Dr. Jonathan Weinkle speaks with Reverend Dr. Anastasia Holman on the power of lament as a tool for healing in medicine. They explore how recognizing patients’ soul cries of grief, loss, and “why me?” can deepen clinical relationships, support emotional and spiritual care, and begin the process of transformation for both patients and providers.
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In this episode of Healing People, Not Patients, Dr. Jonathan Weinkle welcomes Reverend Dr. Anastasia Holman, Director of Spiritual Care Education at Indiana University Health and faculty at IU School of Medicine. Released just before Tisha B’Av, the conversation centers on lament the ancient practice of voicing deep pain, brokenness, and protest and its relevance to modern medical practice.
Drawing from Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Black Church traditions, they discuss how laments are prayers that burst from wounds, why medical professionals hear them daily (often subtly), and how slowing down to truly listen, see, and notice patients’ existential distress can open pathways to deeper healing. Reverend Holman shares insights on the role of memory and the senses in connecting across differences, practical ways clinicians can show they’ve heard a patient’s cry (including the power of 40 seconds of compassion), and the integration of chaplaincy with medical care.
The discussion weaves personal stories from the COVID era, references to The Chaplain and the Doctor, and reflections on Tisha B’Av and the Book of Lamentations, emphasizing that lament is the beginning of healing and transformation, for individuals, communities, and the practice of medicine itself.
Resource Mentioned:
The Unimaginable Trauma and Resillence of the People of Gaza
https://time.com/article/2026/07/14/trauma-resilience-gaza-james-gordon-essay
Song Lyrics:
Hebrew Version:
אין מילים, כי אין אבל באבל
אין בקיאות בבכי, לשכול אין שכל
בדמעון אין לחפש שום הגיון
באובדן אין מה לשאול אין לפקפק בסבל
בשום שפה אין אבל באבל
בבור אין מים, מתים מצמאון
תחת השיח בלב הישימון
נעקד על ראש ההר, הביאו אש ומאכלת
אשה ושפחתה בוכות בקול אחד לילד
בלב האם אין אבל באבל
English Translation:
There are no words; there is no “but” in bereavement
No expertise in weeping, no wisdom in mourning
In tears we don’t seek sense
In loss we don’t ask, we don’t pick apart suffering
There is no “but” in bereavement – in any language
In the pit, there is no water, only thirst
Under the bush, in the heart of the desert
Bound on the mountain top, they brought the fire, and the knife
A woman and her maidservant weep in one voice for the boy
In the mother’s heart, there is no “but” in bereavement
About the Show:
Healing People, Not Patients explores ways to enhance medical practice by infusing it with compassion, humanity, and a deeper sense of purpose, aiming to help healthcare professionals rediscover the "soul" of their work. Framed around the four questions of the Passover Seder, it probes how to transform medicine for the better, promoting an empathetic and supportive approach that empowers patients to create meaningful, sober lives, while drawing on Jewish teachings about community and friendship.
"Our theme song, 'Room for the Soul,' is available on Bandcamp at https://jonathanweinkle.bandcamp.com/track/room-for-the-soul."
Reverend Dr. Anastasia Holman is the Director of Spiritual Care Education at Indiana University Health and faculty at Indiana University School of Medicine. She co-leads programs integrating spirituality and medicine, including Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) and scholarly concentrations for medical students. With a womanist lens and deep experience in interfaith collaboration, she trains chaplains and helps medical professionals incorporate lament and spiritual care into patient encounters.
About the Host:
Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is an internist and pediatrician who practices primary care at a community health center in Pittsburgh. He strives to be a "nice Jewish doctor" focused on patient-centered healthcare, emphasizing effective communication and holistic well-being.
He teaches the courses, “Death and the Healthcare Professions” and “Healing and Humanity” at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the books Healing People, Not Patients and Illness to Exodus, and runs ‘Healers Who Listen’, where he blogs on healing and Jewish tradition. Once an aspiring rabbi, he now integrates faith and medicine to support other physicians and his own patients.
🌐 Website: healerswholisten.com
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weinkle-3440032a
📸 Instagram: @HealersWhoListen
📘 Facebook: @JonathanWeinkle
[00:00:00] My first book, the one with the same name as this podcast, was published in September 2018. Less than a month later, there was a terrorist attack on a synagogue six blocks from my house, a synagogue I had prayed in myself just a week earlier . Whatever plans I had for publicizing the book went on hold.
Instead, I took to my blog to write out my grief and disbelief. 18 months later, COVID gripped the world and would not let go for more than two years. Again, I wrote my way through, though not out, of the distress and suffocation I was feeling. Looking back now, I realize there is a particular genre I was writing in.
I was writing lament. This episode releases July 21st, 2026. The next night is the beginning of Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the fast commemorating the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire and the Second Temple by the Romans. It's a holiday that a lot of less observant Jews don't know well.
It falls in the summer, so it's outside the [00:01:00] academic year of Jewish education. But it also breaks the stereotypical mold of Jewish holidays. "They tried to kill us. They didn't succeed. Let's eat." "They killed us and destroyed our homes and our holiest place. Let's not eat." The prophet Jeremiah responded to this tragedy the same way I did.
He wrote a lament. In fact, the whole book of Lamentations, which you can still read today nestled into the Bible between Ruth and Ecclesiastes, an eyewitness account of destruction. It's written in acrostic poetry, filled with lurid images of despair and deprivation, and chanted to a mournful tune while sitting barefoot on the floor, illuminated by flickering candles and often sweltering in the summer heat.
Chances are if you're a medical professional seeing patients, someone you saw today or last week or sometime recently has shared their own lament with you. It might not have been chanted according to a thousand-year-old musical notation or phrased as a perfect alphabetical acrostic [00:02:00] or shared in a community of people who all knew what the symbolism meant , but it was lament.
Maybe you were the only one to hear it. Did you recognize it for what it was? What did you do with it when you heard it? My guest today is Reverend Dr. Anastasia Holman, director of spiritual care education at Indiana University Health and faculty at Indiana University School of Medicine. She and her colleagues from IU introduced me to the idea that you could use lament as narrative medicine, a tool for understanding my own pain and that of my patients, and today, she's here to share those same insights with you.
