Homily from April 19,
2009
by Rob McGregor
Member of North Shore Unitarian Church, West
Vancouver, BC
robm@spiritwest.com
"Transitions"
Sometimes
in our lives events seem to mesh so that doors are opened and others
are closed, almost as if we were being directed somewhere in
particular. Chance? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Such
was the case in 1989 as I was doing my Masters of Divinity in an
Anglican Seminary. Part of my training was to spend 3 months working
in an institutional setting as a chaplain. I had planned to ride my
motorcycle to
Los Angeles
for my training. Had it all worked out. It was suggested to me that I
might want to check out the possibilities in
Hawaii
. I didn’t want to go to
Hawaii
so I made up excuses that really amounted to “I want to go to LA by
myself on my bike”. To make it all go away I said I would enquire
about
Hawaii
. So I did the minimum. I called
Hawaii
as the time frames were tight and it’s easy for someone to say no on
the phone. When I got off the phone an hour and a half later, I was
dumbfounded to report that I had just been offered a 1 year paid
internship subject to an in person interview. LA just seemed to
disappear from my radar screen.
I
scraped the money together and went to
Hawaii
for the interview but when I got there I found out there was a
miscommunication on the timing. The interview would not be till the
day before I was to leave. They talked to me a bit, gave me a tour of
the hospital and then left me alone. I had hoped they would take me in
and give me a place to stay. But they just said see you next
week.
I
was a struggling student and I had no way of paying the hotel costs
for the week so I went begging for a place to stay. On the
North
Shore
, at Mokuleia, I found a retreat center where, in return for mopping
floors and doing handyman chores I got room and board. I didn’t know
anyone, so, being the social animal I am I just started talking with
people. The people doing the behind the scenes work at the retreat
center were native Hawaiians. They were such amazing people. They
wanted to know about
Canada
, about my world. And hospitable! Wow. That week I was invited on a
Honolulu Fire Department fireboat, was invited to a church to join the
work crew cleaning gutters, and found out what the poorer people in
Hawaii
did to make ends meet. A priest associated with the retreat center
invited me for dinner and I helped him sort out what he would do after
retirement. The Hawaiian family who provided the food services adopted
me and the last night I was there, they assembled their church choir,
sat me down in the middle of the kitchen and for half an hour
serenaded me in Hawaiian. It was magical. I knew then that
Hawaii
and the people would be significant in my life.
When
the folks at my interview enquired as to where I had been for the week
and what I had done and seen I had a lot to report back. They
listened, somewhat dumbstruck. Finally one of the interviewers spoke
up and said that he had lived in
Hawaii
more than 25 years and had never gotten to do any of those things.
They gave me the job and told me that if I could be invited in like
that I would have no problem doing hospital chaplaincy. I didn’t let
them in on the thought that all I had done was show up for the
possibilities that life offered.
That
year in
Hawaii
was a time of great challenge and growth for me. I went to The
Queens’
Medical
Center
in
Honolulu
knowing that a hospital was a place of transition: from sickness to
health; from life to death. But I wasn’t aware that it would be a
transition for me in so many ways. I learned so much and struggled to
milk the experience for everything I could get from it. My theme song
for the year was John Mellencamp’s “Hurt so Good”. When the pain
of dealing with everything became too much I would go to the ocean and
just sit and cry and let the Aloha fill me, surround me, and heal me.
And it did. I have never felt so at home and so loved anywhere in my
life. As most people who have lived, and I mean really lived in
Hawaii
know, Aloha isn’t just a greeting, it’s a blessing and a way of
being in the world. And it exudes from the islands themselves if you
open yourself to its existence. When I went to
Hawaii
I thought it was just a place. When I left it had become part of me
and my journey.
