Why I Became Episcopalian

After spending the first twenty years of my life as a Southern Baptist, and the next seven years of my life questioning and exploring my faith, I finally made the decision to become Episcopalian. I will, however, always have so much gratitude and love for the Baptists that raised me and for the Disciples of Christ who first called me to minister to their youth. These traditions will always be a part of me.

Just a few days ago, I went with my new church, stood before the bishop, and listened to him pray for me before the congregation, with my husband watching and my new friends' hands upon my shoulders in prayer.

"Defend, O Lord, your servant Hillary, with your heavenly grace, that she may continue yours for ever, and daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more, until she comes to your everlasting kingdom. Amen."

photo credit: Tom Kimsey

Rachel Held Evans, in recent blog posts and her latest book Searching for Sunday, has written much more eloquently than I plan to about the draw of liturgical worship for millennials, particularly former fundamentalists like myself. So, less eloquently and more for my friends and family, I'll offer my own reasons for making the change.

1. Right Place, Right Time, Right People

First and foremost, I became Episcopal because I fell in love with a specific Episcopal community. When Tom and I moved to Bremerton, we were searching for a progressive church. Too often, people only associate Christianity with Republicanism, with homophobia, anti-intellectualism, patriarchy, and literal interpretations of holy texts. During my seven years of searching, I learned that not every church espouses these things. I read Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Phyllis Tickle and other Emergent voices. I discovered progressive Christianity existed. And when my husband and I ended up in Washington, and I googled progressive churches near our zipcode, St. Paul's Episcopal came up. I emailed the priest (a woman!), and eventually, I visited. I fell in love. People welcomed me, remembered my name, asked me to sit with them. The people of my parish drew me just as much as anything else.

2. Beautiful Liturgy/Biblical Focus

There is such beauty and rich symbolism in liturgical worship. Everything done in worship is done for a reason. The Gospel is brought from the altar and read among the people to symbolize the Incarnation, the coming of Jesus on Earth, for example. On Maundy Thursday, the altar is stripped and we wash each other's feet. The elements for communion are brought forward by the people. Every action is deeply symbolic. Music is beautiful, but the musicians are not the star. Th altar is at the center of the sanctuary. The pulpit is off to the side, the choir off to the side or behind. Performing for the congregation is not the focus for worship leaders. 

In most Episcopal churches, there will be three scripture readings. In our church, we usually have four! One from the Old Testament, one from the epistles, one from the Gospels, and then we sing a refrain as a Psalm is read. Episcopals may not read the Bible literally or memorize as many verses as I did as a Baptist, but that does not mean there is not great respect and focus given to the scriptures. Thanks to the lectionary, over a period of 3 years, nearly every passage in the Bible is read aloud in church, and in my particular church, each passage is introduced with context. 

Prayers are often said together, following the book of common prayer. I love this because I have been to many evangelical churches where praying before the church was a chance to show off one's piety. When I prayed at my old church, I felt pressure to pray  eloquently but not to write it down, because that was too practiced. By praying in unison, there is the element of unity, the rich history and commonality of the words, and also, many less appearances of the word "just." ;-) 

In liturgical traditions, God is the audience, not the congregation. We gather to experience God's grace and thank God for good gifts and good people. The sermon is not the pivotal moment, though it often wonderfully rendered--communion is the climactic point. People do not gather to be entertained; they gather to love each other and to love God.

3. Worship Engages the Senses and the Body

There is such an attention to beauty, to aesthetics, to the senses. In one service, every sense could be engaged! Incense, bells, beautiful worship space, wine and bread. Even the body has a role-- kneeling, embracing each other during the peace, making the sign of the cross, bowing at times... the body is not ignored, and neither is the mind.

So many of my friends and family might be surprised to see me make the sign of the cross after so many years as a Baptist! But while my upbringing taught me many wonderful practices, prayer practices that involved the body in something other than stillness were hard to come by. I love to pray with my prayer beads, to feel them and internalize the words. People make the sign of the cross on their foreheads, lips, and chest as the Gospel is read, in hopes that the words will live in their minds, on their lips, in their hearts. People cross themselves to bodily remind themselves of the cross, to remind themselves of the Trinity, to ask for God's presence in their heads, hearts, and bodies...one small gesture has such a rich meaning and history behind it. 

