Silent Sympathy

First, some logistical issues to address: Posterous unfortunately is shutting down (http://blog.posterous.com/thanks-from-posterous), hence the move to Posthaven. Theoretically I could have written this post sooner, but like all good residents I procrastinated, in this case with importing my previous posts. Anyways, the import is now complete so I have no more excuse to hold off on writing.

To understand this post, some background info is needed. For those who don't know, I was baptized into Christianity on June 10, 2012. (That entire testimony and my continuing walk with Christ is probably more appropriate for a separate blog in and of itself, but I digress.) For a bit more than a year now, part of my Christian life has included listening to Christian rock, specifically K-LOVE. This was a genre of music that I was previously indifferent to, if not mildly annoyed with. I can't really explain why. Maybe the lyrics sounded too cheesy. There was also the amusingly cynical view that South Park expressed in their Christian Rock Hard episode, questioning the purity of Christian artists' motives. Whatever it might have been, for a while whenever I heard "Jesus," "Lord," or "God" in the lyrics on the radio I would scan for a different channel. I can't say when exactly I started tolerating Christian rock or when I started actually enjoying it, but I can say that now it is what I listen to in my car almost all the time. I'll occasionally switch to NPR for news updates, or to a classic rock or pop station if K-LOVE is out of reception, but this is rare. What I've come to appreciate is how Christian rock is like prayer in music form. Lyrics praising God's plan to redeem the world through Jesus's death and resurrection; lyrics trying to describe the indescribable amount of love Jesus had to have had for every human past, present, and future in order to willingly go to the cross; lyrics explaining the reassuring implications of God's grace; all of these concepts I sort of understood on a cerebral level through reading Christian literature, but putting these messages to music has helped me understand these concepts at a heart level as well.

Which brings me to the main thread of this post. (Note: there is a lot of musing on religion, but there are also thoughts in the end on how these musings apply to medicine.)

Although I was raised in a household that believed in God, I never went to church services growing up, so a lot of my growth as a Christian has been simply learning about the traditions that many believers know like the back of their hands. One of these traditions is Maundy Thursday, the evening service on the Thursday prior to Good Friday that commemorates the Last Supper and the night that Jesus was betrayed. This year was the first year I went to a Maundy Thursday service. That night, I drove to church with K-LOVE playing, parked my car, and went in for the service. The program included Scripture readings, hymns, and explanations of the significance of Maundy Thursday. I remember the atmosphere being more subdued than usual, but not necessarily somber. Everything seemed to be fairly straightforward until the account of Jesus's trial was read (I believe it was the account in Mark 15).

I distinctly remember following along in the Bible with the reader at the pulpit when she came to the verse where Pontius Pilate asks the gathered crowd what they want done with Jesus. The verse was read ("Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?") and I was expecting the next verse ("Crucify him.") to follow shortly...but instead there was silence.

And then I realized the reader at the pulpit was trying to hold back tears.

After a few seconds, she read in a quivering voice, "Crucify Him."

Pilate asks what Jesus has done to deserve this sentence. And again the reader had to collect herself before reading again, "Crucify Him."

In a similarly halting manner, she continued on to recount the abuse Jesus suffered, the crown of thorns on His head, the beating and taunting he endured.

I can't remember if she went on to read the account of the crucifixion, but at the end of the service the congregation was asked to make their way out silently. Getting into the car, I turned the key with the expectation that I would drive back with K-LOVE on the radio like usual...but it didn't feel right. At that moment, I needed silence. So I turned off the music and there it was again, like those few seconds during the reading.

Silence.

It was then that I came to appreciate the spirit of Maundy Thursday. You see, we current Christians have the benefit of hindsight. We know that Jesus will end up rising from the dead. That glorious event is what allows us to sing with joy, to sing along with Christian rock, to allow our spirits to be lifted by Christian rock's message of hope. But the first disciples of Christ didn't have that luxury. They didn't have K-LOVE.

All they had...was silence.

With this realization in mind, I decided to abstain from K-LOVE (or any radio for that matter) until Easter Sunday. I had planned to be in Ann Arbor during that weekend, and the three-hour drive from Dayton was simply...silent. Nothing but the hum of pavement underneath my wheels.

During the three or so days I went without any radio in the car, I began to understand loss. Yes, I agree the loss of music is trivial compared to the utter emptiness that the loss of a loved one leaves behind, but my point is that I could begin to feel for myself a sample of that emptiness. The silence I had while driving was so stark that it almost became tangible, like a paper-thin balloon I could feel growing in my presence.

This must be the silence that Jesus's disciples felt in the days after they lost Him to death without the foreknowledge that He would rise and conquer the grave.

I imagine this must be the silence that patients feel at some point when they are alone with their thoughts, a silence that emanates from a loss of some sort, a loss born from the simple fact that they are patients at all.

When a patient is letting the meaning of a diagnosis sink into his understanding; when a patient is sitting, waiting for a procedure to begin or for test results to return; when somehow a patient finds herself free for a few seconds from the daily distraction of life's hustle-and-bustle; I imagine they feel this silence, even if only for a brief moment.

What to do about this silence (if anything) as a doctor is a different question all together, a question I don't have the answer to. For now, just being aware that patients go through this type of silence will have to do. Granted, such an attitude seems incomplete, especially when faced with the prospect of encountering this situation with a patient in front of me...but perhaps having two people, physician and patient, together in the silence rather than the patient being alone is a step in the right direction.