Indulging myself

I splurged last week. A small splurge, but on what appears to be a totally unnecessary purchase. I think of it, however, as an important indulgence. What kind of splurge inspired this posting? I bought a skinit for my work phone.

I could argue that I needed it to distinguish my phone from all the other phones on those rare occasions when we're all in the office, but that isn't the reason I bought it. (Although I think that was part of the reason I gave myself.) I could say it was because there was a special deal with free shipping, but if I hadn't bought one I would have not only not paid for shipping, but I would have also not paid to buy it. My real reason for buying it was that I could choose and upload my own picture.


In the past four months, we've had a number of family simchas. We've also had one very difficult, untimely loss. The picture on my skinit is a joyful, smiling photo from one of the simchas. I can't look at it without smiling. I look at it and remember how happy we all were. I look at it and I remember that the pain of our loss was also a part of the day. The photo reminds me that a month after one of the worst days in our lives, we celebrated one of the happiest.

When I see this photo as I'm working, I'm reminded that all of us have mixtures of love and loss, celebration and loneliness in our lives. It reminds me not to take my blessings for granted. It reminds me that joy may be followed by sorrow and then again, God willing, by joy. The photo helps me remember that I want to work to live, not live to work. It reminds me to turn off the phone when the day or the week is over.


The photograph is not a talisman. It won't protect me from the pain that comes with my work or the pain that comes with life. But I hope it will protect me from becoming callous or indifferent. I hope it will always make me smile. When I think about the joy the photo gives me, it is clear that this splurge was not an extravagance and not really an indulgence, but another important weapon in my battle against burnout.

Elul

One of my favorite things to do at this time of year is take my shofar with me to work. From the beginning of Elul until Yom Kippur, I have it with me. I sound it for my Jewish patients. I let the nursing homes where I work know what it is, why I have it, and that I will visit any Jewish resident so that they can hear the sounds of the shofar. In a nursing home with a younger, more alert, special needs population, the activity department and I schedule a program so that the Jewish residents can prepare for the New Year.

In a job where almost everyday provides the unexpected, I never know what to expect once I take out the shofar. I do a lot of education with staff and residents at this time of year. I never sound the shofar without making sure that everyone around me knows what I'm doing -- especially when I'm on a dementia unit.

Sometimes there are moments of serendipity, of grace. I'm in a nursing home doing a spiritual assessment on a new patient. We're meeting in a corner of the activity / dining room. The activity director, spotting my kipah, comes over to tell me that they are making "cards for the Jewish New Year." I am able to respond not only by coming over to meet the residents and talk about the meaning of the New Year, but by saying, "I have a ram's horn in the trunk of my car. May I go get it so that your residents can hear the sound of the New Year?" And while I have it, a nurse mentions a bed-bound Jewish resident down the hall and I am welcomed into her room so that she can hear the sound of the shofar. "Her family will be so happy when we let them know that you were here."

I'm visiting one of my Jewish patients. We sit in her room and I talk to her about the season. There's no response today, no eye contact, no acknowledgment that I'm present. I take out the shofar and blow it. Her head jerks up, her eyes open, and, for a moment, she's there.

Another patient, another home - my patient is a 100 + year old Holocaust survivor. We visit in front of her room, by the nurses' station where she sits each day. I take out the shofar -- Tekiah -- and the woman sitting next to her in the hallway glares at me and loudly asks, "What are you trying to do - wake the dead?"

Another survivor. Not yet my patient, but when I talk on the phone about hospice with her out-of-state son, he asks that I take in the shofar so that she can hear it. It turns out she's in a different place in her dementia. The shofar scares her. When I greet her in Hebrew or Yiddish she gets agitated and motions me to be silent. She responds to me and converses only when I greet her in Polish. Unfortunately my Polish extends only to "good morning," "how are you," and "thank you," but that doesn't stop her from taking my hand and talking to me - as long as the shofar is not in sight.

Once again it's Elul. This morning I opened my living room cabinet and took out my shofar. I don't know what the next month will bring, but I do know that for my Jewish patients it will include the sounds of the shofar as, together, we prepare to either close the Book of Life or to greet the New Year.

Again with the yarmulke . . .

This was my weekend to be on-call. There are a couple of differences in my on-call "look." Weekends on-call are the only time I wear jeans to work, although in the summer my weekend clothes are closer to my weekday work clothes. The big difference is that on Saturday on-call I don't wear a kipah. It's funny - as easy as it is to forget my kipah when it's on, I'm hyper-aware of its absence when I'm not wearing it. I almost feel as though I'm going to work naked; missing a vital part of my "uniform."

