Soiling & leaking - Poor Little Kid 穷孩子

Here’s a sermon about bed pans.

Sermon transcript: Manhattan, April 2023

“Have you ever emptied a bed pan? It’s a messy job. And it’s even worse when there is no pan there to begin with. I learned this lesson 45 years ago as a 19-year-old Jesuit novice, who was sent on a hospital experience to Calvary Hospital in The Bronx, a hospital that is really a hospice for the terminally ill. One of my patients was a Blessed Sacrament Brother, named Br. Jean. And I would care for him. I would have the seven-to-three shift. I would care for him much of the day along with a couple of other patients. Every morning at 9:15, I took my coffee break. Well, one day when I was away Br. Jean called for a bed pan. And he got no answer. And he soiled the bed. Fifteen minutes later I arrived to find a mess. A couple days later it happened again. You can be sure I changed my coffee break.” [Congregation laughs out loud.]

What do you think?¶

Questions

“Everybody” thinks that way about hospices and caregiving, right? Who doesn’t?

Audience¶

Were folks damn sure that nobody in the congregation had conditions similar to Br. Jean?

When we are damn sure, we are usually damn wrong. Here’s an exchange between two parishioners:

I’m afraid of going out too much... Some of these things have been happening for a long time... Pooping my pants.

I pooped in my pants before the service tonight and had to leave my underpants in the garbage receptacle in the bathroom behind the sacristy. I played bells going commando. You’re the only person I have told and I guess whoever else might read this.

So, among the audience there were indeed persons with conditions similar to Br. Jean’s.

In addition to the on-site and in-person attendees, the service was livestreamed and it stays on YouTube. So the audience is limited to neither time nor space. Among others:

Folks with conditions like Br. Jean’s: are they given the affirmation that the condition is very common, and that it is okay?
Folks anxious about aging or going downhill: are they given the confidence that advancing in age is something we can all boldly aspire to?
Health professionals, caregivers and volunteers: are they given the reinforcement learning that folks they care for are at least as venerable as they themselves, if not more?

Formation¶

Are stints such as hospital experiences meant to help us move out of ourselves, to smooth out rough ages—or to reinforce our sense of supremacy over lives we size up as inferior?

Putting it right¶

Leaking and soiling are understood as much as they are understandable. They are very common. Bladder and bowel misses very commonly start a lot younger than disclosed. And that’s okay. Just that celebrities come out about cancers and depressions, dementias and addictions, but not about bladders and bowels.

Leaking and soiling are very much part of life as much as accidents and messes are integral part of kitchens, bathrooms, gardens, living rooms, churches, ... and all these are okay.

Physiology¶

Engaging in experiences such as these,

A person whether secular or not could have honored the beauty of human physiology, which comes packaged with a digestive system and a urinary system.
A person of faith could have praised the physiology created by the creator God, the same physiology blessed by the incarnation of the emmanuel. Would the person of faith forget, would he or she forget how the woman with hemorrhage touched Jesus’ cloak? Jesus does not find the blood that was mixed with mucus, secretions, feasting bacteria and scraps of endometrial lining disgusting. Jesus has no problem with body discharges.
A coder or programmer would have appreciated the inputs (edibles in) and outputs (wastes out) of life.