Stick around. We'll be right back with the interview
Welcome back. Thanks so much for being with us today. my guest today is a new friend. Reverend Dr. Anastasia Holman is the director of spiritual care education at Indiana University Health System. We know one another, as do many of my recent guests from the Conference on Medicine and Religion, where we both serve on the executive committee.
And she's been a great [00:03:00] help to me. She got a brief shout-out in the introduction to my book From Illness to Exodus. I don't know if you were fully aware of that, that you're in there.
you helped get me unstuck on something that was bugging me, so I appreciate that. And we're here today to talk about a subject that you really got me started thinking about, which is the topic of lament so I'll set the stage here.
You and I met three years ago at CMR when it was in Columbus at Ohio State, and you and your colleagues from IU were leading a workshop about lament. And you had brought us texts from four different traditions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and from the Black Church. And I wonder if you could start by helping us understand how you chose which of those texts to include, or more generally, what makes something a lament?
So I'll start by saying I can't take all the credit for what went into our booklet that we made for the presentation. And, we gave it to the participants, and we also had [00:04:00] them write a lament during the session. I worked well with some great team members. I want to name them Dr. Benjamin Snyder Rabbi Bruce Fefer, Dr.
Alex Lyon, and Dr. Mona Rad. We all come from different faith traditions, and our friendship, first of all, is a part of our teamwork. And so everyone chose a genre or a lament that was important to them from their sacred book or from their context. And so there are three Christians on the team, and since I bring a womanist lens to the group we thought having something from a Black church tradition like a song that has lament in it be a part of the packet.
So that's really how we came up with it, our friendship and making space for everyone's sacred text to be a part where we all know that they intersect and are very much... We start in similar places. The Abrahamic faith tradition is where we all start, whether we're Christian, [00:05:00] Muslim, or Jewish. We all start at that place.
And so I got to bring in the lens of the Black church. And so even my partners picked out a couple, and I was like, "Yes, let's go with that," and I added a few to it as well. So that's how we got to the booklet. And then what makes the lament? Actually it is pouring out our, our hearts from a place of pain, struggle, deep sadness brokenness, our woundedness.
as I was studying for this, because I like to study Kathleen O'Connor says, "Laments are prayers- That they come from wounds. They burst out of unbelievable pain and bring it to language. Laments complain, shout, and protest. They take anger and despair before God and the community. They grieve, they argue, they find fault.
And so that's the beginning of lament. And I'll just say this quote that I always like by a womanist Reverend [00:06:00] Dr. Emily Towns. She says, "Laments," and I'm paraphrasing, "are the beginning of healing and transformation." So lament is where healing starts to take place, and she says that in The Fine Death of Rain, a womanist ethics book.
And so that's how I see laments. They are just a soul cry to God for others to hear and see, and to begin to bear our true witness and feelings to God and the community.
Yeah. so healing professionals, and I include chaplains in that for certain, but like the physicians that were on your team putting this workshop together, we hear things that are lament fairly often, but a lot of them are really subtle.
And I think sometimes we don't recognize that we're listening to a lament- ... but we're obviously taking care of wounds, whether they're actual, wounds in the flesh or a more broad definition of wound that it's an illness of some [00:07:00] kind. and I think that we don't recognize when we're hearing lament.
How can medical professionals recognize lament when they hear it?
So thank you for that Jonathan. Uh-
As I think about it, doctors hear it, as you say, all the time. It's important to stop and slow down and really see the person and hear their heart and story. So I think it's listening for the soul cry, not just the wounds that you may attend to, but also the soul and the spirit and the emotion.
When the questions of why, why did this happen to me? How could this happen to me? Like, some of the phrases that begin to deal with the ontological and existential angst that a person is dealing with during their illness or their new diagnoses, that's where the place of... And just stop and pause and make space.
Don't have to have all the answers. Just be willing to listen before going to the physical, or if you're in the midst of the physical, stop to hear the voice and the cry of the [00:08:00] emotions and the soul. And if a person feels seen and heard and valued, they'll listen to you anyway. You're the doctor, they're gonna listen to you anyway.
They're gonna listen, it helps them to heal and to hear what you're saying about the physical world if they are seen and heard from the emotional, and the spiritual and that world and the soul cry. And so I would say just stop slow down do a deep breath and really hear what the patient is saying.
you can repeat back to them if they've said something like, "Why?" Don't have to have the answer, just make that space that's sacred and secure and enough space to hear the why and the angst and the wrestle and the tension. Even saying something like, "Ooh, it sounds like, hearing this, there's a lot of tension in where you are and where you wanna be."
And that could just open up that space to hear that lament.
I like that. So to draw out, like, the quote that you gave before about prayers that [00:09:00] come from wounds, if we can hear the prayer first, then we can follow that prayer back to the wound that it came out of, and then start having the conversation that we thought we were going in to have in the first place, but needing to have heard the person first before we can do that.
Yes, exactly.
You may have noticed that I sent you four questions. That's my MO for this podcast all the time. I've attended 104 Passover Seders in my lifetime. We ask four questions every year, but I change up the model every time. And One of the fours in the Passover story is very early on there is a line that says that God heard the cry of the Israelites-
mm-hmm ...
saw their suffering, took notice of them, and there's a lot of discussion around the difference between seeing and taking notice, and was aware of them, right? So there was a reaching that level of intimate knowledge of friendship of closeness at the end of it. So the hearing is the first step before [00:10:00] you can get to the point of seeing the wound, understanding how it got there, and knowing what the person's going through .
You also said something else right at the beginning, which is gonna take us to the second question. You talked about your team and the breadth of different religious backgrounds that people came from. Having met the whole team, I know three different Christian backgrounds. Rabbi Fetzer , who is from a background very similar to mine, and, Dr.
Riad, who's from a Muslim background.
Yes.
And when I was working through this, we did a small group study. That was sort of text study model that I'm used to. And my group of three chose to talk about a text from the Islamic tradition that was describing scents and aromas.
It was describing smells that specifically accompanied the mourning period after one of the Prophet Muhammad's sons died And that passage triggered for me a whole cascade of scent memories from my tradition. So there's four species of plants [00:11:00] that we hold together and shake on the holiday of Sukkot, two of which have very strong very pleasant aromas.
