Bob David (BD): Bill, at age 84, you are about to retire as chaplain at Boston Medical Center. You’ve been there for 18½ years, which means you were around 65 when you came onboard. Can you give a rundown of your rich history and experience before then, which I understand was not without controversy?

Bill Alberts (BA): Well, my first major ministry was at Old West Church in Boston’s Government Center. The Methodists had reopened Old West in 1964 to have it involved in the community. They brought in a man named Bill Zeigler to do the preaching; he was a good preacher. I had gotten my degree in psychology and pastoral counseling in 1961, so I went there to do their programming and set up a pastoral counseling and referral service. We established a variety of excellent community-centered programs. We had a tutoring program for children with learning difficulties in the neighborhood schools. We had the Hub Theater Center with a professional theater group performing plays committed to people as determiners rather than victims of life. We had a jazz group. We had a Friday night teen dance that would bring together young people from the North End and from Beacon Hill, where I did a lot of street work. So we were pretty active.

Then we became a medical-legal information center for demonstrators against the war in Vietnam. Enough of us had a commitment to peace and were against the war; and as the Federal Building was just down the street, we were in a strategic location. I became personally involved in demonstrations as well. We attracted progressive people, but it was a turn-off for some United Methodists in the New England Conference who didn’t see the church doing this.

Then the Insurance Company of North America canceled our insurance. They thought that a Bircher might throw a Molotov cocktail through the window to protest these kinds of activities. They saw a church as having a youth group, choir rehearsal, and Sunday services. That was their concept: they could actually control the church’s mission. That’s a no-no. [chuckles]

I’m a writer, so when I’m in ministry, I’ll write about it. At that time The Boston Globe was publishing certain things I was writing, so I submitted an article that appeared in the Sunday Globe Magazine called “How Insurance Companies Oppress Churches.” I went into detail about what happened. I also used radio and television. We still lost our insurance.

Anyway, I was at Old West from ‘65 to ‘73. In ‘73 I performed a gay marriage of two young men who had attended Boston University School of Theology and had become active members of my church. I’d performed the marriage of two women a couple years previously and shared that information with the Pastor/Parish Relations Committee and nothing came of it; but this marriage, with these two men, was covered in the media. The United Methodist Church is against its ministers performing gay marriages. In fact, the Methodist Church believes homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Well I think that’s sad, because I think the Methodist Church is really incompatible in that belief with humanity.

BD: There weren’t many gay marriages at that time. Were you the only one doing them?

BA: I was the only one where it became a public issue. I’d heard that a Unitarian minister, Randy Gibson at the Charles Street Meeting House, did a couple in 1969 or around there. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, and nobody else was, except for those for whom it had meaning. But there were other issues with me and the Methodists… I was an activist and I wrote. Unitarians are progressive about gay marriage; with the Methodists it was a different thing, and the Globe covered it for a long period of time. It was early on, and no, nobody else was performing gay marriages. But it was important to do it, because I believe everybody is precious and equal.

BD: But the marriages were not considered legal.

BA: [chuckling] Well, my former bishop used that argument: “They’re not legal!” But it’s the two men, their motive... The bishop wanted me to perform a ceremony that would recognize their friendship. That’s not where the men were at. He wanted to deny their sexual relationship.

And as I said, there were other issues. I had been asked to be the convener of a Conference-wide group of ministers and lay people. Our group had joined with the Conference’s Black Methodists for Church Renewal to deal with racism in the Conference. We accused the Conference of ignoring black ministerial candidates for a church position and appointing a white minister instead. I’d taped a Conference session in which all of that discussion went on about the appointment and gave the tape to the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Religion and Race, which came to the Conference to investigate the alleged discrimination against the Conference’s black ministers. The Commission brought the report back to the Conference a couple of months after I’d performed the gay marriage.

I did not make certain friends by becoming convener of those sessions. And of course reactions to the gay marriage itself were rather hysterical. So the Conference leadership used the gay marriage to divert attention from the investigation of racism. My bishop and former superintendent went to my former psychiatrist without my knowledge or permission and used what he allegedly told them to discredit me in a press conference and have me forcibly retired for a year. So I brought a lawsuit. It took a long time—13 years.

