Shards from an Earthen Vessel

Richard Rohr (via ramsesprashad)

“When I was in 7th grade, I saw someone who committed suicide behind my apartment. I was riding my bike when I saw someone lying on the ground. I thought ‘what is going on?’ and approached. I saw blood flowing down to the streets so I called the police. I yelled out to passersby in the alley, “Help. There is a person lying here.” One man asked if I called the police and said, “If you called them, they should be here soon,” and he left. I asked another person for help and that person told me to move, so I moved out of the way because I thought he wanted to take a closer look, but that person just wanted to get through and I was in his way. He just left like that. What shocked me more than the person lying on the ground was that the people did not care.”

At the hospital, we had a training session from a fellow chaplain about how to approach the LGBT community.

We needed this: because no matter how “open-minded” or “tolerant” a person might claim to be, from atheist to Buddhist to liberal Christian, there’s always a stigma about the unknown. And when it comes to medical care, we can’t flinch. 

We were told about an incident in another state where some paramedics were cracking up in the ambulance over a transgender woman, and because of their neglect, the woman coded and died. The mother won a lawsuit: but who really wins in that sort of thing? 

Then another story, about a transgender woman who was locked up in a van with saran wrap and left to die in the Florida heat – and she died in the hospital. The doctor went to her family, who had been supportive of her choices, and graciously asked, “What name does your child go by?” And from that point on, the doctor used her chosen name and the correct pronouns, and it was this little bit of dignity that made a huge difference for the deceased woman’s family.

I started thinking, If we can accord this sort of dignity at death: why can’t we do it when they’re alive?

Because it shouldn’t take sickness or dying or death for someone to be a whole person worthy of such value.

The policy of the hospital is that we can never, ever refuse someone based on their race, gender, orientation, age, or ability to pay. Yet our subconscious prejudice, the hatred inside that we’ve never confronted, can bleed out into the way we treat others. Even in the hospital. There are doctors and nurses who won’t take orders for gay couples; there are gay spouses who are demanded to prove they’re married for visitation rights, when we don’t ask straight couples; there are transgender people who are scared out of their minds that they won’t get fair treatment because they’ve been rejected their entire lives. Over and over, there are stats and case studies on how the LGBT community is abused in the medical field, and most of us aren’t aware we do it. It goes deeper than “the religious right” or “right-wing conservatives.” It’s a human thing to hate what we fear and to fear what we don’t understand.

The chaplain who instructed us then revealed that he was a transgender male, who had successfully transitioned from a female about ten years ago. The room suddenly changed: I could see gasps and shock and shaking heads. We had all been working with this chaplain for months or years, and some didn’t know. Why would it even come up? And why did some of us feel shock? And why should we work any differently with him?

He carefully brought up his journey, acknowledging that he had massive amounts of resources to undergo the surgery and take the medicine, and that becoming a white male offered even more status than he was comfortable with. He was kicked out of his church, but he became a chaplain anyway, because a hospital is the one safe place where a human being’s life is way more important than our tiny cultural boxes and biases.

Then he said, “I’ve learned that people are conditional. They’ll love you up to a point. Our job is to break these conditions.”

Our job is to break these conditions.

All this challenged me right upside the head. Yes, I’m a Christian, and we believe certain things about how they should be. But – the second I see a patient enter the trauma bay, the second I enter a patient’s room, the second I visit their families, I’m there to serve that person. I can’t give in to conditions. I refuse to refuse anyone in their moment of crisis and need. I must honor who they are, fully without flinching, and I must serve them simply because they’re alive, because they exist, because they have a name.

And you know, if my faith is making me a jerk: maybe I need to step back and start over on why it’s making me worse. I don’t mean that we neglect accountability; I don’t endorse a free-for-all theology; I don’t mean that everything is okay. But maybe I missed part of the message somewhere back there. Maybe this is why they killed Jesus, because he loved too much.

I’m finding that love, the kind of gritty real sacrificial love that puts others first, doesn’t draw up a contract when it comes to someone at the edge of death. And I’m wondering why it should draw contracts at the edge of life.

I’m wondering how I can break my conditions.

“I’m heading to my younger 24 year old friend’s wedding and I’m feeling empathetic. I’m worried about how my life will go in the future. I heard marriage is like voluntarily going into a tomb and I wonder if that is really true. I’m also worried that I should worry about that sort of problem as well.”