Handout 2: Caring for One Another
As human knowledge has grown, we have come to know the immensity of the universe. The universe is big and we human beings can seem infinitesimally small. The hurting in the world, our community, and our families seems huge, and we can feel as though there is little we can do. There’s so much that needs care and compassion, so much pain and suffering, and so much hurting and injustice.It’s a lot to wrap our brains around, to think about, to try to understand and work to solve. It’s a lot for our hearts to feel, to keep open and sensitive and responding. It’s a lot for our hands to try to do. It’s more than we can do singly.
How do we keep ourselves from being overwhelmed? How do we keep our spirits from sinking into the pain and staying there? How do we keep ourselves going? How do we link with others in our efforts?
Members of one of our congregations volunteer at a hospital where one of their members is the chaplain. The Rev. Jurgen Schwing is an ordained United Church of Christ minister who is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley in California. The people who work at the hospital Rev. Schwing serves are stressed out. He wanted to offer the hospital’s doctors, nurses, social workers, and other health care staff a ritual blessing of their hands.
It is a secular hospital. Many of the staff have no religious affiliation, yet they say they are spiritual. The hospital administration was initially against the service, although it was proposed to be voluntary and interfaith The administration gave Rev. Schwing the go-ahead mostly because they didn’t want to un-invite the clergy and volunteers whom he had already invited.
The chaplain and his team thought 30 to 40 participants would count as a success. Yet, 150 people showed up.
Each participant was invited into the meditation room, where one of the team asked their name, their role in the hospital, and whether he/she could bless and hold their hands. Then the team member offered a blessing, particularized for the individual.
For example, a phlebotomist, who takes a patient’s blood, might have received this blessing:
May your hands be blessed. May they be calm and steady. May you be able to induce confidence in the people you serve. May you provide great health care, and may you also share of your heart and of your compassion. May your work contribute to the detection of diseases and in this way contribute to health.
May those who come here for healing be touched not just by your work, but by your being. May you find wholeness, and may you go home at the end of each day feeling blessed and feeling that you have contributed to the healing of the world.
Rev. Schwing and his staff and volunteers have now offered thousands of those blessings. People arrive stressed out, jaws set, and in “work mode.” By the end of the blessing, there are tears or smiles or both.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
