experiments in everyday chaplaincy 3

running with metaphors

(pictured: in-process office space for the hearth chaplain!)

in my work a a midwife, a chaplain, and a human being, one of the most difficult and important lessons that i've learned is how to sit on my hands--how to, in essence, "do nothing". you'll remember the refrain from earlier posts. no fixing. no saving. it's incredible how difficult it is and how much willpower it takes to override that drive. helping (the active version of it, anyway) is so fundamentally programmed into us that we almost can't... well... help it.

and there's certainly a place for active helping. if a midwifery client has wild nausea, i'm not just going to say "mmm, i hear you, that's hard"--I'm going offer remedies. if a friend is about to make (in my estimation) a very dangerous decision, i'm not going to say "sure, that's something you could do--let's explore that"--I'm going to warn against it for concrete reasons.