As professional chaplains we need to be in dialogue with each other about what we do, how we do it, and why we do it a certain way and how these practices benefit our patients. The ultimate goal of MyPractice is to build a consensus about what constitutes “good practice” and eventually establish “Standards of Practice” for chaplains. As with quality improvements in our institutions, this is an ongoing process in order to improve our practice.

To have a description of a practice that you use in your setting considered for inclusion here, write it up and send it to PlainViews for consideration. The Association of Professional Chaplain's Quality Commission’s Best Practice Committee will work with the Managing Editor of PlainViews to review submissions and select articles for publication. Your submission does not necessarily need to be cutting edge (although that’s okay, too). We want to identify “good practices” that could be recognized as standard practice.

PlainViews will highlight one article in the second issue of each month. Readers are invited to respond to the featured practice. Responses will be posted as they are received. This is a great opportunity to start a process that will move us forward in professional chaplaincy.

If you’d like to respond to MyPractice, please send a comment of no more than 400 words. You can use the e-form below (click on "hearing from you," link) or submit your commentary to the editor in the body of an e-mail (or as a Microsoft Word attachment) sent to Info@PlainViews.org. Please put the phrase “MyPractice” in your subject line.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Creating Sacred Space

Editor's Note: We received two articles on sacred spaces and so decided to include both of them here.

From Chaplain Eric Guthrie

A hospital contains many sacred places, where the Divine and human interact and we get a glimpse of creation at work. There are the neonate units where new life is born. There are the operating rooms where technological miracles are only surpassed by the marvel of surgical skills performed. There are the intensive care units where life and death whisper to each other, each working to stake its claim.

Family and friends of the patient, who wait and worry, often seek solace and comfort in the hospital chapel, if only for a few minutes. It is here that they seek to connect with God in a way that brings peace and eases anxiety by placing their trust in a higher power.

These days, hospitals are usually short on space. The accountant’s sharpened pencil demands that every square foot contribute financial viability. It is difficult to measure the spiritual revenue of a hospital chapel or its real estate value because many of the benefits/blessings are intrinsically intangible and subtle.

From the beginning of time humanity has needed something more than auditors can calculate. How else could we explain the fact that in every time and every culture people have created time and place they call “sacred” to pray, dance, sing, cry and celebrate as worship?

The sacred space of a hospital chapel is a sacrifice and an extravagance for God and our hospital congregations. The chapel is largess. It is a gift given out of love and a deeper understanding that the body is more than the sum of its parts – cells, tissues and organs. As a human being has a soul, so also the hospital organism needs a soul. Our souls would languish if there were only walking and no dancing, talking and no singing, speaking and no praying. Stained glass windows and frescos speak to us in a way that ordinary walls do not.

The chapel holds a very important place in the hospital setting. It is a purposeful and powerful “waste” of space. The chapel is a gift of time and space. Like a poem instead of prose, a chapel is a place where we will take some time out of time to reflect, meditate, center down, pray, be still in order to hear God speak to our soul.

The chapel is a place where people can wrestle with God; a place of refuge from the storm and chaos of life; a place to sort out difficult decisions. Often the chapel is simply a sanctuary where one finds a moment of quiet peace from inner turmoil.

Buddhists speak of the importance of the hole (space) at the center of a wheel. That space is important. The Hebrews believed that God was most present in the empty space just above the Ark of the Covenant. Christians understand the importance of wombs, rooms and empty tombs for good things to come about.

So we shape a sacred place from the space we set aside for a chapel. We can fill the place with activity that meets the spiritual needs of people, which in turn sanctifies the space. It is made holy by what happens there. The hospital chapel is a blessing beyond value for those who find themselves there.

From Rev. Jill Bowden

Serenity Chapel is “a place of hope and healing.” This expresses the highest aspiration we have for the desired effect of our new chapel. It is new only in its physical presence; it is much older if we include the visioning, planning and building of the beautiful rainbow-lit space carved out behind the central lobby on the main floor of Winthrop University Hospital. Building our chapel took seven years, five Directors of Pastoral Care, one dedicated Vice President, an administration committed to the importance of wholeness in healing; it also required a Pastoral Care Committee deeply invested in spiritual and religious traditions rich with healing, and a willing community of supporters who provided the means to make the vision a reality. This space, located at “the heart of the hospital.” is unlike other spaces that existed previously. Our Hospital’s President, Dan Walsh, said, “”the Meditation Room located far from the main lobby was not the sanctuary for spiritual reflection that we felt the entire Winthrop family deserved.”

Serenity Chapel contains two Family Meeting Rooms for physicians to speak privately with patients and their families about the results of surgery, the outcome of medical testing, treatment planning, and diagnosis. Previously, doctors stood in the lobby in full view – and hearing – of others who were waiting to speak with their own doctors. The Family Meeting Rooms offer a quiet and personal retreat, created to convey the Winthrop Hospital’s central tenet: Care Without Compromise.

The central space is furnished only with an oval worship table that can become altar or bema; it can even be moved (it has concealed wheels) to the side to create other types of worship spaces. The center of the focal wall is an arrangement of artfully hung lights framed by a rainbow of back-list stained-glass panels designed by a local artist. A generic wooden lectern faces softly colored armchairs that link together in three curving rows to seat twenty-three people, with more chairs available in the Family Meeting Rooms that can be brought in when needed. The soft gold and brown of the upholstery and carpeting highlights the beautiful glass, while controlled lighting and multiple speakers that play meditative music throughout the day keep the atmosphere peaceful and mask the sounds of the hospital outside its doors. There is still plenty of open space, room for wheelchairs to be brought in, and for prayer rugs to be laid down. The worship table has storage space that holds the elements of worship for Roman Catholic mass.

To one side, a built-in credenza conceals a sophisticated sound system, storage space for religious reading materials, prayer rugs, and a directional indicator toward Mecca for Muslim worshippers. The credenza also contains a menorah, chalices, pitchers, bowls, candles (flameless – battery operated) and candle holders. Religious symbols are only in evidence during a service specifically for that faith tradition; these symbols are put away when not in use.

At the dedication of Serenity Chapel, seven local religious leaders participated, gifting the hospital with the elements of worship for many different faith traditions. Community clergy have an open invitation to lead interfaith worship services, held each Wednesday.

Besides Interfaith Wednesdays, a Muslim Jumah prayer service is offered on Fridays, and Roman Catholic mass is offered each Saturday evening. A 9/11 Day of Memory was observed, and in November there will be a recognition of veterans and a “community table” Thanksgiving observance. In this first year, building a culture of spiritual and religious community life has been enthusiastically supported by the hospital administration.

During Nurse Recognition week, chaplains blessed the hands of the nurses who serve the hospital and held a special service recognizing the nursing staff. In the coming year, Pastoral Care Volunteers will be celebrated, deceased staff members will be memorialized, and countless persons will share their pain, joy, and the cries of their hearts in the book, “The Prayers of the People,” which is always open and always present on a lectern near the door of the chapel.

Serenity Chapel is becoming a part of the cultural life of the hospital. Staff stop chaplains in the hall to say that they noticed the beautiful fresh flowers, the soft music that plays continuously, and the instant feeling of peace and quiet they find when entering the chapel. Serenity Chapel is accessible to all persons at all times; it is meant to be a place of hope and healing to all who come through its doors.

Rev. Jill Bowden, BCC, MPA, is Director of Pastoral Care and Education at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, NY. She is a Unitarian Universalist community minister affiliated with The Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York.

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