Discovering hope in the rubble of the World Trade Center
Chaplaincy Innovation Lab Advisor Ron Oliver writes in Norton Healthcare News:
While we were cognizant of the obvious needs, what took its toll on me and many of my chaplain colleagues was the awareness that we had no awareness as to what circumstance or what chance encounter would present a story so bizarre and unpredictable that there was no way to be prepared for it:
A mother said to a chaplain, “I am so grateful.” The chaplain, anticipating good news, opened herself up to take it in. The mother continued, “They called me yesterday and told me that they had found my son’s foot.” Grateful for a foot? Whoever could have imagined praying that prayer of thanks?
A lawyer, while filling out a man’s expedited death certificate, said to his widow, “I’ll record his date of death as 9/11.” From the mother’s side a little girl looked at the lawyer and asked, “You mean my daddy’s dead?” The question devastated the lawyer. She didn’t know what to say or do. In anxious desperation, she sought a chaplain.