BD: The lawsuit was against the bishop?

BA: Against my former psychiatrist and the bishop and superintendent. And it proved to be very successful in that the Massachusetts Supreme Court made a ruling that not only is a physician liable for breaching a confidence, but also anybody who induces a breech when they use that information to hurt somebody, to discredit somebody. Well that lawsuit led to a new law.

The bishop and the superintendent and the psychiatrist tried to undo it by going to the United States Supreme Court. They even had the National Council of Churches supporting them. It was like David against Goliath. [both chuckling] And the US Supreme Court turned them down; the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling stood. That was in 1985. They were forced to go to trial, and we finally worked out a settlement. The value of that lawsuit was that it’s used all over now as precedent. Various states are using it. But I went through a lot of pain at that time, both emotionally and economically. For five years after filing the suit I had difficulty getting a job.

BD: You were forcibly retired for one year.

BA: One year, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with the Methodists after that. I walked away. It’s interesting—I was watching the bishop’s press conference, where he was saying I wasn’t capable of serving a church right then, and I said to myself, I will be a minister as long as I have breath! And I’d just stopped smoking! [chuckling] I had!—I’d been a chain smoker. That was 30-some years ago. Anyway, the lawsuit was important, as I say, because of the new case law that any employee could use to protect himself against an employer who could otherwise try to use the employee’s alleged emotional state to discredit and get rid of him if he rocked the boat too much or was critical.

BD: So you’ve been an activist in many ways, and it was your own personal situation that actually led to new law.

BA: Yeh, oh yeh, it was the persistence in pursuing that lawsuit when I had no money and went into bankruptcy. We filed the lawsuit in March of 1974. I was forcibly retired in June of ’73. During those months I wrote for the weekly Boston Ledger, which is defunct now.

BD: What were you writing?

BA: I was writing news stories and personal columns, opinion pieces. Eventually the ministerial position at the Community Church of Boston opened in 1978 and I applied for the position. On my first interview they asked about my theology and I said, “I bleed human; I believe in human beings.” The Community Church is very nonsectarian, and they appreciated that.

One person who was helpful to me was Kip Tiernan [founder of Rosie’s Place, a shelter and resource center for poor and homeless women in Boston]. Kip just died, and there’s an editorial and a nice picture of her in The Boston Globe today. I’d come to know Kip. She wrote a letter of reference for me to the Community Church that said, “Bill Alberts has been a political prisoner of the church for too long. Free him! Hire him and free him!” [both chuckling] And that’s what they did. Community Church wanted me to do the very things that Old West Church punished me for doing. So I’m still a retired United Methodist minister in good standing, only… Anyway, I became certified as a Unitarian Universalist minister. I did a lot of writing there and got quite involved in citywide issues.

BD: Did you do gay marriages?

BA: Actually no. In fact, a few folks at Community Church thought that if they hired me, people would be lined up around the corner wanting to get married. No, I didn’t, though gay people came and felt at home there. But you know, the first gay marriage I did after Old West was at Boston Medical Center in 2004. It was beautiful. It was out in the lawn of the School of Medicine, in May or June. The two women brought flowers from their garden and put them in a nice little vase. We sat on the benches at the picnic table and I performed the ceremony. It was wonderful.

Then a couple years ago I performed another gay marriage. The mother was an active Methodist who was looking for a minister to perform the wedding of her daughter to another young woman. My colleague Dick Harding, who’s still a retired United Methodist minister, referred them to me. I performed the wedding in the MIT chapel in Cambridge. That was another wonderful event.

Anyway, Community Church was great. I think the main character of that church was the Speakers Program we had each Sunday. We would have Noam Chomsky, Mel King, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Cesar Chavez—just a variety of activists and scholars. I was so fortunate to be there.

I was involved in Mel King’s mayoral campaigns in ’79 and ‘83 and wrote about it when he became a finalist in ’83. Though The Boston Globe appears liberal, and it is in ways—it was very supportive of me during my struggle with the Methodists and the gay marriage—, it has quite a racist streak. [The Globe’s publishers] control the city, and they wanted to make sure that Flynn, a white man, was elected and not King. They undermined King’s campaign. So I wrote about it in an essay called, “What’s Black and White and Racist All Over,” which became a chapter in a book on black power in Boston published by Mel King and my long-time colleague James Jennings. Their emphasis was not on access to power, but on power itself.

