Chaplain Joan Paddock Maxwell, M.T.S., on “coincidences” in our work

Elevator Chaplaincy

A woman in her forties is waiting for one of the hospital elevators. She’s carrying a small vase filled with yellow flowers and is looking at the floor. A couple of feet away a young neurology resident from India is gripping the lapels of his white coat and frowning. Behind them, a balding man holding the hand of a little boy, is fidgeting with a brown paper bag.

“So which elevator do you think it will be?” I ask the woman, but include the others in my glance.

“Huh?” She looks up, surprised.

“Elevator one, elevator two, or elevator three? Which do you think will come first?” I gesture at the three possibilities.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Three!” the little boy says.

“I’ll take two,” says the resident. The group sorts itself by preference, and when elevator three arrives the little boy looks proud as he receives the others’ congratulations.

A couple of hours later I’m called to the bedside of a newly-admitted woman who is actively dying. The balding man and the little boy I met at the elevator are her family. The boy recognizes me and smiles, and the man nods. Because we have already connected, albeit at a very superficial level, our reencounter at this painful time is a little bit easier for the family.

I find this sort of “coincidence,” where in my professional service as a chaplain I meet someone I’ve just chatted with an hour ago at the elevator, happens at least once a week. The odds seem to be against this, as the hospital has 250-300 patients, plus staff, students, and visitors, and I only take the elevator a few times a day. Nonetheless, it happens so often that I make a point of trying to connect with people – both visitors and staff – whenever I take the elevator.

I learned in clinical pastoral education that people sometimes say significant things in elevators, and experience has taught me the importance of trying to establish a connection with everyone I encounter there. That means, of course, breaking the taboo of speaking in a crowded, silent elevator – everyone facing front, eyes downcast. To that end, I seek and share elevator jokes: simple, easy-to-understand jokes that can unite an entire car in a shared groan. The following joke (brace yourself) has recently been quite a hit:

Question: How does the butcher introduce his wife?
Answer: Meet Patty.[1]

One good groan and passengers start talking to me and to one another; the dark cloud that so often hovers over the elevator car temporarily dissipates, or at least lightens. Quite often a visitor or staffer will get off of the car with me and raise a matter that has been troubling them.

Of course there are times when bets on when the elevator will arrive and silly jokes are totally inappropriate. Whenever I see a waiting passenger standing alone and looking disconsolate I will stand next to them and gently ask how things are going. Almost always people appreciate the inquiry and frequently will take the opportunity to share some of what’s on their heart. A similar inquiry of a staff member will sometimes get the response, “Right now I need prayer,” allowing me to comply on the spot.

The hospital elevator is a liminal space between the impersonal outside world and the intimate inside world of fear and pain and hope. It is where we grit our teeth for what lies ahead, where just for a moment we have taken off one self-protective mask and not yet donned the next. The hospital elevator: a place for chaplaincy.

Footnote:

[1] Finding jokes that are short, clear, and inoffensive isn’t easy. A website that can be helpful is Jokesbykids.com. The Sunday Parade magazine can occasionally have something worth appropriating. (“Meet Patty” comes from that source.)

Do you have thoughts about professional practice you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail info@PlainViews.org.