I live in a heavily Jewish neighborhood, so when I walk the streets in the evening on a holiday, the entire neighborhood smells like holiday food . So I know biologically people talk about, you know, our lizard brains, and very deep in that lizard brain, that very primordial part of the human brain, is our sense of smell, and that's intimately connected to forming memories.
So my second question is about what's the role of memory and senses in being able to connect to somebody else's lament, especially if it's somebody from a different background, whether it's a different faith, a different social stratum, whatever it is.
So in my work, I've learned that it's called use of self.
And I will have to say this. For me and what I've learned over the years, all humanity has suffered in one form or another. It may not be the same. It's not gonna look the same. It's [00:12:00] not gonna smell, taste, be the same, and yet everyone has had some form of suffering in their life. And so I try to remind students that, you know, just because you didn't go through the same thing, if you've ever lost something, that is a form of suffering and grief.
And so if I can tap into my own grief, then I can sit with someone else in their grief. And so as they begin to share their lament, I know what it's like to grieve.
Hmm.
I know what it's like to be at a place of, why me? Why God? Why now? Why my family? I know what that feels like. And so as someone else begins to share their lament with me, I've had my own laments, and so my use of self is not to say, take over and say, "Oh my gosh, I remember a time when that happened to me."
Actually, what I can do, I'm probably the best chaplain, person, doctor to come alongside another in that [00:13:00] despair and in that lament because I know what it likes. I can hold the space while we go through the senses together so we can see it- When something is happening while a person is telling their lament to me, I would think of like a mindfulness technique.
They can begin to remember where they were. And as I'm sitting with them, I can begin to remember where I am to help use that to stay connected to them. If I can't begin to feel, touch, taste, smell that lament that a person is giving, then I'm not connected in an intimate form. when I was studying about laments to get ready and then just to talk to you about laments, this is the second time I've talked about laments.
I'm like, okay, maybe I need to be doing some more research and writing my own laments. I recognize that the more that I can get in tune with what I'm feeling-
Tasting, touching, [00:14:00] hearing, smelling, the more it helps me to help someone else to get in touch with that. I remember the session you're talking about, and as people started, because we had them write their own lament.
As people started reading the laments, it actually began to show how connected we were in that room and not disconnected by spirituality, by faith, by religion by culture or context. The lament actually brought us all together because by the time we left the room, one, I think everybody could hear the voices in the room and could begin- Yeah
to feel and release some of their own tension of what was happening with COVID what was happening that we had been isolated during that time. Mm-hmm. And so as the person was writing a lament about isolation, I know I could go back to, "Oh my gosh, this is where I was during COVID. This is how I was feeling during COVID."
And then I could connect more, as you say, [00:15:00] more intimately with that person. It is not a separation. A lament actually can bring people and communities together that's my faith tradition, with God, with themselves, and with others. And that's really what a lament is. It's about- Mm-hmm ... crying out to God, but it's also individual, but it can also be communal.
And so that practice was very much a communal lament that was, needed. And so when we did that session, as I stated, I, you know, I could smell where I was, I actually found out I like cooking during COVID. Mm-hmm. Because it slowed me down. You know? Mm-hmm. I wasn't always on the rush, and so I could smell some of the new dishes that I started to create when people were talking about their laments of COVID or, how I was feeling.
A lot of people got separated. It actually brought me and my spouse closer together to actually sit down. I remember one time my whole family was at the dinner table during COVID. We weren't running everywhere because we couldn't, and so we sat down- Mm-hmm ... and really started having [00:16:00] some deep discussions.
So I think that's what lament starts to- Right ... the sense, the family around the table, how things were changing even in the midst of some unknown times. Mm-hmm. So laments touch every part of our bodies, mind, body, spirit, smell, touch, taste, seeing. So when you talk about sensory, lament is very much a sensory exercise and a way of being.
And, so I'll leave it there 'cause I could keep going.
Well, speaking of sensory, you bring me back to that moment. that conference was in March of 2023, so we were really just-
Yes ...
on the back end of it, really, like at the beginning of the new normal, if I can use that term that everybody was using at that point.
You know, the previous year's conference was literally, it was in Portland, Oregon. It was the day after the state of Oregon had lifted its indoor COVID restrictions.
Yes.
So it was the first time I had been in a large group of people without a mask on in two years, and it was [00:17:00] the first time that I had traveled on an airplane any distance had really felt like I wanted to travel on an airplane in a long time.
Exactly. It was, just a few months earlier, I had gone out to a restaurant in Pittsburgh at a time when I thought, "Okay, things are pretty good," and two days later, I tested positive for COVID, and I was miserable. Oh my. From that year, from March of '22 to '23, the feeling of exhale and yet this feeling of still feeling so heavy because of all we had gone through, especially in the helping professions because it had all landed on us- Yes
Was really a, a tremendous weight. So there was that physical, I guess it's sort of the sixth sense of proprioception, like knowing where you are in space, and where I am in space is under 10 tons of bricks. yeah It's coming back to me now.
It's really interesting that you talk so much about senses, that we both did, because, you know, we think of The chaplaincy as the spiritual profession where everything's happening kinda [00:18:00] up here in the cloud, but it's happening here in our bodies.
It's in our bodies. what is it? The body keeps the score.
And so the body's gonna keep the score about everything. It keeps the joys, it keeps the grief, it keeps the trauma, it keeps the drama. I can remember the first time I was in school, and a teacher was like, "Oh my gosh, you can draw."
And I won an award for drawing. it keeps the happy. It keeps- Mm ... everything in the body, and so the body keeps the score. And one way to release some of the grief and trauma is to begin to write a lament.
I'm smiling because I'm probably gonna need to write a lament tonight.