Later, James Jennings, who teaches Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy at Tufts University and was director of the Trotter Institute, engaged me to do research reports for Trotter on the ’83 campaign of Mel King and the ’93 campaign of Bruce Bolling, another black leader whose campaign the Globe undermined. I also wrote a research report for Trotter on Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March. I studied the Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. They all tried to undermine the March, but they weren’t able to.

BD: Can you say how they tried to undermine the Million Man March?

BA: In their news stories, their editorials, their opinion pieces, they were all critical of Farrakhan. He was ‘anti-semitic’; he was for ‘black power’ and ‘separation.’ I do a content analysis when I’m studying a news story. Reporters are really supposed to be objective, but there would be stories with subtle opinions by the reporters about Farrakhan. I’d list those, and other things. It was interesting that after the Nation of Islam’s newspaper Final Call did a review of my report, the Trotter Institute received thirty-some requests for copies from Nation of Islam prison inmates. It was nice that James Jennings decided we would give them the report. As it turned out, over a million people marched. [chuckles]

Then I did another report for Trotter on Clinton’s national dialogue on race. It was pretty racist, because what Clinton tried to do was redefine racism as individual and interpersonal, when in fact it’s been institutionalized from the beginning of this country’s history. With Clinton, it was like we need to talk more with each other, blacks and whites, as if the problem now is an individual issue, when it’s really economic, political, and educational, the whole thing. So I did a content analysis of the Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post and brought out commentary on what Clinton was doing and how it was redefining the problem.

That gets beyond Community Church, because I was doing those research reports when I first started at Boston Medical Center in ’92. Actually, I left Community Church in ’91 and did an interim parish in Leominster [MA] for a year—First Church in Leominster. It’s been great for me at Boston Medical, because the hospital is a global neighborhood—you have all kinds of people. And my theology is very nonsectarian. I believe that every human being has the right to be who he or she is—has the right to become, and to belong, no matter who. So to come to Boston Medical, with its diversity of patients and staff, was just wonderful for me. I’ve thrived there.

BD: Tell us about your transition from being a minister to being a chaplain.

BA: I have a PhD in psychology and pastoral counseling, so I’ve had a lot of clinical pastoral education and clinical training, which has served me well in my parishes. I had a pastoral counseling and referring service, as I said, at Old West. I did some pastoral counseling at Community Church, but there was more of the prophetic social justice kind of stuff going on there. I’ve been fortunate to have experience in both the pastoral and the prophetic (words that religious types use), which I see as being pretty much interrelated. When I came to the hospital, though, it became more pastoral: visiting patients and their families, seeking to utilize what they believe to help them deal with their illness, seeing how they love and support each other, then having a patient die and seeing the grief and how that gets expressed and how that love gets expressed, whether it’s a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a patient of another religion or no religion. It’s all very human stuff.

BD: Would you say more about how you approach and deal with people who could be very different in their religious orientations, backgrounds, belief systems?

BA: I seek to find out what they believe and to tune into that.

BD: How do you do that?

BA: I will go in and visit a patient. I’ll introduce myself. I have a list that indicates their religion, so I’ll start with that information. For instance, if a patient is a Baptist, I’ll say, “I’m making my rounds. I don’t mean to be intrusive. I’m glad to see you. You’re listed as Baptist. Have you been able to be active in your church?” Patients will let you know whether they are religious or not, whether they’re interested in talking with you or not. You can tell if they keep looking at the TV and rarely make eye contact or their answers are very brief and economical, or if they go into detail. Then they might start asking you questions, which indicates they’re interested in you. So I pick up on where the patient is at. I seek not to be intrusive, nor to pry. I’m not selling anything. What I’m interested in is what’s important to the patient. I seek to communicate that by my posture, my tone of voice, by who I am. And they pick up on that.

BD: You don’t wear a collar; you wear a jacket and tie. Other chaplains do wear collars.

