To Be a Blessing
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I love my job. I love driving to the hospital each morning, having no idea of what will happen that day—who I’ll meet, what I’ll do, whether there will be triumphs or tragedies, joy or heartbreak, setbacks, small signs of progress or holding patterns. The one thing I do know is that there will be opportunities to be of service.
Actually, that’s true for each of us, every day—we never really know what will happen, even when we think we do—and there’s usually something we can do to help someone else. However, that sense of mystery and possibility is heightened in a hospital setting.
I love all the different people I get to meet, especially folks I would never get to know otherwise. And since everyone responds a little bit differently to crisis, I learn a lot about people, particularly where they turn in times of trouble.
For many of them, religion helps, and I get to learn how. My job is to serve people of every religion and no religion, people whose beliefs are similar to mine and folks whose beliefs are radically different.
As you might guess, hospital chaplaincy meshes beautifully with my calling to Unitarian Universalist ministry. Our UU principles guide and ground my work, starting with our beloved first principle—the commitment to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
As hospital chaplain, I serve everyone who steps onto hospital grounds—patients, visitors, and staff—from the custodians to the CEO. I love how spiritual care flattens the hospital hierarchy. To a chaplain, everyone is precious and worthy, regardless of beliefs, finances, language, education, country of origin, skin color, age, gender, class, sexuality, and so on.
But while spiritual care uplifts the divine spark in everyone, hospital work reveals painful societal inequities, like diseases that could be prevented or better managed if everyone had full access to the care they need and the resources to take care of their bodies. These situations break my heart every day.
Unitarian Universalism’s second principle calls us to justice, equity, and compassion. At the hospital, I look for ways to counter injustice directly, such as advocating for folks whose voices are muted or educating staff members about cultural differences. As chaplain, though, I bring another gift that counters injustice. By listening without judgment, by affirming each person’s experience, I let them know that they matter to me, that ultimately we are all equally precious.
I’m frequently asked how I can spend my days surrounded by so much pain and suffering. One answer is that the work itself comes with many gifts—moments of deep connection and meaning, joy and laughter and gratitude amidst the tears, and ample opportunities to make a difference.
Another answer is a prayer that welled up in me a few years ago. I say it every morning as I drive to the hospital. It goes like this:
May I be what’s needed.
May I be of service.
May I be a blessing.
These simple words remind me of my deepest intentions. They help me return to center when I get thrown. You’ll notice that the three sentences overlap—each offers a slightly different framing. Here’s what I hear:
May I be what’s needed.
It’s not about me. This is not about being brilliant or wise or creative. This is about being what’s needed. Sometimes that’s a warm blanket, an extra pillow, a box of tissues, a glass of water. Sometimes it’s sitting silently, holding a hand. Sometimes it’s singing. Sometimes it’s listening for a long time without saying much. Sometimes it’s coming back later.
May I be what’s needed. May I watch and listen and sense what’s needed in this moment by this person. May I honor that and respond as I’m able.
May I be of service.
May I go beyond what’s needed to discern what else might be helpful to this person at this time. Service might involve religious support—arranging communion, bringing electric Shabbat candles, finding a prayer rug. Service might involve taking a risk—asking a difficult question, speaking the unspoken, naming the unnamable. Service might be helping a patient or family think through a difficult decision. And it might be much more basic, such as tracking down some apple juice or helping a patient cut up his food.
May I be what’s needed. May I be of service. And then the line that inspired this sermon:
May I be a blessing.
A blessing. Seeking to be a blessing shifts something for me. There’s something concrete about being what’s needed, being of service. But striving to be a blessing makes room for mystery, for serendipity and synchronicity, for grace. Desiring to be a blessing reminds me that I’m not in control. It encourages me to hold things a little more lightly.
Being a blessing is an act of openness, an act of love. It connects me to something larger, to that interdependent web of existence in which things can unfold in uncanny and unpredictable ways.
