Category: Healthcare & Medicine

‘Chaplain, Can You Do an Exorcism?’

To accompany people struggling with command auditory hallucinations, the author uses a metaphorical approach and works within each patient’s own religious framework. By Jeremy D. Sher

Chanting through the Spring Surge

An interview with Sarah Byrne-Martelli, a chaplain at Massachusetts General Hospital, on the quiet camaraderie and unnamed grief among hospital staff during the pandemic. By Wendy McDowell

A Minister Cultivates Abiding

The current pandemic provides a context to learn what it means to bear witness while impotent to reverse human suffering. By Emily Click

Chaplaincy as ‘Tragic Improv’

Erica Rose Long describes the honest conversations about race taking place at Massachusetts General Hospital and discusses the unique challenges and joys of chaplaincy. By Wendy McDowell

A Jewel in the Lotus

The Buddha’s life, teachings, and response to human suffering inform practices of spiritual care in the hospital, and also in the classroom. By Chris Berlin

Plague Wisdom

Learning from queer elders who cared for the dying through the horrors of the AIDS crisis. By Cody Hooks

Ways of ‘Knowing’ Cancer

For an academic who has been living with cancer since 1996, reflecting on the ways we think and make value judgments about serious illness cannot help but be an existential endeavor. By Mark U. Edwards, Jr.

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