BA: It depends on the chaplain. Catholic chaplains wear clerical collars. My Episcopalian colleague at the hospital wears a collar. It’s a matter of choice. My thing has always been, this is who I am. I will get to know you and you will get to know me. I go around the hospital now and most people know I’m a chaplain. I don’t need to wear a collar; I don’t need to say “God” or “Jesus” or quote the Bible or whatever. But I do my work. I’ll be interested in the patients; we’ll talk; I’ll follow through with them. You can have a collar on and be very caring, or… It depends on the personality.

When I started in the ministry I thought I had a calling. I thought God called me to be a minister. My girlfriend, who became my first wife, was religious and I wanted to impress her. I thought, I’m not a good person, but God is accepting me by saying, “Go preach.” Well that was back around 1948. Over the years, as a student minister, in my graduate studies, in my other ministry, and in the therapy I had with my former psychiatrist, who was very helpful, I’ve discovered that what began as an outward calling became an inward journey into self. I had to come more and more to know who I was and what I was dealing with in order to be able to experience other people as they are, rather than as I want them to be or as I perceive them to be. Those kinds of insights come out of a certain amount of pain—when you’re confronted with your own insecure behavior and you seek to process it, or you seek to get help processing it, or other things happen and you want to know how much you’ve participated in their happening, and all of what goes into self-understanding… That’s all been an important part of who I am. So I did show up at Boston Medical with a certain amount of insight, self-understanding, and experience.

BD: And a basic philosophy or approach that you’re going in to find out what’s important to a person, which becomes the basis of where you go with that person.

BA: I’ll give you a recent example. I visited a 40-year-old man whose religion was listed as ‘nondenominational.’ When a patient’s religion is listed as ‘no affiliation’ or ‘nondenominational’ or ‘unknown,’ I check to find out if in fact there is an affiliation and then pass that information on to Admitting and to the other chaplains. So I introduced myself and said, “Your religion is listed as ‘nondenominational.’ Are you affiliated with a church?” He replied, “No. I don’t attend a church. Does that make me a bad person?” [chuckling] I said, “That makes you a human being.” Then I said, “Religion should affirm people’s worth and rights” and added, “You’re as good as anyone else.” That was probably much better than any prayer I might have offered him. But that’s what he was taught, because pastors, priests, denominational leaders—they want people to come to church, and they equate being religious, being good, with coming to church. Lots of good people go to church; lots of good people don’t go to church.

There was a born-again Christian patient who had been a dope addict. His line was, “I was a hopeless dope addict, now I have become a dopeless hope addict.” He was in a ministry now with others seeking to convert teens who are on drugs to Christ. I visited him, listened to him, and prayed with him. We had a good conversation. I came back and visited again. At one point he started asking me questions about myself and my chaplaincy. Then he said, “Maybe some of us could come in sometime and lead one of your services.” I responded, “No, that wouldn’t be possible.” “Why not?” I explained, “You believe just in Jesus, that Jesus died for everyone’s sins. We have lots of patients who don’t believe that.” He asked, “Well, don’t you agree that you have eternity in your heart if you believe in Jesus? Do you believe everybody has eternity in their heart?” I said, “Yes, I believe everybody has eternity in their heart.”

What he meant is that only certain people are going to be saved and go to heaven—his concept of salvation and heaven. I reminded him of Jesus’s words, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He said, “I believe that.” I said, “Up to a point. You believe you love your neighbor as yourself, but you also want your neighbor to be like yourself rather than be who the neighbor decides he or she wants to be, in terms of whatever he or she believes. That’s why.”

He knew I cared about him, and I think we had established enough rapport for me to be able to say these things. I rarely share my particular beliefs with a patient, except the fact that I believe that what they believe is where it’s at, not what I believe. The chaplaincy is not about the chaplain but about the patient. It is about the chaplain in terms of the chaplain’s awareness that it’s about the patient. That gets at the chaplain’s own self-understanding, self-awareness.

I’m not sure what influence our exchange might have had on this young man. But it had become important to draw the line at that point and to tell him something else—that every patient at the hospital is equally precious, has a right to his or her own belief, and nobody should try to impose.

BD: And how did he accept that?