I
want to tell you a little bit of that journey and how it fits in to my
being here speaking to you folks this morning. As I said I have a
Masters in Divinity and was on my way to becoming an Anglican minister
when I ran into the full disapproval of the hierarchy of the church:
in a nut shell I was too Unitarian for them. But that’s another
transition story that I won’t go into today. What I do want to tell
you about is some of the people and events that contributed to a
transformation in my life through a number of small transitions for
which I will be eternally grateful.
One
night while I was on call, I was paged with a message to get down to
the secure Psych ward. I hadn’t had any experience on that unit as
it was quite intense and one of the more experienced members of the
team covered the unit. I was asked to come STAT, (That’s medical
talk for move your buns) I was asked to come STAT as Abigail was
threatening to tear the place up…and she was capable of doing
exactly that. The message said I was to talk to the charge nurse
before I went in to see the patient.
I
got to the locked doors just as the charge nurse was letting herself
back in, so she took me aside and filled me in on Abigail and why she
was threatening violence. There had been a situation earlier in the
day in the ER where a woman lost her unborn almost full term baby due
to the severity of the beating she had received at the hands of her
boyfriend/pimp. The woman was Abigail’s roommate. It was explained
to me that Abigail had heard of the death and was quiet most of the
day but then had begun destroying things and threatening staff just
before the call came in for me to come down. The charge nurse said
that Abigail had said that the only person who could come near her was
a chaplain. I asked if there was anything else I needed to know. The
charge nurse said “Abigail is about 6 foot 4, weighs about 240, is a
prostitute and a transvestite.” Naively I asked What do I call her?
The charge nurse looked at me kind of funny like and said
“Abigail”.
I
thought: Right it’s what people believe about themselves that shapes
their reality. Why would I question that?
I
was escorted into a large somewhat dark room (Abigail didn’t want
any lights on). There was a love seat at one end and a matching chair
about 15 feet away from the love seat. I sat down beside 6 foot
something, 240 pound, able to destroy the ward, Abigail and introduced
myself. She turned towards me and our knees touched. I was scared. But
I began to relax as Abigail and I began a four hour journey of
exploring her rage and the hurt and disappointment of now never being
able to fulfill her true womanhood because of the death of her
roommate’s baby. I guided Abigail into her emotions of anger and
hatred and then would help her to come back to her sense of loss and
the love that triggered her grief and then her anger. Abigail went
with me on the journey, trusting me and letting me bring her to the
edge of her destructive feelings so she could express them in a way
that would not be self-destructive or threatening to others, including
the boyfriend/pimp. Abigail rode her pendulum between masculine rage
and destruction to feminine nurturing and lovingness, sometimes
melding the two into a fierce desire to protect through destruction
and punish with violence. In the end, as she hugged me gently, I could
see and feel that her feminine persona had won the battle that night.
Undoubtedly the war would rage again in her. As I hugged Abigail I
felt grateful to have been part of this four hour journey into the
sane and insane, strange but not so strange world of a transvestite
prostitute who was just a sweet tormented soul struggling to deal with
the challenges and tragedies of a life most people couldn’t even
imagine.
I
left the Secure Psych ward humbled by the privilege Abigail had
bestowed on me. I entered the ward that night naïve and in that
naivety unknowingly prejudiced. I came out more willingly
compassionate, less judgmental, and realizing we are all journeyers in
the strange process we call life. None are better, none are worse. I
was finally starting to get it that we all really do matter.
One
evening, again when I was on call, I wandered down to the ER as I
figured it ought to be real busy, but I wasn’t getting any calls. As
I stepped off the elevator I was almost run over by a gurney wanting
my elevator to get to the operating room as quickly as possible. As I
weaved my way through the seeming hordes of people into the ER the
level of activity was frenetic. I moved over beside one team of
medical staff working on what I saw was a man with a great hole in his
chest. I stood there a little overwhelmed with what I saw. As I
started to get my wits about me another ambulance stretcher rolled in
with a doctor shouting for nurses to help him STAT. The team I was
standing near disappeared to help the new case leaving the doctor by
himself with this open chest. He mumbled something and looked up when
he got no response. He looked around and saw that his team had left.
