Thinking About “Response Ability”

This summer I had a Clinical Pastoral Education internship for eleven weeks as a hospital chaplain. It proved to be one of the most important periods of my life for a host of reasons, but none more dramatically than my experiences of being “on call.” Chaplains work jobs that require them to sometimes drop whatever they’re doing at a moment’s notice and attend to something new and urgent. Others, too: doctors, firefighters, the legal teams of scandal-prone celebrities (one imagines) — all must have a degree of discipline, a practice of training oneself to be reliably capable in a wide variety of unexpected situations at any hour.

As bedtime of an on call night neared, I lay my clothes over the dining room chair, making sure my backpack was filled with a bottle of water and some snacks, and set out my folders bursting with contact sheets for various departments in three different hospitals (as well as prayers, rituals, and poems appropriate for—I hoped—just about any life-and-death situation I might encounter overnight). I made sure my phone had been turned up loud, and that I was signed into the app that would call out with a bracing electronic shriek if my services were requested. I was ready.

Sometimes the word “responsibility” reads as guilt, or at least obligation. I find it helpful to break up the word, and think about my “response ability.” That is, am I able to respond appropriately to whatever arises in my life? Am I living in such a way that I’m able to be responsive to the people who count on me, like my family, my students, and my community? Or is my response ability diminished because I’m not appropriately managing my stress, or I’m reaching for that second glass of wine, or allowing the next video to autoplay? Am I overly preoccupied with my own to-do list, seeing the world with tunnel vision that leaves others outside my circle of focus?

Living life from a zazen place—rooted in our bodies, completely present, curious, and open—can help us maintain, and increase, our “response ability.” What I realized this summer was that not being on call is actually an illusion. In every moment—especially in the increasingly uncertain and perilous world we live in—I can be called upon to take bodhisattva action. Zen practice helps me stay both relaxed…and ready.

By Zach Jūken Fehst, priest candidate at Clouds in Water