25 Comments

O dear friend, this piece made me laugh and cry the same time. What a wonderful and deep reflection you are sharing with the world! Just like the crosses you are signing on so many. I had no idea that Ash Wednesday was the Super Bowl in the hospital ward! But it makes so much sense. And I am so grateful you are giving this service even if it sometimes feels to you like at a drive through pace. And nonetheless those overworked doctors and nurses wait for you and make those three seconds count for them. May be it is one of the few days when the hospital stuff is actually truly included in the pastoral care usually given to patients and their loved ones? How much more is the stuff confronted with mortality every single day and how much less time do they have to grief? What if those three seconds when you sign the cross on their forehead hold the whole world of life and death for them? And your brief eye to eye contact makes them feel seen individually, personally, in all their vulnerability their work entails? What a sacred moment indeed. No matter the pace it holds healing and consolation nonetheless 😇. Bless you for doing this work and thank you for sharing it here 🙏

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I teared up reading this, thank you for this beautiful reflection. It really is a sacred day in so many ways.

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🙏 I also shared your piece in my last newsletter as it is so moving! 😇

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I just saw that and my jaw hit the floor!!! Thank you for your precious support!

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Re: Ash Wednesday 2021… That pressurized moment, and the sense of compounding morbid emotion in this case, is the ultimate and compassionate function of tradition. It is a touchpoint built and maintained over time that, through its relative invariability, offers a grounded perspective as the winds of life blow us around. And when the winds are at their worst, the “heaviest” traditions offer an avenue for transcendent contextualization.

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Well said! Sometimes I need that reminder of how necessary tradition can be in leading us to healing.

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This is beautiful. Even as a chaplain intern in a hospital, I never had the opportunity to participate in Ash Wednesday there. May you be strengthened for your work today.

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Thanks Jenn. It was a sacred day and hope it was for you in your context as well.

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Thank you. In fact, it has been.

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I also have a love/hate relationship with this day. It's dark and necessary and yet somehow also hope-filled. One year at our church we marked foreheads saying "repent, remember & believe the gospel." Thinking of you today as you put on your collar and gear up for the super bowl...

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Thanks Emily! Your summary of dark and necessary and hope-filled is the perfect paradox for this day!

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I just love this post. It brought back memories of Ash Wednesday, 2021. I am an assisted-living administrator and Ash Wednesday of 2021 came in the middle of another Covid outbreak in the facility I was running. We could not get a minister of any kind to come in and impose ashes on my residents. My Director of nursing, both a phenomenal nurse and a phenomenal human being, came to me and told me that she was a Roman Catholic Eucharistic minister. She asked my permission to bring in ashes which I was delighted to give. Watching her, in full PPE, with a stethoscope around her neck (not a collar) and go person to person, staff and residents alike just broke me open. When I tapped her on the shoulder and lowered my head towards her we were both sobbing. After all we had been through I realized the gift of the tiny ritual wasn’t in the ashes, it was in our shared human experience. We are all dust. We are all in this human experience together. We are all in need of mercy and kindness. It was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I have ever had.

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Oh what a precious memory and thank you for sharing it here. It is such a day full of meaning and connection especially in the midst of the pandemic. I am grateful for your director of nursing and the way you bore witness to the experience you both shared.

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Christine, this was vulnerable, helpful, challenging. I'll be thinking of you on Wednesday. May you be deeply blessed in the process of blessing others.

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Thanks Linda, I'll take all the prayers I can get!

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What a beautiful reflection, Christine. Reading your post caused me to reminisce about my past work as a physical therapist in the ICU. The people, the moments, and these tiny rituals of meaning. I so appreciated your words. Return to Love. I love this as a contemplative reflection for this week.

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Thanks Beth Anne, I'm glad it brough back some memories for you and I hope your week is full of love!

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I grew up Catholic and took Ash Wednesday for granted. I almost forgot all about it when I became more involved in denominational worship but with a resurgence in myself to revisit traditional practices, once again Ash Wednesday is on the radar. This is a wonderful reflection on this day and I love your perspective on it as a hospital chaplain. BTW, you look very official in your collar :).

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I'm curious to hear how it is for you to return to a practice that you grew up with, from a different vantage point. Thanks for sharing this piece and I hope you have a meaningful day tomorrow! And the collar is so funny for me, since I so rarely wear it!

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Lol. I can write so many essays on returning to what I thought was just ritual. Let's just say that saintly feast days, Ash Wednesday, Christmas (especially carols) and celebrating the Eucharist are just so rich now: rich in their meaning, rich in the history of the practice, and so rich in their ability to continually cause me to be enlightened by what they represent. Like I said, I can go on and go on but really, now I can see the love and appreciate the love in these practices.

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That sounds like a future substack article!

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I'm an ER doc and a catholic returning after decades away. For the first time in my life I'm looking forward to Ash Wednesday mass and this lovely writing adds another layer to that. Thank you.

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I hope it is a meaningful day for you. And thanks for all the hard and good work you do as an ER doc!!!

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Christine, this is a lovely mini-homily as we approach the threshold of the Lenten season. Reading your descriptions of life as a chaplain causes so many memories of my own chaplaincy work and pastoral care over the years. Thank you for reminding me of the blessings that flow both ways!

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"The blessings that flow both ways!" what a lovely framing of it.

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