The Unspokenness of Prayer

"Chaplain, you are going to stop making our patients cry."

I did not do it on purpose; in fact, I was somewhat surprised when it happened, but this is a hospital environment and all level and kinds of emotions tend to happen.

Two patients this week starting crying during a time of prayer near the end of visit. It's happened before, but these stood out and had me thinking about "what's going on here?" "What am I missing?" Otherwise known affectionately as chaplain "chaplain thyself!"

After the second patient was quietly crying after our prayer I asked "tell me about the tears?"

Keep in mind that she has said to my chaplain face "I am doing ok; I can't think of anything that I need." Then the prayer, the tears and... "Well, I am just grateful that I am alive. This surgery and all has been much harder than I expected and I have been really scared recently. Your prayer reminded me that God hasn't forgotten me and that made me cry."

"It going to make me cry also."

"It's ok." "Yes, ma'am it is ok."

To which I added, "I am amazed at the sacredness of prayer. The words that are spoken seem to connect with words that are unspoken and there is an understanding and sense that God is present. It is hard to explain, but obvious when it happens."

"Thank you helping me let my emotions and feelings come out. I feel whole again."

Art of the Docs!

Picasso Head of the Soul Docs!

"I got divorced for better care!"

"I think I am going to need some more information, sir."

"Well, because of my disability I need a lot of care. Because I lost my job because of what happened to me this has been a financial disaster to my me and my family. So, I couldn't get the help I needed. So a friend told us that my wife and I should get divorced so my income would drop so I could get help."

My head spins around like the exorcist movie and I say, with a depth of birdbath water, "What? Are you kidding me?"

"Nope, and the crazy thing is that it worked." Head spins around again...

"My wife made just enough money to put us over the minimal level for support, so when we got divorced, she could keep her income (think about that statement for a minute...because it will truly piss you off) and then I could get support. It's ok, though, we still live together and love each other; we just had to do this so I could get the appropriate medical care without it costing us more than we earn in 10 years."

"How long have you been dealing with this?"

"For the last three years."

"What has been the hardest part?"

"That I am going to lose my leg to this infection and they is nothing they can do about it...."

Monastic Mumblings on his brother's hospital care

More than an Anchor

Tom Peters on Health Care in America!

Tom Peters is the Business Guru of In Search of Excellence fame.

It is harsh. Prepare yourself.

Health Care Horrors and Hopes

PlaneTree: A Radical Model

Healthcare

Healthcare 21

The files are PowerPoint slides that Mr Peters has given access to.

I am not saying I agree with all that he is saying, but he makes you think. The New York Times has also been doing a series on Health Care in America. Definitely worth a read!

Chaplain goes off!

It had to happen, sooner or later, it had to happen. Today in Inter-Disciplinary Rounds the chaplain went off. Inter-disciplinary rounds is when the medical team gathers together (read: crams ourselves in a small room with our knees touching) to discuss our patients status including diagnosis, treatment plan, prognosis, any issues from that might arise from a psycho-social, spiritual area and/or anything else.

It's a BIG deal. It should be.

It's about getting everyone on the same page.

As rounds are ending I interject: "I would like to discuss something that is worrying me."

"I am not sure how to address this issue, but I am having a problem with a couple of our recent patients' care." I hesitate. "We have had two patients die this week. What is upsetting me is that I was talking to them the day of their surgery. They were lucid and aware of their environment. And then they have surgery and never come out of the anestethic. If their prognosis was that poor, why did they undergo the surgery? Why did we allow then to do that? Let me personalize this even more. I do not want my last three days on earth to be after surgery with me being intubated and sedated. Why would we allow this to happen? What a terrible way to die? What a waste of the patients last three days that they could have spent those precious hours with their family and friends, but no they spent it in our ICU with tubes stuck in them. I am very upset about this and had to get it out!"

Everyone looks at me. No one says anything. It was just like in my collegiate Speech class after I gave a speech on "Something You Dislike" (professor topic) and I spoke on Racism. No one talked to me for three weeks after that speech...I am hoping I have not just re-lived that moment.

Boom.

Everyone starts talking at the same time. "We hate it too Chaplain." "I don't know." "I don't like it." "We have been dealing with this for years." (Ick) "You sound burnt out!" (I am not!) I unleashed a firestorm of conversation; of unspoken hospital angst, of Doctor anger, of family uninvolvement, of patient passiveness and old wounds.

