Chaplains

The end of life is difficult when it comes slowly, but what better place to live out those last days that the coast of Florida? Be prepared, though, that should you end up in one particular hospice you may find the chaplains have a limited spiritual input, limited by sometimes not being allowed to include God in what they say!

I've spent time (alright, I confess, had meals) with two very interesting chaplains on my Sabbatical and both of them also work with limitations, though not the ridiculous one from Boca Raton.

The first was a chaplain in the British Army for 22 years. These days he's a local vicar and, needless to say, the services in his church always start (and finish) exactly on time! He told me how, as he went further into his chaplaincy, he could always spot a newly-appointed chaplain. He would be the one who carried books or Bibles, mini communion sets and other religious encumbrances.

"When you've been a chaplain a while," he said to me over lunch, "you understand that all you have and all you can carry is you and your faith."

The second chaplain is blog-sensitive because he is working in a medical facility in a fiercely Islamic country where any proselytising would get him on the next plane and the convert possibly into the next life. Yet despite that apparent limitation he was hugely excited about his work and his witness.

"There's a lot that I cannot say and some things I cannot do, but there are a lot more people watching who I am than would ever happen in a parish."

Chaplaincy is perhaps a reminder to believers that wherever we are we can bear a witness to God. Except, possibly and ironically, in a dying corner of Florida in the land to which the Pilgrim Fathers fled to secure religious freedom . . .