A Prayer for All Who Work in Hospice

NB: This morning is our IDT (Interdisciplinary Team) Meeting. The whole team - doctors, nurse/case managers, nurse practitioners, social workers, chaplains, volunteer coordinator, bereavement coordinator and medical records personnel review every patient's chart, share ideas for (and, sometimes, frustrations about) patient care, and certify that they are eligible for hospice under Medicare guidelines.

It is my privilege and joy to develop a meditation for the team to begin our meeting. The challenge of Hospice chaplaincy - especially with a team made up of widely diverse religious practices and expressions - is to offer meditations and prayers that are spiritual and religious and faithful but not reflective of any one spirituality, religion or faith.

The danger, I've found, is to reduce everything to spiritual pablum - the religious equivalent of sitting in a circle, eating Twinkies and singing Kumbaya.

I always draw inspiration from the nurses and nurse's aides (CNAs) who have more on their plate than they can say grace over and yet always make room for more. Sometimes they do that with grace and style and other times . . .  well, they are, after all, human.

So, I bundled up all the sayings I have heard them say, all the words of encouragement they post on the staff refrigerator or as the tag on their emails or FaceBook pages, along with a few of the lessons I've learned, and turned them into a prayer:

A Prayer for All Who Work in Hospice

May the passion you have for life fire the compassion you have for others.

May you know that when you do small things with great love you change lives.

May the blessings you receive mean more than the hours you work.

May you remember to keep both feet on the ground while tending to those who have one foot in heaven.

May you be grateful that your daily encounter with death and dying brings you a deeper appreciation of life and living.

May you never lose sight of the fact that it’s not the length but the depth of life that really matters.

May your work be grounded in the knowledge that grief is the emotional, physical and spiritual price you pay for the priceless gift of love, and that the only cure for grief is grieving.

May you know that while no one may build a monument in your name, the way you make your mark in this life is by erasing the frown on someone’s brow.

And, may you start each day remembering the last words spoken by Steve Jobs before he died:  “Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!”

Amen.