Today I saw a hysterectomy scar. Not mine, I thank God, and not the scar of someone I love. It wasn’t even the scar of someone I know. It was the scar of a stranger I encountered during my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) training. The woman bearing the scar needed to adjust an itching bandage; exposing the scar seemed matter-of-fact. She didn’t comment on it; neither did I.
Working as a chaplain intern at a major hospital, I am learning to offer a humanizing touch in a deeply alienating and dehumanizing setting. And when I say “learning,” I am pretty sure I mean “floundering,” “failing,” and “doubting.” The hours are long, and vulnerability and rejection abound. Some doctors and nurses don’t seem to welcome pastoral care, nor value it. Others smile at me like I am a child and imply I am nothing but a glorified Candy Striper. I walk into rooms feeling unwanted by patients, and the medical and social work staff fly past me, concentrating on their own well-defined and clearly essential tasks.
I struggle with how to introduce myself and how to offer care. I struggle to break some patients’ association between the title “chaplain” and imminent death (as in “I thought I was in here for minor surgery and they called the chaplain!?”). There are times when I immediately see the relevance and the healing power of eye contact and a listening ear, prayer and blessing, questions that invite a patient to become a person again, to offer me their narrative and their perspective on the world, to allow them to make meaning in the midst of suffering.
My first week has not been overflowing with such times, and today I left the hospital feeling pretty defeated, thinking about the long weeks stretching ahead, a summer not bright with sunshine but dark with uncertainty and mistakes (you know how we over-achievers shrink from those!).
And then a young woman boarded the subway car and took a seat next to me. She wore dark jeans, a hoodie sweatshirt, and a tight black hijab (Muslim headscarf). Her eyes were lined in dark black eyeliner and she wore pale pink nail polish. She carried a purple leather bag that I admired. She fidgeted nervously and kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye. She seemed like she wanted to talk, so I smiled and said, “Cute bag.” “I know,” she said, her shoulders relaxing, angling herself toward me on the bench. “I keep forgetting to latch it, though. I hate bags without zippers, but it was so cute I had to buy it.” We both laughed. I didn’t have much else to say, but she looked expectant, her dark brown eyes still turned toward me. She asked me if the M train were running today, but she didn’t seem much interested in my answer. Instead, she told me she had moved to New York just a year ago.
She spoke quickly. Her voice was bright, but she seemed nervous, like she just needed to make some kind of connection. Perhaps I am projecting, because I definitely needed to make a connection, to feel less isolated. So here I was, my feet sore from standing pretty much all day, eyes itchy and dry from crying, hands smelling of the antibacterial sanitizer I have to apply constantly to ensure patient safety, wearing a Star of David pendant and chatting with a Muslim woman, a complete stranger. The conversation started with accessories and subway schedules, but it turned quickly to marriage, commitment, and relationships.
“I’ve only been in New York for a year,” she said. She carried a large textbook stamped with the name of a local university, so I asked if she moved here for school. “I got married,” she said. She described a whirlwind courtship: at her cousin’s wedding, a man, a friend of the groom’s family, noticed her across the room and asked about her. They were soon engaged, living on opposite sides of the country. After a two-year engagement, the two were married and the bride moved to a fast-paced city and a new life. I asked if the couple had any children and she raised her eyebrows, shaking her head emphatically. “I’m still young!”
If I type out the rest of the conversation, I am afraid it will sound silly and trite. But I assure you, it wasn’t. We talked about how, even in a happy relationship filled with love, it can be a challenge to move from making choices independently to being ever-mindful of your partner’s needs. We talked about how we worry for our spouses’ health—sometimes more than they worry for their own. We talked about establishing a rhythm with your partner before adding children to the family. We talked about carving out time for emotional intimacy amidst career tasks and schoolwork. She was surprised to hear that I am ten years older than she (“I thought we were the same!”). When she learned my partner was a woman, she apologized for assuming otherwise and the conversation continued smoothly. She asked for advice in shaping her marriage and ensuring fulfillment for herself and for her husband. We weren’t “the same,” but the ways in which we were different mattered little. In some ways, it was the differences that made the conversation enriching.
When I got off the train, I started to cry. It had been such a long, tiring day, and most of it was spent wandering hospital hallways feeling lonely and useless. On the subway, I became a person with something to offer: my life experience reassured a young bride. On the subway, I became a person worthy of care and attention.
At home, I opened Siddur Sha’ar Zahav, the prayerbook of the LGBT synagogue in San Francisco, and read the “Prayer for Unexpected Intimacy”:
“In the dark, in a strange place, our father Jacob encountered a stranger with whom he grappled all night. He never knew the stranger’s name, yet their encounter was a blessing, which turned Jacob into Israel and made him realize, “I have seen God face-to-face” (Genesis 32:31). May this intimate time with another person be an encounter with angels that allows us to both touch and see the Divine, in the Name of the God of Israel, who created passion and wove it throughout creation, turning strange places into holy ground and strangers into a source of blessing.”
I needed an easy conversation, a surprising connection, a simple, human encounter, and that is what this young woman blessed me with today. Before I left the subway car, I asked the woman her name. “Huda,” she said. I looked it up on the internet and found the meaning “right guidance.” Thank you for guiding me back to a complicated and surprising world and for reminding me that unexpected intimacy can connect us to the best in our humanity. We cannot reach transformation without uncertainty, without scars.