Ten-Finger Exercises

Callings

These incidents were playing around in my head as I tried to get to sleep, so I got up to write them. They weren't playing over and over like something I was obsessing about, more like little musical phrases that suddenly sounded like a tune, or like jigsaw pieces that might fit together. Then again, they might fit together while one might be of sky, and one of a boat and one of a waterfront bistro.

Here are the pieces. Yesterday I was called in to see a new hospice patient who was dying. I had met her before in an entirely different setting; and I knew that, although she had not been of my denomination, she had received communion regularly with two other women from a eucharistic minister from our church. She was no longer able to talk, and did not even appear aware of my presence. Her daughter and son-in-law were with her. I explained to them that I had met her on a couple of occasions as a hospital patient and also when I had filled in for the eucharistic minister to take communion to the ladies in the nursing home.

They immediately asked if we could have communion then, and so we did. I broke off the tiniest morsel and softened it in the wine in a spoon and put it to her lips. It was not so big that she would have to swallow it.

Her son-in-law, who had been a Catholic, asked if we had anything like last rites, and so we did the litany for the dying together.

The daughter was very happy that all this had happened. They had not considered calling their old pastor because the last time they had needed him, in a similar situation, he brought up the subject of the person's monetary pledge to the church and how it would be paid.

It was evidently clear to her that the sacraments had been important to her husband as well, and she suggested to him that maybe, if he'd like to, they should start going back to church, but this time, to his church.

Okay, that was one thing.

Today I met another new patient. She could speak, but hardly did. Her daughter stood on the opposite side of the bed, and we talked, including the patient but not requiring her answers. She had been a very active church-goer but left the church when some powerful members ran the minister off. I remembered the story and knew the minister. She said she had not missed the fellowship as much as the act of worship.

The church she was a part of was not a liturgical church where the service revolves around the eucharist. Nevertheless I asked her if she'd like to have me bring her communion. She cried. Yes, she would like that very much. They were getting ready for company soon, and I didn't have it with me. She agreed that next week would be good when the company went home.

That was the second thing.

The third is actually two things, but small ones. Someone (not the priest, who is out of town) asked me if I'd take over the pastoral care oversight for our church. And an Adventist pastor asked if I'd help with worship services at their retirement community.

None of these things fill me with joy and excitement, I'm sorry to say. I truly am sorry to say that. The first two, particularly, sound exactly like the sort of experience I'd list as "extremely rewarding." Maybe it's because I haven't felt very well this week that I can't get up much enthusiasm.

Here's the last piece.

I called the sister of another hospice patient today, having met her before, a long time ago. (I'll refer to her as Marge.) As we talked, she told me of an experience, many years ago, of feeling "a calling" to befriend a woman who was dying. The dying woman was not someone who ever confided her troubles to anyone; the woman I spoke on the phone to had been the same. They had never been close, until then. During that year, the dying woman was able to open up in ways she never had, and Marge knew her instinct had been right. After the woman's death, she took hospice classes and became a volunteer. She felt she did some good, but never again that she had that special calling.

Now that her brother is dying, she is again aware of her gift. She told me that she is the artistic one, the one who plays the piano and cries and writes poetry; he is the one who, when something bad happened, mowed the lawn and told her she was nuts.

She talks on the phone to him for an hour every day, she says. He has begun to talk about "the switch that turned off" in him when he was a little boy and their father left them.

She invited me to drop by and read poetry with her. She said that that is the best part of writing it, reading it aloud to someone else.

Callings, and servanthood, and poetry. I'm in there somewhere, but I'm being quiet. I'm not shouting out, "Send me!" Not yet, anyway.

P.S. There were no big 'Aha's' in what I wrote, except for this: to go to bed without having blogged felt sort of like I'd been going off to sleep without saying my prayers.