Going Home (Alone)

As a hospital chaplain, death is a regular part of my job. More times than I care to remember, I have sat by a bedside, and watched someone die. More times than I care to remember, I have held sobbing family members in my arms as they grieved the loss of a loved one. More times than I care to remember, I have given the "after death" spiel; "Take all the time you need. Is there any one I can call for you? Which funeral home have you chosen?"

It is hard to sit with families and watch someone die, but that is not the hardest part of my job. Sitting and watching and waiting is a contained experience, and everyone knows what to do. The only question at this point is, "When?" This is a communal activity. Everyone in the room is tied to each other by the same thing--the death of the person on the bed.

The really hard parts come after the death. From the last breath onward, nothing is well defined. The story writes itself during the death. Everyone has to continue the story in their own way after the death, and each story is going to be different, so you cannot look over your neighbor's shoulder, figure out what they are doing, and copy them, even if the "neighbor" is your spouse.

Usually after a death, I stay with the family for a while, then I go upstairs and chart the death. I don’t have to do this part. Once they are dead, they are no longer a patient, but I want there to be a record, even if only a few sentences, of their passing. If I have been called in for a late night emergency, I head downstairs, and out to my car after charting.

Nine times out of ten I run into the family, who is also leaving the hospital at this point. I am going home to a family, my warm bed, and usually a few more hours sleep. I am heading back to the familiar.

The family of the deceased does not have that luxury. They are heading into entirely new territory. Husband and wives go home to empty beds, parents go home to empty chairs at the dinner table, children go home to an empty house. Everyone goes home with a hole in their lives. And there is no book to tell them how to fill that hole. There are no tapes they can buy which will unexcavated the emptiness. Even God, for many people, appears now primarily by absence, and not by presence.

I watch them go out to their cars, and then I grieve for them, for they know not what manner of storm will sweep over them in the form of unrequited loss. I grieve for them, for they go alone; even when they go in groups, they go alone, for grieving is a uniquely isolating experience, and it brooks no cohorts. I grieve for them, for they will face a new tomorrow that is defined now by what they have lost, and what they will never have again.

Musings of a Spiritual Madman

By accident or design…religions reinforce and then exploit our early developmental tendency to project our souls’ innate self-transcending intelligence outside of our ourselves onto others. Instead of guiding us to recognize our own personal relationship to the Spirit, they claim the spiritual authority we give away. …In accepting what we are told, we become disempowered. As the innate qualities of our souls are discouraged, denied or rejected, we unconsciously become angry and brittle. This revenge of the unconscious that results from the denial and suppression of our real selves shows up outwardly as emotional and psychological inflexibility. We advocate a categorical morality, rather than a deep moral sense, and we come controlling, self-righteous, judgmental, and intolerant.

--Richard Moss


There was a time when I was looking for The Answer—The Thing I Needed to Know Which Would Make Sense of the Rest of My Life. I was looking for a stable place to rest my faith, and sometimes it any stable looking place in a storm would do. I was looking for some kind of spiritual authority, so that I would not have to take that responsibility myself.

Of course the whole problem was that I was floating in a sea of delusion, and anything I grabbed onto as an authority was ALSO floating with me in the same sea. It was just that hanging on to something that seemed stable felt a lot better than floating.

By not taking responsibility for my own faith I was prey to a variety of "easy answers," even though I am not sure I believed in them. A few years ago I began to realize that I was scared to let people know what I really did believe. At the time I was a preacher, and when the preacher cannot really preach what he believes... well that is a scary place to be. Eventually I stopped preaching. I started attended Zen Meditation sessions, and joined a Quaker meeting.

If I had preached honestly, I would have preached something like this: “Stop looking for the answers in the Bible, or in your preacher, or in some moral code. Look for the answers in yourself. You know, if you will just have the courage to look. Use the stories of the Bible to locate your place in the universe, but use them as story guides, not as authoritative guidance.”

What I could not say then, was that I see this huge spiritual world out there…everything is connected, yet all parts have separate roles. There is no REAL Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism or Pagan, there are only forms of ways of trying to approach or avoid the work of God within us. It is all one, and each feeds the other, or can if you let yourself get fed by an "outside source."

My interest in Buddhism developed through my interest in self change. Buddhism is a practice that can lead to enlightenment (self understanding). To me, it is the whack on the side of the head that lets you know you have been sleepwalking, and tells you it is time to WAKE UP!

My interest in Christianity is the revealed nature of God in humanity. In Jesus we get a glimpse of what that "God" looks like in human form, but unfortunately we make him an idol to worship, not an example to follow. His story gets covered with ways to try to build up his reputation--to make Him more "worshipable"--so people end up impressed, not by who he is, but by what he did.

My interest in Tarot and I Ching is in flow of the universe, the flow of time and space, and how when I do this over here, it affect that over there.

Two falls ago, when I was separated, I laid tarot cards to try to get a handle on what would happen with My various relationships. The cards laid in a way that helped me see that one move would be a move toward ruin of a certain kind. I was also able to see in the cards that moving toward my wife gave me the possibility of a renewed life. I don’t think the placement of the cards were accidental, and yet I also think that everything I learned that day came from deep within me, and not from the cards. The cards merely helped me see what I really wanted to see. “One of the remarkable qualities of our living universe is that it is self-reflexive. Whatever we project onto it is what it shows us.” Richard Moss again.

Right now I have no plans to “settle down” into one religious expression. I hope my son and I can continue our Zen Sittings. I will continue at sitting with Quakers. I will do my part as a chaplain and as an Ordained Presbyterian Minister. Frequent meditation and occasional casting of cards will tell me something about what is within me, it will help me form and understand my story. And then it will help me abandon that story, so that I am not tied to it.

Beginnings

I hate beginnings. My goal is to be halfway down the path before I ever start. And of course the problem with a blog is I feel the need to say something "deep" and "meaningful."

Maybe I should just go get a cup of coffee.