Rev. Myo-O Habermas-Scher: The Importance of Listening

I'm listening for the place of connection, where there's a kind of trusting and confidence that's not dependent on who they think they are or what they think they believe in.
—Rev. Myo-O Habermas-Scher

Reverend Myo-O Habermas-Scher’s office is located in the West Building of the University of Minnesota Medical Center. The office, shared with several other chaplains, is decorated with Tibetan prayer flags hanging from the ceiling and small pictures adorning every desk. As we sat to talk, Rev. Habermas-Scher adjusted a small picture of a Buddha statue that had fallen flat on her desk. Her journey as a chaplain began in 2006 and she has served at multiple hospitals throughout the Twin Cities since then.

I started training as a chaplain in 2006 and then I did my residency at the University of Minnesota Medical Center for a year. Then I worked part time there and Southdale and Hennepin County Medical Center for a couple of years, I don't know how many years, and now I've been working here at the University of Minnesota.
—Rev. Myo-O Habermas-Scher

In her position at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, she worked primarily with patients in intense rehabilitation or with transitional care units. Each are unique communities, but both cater to those who need extra support or therapy before moving out of their care setting. She described the two main units that most of her patients come from.

I am assigned to two units . . . the transitional care unit and the acute rehabilitation unit. The transitional care unit is a little bit like a nursing home; it has a nursing home license. People come there if they need care and they need therapies in order to go a community nursing home or to get home or to get to their next place. Acute rehab, they have three hours of therapy a day. It's much more intense and it's part of the hospital and from there they might go to a nursing home or go home too. But they're a little bit different.
—Rev. Myo-O Habermas-Scher

In these units, as Rev. Habermas-Scher noted, patients are provided with transitional care or rehabilitation services, but she indicated that such care must be holistic in nature.

[My work attends to] all areas of who they are as human beings because they are often facing distressing life-shifting conditions and so it's necessary to address medical, psychological, lifestyle things. It's also necessary to address how they hold themselves as a spiritual being, whatever that is, because that often gives them the energy to meet their circumstances in a more balanced way.
—Rev. Myo-O Habermas-Scher

In order to help address the whole person, she explained that a significant part of her job as a chaplain is to help comfort patients and ease their anxiety, which can be a difficult task. However, a significant part of such work is simply providing an active listening presence.

I try to listen, that's my main job, is big ears and small mouth, so I try to listen. I listen to what they're saying and to what they're not saying. I listen to the tone in the room and their voice, in their body. I listen to how they veer off from the topic of conversation and where they go. I listen to the silence . . . I'm listening for the place of connection, where there's a kind of trusting and confidence that's not dependent on who they think they are or what they think they believe in. So I'm listening to that.
—Rev. Myo-O Habermas-Scher