{podcast_episode 139}
What a joy to be standing in this pulpit for the first time since you ordained me into the Unitarian Universalist ministry last April. This is the stole you gave me as an ordination gift
and this is the first time I’ve worn it for preaching. This is also the first time I’ve stood in this pulpit since you voted in May to make me UUCB’s sixth community minister. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for these profound blessings.
As a community minister, I’m affiliated with UUCB, but the bulk of my ministry happens in the community, in my case at San Leandro Hospital where I serve as Spiritual Care Coordinator and Chaplain. At the hospital, I minister to people of every religious tradition and no religious tradition, people whose beliefs are similar to mine and folks whose beliefs are radically different. I love this work and, as you might guess, it’s a perfect job for a UU.
Our UU principles guide and ground my work, starting with our beloved first principle –
the commitment to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. As hospital chaplain, I serve everyone who steps onto hospital grounds – patients, visitors, and staff – from the custodians to the CEO. I love that spiritual care flattens the hospital hierarchy. To a chaplain, everyone is precious and worthy, regardless of beliefs, finances, language, education, skin color, age, gender, class, sexuality, and so on.
But while spiritual care uplifts the divine spark in everyone, hospital work reveals painful societal inequities –like diseases that could be prevented or better managed. if everyone had full access to the care they need. These situations break my heart every day.
Unitarian Universalism’s second principle calls us to justice, equity, and compassion. At the hospital, I look for ways to counter injustice directly, such as advocating for folks whose voices are muted. As chaplain, though, I bring another gift that counters injustice. By listening without judgment, by affirming each person’s experience, I let them know that they matter, that ultimately we are all equally precious.
My chaplaincy is also guided by our third, fourth, and seventh principles – but I’ll leave that part to you.
One question I’m asked frequently is how I spend my days surrounded by so much pain and suffering.
One answer is that the work itself comes with many gifts – moments of deep connection and meaning, joy and laughter and gratitude amidst the tears, ample opportunities to make a difference.
Another answer is a prayer that welled up in me a few years ago, that I say every day as I drive to the hospital. It goes like this:
May I be what’s needed
May I be of service
May I be a blessing
These simple words remind me of my deepest intentions. They help me return to center when I get thrown. You’ll notice that the three sentences overlap – each offers a slightly different framing.
Here’s what I hear:
May I be what’s needed
This is not about me. This is not about being brilliant or wise or creative or a model chaplain. This is about being what’s needed.
Sometimes that’s a warm blanket, an extra pillow, a box of tissues, a glass of water.
Sometimes it’s sitting silently, holding a hand.
Sometimes it’s singing.
Sometimes it’s listening for a long time, without saying much.
Sometimes it’s coming back later.
May I be what’s needed.
May I watch and listen and sense what’s needed in this moment by this person.
May I honor that.
May I respond as I’m able.
Part two:
May I be of service.
May I go beyond what’s needed to discern what else might be helpful to this person, at this time.
Service might involve religious support – arranging communion, bringing electric Shabbat candles, finding a prayer rug.
Service might involve taking a risk – asking a difficult question, speaking the unspoken,
naming the unnamable.
Service might be helping a patient or family think through a difficult decision.
And service might be much more basic, such as tracking down some apple juice or helping a patient cut up his food.
May I be of service.
May I watch and listen for what might help.
May I respond as I’m able.
May I be what’s needed
May I be of service
and the line that inspired this sermon:
May I be a blessing
A blessing. Seeking to be a blessing shifts something for me.
There’s something concrete about being what’s needed, being of service.
Striving to be a blessing makes room for mystery, for serendipity and synchronicity, for grace.
Desiring to be a blessing reminds me that I’m not in control; it encourages me to hold things a little more lightly.
Being a blessing is an act of openness, an act of love.
Striving to be a blessing connects me to something larger, to that interdependent web of existence in which things can unfold in uncanny and unpredictable ways.
Sometimes being a blessing depends on being in the right place at the right time, and usually, in chaplaincy at least, that’s not about planning. I can’t tell you how many times folks have said to me, “you came just when I needed you most,” leaving me flabbergasted and humbled, having no idea how that happened.
Being a blessing doesn’t necessarily involve doing anything. Sometimes it’s just about showing up. There are times when I sit with grieving families in silence while they do the praying, and they take care of each other. Sometimes I wonder if anyone notices I’m there, but, invariably, when it’s time to leave, the families shower me with hugs and thank yous and I’m left wondering, “what exactly did I do?”
Very simply, I was there – available if they needed something, willing to be with them in their anguish, letting them know by my presence that their grief mattered.
Whether my actions are actually a blessing is something I may never know, but striving to be a blessing reminds me of times when others have been a blessing for me, when a small simple action – sometimes just a word or a smile – has made a world of difference.
Now I’m using the word blessing as if we all know what it means and I know that for some of you, blessing is a zingy sort of word – a little too religious or touchy-feely or amorphous
and certainly, the word blessing is just a bit vague.
My analytical side would love to give you a clear, unambiguous definition, and I tried, really I did! But the more I tried to determine what makes something a blessing, the more slippery the definition became. Unfortunately, religious words are like that sometimes.
I’d like to say that a blessing is in the eye of the beholder, but even that’s problematic. So many blessing slide by without our noticing. Others come in disguise. Who knew, for example, that a rare infection that landed me in the hospital for a week back in 1997 would become a blessing in retrospect? Without that experience, I’d have no idea what it’s like to be a hospital patient – the lack of control, the boredom, the fear, the endless waiting. In fact, many of the hardest times in my life have become blessings to my ministry since they’ve given me compassion and insight as to what might help others. Blessings come in so many forms.
And so, with the imperfect and unsatisfying assumption that we might know a blessing when we see it, I ask you:
What have been some of the blessings in your life?
Where did they come from?
From someone you know?
From a stranger?
From a situation?
And, shifting to today’s theme: how have you been a blessing?
How have you been a blessing to those you know, to loved ones, to family and friends?
How have you been a blessing to those you don’t know?
How has your work been a blessing – both what you do and how you do it?
How do you bless your communities?
How do you bless the world?
What would it be like to walk through your day asking yourself, “How can I be a blessing today?”
Rebecca Parker encourages us to “choose to bless the world.” She writes, “The purpose of life… is to discover the joy or well-being that simultaneously pleases us and blesses our neighbor. Every act we commit is a contribution to the world; the question is whether our actions will be a blessing or a curse. The basic question of life is not, “What do I want?” but rather, “What do I want to give?”[1]
We cannot always be a blessing. Sometimes we need to just be. Sometimes the blessing is letting others care for us. Sometimes, miraculously, there’s a blessing in simply being our messy, weary, grumpy, painfully human selves. Blessings are not about perfection and they come in many unexpected forms.
That said, what would it be like to walk through your life with the intention of being a blessing, in the words of the Starr King chalice lighting, “accepting your gifts with grace and gratitude and using them to bless the world in the spirit of love.”
What would that be like?
In closing, I offer you my chaplain prayer:
May you be what’s needed.
May you be of service.
May you be a blessing.
May your life be a blessing.
Amen
1 p. 161. Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now. Rebecca Ann Parker (Robert Hardies, Editor). Skinner House Books, 2006.
Copyright © 2013, Rev. Sue Magidson. All Rights Reserved.