4. Mystery is Celebrated

My church is full of ritual and pageantry, but there is not a pretentiousness to them. The Episcopal church harkens back to Celtic Christian traditions, where doubt and mystery are not things to be avoided, but things to honor. In my upbringing as a Baptist, I associated doubt and questions with weak faith. These were problems to be solved, and quick, before anyone saw! I felt such pressure to always seem confident, to always have an answer. 

Mystery in the Scriptures is also a reality. There is more openness in approaching the Bible here than I experienced as an evangelical, when I was taught that the Bible was literally true, that it could serve as a history and science textbook. My church does not read the Bible literally, but we do read it often, with curiosity, and with respect. I have written blogs and essays in the past about how my tendency to question got me in trouble as a child in Sunday school; questions are urged in my new church.I truly feel like I am a part of the priesthood of believers, that my interpretations are valued as much as anyone else's. 

5. Open and Affirming

My church is open and affirming. People of alternate gender identities and sexualities are not only welcomed, they are prominent in leadership! Same sex couples can be married, and LGBTQ people are loved and respected not in spite of who they are, but because of who they are. There is no "hate the sin, love the sinner" mentality here because generally, there is such humility. People don't deign to label each other's actions or identities as sinful because there is such respect for individual experience. And it does not hurt that most people here do not believe that homosexual or alternate gender identities are sinful. God created us in God's image, and God declared us good, and with God's help, good we remain.

6. Less Patriarchy!

So, as a seminary student discerning her own calling, this was huge! My priest is a woman, a strong, kind, brave woman. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is a woman! Women serve as deacons, as Eucharistic ministers, in leadership on the Vestry-- we are not asked to stick to working with kids or listening to men! If I discern a calling as a priest or deacon, my new denomination is decades ahead of my old one in respecting women in ministry.

Not only this, but God is viewed in a much more gender-neutral way. Certainly there is still male-language for God, especially in some of the oldest practices, like reciting the Nicene creed. But in sermons and even day to day conversation, God is not spoken of as male, with male pronouns. If male pronouns are used, don't be surprised to hear female ones also! 

7. More Trinity!

Episcopalian worship is much more Trinitarian than what I have been used to. Hymns, prayers, practices... so much what we do and say and sing in worship represents, invokes, or teaches us about the Trinity. This is so important to me because I believe in a relational God, in a Trinitarian God focused on relationship and community and balance. 

8. Less Show, More Meaning

After my teenage years, I became uncomfortable with worship services that felt like concerts or one-man shows. Certainly there is beauty in these services, but they just weren't quite right for me. I did not come to church for entertainment, but for worship and community. I did not need a smoke machine or a preacher in jeans to get this-- I needed scripture, communion, loving community, honesty, prayer practices. 

9. Historical Connections

The Episcopal church's history, like the Baptist church's, is deeply rooted in the American Revolution. Episcopalianism is the American strain of Anglicanism, developed when Americans breaking away from England wanted to continue to worship in the tradition of the Church of England. I enjoy the historical aspects.

I also enjoy the connection to Celtic spirituality as well. The first Episcopals had to look to Scotland for their first bishops because we weren't getting along with England, and Scotland was more than happy to stick it to the English and help the Americans out. As such, we tend to be more Celtic than British in our practices and beliefs. Because of my Irish heritage and my own Celtic style of spirituality, I love this as well.

10. Don't Forget Robin Williams!

I could go on and on, and perhaps I will add to this list as I go, but I'll leave you all with Robin William's list. Williams was a favorite actor and person of mine, and I am still saddened by his death. But Robin Williams was an Episcopalian, and he wrote some funny (and of course, true) reasons why one might want to become Episcopal. ;-)

10. No snake handling.
9. You can believe in dinosaurs.
8. Male and female God created them; male and female we ordain them.
7. You don't have to check your brains at the door.
6. Pew aerobics.
5. Church year is color-coded.
4. Free wine on Sunday.
3. All of the pageantry - none of the guilt.
2. You don't have to know how to swim to get baptized.

