Bleeding on the Flock
Last week I told a hospital patient I loved him. Yes, as his professional chaplain.
He’s what the nurses call a “frequent flyer” and this wasn’t his first time at the ICU rodeo. Technically he had been admitted this time for different reasons than the last time, but the underlying reason - opioid addiction - was still the main cause. This admission in particular was a new rock bottom.
There was still blood on parts of his face, two new casts, and most likely some permanent deep tissue and organ damage. Worst of all, he had just missed a very important family funeral because - for legal reasons I didn’t care to explore - he couldn’t leave the state.
As I listened to his profound regret, burning anger, and true desperation I just really felt for the guy.
As a hospital chaplain I’m supposed to do things like “compassionately re-direct towards hopeful meaning-making” and “facilitate life-review” and “explore inner sources of spiritual hope.” I did all that of course.
But if you’ve ever sat with an almost-just-died-for-the-eighth-time addict in the pit of despair that stuff doesn’t quite hit.
He was holding it together and being tough but I could tell he was scared for his life, scared that when he left the hospital this time he was gonna die. And honestly I was scared of that too.
As our visit was wrapping up he asked me to pray for his family member.
Of course I prayed for that but I also prayed for his safety, his recovery, his life, his healing, his mental health, his protection, really anything I could think of knowing this guy might not even be on Earth much longer.
At the end of the prayer we were both crying and he grabbed my hand real hard and said “I love you.” I held his rough hand with both of mine, looked right in his eyes and told him “I love you too” like I really meant it, because I did.
Now listen, I don’t tell every patient I love them.
In fact he might be the only one. And I certainly felt a little awkward coming out of that room. But I knew it was the right pastoral move.
More than that, it was the right thing to do as a human. If he had said he loved me and I didn’t say anything back, I knew that would weigh on my soul maybe for the rest of my life.
It made me think of a preaching class I took in seminary by Bishop Yvette Flunder who calls herself something like a Metho-Bapti-Costal and is a same-gender-loving woman (her words) who ran a church for drag queens, gay men, and recovering addicts in San Francisco in the 80s.
As you can imagine, many of her congregants died of HIV and AIDS. If you’ve ever seen that Matthew McConaughey movie Dallas Buyers Club, that was her. They’d have church service then take sick people back to the fellowship hall, hang the then-illegal IV bags of experimental meds from coat hangers and try to save some lives.
Bishop Yvetter Flunder
The deaths were horrible, not just for those church members but across the city and country.
What Bisphop Flunder taught us about that time was that she had been told during her training not to “bleed on the flock.” It’s wise advice in terms of not asking your congregants to be your emotional support system, but after living through the AIDS crisis up close and personal it’s just not a realistic pastoral guideline.
So she told us stories of times she had broken down in the pulpit, fallen to the floor in grief, and let her congregants sing to her and fan her while she recovered. She told us about the funerals and the dwindling numbers until there was no one left. She told us about the tears and the endless goodbyes.
More than anything she gave me permission to be human as a minsiter, a gift that has changed my life.
Since then I’ve also cried in the pulpit.
I’ve bled on various flocks. I’ve cried out for help. I’ve told people I love them in all kinds of unprofessional ways. I’ve talked about my addictions and struggles with various dependencies.
More than anything, I’ve tried in whatever way I can to put my humanity above my profession. I think that right now, at this astounding point in our human history when we’re subject to every kind of dehumanization people have ever been capable of, that’s the actual pastoral thing to do.
What people seem to need more than the Professional Tools of the Ordained Hospital Chaplain is someone who just holds their blood-caked, crack pipe burned hand in a city hospital bed and tells them “I love you.”
And if you need to hear this today, I love you too.
I really do and I will hold your hand no matter what rock bottom situation you find yourself in, no matter how unprofessional, no matter if we have known each other a long time or just met that day, and I will say it until you feel it.
May you always always always feel it, especially now. I love you.
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