Author: scblair

No-handed trust

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It’s been just over two weeks without a job, and the fear is starting to kick in. I’ve had three serious interviews, but one was only for a per diem position and the other didn’t pan out. The third, with CCO, is still in process. However the fact that things aren’t sure yet bothers me. it’s unrealistic to expect a job so soon I know, but my unemployment is still not settled (I apparently haven’t worked anywhere) and my final paycheck hasn’t yet arrived. I had hoped those would have been resolved by now, so doubt is stealing the peace I had.

However I think that this is all still part of my own learning to trust God wholeheartedly. As a teen I would occasionally go on ropes courses with my youth group. The phrase you heard all the time was “let go of the rope!”, meaning the rope that connected you to the safety line overhead. Holding on to the rope made you feel more secure and was a purely instinctual reaction: “if I hold on to the rope I won’t fall”. However holding on to the rope also immobilized you as you couldn’t use your hands to move around or balance yourself. You had to trust that you weren’t going to fall even if you weren’t holding the rope – you had to let the rope hold you.

This is a hard task for anyone, especially those of us who are still struggling with confidence and trust in God, ourselves, or even those closest to us. Trusting God isn’t holding on to Him with both hands, hoping you won’t let to, it is trusting enough that he has you that I can let go with both hands.

Next steps

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Last Wednesday, on my youngest son’s fifth birthday, I was fired. I had been there nearly seven years. However it was not exactly unexpected, and as i see now, not unwelcome.

I have had a tremendous sense of peace since then. Not just the peace that comes from not having to wonder who might die today, but a sense of peace that comes from a deep sense of trust in God’s plan. I haven’t always had this trust, and I expected to fall apart when the hammer came down. Knowing that the prayers of many are covering me, and having grown through my own reading, have allowed me to simply rest in the assurance that all things are working toward the good.

At this point I am not sure if I will continue in hospice chaplaincy, do some other kind of ministry, or change paths completely. So I’m not sure if this will go on or not. But I’m not worried about that right now.

The Fearful Pastor

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While occasionally the Gospel Coalition Blog makes me wince, I thought this article/reflection was right on target concerning how often even our ministerial leaders work from a perspective of fear and distrust. As do we (and me) I’m sure.

“Perhaps this is an infrequently shared secret of pastoral ministry; that is, how much of it is driven not by faith in the truths of the Gospel and in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, but driven by fear. It is very tempting for the pastor to load the welfare of the church on his shoulders and when he does, he ends up being burdened and motivated by an endless and every-changing catalog of “what ifs.” This never leads to a restful and joyful life of ministry, but rather to a ministry debilitated by unrealistic and unmet goals, a personal sense of failure and dread.” Paul Tripp

Read the whole article below:

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/07/08/the-fearful-pastor/?comments#commentscomment-34176

When Prayer is Trivial

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While driving out to my first visit today I ran through the presets on my radio as I usually do. Not finding anything of interest music-wise I jumped to the Christian talk station to see what was on there. The speaker (don’t remember who, but he’s well known and I think nationwide) was talking about the need for us to pray in order to maintain our connection to God. He laid out several other benefits as well, but then made a bit of a quizzical move. God apparently wants us to pray, but God doesn’t want to be bothered with “trivial prayers”.

Prayers for mundane things – he used the example of picking out his clothes – are trivial in that they aren’t about important matters, or about things we can take care of ourselves. He got a laugh about his comment about his clothes-picking skills, but I was a bit perturbed.

I did a quick little search for “trivial prayers” on Google and got an interesting list of results: nonbelievers who said that any prayer was trivial or that prayers for personal gain were trivial, as well as people who called their own prayers trivial because they didn’t seem to be about important things. I even ran across a video of a minister teaching that God doesn’t want our “help me! help me!” prayers or petitions at all.

I brought this up to my client that I saw today, an elderly man with heart failure who prays the Rosary daily every day he can. He too was surprised and not very happy with the comment. He said, “Any prayer is important to God! Something that seems trivial to someone else can be very important to me. Say I cut my finger and I pray that it gets better. You could say ‘just put a band-aid on it, don’t bother God!’ But if that cut gets infected I could lose that finger. Prayer is all the more important to me!”

