The Power of [Lack of] Belief

I'll be working with the chaplains, and I'm stoked.

I'm not a religious person. In fact, I embrace the 'atheist' label. That is, I have no belief in any god or gods. 'a', meaning 'non' or 'without'; 'theism' meaning 'god belief'. That's all 'atheism' means. 'Atheism', by definition, does not imply any belief, just a lack of a god belief. But I digress.

Many times in the past, I have described myself as "faith envious". I wish I had religious faith. I just don't. But this puts me in an interesting position.

Death care overlaps greatly with faith. Even just within the onboarding process of my hospice internship, I have encountered many instances of individuals viewing their role or the role of the hospice through a religious lens. They thank god for their skills to do this work. They feel blessed to be trusted with end-of-life care. In a way, I feel similarly. Despite no belief in god, I do feel called or driven to work in death care in an intangible, ethereal way.

And so, I'm very excited to work with the chaplains.

I want to see how they navigate this process, how they reconcile suffering, how they soothe pain. I wonder what of this is driven by their faith versus their secular beliefs, and if those are even different things. Will my experience be so different from theirs? I don't know, but I suspect not.

The incorporeal force driving me to death care is, dogmatic specifics aside, probably not that different than how they experience what they perceive as a god or gods. Though perhaps that's just my faithless view of it.

But am I really faithless? The entire project of going back to grab school, changing careers, working myself to the bone with my full time job, grad school classes, internships, along with all of my personal obligations is a leap of faith in some ways. Perhaps I shouldn't be so envious.