The Pastoral
by Christine Davies
THE PASTORAL
During the week, I work as a hospital chaplain. I tend to people’s hearts and souls as grief rips their lives apart, and they look for God’s presence in the face of suffering.
On nights and weekends, I am a hobby farmer. I tend to bees, chickens, and gardens. I am greeted with God’s presence in the form of flowers and birdsong.
I was raised in the suburbs and became a city dweller in adulthood. A change was needed when crammed in a 500-square-foot apartment with a toddler and baby on the way. I stepped on too many toys and Cheerios. I longed for an herb garden and to make my own jam. My husband, the biggest introvert I know, was sick of neighbors. We both dreamt of more space. On a whim, we moved to a 34-acre hobby farm.
What we thought would be a simple, idyllic life wasn’t always the romantic dream we had envisioned. It turns out that caring for the land is a lot of work! Especially while juggling day jobs and caring for children. Just as books can never prepare soon-to-be parents for what it is to raise a child, no amount of reading prepared us for the intensity of nature and the sheer amount of learning as you go.
What did prepare me for farm life was working as a chaplain.
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A week-old, black-furred, silkie chick my kids had named “Baby” is the runt of the flock. She has a terminal condition known as “pasty butt,” which is a funny phrase if it hadn’t led to the end of her life. I hold her in the palm of my hand as she opens and closes her eyes, taking her last breaths. We tell her how much we liked having her in our house and that we would always remember her. My 6-year-old wails for hours. I hold him as he cries himself to sleep.
I dread the calls to the Labor Delivery unit. We’re not called for healthy deliveries; we are called when something has gone terribly wrong. This time, the parents are in shock; they didn’t know their pride and joy would not live in this world. I bless the baby while the mother anoints him with her tears. I sign the certificate that announces the baby’s birth and death all in the same moment.
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Any beekeeper knows you can help prepare your bees to survive the winter, but it is simply luck. About fifty percent will not make it through. Many things can go wrong: starvation, moisture, mites, bears, just to name a few. The first time I check my hives after months of snow and cold, I crack the top of the hive box open and gasp at what I see. There are hundreds of honeybees huddling together to keep warm. Alive. I had expected death—only to find life.
As I watch the doctors and nurses perform heroic measures on a patient in cardiac arrest, I say prayers and hold the crying family members. The odds are not great. If your heart fails while in the hospital, the odds of surviving are twenty-one percent. The patient’s daughter and son are demanding that God give them a miracle. The staff take turns doing compressions. I am prepared for the lead doctor to announce “Time of Death” at any moment. Then I hear someone say, “There’s a pulse. It’s faint, but it’s there.” The patient’s daughter declares: “Not today. She’s a fighter; she’s living another day.” And she did.
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When sowing wildflower seeds in the meadow, I never know what will take root. Which plant will find a way through inhospitable soil? I hope some will make it. Many don’t, but the ones that do bring beauty.
In the oncology unit, I counsel patients with new, life-altering diagnoses. Sometimes, we just have one intense and vulnerable conversation, and then they are discharged. I will never see them again. I don’t always know the outcome of their treatment. I keep praying for them.
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One of my chickens was being pecked by the other chickens—almost to death. I nurse her back to health slowly and keep her in a separate enclosure from the other hens. Just as she’s looking better and her wounds are healing, she is killed by a raccoon. The predator takes her head and her feet and leaves her poor body behind, which I bury while singing hymns.
I accompany the nursing supervisor to the morgue to identify a young man who had been killed earlier that night. The family is too upset to see his body. They stay in a waiting room and give me a picture from his girlfriend’s phone. They hope it’s not him. I knew the patient had died from several gunshot wounds. I had not been told some of these were to his face. It is impossible to tell if this poor guy in the body bag is the same smiling selfie I have in my hand. I return to the family and ask about any tattoos. It is a small cross on his shoulder that ultimately claims him. I commend him back to God while bearing witness to the indiscriminate cruelty of the world.
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While trying to catch spotted lantern flies in plastic bottles mixed with water and soap, my eight-year-old asks, “Why did God invent spotted lantern flies?” A fair question after they killed several of our trees and grapevines. Theologians have been arguing over answers for centuries. “I wish I knew,” is the most honest response I can give him.
“Why” is the question I hear most in the hospital. Why did this awful thing happen to my family or me? As a chaplain intern, I thought I had to preach a sermon on theodicy so people wouldn’t lose their faith. Or feed them some toxic religious platitude that our society peddles. Now I know that “Why” is a lament and an expression of pain.
I am not expected to have any answers. All I can claim is “I don’t know” and give space for the asking of these impossible but necessary questions.
When COVID raged, I was present for multiple deaths a day in the hospital. And then I came home and pruned trees. I processed the horrors I witnessed by wielding a lopper over my head and snipping unwanted growth. Tears flowed as I yanked bramble from the ground, more aggressively than normal. I couldn’t control how people were dying all around me, but I could till the soil. I mixed fresh cow patties into the garden. Maybe mucking through the manure would allow for new growth to come forth. Several months from now, there would be food from this mess. Even if I could not see a way through, much was happening in the darkness below the surface.
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My favorite season used to be autumn. I still love the color of the falling leaves. But it is a harbinger of the cold, bleak winter around the corner. Since moving to the farm, my favorite season is spring. The first thing to bloom is my overgrown forsythia. I refuse to trim it because I love how wild it looks as it lines the long gravel driveway to my house. Every year, I watch it for weeks, wondering when it will flower. Will it be tomorrow? And then, suddenly, tomorrow comes, and the yellow flowers take over, looking like tongues of flame. And the promise of new life guides me home.
CHRISTINE DAVIES
The Rev. Christine Vaughan Davies is an ordained Presbyterian Minister, ACPE Certified Educator, seminary professor and trained Spiritual Director. She runs the Spiritual Care Department at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
She lives with her family on a small farm in New Jersey and spends her time chasing chickens and chauffeuring her school-aged children to all their activities.
You can find more of her writing on her Substack at https://journeyingalongside.substack.com or on Instagram @cvdavies.