This service is adapted from “Care for Caregivers” by Wendy Kean, Mandate Fall 2020
Opening Prayer
We come to you, O God, river of life:
May we drink deeply and receive your grace.
We come to you, O God, our rock of ages:
May we stand in trust and receive your strength.
We come to you, O God, source of our compassion:
May we open our hearts and receive your healing love.
Hymn: VU 374 Come and Find the Quiet Centre
Psalm 90 excerpts (From Psalms for Praying by Nan. C. Merrill)
Eternal and Immortal One,
You have beenour refuge in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
before You had formed the earth andthe world,
fromeverlasting to everlasting,
You are the Alpha and the Omega.
When our days on Earth are ended,
You welcome us home to your Heart,to the City of Light,
where time is eternaland days are not numbered.
You gather those who love You
Asfriends returning from a longjourney,
giving rest to their souls.
You anoint them with the balm ofunderstanding,
healing wounds of the past.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-15
The Gospel: Matthew 25:34-40(From The Message by Eugene Peterson)
34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’
37-40 “Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’
Reflection
One of the many strengths of DIUC is your gift of appreciation. Through the example of your generous expressions of appreciation, I am learning to also express my thanks more frequently and more specifically.
Today, we are focussing on caring for the caregivers. Appreciation of the work that caregivers do seems like a good place to start, and I’m going to begin with thanks to the people who cared for me during my most intense experience of needing the care of others.
When I was 25 years old, two years married to Harvey, working in a library full time, I broke my back. In a hurry to fit in a quick ride before an evening work engagement, I slipped a halter on my half-Arabian mare Dancer and went for a short ride in our steeply sloping coulee pasture. Note that I said halter, not bridle. It was quicker and easier than a bridle, I reasoned at the time. Partway down the pasture, something spooked Dancer and she took off. With only a halter and a rope on one side of her neck, I had next to no control. She was galloping full tilt towards the barbed wire and, when she saw it, suddenly swerved up hill. I went flying downhill and landed on the end of my spine. I knew right away that something was seriously wrong, but the ambulance attendants didn’t and so they and Harvey lifted me onto a stretcher – no stabilization, no back board.
So my appreciation starts there, because it was only by the grace of God that my spinal nerve wasn’t badly damaged in that transfer and a similar transfer onto the X ray table at the hospital. I am eternally grateful for God’s care at that time, and for the gruff surgeon who took one look at my X rays and said, “You better start handling this girl really, really carefully” as I had a very unstable fracture of the lumbar 1 vertebra.
That was the beginning of two months in hospital: surgery followed by a full body cast, unable to sit up or get out of bed. During that time, I had so many caregivers.
So my appreciation goes to all those who cared for me then – physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Thanks go to all the nurses who fed me, bathed me, woke me up too early to take my vitals, who laughed and commiserated with me. To the tough love nurses, and the nurses that massaged me with lotion and wrapped my Christmas shopping. To the nurse who hid her loneliness under a cloak of meanness and then gave me the opportunity for kindness when she had surgery on her hands and became my roommate.
Thanks go to all the doctors, but especially to that orthopedic surgeon who patched my shattered vertebrae together and erred on the side of caution by immobilizing me for two months. He was the stereotypical surgeon with very poor people skills, but he dropped in to see me on Christmas Eve and I’ll always regret not telling him then how much I appreciated his skill.
And thanks go to my family and friends. To Harvey, who visited every evening and then slogged through the snowiest winter for years to care for the animals on our country acreage. To my brother, who visited every lunch hour and brought me the copy of Bruce Cockburn’s new album “All the Diamonds” that got me through many a sleepless night. To my parents who dropped everything to be with me, and to my aunt who read aloud to me in the first pain-filled days and nights. To my sister-in-law who brought me porcelain clay to play with even though we hadn’t been speaking to each other for several months. To my cousin who arranged for one rose to be delivered each week. To the often annoying acquaintance who brought his German Shepherd to the parking lot where I could see him from my window. They all brought their own particular and creative gifts of caring and companionship and made it a tough time bearable.
