Video: Chaplaincy Across Fields: Nurturing Resilience and Compassion

This alumni webinar explored the role of chaplaincy in fostering resilience and navigating complex challenges.

Representing different religious traditions and fields, HDS alumni—Celene Ibrahim, MDiv '11, Faculty and Muslim Chaplain at the Groton School; Naomi Tzril Saks, MDiv '10, Palliative Care Chaplain at University of California, San Francisco; and The Venerable Priya Rakkhit Sraman, MDiv '17, Buddhist Chaplain at Emory University—shared their insights and experiences on providing spiritual care in diverse settings. The conversation was moderated by Kerry Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Harvard Divinity School.

The global impact of Harvard Divinity School is realized through generations of remarkable alumni like Celene, Naomi, and Priya. You can help HDS continue to educate leaders who serve with empathy and care by making a gift this year.

Full transcript:

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Chaplaincy Across Fields, Nurturing Resilience and Compassion, March 19th 2024.

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: All right. All right. Hello, my name is Chandra Mohammed, and I am the associate director for Alumni Relations at Harvard Divinity School. We are so glad to have so many of you here today for our discussion on chaplaincy, resilience, and compassion. Fantastic.

Before we bring forward this fantastic, wonderful panel, I am excited to introduce you to the dean of Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Marla Frederick, who will share a few opening remarks. Great. Dean Frederick is a trailblazing scholar, whose groundbreaking work has provided crucial insights into the intersections of religion, race, and culture.

Through her award-winning books and teachings, she has helped us better understand the richness and diversity of religious experiences across communities. Beyond her academic accomplishments, Dean Frederick is also a very thoughtful leader, who has served Harvard with distinction for many years. She has long demonstrated her commitment to supporting our students and our faculty.

Under Dean Frederick's guidance, Harvard Divinity School will continue its tradition of excellence while addressing the most pressing issues of our time. So please join me in giving her a very warm, virtual welcome as our new dean. Dean Frederick, thank you for being here.

MARLA FREDERICK: Thank you. Thank you so much, Chandra. Hello, everyone. And I just want you to know how excited I am to be here with you today. There are more than 100-- I hear maybe 200 people registered for this webinar to hear from our wonderful HDS alumni.

And so before we begin, I want to share my appreciation to each of you who really make HDS such a powerful and wonderful and vibrant and engaging community. I want to thank our Alumni Relations team, thank Chandra Mohammed and Kristen Ponte. They are doing a tremendous job.

And I also want to thank each of you who have really, warmly welcomed me this semester. And if we haven't had a chance to meet, I really hope that I'll have a chance to meet you at the Gomes Honors Awards on May 9th or at other future events.

I just want to say a bit about myself and coming to this place. Earlier in my career at Harvard, I was fortunate to really work closely with HDS, through the committee on the study of religion. And this connection between the faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Divinity School creates, I believe, a vital network of professors and students interested in different faith traditions and understandings of religion.

And so throughout my time with the committee and later through the [INAUDIBLE] interview process, I found myself drawn to the mission of HDS, to educate students of religion for intellectual leadership, professional service, and for ministry. And such a mission, I believe, is certainly a lofty ideal for institutions committed to just one faith tradition.

And here, we are building a multifaceted, multi-religious school truly to the ideal of pluralism. This, as you all well know, is no easy task. Yet, we have a strong foundation at HDS with strength in academics and ministry and in religion in public life to truly support the work that we do.

And so today's discussion, you'll have the privilege of hearing from three truly exceptional alumni, those serving at different institutions and practicing various faith traditions. They are each committed to making a much needed difference in the world through chaplaincy.

And I can certainly think of no better person to introduce this esteemed panel than our own chaplain and director of religious and spiritual life here. And that is our very own Kerry Maloney. And so, Kerry, I want to turn it over to you.

KERRY MALONEY: Thank you, Dean Frederick. And thank you for coming back to Harvard. We are thrilled to have you here. So welcome home. And welcome to all of you who are joining us. I'm watching the chat and the names popping up that we are in a remarkable company this afternoon here of colleagues and, frankly, dear friends. I'm recognizing most of the names of HDS beloved alums. So many thanks to you for joining us today.

And special thanks to our panelists, our esteemed panelists for joining us today. Also, remarkable colleagues and dear friends, each and every one of them. So I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves to you briefly. We'll begin with you Venerable Priya Sraman.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Thank you so much, Kerry. And good afternoon to everyone. Good morning or good evening to those of you from different places in the US and in the world. So I am Venerable Priya Sraman. Right now, I am the Buddhist chaplain at Emory University. And I graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 2017.

Before that, before coming to Emory University, I also worked briefly at Tufts University as the Buddhist chaplain. And obviously, I'm a Buddhist monk. I am ordained in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Originally, I am actually from Bangladesh.

