For our closing worship service, my CPE intern group led an exercise in which all the chaplains who were gathered reflected on where they had found the sacred in the hospital. People were encouraged to write and draw where they had found God in their work there. I loved all the responses people came up with. Mine was as follows:
I have found God
in the hands of
the nurse who rubbed
the back of a grieving
mother for hours in
the middle of a long
night in the ICU.
I remember that night as I sat and stood in the room with a large group of family members who were watching their beloved 18-year-old son/brother/cousin die and saying their goodbyes. The mother was inconsolable, and I'm pretty sure that almost nothing I said (which was very little to begin with) made it through to her. It seemed as if the only thing that kept her from dying of grief in that moment, the only thing that kept her anchored in the room was the nurse who stayed right there with her and, for maybe 2-3 hours, never let go of her.
After the young man died and the family had gone, I walked back across the hospital and chanted quietly, "Om, shanti, shanti, shanti . . ."
