Ten-Finger Exercises

articulated faith

Our hospice census is low right now. Usually I have at least eighteen patients, but now I'm down to eleven, and not all of them want my services. Of the recent admits, quite a few have died within a few days. Some of my long term patients have "graduated," that is to say, they're no longer eligible for hospice because they're getting better, not worse. Reasonably, Medicare doesn't want to pay a hospice benefit to people who looked like they were going to die but have now recovered nicely.

Being an introvert by nature, I find it difficult to always be starting out with new patients, always trying to develop rapport. A couple of weeks ago I met a patient I genuinely wanted to have hang around for a long time. Unfortunately, we never had a second visit, but I will always remember her.

When I first entered her living room, before I could even sit down, she said, "I'm not a religious person." (That's not an unusual thing to say, but usually it happens on the phone and is a prelude to "Please don't come. I don't need anything right now." Social workers and chaplains hear that often enough to not take it personally. Nurses never hear it.)

Helen was sitting in her recliner beside one of those Amish heaters that look like a fireplace. "I am an evolutionist," she continued. I nodded and said I also believe in evolution.

"My husband is one too," she said, "but not in the same way. He believes that God used evolution to create the universe, and so there is no conflict for him." I could agree with that too, but I kept quiet, waiting to hear what was different about what she believed.

"I'm not sure there is a God," she said, "at least not one who created the world. God is Love. I don't know about all the rest. Love is the only way we'll ever solve our problems in this world."

"I don't know about Jesus either," she went on. "I think the Jews made up a lot of those stories, like the Resurrection. That's not important to me. The important part is that Jesus is the only way we got to see God."

I was amazed. No one had ever articulated their faith to me so succinctly. She had really thought it out, and I congratulated her. I asked her if she believed in an afterlife, and she said, "No, not really. I'd like to. It's a nice idea, but no. I think this is it, and we have to do the best we can here."

I asked her if she considered herself to be a spiritual person. She said, "It's all the same thing, isn't it? Spirituality and religion?"

I told her no, that religion is more the tenets one believes, the way the story about the world and our place in it is told, and the rules of the faith. Spirituality, on the other hand, is what gives our lives meaning, what enlivens us and makes life worth while. Our spirituality may well be made up of certain rituals and practices that are part of our religion, but that isn't all it is.

For some people, the beauty and challenge of the natural world, nature, is a large part of their spirituality. Or music, or art, any creative activity. (We are co-creators with God, you know.)

She nodded as I talked on, and then said, "My spirituality is one of service. I was a nurse all my life, and helping people was what I did and who I was."

I am so sorry not to have heard more, to have had many more visits to learn how she came to this way of thinking, how she distilled her early Presbyterian beginnings to this personal and precious faith.