And I left Bangladesh to go to study in Sri Lanka. And then went to Thailand to attend college in a Buddhist University. After which, I went to do a brief one-year master of Buddhist Studies at Hong Kong University before coming to Harvard Divinity School first as a Buddhist Ministry Initiative International Fellow. And then after that one year experience, moving on to the Master of Divinity program. And I'm very happy to be here. Thank you so much.

KERRY MALONEY: Beautiful. Thanks for joining us, Priya. Dr. Celene Ibrahim.

CELENE IBRAHIM: It's so good to be with everyone. Salamu alaykum. Peace and blessings be upon you. Ramadan kareem to those celebrating a blessed Ramadan. Thank you to Chandra Mohammed and Kristen Ponte and Kerry Meloney and Dean Frederick for the warm welcome.

It's wonderful to be with my colleague, the Venerable Priya. Priya and I worked in chaplaincy at Tufts University together, where I served as the Muslim chaplain. And I'm currently at the Groton School, which is a school in the Episcopal tradition, where I serve as the Muslim chaplain. And then I also teach religion and philosophy courses.

So my path from HDS to my current position included a PhD. And I also write books in feminist studies and in Islam and on inter-religious relations.

KERRY MALONEY: Thank you, Celene. And finally, Chaplain Naomi Tzril Saks.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: Hello, everyone. And thank you so much, Kerry. I, too, am just so delighted to be in this beautiful company of everyone. I received my MDiv in 2010 and had a fabulous, really magical time at HDS. Since then, I work as a clinical health care chaplain specializing in palliative care and also an assistant adjunct professor and director of our well-being program for our physician Fellows at University of California, San Francisco.

I focus a lot on mind-body interventions for well-being and addressing pain and spiritual, religious, and existential pluralism and justice in healthcare. I'm just so delighted to be here.

KERRY MALONEY: [? You're ?] welcome. Thank you so much, every one of you for joining us today. Seeing your faces, floods of memories come back to me of your time with us at HDS. And Naomi, in particular, I always remember you encouraging us to religious intimacy with one another, while at HDS and beyond. So we're going to explore that today and to be intimate together in the ether across time and space here with each other.

We don't have a lot of time today. So here's our plan. We have some questions for our panelists. And then at about 3:45 or [? just ?] 3:45 here in Eastern Time wherever you are-- I don't know where you are-- we are going to turn it over to questions and answers from-- the questions from all of you who are joining us for the webinar and responses, answers, further provocations from our panelists for a few minutes, before we wrap up tightly on the hour. So I hope that sounds like a good plan.

I'm going to begin our questions. And maybe we can go in the reverse order in which you introduce yourselves. We'll begin with you, Naomi. What is your brief working definition of chaplaincy, in general, and in your field in particular? And the same question for all of you. So, Naomi.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: I love that question. And I think about it in the relative sense and in the absolute sense. So in my work in the relative sense, my job is to ensure people's inner life is included in their well-being, whatever that looks like, spiritual religious, existential, philosophical.

In the absolute sense, I really see-- the pointer for me is to remember my essential nature as love, quiet joy, beauty, and peace, and to live that out in any way in the service of healing and well-being of the patients, caregivers, and colleagues that I am so honored to be caring for and with.

CELENE IBRAHIM: Naomi, that's such a beautiful description. I wanted to go back and watch this webinar to hear that again. I was thinking of a one word answer, which is accompaniment. And you never know when someone books an appointment, or you're called to show up in a space, what type of presence that's going to require. But that accompaniment through the joys, through the hardships and in educational chaplaincy, in particular. And I work with youth really from anyone at our school could be, aged 13 to maybe 19.

And so for me, this process of chaplaincy is really about helping a student through this tremendously fraught and fun period of life that is the teenage years. So accompaniment is really what the word I'm settling in on.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Thank you both so much for sharing that. One of the good things of attending a panel like this is that you don't have to add so much, because there's so much wisdom coming from the others. So I love what both of you have said. And I was thinking of chaplaincy specific to my role here is like a resource, a resource for the religious, spiritual, pastoral curiosities and the needs of the campus community. And so that involves student staff and faculty.

And going a little more into the depth of what it means is programs like religious spiritual practice programs, organizing educational events, facilitating support groups, grief groups, at times, even visiting classes to give presentations, a lot of one-to-one conversations, workshops, and retreats among many other activities.

And just the one word definition that, Celene, you have brought up made me think about, whenever I think about chaplaincy in general, in my experience, what I think about is words like tending to or attending or nursing, nursing the, you may call it the spirit or the soul of the person, the one in your presence accompanying, you just said, in front of you. So this is what I think about chaplaincy, in general.

