VIEW FROM THE PEW
Here we are in March marking the one-year anniversary of anxiety as our daily state of mind. A year ago, people were just beginning to realize that the deadly, highly infectious disease in a distant country was indeed going to be our problem, too. We’ve faced daily breaking news from the battlefront stoking our fears, and curtailing our lives on every front. Finally, now we have hope.
Even if we don’t personally know someone who has been on the front lines in the fight, I doubt many are so emotionally distanced to not appreciate and applaud them. Every time I watched a nurse or doctor, gaunt with exhaustion and tearful with the overload of responsibility, and caught in the headlights of a camera crew, I thought of my niece working in a nursing home and her husband in law enforcement, worried about carrying the virus home to their kids.
So I want to celebrate this anniversary by talking about the support system that rallied behind the front-line troops and their patients, about the people who had their backs. Hospital ministry is a long-standing mission for many faith traditions, initially aimed at bringing spiritual support to patients and their families. What this pandemic has underscored is that medical professionals may also need the ministry of spiritual caregivers.
“It has been a hard time for caregivers who have worked to rise to the challenges of the year. To meet the needs, we can be really exhausted. We only have so much in our physical and mental tank,” said the Rev. David Hendrickson, one of a team of Hawaii chaplains trained by Pacific Health Ministry (PHM) and serving in 11 hospitals. “What’s important for caregivers is finding time to retreat and take care of themselves. This is a long-term marathon without knowing where or when is the finish line.”
“We do a lot of listening,” said the Rev. Al Miles, a PHM chaplain with 28 years of service at The Queen’s Medical Center. He is an ordained minister with the Church of God, headquartered in Anderson, Indiana. It was a statement he repeated many times in an Ash Wednesday interview. “Never in my career has there been this overwhelming need for chaplain services. This is where I need to be.”
What used to be a routine of bedside visits and prayers with patients morphed into talks via iPads and cellphones. “Patients meet with us, both in person and virtually; there’s a lot of asking for Scripture readings, asking for prayers. We also do a lot of listening to staff and physicians. We provide around-the-clock spiritual and emotional care.”
Miles said that when he and fellow chaplains hear the worries of medical professionals during the pandemic “It isn’t as much a concern that ‘I’m going to die’ but that ‘I’m going to spread the virus.’ People are worried about child care, financial woes … not being able to travel to see families elsewhere … some tensions in the home. Many young brides have had to postpone their weddings.”
At Queens, chaplains may meet in person with employees. “My office is about nine feet long,” Miles said, “it is enough space to maintain a safe distance. Our chaplains have a lot of staff come to us, one by one.” They also continue a longstanding tradition of providing “Teas for the Soul,” but COVID-19 changed the coziness of these get-togethers in breakrooms or other hospital units. Aimed at providing nurses a chance to decompress with refreshments and informal talk, the Teas are now a quarterly event, with masks, physical distancing, individually wrapped cookies, tea bags and wisdom scrolls.
Ash Wednesday
When we spoke, Miles was preparing for the Ash Wednesday observance held in the Queen’s Punchbowl chapel. Father Francisco Sanchez, director of the Honolulu diocesan Office of Hospital Ministry, presided. Attendees were either sprinkled with ashes by Father Sanchez or were provided cotton balls by the chaplains to administer the ashes on their own foreheads. Miles said, “people requested to attend the Catholic service, which was meaningful to some Protestants as well.” He said most outside clergy are not permitted to visit hospital patients under the strict COVID-19 rules, but Catholic priests are allowed in to administer sacraments such as confession and anointing of the sick.
The Honolulu diocese requires Catholic clergy who will take on a hospital ministry role to take a Pacific Health Ministry’s Clinical Pastoral Education three-month course of classes plus field training in hospitals. The agency’s executive director, the Rev. Anke Flohr, said four priests signed up last year but the pandemic postponed their session.
She said the 18 accredited chaplains in 11 Hawaii facilities on three islands are “a team; we support each other and can cover for each other. Chaplains have worked without vacation throughout the pandemic. We have helped medical professionals come through it.”
Flohr, a Lutheran minister, said “nationwide, chaplains have found a new place in health care, our role has expanded. We could substitute for families who could not visit patients because of the access we have. The medical profession values us.”
She said the crisis was hard on the religious professionals. “In the old days we would have gone into patients’ rooms, held people’s hands, been recognized. Now we are all in PPE (personal protective equipment), we look like everyone else, a very different connection to people. We would be there to comfort a family, hugs were allowed. But now, people have accepted the distancing, it still works.”
