Eldorado

UNIVERSALIST CHURCH

(Unitarian Universalist Association)

 

 

 

Where Is God In Suffering

by Donne Hayden

Good Questions, Bad Answers

On Saturday, March 17, I was the on-call chaplain at Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati. My shift began around 7:30 p.m. when I arrived at the hospital, stowed my suitcase in the tiny bedroom off the chaplain’s office, put on my white chaplain jacket, and retrieved the on-call pager from its drawer. About 7:45, I began my rounds, going first to the Emergency Room, then the Intensive Care Unit, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the Coronary Care Unit and the Neurological Intensive Care Unit—different floors of the hospital, but all places where a crisis might occur during the night. In each place, I left a slip of paper with my name and pager number on it, or wrote them on a white-board by the Unit Clerk’s desk.
Ordinarily, I simply check in with each unit and then return to the chaplain bedroom where I wait: watching television, reading, or even sleeping, though never very well. At any time during the night I may be called to go be with the family of someone who is dying. My job is to go where they are and simply be there; if they wish me to stay, I stay. If they wish me to leave, I leave. Most nights are quiet, thank goodness, but March 17 was not one of those nights.
As I made my rounds that night, I rode up in the elevator with two women. One of them spotted my name tag, which says “Associate Chaplain,” and said, “Oh, you’re a chaplain. Could you go visit my husband?”
“Of course. What’s his name and what room is he in?”
“Max Wentworth. He’s in 1521.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I finish my rounds,” I promised as I got off the elevator.
Two floors up, I stopped at the waiting room outside ICU to introduce myself to any families waiting there and to let them know I was available through the night. In one family, a woman immediately asked, “Oh, can you visit our sister in Room 720? She’s a good Christian and I know she’d like to see a chaplain.” The patient wasn’t in ICU, but simply on the same floor, but I promised to stop by after my rounds.
About 8:30, I went to the 15th floor to visit with Max Wentworth, a young man about 30 who was scheduled for back surgery the next morning. In the room with him were the two women I had met in the elevator—his mother and his wife, who had given birth to their first child four days earlier. They were Catholic, but were okay with my being a Protestant chaplain. I stayed for a while and at their request, offered a prayer for Max and his surgery. When someone asks for prayer, it’s usually because they are believers, and I try to pray appropriately for the person, depending on their faith tradition—Christian, Jewish, Moslem. Here is a general, all-purpose kind of prayer I say at times like this:
Gracious God, you are loving and caring and we trust you. Help us to know that you strengthen and hold us at all times. We give thanks for this place of healing and for the devotion of those who give medical care. Grant to Max a strong faith, an inner peace, and a calm spirit as he approaches and goes through the operation. We give ourselves to your loving care. Amen.

