One Last Kiss - a day in the life of a chaplain

I feed the chickens. Walk Milo my mini-Schnauzer. Sit down, always with freshly ground coffee, to livestream Morning Prayer to the Treehouse ‘fakebook’ Prayer Group and our churches. Fruitless I suspect; highly unlikely any student will watch. I console myself knowing more will join traditional Compline Night Prayer at 9pm with it’s poignant 3000 year old ending, the Aaronic Blessing:

The Lord bless us and watch over us;
The Lord make his face shine upon us and be gracious to us;
The Lord look kindly on us and give us peace. —Numbers 6:22-27

The Blessing is also fitting, because students of different faiths can also identify with it.

Last night, 10pm a young Asylum Seeker I’ve befriended gets a Home Office message out of the blue: he is to be ‘dispersed’ to Birmingham in the morning. That’s it. End of.

10am
I take time out to have a goodbye breakfast with him in McDonalds, he gives me flowers and one of two small wooden pocket crosses. I am to keep my cross in my pocket; he will keep the other in his. I promise to get his bike, donated from my village, to his new home in Birmingham. The process of finding a Solicitor, support, and a welcoming church will have to begin again. I return to the Treehouse, my heart heavy. This kind of volunteering is worthwhile in itself. And for the university it builds relationships with the community and favour for its reputation.

11.30am
Back in the chaplaincy a recent international graduate walks in. Praisy our lovely Chaplaincy Assistant has managed to help her find out if she is eligible to work. I tell her my heart is heavy. She smiles and makes an expansive gesture, “is that because your heart is big, Andrew?” My mood lifts. Then I ask about her family – I had heard her mother had died in the Philippines of COVID-19. She begins to tell me the story of her sickness and death. She had underlying conditions. She ended up in a government hospital despite the family’s best efforts. The hospital was over-capacity, so she sat in a chair for hours unable to get help to move, then she managed to slide to the floor to rest. Eventually the family were able to see her, but physically distanced outside, masked up and gloved in plastic bags. Finally she drew her husband to her, and gave him one last kiss on the forehead. She died a couple of days later on a ventilator.

She herself had often told the story of how she had not been able to see her own mother before she died, and now neither had our graduate. Was this a kind of prophetic destiny for her she wondered? I invited to her to our little prayer room, and there we prayed to break the power of the prophecy in the name of Jesus, that it might not be so, and for her grief and her mother. I anointed her on her forehead with holy Oil blessed by the Bishop for healing, tenderly, with the sign of the cross.

We’ve missed our noonday Celtic prayer time, perhaps for something better, of the Holy Spirit’s choosing.

12.30pm
A student wanders in, and I start to show him round the Treehouse. I ask him what prompted his visit? He’d been sent by our colleagues in Careers because he was lonely and homesick. He sits at the table with a cup of tea and we chat. I explain we try to be a ‘home from home’ for students and he can make friends here. The old student sitting beside us nods and affirms, ‘yes, it’s true, they really mean it.’ I feel a little embarrassed but pleased she said it.

1pm
Lunch with students round the table. Always.

2pm
My Asylum Seeker friend calls, agitated. The taxi driver is taking him to a different city, not Birmingham. I ask to speak to the driver. He tells me the Home Office called to say the Birmingham house isn’t ready. He is to go to Coventry. “What’s the address you’re taking him to?” I ask. “I can’t say, he’ll have to tell you himself when he arrives.” Sudden changes of plan are scary when you come from a country where you were tortured. It takes two days before my friend manages to get a data SIM card and message me his new address. I start searching for churches in the area who might support him.

New students peek shyly through the door, “come on in!”, we show them round, the kitchen, arts and performance area, prayer rooms and explain how we work and how we can help along with colleagues in the university. They smile, delighted, when they see our real tree house platform.

2.55pm
Manan comes in. Manan is an atheist. The family catering business has foundered because no-one is having events except for tiny numbers due to COVID restrictions. He’s paid 65% of his fees but what to do next? I go up to the Finance office with him to ask for a payment plan partly to be funded by his work in a Care Home. Improbably it turns out the Care Home is my village Care Home, half an hour’s drive from Luton. I say he must come round for tea. The Finance Office has closed at 3pm, shucks. I suggest he takes a photo of the open hours for reference, and we go back to Treehouse where he writes an email asking for a plan. Treehouse is alive with the sound of music, a North African girl’s beautiful voice floats on the air, accompanied by a West African boy playing a bass guitar. My heart lifts at the sound – we’ve not had music properly for 18 months. I notice he peers over one of our previous year’s student’s head to look at something on her laptop together, his arms around her shoulders. I smile and comment, “I didn’t know you two were together”. They smile shyly back. Turns out they met in the same Care Home. I change the invitation to Full English Breakfast for two, after they’ve finished their shift. Four days later I learn Manan is locked out of BREO and Outlook – he can’t access university systems. We must go back to Finance again.

It’s time to Close, and we end the day with the prayer of Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary General of the United Nations in 1953, whose plane crashed in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia in mysterious circumstances.  I read his journal 'Markings' as a teenager and his prayer has stuck with me ever since. We gather in a circle, and I explain we can all participate as much or as little as we like, or just observe. We hold hands, respecting Muslim students usual wish to hold hands with someone of the same gender. What are we most thankful for today? People take turns to share, some go deep. Then I lead the prayer, explaining the two words to say, thanks, and yes.

God, for what has been this day, we say Thanks
For what is to come, with you, we say YES! —Dag Hammarskjold

Note: as always, everyone's personal story is either anonymised, written with permission, but mostly both.