And the Number One reason to be an Episcopalian:1. No matter what you believe, there's bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you.

the Holy Spirit and the Artist

I. Wind and Breath

Whisper, tease my ear, words,

until I take note.

Hover over me, brood above1

the waters of my heart.

Sweep past me, seize me,

wild God. I hear you,

I feel you, but I cannot

trace your movements.2

Poets, they whisper aloud

trying to grasp elusive words.

Pass through my lips like

poet whispers, like their quick gasps

and give me life.3

II. Water

Surround and embrace me

like the sea, like music.

Pour over me like baptismal

waters and quench my thirst.4

Come alive as rivers do,

as only you.5

Symphonies carry me

away like a persuasive current.

III. Fire

Burn me, consume me

sear away what cannot stay.

Melt away what binds me,6

burn bright so I may follow.7

Rest on my head, tongue of flame,

like poet’s laurels.8

Baptize me like fire

in a kiln. Seal me and

make

my colors

dance.9

IV. Woman

I see you, holy Dancer,

with your soft eyes and

fierce toes.10

I see how you trace your body

with gentle fingers, where you

swell with new life.11

V. Dove and Cloud

Are you flighty and elusive

like a dove?

Descend, please, like

the words I cannot find,

like the color I can’t seem to blend,

like the harmony that eludes.

Stay long enough for me to

glimpse you on his shoulder,12

maybe hear what you whispered

in his ear.

Come down, and cover me

like the cloud overwhelmed

the mountain.13

Call my name; I will answer,

I will sing.

VI. Boldness

Possess my hands, my pen

and appear, speak to my accusers.14

Subdue my inner critic too.

Give me a voice to shout,

to prophesy,15

to come alive and confront like that

nameless Juliet on stage

who weeps

and woos

and wakes

us

all.

“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly, then your love would also change.”16

Come, empower. I will go if you go with me.17

VII. Love

The incomparable audacity

of an artist’s hope,

to love colors or words or sounds

or movement so much

to put their soul in a frame

and put it on display.

Even without favorable reviews,

Oscars or Pulitzers or exhibits with

spotlights and soundtracks,

art teases us, and yet that hope

never disappoints.18

Light my eyes with child’s glee.

I plunge my pudgy fingers wildly

into paint. You smile,

you are delighted

with my crinkled masterpiece.19

“Look at this,” you say.

“My child made it. Isn’t it beautiful?”

1. Genesis 1:2

2, John 3:8

3. Genesis 2:7

4. Isaiah 44:3

5. John 4:10

6. Judges 15:14

7. Exodus 13:21

8. Acts 2:3

9. Matthew 3:11

10: Proverbs 9:1

11. Luke 1:35

12. Matthew 3:16

13. Exodus 24:16

14. Mark 13:11

15. Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28

16. Juliet, to Romeo; Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

17. Acts 1:8

18. Romans 5:5

19. Colossians 1:8

Maundy Thursday

How quickly one evening's delight can crumble into dread and chaos. So it is with the Thursday of Holy Week.

Seder Meal

With curiosity, our community listened to the words of the Seder supper. We sipped wine, ate bitter herbs and salt water and matzah, tasted the sweet apple taste of hope. 

A photo posted by Hillary B. Kimsey (@sincerely_hillary) on Apr 2, 2015 at 7:16pm PDT

Eucharist

We gave communion to one another. 

The body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.

The blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation. 

Washing of Feet

We washed each other's feet, as Jesus did for his friends. We smiled, blushed, washed, tenderly dried. "Bless these feet."

Stripping the Altar

In silence, we stripped the altar. The priest gathered candles, fabrics, Bibles, cushions, podiums, passed each to us one by one until the altar was bare of color, stark and barren. The lights dimmed. "Hillary," she whispered. I followed her to the back, and she said, "Will you carry this? Be careful. There are nails."

I placed the cross on my shoulder, bent to lift it. I carried it, slowly, down the dark aisle. I followed moonlight to the altar, leaned the cross against the communion altar. Tiny candles illuminated the cross. In silence we remained.

