When Francis Harwood, an anthropologist, asked a Sioux elder why people tell stories, he answered: “In order to become human beings.” She asked, “Aren’t we human beings already?” He smiled, “Not everyone makes it.”
Laura Sims
(Taken from David Loy’s The World Is Made Of Stories
Some of you know what my vocation is but for those of you who don’t, I’m the chaplain for a private oncology practice. I have been doing healthcare chaplaincy now for twenty-two years. Eighty percent of that time has focused in the area of oncology. Needless to say, I have dealt with a lot of death and a lot of dying.
There are times when I recognize that this has changed me in good ways and there are times when I realize it has changed me in bad ways.
Just this week my wife had to make a return trip after her regularly scheduled mammogram but turns out the radiologist is not concerned but will see her again in six months just to be safe. It also turns out that my wife did not tell me she had to make a return visit until after the visit was over and after she got what seems to be good news. She said she would have been more anxious about it if she had told me because I would have over reacted and run the anxiety meter up significantly, just because of what I do every day.
I hated she did that alone but truly understand what she was saying. She was right!
So that is one of the bad ways that this vocation affects my life. But this is not what I wanted to write about today.
For the past five to seven days I have been dealing with a young person who is presently in the process of dying. I have made contact with the spouse and the rest of the family at least three or four times a day, as they sit vigil, waiting for the inevitable but somehow hoping this “thing” does not take place. I have become really close to the father of this young person, more so than the spouse, probably because the patient is in the same age bracket as one of my children.
Leaving the room yesterday afternoon and heading back over to the office, I realized how perfunctory I felt in my presence at times. It’s true you have to carry somewhat of a professional presentation into these situations but you cannot let the human slip away.
I’m not saying in all this that the folks did not feel me truly caring for them. My presence was and is much appreciated. My recognition of some distancing was an internal thing.
Here again is one of the bad things you may come away with in this work I do when you do it day in and day out. You can shut down. You know all the right words that are helpful and the ones that are harmful. You know when to step in and you know when to step out. But all of this must be done as (what the Native Americans might call) a true human being. And sometimes we lose that way of being because we shut down in a protective way, unaware or we get too caught up in our “roles”. It may feel like true compassion to those who are receiving but if the person offering this is in any way aware, they know there can be a more opening of the heart in these situations. They know the “true human being" is still holding back, sometimes for the right reasons but sometimes for the wrong reasons.
This is where my spiritual practice saved me yesterday.
I stopped myself on the way back to the office, after a visit with the patient and the family. I made myself sit down in a chair in one of the lobby areas and contemplate this situation in a more personal way, realizing that my emotions needed to be expressed. Alan the human being, not Alan the chaplain, needed to be expressed.
So I began to place one of my children in that bed with a tube stuck down their throats, seeing their spouse standing by that bed, just waiting for the unbelievable to happen. I tried as best I could to become the father in this situation. Within seconds the tears flowed and what had been stuck (the true human being) poured out in the form of tears and sobs. I continued to sit there with this practice for about ten minutes.
Bearing witness to these kinds of events also means bearing witness to our own participation in them.
If I don’t pay attention like this, I can also become very needy because I have not taken care of my own stuff.
What does this have to do with zazen?
Everything, I think.
P.S.
I visited the family this morning (8/6/11) as a true human being.
(I'm not sure if I have used the "true human being" within a right context here, so I apologize to my native american friends, if this is so)
Bows,
Alan (working on being human)