That's what I'm hearing. Like, it's like, okay, as I was doing this, like, I need to sit down and write a lament of some things that have happened recently. Because as Emily Town says, I stick with, "It is the beginning of healing," and I'm gonna add transformation, for an individual and a community. And as you were talking, and I was thinking on the plane, and I still do it when I travel, like, I still travel with a mask, and so even that the smell of a mask- Yeah
that you [00:19:00] pull out of a box, like, and you're- Yeah ... inhaling that on the plane, that is actually a sensory. And, I actually had started before COVID, because every time I got on a plane I would get sick, and so my doctor's like, "You need to do it." And then we were forced to do it. It's different when you have a choice than when- Mm-hmm
you're forced. So even thinking about that and as we talk, I think about there's a lot that was happening. Um- Mm ... the George Floyd death that began to be plastered all over the news. Everybody was coming to a different kind of awakening. That was part of the laments there. We were gathering in a space where we were connecting with people, and we weren't feeling so isolated in our bodies.
But how close could I get? I'm still cautious. There was sanitizer everywhere. And I think the lament broke through some of the tension, the coldness, and the rigidness that we were left with from COVID and some injustice in the air, where we said, "We are in this space [00:20:00] together."
Yeah.
One of the things that I'm thinking about with the mask, and it's odd that I started rewatching the original series of Scrubs yesterday- to have something mindless to do. Yes, I like Scrubs. And in the second episode, there's a scene where Turk says to JD, you know, "It's a good thing surgeons wear masks, 'cause otherwise people would know that my face is always like this."
Ah. So I think we lost some of the ability to see each other- Yeah ... with those masks on, and- One of the things that I wanted to ask you about is that, you know, memory is important, but having that resonance of being able to sort of recognize where somebody is is only useful to them if they know that they've been seen.
So as a chaplain I know that you go through these things with someone where you need to show somebody that you do see what they're going through, that you recognize what I borrowed a phrase from, some researchers that worked with Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. It's a population that I work with a lot in Pittsburgh.
and they call them [00:21:00] idioms of distress, which is a lot of- Mm-hmm ... the physical signs that we were talking about. You know, heartburn, numbness and tingling in their fingers and toes dizziness, memory loss sometimes can be a big part of it, chronic pain, especially headaches- Mm-hmm ... but also some diffuse kind of burning pain all over the body.
And being able to recognize those as clear signs of distress and to sort of understand what they mean to that person. From your chaplaincy work, I would love to hear some recommendations for my people on the medical side of how to show people that we see them, that we recognize those things that they're going through.
So you named the physical. I'm gonna name, and I said it earlier, one big thing we train, I've trained chaplains to look for when someone is asking why. I think that's the cry, usually why. I'm not understanding what's happening." There's a gap from what they're seeing, especially for those who may, and I say even those who, I was gonna say someone who's spiritual, but even for someone who says they're not spiritual, [00:22:00] once I begin to ask the question why, there's a rupture into, my homeostasis and balance and, where I am, where I have been to where I thought I would be, and so there's a gap there.
And it's not only a physical wound, it becomes a spiritual, because spiritual can also mean, what do I need to get through this time? And so as a chaplain, we really want to help people navigate, as you say, their new normal, but they can't get to the new normal if I cannot begin to, lament what- being one way has meant to me.
And so to do that, listen for the, as I said, the why. What does this mean next?
And for those who are spiritual or have a faith, they may even say, "Why is God doing this to me?" Once again, I say you don't have to have the answer, but just be willing to listen to that. we call it active listening, and so some easy way to do that, you could parrot back what you [00:23:00] hear.
I can hear the distress in your voice." Now, you have to have some time to just, not a lot, but you have to have some time to not gloss over it, but really create that space and be willing to sit in that with them before moving to the next space. So active listening something that as easy as, which is a part of that, it's like, hmm." Just, you know, listening. It's a deep soul- Mm-hmm ... listening is what I call it. It's listening for the wounds. I m- I think I mentioned it earlier. Mm-hmm. And it takes time, and then when you don't have time as a doctor, I would say call your chaplain, right? That no, I'm being serious.
Yeah.
The chaplain can sit with you.
you and the chaplain can work together. And I recommend this for everyone, The Chaplain and the Doctor.
Ah.
It's out now.
I don't get anything from naming it, but what it does show is how a doctor and a chaplain came together- Mm
and they went on, on visits together. They became a teamand it may surprise you, it's actually [00:24:00] a Jewish doctor and an African American ... woman chap, both Jewish. Yes. They worked together as a team, and they went in and they gave care for the body, the spirit, and the emotion together as a team.
They talked about the cases together. So if one person was missing something, the other person well-round it, come together as a team, mind, body, and spirit. So how do we listen for that? One, we have to be still enough within ourselves, and then we have to make space to hear and to see. And if I'm so busy I can't do that, I'm not going to do it.
Mm-hmm. And if I'm not attuned to my own soul cries, I'm putting upa barricade to anyone else's.
So the more I can do the practice of lament myself, the more I can come attuned to other people's lament.
I love that you just brought that up because I went to the screening of that film here in Pittsburgh about a month and a half ago.
had lovely conversations with both Dr. Jessica Zitter and Reverend Betty Clark, who are the stars [00:25:00] of that film. Yes. They're amazing. And you unwittingly put in a plug for a far future episode of this podcast because I'm gonna be interviewing them for a session in Pittsburgh, sponsored by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation here sometime in the beginning of October.
Wonderful. That will air on this podcast after the session's over. So thanks for plugging for me.
You're welcome.
And you didn't need to say any of that. But one of the things that I loved about that in my conversations with them afterwards is that I think Dr. Zitter's point is that she wasn't able to access those soul cries.
the film starts out with her discussing how ... she bumped up very hard against Reverend Clark when they first started working together with something that she blurted out. I won't ruin that part of the movie. I'll let her tell it in her own words.
Yes.
But that led to their relationship when she realized she couldn't hear that part of herself.
And from working together, now she can. And my big regret, as I think I've expressed [00:26:00] to you in the past, is that I'm in the outpatient world. I'm in primary care. I don't have a chaplain. I mean, I have you and I have Rabbi Kara Top- ... who was a guest on this podcast previously. And if- I need a chaplain for my patients with addictive disorders, I'll call Rabbi Korber in Vancouver 'cause he was a great resource for me as well.
But you know, this is, one of those things where the place where we first encounter people in their lament is usually in their family doctor's office.
Yes.
