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What is community chaplaincy all about?
A letter about communicating the significance of community chaplaincy to other health care professionals.
The writer shares her thoughts about community chaplaincy in a letter to the president of CAPPE. Even though the Ontario Multifaith Council has significantly developed the idea of community chaplaincy, the writer broadens the concept to include programs in residences and group homes where outpatients live.
Dear Marcia,
To try to describe what we do in linguistics that may be comprehended by the medical model folk tends to diminish their value.
To describe what we do in terms of the spiritual dimension causes many to react with suspicion, denial, confusion, even fear.
What works best for me to teach others what I do is to rely on experience as the teacher. To gain trust and acceptance amongst my medical model peers is slow, time-consuming, largely non-verbal. It is to demonstrate what I do by doing it, by being in the context in my own individual way, by being constant, non-threatening, openly acknowledging my equations and my lack of certainty, my powerlessness.
This stuff is hard to account for on a page of statistics or a QA form. It is a quality we're trying to measure, not a tangible thing. Perhaps we need to learn from art critics, how they can verbalise a measure of the value of any piece of art.
The staff, the patient/clients and outsiders too, all learn about faith, commitment, spiritual values, community, by experiencing it at work. Top this end I have encouraged our Community Case workers to call on me to deliver Memorial Services in the residences where our outpatients live. This enables me to be seen in action in places where no religious worker is to be found. This brings me into contact with other community professionals, and certainly would not have funds to provide for such a service. So they have an opportunity to experience the healing that comes from a religious ritual, and hopefully may remember to call again for a similar service or better het, to ;push for the hiring of a Community Chaplain to visit on a more regular basis.
That this method of advocacy for community chaplaincy is effective is proved by the fact that requests for these services are coming in more frequently. So I see that education through this experiential model is effective.
I don't know whether we need to fear other disciplines taking over our work, as is suggested by changes in the training of nurses which effect an understanding of the healing power of time, presence, and listening. Nurse improve their skills by taking learnings from us, but they are still 'Nurses'. The mystique of the chaplains's role is unique to us. Nurses are still just nurses, even when they have learned to listen well. What is laid on us by the expectations, the vision, of the patient/client gives us our potency as spiritual healers. This comes to us out os an archetypal sort of knowledge of the 'holy' embodied in every person. We are privileged b y this expectation which lies in every human's spiritual centre.
Marcia, I have become a member of the District Health Council for York Region. This is a political body established to make recommendations to the Ontario Government about the establishment of community facilities to support those needing health care outside the institutions. As prepare myself for our first meeting today, I am thinking that the issues of greatest importance to the outpatients I deal with is the education of the public about health care issues.
My outpatients are fragile, and they are sent out to communities where the people have a deep fear of those who appear to be 'different', and who therefore react in an unhelpful way, being unable to accept and support. This reaction effectively prolongs and exacerbates the abuse already experienced by the clients. So from my point of view, it is the education of the public that is primary importance in preparing the community to accept my clients.
In like manner, it is in education the public the values inherent in traditional religious practice, to the necessity of the human person to possess a vehicle for expressing his/her spirituality, that is important. Also to warn of the diminishment of one's possibilities for growth and development that results from the denial of one's spirit.
The timelessness of our classical literature and art results from the portrayal of spiritual values through story and other forms of expressions. They describe the human longing for truth and justice in vehicles acceptable to humans because they speak to all humans. In contrast, our religious treatises often divide the 'good' and the 'bad' in terms of allegiance to one specific religious group and this tendency destroys the idea of the universality of human ideals of the 'good'. Here is an issue we must Address in order to show that chaplains are able to build community in diverse populations, and that therefore chaplains are a valuable asset to any community whether that community is defined by a territory or a culture.
When we speak of ministering to a 'community' we need to be aware that that community is made up of pockets of various cultural influences. We chaplains need to emphasize our ability to transcend cultural differences. To work on a human level, to find the truths that are valid for any and every cultural group and thereby brings cohesiveness to the larger populace. We need to be able to use our rootedness in our own faith group for personal strength, but to understand religions from a larger perspective to see how various religions address those common human spiritual values, to find the singleness of the human spirit as expressed by a variety of religious groups.
Maureen Soukoreff is the Chaplain at Queen Street Mental Health Centre, Toronto.
Posted by editor on September 30, 2003 10:03 AM