The interfaith non-profit organization founded in the 1980s is the only chaplain accreditation agency locally. The interfaith nature of its mission requires chaplains to learn to provide spiritual support to people of all faith traditions. And a key tenet of training is that chaplains not proselytize for their own denomination or religious tradition.
“I think the pandemic has changed us for the better,” said Flohr. “People are looking out for each other in new ways.”
“You don’t have to be religious to be spiritual,” said Chaplain Utufa’asili McDermott. “Chaplaincy is like a booster shot for the medical staff, to help them keep strong when they go in and give themselves up to the patients. If there is any time people need a chaplain, it is now.”
She spent last year at Queen’s finishing a one-year Clinical Pastoral Education course to earn certification. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Chaminade University, and during a volunteer stint in hospice spiritual care, she changed from a goal to teach religion classes, deciding “chaplaincy is my calling.” Utu is the rare Catholic chaplain who is not an ordained deacon or priest.
She said that she believes her Catholic faith “helps me bring something to interfaith work.” She recalled reading Buddhist scriptures to a Buddhist patient, bringing a bell to ring as part of his familiar prayer ritual. “Whoever they may be, it’s about making people reach a level of spiritual comfort.
“It came natural to me to listen to people; I have been a listener for a long time,” said the Samoan mother of eight and grandmother of eight additional children. She took the path to a new career after her airline career ended when Aloha Airlines folded.
Curtailed to having virtual visits with patients, McDermott launched a new communication resource. She placed prayer cards on patients’ doors, offering solace and encouragement. “Nurses would also read them and it became a help to them. A lot would tell me, ‘Thanks for the prayers, I go door-to-door and read them.’ I would change the prayers every week.
“I also did a ritual blessing of the hands for nurses and doctors,” she said. “I would use a Koa bowl, ti leaf and holy water. I would sprinkle it on their hands and the crown of their heads. Sometimes they would call on me to bless a room, an ICU unit, if someone had passed away. Sometimes they would ask for a staff blessing; I would ask them if you want to share what you have in your heart.”
Sharing what’s in people’s hearts is a familiar practice for the chaplains. They have regular peer-to-peer meetings to discuss what they are experiencing. “We talk about the fears of COVID, how difficult it is to connect with a patient using an iPad,” said Flohr. “With each other we can be vulnerable, in hospitals we have to be strong. We have become a Zoom support group.”
Miles and Flohr both applauded a trio of chaplains-in-training who had the option of stepping out of their residency year for their own safety, but who chose to stay the course for the past year.
Non-COVID cases
McDermott was one of them. When she finished, she took a PHM chaplaincy position at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in December. The hospital does not see COVID patients but there are patients, their families, and staff needing the comfort of a chaplain. “If a baby or a mother passes, it takes a toll on the staff,” she said. “So we do a debrief when they come together and it helps them to talk about how they feel. It helps people to come to terms and be at peace, to know what happens is not under their control.”
Ministry at Kapiolani includes working with families after a patient has died. The program, initiated by a previous chaplain, continues beyond the hospital bounds. “I call them after 30 days to let them know we are still praying for them, give spiritual care over the phone, say a prayer with them. After another 30 days, I send a card … to let them know we are still thinking of them,” said McDermott.
Hendrickson has been ministering for three years with Good Samaritan Society-Pohai Nani, a retirement community in Kaneohe. His work involves being both a chaplain and pastor to a congregation of about 175 residents, whose meals are delivered to their rooms. “It’s more like a long-term relationship than the hospital setting,” he said. There is enough open space on the grounds to keep safe distance for the weekly interfaith service. It was moved from Sundays — when patients watch online services of their own denominations — to Tuesdays. And there is a solarium where, with Plexiglas separation, residents and families can visit with one another. The chaplain can meet with residents directly.
“The residents are a model of resiliency and strength,” he said. “They share their stories.” One story that resonates in this dire time is the experience of Hawaii old-timers who lived through the days of martial law during World War II. “One woman pointed out that masks aren’t a new thing. ‘We all had gas masks during the war,’” she said, in a time where enemy attacks were the looming threat.
Hendrickson told the congregation at one service that when he thinks about caregivers in today’s crisis, it calls to mind the Gospel story of the Transfiguration, when “the awestruck apostles saw Jesus meet with Moses and Elijah. All Peter could think of doing was to offer to build a tent. It’s an example of when you don’t know what to do to help, you try to do what you know.”