My Journey to Hospital Chaplaincy
by Elizabeth Hawkins
Elizabeth with her husband, Charles, and Metropolitan Nicholas at the endorsement and commissioning prayer service.
On the feast day of St. Luke the Evangelist in 2013, I sat in front of a small group of my peer reviewers in New York. This was the final step of a long professional journey of becoming a board certified chaplain by the Association of Professional Chaplains. A question was asked that has become a familiar refrain throughout the years of my training and one that continues to resonate: “How does it feel to be the first woman to be commissioned and endorsed for institutional chaplaincy by your archdiocese?”
I wondered about the meaning behind this question. As chaplains, we spend a lot of time wondering along with people, finding meaning in places that seem bereft of meaning. Being unable to discern what the interviewer may have intended—rather, I didn’t seek clarification—I can confirm that having gone through this process allows me to feel loved, supported and validated by my community.
Very often I find myself alone in a hospital room with a patient and his or her family. Working in a pediatric hospital, I am frequently at the bedside of a baby or young child, engaging his or her mother in conversation. In issues of sickness and health, as we contemplate the well-being of our children, and perhaps the very things that make life worth living or that define life itself, we share the most intimate and vulnerable parts of ourselves with each other. Inevitably, a time will come when someone asks, “Well, what do you think, chaplain?” In these moments I take a breath, say a prayer and feel strengthened by the prayers of my community. The endorsement of my ecclesiastical body, having stood in front of the congregation as His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas read prayers of commissioning and endorsement over me and the intercessory prayers of my patron saint bring me peace in the midst of chaos.
While that question has become a refrain, so has my answer. Although many of our religious colleagues, clergy and otherwise, speak of a vocation—a sense of being called out—I feel just as strongly that God sometimes pushes rather than calls. I’ve had many experiences in my life when, upon reflection, I understand how I was being prepared for things in a very wonderful way that was completely lost on me at the time.
Some chaplains have a natural inclination toward the sciences; my own clinical supervisor during my training was premed before he entered seminary. This was not the case for me. Working with patients as they receive heart transplants; learning about head injuries, seizures and heart-lung bypass machines; watching little lungs develop with the help of machines and medicine; eradicating sickness and disease—these are as much miraculous as scientific in my eyes.
Rather, while in college I studied filmmaking and sociology, wanting to make documentary films. I love learning people’s stories, listening to them and learning about our world and our functioning within it. After studying for three and a half years I had a crisis of sorts, one known to many young people on the verge of college graduation. I had spent years working toward a goal that no longer inspired me. Through hours of thought, prayer and conversation with loved ones, I decided to study theology. A constant in my life was and is a love of the Church. I didn’t have an end goal in mind—and I had never even heard of hospital chaplaincy! When I finally summoned the courage to tell my parents that I wanted to study at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, my mother, much to my shock, responded with, “Well, we thought you may say this.”
Maybe it was my years in camping ministries and GOYA, the conversations with priests and monastics or all those hours spent in the liturgical cycle; maybe it was the continuing work of the Spirit imbued upon me during my baptism as an infant. I can’t make any more sense of this push now than I could then.
While in pursuit of my master of divinity at Holy Cross, I learned the unique value of being a student who was not preparing for ordination into the priesthood. While we all have the same vocation as baptized Orthodox Christians, those of us non-seminarians learning about theology and the practical applications of our faith are taught by default to think creatively about how to apply the same lessons. Whether we are studying to be youth ministers or missionaries, chaplains or social workers, we are well equipped with a strong foundation in theology. And, in quite an accidental way, I found that I loved the work of chaplaincy. My first introduction to this work was during my required hospital ministry class.
Continuing in pursuit of ecclesiastical endorsement, a requirement for board certification, I didn’t realize that I was asking questions that had not yet been asked of the archdiocese. I sought to professionalize or modernize that same call that each of us receive to visit the sick, a command Christians have had since Christ walked among us. This looks very different in America during the twenty-first century than it did in the first century or in Byzantium.
This tendency to think creatively, perhaps a skill acquired while I trained as a filmmaker and then honed during my studies at Holy Cross, was beneficial throughout my training and the process toward board certification as well as the work I do in my hospital each day. I am grateful to His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas for his support. I am beholden first to the tenets of my Orthodox faith, but also to the hospital that employs me and the professional organization I represent.
Elizabeth Hawkins received her MDiv from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 2009 and then returned to her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, to continue chaplain training. She is recognized by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese to serve as a hospital chaplain and is board certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains. She and her husband have two sons and attend Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Memphis.