Which is a place where often the reason I keep asking you about, what do you advise us to do? 'Cause we're the only resource that there is.
and family medicine and internal medicine and pedes are so pressed for time, that I know that when somebody asks why, they're usually asking me a why that the surface question is, why did this happen? Oh, well, your thyroid stopped producing enough hormone, and so we've gotta replace... But the real question is, why am I gonna have to take this medicine very first thing every [00:27:00] morning and have to rearrange my breakfast schedule around it and, change all of my other medicines and, you know, why am I having to put up with this?
What did I do wrong? Or-
Yes ...
who screwed up my water supply or whatever.
And I think even a little bit deeper than that why am I gonna have to take this medicine? Depending on your patient, how am I gonna pay for this medicine? I'll use the iceberg theory.
We're seeing the tip, but there's so much under the surface- ... that if, if we can begin to sit with and ask some of the deeper meaning behind the why, and what next, what else could it be?
...
Continue to ask, "So why this? I hear you ask about that. Help me understand how that's affecting you.
How are you coping with this?" And as you were talking, you don't have a chaplain, but what would it be like, as you say, you have relationships with me- building relationships with other chaplains and then inviting them into your space, one afternoon or tele-chaplaincy where maybe they can't be here, but [00:28:00] if you could connect them to some of the systems that they have.
Talking to maybe your director of chaplaincy or the VP of mission and values. I don't know what you call it there.
that position doesn't exist yet. I'm in an organization- ... of less than 100 people, so. So you know what? How- We're five times the size as we were when we started, but we're still really small.
It's really small, so ... how do you build relationship with people where they- Yeah ... love what they're doing and they say, "You know what Dr. Wig, I'll come by and I'll just do one day a week, but this is the one day a week that I will offer to your practice," right? Yeah. It's kind of like having rabbis and ministers alliance that says they will come in.
Now, we are trained, so not just- Mm-hmm ... anybody can walk off the street because sometimes- ... we may do more and spiritual damage if we have not been. But partnering with someone, you and I getting together and having more conversations about this, talking about what it looks like to sit with someone and hear them saying [00:29:00] why, and getting underneath the surface so that we can see what's really under the water, the deep layers that is causing more harm than good.
And as we know, everything's connected. So I could be taking the medicine, but if I'm still having emotional and spiritual distress, it's going to end up manifesting in the body into something else. And so is the medicine really going to work? I tell people as a chaplain, when I go into rooms,
If I can create just a moment of peace, a person's breathing will relax . The way they take their medication can begin to work in their bodies. They may be able to rest at night now that they have gotten some of the weight and heaviness of the emotional and spiritual distress on them.
Then when you come in or you've already been in and you've asked them to take the medicine, it can work in the body in a whole different way. Even the cells are going to react differently because- Mm-hmm ... a person has been able to release, what has been carrying them down [00:30:00] emotionally and spiritually.
Yeah. Yeah. There's a book that I teach out of not a religious book, but a, book of really a compilation of research by Steven Trusiek and Anthony Masorelli. Uh, they're both, attending physicians at Cooper Hospital System in Camden, New Jersey, and their book is called Compassionomics.
And one of the pieces of research that they pull in is that a few moments of compassion from, let's say, the anesthesiologist before a surgery actually cuts the anesthesia dose and the pain management doses that are needed for that person after surgery. they've got data on, improved recovery times after the surgery, all sorts of different things that happen.
And w- you talk about a moment of peace. Yes. The time needed in those encounters to give that moment of peace from a clinical perspective, right? To give that- Signaling of compassion, right? So basically to answer my own third question about- ... how do you show them that you've seen them, it's about 40 seconds.[00:31:00]
40 seconds.
40 seconds. That makes a difference. Zero overhead. It's free. It is essentially free. It's free. It is free.
And What I've learned, I've written about it, I've studied about it. and I got this from bell hooks. She was my education theorist for becoming a certified educator.
One of my theorists. Mm-hmm. She says until we are fully known, seen, and heard that really we can't learn. She was talking about learning. She can't learn... We can't learn. So just imagine until we're fully seen, known, and heard in all our- Mm-hmm ... spheres of influence, what a difference it could make. So if I can't learn, probably healing comes in different ways.
And as you were saying that, I remember when I myself had surgery, and I went in thinking, "I don't want this surgery." I just was not in a good place. And it ended up my surgery took longer.
Coming out of the surgery took longer. And I just had a surgery recently where I did all the things that I needed to do.
You know, I got grounded myself. I was doing my daily meditations. I was praying. I was [00:32:00] journaling. I went into it into a good space, and I went in trusting my doctor who had told me before surgery, "This should've came out a long time ago." I was thinking, "Finally, somebody hears me."
It went fine. I mean,
It didn't take as long. My recovery was... So what you're saying is correct. I'm a witness to, the research that you read, like, and it only takes 40 seconds of compassion and seeing someone- Yeah ... and sitting there with them so that they can feel fully seen and heard, and relaxed. A moment of peace.
I think a moment of peace. I'm gonna have to write something about lament, a moment of peace. And so while it may not feel peaceful, 'cause as we know, lamentations was not peaceful but in the end it led to moments of peace. It can lead to moments of peace. And just stopping to lament, which in my faith tradition we don't always do.
We kind of skip over the whole section in our sacred text. We just kind of skip over that. We don't do that well. I think we're learning [00:33:00] how to do that well in the Black church, and so I can be even a voice for that. this is a place- Mm-hmm ... to recognize that life is not easy There are things that happen to us that we don't want to happen to us, some by our own, and some by other people, and evil in the world.
It- life happens. and how do we recognize when what we see and hope for, there's a gap from what we know or believe to know is promised to us? And when there's a gap, that's where the lament comes from. And until we pause for that moment of peace to lament, to move us towards peace, I think we stay stuck.
Yeah. So you mentioned Lamentations, I think with a capital L, meaning the- Yes ...
Book of Lamentations in the Bible. Yes, the Book of Lamentations. So
this episode is going to go live two days before, the commemoration of the ninth day of the month of Av- Mm-hmm ... which is the commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem- which is the darkest day [00:34:00] in our calendar. And we actually just sort of glom all of the other things that have happened to us throughout history into that day, partially so that we don't spend the entire year crying. But we lead up to that, right? So, you know, these sections from Jeremiah that are the dire warnings and the I told you sos, and all- Yep
of those sorts of things, You can't just go into that and cry it out without some kind of preparation. Like, you have to be ready to experience that crying. But you're right. Even within the process of lamenting, you know, there's a line in Jeremiah that my middle son read at his bar mitzvah that, there will once again be, you know, people will once again purchase vineyards and fields and, you know, plant things in this land that's currently destroyed.