I replied, “I think the only kind of prayer that is trivial is one that isn’t said.”

And it was probably the smartest thing I said all day.

Works and Grace

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This morning I was having breakfast and skimming through the latest Christian book catalog that came through our mail when my son noticed the title of one of the books was on learning to “pray better”.  He asked, “How do you pray better?  Don’t we pray good enough already?”

I think this question goes to the heart of a lot of the problems we face as Christians, and maybe especially as Americans.  We have such a tendency to find ourselves, no matter how much we talk about grace, looking at our faith as a matter of how much effort we put in to it.  Sometimes that work is actual “work” – penance, good deeds, giving financially or of time. All these things in themselves are good, but we can easily fall into the trap of seeing these things as preliminaries and prerequisites for God’s grace to happen.

The Protestant mourns for his fellow Catholic brother, whom he sees as “works based” regarding salvation. Yet Protestants are just as trapped by the need to “do more” and “do better”. A glimpse through any Christian book catalog or bookstore shelf of popular Christian “inspiration” will prove my point. So much seems to be about doing more, doing better, gaining and striving. I think this comes out also in theology with the insistence that one’s theology be “right”. I remember growing up that faith wasn’t just about knowing Jesus, but knowing Calvin. You had to know the right things in the right way – not just Biblical truth but the correct interpretation of Biblical truth.

This, I think, is just another form of works. Grace is something we accept without any merit on our part, and to make that grace beholden to anything we do (and I think belief can be a form of works as well) negates that.

Can I pray better, read more, give more? Surely. I stink at all of these. But I gave up worrying for Lent.

What are You Fasting From?

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Ok, maybe my grammar is a bit sketchy title-wise, but I like it.

I never fasted in my life, save for bloodwork or the occasional operation. Most of this came from my Presbyterian/Calvinist upbringing, which saw fasting as something a bit too “Catholic”, which is code for works-oriented. It was spiritually good but unnecessary at best, idolatrous at worst. Lent tends to be interesting at times because, as I’m the hospice chaplain in a secular company, I’m seen by some as this pillar of sacredness. Especially by our Catholic staff. It freaks them out when on a Lenten Friday I pull out a ham sandwich and dig in. It has provided some opportunites to teach what I know about grace and works.

But I’m rethinking things a little this year. Not so much about abstaining from food or drink or whatever. I understand why fasting from things that are pleasurable is supposed to connect us with the suffering of Christ. However there have been plenty of folks who, rather than fast from something, try to increase the good that they do. I think that’s a good way of looking at things and not quite so self-centered. But I was thinking today that if I’m going to fast, I’d rather fast from the things that pollute my life…worry, fear, self criticism. Life without chocolate only promotes misery and desire. But life without worry for 40 days? Hallelujah! What would it be like to not be afraid for 40 days, or critical of myself or others, or anxious? What can be more enriching and spiritual than that?

So I’m going to fast from worry. What are you fasting from?

Notes to a New Chaplain: 1

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I thought it might be interesting to pass on some thoughts on chaplaincy to those who might be thinking of it as a career.  It’s a pretty specialized field, and it’s hard to find someone who is a chaplain at times to talk about the position. Plus I think there’s a lot in chaplaincy that can – and should – carry over to ministry in general.  So here goes-

First of all, don’t take yourself too seriously.

I know that might sound a little strange as this blog comes off as really serious most of the time. This is where I get that serious stuff out. However I’ve found that the best approach to ministry, especially with the dying, is lightness. Things are dark enough already, and adding weight to weight just doesn’t help.

I take my position seriously, but I don’t have to take myself seriously. I don’t wear a collar or anything else that readily identifies me as clergy. If I do come to work wearing a suit people usually assume I have a funeral or a job interview. Others wear clerics and that’s fine – in some places like the VA hospitals it’s a requirement. I can see times where adding weight and seriouslness to my position is beneficial, as when I need to take on a position of authority in a situation or with a family. However I have seen many times when that collar doesn’t even get you through the door.

