Thursday, December 14, 2023
Memorial of Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Living the angel life
I am the Lord, your God, who grasps your right hand. It is I who say to you, “Fear not, for I will help you.”
Once his wife passed away, my mentor Al Schmidt began spending time visiting patients at the hospital in Lincoln. Sometimes he traveled the thirty miles to Springfield or Bloomington, Illinois to see someone he knew, to pray for them, to hold their hand, to hug them, to pass the time in conversation, or playing rummy, or watching tv.
When he headed for Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital in Lincoln, he often didn’t know who or what he would find. Al became a chaplain for many, although he wasn’t trained to be a pastor or a chaplain. He knew instinctively how to minister.
Counseling professor Robert Carkhuff described three primary helping skills as warmth, empathy and respect. He said these were necessary in every helper, whether or not they were professional. “Without them, a professional is ineffective. With them, a volunteer, a parent or partner, a teacher will all be effective.” Nothing matters until a hurting person feels accepted, heard and at least partially understood.
This is what Al did so well, walking the halls of the hospital and peeking into one room after another. Not as a Christian ministering to others so much as a person who has suffered himself offering companionship to one who is suffering right now. Would you like to talk? Or I could just sit with you. Perhaps I could come back again tomorrow. Of course. Let’s pray right now. The words flowed entirely from the relationship Al established with a patient.
Roy Weece, campus minister at U of Missouri at Columbia for most of 40 years, and our friend, often said he was different from others only in that he had a crust of bread when perhaps they had none, and he was always willing to share. Sometime the bread was literal, sometimes symbolic. Al and Roy were cut from the same loaf. Pass the body, pass the blood, let us break bread together on our knees.
Your Kingdom is a kingdom for all ages, and your dominion endures through all generations.
Al did his work and eventually moved into a nursing home in Mason City, twenty miles west of Lincoln. There, suffering from dementia, he passed away at age 90. I will never forget my friend and mentor. I am thankful to God for showing me so much of how to be loved and love through Al Schmidt, who called me by name, always by name.
I bet God doesn’t call you Robert or Elizabeth.
The Beloved has a name for you
no one else has given you,
a name no one else has. No one.
Better than a nickname,
or even a heartfelt term of endearment.
The name of your soul,
declared to the universe in the language of mystery,
pronounceable only by God.
When you pray, it is for that name you are listening.
When God speaks your name
it is as when God says “Let there be light.”
It is the name of who you alone are created to be,
the name by which God knows you,
calls you into life.
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Listen for the silence in which that name is spoken.
(It takes time; it’s a deep and wide silence.)
Listen for that name.
Let the one who alone calls you by name lead you out.
(Isaiah 41, Psalm 145, Isaiah 45, Matthew 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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