I stood next to a couple of coworkers in the ER. We were waiting for a patient to arrive. I was hearing their conversation. (When you are standing two feet apart, it’s hard to call it “eavesdropping.”) “OTF is off the floor” was the first sentence I heard. I immediately assumed that they were saying […]

I keep mail lists, just in case. It’s what everyone says to do if you want to sell online. I created one for Lent, one for this project, one for that project. Each of those lists was for a good idea, an occasionally helpful project. After all, I wrote the Nehemiah book to an email […]

It was a very challenging day for Northern Indiana. Which meant that it was a very challenging day for people working in the hospital. Which meant that it was a very challenging day for chaplains. As each new unrelated event happened, coworkers would look at each other and say, “What is going on?” Some people […]

(A couple years ago, I did a funeral for a friend with Alzheimer’s. These were part of my comments. I come back to them now, as a chaplain, regularly. Because this text was part of the service that led to my last two posts, I decided to run this today again.) More than I ever […]

Chaplains walk into rooms for lots of different things. Many of them are not exactly spiritual. We offer people help with advance directives, like appointing a health care representative. We are notaries. We show up when people come into the ED for accidents and falls and heart attacks and strokes. I don’t pray out loud […]