A photo posted by Hillary B. Kimsey (@sincerely_hillary) on Apr 2, 2015 at 8:38pm PDT

Do not rush to Sunday, do not flee the heaviness. 

Tonight, a sacred meal, joyful fellowship fades into betrayal and despair.

Tomorrow, pain, death, shaking earth, tearing the veil.

Saturday. Silence.

...

Theology and Grief: God’s Perfect Empathy

TCE 503R: Theology 1

Chelle Stearns, Ph. D.

Theology Research Paper

December 2, 2014

Theology and Grief: God’s Perfect Empathy

When I was 18 years old, I met death. Death was civil--took my grandfather with all the politeness and regret I expected. We regarded each other solemnly and didn’t speak much. Death did his job. The job was a gruesome one, but it had to be done. My grandfather was old, and lived long and well so far as I figured, before the cancer came. I was not angry when Death took him. Sad and a little empty-feeling, of course, but not angry.

A month later, my best friend’s mother called me the night before my first college final. She said that one of my church friends went to the hospital for mono, but Lee did not have mono. Lee had leukemia. I heard “cancer,” and I feared Death’s return. I wept for the unfairness of it, for an eighteen year old boy, the kindest person I knew in the world, with the disease that took my grandfather. I closed my eyes and asked my damp pillow, “Why, God, why? Why him? Why now?” I prayed for his remission to stick, but he relapsed. I prayed for his bone marrow transplant to succeed; it failed. I prayed for Lee to live, prayed harder for it than I’d ever prayed. But when doctors told me, told his parents, that there was nothing left to be done, I stopped praying. I stopped asking why. I sat by his bed, and when the medications pulled him under, I wept. I read the loudest lament psalms, gave up hope. I dwelled in the bleak knowledge that death would come again. Five years after his diagnosis, Lee died. For months, my prayers were rarely any longer than, “God. Help me.”

When tragedy strikes, darkness falls. We stumble, blindly throwing out our hands, fingers desperately seeking to grasp God. When prayers go unanswered, we wonder if God heard them. We wonder how a God of love could allow a gentle soul to die young. Where is God in the midst of trauma? How can God be good in a world of pain and suffering? If God is omnipotent, why did Lee’s healing never come? These are questions I asked, questions I will probably always ask. No seven page essay or its sources referenced could hope to answer them, so I shall not attempt it. Instead, as a person who has experienced her own debilitating grief and felt and shared that of others, I submit a less popular perspective.

God’s immanence does not wane in the darkness. Instead, God’s immanence is intimate; God not only remains with us, God suffers too. Because of Jesus, God knows the pain of loss and betrayal and the sting of death. The love of Yahweh, the crucifixion of Christ, and the movement of the Spirit give Creator God deep proximity to our suffering, such closeness that the Creator feels it too.

Children confused by the evening news are just as likely to question theodicy as the intellectual giants of the faith. C.S. Lewis explores the issue of human suffering in The Problem of Pain.

[Christianity] is not a system into which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain: it is itself one of the awkward facts which have to be fitted into any system we make. In a sense, it creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.

In humility and eloquence, Lewis explores the nature of suffering and the nature of God. He suggests humanity would not object so to pain if we we not so convinced that God is loving and good. Initially, Lewis’s exploration of God’s omnipotence focus on the importance of human free will-- where does that leave Lee, who did not choose cancer? Lewis might answer with a more eloquent version of the platitude loathed by the grieving: “What seems to us good may therefore not be good in [God’s] eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil,” which smacks of God’s “mysterious ways.” Lewis, what little consolation you offer! But even Lewis, in the midst of his intellectual meandering, touches on the truth we seek, quoting Hosea 11:8 where Yahweh agonizes “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I abandon thee, Israel? Mine heart is turned within me.” Even as he seeks to show that God transcends our definitions of love and justice, Lewis stumbles onto scriptural evidence that God feels and suffers.