CELENE IBRAHIM: Yeah, to build just, Priya, what you've just said, Venerable Priya, I just love the space of educational chaplaincy for all those reasons that you described, because there is this place for learning and for cultivating, programming, and for helping facilitate encounters between people, who might not otherwise be able to encounter each other in this really authentic way. So, yeah, thank you for adding that.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Just want to just add to that is that the encounter and the conversations and the discussions that happen. The way I like to think about is I use the word curiosity. So it's curiosities in conversation with other curiosities. So we're all just learning from each other together.

KERRY MALONEY: What a rich beginning. I've heard such words here as curiosity, accompaniment, nourishment, attention, interiority, exteriority, well-being. And I think all of you who are listening in and participating in this [? where ?] chaplains can resonate with each of those words and all of them and probably have more to add. But that's a great place to start.

Our second question. And let's go in the reverse order again. So we can start with you, Priya, since you were the last to answer is would you please be able to identify one particular way in which chaplaincy within your field nurtures compassion and one way in which it nurtures resilience?

Now, you may think that they are one and the same, that you would have the same answer for each of those questions. But maybe you have different answers. So, Priya, do you have a thought about that?

PRIYA SRAMAN: I have some thoughts about that. And I'm very curious to hear what my friends and colleagues have to say, because I feel like-- I'm only going to share from my limited experience. And the way I think about it is, specifically in educational spaces like a campus, I feel like the allowing for a diversity of possibilities, our understanding of possible truths, our understanding of different realities around us, and the acceptance of the differences. So the acceptance of diversity. All of these, I think, creates a way for us to cultivate compassion, compassion for the different versions of ourselves, different versions of my identity, and the compassion for the different versions of those around us.

So in a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is that a creating a space, cultivating different perspectives that allows us to then cultivate and a practice of acceptance, I think, leads to the practice of compassion itself, compassion for myself as well as compassion for people around me.

And going to the idea of resilience, I would say that I talked about different versions of myself or different identities that I may hold, as I continue to grow. So I think of this as a process of growth. And recognizing that process of growth is where I see the cultivation of resilience, that being open to all the multiple ways I'm experiencing life, multiple ways I'm experiencing my college life, for example, and recognizing that there is always going to be some change, some challenge. But I'm open to that. And I welcome that. And so realizing this process as a process of my growth is what leads me to cultivate resilience.

CELENE IBRAHIM: Thank you again, Venerable Priya. I was thinking about things along similar lines. And that there's this important place for self-compassion. And especially as I'm working with youth, who have all of this ambition, and they're extraordinarily talented, and they're pulled in so many different directions, sometimes my practice of chaplaincy is just telling someone, please go take a nap now, because you are at your bandwidth.

Sometimes it's even just. in those moments like you were highlighting, encouraging students to have compassion for each other, so that they can respond with their most generous selves, especially in those of us who remember our teenage years, remember all of the social pressures as well.

So I think that that self-compassion can come in to help each student find their own way of expressing themselves, whether that's finding a social circle in which they feel that they can be their more authentic self.

And I think that compassion and resilience, it's so wonderful to tie those together, because resilience, to me, has to do with both being able to pick oneself up, when things are difficult and challenging. But resilience is also, in the Arabic language, I think of the word [ARABIC], which has to do with perseverance. And so perseverance is continuing to strive, even when things are really difficult.

So I think that helping, especially with the demographic that I'm working with, helping students understand when they need resilience and perseverance and when they need self-compassion is a really important part of the work. And when can you say, no, I'm not available. When can you say, you know, I'm sorry, but I can't. And all of these ways that I think I'm helping these very, very high-performing, very ambitious students think about their own life priorities.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: Thank you both. So many things you said too sparked me too. It's just lovely. The waters that I swim in are with people whose life has crashed. And they no longer recognize themselves, because of serious illness, because of dying, or because of death, or because their body. They no longer recognize their body anymore, of all ages.

So when I think about professional, spiritual care in that context, what I really do is I try to be the thing I want to see in the world, to be the being and connection and the truth and speak that in many languages that people can hear.

When people's life has crashed, when they have spiritual, existential distress, when they say, I don't know who I am anymore, now that I can't use my hands. I don't know who I am anymore, now that God has abandoned me, I don't know who I am anymore, now that my wife is no longer at home with me. When they say that, the first thing is for me to get still inside. So that I make sure I don't banish any parts of myself.

The best thing I have to offer this world is to remember, remember what I am to become still. And then everything comes from there. And it isn't me doing it. It's coming from being. The compassion comes with absolutely sitting right in the center of wherever, whatever's happening and be as steadfast as I can without an agenda and see where love takes me.

And sometimes, it takes me to hold a hand. And sometimes, it takes me to dance to funk music with people. And sometimes, it takes me to go outside and light a smudge stick for a Lakota Sioux friend, who's in the hospital. It takes me everywhere.

