through the fog

We're having a whole week of rainy, foggy, cold weather here, and I'm at home for the second day with a sore throat, headache and cough. Sometimes I look forward to such an opportunity to sit and read and/or write. Today my head feels too foggy to produce much.

I work with some wonderful, caring people at hospice. The patients and families are uniquely interesting and challenging. Still, I haven't fit into the mold of romanticizing death as some of my co-workers have. I seldom think of a death as "beautiful." I do find the patients and families often amazing in what they try to accomplish and how well they care for one another, but not all the time. Many people die without splendid moments of clarity, without loving family members singing hymns aroun their bedside.

Some patients, and families, are in a fog about what's happening and what they should do. I'm not meaning this to be critical, just an observation. I too may just pull the covers up over my head and wait out my life when it comes time.

The surprising part to me is how few people have, or can articulate, any sense of what their life has been about, what their hopes were, what they believed.

A recent patient I'll call Helen stands out in my mind as a notable exception.

Helen was sitting in her recliner beside one of those Amish heaters that look like a fireplace. "I am an evolutionist," she continued. I nodded and said I also believe in evolution.

"My husband is one too," she said, "but not in the same way. He believes that God used evolution to create the universe, and so there is no conflict for him." I could agree with that too, but I kept quiet, waiting to hear what was different about what she believed.

"I'm not sure there is a God," she said, "at least not one who created the world. God is Love. I don't know about all the rest. Love is the only way we'll ever solve our problems in this world."

"I don't know about Jesus either," she went on. "I think the Jews made up a lot of those stories, like the Resurrection. That's not important to me. The important part is that Jesus is the only way we got to see God."

I was amazed. No one had ever articulated their faith to me so succinctly. She had really thought it out, and I congratulated her. I asked her if she believed in an afterlife, and she said, "No, not really. I'd like to. It's a nice idea, but no. I think this is it, and we have to do the best we can here."

I asked her if she considered herself to be a spiritual person. She said, "It's all the same thing, isn't it? Spirituality and religion?"

I told her no, that religion is more the tenets one believes, the way the story about the world and our place in it is told, and the rules of the faith that govern us.

Spirituality, on the other hand, is what gives our lives meaning, what enlivens us and makes life worth while. Our spirituality may well be made up of, and enriched by, our beliefs and certain rituals and practices that are part of our religion, but that isn't all it is.

For some people, the beauty and challenge of the natural world, nature, is a large part of their spirituality. Or music, or art, any creative activity. (We are co-creators with God, you know.) I went on to offer some other aspects of this topic.

She nodded as I talked on, and then said decisively, "My spirituality is one of service. I was a nurse all my life, and helping people was what I did and who I was."

I am so sorry not to have heard more, to have had many more visits to learn how she came to this way of thinking, how she distilled her early Presbyterian beginnings to this personal and precious faith. She died the following week.