The suffering of God is not a new concept. Through the Hebrew Bible, glimpses of God’s pain rest in verses like the very one Lewis quotes. Terence Fretheim wrote an entire book on the concept of God’s suffering from an Old Testament perspective. Fretheim begins with the importance of metaphor and the nuance thereof. “God is not simply father: God is a certain kind of father. God is a loving father, always (Hos. 11:1). And God is not simply mother; God is a certain kind of mother. God is a mother who will not forget her children, ever (Isa. 49:15).”

Throughout his text, Fretheim guides us through instances of divine suffering, particularly as show in the Hebrew Bible, whose God is much maligned by western Evangelical readings of wrath and rage. He explores new metaphors, or new understandings of ancient ones. (In a longer paper, I would praise both the accessibility and eloquence of his book.) Perhaps God is bound by the rules inherent in that which God created, or bound by the promises God makes, and God’s freedom to intervene in tragedy is limited. But this is circular, and not the issue at hand. Fretheim claims that God can be vulnerable, can suffer violence, and that the Old Testament notion of omnipotence is different. He also writes and bluntly that:

The immanent and transcendent God of Israel is immersed in the space and time of this world; this God is available to all, is effective along with them at every occasion, and moves with them into an uncertain future. Such a perspective reveals a divine vulnerability, as God takes on all the risks that authentic relatedness entails. Because of what happens to that relationship with those whom God loves, God suffers.

God loves us, and so, enters into relationship with us. Because of relationship with us God risks the pain that comes with relationship. Fretheim later writes that “God’s powers of commiseration, of shared suffering, must be considered unsurpassed.” God empathizes so much that the our problems, our pain, our tears, become God’s own. Yet the assertion that God suffered on behalf of Israel or even suffers alongside us is not where we stop. Indeed, I submit that God’s deep empathy is inextricably tied to the cross, and embodied in the Trinity.

God, after all, knows Death for Death once came to God’s door as he came to mine. God knows the physical pain of the dying body, and God knows the unspeakable grief of loss. In Rachel’s Cry, a exploration of lament, Kathleen Billman and Daniel Migliore quote Moltmann: “The Son suffers dying, the Father suffers the death of the Son. The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son.” This moving text on ancient and modern lament continues with respect to Moltmann, asserting that “loss, grief, and the feeling of abandonment are not just experiences of humanity in general or of Jesus in particular but are a defining moment in the experience of the triune God.”

Lee’s diagnosis and death, so far, is the defining tragedy of my life. I can be confident that God, through Jesus, knows how it feels to die. I can be confident that through Jesus, God knows the terror and dread and the final resignation death’s approach incites. Because of Jesus, Creator God knows the insufferable ache of grief that follows the death of a most beloved one. Knowing that God understands is comforting in a way. We can trust God understands something of what we feel because God experienced death and grief through Jesus. But then God is no better than me, a chaplain who says to a grieving family, “I understand your pain because I have felt pain like it when Lee died.” No, God’s empathy not this; God’s is perfect. God does not simply understand our pain because God experienced something similar. No, God feels our pain, just as we do. God’s empathy is perfect and God’s suffering is identical to our own. Only because of this might God be of any use to those who are grieving or dying, especially when God feels distant or even absent. From prison, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Only the suffering God can help.” And the suffering God can help even more than a suffering chaplain for God’s empathy is flawless and boundless.

Through Jesus, humanity and God enter into a Martin Buber-esque I-Thou relationship. Our conceptions of the cross and theologies about Jesus will always fall short because “Jesus the Christ cannot be contained in statements about Jesus the Christ.” We cannot turn Jesus into an IT; Jesus must always be a Thou. Jesus is not the same as the doctrine that surrounds him, and it is in Jesus the Thou that we seek to find the key to God’s empathy. In The Cross in Our Context, John Douglas Hall makes the connection clear:

If, in the face of the one who suffered, we cannot see a Redeemer who shares precisely our questions (What is it all about? What are we for?), then surely we have lost any theological imagination we might once have had. If, in the word of dereliction from the cross (“Why have you forsaken me?”), we cannot hear the anguished cries of millions of our contemporary abandoned and our own own deeply repressed cries as well, how shall we ever expect to find in this person one who takes our despair upon himself and gives us in return hope?