BA: Well I continued to see him. I’m not sure how he accepted it or how much he was able to hear it. He didn’t say, “Get out of my room.” See, he had a drug-abuse and alcohol problem, and my own personal interpretation is that the problems that led to his alcohol and drug abuse were not solved. They just got transferred to religion, and I see him as using religion to consume others with his belief. I think it’s a psychological dynamic that’s unconscious for him now. People can use religion like alcohol; it can be a form of denial, or a way of dealing with painful reality. Anyway, that’s an example of seeking to work with people whose religion I don’t share but whose right and need to be supported and to have their religion be honored I do share.

BD: As a hospital chaplain, you have to deal with a lot of deaths. Can you talk about that?

BA: I’ve had the unique situation of being able to be at the bedside of dying patients who are surrounded by their loved ones and to witness the kind of love their loved ones have and express for them. It is very sacred. A couple weeks ago a 28-year-old man with sickle cell disease was dying. Evidently he’d had a blood clot. He was fine one day and the next day they get a call at 3:00 in the morning that he’s in the hospital. And they’re devastated, his mother and two sisters. I spent several hours with them. At one point we went into the room where the mother and sisters surrounded him. It was right before they were going to remove the life supports. One sister, who also has sickle cell disease, is saying, “You’re the best brother. I love you so much.” And the mother is saying, “You’re so special to me, Junior. I love you so much.” The other sister is saying the same thing. They just surrounded him with their love, and how they expressed it was very moving.

I’ve had other situations where the testimony of a son or a daughter or a brother or sister is so moving and beautiful. And it reveals to me that life is about passing it on. Because the patient passed life on to them.

That gets at my particular belief that at the center of the universe is love. I don’t call it “God.” It’s love. There’s a force—love—that gives birth, nurtures, sustains, and renews. I see it in pigeons, where a pigeon will sit on the ledge outside the hospital in a very impersonal and cold climate and sit on eggs until she gives birth to two little pigeons. Then she goes out and brings food back to them until they grow and they’re able to fly away. I think that’s part of what life is about—giving birth, sustaining, and renewing. You see it so clearly in patients dying and the testimony about what they’ve done for their loved ones: “I love you so much, Mom. I’ll never forget all you’ve done for me.” Or the big family of a patient is present and the son says, “Momma, we know that diabetes does things to people like us, and we’re gonna make sure we do something about it. We thank you, Momma, for protecting us and taking care of us.” There are times when I’ll well up, because I’ll be identifying with the patient and the family.

BD: When a family is dealing with this—their loved one has been sick for a long time, or maybe it was something sudden like a stroke—and you’re called in, it’s one of the most intense personal family situations, and here you are, a stranger to them perhaps. How does that work?

BA: That’s a good question. I’ll give you one example. I was paged to go over to a unit where a woman was dying. I met her two sons in the Visiting Room. I introduced myself and told them I had been paged. I spoke briefly with the older son, who had tears in his eyes. He said, “I shouldn’t cry like this, I’m the oldest.” I replied, “Your crying indicates your love for your mother. I’m glad to help in any way I can.” He said, “Well, people haven’t arrived yet. Would you come back?” “Sure,” I said, “have the nurse page me.”

When I was paged and returned later, the family was gathering in the Visiting Room. I make it a point to introduce myself to the closest kin. So I was doing that there. When people would come in, the kin would stand up and get in line to say hello, and I would, too. I’d introduce myself as Reverend Alberts, Hospital Chaplain. Then I would sit with them, and they would talk, and I would listen. And I would laugh when they would laugh. If they asked me a question, I would respond to it. At one point, the younger son asked, “How long do you stay with the family?” I said, ”As long as they want me to.” “Oh, we want you to stay.” But that was only after this other stuff had gone on—the contacts with them, the sharing…

The family was waiting for the nurse to bring them in to see the mother for the last time before they pulled the supports. One daughter had come up from Alabama with her son, and another daughter was there with her son, who was a disk jockey in Cambridge. So they would be sharing stories, like when the disk jockey son had gone south to visit, and about how good a cook the patient was. When it was time, we went in and the family gathered around. There was a picture of the patient and her husband, who had died three years before, and three pictures of the children, each framed with a star. I pointed out to all of them, “Oh, what beautiful pictures!” After a while they asked me to offer a prayer. I would be listening to what they were saying, and I’d include certain comments of theirs in the prayer that I would offer. And I would observe them hugging each other and crying, supporting and comforting each other. And I did the same with them.

