Chaplaincy in the land of Social Justice

Recently, during a coffee break with Rabbi Brent Spodek from American Jewish World Service, we began chatting about the overlap of social justice and being a chaplain. Rabbi Spodek's essential question, as I recall, is how can being a chaplain be an act of social justice.

Here is my vision, I can see chaplaincy as an opportunity to do more than just social action (as in direct service work like going to a soup kitchen and serving a meal)but to create true social change.

But what is this thing, chaplaincy in the first place? I am a chaplain at Mount Sinai hospital in New York City. My job is to sit with people and bear witness to their experiences, especially bearing witness to people's suffering. Here is the hope, like any heavy load one carries, it is easier when two people are shouldering the burden than just one. The goal of sitting with someone is not to solve problems, but to make their portage less burdensome.

In social justice/social change world...well, I think being a chaplain opens up a space for some true social change. Beyond just helping those who are burdened (and PS, we are ALL burdened by something) to carry the load, there is something which acknowledges the humanity of another human being, which validates someone else's sense of self worth just by asking, are you ok?

My assumption and understanding, there are people in the world who are in pretty terrible life circumstances. People do not wake up in the morning and think, I want a really hard, miserable life full of suffering and travail. No, what happens is if you hear enough messages from your family, your community, the media, strangers on the street and other subtle sources of input that you, are worthless or even just worth LESS, eventually you will believe it.

At the soup kitchen, we teach the kids, imagine the homeless person on the street who is not only in a place to need help, is not only asking for help, but is spending the day being ignored by almost everyone who walks by while in the middle of doing one of the hardest things people ever have to do (which is admitting we cannot do it all alone and HAVE to ask others for assistance). Imagine how fundamentally invisible-ing that feels, how profoundly terrible it feels go through a day, let alone a life of being unseen by all other people in the world. (Imagine going through a day without anyone even saying hello to you...) Now what would happen for that person to just simply be acknowledged?

People out there say, well why don't those who are in need just pull themselves up by their boot straps and change, make their situation in life better? Well, what if you do not even know that you deserve better? What if you cannot even imagine better? What if you do not even know that your boots have straps to pull?

This is the power of being a chaplain in creating social change, as I can see it.

And it feels like an appropriate and powerful role for those who are the "haves" to play in the lives of those who are the "have nots."

Imagine if that tv show where the really sexy host from Home and Garden TV built a new house not for the most deserving but for the seemingly LEAST deserving. What if we assume that the hardest, meanest people are the ones who hurt and suffer the most? What if that show validated THEIR humanity, their suffering and misery? Can you imagine, in a certain supported social context, how an act that that (the giving of a home to someone who is constantly told by the world you deserve nothing and so we give you nothing!)would change that person's life and the lives of others around him or her? Assume for a moment, our symbol least deserving person, consumed with his/her own pain takes it out on those around him/her through various kinds of violence (emotional, spiritual, physical) what would happen to our crime rate our abuse rate or jobless-ness rates if people everywhere who formally felt like nobodies suddenly knew that really truly they are somebodies? Somebodies who deserve better.

Somebodies with boot straps to pull up...