Mm-hmm. And at the end of Lamentations, the line we finish with, we actually have to go back to the next to the last line and repeat it, 'cause the last line is really dark. You can't end on a bad note, so we end, it's, You know, it's renew our days as of old. return us to you, renew our days as of old, and that's, someday [00:35:00] it's gonna get better again.
... Having connected over that lamentation, then you get to that point that I was talking about at the beginning, this intimate knowledge. And I complain about primary care a lot, that we are, sort of the poor stepchild, one that gets the scraps. They- we're supposed to do all the things with the least amount of resources, but
Far and away, the best thing about it, and I think the thing that we get better than anybody else does, is these long-term relationships with people- Yes ... where because we're the starting point, people come to us over, and over, and over again, and I might see somebody with multiple chronic illnesses six or eight or 10 or 12 times a year.
Their specialists, if they're doing a thorough job, are seeing them twice. So I know them, if I'm doing my job well, quite intimately. But the question is, what do we do with that intimate knowledge? How do we move from the place of knowing the person to healing them better? Like, I've seen your pain.
I've sat through your pain with you. [00:36:00] What do I do with that knowledge?
So, first I wanna say Thank you for, I would say, ministry practice and your vocation, and I know being a doctor is much more than that, but I wanna say thank you. And what I hear from you as my friend, which I'm grateful for, is that you're caring for people, but they keep coming back because you're doing what you need to do with that pain.
People leave doctors all the time for just that very reason of not being seen, heard, and valued. And because you are hearing their woundedness, you are helping them to navigate, even when you refer them to a specialist. Like you, what you just said, you are the person that I'm coming to with some of my most vulnerable moments.
Even if it's physical, I still have to be vulnerable to let you know what's happening. If I'm telling you this is happening so that you can make wise decisions.
Somebody comes in and says, "I've [00:37:00] been telling myself it was nothing-
Yes ...
for four years or whatever," to finally admit to themselves that it's not nothing.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
And then I'm coming to you as my doctor to finally put that guard down. I think that's a level of trust that may seem like it means nothing, but you're right. I've been thinking it's nothing, and then I come in here and you sit with me. And then you'll take the time to really check it out and not affirm, "Oh, it's nothing."
Even if you may know it's, may not be as serious, and we don't wanna just do tests because we're doing tests, but at least Acknowledging that, yeah, it could be that, and, maybe it is nothing, but we're going to check it out. The first step that I come to you and I trust you with my body is you're already doing part of the work.
Now, if I'm telling you it is causing me more angst than that, and yous can sit and hear that as well it... I would say this, that laments are truth, when someone lamenting, it's their truth. Honoring their [00:38:00] truth and their voice, that's what you do with it. I explain to students every time I'm with someone, for me, it's a spiritual encounter.
So just the fact that you're with that person becomes a spiritual encounter. So how can I make space for not only the physical, but also your spiritual wellbeing, your emotional wellbeing? You may not be able to fix those things, but even if all of a sudden you're talking to your patient and you're like, "You know what?"
And they may get upset. "You know what?" Or just asking, "Are you seeing a therapist?" You know, "Have you talked to your spiritual advisor or Just anything to connect them to help them see that it's all together. And if you feel comfortable enough sitting with them as they are talking about the woundedness of the emotions and the spirit as you are doing the physical diagnoses, begins to make a world of difference in the healing process.
And For me, I've gone back to a doctor. I actually go to a doctor now. I left the old doctor [00:39:00] because they couldn't hear me. and so I went to a new doctor. When I enter that space she is a Christian, but she has, like, scripture all on the wall. So she's setting the atmosphere to say, "This is who I am and this is where I want my patients," but she's also very knowledgeable.
I needed to be referred. I told her, "This is going on with my body." She said, "You know what? That doesn't sound right. Let's get you some tests." But I know I can trust her. I can trust her with my emotions, I can trust her with my spirit, and I can trust her with my body. And I think that's how you do it as a doctor- Yeah
Who really cares. Not saying others don't, but you know, When I'm talking to you, Jonathan, I see that your mind, body, and spirit, or body, spirit, and mind, and emotions. And until- other doctors can do what you're doing. I think a lot is being gone unheard, and people aren't being seen in ways that will matter truly so that they can say "I trust my doctor," or they start referring people to you.
So I've been referring everybody to my [00:40:00] doctor, and I know she's probably, "Could you hold up a little bit?" Because I trust her.
more than just with my physical. and so it became 'cause she would sit and listen. Even if it was, "Oh, no," she couldn't fix it, but she would just say stuff like, "Oh, no, that really happened to you?
Oh, that's horrible." Just being willing to go there to that space, not to fix, but just to say, "I hear you" or "That sounds rough. Let's see what we can do." Just acknowledging it. I think that's what, Jonathan doctors can begin to do.
Well, and that's part of the mission of this podcast is to get ideas out there.
And, one of my guests couple of months ago, Dr. Brian Miller, who's a, trauma therapist, talked about, you know, we recognize that there's a messed up system around us, but blaming everything on the system doesn't get us very far. What can we do to make our little piece of the system a little less awful today?
And, you know, employ some of the techniques that you're talking about, employ some of the techniques that he told us about, about, you know, eh, what he called [00:41:00] parasympathetic recovery or ways to lean into the distress of the visitor or things like that. So trying to build a toolbox for people. So-
in a very comprehensive way at IU, and I would like to spend the last couple of minutes of our interview with you telling us a little bit about the program that you are running there and not just having these one-on-one conversations 'cause you and I happen to know each other, but a very deliberate designed experience of bringing chaplaincy and medical professionals together to learn with one another.
So thank you, Jonathan. Before I answer, I do wanna say it just really popped in my, what I would say spirit, made my spirit, If someone would want some of this education or someone to come in, what we're doing partnering, you're building this toolbox. Chaplains, chaplain educators, will partner and come in and speak to your staff if that's something that you want.
