I was happy to return to the Mansion this morning as Acting Pastor Katz. My meditation class will resume next week, probably on Wednesday morning. I’ve also continued my weekly visits to Bishop Maginn High School in Albany.

I am delighted to be doing this work of the Army Of Good again. I’m getting a lost list of things the Mansion residents need in the next few days. This is not a role I ever imagined playing, but it somehow seems to fit.

We had as many residents as permitted during the pandemic, and I was pleased to see four or five people from the Memory Care unit next door.

I brought two books to this service today – one was Thomas Merton’s Book Of Hours, a collection of prayers, ideas, and hymns set in the framework of every day of the week. I use Merton’s book to open and close the service.

The other book was Henri Nouwen’s Bread For The Journey for thoughtful and spiritual talking points and ideas. I am an avid and longtime fan of both authors.

 

 

I’m not a pastor, obviously, and everyone in the class is Christian, which I am also not.

That doesn’t seem to matter. From the beginning of my Mansion work, I understood that the point of my work is showing up. That matters to the residents more than anything.

My goal is to spark discussions about the fears, hopes, and challenges of living in assisted care at the edge of life.

Merton gives me beautiful prayers and mini-sermons to read, Nouwen gives me many essential ideas to think about and talk about.

First, we talked about hope. Hope is important in assisted care.

“The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands,” writes Nouwen. “All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day (King and Mandela) were people of hope.”

I think it’s essential to offer the residents these examples to talk about. Hope can make all the difference at the Mansion.

The great spiritualists all lived with a promise in their hearts and souls that brings them to the future without the need to know or promise precisely what it would look like. But they never lose hope.

Most of the residents nodded vigorously at this idea. “Hope is important here,” said R, “because what are we supposed to hope for? We’re not going anywhere but to a nursing home where we will certainly die.”

But several of the residents jumped in. One said she hoped for friends in her new life and found some. Another said she hopes for happiness for her children and grandchildren. A third said she hopes for two or three more springs, she loves flowers since she can’t have dogs or cats anymore. And Claudia says she hopes for health.

I said I thought every human being had to have something to hope for, even if it isn’t always obvious or straightforward.

The residents need to be able to talk about these things. That’s the best work that I can do there. We also discussed the importance of community and being oneself in a gathering of others.

I read this from Nouwen: “We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!”

The last thing I read about and spoke about was loneliness and solitude, the first an almost universal emotional issue at the Mansion and other elder care facilities.

The residents miss their families, friends, dogs, cats, and other pets. They cut their homes and their lives. They miss a future or can’t imagine one.

They come to a place where no one knows them well and often don’t have the time to know others and be known. People come and go at the Mansion; life is constantly in flux. The residents are not only lonely for familiar people, but for the work, they did and can no longer do.

I read this passage from Nouwen on finding solitude and using it to find peace, something I have worked hard on (I told the residents about my quiet hour.)

“Letting our loneliness grow into solitude and not into loneliness is a lifelong struggle. It requires conscious choices about who to be with, what to study, how to pray, and when to ask for counsel. But wise choices will help us find the solitude where our hearts can grow in love.”

My last subject was a Nouwen essay I found called Creating Space to Dance Together.

Nouwen cautions in his book about looking for a person who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts, he said, cry out, “Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me.”

But often discover that the people we expect to take our loneliness away can’t give us what we need. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and can become destructive. “For love to be possible,” wrote Nouwen, “we need the courage to create space  between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together.”

We talked a bit about the space where everyone could dance together. I got a lot of questions about that. I think it made everyone in the room think, and that, I guess, was the point.

Pastor Katz will return to the Mansion. Next, he will put on another hate and teach his meditation class. This is a sweet and rewarding twist to the spiritual life; it enriches and deepens me.