In this day and age, there is a tendency to call all and sundry ‘guys’ (so tiresome, to say the least, don’t you agree?). So, the other day I am caught off-guard when someone in the hospital where I work addresses me as ‘minister lady’. To my knowledge, this title is notably bestowed on women of nobility or claimed by singers like Stefani Germanotta aka Lady Gaga, but not on a hospital chaplain. Furthermore, it is rare these days that a woman in general is called a ‘lady’, and in my eleven years as a hospital chaplain I have certainly never been called ‘minister lady’. This accolade caused me to pause and reflect on all that is entailed in my daily ins and outs as a ‘minister lady’.
As I mentioned already, I have been a chaplain at Victoria Hospital, one of Canada’s largest, most diverse hospitals, for close to eleven years. For this ‘minister lady’ it has been both a challenge and a blessing. It has been the context of vast experiences, unsettling at times yet always inviting me to welcome and embrace the opportunities to learn, to grow, to think outside the box, to embrace the constant changes in health care - to ‘enlarge’ my heart.
Some of you probably know that London, Ontario, is by far not as diverse as is multicultural Toronto. However, since Victoria Hospital is a regional hospital, patients come from a wide geographical radius. The hospital is, furthermore, connected to Western University which caters to a huge student body from many different countries and has a large medical student and nursing student body. On any given day at the hospital there are not only patients of many different cultures and ethnic groups. There are doctors, nurses, residents and student nurses who are Canadians or foreigners, believers or non-believers, Christian or non-Christian, Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or Jewish, Mennonite or Amish. And here am I, the ‘minister lady’, a member of a Religious Congregation, in this government hospital with its multicultural milieu just maybe making a small difference in the lives of those to whom I daily minister.
Though I am hired by the Catholic Diocese of London to provide pastoral care for Catholic patients, people of just about every other denomination and nationality also daily cross my path. In my diverse encounters with Catholic patients I have supported families who are confronted with the sudden death of a child, with patients who received devastating news of a cancer diagnosis, parents coming to terms with the loss of a still born baby. I have been asked to support palliative patients contemplating the option of MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) and parents who were advised to have a genetic termination because their baby had severe abnormalities. All of these encounters were opportunities to set aside my personal beliefs, my values, and any lingering prejudices in order to support these people. I have sat with a homeless woman admitted for mental health challenges due to drug abuse whose life at first glance looked so very different from mine, and yet I felt such compassion for her in her plight. Listening to her talk about her pain, her difficulties, her struggles, quickly made me realize that we were just two women who each have their struggles, who, in fundamental ways, were not that different from each other.
Along the way, I learned to handle different theological stances, often being challenged to think outside the proverbial box and am often amazed by how much more we have in common with people who ‘seem’ at first glance so different from us. Again and again I am invited into the chaos of people’s lives, learning to engage the differences, to widen my heart, to listen and support, to being non-judgmental. Within the last year or so I have, for example, become increasingly aware of the incredible challenges parents of transgender teenagers face and have become the confidant of staff who struggle to cope with teenagers who are dealing with gender dysphoria, which, by the way, is becoming a far greater phenomenon than many of us perhaps realize.
Talk about being stretched, constantly embracing the new and different. All these various pieces of the kaleidoscope of my work as a ‘minister lady’ at the hospital have proved to be a gift and a blessing, albeit in disguise – and often an emotionally draining one. Many a day I go home thinking to myself, now I have seen it all, and then a new challenge comes along, a new invitation to make room in my heart, in my ministry as a ‘minister lady’ to be a co-creator in building God’s kingdom.
- Sr. Magdalena Vogt, CPS