Tag: rodney frey

As a Lay Chaplain, with empathy having opened the door and now standing or seated beside the bed of someone less a stranger, I continue to listen with deep attentiveness.

I ask myself, was I able to effectively engage this diversity, to the extent I did, because I had empathy – somehow already endowed with it? Or did my empathy grow as I continued to engage diversity, in high school, college and professionally – is empathy somehow learned?

During both my healing journeys, I never really feared the Lymphoma, never got angry at it, never depressed, never saw it as somehow an enemy, to be fought, battled and defeated, though it certainly represented the antithesis of my existence.

As Tom explained to me, the world is like the great Wheel, made up of many different spokes.

In my capacity as a volunteer Lay Chaplain at Gritman Hospital, in Moscow, Idaho, I’ve been doing some hall walking. Walking that leads me into the rooms of perfect strangers.