Hospital teaches healing of the soul
Head bowed and eyes closed, Mary Margaret Earl asked God's blessing on an older woman lying in bed at Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center. "We lift up our prayers and hopes that her body will find continued healing as she journeys home," Earl prayed.
The woman was expecting to be discharged from the Boston hospital soon, her leg encased in a foam cast, on the mend after she fell at home. Earl, who is preparing for the Unitarian Universalist ministry, had visited the woman in the past.
"You're always smiling," the woman said as she thanked Earl. "That's a good thing."
Of course, there are days when those who minister to the sick and dying show tears instead of smiles. Earl recalled a nocturnal vigil in the neonatal intensive care unit with a mother whose sick baby lingered for several hours and then died.
"There wasn't a lot to say," Earl said. "It was just sort of being with her, so that this person didn't feel alone."
Helping the ill is a part of ministry even for those who don't work as hospital chaplains. Religious denominations increasingly are requiring clinical pastoral education of candidates for ordination. The two-decades-old clinical pastoral program at St. Elizabeth's has earned a national reputation. It was one of the first such programs accredited by United States Catholic authorities, and as part of a hospital network, St. Elizabeth's can tap unusually ample resources for its teaching, said Sister Kay Sheskaitis, a nun in the Immaculate Heart of Mary order, who is with the national bishops' Commission on Certification and Accreditation.
Earl is one of five students who have gone through St. Elizabeth's full-time, five-day-a-week program this year. There are also part-time programs that meet a couple of days each week. All teach the essentials of soul work, from theology to psychology, that complement the physical healing of health care.
"We can be an arm for the physicians . . . to help this patient go home with some inner coping skills, not just a prescription for penicillin," said Sister Mary Anne Gallagher, a supervisor in the program.
"I don't care what they're going to be doing" in ministry, whether it's health care work or not, she said. Learning how to help people through some of life's greatest stresses teaches students about themselves, she said, and that's something "they need to come to grips with before they're ever going to be able to enter into the space of another's suffering."
Indeed, Rabbi Ilene Lerner Bogosian, a former student, said the insights she gained helping patients navigate crises came in handy when she counseled the troubled in her former job as a campus chaplain at Wellesley.
Though St. Elizabeth's is a Catholic institution, its clinical pastoral education program takes students of all faiths, including the already ordained and those preparing for ordination. The program is also accredited by the multifaith Association for Clinical Pastoral Education.
Neither Bogosian nor Earl found themselves chafed by the values of the institution training them. "I don't agree with everything the Catholic tradition advocates, and vice versa," Bogosian said, "but that hasn't been an issue."
At any rate those moments of helping others transcend denominations. Bogosian's most profound experience in the program came at the end of a long, tiring day, when she was asked to help a Russian Jewish woman whose father was dying. It wasn't a scheduled visit -- she almost left, after being unable to locate the daughter -- but Bogosian finally tracked down the woman and accompanied her to the room, where the woman's father was asleep.
The family was not versed in Judaism, so Bogosian explained some Jewish tradition about death. As a nurse checked on the slumbering patient, the rabbi and the daughter began discussing the family's history.
"We were talking about the wonderful legacy that this man had given his family by bringing them to this country, a place where his grandchildren, this woman's children, were able to get education in Jewish tradition, and a lot of other things, and many other opportunities," she said. "And while we were having that conversation, the nurse turned around and gave me a look. The patient died at that moment."
The daughter reached out and grabbed Bogosian's hand, wanting another person there at that moment. In the ensuing minutes, Bogosian alternated between sitting with the woman and leaving her to be alone.
"This isn't a science, though it's informed by science. There's an art to this, too," she said. In the end, she remembers how they talked during the man's final moments. "I'd like to believe that our conversation was a help to him, to let go."
Rich Barlow can be reached at rbarlow.81@alum. dartmouth.org.