It’s that kind of thing. They don’t know you, but I’m not in there preaching or talking a lot or mouthing religion. I introduce myself and then ask questions that will help me understand. I introduce myself to each one. And I’m there to respond in case they want to continue a conversation with me. As time goes on I get to know more of them. It’s being comfortable with silence—not feeling you have to fill it in with talk. It’s being able to be spontaneous. It’s being able to allow people to cry, or scream, or be silent, or whatever way they need in order to grieve. There’s a point at which it’s being able to feel comfortable in the midst of this strangeness, where it’s no longer strange and it’s just human.

BD: Would you talk more about the role of prayer in your visits with patients?

Once I introduced myself to a 75-year-old black Pentacostal patient and she replied, "I know who you are. I was here six years ago. I was on death's door, and you prayed for me. I will never forget that."

I’d had some interesting visits with a young female cancer patient. I was later told that her sister had attributed her still being alive to my prayer. Hearing this helped me realize that it’s not just my prayer, but what a patient brings to my prayer. Her belief was vital for her—and revitalizing for her.

An 80-year-old black Baptist who’d just learned that his illness was terminal asked to see a chaplain. His first words to me were, "I want to get tight with God." Enabling him "to get tight with God" included allowing him to get "tight" with me, which involved his sharing certain important family and cultural history. Later in the visit, he continued to hold my hand tightly long after my prayer ended. Again, it’s what a patient brings to a prayer. It’s also what a chaplain brings to a visit before a prayer that invites "tightness."

These examples reveal that prayer to a loving god is a powerful way to affirm and reassure and empower a patient. That said, it would be inappropriate to globalize the value of prayer for everyone. To impose a prayer on someone for whom it has no meaning—or has negative meaning—reveals that such a visit is about the chaplain and not about the patient. It is the relationship that gives wings to a prayer—and to a chaplain's visit as well where there is no prayer.

BD: I know you’ve got a humorous side to you. Does that enter sometimes into these situations?

BA: [chuckles] It can. By the way, I have a good memory. A few years ago a patient shared things with me about his family. He showed up back in the hospital about 4 or 5 years later, and I recalled this stuff to him. He said, “Who told you that!?” I said, “You did.” It becomes very important to remember people’s names. That’s so important, because then they know that you know them, or that they’re important enough to you to remember their names. Humor? It depends. I visited a young woman about 20 years old whose religion was listed as ‘no affiliation.’ She was there with her family. I introduced myself, and when I asked if she were affiliated with any religion, she laughed. They all laughed. That communicated to me right away that she had no interest in religion, probably for good reason.

BD: Backing up a bit, how was it that you were summoned to this patient?

BA: I was just making my rounds. It’s not like she or her family wanted me to come. She was listed as ‘no affiliation.’ I needed to verify that. I do that for all patients. She was just another patient I’d come to visit.

So when she laughed, I said, “Oh, I used to be a comedian, too!” And they all laughed again. Later that same day, I met her and her family—they were going to go outside; it was a nice, sunny day. As we rode down the elevator, I said, “You know, I did do comedy.” She said, “Oh, I thought you were joking.” I said, “I was joking!” [both chuckling] So we got down to the bottom of the elevator. As they all headed out, her mother stopped and said to me, “Tell me a joke.” I couldn’t think of any. [both laughing] I replied, “I can’t think of any right now.” She smiled and walked on out. Then a little bit later as I walked away I thought, I could have told her that I wanted to be the Cleric of Comedy, the Jehovah of Jokes, the God of Gags, the Pastor of the Pun. And that went on and on. My son later added, “and the Bishop of the Bomb.”

I visited a woman who was not affiliated and I asked her her religion. She said, “So-so.” I said jokingly, “I don’t have a category for ‘so-so.’” [chuckle] That’s just part of responding to a situation, not playing a role, not playing a ministerial role or the role of chaplain. I get a kick out of some people because they see religious types like me—chaplains, ministers, priests, rabbis, whatever—in a role. They will reveal their own impression of religion—what happened to them in the past—by how they respond to me. I would assume, for the young woman who laughed, there may have been a time when religion played a joke on her, in terms of who she was as a woman and her sense of her own individuality and power, and how certain religions would put her in a lesser category and want her to be submissive. We didn’t get into that, but I would assume that’s what happened.

