“We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:22-23)
As a chaplain, I was always anxious when I was paged to Labor and Delivery. The human project of creating new life is messy and complicated, even when it all goes as planned. But most often, when I was paged to this creation-centered part of the hospital, events had not gone as planned and big concepts that we feel in our bones teeter-tottered seeking balance: hope and the future. The work of spiritual care at this time is to help patients and families find meaning in the gap between what they had expected and their new reality. They had expected a healthy new baby, but their new reality did not include that.
One of these patient visits sticks with me. A patient was having an abortion for medical reasons and had asked for a chaplain. When I arrived, the medical staff was on edge and seemed to hover, not giving us the privacy that is expected of a chaplaincy visit.
The patient was sad, but calm. She tearfully asked that I baptize the baby’s remains after the procedure. She had wanted this child, but the pregnancy was no longer viable and she was having an abortion to preserve her health. But she felt connected enough to her baby that she wanted to care for it spiritually in the best way she knew how. Against Christian teaching, I baptized the remains of the baby because this patient — a mother — also has spiritual needs related to the act of creating new life.
Hospital workers take a lunch break together in La Timone Hospital in Marseille, France, on Dec. 25, 2021. (Daniel Cole/Associated Press)
Later, when I asked my manager why the medical staff had been hovering, she said that on Labor and Delivery they had seen chaplains make patients feel worse. Some chaplains had shown up and filled the gap between expectation and reality with moralizing statements and platitudes about the value of suffering. And the medical staff wanted to protect patients from that kind of interaction during one of the worst moments of their lives. In the space of creating new life, Christianity had become a problem to be managed instead of a source of care and support.
This Advent season, we have also been paged to pay attention to what is happening in the spaces where we create new human life. As we eagerly await the birth of Jesus Christ, we must keep in mind that being part of the act of creation is dangerous.
Historically, there has been high mortality for mothers and babies alike. And we have taken creation so seriously that we’ve developed protocols and procedures that drastically increase the safety and survival rates of creation. As that safety is attacked, we are called not to moralize or evangelize suffering, but to care for those brave enough to create new life.
Kristel Clayville is a religion scholar and former hospital chaplain, ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She currently teaches technology ethics and religion and medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is working on a memoir about being a chaplain and ethicist during the pandemic.
NOTE: This is part of our Unsettling Advent devotionals running Dec. 1-Dec. 24. You can subscribe for free and receive them each morning in your inbox.