I added one last statement: "Is this how you would want to be treated if you were a patient?"

Once again in one voice: "No!"

clear message

a life worth living....

Saw Elizabethtown over the weekend. The critics are trying to kill the movie. The critics are elitist, snobs and full of themselves. We should make junior highers movie critics and for that matter weather forecasters...but I digress.

Elizabethtown is a wonderful movie about the meaning of life, family, the "wierd-o" factor of family and love. It is an engaging spiritual journey of a lost soul whose priorities are so screwed up that after a HUGE financial screw up considers ending his life.

I now live in an area that has a high attempted suicide rate of white women 28-45 years old. This is an highly affluent area, with home prices over 700K, so high that some of our Doctors have left because they could not afford to live here. We are entering 'suicide' season here. It started early this year. Last year, my first introduction to 'suicide' season saw 17 attempted suicides in 11 weeks. This does not include those who 'finished the act" (sic). The old timers at the hospital stated "don't worry chaplain, it's been this way for a) for a long time or b) as long I can remember." I guess I should update the stats. We did have 2 men also. "The reason we have so few men is because when they do it, they really do it."

That doesn't make me feel any better!

4 deaths and a suicide...

It's been an adventurous 4 days at the hospital. Four deaths, three of them in 23 hours and an employees' husband committing suicide; so that would actually be five deaths.

Three of the deaths were anticipated, the patients medical condition was such that there was no treatment options available to reverse what nature was bringing. One was a shock, the patient had survived a long, complicated surgery, 10 days in ICU and three days on the floor when suddenly he coded; went into cardiac arrest and died after 45 minutes of CPR. Very sad. His RN was stunned and very sad.

The suicide was devastatingly selfish and tradegic. While the employee was gone, her husband killed himself in their home and left a brutal, horrific scene for her to find and burn into her memory, the selfish son of a bitch.

We are working on a Taking Back Your Home ritual to bring peace and love back to her home.

Still have another day left in my week...

Ironic Prayer comment

So I am visiting a patient this morning and she says, "Chaplain, I just have to laugh at what my daughter said to me yesterday."

"Oh? Tell me more."

"She was here visiting me and heard the prayer you do over the intercom for the whole hospital and stated, "My children can't pray in school, but they have prayer at the hospital. That's just wierd!"

"Chaplain, we love the prayer! Keep it up."

I had never thought about the irony of the daily prayers and reflections I do every morning over the CODE phone line to everyone in the hospital. Love it when patients are engaged in their care and what is happening around them.

Oh, just for your information I lead a reflection this morning from Fred Roger's of Mister Rogers
Neighborhood...

Air Force Chaplains sued...again!

Air Force Veteran Files Federal Lawsuit to

Stop Religious Bias in the U.S. Air Force

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications

October 6, 2005

ALBUQUERQUE, Oct. 6— An Air Force veteran and United States Air Force Academy graduate today filed a federal lawsuit that seeks an immediate injunction to stop the U.S. Air Force from encouraging unconstitutional proselytizing of its members.

Mikey Weinstein, formerly Assistant General Counsel in the Reagan White House Office of Administration and currently an attorney and businessman living in Albuquerque, NM, has led a nearly two-year struggle to end evangelical religious bias at the United States Air Force Academy and to bring the Academy into compliance with Constitutional standards.

Today, Weinstein filed the lawsuit, Weinstein v. United States Air Force and Pete Geren, Acting Secretary of the Air Force, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico.

“It is a shocking disgrace that I have been forced to go to federal court to stop the U.S. Air Force from violating fundamental precepts of the Constitution— the separation of church and state and the establishment of a national religion,” said Mikey Weinstein.

“It has been nearly three months since Brigadier General Cecil Richardson proclaimed that the Air Force will ‘reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched.’ The Air Force continues to drag its feet while Gen. Richardson, the deputy chief of all Air Force chaplains, sets patently unconstitutional policies,” said Weinstein, himself an honor graduate of the United States Air Force Academy who comes from a family of three generations of military academy graduates with a combined 115 years of active duty service. Weinstein has one son who is currently a cadet at the academy and another son and daughter-in-law, both academy graduates, are currently on active duty in the Air Force.

