A No Win Situation

    Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation in
    which there is no possible way to succeed. What
    are we supposed to learn from those experiences?
    To avoid them? To endure them? To make the best
    of them? Or is there another lesson lurking in the
    failure?

One of the hoops that I was required to jump through in seminary was a 10 week stint as a chaplain intern at a hospital. Clinical Pastoral Experience (CPE) was designed to introduce us to working with people who were sick and/or dying. But CPE was also used as a means to expose each intern to the personal issues within us as we ministered to people. In addition to meeting patients and serving their spiritual needs, six of us would meet with a full-time Chaplain to review our work. The goal, it seemed to me, was to have each intern break down and sob in front of the group so they could be lifted up and supported. Definitely not my learning style.

 I didn’t like being a chaplain. I didn’t like going into a room and asking if someone needed some kind of spiritual tending. I am extremely thankful for the men and women who do this kind of ministry every day in the military, at hospitals and at care centers. But for me it seems too impersonal. It’s spiritual care based on the model of medical care in our culture. Each component of a patient’s health (mental, physical and emotional/spiritual) is handled by different teams of experts that are each trying to fix what’s wrong with the patient. Maybe I didn’t understand what was really expected of me but it seemed like I was being asked to join in a team effort to treat what was wrong with each patient.

Feeling ill-equipped for this role I spent my days  doing the bare minimum to pass my CPE course. I would see the people who requested visits and chart anything I thought was significant to help the doctors. I would meet the new patients on my assigned floors. Then I would hide out in the medical library or a visitor’s lounge and write verbatims (word for word transcriptions of visits I did with patients) for my group of peers to pore over and critique.  

 I feel bad about hiding when so many people needed help but I was certain that a 10 minute chat with a seminary student wasn’t going to do much more than calm them down for the rest of the afternoon. Maybe that was enough for that moment but I could see they needed more. Most patients on my floors were dealing with life-threatening ailments like cancer, brain tumors, diabetes or emphysema. Whenever I entered a room I frequently sensed two competing expectations: One was the expectation that I was there to heal them. The second was that I would do it as quickly and efficiently as possible. What they wanted was a  quick fix. What they needed was a healing presence that lasted more than 10 minutes. Very often, what they needed was for someone to walk with them slowly through their suffering.

The trouble was that I wasn’t able to do either of these things.

I have seen the power of grace at work to calm and relieve an anxious heart instantly so I know that spiritual healing can come quickly. But all too often a carefully chosen quotation from the Bible can come across as trite and meaningless, especially to someone struggling with their faith. We tend to use Bible verses and theology like spiritual Band-Aids when the patient is hemorrhaging.  We want them to work like magic because we are just as uncomfortable in the presence of suffering as the person to whom we seek to give aid. While I was comfortable reading scripture to those who requested it, I didn’t have a go-to verse that miraculously set everything right.

Neither did I have the time to sit and chat about seemingly trivial matters and let the bonds of companionship grow. I know I can’t be all things to all people. But I met a lot of people who had no one in their lives who truly knew them. Sometimes it was because the person who did know them passed away. Sometimes it was because they were guarded and didn’t ever let anyone get to know them. Sometimes it was because they had been abandoned by family and friends for various reasons.  All I know is that I couldn’t give them the time and attention they needed to feel loved.

In CPE I was put in a situation where I was set up to fail. It was not possible for me to give people what they wanted the most and what, at some level, they needed the most.

I thought that parish ministry was the answer to that dilemma. In parish ministry I would be able to take the time to get to know people. But I am finding that the conditions that existed in CPE now exist in the congregation. The demands of my job restrict the time to truly connect with the 1300 people in my congregation or even a significant fraction of them. And while applying scriptural Band-Aids is all that many people seem to want; something to patch up their spiritual dis-ease, I don’t feel comfortable leaving it at that. I don’t believe faith is meant to work like that.

So is there some lesson that I’m missing in all of this? 

