Spirituality at work
Many people advise not to speak of religion or politics at work and often that is great advice.
To me spirituality is not your religion or what church you go to. Spirituality is who you are inside, how you treat others and how you handle all situations, joyful or painful situations.
I have a Chaplain friend named Wayne and his goal when going on a call is that he shows up, shows love and when he goes the people never know what religion he belongs to. We should love each other no matter what church we attend.
Chaplains do not preach, they are suppose to assist the police and be there for families of those going through difficult times such as a death or if an officer was involved in any situation that he or she needs someone to talk to that will not judge them but will listen to them.
Many times our officers have stress that they hold in, they don’t want the stigma of anyone knowing they are going to therapy. Chaplains have different degrees of training and some of us have degrees and some don’t have degrees although we are there for the officers and we are part of their extended family.
When you think of being spiritual do you think of church or church services? When you are in the mountains and in nature do you relate that as a spiritual experience? I do, I often think about people and their feelings and their struggles and many times it is difficult for me to serve when the person I am there to help is grieving and high on drugs. I am learning not to be as judgmental although that is something we as humans do on an almost constant cycle.
The last two chaplain calls I responded to in the middle of the night were overdoses and on one the wife was dead and on the next one the husband was dead and in both cases the spouse was on drugs as well and crying and smoking at the same time. Is much easier to think of a situation where you respond to a person that is in emotional pain and you can put a hand on their shoulder and offer comfort or just be there.
When you respond to assist the officers when a person is in emotional pain, physical pain and they are on drugs it drains you even more to strive to be caring and loving. When I was with these last two people I said to myself that these people are God’s children just like I am, he loves them just like I love my children no matter what, and they are just as important to him as anyone else.
It is easy for officers and case workers to be cynical because many times the people don’t want help, they don’t want a job, they don’t want to get off of drug and many times mental illness is involved along with the drugs. Loving people that are easy to love is easy. It is easy to love my wife and children.
We can read the scriptures, the word of God but do we incorporate his loving words into our lives is the question? I don’t claim to be a perfect Chaplain. The one thing I do well is I show up. I am there and sometimes I may not say the right words or sometimes I may not do everything or say everything that I should but I show up. I am learning to appreciate our law enforcement men and women in a way that I never felt that I would.
These men and women are like me they are a brother, sister, husband, wife, mother, father, cousin, uncle, aunt. They play video games, they like to party, some like camping and hiking, some like to fish, some like to dance. These men and women are people just like you and me.
These men and women answer the calls when we are in danger, when our kids are in danger or missing. They put themselves into hard situations for us to protect us to serve us. There is a very small percentage of law enforcement that do not do things the way they should and the officers that do would rather that those men and women leave the force and not be part of their team. Overall law enforcement do a great job helping us with so many situations. I appreciate them, their jobs are so very important and I hope I can help them if even a little bit when they need to talk even if it is just to listen.
I went on a ride along with a Sargent and he said to me, your a normal person and he then opened up a bit about his family and the things they were going through. We need each other in this life and no matter how you look at God whether you believe in a God or a higher power or whatever, we should love each other and help each other. Remember being spiritual is much more than going to Church or even reading the scriptures it is putting the advice from those scriptures into practice through love.