But what I have to do is I have to be supple and accepting and surrender to that. And then truth comes through me. And I would say resilience, my friends, has been torn apart just like these people since the worst of COVID. In my work and in my facilities and my institutions, resilience used to be just, oh, we bounce back. We burn people out. And then we tell them to have mindfulness moments. That doesn't fly anymore, my friends.

Resilience, we don't even use the word anymore in the institutions I work, because it's been a smack in the face. We talk about are we or are we not going to do the radical move of saying, we will not, not show up, if we cannot be whole in our work, in our families, in our relationships, in the service to other people.

And so well-being, we call it now, is quite radical. It's about dismantling systems that oppress us. It's about nurturing systems that tell us that, yes, we want you whole. We see you. And it's also 80% systemic. So it isn't, you're a bad person, because you didn't have time to go to your yoga class tonight. It's actually saying, you are about the most resilient human being.

When I work with physicians, nurses, physical therapists, patients, their care partners I say, are about the most resilient human being on Earth. This system is not here to take care of you. And we all together with our hearts and minds, let's think about how we can do better.

KERRY MALONEY: [? Hear, ?] [? hear. ?] I think those of you who are joining us can see why we've asked these great chaplains and prophets to be our teachers for this hour telling us some truths about even the words around which we decided to organize this webinar, the ways in which resilience has been used as a cudgel.

And if we're not resilient enough, there's something wrong with you, rather than with the system. Compassion, we frequently use. Its Latin roots, to suffer with, to be in the community, to accompany one another in all of our pain and all of our growth, to be present with each other. And our teachers here are giving us glimpses of what that really looks like on the ground.

So I'm going to ask you to say a little bit more about what that looks like on the ground. And, Naomi, I'll ask to begin with you. And then we'll go to you, Celene. And back to you, Priya. Would you please share with us one brief story? You've already intimated a little bit about this and what you've shared.

But one story in the concrete anonymizing, of course, the identities that people about whom you speak. One brief story of a person or a community that you have accompanied as a chaplain in that nurturing of compassion, in that, if not, nurturing of a resilience, a witness to the resilience that they already have, as you spoke about. so beautifully, Naomi, not the one that we would assign them to have. But both the resilience, the elasticity, the beauty, and growth of the human spirit in the face of very difficult [? odds. ?] So, Naomi, why don't you begin and tell us a story.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: Thank you so much. So if there's a hashtag to this story-- I used to would say a bumper sticker. But nobody puts bumper stickers on anymore. If there is a hashtag to this story, it's a line from a Mark Nepo poem. I'm sure some of you know Mark Nepo accepting this. My efforts now turn from trying to outrun suffering to finding love wherever-- from accepting love, wherever I can find it.

And Rosebud, a woman I was working with, helped me accept love, wherever I could find it. She was a woman that I came in to see initially. And her blanket was over her head. And her room was dark, and her shades were drawn.

And all of the nurses and physicians and teams said, you know what? She's screaming out in pain every day. Help me. Help me. She was dealing with advanced cancer. And so I went in. And I sat with her for a few minutes. And just sat there in the dark in the chair.

And then after a while, I said, Rosebud. She said, Yeah. I said, this really sucks, doesn't it? She said, yeah. Finally, someone just says it like it is. She was a woman who lived on the streets and had a hard life. And she did not like being in the hospital. And she did not like being woken up. And she did not like that. she was dying.

And I went in a couple of times with her. And I got to know her a little better. And she kept saying, the goddess has abandoned me. Naomi, the goddess has abandoned me. And I said, tell me more about the goddess. And she said, I know a lot about the goddess. I draw pictures of goddesses all the time. I said, really? I said, what if got some stuff for you to draw some goddesses? Do you think you could do that?

And so I got her a bunch of art supplies. And she started to draw these beautiful, fierce, red and black women goddesses with armor on, and their fists up and radiating hair. And we started to plaster them all over the room. And these goddesses came to attend her and support her.

And then she said, Naomi, these are strong goddesses. But I feel like I'm not strong now. And I've had a really hard life And nobody really knows how hard it's been. And I said, tell me, my friend. Tell me how hard it's been. And so then we decided that I would come in. And I would take notes. And she would tell me day by day about her life.

And then we decided we would put it into a book. And I said, Rosebud, do you think you could illustrate this book of your life for us? It would be so beautiful. So she spent time in her last few weeks of life drawing the goddesses that were associated with each of the stories of her life. And then we bound the book. And we gave it to her. And she wept. And she said, I never knew my life was so important.

KERRY MALONEY: Wow. And, Naomi, I feel like I would like to have you on speed dial, if I'm ever in those moments of-- wow. wow. wow. Thank you for the tremendous work that you do. That's amazing. I love too in your story the way that you sense just the question to ask or the subtle suggestion to help someone to shift their energy, their way of being. So wow. What an incredible story.