Then again, it isn’t just the collar but how it’s worn that makes a big difference. I’ve had some chaplains be so tied to the externals of their position, whether through collars and vestments or even through how they pray, that it gets in the way of their calling, which is soul care. I think if your identity is too tied in with externals it can be a hindrance. Your identity as a chaplain and as clergy in general needs to be tied to who you are and what you bring to the situation. And what you as a chaplain bring to an encounter is, at it’s core, yourself and Whom you represent. Yes we are often called to do things that only we can do because we have been given the external mantle of clergy, whatever that mantle looks like. But if you can’t divest yourself of all those same things and lay them at the cross in service of another you aren’t a minister of Christ.

Dealing with Anger

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One of the challenges some chaplains face, myself included, is the need to be liked and avoid conflict.  We want people to feel good and comforted, and this is what often leads us into the profession.  We’re the Rogerians in the room: providing that unconditional positive regard to all comers. Trouble is that when conflict takes place, it can feel like failure. So when conflict is on the horizon we dodge it. I can talk myself into twists trying to avoid or minimize whatever the problem is. Which tends to make the problem worse. Then when that conflict does erupt I tend to look at myself as the cause of it, as if conflict and anger are wrong and my fault. In doing so I take responsibility for their feelings and reactions, which isn’t healthy or logical.

One of the harder parts of my own development as a chaplain is raising that emotional boundary between myself and others. It’s easy in the caring professions to open one’s self up too much and to care too much for the other person, which neglects ourselves. This isn’t just chaplains but nurses, social workers, and on down the line. Sometimes this self-neglect takes the form of taking on what the other person needs to do – the “fix-it” or “savior” mentality, an outward focus that neglects the self’s boundaries. However I also see that this self-neglect can be inward focused as well, where I don’t try to fix the other person as much as make their problem my own – their problem is a bad reflection on me, so I take it personally. This can happen a lot with handling anger. This still avoids the problem though, and all I end up doing is taking their anger and internalizing it because it’s directed at me.

What I fail to do though is see that even though it’s directed at me it is still their anger, their emotion. How they choose to express it is their issue, not mine.

Overcoming Nature

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I watched the film Temple Grandin with my wife over the weekend.  My wife works with autistic children and their families, and had been looking forward to seeing this movie for some time.  Grandin is a PhD and expert in animal husbandry, as well as autisitc.

Part of the story revolves around how she seeks to revolutionize the cattle industry by reorganizing slaughterhouses to make them more amenable to cows actually behave, making the whole process more humane as well as efficient.  For example, rather than forcing cows into insecticidal dips with prods and slick  chutes, which occasionally result in drowning, Grandin’s model uses curves to lead the animals to a stepped platform, where the animals simply walk into the dip, swim through, and back out.  It’s all pretty amazing in how simple the design and process appears, yet how complex the behavior is that the process is built upon.

What else is interesting is her reason for doing so.  Most of us would think that her affinity for cattle and the desire to limit their suffering would have led her to denounce the whole industry, but that wasn’t the case.  She understands and respects the life that is present in each animal (in the film, after a cow is killed before her she asks “where did it go?”), but doesn’t have the deep emotional connection that we would expect due to her autism.  The reason she sees for treating the animals humanely is simple but deep: “Nature is cruel, but we don’t have to be.”

I thought about this in light of hospice care.  This same thinking guides a lot of our care and judgment regarding care for those we care for.  We see nature at it’s most cruel sometimes.  I recently had a patient whom I was close to pass away.  He had struggled with pulmonary fibrosis for several years, struggling to breathe continually and leashed to an oxygen tank.  He gradually grew weaker and more dependent, to the point where he could only walk short distances.  Then he had a serious stroke, taking most of whatever he had left.  He could talk, though slurred, and could understand, but was otherwise unable to move.  Even his head had to be propped up with a neck pillow.  It was tremendously sad to see the cruelty of nature at work here, and our job was to make sure that cruelty was dealt with as best we could.

