Explanation of "Healing Spirit" Sculpture
Chaplaincy
A picture of the plaque that explains the history and symbolism of the "Healing Spirit" statue by sculptor Georgette Sosin. It explains the meaning of the “healing spirit” and the symbolism behind the secular hospital’s large statue.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
06/27/2012
Still Image
.jpg (image)
C_PlaqueStatueExplanation.jpg; C_PlaqueStatueHistory.jpg
Minneapolis, MN
Model of "Healing Spirit" Statue at Abbott Northwestern
Chaplaincy
A picture of a smaller model of the "Healing Spirit" sculpture on the building's exterior. Next to the model is an explanatory plaque about the artwork.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
06/27/2012
Still Image
.jpg (image)
C_SmallStatue.jpg
Minneapolis, MN
Unfair Death
Chaplaincy
I see a 21-year-old young woman, just, just married, just had a baby and discovered cancer after her birth with the baby, and she was dead within three months or, I don't remember it, it was quick, and I'm like: 'God, hey what’s this, what is this?' And we all know God doesn't cause this, but if you're feeling that way you might as well just say it. And allowing people that, that's one of the differences between chaplaincy and parish ministry in, in, in the general sense, because I know some parish ministers who will go there. But the parish ministers don't always have the luxury of opening up those spaces to really let people say those things, where we do. They can say whatever and still feel blessed because I’m not going to say, 'Okay, therefore I'm turning you in to God and you will be going to hell when you die because you said these things.' [laughs] No, we don't, we don't, we don't do that, and so that's one of the biggest differences and some parish ministers are not skilled enough to do it but many of them probably have the heart to want to do it but they just don’t have the venue to be able do it as often as they may want to, whereas this is kind of what we're called to do, here in chaplaincy.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_UnfairDeath.mp3
Minneapolis, MN
Chaplain as a Surgeon
Chaplaincy
Chaplaincy, in those cases, is like, you know, a doctor and a surgeon. A surgeon is the one that comes in and makes those small slices and attends to that one piece that needs to be removed and it might be something huge that the person would love to keep but they can't. The doctor's is to do the pre-care, the after-care, continual care of the person. A chaplain may have to come in and go into one of those sensitive areas. I had a patient many years ago come in, she, this particular patient was in almost every other month and we're talking over a period of maybe six years. And always wanted prayer, always wanted prayer, looking at the records, always wanted prayer. Every chaplain in the hospital had seen this person. And so one of the things I noticed in the pattern of the conversations with the person, and I think I saw this person more than others but I looked at all the records and the person would always say, 'Pray for the Lord to make it better.' And doesn't that sound great? You know. [muffled voice over intercom] Okay, that's not my unit, okay, I had to . . . So one day, I just said, a request to make it better and this person's brother was in the room, someone who interestingly I had never met. And I said, 'Okay, but could you tell me what is better?' The person looked at me and said, 'What are you talking about?' I said, 'Could you define better for me?' And they said, 'Well what do you mean?' 'You're always asking for the Lord to make it better, but what is better for you? Do you have a sense of what better is?' And the person kind of went to a [confused noise] you know, and had to realize that they were kind of pushing off, that's kind of the language they'd always used but since they could not name the things that would be better, they were stuck in what was not good for them. And it was very interesting. I left the room, the patient was really happy with me at that point, the brother followed me and said, 'Thank you, for kind of breaking that open.' The tradition was 'Pray to the Lord to make it better, always make it better.' 'Well, better than what?' And at the surface it seemed kind of cold, but I thought it was interesting after that, the person had one more admit and then we didn't see that person again for two and a half years. And it was the, you know, the physical issues were in play, but the getting admitted every other month had stopped after that. And I can't say that I'm a miracle worker or anything, but certainly that question pushed them to the edge and the tradition of, you know, just general praying.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_ChaplainAsSurgeon.mp3
Minneapolis, MN
Prayer and its Complexities
Chaplaincy
We're learning so much in quantum physics these days about the power of energy and thought, and that we're all energy, that everything is energy, that when I think about it I think: What is prayer but intention and energy directed towards a positive outcome? So at its very basic level, I don't think you could ever go wrong praying for someone. You're sending positive intent their way, and I believe positive intent makes a difference. I can ramp that up. For some people that translates into very specific requests to God for concrete responses, you know, 'Please God heal my cancer.' I've prayed and been with enough people where that hasn't come true to know the damage that that kind of prayer can be, but if a patient wants me to pray for that who am I to not pray for it? I might ask them, you know, 'So what is your sense about that?' 'What do you think?' 'What would healing mean for you?' Because sometimes we make assumptions too that when patients want us to pray for their healing that it means that their cancer goes away and it isn't really always that. Sometimes they need to have their attitude healed and they need to come to a place of acceptance that whatever happens that they'll be okay with it.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_PrayerAndComplexities.mp3
Minneapolis, MN
Rabbi Liberman Interfaith Language
Chaplaincy
I speak in a more interfaith language and more inclusive language, for sure and trying to be able to stand there in my own skin, but also be available to them. So I'm not gonna pray in the name of Jesus, but it's not a Jewish prayer to say in the name of anybody. So like, for example, I will say, 'in the name of God.' Which is a doorway to open to them and it's okay for me to do. If I'm with a Jewish patient, I don't even have to go there, because I know what the particularity is of our faith tradition.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_RabbiLibermanInterfaithLanguage.mp3
Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Dunbar-Perkins A New Normal
Chaplaincy
Many people, especially after you have a colon cancer or some other, sometimes Crohn's disease, diseases that interfere with your large intestine, your bowels. This is a hospital, this is how we talk. And you may have to have something where all of your waste material comes through this bag that's put on the side of you and you have to manage that every day. You can't do it how everybody else, you got to, that's got to be physically worked with. I've heard people being told, 'Well you oughtta be glad, this colostomy saved your life. Now that you have this, you don't have to worry about this.' But what about the woman who says, 'Oh my God, when I'm sitting in church, can people smell me?' We're talking about the most basic parts of the human body, the functions. So yeah, you feel marginalized because your life, the normal that you had, is gone.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_RevDunbarPerkinsNewNormal.mp3
Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Dunbar-Perkins Marginalization 2
Chaplaincy
And even us in the health care profession, we think when we say, 'Oh no, you can't eat that bacon, it's gonna make your blood pressure go up.' But you know, you live for having that bacon and eggs every Saturday morning. And it's the ritual around it; it's not just the eating of the food, it's the people that you're with and what you're talking about, and now you've been told you have to get rid of that. So people are marginalized, they're grieving. They're in a constant state of grieving, loss. Because of the changes that they have. And it takes you to a deeper level. And we know that we're trying to help people by saying, 'You have to change your life to be able to survive.' But that change is grief. And in chaplaincy, we get to recognize that, we get to lift that up. And say, 'Yeah, we get that. That is loss.'