So my experiences, thankfully working with youth, have not revolved around death or dying and more coming into moments of-- but still coming into moments of themselves. And so the school that I work at is about 140 years old and has been majority Christian for-- the vast majority of its existence is predominantly Christian students.

And I do have a small group of Muslim students. And we never had a prayer space, per se that kind of felt like our own. And this year, we, thankfully to the collaboration with the other chaplain on campus who's the main chaplain of our school, an Episcopal priest, Reverend Allison Reid. Thankfully, for her persistent efforts, the Dean of Students had an abandoned office that we were able to turn into a prayer space.

And once we had this beautiful prayer space, we started thinking that we actually could use a Friday prayer, because the Friday prayer was one thing about campus that we hadn't quite established that was really important. We had Halal dining options. And we had a community that was gathering regularly for study.

And we had other facets of what makes Muslim life. But we finally had this prayer space. And it happens that in the winter, the prayer time hits perfectly on the lunch block. So my students are now having a jummah prayer. And we need a jummah prayer leader. I don't lead the jummah prayers.

And so I worked with one of our young students, who is 15 years old. And for his very first prayer, he borrowed an abaya a galabeya, which is a long, traditional dress and just gave this most beautiful Friday sermon. And it was-- in some ways, we're just this very tiny community, and this very tiny space. And here, we have our teenage imam. But he did an absolutely fantastic job. And to sit there, as we kind of sit on the floor. And I'm looking up to him. And he's quite tall. And I'm literally looking up to him, it was just this beautiful moment of him growing his potential as a religious leader.

And I overheard him once introduce himself as the imam in training of Groton School. So it just touched my heart. And maybe someday, he'll end up as an imam. Maybe I'll send him to Harvard Divinity School. And we'll see where that goes. But just really, really touching moment.

PRIYA SRAMAN: That's very nice, Celene. Thanks for sharing. Subtle nudges and creating opportunities for our students to reach their potential to explore different parts of their capacity that sometimes they are not aware of. I think it's so important. Really the words that you say, Naomi, at the very end, never knew my life was so important. The person that you were attending to said that.

I think I have experienced similar expressions in my interactions with a lot of my students also not realizing or seeking validation for who they are and not realizing how important life is, their lives are. I've been working with a student who has been carrying a lot of guilt, a lot of guilt due to something that the student had done long ago before coming to college. But still stuck with her.

And she wouldn't open up. She feels guilty. She feels bad. We've been having a lot of conversations on a regular basis. It took her some time to come to the point, where she felt comfortable to share what she was guilty about.

And then when I heard it, I just realized that, , objectively, it's not really that big of a deal, if you know the details, and if you know the story. But it is a big deal for her. She can't forgive herself. And because of that guilt, because of the burden that she has been carrying for months and years, it's actually impacting her life in other areas as well, her performance, her relationship with others. Because there's a point that she has reached where she is blaming herself a lot.

So, in my understanding, and you asked about a story or a case of compassion and resilience, I have not fully reached the end of this journey of self-exploration with the student that I'm having this conversation with. But so far, in my interactions with her, what I find myself doing is just sitting there listening. Just allowing her the space and opportunity to share everything that she has been carrying for so long.

And that's the thing that I have observed is that when I am not talking, she doesn't stop talking. She has so much to share. So just a big part of my work is just sitting there just listening. And sometimes, asking challenging questions just to-- is that the right way to think about this thing or yourself? Just nudging here and there.

And over time, I have seen that she has changed a little bit. She has changed the narrative of how she sees herself. But then, again, I see that she's gone back to how she was feeling about herself. So that's what I was saying that it's a process of going back and forth. It takes a lot of going back and forth.

And I think that's where I find myself just, what Celene said at the very beginning, accompanying, just being there, just sitting there. And sometimes, also just giving them a sense of stability. Yes, there's a lot of chaos and uncertainty and instability happening within me in my head.

But then I see someone listening to me and just sitting still. I think that also helps. So, yeah, I didn't want to get into the very details of this case. But this is something that I've been working with recently.

KERRY MALONEY: So a journey towards self-acceptance, teenage imams, dying warrior goddesses. I think we can add to your working definitions of chaplaincy the art of bearing witness to life in all its glorious complexity, beauty, pain, and wisdom. Each of you does that with remarkable clarity and courage and persistence. Thank you.

One more substantive question about the nurturance of compassion and resilience has to do with this. What specific practice or resource have you found especially helpful for yourselves in the nurturance of compassion and resilience in your role as chaplains?

Is the work that you all do day in and day out, that so many of you do on this webinar day in and day out demands endless amounts of energy and attention and love and commitment? And it's always been difficult at every moment in history, I'm sure. I think we can say that this last year has been particularly demanding for each of you, for all of us in many ways.