I do believe that, by building the relationship and the partnership, just to come in and have a conversation, what is active listening? How do I [00:42:00] notice what we're doing? So at IU Health, I'm gonna talk twofold. I get to work with, Dr. Alex Lyon. I call him my brother. We have built a strong relationship.
it would be him, Dr. Mona, Rad, myself, we wrote Team-Based Spirituality. I get to work with them at the IU School of Medicine. We do religion, spirituality, and medicine, a scholarly concentration, but we wrote Team-Based Spirituality, and it really talks about how chaplaincy is a part of the team and how we're working together in this and no one is separated.
My grandbaby is out there lamenting right now. So
we've got about 90 seconds left,
and so then I'm the director, and so ACPE, the Association- Mm-hmm ... Professional Chaplains, CPE program through IU Health , and so I place students, interns, residents, fellows, someone wanting to become board certified.
They want to be a better minister, or they have been told by their denomination or their faith group they must take a unit of CPE, clinical pastoral education. It is [00:43:00] for integration. It is interpersonal relationships, and then looking at becoming congruent so that I can show up in a space and be a better chaplain is what I said, the use of self.
I know what it's like to grieve, so I can sit with this person as they grieve, not making it my own. But helping them to journey because I've been there, I can recognize the tension and help hold up the tension for them so that they can begin to get free as they name the tension and the grief and the sorrow and the trauma.
And so that's what we do at ACPE. To become board certified, you have to have four units, a minimum of four units of CPE and 2,000 hours of CPE. So we have interns, residents, and fellows. after our residents, they are qualified with four units of CPE, but at IU Health we offer a fellowship. And so people concentrate in peds and trauma and congregational care network.
They discern if they wanna become an educator, which is another four to six years of training. And so it's really intense what we do at IU Health. We are the one of the [00:44:00] largest programs in the state for CPE. So again, I am honored that I have watched people come in and say, "I've lost my voice because of church hurt, a minister."
And by the time they are leaving, they say, I found my voice in this space. I was able to connect back with my voice as a minister and a leader." Mm. So that's some of the work that we do. I would say that most of the chaplains at IU Health came through our program, and our program is at a 97% employment rate.
And so we are really building the future leaders for chaplaincy, our staff, our patients, the community, and being, coming alongside others during those times where lament show up in those spaces.
it sounds like you've got laments from two different species going on out there, too.
The experience that the medical trainees have in that program, if you could share a little bit about that as well. Oh.
Yeah, religion, spirituality, and medicine is a scholarly concentration offered through IU School of [00:45:00] Medicine.
And I get to work, as I said, with my brother at, Dr. Alex Lyon, and in the first session we do an intro to religions and spirituality. The second part is a journal club, and then that usually happens They'll do this as a scholarly concentration that they pick first and second-year medical students, and they will do some kind of research in spirituality.
It is self-selected, and so they are choosing to be a part of this scholarly concentration. It's exciting to watch as people... One year we had, someone give a presentation on, They were Sikhs, and so they came and taught that to our students. Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish. as you're talking about Rabbi Bruce, my rabbi, he always, spends time talking about the Jewish faith tradition.
So that's in the first section. We'll just do an intro And I'll do womanist theology, and, Christian, and non-faith. We had a humanist, doctor come and speak. And so they're usually either doctors or chaplains coming to speak in that space as we do the [00:46:00] intro part. And so we just finished that at the end of June.
And so they pick their scholarly topic and present it, and then they'll work on that for the rest of their time, the rest of the time as they're working on their scholarly concentration.
is there a clinical pastoral experience for the medical students as well, or no?
We have a lot going on at IU Health too, just like around here. Robin Axel Adams, she's a chaplain, a board-certified chaplain. She also, for our third and fourth-year medical students, they will come in and shadow chaplains. They also self-select- ... into that as an elective. And it's usually right before they get placed in their placement day, and they'll come and they'll shadow I mean, shadow the chaplains, and they'll sit in on some of our sessions for CPE to see how it really works.
And then they'll take that time and to reflect on what they've been feeling, seeing, hearing, and as they think about themselves as doctors, and how will they show up with patients now that they've had an opportunity to shadow chaplains and see how important and it's integrated it should [00:47:00] be.
I'm not saying, I don't want to should on anyone, but how effective it can be if chaplains are in the mix. And if we get to touch that side of ourselves, that brings out our emotions and our spirit while we are also taking care of the physical.
Amazing. You're not supposed to be envious or jealous, but I'm jealous of your students from what they get to experience in that way.
Anyway, I don't want to hold you any longer- ... 'cause it sounds like somebody is very anxious for you to return You know I love you. I want to say I can't thank You enough for sharing this time with me and for talking to us about this. And, soon by me, hopefully. I look forward to seeing you. Take care of yourself
Anastasia shared many powerful truths about lament, but there are three that will always be with me. Laments are prayers that come from wounds. Lament is the beginning of healing, and all of humanity has suffered. For several years in a row, I reread Rabbi Alan Lew's book, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, just before the high holidays of [00:48:00] Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
I guess I thought that if I knew how completely unprepared I was, I'd be better prepared. What's striking about Rabbi Lew's approach to this season is that he begins the book not with speaking about repentance or renewal or God's judgment and majesty over the universe, all of which are high holiday themes.
Instead, he begins with Tisha B'Av, the day of fasting and mourning that I spoke about in the cold open. Part of the logic is that there are peaks and valleys in the Jewish calendar. Tisha B'Av is the lowest low, and Rosh Hashanah the highest high, or perhaps Sukkot, the holiday I spoke about with Anastasia, with its rich aromas, celebration of abundance, and the commandment to be utterly joyful, entirely joyful.
He's simply teaching us to ride the wave, or perhaps he's teaching us to look carefully at context. Yom Kippur takes place right at the peak of the wave, not the trough, yet Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av are the only complete day fasts, twenty-five hours long in the whole calendar. [00:49:00] Our rabbis explained Tisha B'Av, for who could eat on that day, and Yom Kippur, for who needs to eat on that day.
