Indifference

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness.-Galatians 5:22

She enters the room where we are gathered. All light, energy and focus. Unlike other presenters, she moves into the area where we sit, intent with her eye contact. Fashionable glasses frame her brown eyes but it's her Presence that catches my attention. Enthusiasm.  Directness. Compassion. Intelligence. All this and more are reflected in her eyes and body language as she leans into the space of unseen boundaries and introduces herself as the Chaplain of the hospital. The topic listed on the agenda for Friday is "Spirituality".

As she explains her role, her vocation, as the only Chaplain at the hospital, she carefully outlines how her services are prioritized. Everywhere she is in demand, except she is only one person. Thus her time is concentrated on where she is needed the most. ER. Trauma. ICU. Catastrophic situations where death has arrived or is imminent. Quite a calling in service to the Divine. She reiterates a story, that she must have shared before.

Upon her arrival at the hospital, every department called requesting help. Oncology. Children. Geriatrics. Maternity. You name the branch and specialty of medicine, they all had a need. However, recognizing that she could not spread herself too thin, she had to draw the boundaries where she her presence could serve those in the most traumatic, life-altering situations.  She needed to confine her ministry to those most in need. After settling in, she made her way to the psychiatric department and inquired as to why they had not contacted her. The director, let's call her Mary O'Malley, asked why in the world would they need her? It seems, Mary, like so many others of a certain generation and mindset are confused about the differences between religion and spirituality. Religion is the institutionalization of a system of beliefs. Spirituality, in my opinion, are the qualities of the Spirit, that which nurtures the soul.

Grabbing a marker for the white board she inquires about being human. There's the body, the mind, and the spirit or soul. Mental illness, unlike other diseases, attacks all three: the body, the mind and the spirit all at once! Ah, hah, I say to myself, she really gets it about mental illness! No other disease except depression attacks the soul, the spirit of an individual as it ravages the body, the mind and its emotional state. To have one's spirit sickened by this disease is its most devastating element.

To underscore her point she asks us to describe how our spirit feels when it is in depression. The group members offer; hopelessness, grief, despair, resignation, weak, helpless, isolated, suicidal. "What else? What's the worse attack of them all?" I'm sitting there knowing, I know the answer to this question, but I'm unable to pull it from my memory. She waits. There is silence. Then she turns to the board and writes one word:  INDIFFERENCE!

Yes, that's it. Indifference is the complete opposite of love and faith. Some falsely believe that hate is the opposite of love or that fear is the opposite of faith. But it's not. For love and hate are passionate feelings. Indifference is the domain of man's inhumanity to man. Indifference is the domain where suicide and murder occurs. Indifference is devoid of and is the renunciation of the fruits of the Spirit. May none of you ever be or feel indifferent for this is the saddest state of them all.

Thank you, Jane for your inspiration, wisdom, compassion and reigniting the spark within my soul.

—Synonyms
Indifference, unconcern, listlessness, apathy, insensibility; all imply lack of feeling. Indifference denotes an absence of feeling or interest; unconcern, an absence of concern or solicitude, a calm or cool indifference in the face of what might be expected to cause uneasiness or apprehension; listlessness, an absence of inclination or interest, a languid indifference to what is going on about one; apathy,  a profound intellectual and emotional indifference suggestive of faculties either naturally sluggish or dulled by emotional disturbance, mental illness, or prolonged sickness; insensibility,  an absence of capacity for feeling or of susceptibility to emotional influences.