Chaplains as Collectors of Stories

(A reflection given at a CPE Graduation, December 2023)

My dad was a storyteller. If you have seen the movie, “Big Fish,” the dad in that film was the spitting image of my dad. Always telling a story. One of his favorites was “The Bear Story,” by the Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley. It’s written from the perspective of a little boy telling a story about hunting a bear with a pop-gun. The boy is constantly revising his tale as he tells it. That constant revision is the story.

I was in a meeting yesterday where someone referred to me as a “collector of stories.” Y’all would certainly agree that I might have picked up something from my dad. But I think that phrase describes our work as chaplains, too. We collect stories, the stories we hear from patients and staff and one another. That’s what a chaplain is, ultimately, someone who listens to stories.

We collect stories and we curate them. We listen, then thoughtfully reframe what we have heard in verbatims, mining them for meaning, for what they say about a person’s search for peace and purpose, and their relationship with God.

We curate our personal stories, too, as we tell and retell them, relating the stories of our childhood and youth to our self-identity today. And what a variety of stories you have: stories from India, Nigeria, and Birmingham, Alabama. Stories of your families, your journey of faith, and your call to ministry. Each time you told your story in CPE it changed a little.

I’ll offer _______ as an example. The first time you told your story it took ten minutes and you said almost nothing of your childhood except that you were from Birmingham. The last time I heard you tell it, you spoke of what Birmingham was like in the early 1960s, when girls close in age to you were killed in a church bombing by the Klan, and you participated in marches where those in the front of the line were met by firehoses and police dogs. You came to see that that childhood helped to form you into the passionate woman and minister you are today.

One of the stories I told was of my introduction to my hospital ward in my first unit of CPE back in 1986. My preceptor, if you can call him that, took me up to the ward and said, “Here you go,” and went to get back on the elevator. “What do I do?” I asked. “Visit your patients.” I struggled. I was scared. You remember your first visits. You were scared, too.

I sat down alter with my CPE educator, Carl Towley. He listened to my confession of my inadequacy and then asked pointedly, “Do you or do you not believe in Luther’s explanation of the third article of the creed?” I was a student at a Lutheran seminary.? He didn’t wait for an answer. He leaned back and closed his eyes and recited what he memorized as a child:

“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”

That became a key part of my story. I learned, as I hope you have, that though we develop many skills in CPE, learn many theories, and become proficient in the required competencies, we remain but instruments in the hands of God--listening to stories, listening for signs of God’s presence.

This graduation is not the end of your story. Nor is it the beginning. It’s merely one piece. Your story will go on. The way you tell it will change. But the more you listen for the presence of God in your own story, the more you will be able to hear him in the stories of others. And you will be able to reflect that back to people who are anxious, fearful, and in pain, to give them hope, and courage, and peace.