I walked into a facility yesterday to do some on-call visits. I said "hello" to a resident I often talk with on my way in and out. She looked at me and said, "You're not wearing your little . . ." and pointed to my head. "Right," I said, "my yarmulke. Well, I don't wear it when I'm working on the Sabbath." I didn't go into a lot of detail, simply explaining that Jews generally don't work on the Jewish Sabbath, so when I'm making on-call visits on the Sabbath I don't wear it.

I didn't want to get into an entire discussion on marat ayin (how things appear; not wanting to mislead a fellow Jew) and why I leave the kipah off. Although I consider myself an observant Jew, I am not a halachically observant Jew. In addition to working on some Shabbatot, there's the car I drive to the nursing home, the pen and paper I'm using to write up my visit notes, the BlackBerry that I use to check patient details, and the myriad of other non-Shabbasdik things involved in patient visits.

I leave the kipah off on Shabbat because I don't want to be a public Jew on that day. I don't want to advertise my religion. On a Shabbat on-call visit I just want to advertise the hospice presence. Of course, it's on my on-call days with no kipah, working in buildings where we have other chaplains during the week, and with staff who aren't familiar with me that I am most often mistaken for the hospice nurse. This weekend was no exception. "Yes, I think it's alright to skip a PPD on a hospice patient," I say, "but I'm not the nurse, I'm the chaplain. Let me call my nurse and get an answer to your question."

After a day on-call, disguised as "just another chaplain," it's a pleasure to put my kipah back on and enter the new work week as the Jewish chaplain.

"I assume you're a Christian."

I was visiting today with a patient and her daughter (really with the daughter, who's having a hard time facing the loss of her mom.) She was talking to me about her mother's faith; how long it's been since she "accepted the Lord." At that point she looked at me and said: "I assume you're a Christian." "No," I responded. A pause, and then I added, "But I understand the language."

It may seem like a funny response, but I do understand the language. And she's not the first person who has been concerned about my "relationship with Jesus" - I've had that discussion lately with several patients or family members. Today's woman took another look at me and said, "You're Jewish." "Yes." "I could tell from your headcovering." Last week's family member, after I initially missed her question about my salvation in our phone conversation, responded to my letting her know that I am a rabbi by letting me know that it was fine for me to visit her mother and to bless her because, "The Jews are God's chosen people."

Judaism is my spiritual "mother tongue." It is the lens through which I see the world. Most of my patients, however, are not Jewish. So I "translate" my religious language into theirs. I listen for the phrases in their conversations that tell me of their beliefs. I talk with them about this world and about the next (but instead I call it "the afterlife.") I affirm the lives of faith led by their loved ones. I reflect back to them the teachings that provide them comfort as they confront love and loss.

The religious differences may make me a better chaplain. I have to listen. I have to think about what they are saying and the meaning of the religious phrases they use. As I respond, I have to make sure that I have framed my response in the language they speak. I have to recognize my boundaries as well. I can't anoint a patient or absolve them of their sins. I have to reach out to their clergy, if they allow me to do so, or to clergy of their faith if they request it.

Often my kipah proclaims my faith so I don't get the questions I seem to have gotten lately. But whether patients and families know I'm Jewish or just know I'm the chaplain, my job is to let families know that I will listen to their spiritual needs, help them connect with a clergyperson if they wish, and accompany them on this journey.

Clergy burnout

Yesterday's New York Times had an interesting article on clergy burnout. The article spoke of the rising rate of "obesity, hypertension and depression" in clergy. There are a lot of reasons - lifestyle changes, the speed of modern life, the need to be present to our congregants 24/7 - but the one reason the article focuses on the most is the need to take more time off.

It can be tough to take time off sometimes, even when you take time off. When I was a congregational rabbi, I had to leave contact information when I went away whether my absence was business (convention) or personal (vacation.) That was a long time ago. I was a solo rabbi of a small congregation. I don't know what things are like now in small congregational life, but I can remember the tremendous feeling of freedom the first time I took a vacation after leaving my pulpit. No one knew where I was going (except family) and no one knew how to reach me (except family.) It was the feeling of freedom that let me know that my previous vacations had not, fully, been vacations. This was before the internet, before cell phones, before BlackBerrys and instant messaging and email, before the expectation of immediate responses to questions or needs. The contact information was for deaths or major crises. Still, the expectation was that in an emergency I'd come back.

I've had other jobs in the Jewish community that also came with expectations of long hours, contact during vacations to deal with crises, and the need for immediate responses to unexpected events. I was definitely burnt out when my last job ended. One of the nice things about the brief unemployment after that job was the chance to relax, reflect, catch up, and go away without worrying what I'd find on my desk when I returned.

