More on: chaplain

Becoming involved in a poem, allowing the lines to unfold, not knowing if there’s going to be a surprise, a turn, or deepening—this is very similar to being with a patient or family as a chaplain when I don’t have all the answers. Part of my job is to sit with them in uncertainty. It’s a big white space.

Chaplaincy was magnificent, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

While my brother and I waited for our father to die, which took longer than we thought it would, one of the hospital’s chaplains came in to visit us. Her name was Cynthia, and the first thing she did was read some passages from The Book of Common Prayer as we stood around our father—…