The physical pain was manageable, but the psychological and spiritual pain was tremendous. I spent time with him the day he died in his home, holding his hand and praying for him along with our staff and his wife and daughter.  Some of his grief was directed at God, and I can’t say that I blame him.  You can’t go through an illness like that, or accompany someone along that road, without wondering why.

There are plenty of answers out there for sure: the fallen world, suffering as part of life, the stripping of everything to increase our dependence on God, the work of the devil, the work of God, and so on.  Yet I found Grandin’s insight to be one of the simplest and maybe truest at the moment.  Nature is cruel in many ways, and we can’t overlook or overcome that cruelty.  Sin and death are, at least for now, permanent fixtures in the world.  However part of realizing the kingdom of God in the here-and-now is to see that while these can’t be overcome, we don’t have to fatalistically succomb to it.  Jesus reminds us, over and over again, that he has “overcome the world”, and even though that cruelty is still there in the world, we can overcome it as well.  Nature is cruel, but we don’t have to be.

Calling, Pt. II

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At times it seems like the biggest question in life, taking a line from Kenny Rogers, is knowing when to hold ’em and knowing when to fold ’em.

I was driving today and turned on to one of our local Christian broadcasts, where the minister was extoling the virtues of perseverance.  He used the story of the calling of Matthias to the Twelve after Judas’ death as an example of sticking around and waiting for the fruit of your labor to be ripe for the picking.  He extended this to show how Christians need to keep going through rough times, to never give up, to endure at all costs.  “God rewards those who endure”, I think he said.

I can see this applying in some situations, but there are other examples where I think it leads to harm.  On the very same station later in the day I heard people (mostly wives) calling in to get advice on how to deal with unendurable situations.  I never heard the counselors say “just keep going and you’ll make it” once.  Granted, they never said “call it quits” either, but the call to change was apparent and clear.  Patient endurance does not always win and is not always good.

Christ does call us to endure through difficulty and hardship.  Indeed as followers we are expected to have hardship because of Christ, and we are frequently exhorted not to fall away because of that hardship.  Endurance does count for a lot, but it isn’t everything.  I think too often we can be short-sighted in our view, thinking that God called me to a certain path and that only by persevering and enduring on that path are we being faithful to God.  Changing course is not an option, for that can be seen as weakness.

However I think God’s paths are often much more open than we think.  For example, I may honestly and prayerfully believe that God has called me to be a missionary to India.  Say that in that process of preparing to go to India I run in to a million different problems: lack of financial support, inability to get a visa, health problems, lost tickets, lost paperwork…let your imagination run wild.  I can take all these things as obstacles that must be overcome on my path to becoming a missionary to India.  But what if there is another message in these obstacles?

Maybe I am not ready yet.  Maybe I’m not called to India.  Maybe I’m wrong.  If I am wrong, the worst thing I can do is push on to some goal that is simply my own invention.

However if I take the tack of “God called me to be a missionary”, then there is much more freedom in that calling.  You can be called to India, or China, or Minneapolis, or the homeless shelter.  And I think that this is more often how God presents our paths.  The narrower your perception of what you think God wants you to do, the less freedom you have to deviate from that, and the more fear you have of deviating from it as well.  You also stand more chance of persisting merely to persist, not because you feel that God is still in it.  If you widen your call and become flexible in it, God’s ability to use you also increases.

To take a page from Thomas Merton’s life again, he definitely felt called to the monastic life and to life as a hermit.  I think he felt called to Gethsemani.  Yet I also get the impression that the specifics of that call were merely circumstancial.  He could have been a hermit anywhere, and I don’t get the impression that there was something about where he was that was irrevocably tied to a particular call.  He was flexible and looked for what God was calling him to do that day, not projecting a certain path that extended for years down the line.  And reading his journals you can see that he struggled but also found that every day his calling was reinforced by his own experience and desire to simply be with God.

I think sometimes we try too hard to hold on to things that we were never meant to hold on to, losing track of the focus of the call to serve and live in God’s grace because we get so preoccupied with how that happens.