Something I really appreciated when interviewing for hospice jobs was the concern about self-care. Our work can be difficult and some days, overwhelming. We're with people at some of the worst times in their lives. We help them try to make sense of what's happening, find meaning in loss, and craft the story of the life that's ending and their new world on the other side of loss. Each hospice interview I've had included questions like: "What will you do to take time for yourself?" "How do you think you'll be able to leave this work behind?" "What do you do for fun?" "When do you relax?"

In my job, when I'm on - I'm on. But when I'm away or off for a day or not on-call over the weekend - I'm off. There's no expectation to check in, no need to leave contact information, no worries about what will be on my desk when I return. We cover for each other. We make sure the work is done. We understand the need to take vacation time; to get away, to recharge ourselves, to rejuvenate. We may not do it as well as we could - we still need help and support to eat healthy food, to exercise our bodies, to challenge our brains, and to look for the everyday miracles that fill our world, but I know that I am much healthier as a rabbi in this job than I have been in others.

yarmulke

In addition to the times when wearing a kipah leads to serious discussions or requests for additional support (or "courtesy visits" as one of my fellow chaplains refers to them,) there are the unplanned moments of humor.

• I'm sitting at the nurses' station at an unnamed nursing home working on my visit notes. A patient (not one of mine) comes up to talk with me. The back story, which I find out later, is that she noticed the kipah and asked one of the facility nurses who I was. The nurse told her: "That's the rabbi."    
• Patient: "Oh. You're Jewish." Me: "Yes." Patient: "I thought you just liked to wear doilies on your head."

• I'm visiting a patient in a "memory unit" in an assisted living. A staff member comes up to me and notes that several of the women have noticed my headcovering. They are wondering where I'm from. A quick series of responses runs through my mind. I can't say, "I'm from "We Care For You Hospice" because that would violate HIPPA rules and patient privacy. I don't really want to say, "I'm from the "We Care For You Agency" for similar reasons. (Although I wear a name badge and most of the staff know where I'm from.) I could say, "I'm from 'Hometownville'," but I don't really think that's what they're asking. So I go for what seems to me to be the simplest answer:
• "Just tell them I'm a rabbi." Staff member: "What?" Me: "I'm a rabbi." The staff member walks over to the residents and says: "She's from A-rabb-ia."

To be perfectly fair, in the first case it was a particularly lacy, open crocheted kipah. And wearing a doily is sometimes a fashion choice on the dementia unit.

At the second facility they were playing Christmas music ("O Holy Night" when I walked in) even though it was a hot, late spring day.  I reported to my colleagues afterward that apparently I was only "alert and oriented x 1" that day. Which is to say, I knew my name, but it seemed that I didn't quite know the date (December? May?) or the place ('Happy Dawn Assisted Living'? A-rabb-ia?)

Some days all you can do is laugh.

Where did you get your faith?

One of my patients and I were talking about faith today. He was born Catholic but no longer practices. He had told our nurse that he believed in God and would be happy to have me visit. He's not much for talking - he told me that and told me that his voice was wearing out from talking with me (and there really wasn't that much talking.) Then he asked, "Where did you get your faith?"

Wow. I needed to think about that one. Where did I get my faith? I got it in part from my parents who joined a synagogue and sent me to religious school. I got it in part because I looked around at how the world works and knew there must have been something (someone) who created it. That was about as much as I could come up with during the visit. We talked a bit more - about people whose faith teaches them that there will be a reward after this world, about my belief that what's important is not whatever comes next but what we do here. He was tired, so I asked if we could talk about this more at our next visit. He agreed.

Before I could write a visit note or even begin to process the visit, my phone rang. I was needed somewhere else -- 50 + miles away.

I love driving. It gives me time to think, to ruminate, to dream. I've been known to miss a turn I know well because I'm mentally writing a sermon (or now a blog post) while I drive. So, with 50 + miles of highway I had plenty of time to think about where I got my faith. The more I thought, the more I think that my first answer -- my synagogue -- was more true than I realized. I don't remember a lot of details about what I learned in Sunday School, but I remember some formative experiences there. In sixth or seventh grade we studied comparative religion. At the end of the course, we had to write an evaluation. I wrote that we should have had teachers or guest speakers from the different faiths, because the teacher, Mr. H., "couldn't answer all my questions." Mr. H. wrote in reply, "God Himself couldn't answer all Chana's questions." It was in my synagogue and youth group that I learned I could ask as many questions as I wanted and that there were a lot of texts that spoke to my concerns. It was in my synagogue that I found a community, teachers, rabbis, mentors. It was through the synagogue that I went on to advanced Jewish learning and had pivotal experiences, including significant time spent in Israel.

Where did I get my faith? I got it from Jewish texts, from Jewish experiences, from friends, and from my rabbis. I get it through the work I do and the people I meet. And today I was reminded that in the work I do, I get so much more than I give.