My grandson, just turned five, asked his dad last week, "How did everyone get born…including the first person? How did that first person get born?"
Miles, of course, doesn't know about either Darwinian theory or the various theologies that seek to answer such profound questions. What's important, in this story, is that Miles is lucky enough to have parents who will sincerely discuss such questions with him rather than to dismiss them with the kind of brush off so many children receive during their early, curious phases. One way my grandson, and all of the rest of us, know that we matter is by how people respond to the questions we pose. Do we really feel heard?
When we brush off the sincere questions of others, we demean both them and ourselves. Caregivers are constantly in the position of being able to choose whether to truthfully and respectfully answer the questions of anxiously patients or to duck them.
Recently, The New York Times presented a series of articles decrying the sad state of caregiving in America's hospitals. One anecdote described a daughter who asked a nurse how soon her mother, who had received a knee replacement, might be going home.
"Knees take awhile," the nurse said.
For the daughter her mother was not, of course, a "knee."
Another daughter whose mother was diagnosed with cancer approached a nurse at a Nashville hospital. "This is probably a silly question," the daughter said, "but how difficult will chemotherapy be for my mom?"
"You're right," the nurse said, as she turned and walked away "that is a silly question."
Our questions, and how we respond to the questions of others, signal the level of our humanity at that moment. We are born wondering because life itself is a puzzle for any insightful person. How did the first person "get born?" Do we really know? The answer, it turns out, is not nearly so important as the way we honor the question.
Do you feel heard in this world? How do you hear what is beneath the questions that rise before you each day from family, friends, patients, co-workers?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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