of the ritual to each person, Take and eat this in remembrance... Over and over, they would say the words, each time it was a blessing anew for the participant.

Over and over, at every single room, I would watch the healers as they washed their hands before entering each room. Each time, a blessing anew for the person inside.

Right now, when I leave my house, I take a clean mask. Before getting out at the gas station, the mailbox, the street where I walk with my mother, I tie on the mask, reverently. It is a blessing for anyone whom I may encounter. This is my action, done in order to make you more safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you be blessed.

Comments

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James. Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f...

"I Don't Know Who I Am Now" or The Importance of Not Assuming for a While

The next 5 months are probably going to be kinda weird. Uncertainty and anxiety flying all over the place. Duck! And then after that ... it's also going to be kinda weird, but a different kind of weird, as we move into the After Times, and figure out what exactly they're going to be like, and what exactly WE are going to be like. It is in times like these, that I like to turn to art to help make sense of it all. I refer, of course, to the art known as the television series Doctor Who. I mean, if we know things are going to be weird, we probably should look at some art that deals with the weird, right? Now's the time to examine Hieronymous Bosch and Marc Chagall. And Doctor Who, that time-traveling, face-shifting hero. Part of the Doctor Who story (and why it's been able to keep going so long) is that rather than die, the Doctor regenerates, retaining who they are, but with a different face, body, and to a certain extent, a different personality. Immediately afte...

Boots and Blessings

Search This Blog