Sometimes being a blessing depends on being in the right place at the right time, and usually, in chaplaincy at least, that’s not about planning. I can’t tell you how many times folks have said to me, “You came just when I needed you most,” leaving me flabbergasted and humbled, having no idea how that happened.
Being a blessing doesn’t necessarily involve doing anything. There are times when I sit with grieving families in silence while they do the praying, while they take care of each other. Sometimes I wonder if anyone notices I’m there, but, invariably, when it’s time to leave, the families shower me with hugs and thank yous and I’m left wondering, “What exactly did I do?”
Very simply, I was there—available if they needed something, willing to be with them in their anguish, letting them know that their grief mattered.
Whether my actions are actually a blessing is something I may never know, but striving to be a blessing reminds me of when others have been a blessing for me, when a small, simple action has made a world of difference.
Now, I’m using the word blessing as if we all know what it means, and I’m guessing that for some of you, blessing is a zingy sort of word—a little too religious or touchy-feely or amorphous, and certainly the word blessing is just a bit vague. My analytical side would love to give you a clear, unambiguous definition. But the more I tried to determine what makes something a blessing, the more slippery the definition became. Unfortunately, religious words are like that sometimes.
I’d like to say that a blessing is in the eye of the beholder, but even that’s problematic. So many blessings slide by without our noticing. Others come in disguise. Who knew, for example, that a rare infection that landed me in the hospital for a week back in 1997 would become a blessing in retrospect? Without that experience, I’d have no idea what it’s like to be a hospital patient—the lack of control, the boredom, the fear, the endless waiting.
In fact, many of the hardest times in my life have become blessings to my ministry by giving me compassion and insight as to what might help others. Blessings come in so many forms.
And so, with the imperfect and unsatisfying assumption that we might know a blessing when we see it, I ask you:
What have been some of the blessings in your life?
Where did they come from? From someone you know? From a stranger? From a situation?
How have you been a blessing—to loved ones, to family and friends, to those you don’t know?
How has your work been a blessing—both what you do and how you do it? How do you bless your communities? How do you bless the world?
What would it be like to walk through life asking yourself, “How can I be a blessing today?”
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, who served for many years as the president of Starr King School for the Ministry, encourages us to “choose to bless the world.” In Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now, she writes, “The purpose of life…is to discover the joy or well-being that simultaneously pleases us and blesses our neighbor. Every act we commit is a contribution to the world; the question is whether our actions will be a blessing or a curse. The basic question of life is not,
What do I want? but rather, What do I want to give?”
We cannot always be a blessing. Sometimes we need to just be. Sometimes the blessing is letting others care for us. Sometimes, miraculously, there’s a blessing in simply being our messy, weary, grumpy, painfully human selves. Blessings are not about perfection, and they come in many unexpected forms.
That said, what would it be like to walk through your life with the intention of being a blessing? What would it be like, in the words of the Starr King School chalice lighting, to move in the world “accepting your gifts with grace and gratitude and using them to bless the world in the spirit of love”?
May you be what’s needed.
May you be of service.
May you be a blessing.
An East Coast transplant, Sue lives happily in Berkeley where she delights in the people, natural beauty, diversity of cultures, progressive attitudes, and plentiful fresh produce at the year-round Farmers Markets.
Sue’s essays have been published in Jewish Voices in Unitarian Universalism (“100% Jewish 100% UU”) and Faithful Practices:Everyday Ways to Feed Your Spirit (“Learning to Pray”).
Sue delights in spiritual practices – journaling, meditation, prayer, painting, singing, long walks in nature, stopping to smell the roses or really look at a tree.Perhaps her favorite spiritual practice is serving as a hospital chaplain, where she endeavors to listen deeply for what is needed in each moment and respond with love and compassion.
- Expecting the Unexpected - December 1, 2019
- The Ritual of Sabbath - July 1, 2018
- To Be a Blessing - November 1, 2017