Their gifts and care mattered, and perhaps what mattered most was my growing awareness of a far bigger caring presence, a surety that God was working through them to care for me. It is the closest thing to a conversion experience that I can identify in my life, although it took another 20 years for me to choose to return to the United Church faith tradition in which I was raised.
And so, if you are caring for someone else throughout this long exile from life as normal, thank you. Thank you for caring for others in the way that only you can. Thank you for the grit, the determination, the gentleness and the creativity that you bring to your work. Thank you for caring for our elders, our families, our children, and the good earth that supports us all.
And, for God’s sake, be gentle with yourselves. Forgive yourselves when you are reluctant or angry or exhausted. Reach out when you need to, ask for the care that youneed and you deserve. When you are vulnerable, give others the gift of being able to care for you. Know that even if you don’t hear it often enough, you make a great deal of difference in the lives of the people that you care for, and that for them you are God’s face and hands and heart in this world.
We are all caregivers, and we all need care, and so we pause to name silently or aloud those who have cared for us, and those for whom we provide care.
Questions for reflection:
Who are you caring for or have cared for in the past?
Who has cared for you or is caring for you?
Let us pray:
Loving Creator, Cosmic Christ, Compassionate Spirit,
We have named in our hearts those who have cared for us throughout our lives, and for them we lift up our prayers of appreciation and gratitude: our parents, our friends and family members, our children, health care professionals, educators, the workers who feed us and shelter us, our community and our church family. And you yourself, source of life and ground of our being, who has loved us and cared for us from the beginning of time.
We also name ourselves as caregivers and name those for whom we care: our families and friends, our community, our church family, our students and clients and patients.
We pray for strength and encouragement for all caregivers, including ourselves. We pray that we will know your presence in all that we do, all that we feel, all that we hope for. We pray that we may accept the care of others gratefully and gracefully. Walk with us now and always, beloved companion. Amen.
Hymn VU 595 We Are Pilgrims on a Journey
Prayers for Caregivers:
O Christ the Healer, as in times past not all the sick and suffering found their way to your side, but had to have their hands taken, or their bodies carried, or their names mentioned.
So we, confident of your goodness, bring others to you.
Look on our faith, even our little faith, and let your kingdom come.
We lift up to you those for whom pain is the greatest problem, who are remembered more for their distress than their potential, who at night cry “I wish it were morning” and in the morning cry, “I wish it were night.”
Lord and lover of all,
Bring healing and peace.
We remember those haunted by nightmares of their past, those whose minds are shackled to depression or fear, who do not know what is wrong, or what to pray.
Lord and lover of all,
Bring healing and peace.
We pray for those in whose experience light has turned to darkness, as their care for others leaves them stunned in their souls and silent in their conversation, not knowing where to turn or whom to turn to.
Lord and lover of all,
Bring healing and peace.
We pray for all who tend the sick, counsel the distressed, attend the dying, or advance medical research. We ask your blessing that in caring for your people they may meet and serve you.
Lord and lover of all,
Bring healing and peace.
We also pray for those who, in this land, administer the agencies of health and welfare, and we ask your guidance that in all they do, human worth may be valued, and the service of human need be fully resourced.
Lord and lover of all,
Bring healing and peace.
This we ask in the name of the one whose flesh and blood have made all God’s children beloved.
Amen.
Adapted from John L. Bell (ed.), “A Wee Worship Book” (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1999)
Choir of Women Physicians sings RISE AGAIN (virtually):
Blessing
Watch now, loving God, with those who wake or watch or weep tonight, and give the Spirit charge over those who sleep.
Tend to your sick ones, healing Christ, rest your weary ones, bless your dying ones, soothe your suffering ones, pity your afflicted ones, shield your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake.
Now may the God of hope will us with all the joy and peace in believing that we may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