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus perfects the immanence of God through perfect empathy. Jesus’ cry from the cross is his own but also my own, the same thing I sobbed into my pillow the night that Lee died. Why God, have you abandoned me to feel this loss alone? Yet I was not alone; God cried with me. When prayers dissolved to wordless weeping, the Spirit translated, interceded, felt, and cried out with me. Nor was Lee alone; while his earthly father held his hand, the Father God held his soul and all the fear and longing within him.

Jesus himself perceived what felt like God’s distance, even absence, as his death approached. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This alone suggests that no one is exempt from feeling like God has failed, from questioning God, even accusing God. If Jesus, in perfect humanity and perfect divinity, can ask this question, then it is not an unholy one. In fact, it is in Jesus that we can find the healing that comes from God’s empathy and concurrent suffering with us.

In Trauma + Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, Serene Jones describes an encounter she had with a woman who had suffered domestic violence. At a retreat. Jones’ self-defense class coincides with Maundy Thursday, and so battered women battling to take back control of their lives and bodies, watch as lights are slowly and ruthlessly extinguished in the solemn liturgy Maundy Thursday. Jones writes that they women wept, and one said, “This cross story,...it’s the only part of this Christian thing I like. I get it. And it’s like he gets me. He knows.”

As Jones writes, this woman’s response seems simple, but within it, she inadvertently captures “well a long and complex thread of Christian interpretations of the cross that highlight the believer’s experience of solidarity between themselves and Christ as the source of redemption.” Knowing that Jesus has suffered and that God knows our very pain is the very avenue to our great hope for renewal.

In moments of deep grief, we feel that God is far from us, removed from our pain. In “A Hymne to Christ,” John Donne pens these lines:  

Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise

Thy face; yet through that mask I know those eyes,

Which, though they turn away sometimes,

they never will despise.

God’s face is clouded, God turns away, even when love never ceases. But in his aforementioned text, Terence E. Fretheim suggests that perception of God’s immanence is affected by a person’s emotional state. In other words, God does not withdraw into darkness; we have only closed our eyes to the light. In the suffering of Christ, we find solidarity with God. As we cast our burdens on Jesus, we can rest knowing that he feels and understands, and with this, burdens lift.

Bibliography

Billman, Kathleen, and Daniel Migliore. Rachel's Cry. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Letters and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition, trans. Reginald Fuller, Frank Clarke, et al. London: SCM, 1953.

Fretheim, Terence. The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

Grierson, Herbert J.C., ed. Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the 17th c.Oxford, The Clarendon press, 1921; Bartleby.com, 1999.www.bartleby.com/105/, accessed 2 December 2014.

Hall, Douglas John. The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

Jones, Serene. Trauma + Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1940.

Blazers and Burning God

Sometimes I sing to people as they die. The pager beeps, and I slip on my blazer because it makes me look older. I surprise families. Even in their grief, they expect an older man, not a twenty-six year old woman with short hair and tattoos peeking from under her slacks. The nurses recognize me now, though I surprised them too.

My favorite nurse is on today. Jackie gives me a little smile, jerks her head toward a room. No greeting, not during a page. “Hospice patient; they’re going to remove life support today. Whole family is in there waiting for you. She’s young-- forties. Late stage cancer. Single. Name’s Angela, Angie for short. Brought in here last night when she coded. They intubated. Really, Hillary... she’s gone already. We’re ready when they are.”

Here is the ICU, my unit even when I’m not on call, like I am today. The nurses like it when I’m on call-- they know me. They know I understand when not to ask for miracles.

“Who’s point?”

“Angie’s mom, Louise. We like her.”

“Okay. Let me go in, check things out. I’ll come get you when they’re ready.”

I straighten my blazer, fluff my hair. Breathe. I knock on the door as I open it. I’ve perfected this move; it is polite to knock, but I acknowledge my own authority to enter by coming in as I do so. Because of my age, and at times, my gender, I have to claim my authority in every quiet way.

