Show Overview
Stephen Jenkins is my good friend ~ we have known each other for over a decade. He stood by my side as I journeyed through some of the most harrowing and scary stretches of my life, always with encouragement, love, compassion, and when needed, a dose of good humor. It is no small surprise that he is much loved by the men he cares for as they move through their own harrowing journey, from the peaks of power and strength, through growing weakness and vulnerability, and eventually, to death. I can only hope that when my time comes that Stephen is there for me, a good friend who has the heart for end-of-life-care. And yes…I will be there for him too.
Please join me for an intimate look at the challenges and blessings of being a spiritual hospice caregiver in this interview with the amazing Stephen Jenkins.
In this Episode You Will Learn About:
- Stephen’s definition of a Spiritual Hospice worker
- How cleaning bedpans is an act of service, and how it filled a void in his life
- How is the male-to-male caretaker dynamic different from the female-to-male
- Why some men won’t allow a woman to care for them (Hint: society has told men not to feel)
- What happens when a man loses his professional identity
- How he walks with people through their regrets as they are dying
- The racial objections that caused him to hesitate
- How he wishes his own dad had lived long enough for him to care for him
- The beautiful idea of paying forward
- How seminary helped him prepare
- The advice he would give to someone considering this job
- The time he came up short (the one case that did not work)
- Why the elderly push back
- About the affect of fear in end of life
- The lesson from two babies in the womb
- The one thing that makes him believe in eternity
- The big IF of dying, and their greatest gift to the living
- His advice for people who are interested in hospice care
- How he bills this clients
- The opportunity created by the health crisis…the opportunity to serve
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Presto and grazie!
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I Am a Racist
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
I often hear nowadays, people being accused.
“He’s a racist.”
“She’s a racist.”
“Trump’s a racist.”
“So and so’s a racist.”
What I have yet to hear is: “I am a racist.”
So let me be the first.
I am a racist.
Yes.
I see the ugly thing, creeping around my soul like a roach in the kitchen. I squash it, but sometime later, there it is again.
I know there is a nest somewhere, eggs hatching, a source deep within me, hidden away where it’s easy to deny. There is where I'll find the library of my false beliefs, the lies I tell myself over and over, so often they become grooves cut into my gray matter, like fissures in rock where the water runs down, cutting deeper and deeper, until fissures become swales, and swales become canyons.
When did the first racist raindrop fall? I don’t know. As a child, for sure. How many drops of poison does it take to pollute the vessel of pure water of which we are born? When, exactly, does a person become a racist, and who gets to decide?
I don’t know, but then, neither does anyone else.
I don’t believe in permanence. That’s one thing the Buddhists have taught me.
Everything changes.
We can become aware of that library of false beliefs, that nest of nasties that colors our perception of things, often for the worse. Awareness alone brings change. We can cut new grooves. My challenge as a human being is not to deny that I am a racist, for that would be as foolish as denying I have cancer when I really do. My challenge is, rather, to stop the cancer from metastasizing and poisoning the whole man.
I doubt I will ever fully eradicate my racism. Unfortunately, I suspect some vestige of it will always be with me. But what I can do, and what I do do, is expose myself to experiences that lessen my racism, those being travel, kind and honest conversation, and breaking bread with “the others” whenever I can. These experiences, like wind and rain, smooth rock and, over time, lay low even the highest mountains.
So when I hear the angry crowd shouting, "He’s a racist,” I want to ask:
“Who among you is not a racist? Stand up then and take a bow...for you are surely a god.”
I moved to Substack!
Hi there. If you've read this far, then you enjoy, or are at least intrigued by, my ideas. If you want to learn more, jump over to my new website on Substack, where I continue to write about travel, the second half of life, and other mad musings.
