A Jew, atheist, Christian and Muslim in a Chemo suite

This week, Rabbi Miriam Lorie joined BBC Radio 2's Pause for Thought.  She explains that:

"Last week, when the UK was melting in the heat, and my coping strategy was a steady stream of ice cream, I visited a place where not everyone wanted to be cold. 

Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0nmcr0m

It’s because I’m a chaplain at the Chemotherapy suite in a hospital, and there were several people there wearing cold caps, who would gladly have swapped the pain of a freezing scalp, designed to protect their hair follicles from those harsh drugs, for the discomfort of heat. 

I always feel more humbled in that room than in the rest of my week as a Rabbi, and learn so much from the patients, their different perspectives and coping mechanisms. 

That visit, I met a proud atheist who told me he’s glad he doesn’t have a faith, particularly at the moment, because there’s nothing to blame for his cancer beyond random nature. But he still told me about the Tree Cathedral in Whipsnade, which I looked up and now want to visit. He doesn’t believe in God, but I sensed his deep spiritual well. 

And then I spoke to two religious chaps. A Christian who felt pretty bleak about his prognosis but felt some reassurance in it being God’s plan for him. And a Muslim who saw everything as from God - both the illness and its treatment. He was so grateful, he said, that his treatment is free on the NHS, where elsewhere in the world it might be unavailable or unaffordable. He told me the story of a friend who needed oxygen when suffering with Covid. But the cost in their country was £2000. All my life, they said, God has given me free oxygen and it takes being charged thousands of pounds to see what a blessing we have just to breathe in and out. 

Wow, what a perspective. What an attitude of gratitude for the everyday miracles. When I’m next feeling down about the thankfully much smaller trials in my own life, I’ll try to have an ounce of the resilience that these three men have. 

And I’ll try to remember that I’m getting two grand of free oxygen a day. "

Listen in full here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0nmcr0m