The lawsuit describes continued violations of the Establishment Clause by the Air Force Academy that are severe, systemic and pervasive, and have fostered discrimination and harassment toward non-Evangelical Christian, non-Christian and non-religious cadets and Academy staff.

The lawsuit also details a litany of abuses including the discrimination and harassment toward non-Christian and non-religious cadets.

“No member of the USAF, including a chaplain, is permitted to evangelize, proselytize, or in any related way attempt to involuntarily convert, pressure, exhort or persuade a fellow member of the USAF to accept their own religious beliefs while on duty,” the lawsuit states.

“The USAF is not permitted to establish or advance any one religion over another religion or one religion over no religion,” it says.

Weinstein is credited with reporting on widespread unconstitutional practices at the Air Force Academy.

“It is particularly egregious that the current leadership of the Pentagon fails miserably to see the myriad, inherent dangers of establishing a policy of evangelizing its ‘unchurched’ service members when we are in the midst of a bloody, foreign war where our enemy falsely seeks to portray and exploit us, one-dimensionally, as invading Christian crusaders,” Weinstein said.

“General Richardson, and by clear implication, his entire Department of Defense chain of command, have essentially declared war on the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution,” added Weinstein.

The lawsuit specifically seeks the prohibition of any member of the Air Force, including chaplains, from evangelizing, proselytizing or any related attempts to involuntarily convert, pressure, exhort or persuade a fellow member of the USAF to accept their own religious beliefs while on duty.

A response to the court from the Air Force is due within 20 days.

"Just sign the document and ask God for forgiveness."

Saw the new movie Just like Heaven yesterday. Again, evidence of how spirituality is replacing religion in our world.

The scene that stood out for me was a Doctor, a colleague of the heroine supposedly, with the bedside manner of a tree frog, (sadly not that unknown or unheard of) is recommending the family of the patient consider signing a DNR. A DNR is hospital talk for a DO NOT RESUSITATE document that allows and directs the medical team to not go to 'extraordinary measures' to save a life when the diagnosis is terminal. More often than not, the conversation centers around quality of life issues and, short of a miracle(though hardly any doctor would use that term) the patient is not going to survive the illness and/or disease they are battling.

DNR's are discussed and signed and not signed every day in every hospital. It is considered a compassionate, caring act.

Except in this movie.

The Doctor hands the document to the patients' sister and says, "Just sign the document and ask God for forgiveness."

The statement is so empty of any moral value it doesn't even need a comment.

"Just sign the document and ask God for forgiveness."

Regarding the last post...

About 10 years ago, at some conference, I no longer remember the name of or the reason I was in attendance, one of the speakers...again, who I can't remember 'his' name or what 'he' was speaking on made the following comment. "The day is coming, if it is not already here, when "the church" will be considered a threat and not an asset to the community. Communities and builders who once allotted land in a subdivision for a church (of any flavor) no longer do or want to. We are considered a threat to the community, not an asset."

Many in the audience were startled, upset and openly unhappy about that statement.

The speaker was a prophet.

Further proof something is very wrong!

October 1, 2005 LA Times Editorial

The dark side of faith

By ROSA BROOKS

IT'S OFFICIAL: Too much religion may be a dangerous thing.

This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States.

Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality.

He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) — also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

This conclusion will come as no surprise to those who have long gnashed their teeth in frustration while listening to right-wing evangelical claims that secular liberals are weak on "values." Paul's study confirms globally what is already evident in the U.S.: When it comes to "values," if you look at facts rather than mere rhetoric, the substantially more secular blue states routinely leave the Bible Belt red states in the dust.

Murder rates? Six of the seven states with the highest 2003 homicide rates were "red" in the 2004 elections (Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina), while the deep blue Northeastern states had murder rates well below the national average. Infant mortality rates? Highest in the South and Southwest; lowest in New England. Divorce rates? Marriages break up far more in red states than in blue. Teen pregnancy rates? The same.

Of course, the red/blue divide is only an imperfect proxy for levels of religiosity. And while Paul's study found that the correlation between high degrees of religiosity and high degrees of social dysfunction appears robust, it could be that high levels of social dysfunction fuel religiosity, rather than the other way around.

Although correlation is not causation, Paul's study offers much food for thought. At a minimum, his findings suggest that contrary to popular belief, lack of religiosity does societies no particular harm. This should offer ammunition to those who maintain that religious belief is a purely private matter and that government should remain neutral, not only among religions but also between religion and lack of religion. It should also give a boost to critics of "faith-based" social services and abstinence-only disease and pregnancy prevention programs.