So while it's always important to nurture ourselves as chaplains, I'm wondering, especially at this point in history, what are you relying on? What practices are you turning? What resources are you calling upon for that growth in yourself, for that [? nurturing ?] of elasticity and the capacity to suffer with your insight to be bearing witness to your own [INAUDIBLE] as you bear witness with [INAUDIBLE]. So let's begin with you, Priya.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm thinking of a few things. And one is contemplation, contemplation meditation, reflection, all of that. And contemplating what? So I think there's a lot of benefit and learning and cultivation that comes out of contemplating on moments and interactions and experiences, where I have encountered compassion from others to me. I feel like that those encounters of compassion from others to us teaches us a lot about how we can also be compassionate to others.

And then you talked about nurturing compassion for ourselves. How can I be compassionate to myself too? So really being intentional, giving myself time to contemplate on these things. How can I do self-care? Where do I need care for myself? And how can I do that? I think the way I talk about meditation with my students is it's a medium of reconnecting with myself. So using that space to reconnect with myself to see, where I can help myself? How can I care for myself?

The other thing I want to say is actually connected is having time for myself. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm meditating or contemplating, but giving myself time for my own self-care, for my joy, for my-- we have this thing of refilling the cup, so that I can find joy and inspiration, motivation, strength to keep going. Because I think if we are unable to do that, then exhaustion, that burnout is so real.

So just finding time away from things that take a lot of our strength, going away from that, and actually refilling that strength, refueling ourselves. And then it can be-- obviously, it's unique individual to individual. So just realizing that. That's what I do for myself is just finding a lot of time to do nothing.

CELENE IBRAHIM: In those moments when I'm trying to refill the cup, one of the practices that I go to is a practice of dhikr which is just the ancient wisdom of this practice. And the different dhikrs that are great from the Islamic tradition for compassion and resilience have to do with the names of God, which Ar-rahman and Ar-rahim. Both are names that evoke different aspects of compassion.

So I'll just recite as I walk from place to place, Ya Rahman, Ya Raheem, Ya Rahman, Ya Raheem, as a type of mantra, and just it's a practice of evoking the divine by a particular quality that you yourself are also hoping to imbibe and to live into.

And another name for the divine is Ya Sabr. Well, Ya is the particle of calling in Arabic like O would be the equivalent. So Ya Sabr would be like a one who perseveres. And in calling on that, the divine by that name, that energy, then it's, at the same time, a prayer asking for that particular [? quality. ?]

And so it's just an example of some of the different dhikrs. But I often find that using some type of meditative practice as a grounding practice, as a clearing practice can maintain my energy in a space where it's healthy and flourishing. And especially in these moments that have been very difficult, it could be that I've just read a news article today about famine, human-induced famine. But then we still have to function in our day-to-day lives.

And so in my work with students, I'm also trying to show them, how do you show up in this energy witnessing these horrific things in the world, but then, five minutes later, go in and take a math test, because that's what you have to do right now? And so that practice of chanting helps refocus the energy to do another task.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: I love this rhythm of emptying and filling and emptying and filling. It's just beautiful. I can almost see the waves. Really lovely. The best thing that the worst of COVID did for me is it totally destroyed my identity as a chaplain. That was the most freeing thing and the most painful thing. I thought I would have supposed to be loving all the time, that I was supposed to be calm, that I was always supposed to be available.

And we were all in a situation that none of us can control. And we were all terrified for years and years. And all that got to be broken away. And so I would say that is the most freeing thing that happened to me. Roshi Joan Halifax, when I was learning from her at HDS, she said, Naomi, you got to train for this work. You have to have a soft belly and a firm back.

So the way that I have a firm back is I get really intimate with the ways I suffer and the ways I'm already free. I get so intimate that they become nameless. I also do a lot of practical things. And it changes every year or every couple years. I'm always adjusting. What is the care and feeding of Naomi need to continue to serve with energy and love?

So everything from I meditate twice a day to eating a new green smoothie that's energizing me to making sure that we have some irreverence and joy. And we have blueberry pancake morning with my team to dancing and laughing and being irreverent and bringing a cotton candy machine in the middle of the nursing station to everything from making sure, on the weekends, that I can commune with nature, with beings that aren't conditioned, that I can also continue to remember and keep coming back home, because I think essentially, what we're all doing is we're all walking each other back home. And yet, if you're so filled up and crispy and tired, it's hard to remember what home feels like.

KERRY MALONEY: We're all walking on another [INAUDIBLE]. Well, I think you've given us, each of you, beautiful examples, living examples of that in this little bit of time we've had with you today and thank you, and certainly, in the whole lives you are leading well beyond this webinar.