With one glance, I can tell who is in charge. A wiry black woman with wide eyes and white hair sits at Angie’s right, holding her hand. Her eyes are dry; everyone else in the room is angled to face her.

“My name is Hillary. I am a chaplain here at the hospital. You must be Ms. Louise.” I am Southern, so an elderly woman gets an appellation. She nods, considering me; her fingers stroke her daughter’s hand automatically.

“How is Angie today?” I turn to the younger woman as I ask, listening to the room. Machines are slow and steady along with the hiss of the ventilator. She is still, eyes slightly open, mouth invaded by the respirator tubing. I touch her shoulder.

Louise answers with calm. “We think she is ready to go home to the Lord.”

She may already be home, I think.

Behind her, a woman my age is weeping. Angie’s sister, I imagine. I know I would weep too. I meet her eyes, touch her arm.  “It’s so hard to say goodbye,” I whisper to her. “But this goodbye is not forever.”

She nods, sniffs, continues to weep. I step closer, and she does not shy away, so I briefly hug her from the side before turning my attention back to Louise. I speak loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Would you all like to gather and pray with Angie?”

They are hungry for it, reaching for my hands, slamming their eyes shut. I have seen pastors in this moment raise their voice to plead for healing, to call down miracles from heaven. I ask for God’s presence during pain, ask for a warm welcome for Angie. The family echoes my every sentence with “please God” or “yes, Lord” and their weeping.

I let the silence hang for a moment after “amen.” Sniffles shouldn’t be interrupted all the time. “If you all are ready, I will go get the nurses. They will ask you all to step out for a few minutes so that they can remove the breathing tube. Then, you can all come back in and sit with Angie again.”

After a few failed attempts to speak, the sister manages to ask, “Will she suffer?”

No one knows the answer to this for sure, but I know that the nurses administer additional morphine to make it as painless as possible. I have seen this before. “It will be very peaceful for her.” I squeeze Louise’s hand, place my hand on the sister’s shoulder. “I will give you all some privacy. When you’re ready, we’ll get the nurses. I will be right outside.”

“Thank you, Chaplain.”

I don’t go to pages with any plans to sing. I lean against the wall of the nurses station, watching Angie’s monitors as the family says their goodbyes.

“You never know how long these things take,” Jackie says. “But Angie is home already, I think. She’s had no brain activity since she coded. I think it will be quick for the family. How is everyone? Sister has been struggling. Heather’s her name.”

I watch the door. “It’s hard to say goodbye to a sibling. Harder for her than Mom right now; Mom is doing okay because this is her last act of taking care of Angie. Afterwards will be the hard part for Louise.”

Slowly the family shuffles out of Angie’s room, with Mom and Heather coming last. I brought them water, tissues. When nurses exited her room again, Jackie nodded. Angie looked more natural. They’d cleaned her face, arranged her on a pillow. Her lips were parted, her eyes slightly open, but she looked like she was sleeping. I noted no breathing, so I hurried to get the family. As they gathered around her bed, they were quiet, crying. After a moment, I began to hum. I hummed the full first verse of Amazing Grace, listened as sniffles intensified, watched the jumps on the heart monitor get further and further apart. Heather reached for my hand and held it, so I sang aloud.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I’m found.

I was blind but now I see.

As I sang, other voices joined me. Eventually Heather folded into me, holding on and shaking. “Don’t stop,” she said. She held onto my blazer, so I put my arms around her. “Don’t stop.”

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come

Twas grace that brought me safe thus far

and grace shall lead me home.

By now Jackie is singing, and so is the social worker. The line is flat now, but I catch Louise’s eye over her daughters braids. She scrubs her eyes with the back of her hand, nods to me. This time, my voice shakes, and I sing through my own tears.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years

bright shining as the sun

we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

than when we’ve first begun.

All was silent for a moment. The attending physician watched me. I inclined my head. He softly read the time from the clock to the sniffling room, muttered some condolences, and left. Most doctors do-- their job is over now.

My hand rubs a circle on Heather’s back while I think of my own brother.  I don’t think to wipe my own eyes or control my own sniffles.