He looked at me and asked “Who the hell are you?”. I told him I
was a chaplain. He asked if I was any use. I said I was and he barked
“Not without gloves you aren’t”. I grabbed a pair of gloves and
as I put them on, the doctor looked up at me and said “Put your hand
in here and apply pressure, he’s bleeding out and I’ve got too
many other spots I have to take care of.” I put my hand inside a
human body.
Another
night, again in the ER on a crazy weekend night, a doctor came to me
and said “I have something unfair to ask of you. Some parents are
coming in and their son just died. I have to go to the Operating Room
for another trauma so I can’t be here to tell them, and the doctor
is supposed to be the one to inform about a death. Would you do that
for me?” I said yes, and he left.
As
I was waiting for the parents, I heard a commotion down the corridor
from the psych ER section. I walked down the hallway and looked into
one of the padded rooms. There was a young woman hurling insults and
abuse at an older couple who were standing there crying and holding
each other. The young woman, lying on the padded floor in a strait
jacket, looked at me and quite unpleasantly asked who I was. I told
her I was a chaplain. I saw in her eyes a message of willingness to
talk to me. I looked at her, turned, and walked out of the room. Just
as I arrived back in the main part of the ER, the parents I was
waiting for walked in and I told them about their son. I was with them
for several hours as they dealt with the shock.
The
next morning I walked into the Chaplaincy office in the hospital.
Several of my colleagues were sitting there talking about how crazy
the night before had been at the hospital. John asked me if I had seen
the morning news. A young woman had been released from the hospital ER
psych unit that morning and had thrown herself off an overpass into
the morning rush hour traffic on the H1 highway. It was the young
woman I had walked away from. As sad as I was for her, I knew that I
had made the right choice: I had helped where I could. And that had to
be good enough.
One
morning I was paged by the nurses on an intensive care ward. I arrived
to find 3 or 4 nurses in the staff room seeming quite upset. They were
concerned that the wife of one of the patients was out of touch with
the reality of her elderly husband’s prognosis. They told me that
there was absolutely no chance for this man to leave the ward alive,
but that his wife was constantly talking about when he left the
hospital all the things they would do together and the active normal
life they would lead. They wanted me to find out if she was really all
there or should they call in the psych unit.
I
went in to see the woman, and after we had talked for a while she said
“Rob, I know why you’re here. The nurses are worried about me that
I don’t know what is happening with my husband or that I might be a
little off my rocker.” I said that yes they were concerned for her.
And then she said “It’s my job to have hope. My husband always had
hope in our relationship and now he can’t manage it, so I have to be
hopeful for both of us. I am fully aware that he won’t be coming
home with me, but until he actually dies I will go on hoping and
letting him know that I am hoping for both of us. If I stopped hoping
I wouldn’t be doing my job as his wife.”
I
got a call just before he died and managed to arrive just in time. I
sat with them for a while, in silence. Suddenly she got up and started
packing his things and was quite matter of fact about it all. I said
something and she turned and said that she had been preparing for that
moment for quite some time and now it had come. She said “I lost my
husband quite some time ago. He’s gone and I will go on living.
I’m going to be OK.”
John is a special person in my life. He was a Roman Catholic
chaplain with whom I worked at Queen’s
Medical
Center
. What caught my attention with John was when, at the 3 month
evaluation process, he handed me a can of fruit cocktail. He invited
me to look at it as he described how I was like that can. Hard shell,
seemingly impenetrable, picture on the outside promising a richness
inside, but no apparent way in. I was shocked at how well he knew me.
And then I realized I didn’t know him at all. And I realized that I
didn’t know him because I had held him at a distance because he was
gay. That shocked and disappointed me. I owned my disrespect and
apologized to him and asked if he would be willing to give me a second
chance. I invited him to explore a new relationship based on
acceptance rather than my fear. He accepted. John patiently listened
to my journey from homophobia disguised as tolerance, to acceptance
and respect.
