Rabbi Lynn Liberman Diverse Resident Group

Rabbi Lynn Liberman Diverse Resident Group

Chaplaincy

This is a very interesting year, I don’t know if they've had a year of residents like we are, but the joke in Minnesota is that you're likely to run into, any religion you're likely to run into it will be Lutheran, because you've got so many here. But in my resident group, we have myself as a rabbi, we have a Baptist, we have a Presbyterian, and a Buddhist monk. And not a Lutheran amongst us, which is always my tagline. Even our supervisor is Presbyterian, so it's really a very diverse group and a very special group of people. We talk about often the fact that the vast number of people that any of us meet are not our religious tradition. Like there's no, very seldom are there, there's no Catholic amongst us and [there are] a lot of Catholics in the hospital. I think we're all trying to say that faith in the world is the important issue and we're people of faith. We bring our particularity but my particularity in any moment with a patient is not as relevant as what is their need in the moment. So what we talk about and the issues that we are concerned with, I think when we're meeting with patients, are the large issues of life. And most of the time even a patient will say, 'Gee, it just doesn't really matter that I call God "Jesus" and you call God "God." We're on the same path.'

Kevin Dowling

Religion Department (Carleton College)

2013

Sound

.mp3 (audio)

C_DiverseResidentGroup.mp3

Minneapolis, MN