And we saw that while you were here. and my [INAUDIBLE] if you've gone on to [INAUDIBLE] And you said contemplation, Priya, just put in mind of the great 20th century Jesuit theologian Walter Burckhardt, who said that contemplation is a long, loving look at the real, at the real. That portion is getting very intimate with what is, as you said, getting very intimate [? soft ?] [? facts, ?] [? hard ?] [? facts, ?] and then back. And you've all helped us to imagine what that looks like.

Friends, we are ready to move into your questions now. And I think we're going to rely on Chandra and Kristen to help us with those. So Chandra and Kristen, if you'd like to come back in to give us a hand with these questions, that would be lovely.

KRISTEN PONTE: Hello.

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: Thank you. Thank you. We have four wonderful questions. Some, I think, you have covered slightly. One slightly very well, [? I meant. ?] So we do have a question from Patrick Downs. As a Quaker, one returning to chaplaincy discernment at a residency, where he spent a CPE unit at Mayo, he wondered what you think the role of silent accompaniment, stillness in chaplaincy, in other words, must we always look for words?

CELENE IBRAHIM: We're just being still with that. We don't [INAUDIBLE].

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: OK. Well, I'll think about that one. This one actually sounds very interesting from Ben. If you weren't a chaplain today, what might you be doing?

CELENE IBRAHIM: I think for the first question-- yeah, I think for the first question, we were all sort of waiting for each other there. But I'll jump in on this one. I go back and forth in my roles between being an academic and being a chaplain, which is quite good for my soul, because they require different capacities.

So even when I'm not being a chaplain, I'm living into to my other hat that also involves religion and religious literacy. But I think if I wasn't an academic and I wasn't a chaplain, I kind of want to be a professional gardener.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: I love that. And I'll go back to the quiet. The alchemy that happens in a space when there are no words beyond words is transformative. So I don't use silence. I try to tap into the silence that we all are. And when that happens, it also evokes that in others. And then things come beyond words. So absolutely, this is not a neck up pursuit.

And it also means that we don't just say listening is like, oh, that's good. We just check that off. Listening is as complex and sensitive an intervention as anything that I do. And I don't just need to listen to others. I need to listen to myself and my own triggers and reactions and see what's happening to me, as I continue to move through my work.

And as far as what I would do, I would be gardening with Celene. And I would probably have a bed and breakfast by the ocean. And I might do some improv. The irreverence is just bubbling up inside of me. So I think there'd be some goofiness involved.

CELENE IBRAHIM: Sign me up.

KERRY MALONEY: I'm going. I'm going to have bed and breakfast. And I'm jumping in that garden with you both.

PRIYA SRAMAN: I'm just going to take a nap, while you all are gardening.

CELENE IBRAHIM: Good too.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Oh, that reminds me. Actually. I would probably make some food for all of us, while you're doing that, I love making food sometimes and sharing it with people.

KERRY MALONEY: You can harvest the things we get out of the garden.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Yes, absolutely. Yes. The question about silence, stillness in chaplaincy. I see that the question-- you ended the question with must we always look for words, right? And it makes me think, at least in my experience when I'm actively looking for words searching for something, it is a challenge for me to be present with the person.

So I feel like when we are truly present there, we don't need to look for words or anything. They come to us, and just to trust in that experience and let that guide our interaction with anyone in front of us. So that, I would say to just to think about that. Yeah, thank you.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: What would you cook us?

PRIYA SRAMAN: It depends on what you harvest.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: You're a seasonal chef then?

PRIYA SRAMAN: Yes.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: OK.

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: OK, so there are, wow, a lot of fantastic questions. We'll try and get to as many as possible. There is a question about what are your deepest concerns about the way AI is being projected into care and accompaniment roles? So this is from Thomas Arnold. We can also actually put that with another question from Wilson about, what worries you about the future of chaplaincy? So maybe I just led you to the answer as a profession and a vocation.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: I was going to say AI-- I work in San Francisco and so high tech and AI. Just the other day, we looked up, what is death, ChatGPT? And give me a picture of that, And so people now are playing around with it and seeing what it comes up with. [? What's ?] [? a ?] [? goals ?] of care conversation for this person?

So right now, I think as far as I'm seeing it in my work, it's really being used in medicine a lot more, so people don't have to chart as much, so that there's a lot of rote things and a lot of record records kinds of things that it's being used automatically for.

I don't go into the fear of it so much. But I could see that there are times that-- AI is not conscious. We actually need conscious beings doing this work. What I worry about chaplaincy is that we continue, at least in my institutions, to continue to think you can be rational and materialistic and humanist or your spiritual, magical, and irreverent and transpersonal.

And I just feel like continuing to make these false dichotomies and not being holistic. For instance, around the country, but especially here in the Bay Area, psychedelics is getting to be a huge thing. And many chaplains are being accompaniers and training and participating.

But I also see the way that it's going to be funded and the way that research is being funded is they're taking off the spiritual, the transpersonal, the part that is actually giving people experiences of unity consciousness, of different consciousness.