Waiting & Suffering

Yesterday I wrote about blazing trails through life and about not waiting for a clearly outlined path to appear before moving forward. But there many places in the Bible that exhort us to “Wait upon the Lord.” (Job 14, Psalms 27, 33, 37, 38, 40, 119, 130, Isaiah 8, 26, 30, 64, Lamentations 3, and Romans 8 for a quick list) So what does that mean? When are we supposed to wait and when are we supposed to forge ahead?

In the English language we use the word “wait” in a few different ways. First, we use it to mean anticipation or a looking forward to some event. We wait for the light to turn green at an intersection. We wait for the food in the microwave to be heated. We can be doing other things while we wait but when we wait we are acknowledging that time has to pass before the event happens.

A second way we use the word “wait” is when we talk about predator and prey. An animal lies in wait for the prey to come close enough to attack. A mugger lies in wait for a victim to pass by. Still, there is a sense that time has to pass and certain conditions need to be met before the event happens.

The third way we use the “wait” in English is when we talk about serving tables. While there are places in the Bible that talk about waiting tables, the original Hebrew and Greek use different words to indicate this action. The passages that tell us to “wait upon the Lord” are not telling us to serve a meal to God.

Most of the passages in scripture that exhort us to “wait upon the Lord” are found in the wisdom literature (Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations). We also see it a few times in some of the prophets (Isaiah, Hosea and Micah). And in the New Testament it is fairly uncommon, appearing only in Romans 8 and Hebrews 6.

The exhortations to “wait upon the Lord” seem to serve as advice in situations in which a person or a community is ready to give up. On the verge of despair they are ready to give up any hope that their situation will get better. Every admonition to “wait upon the Lord” is an encouragement to hold on to hope and to keep looking for the way out of the suffering that God will provide.

But there is another thing that this exhortation does. It discourages me from seeking vengeance and blazing a trail for my own salvation. “Waiting upon the Lord” means that I will not become the one who lies in wait. It means that I refuse to become the predator or the perpetrator making those who oppress me into the prey or the victims.

One of the things that my wife and children have been good about keeping private is that I suffer from occasional bouts of road rage couple with Situational Tourette’s Syndrome (a self-diagnosed condition where I find myself using publicly inappropriate language to vent frustration due to external circumstances).  Sometimes I find myself frustrated beyond belief at being stuck in the lane that isn’t moving on the expressway. I envision pulling onto the shoulder and speeding forward with complete disregard to the safety of everyone on the road. I can also find myself on the verge of losing it when someone else is driving like a maniac, swerving in and out of traffic, tailgating and being a hazard to everyone on the road. Sometimes I catch myself driving like it's my responsibility to teach that person a lesson by blocking the road or giving them a taste of their own medicine.

Most of the time, however, I let such drivers go past while delivering a stern lecture to them from inside my vehicle. I call them names that I won't repeat here. This is a form of waiting. Certainly not the patient and calm waiting that I imagine that I am "supposed" to do, but it is a form of waiting nonetheless. I wait on the Lord to deliver me from this frustrating, anxiety producing experience. Once or twice I have had the pleasure of finding the idiot driver pulled over by the police farther up the road. Even though I had nothing to do with them being pulled over I feel vindicated and exultant. But even when they aren't punished for their actions I know that by waiting, the moment passed and I did not participate in making the situation worse.

When the Bible tells us to “wait upon the Lord” it’s almost always in connection to finding relief from suffering. (Admittedly, thinking that traffic delays and unsafe drivers are a form of suffering is relative but all suffering is relative to the person it affects.) Waiting is an admonition to avoid becoming a vigilante justice system to those who are responsible for my suffering. It is a reminder that I can actually endure more suffering than I ever want to go through. Waiting upon the Lord is a way to adjust my mental framework from within my suffering so that I can continue forward and not add to the suffering already in the world. Waiting is hoping and having faith that things will change.

Perhaps waiting is simply a way to be reminded that it’s not all up to me. Maybe the admonition to “wait upon the Lord” is to get me into the right frame of mind to watch for the signs that tell me the time is right to take action. What if “waiting on the Lord” is about moving us out of the anxiety and panic that comes with suffering and places us in a more reflective and reasonable state of mind so that we can clearly see the way out of our suffering when the time and conditions are right? Isn't that better than causing more suffering?