Sitting with Silence
18/04/12 05:18
Some people thrive on meetings. They enjoy being with others and find that meetings give them an opportunity to express their views and feel like they are participating in leadership.
Others shun meetings. They prefer hands-on service to planning and policy setting.
I am somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. After years of service in my vocation, I can’t really imagine my life without meetings. But it is not difficult to imagine my life with a lot fewer meetings. There are days with too many meetings. The third Tuesday of the month is one of those days. I have five meetings scheduled for that day each month: 8:30 and 10:30 a.m.; 4:15, 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. Since I typically arrive in the office one or two hours before the first meeting and am around to lock up the building after the last meeting it means that at 14-hour day is normal. I go home tired on those days, and usually am a bit hungry, having skipped dinner.
I’m not complaining. It is the nature of my job to have a few days with lots of meetings. It is probably possible for me to do some re-scheduling, but it wouldn’t be easy. The meetings would happen without me, and do so when necessary, but I do a lot of resourcing for those meetings and my performance at those meetings is among the things upon which my job is evaluated.
A plumbing problem in our 50-year-old building added a bit of excitement yesterday as we scrambled to do an emergency shutdown of our boiler, turned off the water and guided the plumber through the attic to make the repairs.
Tucked into the middle of the action yesterday were two visits. Right after lunch I stopped to visit our congregation’s oldest member. A few weeks ago she was diagnosed with Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). She seems to have gotten through the active stages of the illness. She has no fever, shows no signs of breathing distress, and indicates no pain. The doctors say, however, that the virus could be in her system for an additional 90 days. After 111 years of living, she is tired. She sleeps a lot. In the past six months I have caught her awake only twice. Still I sit with her. She sleeps with her hands tucked into the covers and it seems inappropriate for me to mess with her blankets, so I lay my hand on her shoulder and sometimes her forehead. I sing a hymn, read a scripture, say a prayer and pronounce a blessing. Sometimes I repeat the same words I used in a previous visit. I know her favorite verses of scripture. She used to recite the 23rd Psalm with me. These days, I do not see her lips moving when I visit.
I am sure that her life is slowly winding down. But I have no sense of the timing. In fact, visiting her seems to be a timeless process. She is living in Kyros time, not Chronos time. Her life is not regulated by clocks and calendars. It seems like her transition from this life will be a gentle affair without drama. I am sure that she does not need me to be present for that moment. But she seems to appreciate me being present at times. I am visiting more frequently now that the end seems to be closer. In a phone conversation, her daughter reflected on how different time is for a woman who is 111 years old. She joked, “I am the executor for mother’s estate, but I think I should change my will and name her executor for mine.”
In need of exercise, I left my pickup in the parking lot at the care center and walked the few blocks to the hospital where the elevators are under construction. I took the stairs to the seventh floor and visited a man who was the victim of a brutal attack sometime on Holy Saturday. He was found on Easter morning and rushed to the hospital where he has remained, recovering, ever since. The hospital has treated him with great care and kindness and they are doing an excellent job of managing his pain. But he does have fears and he does become agitated and he can be irrational at times. I have been visiting him daily. Some days he believes himself to be a couple of hundred miles away and marvels that I would come all the way to visit him. Yesterday his agitation was intense about a half hour before my visit. The nurse gave him a sedative. He wouldn’t wake up for me, though the nurses were encouraging me to try to wake him. I held his hand. He squeezed mine. We sat for a while together before I said a prayer, offered a blessing and took my leave.
The walk down the stairs was easier than the trip up. The walk back to my pickup was uphill and I kept up a brisk pace as I watched the clouds build and the sky darken to the west. A few drops of rain were falling as I reached the church.
I sometimes comment that when you have a job like mine the distinction between working and not working is so subtle that some people can’t recognize the difference. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that sitting with sleeping people was the most important work I did yesterday. I participated in the meetings. I accomplished the tasks required. I was a minister when I sat silently at the bedside of two people, lightly touching them.
The ministry of presence is more important than the ministry of administration.
The authority of the pastoral office is not defined by decisive action, but rather by silence.
I did not know these truths when I was a younger man. There were days, back then, when I shortened visits to make room for meetings. There were times when I felt awkward in the silence and read from the book of prayer to keep from having to sit with the silence.
Silence doesn’t report well on a job evaluation. It doesn’t show up on a performance review. It doesn’t offer any sound bites or photogenic moments. I do not live for the meetings. I could probably live without them.
I could not live without the silence.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30)