Hospice Journal: Words to the end of the world

Afternoon, Bunker Hill Road

October 24, 2008 – One evening last winter, a hospice patient turned to me, and asked suddenly if I could help get her baptized, as she had not been. I called my friend Steve McLean, pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Argyle, N.Y., and he rushed over and baptized this woman, and my part was to read from the Bible, and then Steve gave me a Bible to carry with me in my work with Izzy as a hospice volunteer. Hospice work makes me think of something said about war – there are no atheists in foxholes. I read prayers a lot.
  I cherish this Bible, and have used it more than once, and sometimes, late at night, when the fire is roaring in the stove and the wind is howling outside, and I am mulling my life, I read from it. Lately, I am reading the psalms. Reading the Bible is always challenging for me. It is an obtuse work, unevenly written, sometimes angry and intense, and then, you stumble on something so beautiful it catches your breath.
  I especially love Psalm 19, which I read to a friend last night over the phone, as the flames flickered in the wood stove, and dogs sighed and I thought of the lovely people I had known in hospice, and read to. This psalm seems especially comforting, especially to those on the edge of life.

  Psalm 19 (first verse)
 
  “The heavens declare the
         glory of God.
     the skies proclaim the work
         of his hands.

  Day after day they pour forth
         speech;
      night after night they
      display knowledge.

   There is no speech or language
      where their voice is not heard.”
   
   Their voice goes out into all
       the earth,
   their words to the end of the world.”

  
  I like to think of the people I’ve met in this work, that their voice goes out into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.