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_RevDunbarPerkinsMarginalization2.mp3
Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Dunbar-Perkins Marginalization
Chaplaincy
For many people, there are two different scenarios I see here—and this doesn't include everything—but you're in a hospital, you don't have control over what you eat, when you wake up, even when you go to the bathroom. You know, the basics, what you wear. Well, the only thing you have control over is what you watch on television. You know, gee whiz, that's all you get. And so, you're in the hospital, and you're in here suddenly. And all of a sudden, people are saying, 'Oh, you can't do this because it'll make you sick. Oh you can't do this it'll make you sick.' And all those "this" and "thats" that they're naming are the things that give you pleasure. Or the things that you've always found is something you want to do. And so, you get those basic rights of a human taken away.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_RevDunbarPerkinsMarginalization.mp3
Minneapolis, MN
Rev. Dunbar-Perkins Oral History
Chaplaincy
This is my third, or technically my fourth career. And I come out of the corporate arena and moved into education and then moved into ministry, but I think it would be helpful to backtrack. I originally [was] born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, one of the children of the Great Migration of the 1930s and '40s. My parents came up from the South, so we have a connected history to that part of our country's history and I'm just old enough to have experienced a lot of issues with segregation and Jim Crow: not being allowed to drink water, not being allowed to sit in certain places, so I have an active history with that. And I bring that experience with me. I brought it through my corporate experience, I brought it through my teaching experience, which was very helpful because I worked in, intentionally worked in schools where the students had been literally kicked out of the mainstream schools, the high school students, and was able to connect them to the history of who they were and to give them a sense of being more than what they were labeled as. And I think that was the beginning of my interest in ministry. At some point, through a series of meeting different people, being involved in different city projects, that I ended up getting involved with the Presbyterian Church and from there I ended up in seminary and most people who end up in seminary don't know how they got there, they just wake up one morning and you're in seminary! So I went to seminary and my intention was to become a minister at a, probably an African American church, which means, and in Minnesota would mean to, to leave Minnesota. There's only one African American church and, a Presbyterian church, and they already had a pastor that I was involved with hiring. Let me see, how can I put this? I was actually the first African American woman or man who was ordained into the Presbyterian Church in Minnesota, and I felt the weight of that. What type of responsibility did that mean? Well, it turned out that I took a residency at this hospital after I graduated from seminary because I wasn't sure if I wanted to commit to a church or leaving and my husband and I, my husband liked it here, I don't know why, but he did. [laughs] And I've been here for 30 years so I can't really say I've hated it obviously. But when I came here, I still had, my intention was to be a parish minister. However, in my journey through this hospital, the connections I made with people, I saw around me a parish being created for me to respond to that looked nothing like what I had envisioned. And my first assignment was here in the [Reno?] unit, then my longer assignment as a resident was with the oncology group, and because I have a background in science and did research in sickle cell anemia back in the '70s, what this particular unit, the oncology unit, also works with blood disorders, and there is a population of sickle cell patients. So we're talking about like a 35-year cycle coming to pass where I had this semi-medical background in understanding the disease and then the population, the population is 99% African American and I was being drawn back into people who have been extremely marginalized for whatever reason, just like my students, and came to the realization that anybody that's in the hospital has a sense of being marginalized; no matter how much money you have. I've seen some of the most powerful people in the country here, and people [who are] very rich, people who have nothing, people who are pushed aside because of ethnicity, where, what country they may come from, what type of religion they practice. And I realize as I look back on my own experience of being marginalized, and even my life being in danger sometimes because of my ethnicity, that I could relate to that sense of being disconnected and that's what my true calling was as a chaplain.
Kevin Dowling
Religion Department (Carleton College)
2013
Sound
.mp3 (audio)
C_RevDunbarPerkinsOralHistory.mp3
Minneapolis, MN