“My sweet girl,” Louise says. “What happens now?” She directs the question at me, while she strokes her dead daughter’s hand.

I continue the circles. “You can have as much time as you want with her. I have a form for you to sign, releasing her body to the funeral home of your choice. The hospital will take care of calling them. They will take very good care of her.”

Louise shook her head. “She is in God’s hands now.”

“Yes, ma’am, she is. No more pain. No more suffering. She fought the good fight,” I said. “She finished the race.” I heard Heather whisper it along with me. “Now, she has peace and joy, and the rest of you will feel it again soon. I promise.”

When everyone else has filed out, Heather remains. She and I sit on the small bench in the room while Heather studies her sister.

“I wish you had the power to bring her back,” she says, calm now. She is studying her sister’s face.

My throat feels tight. I swallow hard. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I do not have that power.” I grip her hand tighter, covering it with my own.

“Do you really think she’s okay now? That she’s with God?”

I do not think things are as cut and dry as my Sunday School teachers said, and I’m not sure what happens when the beeps stop. But I have my theories.

“I think that God welcomed her just now with open arms. And I think God is with you now, too, and always will be. I know how it sounds, but that really is what I think. What I know.”

She took a shuddering breath. “It doesn’t feel like it. I asked for her to get better so many times. Why didn’t God answer me?”

I pondered that. I did not know the answer, or at least, any answer that would comfort a grieving sister.

“Did you ever go to Sunday School back in the day, Heather?”

She barked out a surprised laugh. “That’s one way to avoid a question. But yeah. Mom took us every week until we were old enough to drive ourselves. Then we could choose.”

“Did you ever hear the story in Daniel about the three guys that got thrown into the fire?”

She pondered. “Yeah. They did a VeggieTales episode on that one. They didn’t bow down, had faith that God would save them and then He did. Gonna tell me my faith wasn’t strong enough? I won’t fight you on that.”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not. Mine wouldn’t be either. Besides, that’s not how I remember the story.”

She turns to look at me, focused now.

“In the story, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego tell the King that they will not bow to his statue. The King vows to see them burn. Then they say,  ‘If our God is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace, then let God deliver us. But if not, let it be known that we will not serve your gods nor will we worship the statue.”

“If?” Heather wonders.

“If.” I answer. “They did not know. I think that makes them braver. Where is God in that story? Do you remember?”

She thought, all the while gazing at her sister’s body. “God comes down into the fire with them, and they don’t burn.”

“Is that what they asked for?”

She thought about it.

“They asked for deliverance," I said. "But God didn’t deliver them, exactly. God didn’t even open the door. The King did. Then they walked out themselves. But God is still there in the story.”

Heather nodded slowly. “In the fire. God kept them from burning.”

“I don’t have answers or powers, Heather, but here’s what I think. I think God was with Angie during all her treatments, during all the chemo. I think God cried too when she lost her hair, when the treatments failed, when they told her there was nothing left to try. Maybe God didn’t answer your prayer the way you hoped--didn’t for those guys either. But God was there--- in the fire. Probably felt the heat too. I think God answers by being there, and feeling it with us. And when it’s all over, God is there too.”

Heather studied me, quiet for a while. Then she spoke. “You cried, Chaplain.” She remembered my name. “Hillary. You were sad.”

I swallowed. “Of course. I could tell how much you all loved Angie. I know how hard it is to say goodbye. I thought of my brother.”

Heather returned her gaze to Angie’s body. “I think I’m ready now. I’ll just say goodbye. I think she’ll still hear.”

“Me too,” I said.

She approached her sister’s body and without touching her, whispered something. And then with a little wave, she turned, and we walked out together.

I don’t go to pages planning to hug or not hug, to sing or not sing, to cry or to hold back. I don’t go with planned answers, or stories in my head. I don’t memorize verses or prayers. I just go.

Author’s Note

The above is a piece of creative nonfiction. I have changed the names of patients, nurses, and family members involved, and the encounter described below is a  fictionalized combination of several very real encounters I had with patients and families as a hospital chaplain intern during my first unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. I left my own name because this is my story as much as it is theirs.