We shouldn't shy away from the possibility that too much religiosity may be socially dangerous. Secular, rationalist approaches to problem-solving emphasize uncertainty, evidence and perpetual reevaluation. Religious faith is inherently nonrational.

This in itself does not make religion worthless or dangerous. All humans hold nonrational beliefs, and some of these may have both individual and societal value. But historically, societies run into trouble when powerful religions become imperial and absolutist.

The claim that religion can have a dark side should not be news. Does anyone doubt that Islamic extremism is linked to the recent rise in international terrorism? And since the history of Christianity is every bit as blood-drenched as the history of Islam, why should we doubt that extremist forms of modern American Christianity have their own pernicious and measurable effects on national health and well-being?

Arguably, Paul's study invites us to conclude that the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent.

My prediction is that right-wing evangelicals will do their best to discredit Paul's substantive findings. But when they fail, they'll just shrug: So what if highly religious societies have more murders and disease than less religious societies? Remember the trials of Job? God likes to test the faithful.

To the truly nonrational, even evidence that on its face undermines your beliefs can be twisted to support them. Absolutism means never having to say you're sorry.

And that, of course, is what makes it so very dangerous.

Disturbing chaplain story

I would imagine you have read the following story. It is disturbing for the same reason the stories coming out of the Air Force Academy about their chaplains. One of the significant ways chaplaincy is different from pastoring or leading a flock of followers is that a pastor, minister, rabbi, and/or imam leading their own people would be expected, if not required to teach, guide and lead that gathering in the way of their tradition. Chaplains do not! Chaplains support and resource the beliefs and values of the person/people they encounter. Chaplaincy is about the other person.

The chaplain here was clueless and got what he deserved. Didn't have to, but clearly didn't get it. He's not the only one though...


Would-Be FDNY Chaplain Resigns After Sept. 11 Remarks

Saturday, October 01, 2005

NEW YORK — An imam who was scheduled to be sworn in Friday as the second Muslim chaplain in the New York Fire Department's history resigned that day after he made headlines for questioning whether 19 hijackers really were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, FOX News has confirmed.

The imam, Intikab Habib, had suggested a broader conspiracy may have brought down the World Trade Center, put a hole in the Pentagon and left about 3,000 people dead.

"The fire department this morning received the resignation of Imam Intikab Habib from his position as FDNY chaplain," the FDNY commissioner said in a statement Friday. "Based on comments he made to Newsday, Imam Intikab Habib would have been unable to effectively serve in the role he was appointed to."

An hour before Imam Intikab Habib was to be officially sworn in, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta told reporters: "It became clear to him that he would have difficulty functioning as an FDNY chaplain. ... There has been no prior indication that he held those views."

In a telephone interview with Newsday Thursday, Habib, 30, a native of Guyana who studied Islam in Saudi Arabia, said he doubted the U.S. government's official story blaming 19 hijackers associated with Al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden.

Habib joined the department as chaplain on Aug. 15 after the FDNY's Islamic Society recommended him for the part-time position, which pays $18,000 a year.

His doubt apparently stemmed from video and news reports widely disseminated in the Muslim community.

"I've heard professionals say that nowhere ever in history did a steel building come down with fire alone," he told Newsday. "It takes two or three weeks to demolish a building like that. But it was pulled down in a couple of hours. Was it 19 hijackers who brought it down, or was it a conspiracy?"

He did say that the attack was a "tragic incident" and that he sympathizes with the families who lost loved ones.

"Whoever did it, it was a very wrong thing. It's always wrong to take an innocent human life," he said.

"It's sad," said Kevin James, a spokesman for the Islamic Society of Fire Department Personnel. "We had no idea those were his views. He's entitled to his opinion but he's not the right person for the chaplain."

And Mayor Michael Bloomberg spokesman Ed Skyler said: "The remarks were offensive and the mayor is satisfied that the chaplain has resigned."

Some have blamed the destruction of the trade center on a U.S. or Israeli plot designed to whip up support for attacks on Muslim countries. In 2003, New Jersey eliminated Amiri Baraka's position as poet laureate after he wrote a poem suggesting Israel had advance knowledge of the attacks.