The elevation, the spiritual heights that we reach on Yom Kippur is supposed to be so great that we forget to eat. My friend has a refrigerator magnet about people who forget to eat. Let's just say she's skeptical. But after listening to Anastasia teach us about the role of lament in our lives, I see another explanation of Rabbi Liu's decision to teach the high holidays beginning at Tisha B'Av.
On Tisha B'Av, Jews remember every time we've been wounded as a people. That in itself is constructive because there have been so many that if we remembered each on its own anniversary, there would be nothing but sadness throughout the whole Jewish calendar. Even the happiest of holidays, Hanukkah, Pesach, Simchat Torah, and Shabbat, have been stained by unimaginable pain, many of them just since the publication of my first book, October 27th, 2018, [00:50:00] October 7th, 2023, Bondi Beach in Australia, Poway, California.
When working on From Illness to Exodus, I consciously pushed myself through the last few months to finish before, God forbid, I had to explicitly acknowledge yet another tragedy. So we learn to compartmentalize, but those wounds are always there, and they inform our prayers. We read the Book of Lamentations, Jeremiah's poetic, heart-rending description of the destruction on Tisha B'Av, and then Liu takes us through the carefully planned liturgical recovery from those wounds.
Seven weeks of prophetic readings offer consolation and hope for a better future. Individually, we enter a season of repentance that offers hope for a better self That hope for a better self is often where the laments that I hear in my work come from. People arrive in my office having taken notice of their wounds and resolve to do something about them .
Sharing those laments with me is their way of saying, "I hope for a better self, a better body, a better mind, a better life than the one I am weeping [00:51:00] about now. Can you help me get there?" Sometimes the subject of the lament is the physical limitation, the inability to bend over without something slipping out of place.
Other times, it's the fear that no one will be there to provide care for them in the middle of the night. Still other times, it's the dread that the patient won't be around to provide care for someone else due to some yet undetected but fatal illness. But in all cases, it is a prayer that I can provide hope for a change . One such change, however, is developing the ability to recognize that third truth that Anastasia shared.
All humanity have suffered. Focusing on my lament over October 7th should not make me unable to hear a lament like that written by Dr. James Gordon for Time Magazine last week, detailing the trauma of the people he worked with in Gaza. Gordon exemplifies this truth. His Center for Mind-Body Medicine has operated parallel locations in Israel and Gaza, mere kilometers apart since 2002, and similar centers in Kosovo, Ukraine, and in [00:52:00] US cities affected by large-scale violence.
He writes of the resilience of children growing up in Gaza's ruin and side by side with that of the tragedy that befell their peers in the Israeli kibbutzim on October 7th, and he does so with equal sadness. In so doing, he makes clear that the languages of suffering and of hope are universal. In my work, I've heard hundreds of the dialects of these universal languages, many from opposite sides of the same conflict, some from people who would have every reason to see me as representative of the perpetrator of their trauma, or at least as a bitter adversary.
What has held our relationship together is the ability to hear and validate their lament, free of politics or justification, and focus on their healing. If we acknowledge the conflict, it's to share something we can all agree on, a prayer that it will end in peace. It's true whether the lament is about racial discrimination here in the US, a female patient discussing her trauma at the hands of a male abuser, the [00:53:00] Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or a patient with mental illness detailing the mistreatment they've endured in the healthcare system.
This skill is even more important when the clinician, be they chaplain, physician, nurse, or social worker, encounters pain that they've been taught to minimize. Maybe it's out of proportion to exam, or perhaps it is self-inflicted due to a person's bad choices, or even catastrophizing. We all know what these labels mean.
If we take the time to hear, see, notice, and know, those labels may come unstuck to be replaced with real understanding and healing. A couple of months ago, just before Passover, I aired an episode of music about how to sing when we're broken and feel like we shouldn't sing. One of those songs was an acapella piece called in Hebrew, Ein Avalba Evel.
No, but in bereavement to translate it accurately but gracelessly. It's the song of the grief of mothers everywhere losing their children, some of the rawest, deepest lament that exists. [00:54:00] I'm sharing it here again after the close is over. As we head into a dark day in the Jewish calendar, may we see a world with no more darkness, where no more mothers need to listen to someone justify their loss or fail to recognize their pain.
May we hear, see, take notice of, and understand each other's wounds and begin to heal .
אין בקיאות בבכי, לשכול אין שכל
בדמעון אין לחפש שום הגיון
באובדן אין מה לשאול אין לפקפק בסבל
בשום שפה אין אבל באבל
בבור אין מים, מתים מצמאון
תחת השיח בלב הישימון
נעקד על ראש ההר, הביאו אש ומאכלת
אשה ושפחתה בוכות בקול אחד לילד
בלב האם אין אבל באבל
There are no words; there is no “but” in bereavement
No expertise in weeping, no wisdom in mourning
In tears we don’t seek sense
In loss we don’t ask, we don’t pick apart suffering
There is no “but” in bereavement – in any language
In the pit, there is no water, only thirst
Under the bush, in the heart of the desert
Bound on the mountain top, they brought the fire, and the knife
A woman and her maidservant weep in one voice for the boy
In the mother’s heart, there is no “but”
There are no words. There is no but in bereavement. No expertise in weeping, no wisdom in mourning. In tears, we don't seek sense. In loss, we don't ask, we don't pick apart suffering. There is no but in bereavement in any language. In the pit, there is no water, only thirst. Under the bush, in the heart of the desert, [00:56:00] bound on the mountaintop, they brought the fire and the knife.
A woman and her maidservant weep in one voice for the boy. In the mother's heart, there is no but in bereavement
I wouldn't be able to make Healing People, Not Patients all by myself. So some special thanks to Genesis Productions, editor Isaac, admin manager and clips producer Jacob, and QA and show notes guy Joseph. To Doctor Podcast Network for hosting the show, to our CEO Mike Wuming, and to our COO Desiree Leos, and to Dr.
Bradley Block for being the first one to hear me interview on his podcast and say, "You know, you could do this thing, too." Thanks to my sponsor, NURP, and thanks to all of you for listening. Please share with a friend, leave a review on whichever platform you're listening on, and subscribe so that every episode gets downloaded.
That'll ensure that more people know about the show and start listening right along with you. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next time.