They're taking that off making it a psychology ethical thing and not paying for the integration, for the months and months or weeks and weeks of integration that anyone would need if they get opened up to a larger sense of consciousness.

So my fear is the same fear we've probably had in chaplaincy or spiritual care for years is it's not because people can only focus on one pattern and certain patterns get funded, that the holistic experience of being human gets to be cut off. And then also the spiritual elements. And chaplains are not always included as the experts in the inner life in the way that they should be. So that worries me sometimes

CELENE IBRAHIM: I think I'm going to also just celebrate some of the ways in which chaplaincy is getting recognition and the value of chaplains, whether it's health care settings educational settings. There is a question I saw in the chat come through, what other settings do people work in? Prison chaplaincy as well in the Boston area.

And I have a friend who we're going to share resources. So American Imam is the book that just came out and he talks about his experience as a prison chaplain and how transformative that was for himself, of course, but also for so many people that he worked with. So the prisons.

And just the possibilities. I think more and more corporate workplaces are also seeing the value of having spiritual caregivers at hand. So I'm encouraged by that. One thing I'm a little discouraged by is maybe the amount of need that's coming at us. And if we're really going to accompany people, that takes a lot of time. And so there's a question of bandwidth. I think as our value is known, then hopefully there'll be more people stepping into this space and more hiring.

KERRY MALONEY: Chandra, I noticed that you just put in the chat or Kristen did the book that Celine referenced. We did have a final question for our speakers here. And it was, what book or resource or article might you recommend to our audience about chaplaincy in your field in particular?

And a few of our folks here are recent authors of their own books on the field. So we'd love to give them the chance to promote that or to let people know what those are and any other things that they would recommend to us. So, Naomi, do you want to start?

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: Yes, we have an exciting book called Intentionally Interprofessional Palliative Care. And this is all co-authored by doctors, nurse, chaplain, social worker. And each chapter is different professions collaborating on each topic.

And it really talks about this alchemy, how do we create trust, vulnerability, and psychological safety to be able to collaborate with all of the professions in any environment that we're in? It's Oxford University Press coming out at the end of April.

KERRY MALONEY: Congratulations, and we look forward to that, Naomi. Beautiful. Celene is the author of several books. You want to tell us some of yours?

CELENE IBRAHIM: Oh, the one that maybe pertains the most to chaplaincy. It's called One Nation Indivisible-- and I got that from somewhere-- Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets I had initially drawn. It's an edited collection. Initially drew it together in the rise of the Trump era, the first rise.

And so it's a book that helps show-- it helps humanize Islam and Muslims for an American audience with contributions from different religious leaders and Muslims themselves, who work across religious divides. So it's called One Nation Indivisible. And actually the bulletin, the Harvard Divinity Bulletin has some excerpts of it.

KERRY MALONEY: Beautiful. I [? teach ?] in my class. A magnificent book, yes. Priya, do you have any books that you particularly find to be good resources for chaplaincy to you these days?

PRIYA SRAMAN: For chaplaincy, I didn't. There are so many I have one that I was inspired by a lot, personally. But I don't think that's a good recommendation for all, because it's just so personal. And it's actually not even a Buddhist book. It's not even a chaplaincy book. It's a collected, selected poem by Rumi. And--

KERRY MALONEY: That's fine. That's more than fine.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Yes, that's the book. And I am no expert on mysticism or Islam at all. It's just whenever I read that, the way I feel about what I read has transformed a lot of my outlook on the world and has informed me a lot of about how I am moving around. So help me a lot.

And just one other book, I was thinking of sharing is a book by a Buddhist teacher, Peace Is Every Step, I think, can be a good way to think about how to maybe cultivate compassion, resilience, mindfulness on a regular day-to-day basis. Peace Is Every Step.

KERRY MALONEY: That's one of Thich Nhat Hanh's. Great classic, yes.

CHANDRA MOHAMMED: From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, thank you. I want to thank you Kerry, Venerable Priya, Celene, and Naomi for sharing your truths, touching our souls, and drawing our tears. You created such an unforgettable moment of connection that we will always cherish. So thank you.

And thank you Dean Frederick for joining us and sharing your visionary leadership. Your guidance will light our path. And thank you, thank you so much to everyone who joined us today. These were some fantastic questions. So I hope you'll stay connected with me, with all of us actually, following Harvard Divinity School on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We look forward to connecting with you. Thank you all very much and have a wonderful morning, night, afternoon, wherever you are in the world. Thank you.

KERRY MALONEY: Thank you, everyone.

NAOMI TZRIL SAKS: Thank you so much.

PRIYA SRAMAN: Thank you.

SPEAKER 1: Sponsor: HDS Office of Development and External Relations.

SPEAKER 2: Copyright 2024 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.