I
knew I had progressed when at the 6 month evaluation John gave me this
amethyst. He said you’re still rough on the outside, but it
doesn’t take much to find the beauty inside now. He also asked that
I be backup for him on the HIV/AIDS ward.
I
invited John to meet my family. My kids were the first kids he was
ever permitted to be around. Back home in
North Dakota
he was seen as a threat to children, a monster to be avoided. He came
to love my kids, and they loved him. John helped me to expand my heart
and my scope of acceptance and I helped John figure out that he was
good enough to be a Catholic priest even if he was gay. And I taught
him how to change the oil on his scooter.
All
these events happened a life time ago. But they have shaped my
thoughts, my beliefs and my actions for 18 years. They have helped me
to make good choices in difficult times, and they have reminded me
that no matter how tough it seems, people have dealt with more and
made it through. I value the learnings I gained in that short year.
And the place it happened is dear in my heart. I have been back many
times to nurture my soul in its aloha spirit.
Some
difficult family dynamics reared their ugliness through the events of
my mother’s death and the coming together of the family for her
memorial last summer. Old hurts and injustices were made new through
misinterpretations and fresh accusations. For months, I found myself
snapping at people; getting angry easily; that old fierce railing at
perceived injustices coming up in me, vigilant for a sniff of anything
to get indignant about. Not what I had been experiencing for almost 18
years. Imagine my disappointment when one day (or was it days) I woke
up to realize that some of the old rage that used to drive me had
oozed into my essence again. All this coming up to the point where I
wondered if I should be up in front of people talking, because I
didn’t feel like I had it all together. But then I remembered
Abigail. How, with all she had to deal with to be who she felt she
was, she persisted. I remembered the young woman who couldn’t do it
anymore and took herself out of life as we know it. I remembered the
wife who had hope even when having hope seemed futile to those
watching. I remembered John taking the time to see what was really in
me. I think about the transition I went through in those months in
Hawaii
, and I recall that life is like sailing. It’s not about getting
there, it’s about the journey. So I am encouraged to risk still
being the journeyer, learning and making mistakes, choosing to keep
trying. Asking forgiveness from others and from myself when I don’t
manage to tame my tongue in time. I resist the urge to believe that I
have to be perfect and I try to enjoy the fact that I’m not. I
struggle to find the grace to laugh at my own mistakes to relieve the
welling tears of disappointment so that ridiculous hope can rise up in
me again. I remember that if I don’t put on the gloves and get my
hands dirty I’m not much use to myself or others. And I coax myself
to look again for the beauty in people that Abigail taught me to see.
If I can see the beauty in you, I have a chance of seeing the beauty
in me. And then I can know that I’m OK too.
But
enough about me and my stories.
Where
in your life do you need to look for the beauty? In yourself…in
others? What about that difficult person that you have only been
feeling the irritation with?
What
do you feel like giving up on? What’s the challenge that seems like
too much to handle?
What
choice did you make that you cannot go back and change? What do you
need to do to leave it behind and move forward in your life?
Where
do you need to risk having ridiculous hope?
What
are you not prepared for and need to put on the gloves and risk
getting your hands dirty?
Where
have you been stalling? Resisting?
What
or Who do you ask to help you when you can’t find your way forward?
When you just need a little help to get pointed in the right
direction?
Transitions
aren’t maintenance free. They require work. They require
willingness: willingness to keep being aware; willingness to invest
and reinvest and then invest again; willingness to be afraid and act
anyways.
So
what’s the payoff? Keeping the sweetness in life…Finding a way to
make a valuable contribution……Knowing, really knowing that you are
OK; that your contribution matters. Then you can choose to act so you
can bring all that you are, all you are becoming and all that you do
to the table.
And
that is a beautiful thing.
Transition?
Simply put….It’s an opportunity taken.
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