Chaplain service is a key component of hospice care. In fact, medicare requires hospice agencies to offer chaplain assistance for all patients and their families. Bereavement care must extend for a year after the patient dies.
Since we at Texas Hospice emphasize spirituality as one of our three pillars (quality and physician-directed care are the other two), we care very much which people function as our chaplains. We also believe that each member of the team, hospice aids, nurses and social workers, will from time to time discuss spiritual matters, and quite often will pray with our patients.
Our chaplains believe that human beings are created in God’s image, fallen, forgiven and loved. They believe that God doesn’t just sit and watch his creation. He listens and acts. Long ago He even entered into humanity.
One of our chaplains once told me his perception of what a hospice chaplain does. He said that during hospice patient visits, it is as if God is in the room, but someone needs to break the ice and open dialogue about and with Him. In his mind, the chaplain is the ice-breaker.
I think his assesment is correct. “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door I will come in.”
Professor Robert Spitzer, the Gonzaga Provost, offered the four levels of happiness as a meager way of understaning joy and meaning. At the bottom, is happiness 1, the satisfying of basic needs such as thirst or hunger. Happiness 2 and up are human-only levels: setting and reaching goals, or a participating in a stimulating conversation. Happiness 3 is the joy radiating from self sacrifice. Think Mother Teresa here.
But there is un-happiness in levels 1-3. At the first level, a person can overeat, or not eat enough. Unhappiness 2 comes about when we complete a goal and do not feel completely satisfied. And after we sacrifice our time, money or talents for another human being, soon we must find another opportunity to serve. Even happiness three diminishes.
But there is no unhappiness on the fourth level. Happiness 4 is knowing God. Finite humans can never plumb the depths of God. So it is a continuous journey of talking and listening. It occurs when His Spirit interacts with our spirit.
Chaplains have the task of helping people begin a journey into happiness four. God is in the room.
What a priviledge we have to interact with the Lord as He illumines the eyes of the lost and the hurting in their greatest time of need. I am honored to work with this company and more importantly witth the Lord.
I thank God that I get to work with an organization that so values spirituality. As many great thinkers remind us, we are not human beings that have occasional spiritual experiences. We are spiritual beings that currently are having a human experience.