After visiting with Max and his family, I went down to the 7th floor to visit Marie Smith, who, it turned out, was a charismatic Christian. She put some questions to me to see if I would do—when I assured her that I was a Quaker and that Quakers believe that the same Spirit that moved among the disciples on Pentecost still moves today, she decided I would do. We visited a while and this time when I prayed, I mentioned Jesus, knowing it would be important to her.
Back in the chaplain’s bedroom by about 8:30, I had just settled in when my pager went off. I responded to a call from the 11th floor, the regular cardiac unit. One of their patients had decided to be taken off life support, and she wanted to see a priest to receive the anointing for the sick (formerly known as “last rites”). Only priests are allowed to perform this anointing, but Father Niklas, my supervisor and the only priest at the hospital, was in Oregon at a Catholic chaplains’ conference. I told the nurse that he was gone, but I would try to find another priest who would come. I called three priests whose names and numbers were given as alternates for Father Niklas, but none responded at 9:00 on a Saturday night. I went up to the floor, dreading having to tell the patient and her family that no one was available to perform this last ritual, so important to Catholic believers. What further anxiety would it add to her dying? I wondered. What additional fear or sorrow would it mean to her and her family? When I met the nurse in the hallway, however, she told me she had checked the woman’s chart and Father Niklas had performed the anointing service a few days earlier. “So she’s cleared for take-off,” I said, deeply relieved that I could take that news to the patient and her family.
I went to the room where the patient, an elderly woman, struggled for breath. Her daughter and son-in-law were with her, the daughter weeping. I sat with them for a while and read the 23rd Psalm and John 14 and then prayed for her. The patient kept saying how much she appreciated my coming, as though I had done her a favor. It felt odd to have her so grateful when I had done and could do so little for her. It soon became too much for her to have me there; she needed to focus on what she was doing. I told the family I was on-call all night if they should need anything and excused myself to leave them alone.
As I stood talking with the nurse down the hall, my pager went off again. This time it was the hospital operator who said a woman had called wanting to speak to one of the chaplains. She was suicidal and needed to talk to someone. He gave me her phone number and I went down to the chaplain’s office to make the call. I tried for twenty minutes or so, but her line was busy. It occurred to me that, if she were truly suicidal, she might have taken her phone off the hook. I called the operator back to see if he had other information on her, but he didn’t. I told him the phone number where I was and told him if she called again, to put her through to me.
About 10:00 p.m., the phone rang. It was the suicidal woman who had clearly been drinking. She told me her sister had died two weeks ago at Good Samaritan, and Debbie, one of the regular chaplains, had been helpful and supportive. “I never drink,” she said, “but I started drinking two weeks ago. I want to die and be with my sister. She was ten years younger than me. How could she die? Why would God let her die like that?” I talked with the woman for about 30 minutes, and by the time we hung up, she had calmed down and seemed reassured. (I had Debbie call her on Monday.)
I had just dropped off to sleep when my pager went off again. It was a little after midnight and a patient in ICU, scheduled to be taken off life support the following morning, had decided he could suffer no longer. I wrote down the name and room number and realized I had met the patient, Gilbert, and his family the Wednesday before, the last time I was on-call. The family was not religious, but Gilbert had begun talking about seeing Jesus and had requested prayers. He had asked for a King James Bible for people to read to him. A sweet man, he was popular with the nurses, and clearly was well-loved by his family. Each time I passed the ICU waiting room, his large family was well-represented in the waiting room. He had been “ready to go” for quite some time, his wife, Susan, told me.
By the time I got dressed and went up to ICU, Gilbert was off the respirator and struggling to breathe. Once life support had been withdrawn, Gilbert had stabilized; he may have been ready to die, but his body held on for some time. I could be of no use to him, but Susan seemed to expect me to stay, so I stayed for her. She perched on the bed, holding his hand, crying and murmuring over and over, “It’s okay, Honey. I’m here. You’re okay, Honey.” For the entire time I was there, she comforted him and cried. Finally, around 3:00 a.m., Gilbert was quieter, and she was calmer. When it was clear this could go on for several more hours, and there was nothing I could do, I told Susan I was available if she needed anything. She thanked me and said I had been a lot of help.
Back in the chaplain’s room, I read for a little while, trying to calm down enough to sleep. I dozed off, but around 4:15 a.m. the pager went off again. This time, it was Labor and Delivery—a Catholic woman had just given birth to a baby that would not survive, and the family wanted it baptized before it died. I had never baptized anyone before, and in retrospect, may not have been qualified. I found the materials for infant baptism—a bottle of Holy Water, a small white shell, and the printed ritual liturgy.
Upstairs, the mother was still in OR, but her husband and parents were in the room with the tiny baby. The mother had lost the first twin two weeks earlier, so the family was prepared for this second loss. The baby was christened Annabelle, and only the young father who held her cried.
In the hospital lobby on my way back to the chaplain’s room, I met some of Gilbert’s family who were leaving. I asked about him and they said he was still hanging on—“He’s a fighter,” they said. “He’s struggling.”
“Yes, “I responded. “It’s hard work dying—sometimes it’s almost like labor, like the person is struggling to be ‘born’ into death.” I have no idea what they thought of this comment—perhaps we were all too tired for it to make much difference.
It took me several days to recover from loss of sleep; I’m not sure I have yet covered from the sustained presence of pain, suffering and sorrow I encountered that night. In the article I read from earlier, Rev. Brock remarks that inside a hospital “The pain and suffering that has before seemed ‘second-hand’ comes charging into a life-setting with such force and intensity that one stands dazed, numb, and in shock.” Working as a chaplain has brought home to me questions about suffering that have always caused problems for human beings who want to believe in the traditional Christian God. Rev. Brock phrased the dilemma this way: “People may no longer be sure that God is ‘in control.’ There may be simply too much circumstantial evidence to contrary to allow one to feel at home in the universe.” And in this book, Paul Alan Laughlin says:
Simply put, the sticky question is this: if there is only one God, and if this one God is both Creator or and Ongoing Provider for the world—in other words, is really in charge of it all—how is it possible to account for the existence of evil [and suffering] in the first place, much less its persistence? To make matters worse, how can we explain the fact that evil befalls the undeserving and helpless, bringing unmerited and often unremitting suffering? (57)

Good question. The only good answer is “I don’t know,” and this is the answer Father Niklas encourages chaplains to use freely. “I don’t know.”
The truly remarkable part of all this is that human beings continue to believe in God or in something greater than themselves, whatever you want to call it, in spite of having no answer to ringing questions about suffering and evil. This is the great Mystery.