Now and then I’ll get somebody who is not interested, and that’s fine. I think one of the ways I’m helpful to patients is to pick up on their not being interested and wish them a good day, rather than belabor something out of my need to be needed by them.

BD: You walk in with your box of listening tools and ways to respond. You come in prepared with that, but you don’t have an agenda as to how it’s going to go. It really is up to where the patient wants to go, and the family.

BA: Yeh, and feeling comfortable with that kind of spontaneity. But you do it enough and you feel more comfortable. My commitment is to the patient, what’s important to the patient, whoever the patient is, whatever the patient believes or doesn’t believe. It’s like that young man: “Does that make me a bad person?” “No, that makes you a human being.” I think the aim of the chaplaincy is helping a patient get better, not be better. I think it’s a matter of being aware of morality and conscience and not allowing that to get in the way in terms of where you relate to a person’s ego, superego, id—psychoanalytic stuff. Clergy types are seen to represent our conscience. Well, to hell with keeping somebody’s conscience. It’s a matter of helping them with their consciousness—of what they’re dealing with, where they’re at.

I have no problem trying to keep the conscience of certain political leaders, I mean as far as making judgments about political leaders, or religious leaders, where I think there are policies that are hurting people. Conscience is important. Being prophetic is important. But in being pastoral, a patient shouldn’t need to worry about being judged. We all know that we’re more comfortable around people that are more accepting of us than people who’ve got to make judgments about us.

BD: Define “prophetic” a bit more—prophetic vs pastoral.

BA: A patient who was dying—a black man in his ‘60s—told his doctor that he was going to be shoveling coal. The doctor and the nurse didn’t know what that meant or how to handle it, so they paged me. I introduced myself to the patient and said, “I was told that you’re going to be shoveling coal. What do you mean by that?” He had a hard time talking due to his illness. He replied that it was because of the things he’d done in his life—the bad things he’d done. I said, “Have bad things been done to you?” “Oh yes, a lot of them, a lot...” He’s a black man. My own research and understanding about the racial hierarchy in this country is that it’s white-controlled—whites at the top controlling political, economic, and legal access, and people of color at the bottom. He probably did have a lot of bad things happen to him in his life, and we all need grace. I told him that Jesus loved him, that none of us is perfect, that kind of thing. But what helped was when I told him I will see him after I die, and I’ll look until I find him. He said, “You will?” I said, “Yeh, and neither of us will be shoveling coal.” “You mean that?” “Yeh, I mean that.” That moved him. I came back a second time—he was going then into a hospice—and reminded him, “I’ll look for you until I find you.” He said, “That’s a promise?” I said, “Yeh, that’s a promise.” “Okay.” I think he was moved by the fact that somebody not only cared whether he lived or died, but cared about him after he died. And as far as I’m concerned, everybody has a free pass. Anyway, that’s an example.

BD: That’s a beautiful story.

BA: I’ve written this one up. It’s sad he had to worry about his afterlife. My point is that the prophetic considers the racial hierarchy in this country and the job it’s done on people of color, and that this particular theology is one of self-hatred, and it’s one where probably his mother, father, ministers, and teachers were themselves oppressed. And then they get white evangelicals who are talking about the substitutionary theory of atonement, where you’ve got to believe that Jesus Christ is your savior or you’re going to go to hell. He didn’t believe enough in that, but this could well be what he was taught. That was what he was taught because the idea of burning in hell comes from that particular kind of belief, which I think is a pretty violent belief. I think certain Christians are probably the most violent people there are, who could have such a belief in people going to hell and suffering eternally.

Another patient, a black youth, was shot several years ago and died. That was so traumatic. He was only 16 or 17. We were gathered around him. His aunt was siphoning the blood as it ran out of his nose. She looked at him, and with a sad chuckle, said, “You always were a snot-nosed little kid.” I did an article on it called “The Snot-Nosed Kid Who Was Loved.” My point then was to show what this kid’s mother, father, grandmother, sister, and aunt were going through and also to raise questions about the state budget, because this was right at the beginning of summer, and the budget was being cut for summer programs for young people. So this piece raised those concerns and gave the message that the least and the last and the lost are just as important as anyone else.

