Bad Chaplain

I've been thinking lately of Graham Greene's novel, The Power and the Glory. For those of you who haven't read it, it's set in Mexico in the 1930's, a time of persecution of Catholics. The anti-hero is a priest who is a drunk and a coward, who has a child that he doesn't quite acknowledge (but he won't give up the priesthood to marry the mother of this child, even though that's one options the redshirts are offering, albeit accompanied by much ridicule). If I were to summarize - keeping in mind that many people think this is Greene's best novel (not me, I still prefer Travels with My Aunt) - I'd say it's about God's ability to work through us despite our flaws.

I don't think I'm a bad chaplain in the sense of not doing my job well. I'm sometimes surprised at how well I seem to be doing - bringing comfort to people in distress, offering the hope, or even just the attentive ear that they need. I think I'm a pretty good chaplain, and working to be a better one.

But I worry about the rest of my life, outside the hospital. I don't quite feel the same sort of pressure that a pastor of a church does, since I don't have a "community" in that sense, looking over my shoulder and (potentially) whispering about what I'm doing. I do recognize, though, that many of the patients I see have an image of the clergy that I know I don't live up to: at the very least, they probably think I sing hymns, or listen to K-Love rather than cranking up Black Sabbath and Grand Funk. I'm not really worried about the music of course - it's the other things.

Even after I've made a mess of my personal life, though, it continues to surprise me that I can walk into a patient's room and make such a big difference in their day. And once in a while, being a "bad chaplain" - breaking the rules in order to meet the needs of a patient - makes me a really good chaplain.

(That's not really where I thought this post was going to end, certainly not where I thought it was going when I started it, but... here we are. And it's probably time to go to bed now.)