Thursday, October 8, 2020
Cathy Judd Remember
When I was in high school the Diocese of New Hampshire held a week long youth conference each summer for high school kids. The first one I attended was at Holderness School and the second at Geneva Point Camp. There was a theme for each…or rather a question to be contemplated, discussed, by 80 or so teenagers and a dozen or so clergy group leaders. The first year the question was about belonging…to whom, what or where did we belong and “belongingness” …belonging to family, friends, school, church and ultimately God …concluding with how we “called” and to what. Big questions for high school kids. The second year, the summer of ’65, the theme was “Trust” …who, or what can I (safely) trust…again family, friends, community, relationships, church… and how does God call us to trust Him and what does he call us to do. Each summer we had a conference song…to go along with the theme of trust and calling it was” Here I am Lord” …we sung it three times a day in chapel. The summer of ’65 was one of ongoing civil unrest, racial conflict, the killing of 4 young girls in the bombing of a church in Birmingham, demonstrations, NAACP, SNCC…Jonathan Daniels, a seminarian from the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge was my small group leader…when conference was over he was headed back to Alabama… Jonathan explained to us what was happening in Alabama and throughout the south… “he was called”… he was answering the appeal of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to northern clergy to come to Alabama to work for the civil rights movement. Jonathan told us he was called… he was responding…just like in the words of our conference song we sang three times a day… “…Here I am Lord, send me…I will go…”. He told us one day we would be called. We left Geneva Point at the end of our week together. Less than six weeks later …we would hear of his assassination… the loss of our trusted “group leader” in Hayneville, AL…we would attend his funeral in Keene a week or so later. Impressionable teenagers…I know we were changed… I was changed. Jonathan gave us an example to follow by his life, faith and trust in God... and most profoundly by his death… “Here I am Lord…if you call, I pray that I will have the trust and faith to go and do the work I am called to do…”
I have no doubt my own journey has been shaped by my experiences at the Diocesan Youth Conferences in those adolescent, soul searching explorations of belonging, trust, faith, and to what and by whom are we called. I graduated from the University of Maine, a biology/pre-med major, English minor; my only claim to fame, Stephen King was a classmate…obviously a much better writer and more captivating writer than I would ever be. Immediately after graduation I decided to go to Europe for three months with a ticket on Icelandic Airlines and a 3-month Eurail-pass…I worked, traveled. Stayed 7 years living in Munich and London, married. I finally returned to the States… Dallas, Texas; land of pickup trucks with shotguns in the rear window and bumper stickers that said, “Love NY? Take I-30 east”, where we waited for the Sunday New York Times to hopefully arrive by Wednesday each week. I finally settled into what would be a lifelong career in medicine… a career path which seemed to be one of answering “a call”; “who can I send, who will go…”; over the course of a number of years I spent time in various places among them a clinic on the West Africa Coast Highway in Elmina, Ghana; a clinic in Ismalia, Egypt at the edge of the Sinai Peninsula; taking care of Peace Corps volunteers in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; clinics and hospitals in China a year after Tiananmen Square. Finally, in 2003, I was called; that call … “who can I send, who will go?” …who me? It was a call, one of those, there is no other possible explanation… to provide mental health services and medical care to the chronic persistent mentally ill in the Dallas County Jail, 3rd largest in the country, considered among the most deadly in terms of suicides, and deaths from neglect and negligent care. By day three I was convinced I can’t work here (guess that meant I wanted to “hang up “this call); the conditions and treatment of patients was something out of a third world nightmare. However, a colleague and I became convinced that if we had zero tolerance for the guards, the inmate and patient abuse, degradation, humiliation, and physical abuse, perhaps we could make a difference just by showing up (and not “hanging up”). Multiple law suits, newspaper reports…the Department of Justice became involved; Parkland Hospital took over all the care and developed what is now a model for jail medical and mental health care.
For me, it was not possible to not be changed by my experiences particularly working in the Jail and the criminal justice system… Up until then I had been living, working and traveling in a “bubble”. The foreign travel, medical practice, teaching and lecturing, living and working in impoverished, unserved, underserved parts of the world … places not very close to home. But most recently as a health care provider in juvenile detention and in “correctional care” …. this a world I had no clue about nor of the stories of the people who lived and died behind walls and locked doors.
In the practice of medicine and mental health, being part of a faith community it is the sharing of stories where the experience of what it means to be human emerges…where we come together face-to-face, soul-to-soul. The daily SJC reflections have been inspiring, moving, important connections…the healing and hope and reaffirmation we offer to one another on this tumultuous journey through COVID-19. Telling our stories is not just sharing memories, experiences, speed bumps and hurdles. It is the way wisdom gets passed along between us and is shared. The stuff that helps us live a life worth remembering. In taking care of patients and through COVID-19 it is interesting how patients or people with the same problems have such very different stories. I have been deeply moved by these stories, by them and the meaning each has found in their problems, by the unrecognized strengths, resilience, the depths of love and devotion, the rich and human tapestry of this journey. It is in listening to another’s lived experience I have had the opportunity to grow in connectedness in a time of distancing.