I visited a Spanish-speaking mother who was dying. This was a large family. The oldest son asked me, “Will it cost us any more if you come back a second time?” I said, “No,” and I came back and was with them. I wrote up this family’s concern about the medical cost, and I raised the question about our government having a thousand military bases around the world supposedly to protect us, when it’s making enemies, and having no universal health care for our own citizens, which would really protect us. So the pastoral and the prophetic go together.

BD: Having to deal with so many people dying, how does that affect you over the years?

BA: Well there are certain cases where I will identify with patients and their loved ones and I’ll swell up and feel sad.

BD: Any kind of cumulative effect?

BA: The importance of being there with the people at those times and feeling that my role has been helpful nourishes me. This is reality, and that’s my job and what is meaningful to me. I think it’s natural for me to feel sad, but it doesn’t stay with me in terms of an accumulative effect of feeling depressed. I think that’s because I’m aware of my sadness and I express it. I’m in touch with it, so it doesn’t linger.

BD: This is your last week at Boston Medical Center. What will you be doing in retirement? And how do feel about leaving all this behind? There’s so much nourishment, as you say, in what you do, along with the sadness.

BA: Let me answer the last part first. Boston Medical Center has meant a great deal to me—if you knew my history, a little bit of which I’ve alluded to. I know and value a lot of people there and will miss everyone very much. The latest would be our cancer care Spirituality Group: I’ll miss being able to see patients nourish other patients, to hear one patient, Carl, counsel with somebody who needs a prayer and how Carl gives the prayer in terms of what he is saying.

I’ll also miss knowing such a variety of patients and families, as much as they’ve enriched my life and broadened my own appreciation and commitment to diversity. The variety of staff who have a deep commitment to patients certainly has inspired me as well. You get a nurse in intensive care— The daughter of a patient comes in and is going to visit her mother but is diabetic and hasn’t eaten. She asks, “Could you tell me where I can get a piece of toast?” I relay the request to the nurse, who says, “I’ll make it for her. What does she want on it?” You’ve got that kind of exceptional caring.

Something that became important to me later on was presenting a paper called “The Humanology of Pastoral Care” at Psychiatry’s grand rounds, which I did in January 2011. It was well received, and it meant a lot to me to have my own clinical pastoral care affirmed in that way.

Then I have a book based on fifty-three visits with patients, called A Hospital Chaplain at the Crossroads of Humanity. I’m looking for a publisher; if I don’t find one, I’ll self-publish. So I’m taking that with me. I’m taking a lot with me that is very nourishing. There’ll be a certain amount of sadness. But then, it’s time for me to leave, because at my age, I have some other things I want to do, such as more writing. I have a book I want to write on my ministry—what happened at Old West Church, and what happened at Boston Medical Center
—that gets at my concept of ministry. And I’ll also continue writing for CounterPunch.

BD: What is CounterPunch?

BA: CounterPunch is a web site publication that is billed as “America’s Best Political Newsletter” on the web. It’s prominent in this country and around the world. It’s updated daily, with a larger Weekend Edition. When I get an article published in CounterPunch, either the whole article or references to it will show up in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, the East Indies, various web sites around the country… I did one on Haiti that appeared in a number of sites in that area. CounterPunch is well known in certain circles; it’s very progressive. There are those that would see it as regressive, but it’s very leftist. Ralph Nader gets published in it. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair are the editors. I work through St. Clair and have had 40-some pieces published in it. It has been very meaningful to me to be able to get out commentary that I could never get published in mainstream newspapers, never mind religious periodicals, because it would be seen as too radical. I’m a critic of mainstream religion, which I see as part of the status quo. I believe many clergy are chaplains of the status quo.

So I’ll be writing and spending more time with family. I’ll be walking, exercising. My concern is to be able to create a structure in my retirement. It will be a challenge because working at Boston Medical, you’ve got the structure right there; I’ve written on my days off. But it will be nice to relax and not feel I have to get up and go to work. If I want to write, fine; if I don’t, fine. So while I will miss everybody at Boston Medical, I’ll have this other life waiting and the time to do other things important to me while I still have enough health left.