Hospice Spiritual Support Comes from Many Faiths

This blog post by a spiritual care worker at Victoria Hospice in British Columbia, Canada, addresses how being a Buddhist helps him approach patients with spiritual needs.

Co-workers speak of “our monk” when they mention my services to patients and their families. It’s one of the ways of inserting the S-word (spirituality) into the hospice discourse. We find that many people are cautious when it comes to being visited by someone with “chaplain” or “pastoral” on their name tag. For many, the R-word (religion) is problematic, unless they have an established faith practice. However, when faced with persistent pain, declining mobility, and impending death, a spiritual crisis can easily arise.

Being seen as “our monk,” and especially “our Buddhist monk” allows me to step through doors that might otherwise remain shut … actual doors (to patients’ rooms) and metaphoric doors (to deeply-felt fears, doubts, and hopes). It could be that "monk" is such a non-threatening term–it evokes images of ordinary men and women living extra-ordinary lives in the service of others.