An almost missed moment

I was doing rounds tonight and spent a good long while on one of the medical floors because I get along very well with staff there. We chatted about the holidays and about the past week. All the while, I was ignoring a woman sitting just beyond the desk in a wheelchair. Why, as the chaplain, would I ignore her, you may ask? Well, it is often the practice of this nurses on this floor to wheel "trouble" patients out to the hall in front of the nurses' station. This is for patients who try to get out of bed when they shouldn't, for patients with dementia who require a good bit of supervision that is not really possible for a floor nurse to give. So, yeah, I didn't pay much attention to her, and neither was anyone else.

I went down the hall to check on a patient and when I came back to say goodnight to the staff, I walked past the woman again, still not really paying her any mind. But this time, she called out to me, "Ma'am, do you work here?" Now, she didn't call me by name because she didn't know my name, but she might as well have. I thought about this after reading an article my friend and seminary classmate (Shea Tuttle) wrote. In this article, she talks about Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Zacchaeus was called down by Jesus, simply by his name being called. In this summoning, he was called back to reality and forced to face his carelessness.

I gave a sermon at the hospital chapel service today, and in that sermon, I spoke of the importance of names and of naming things. The use of a name, the act of naming something, is a powerful and important event. Just as Jesus called Zacchaeus's name and this woman called out "Ma'am" to me, there was a naming event occurring. It was so powerful an event that it called me to task and caused me to stop and spend awhile with this patient. Yes, she was suffering from dementia. Yes, she was a problem patient. But there was something truly significant about literally getting down on my knees at this woman's feet, to listen and to pray. Makes me want to think more about Paul's admonition that we are the body of Christ. I'll have to think more on that...