The Spiritual Lives of Dying People. Paul A. Scaglione
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THE SPIRITUAL LIVESOF DYING PEOPLE
Testimonies of Hope and Courage
Paul A. Scaglione and John M. Mulder
THE SPIRITUAL LIVES OF DYING PEOPLE
Testimonies of Hope and Courage
Copyright © 2013 Paul A. Scaglione and John M. Mulder. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Original cover art: “Remembering” by Robert Kipniss. Used with permission.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
isbn 13: 978-1-61097-772-2
eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-703-3
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Scaglione, Paul A.
The spiritual lives of dying people : testimonies of hope and courage / Paul A. Scaglione and John M. Mulder.
xxii + 112 pp. ; 23 cm.
isbn 13: 978-1-61097-772-2
1. Terminally ill—Pastoral counseling of. 2. Chaplains—Religious life. 3. Death—Religious aspects. I. Mulder, John M. II. Title.
R726.8 .S34 2013
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Paul A. Scaglione dedicates this book
to the memory of my mother, Grace Marie Scaglione,
an example of deep, abiding faith
and
to the Gennesaret retreat teams in New Jersey and Kentucky
and all the Gennesaret retreatants.
John M. Mulder dedicates this book
to Robert L. Reed MD,
a physician who listens
and who saved our son’s life.
Preface
This book is the product of a collaboration between two individuals who have become deep friends in the process of preparing it. Readers may wonder how it was actually written. The introduction was written by John M. Mulder, based on interviews with Paul A. Scaglione and participation in one of Father Paul’s retreats for seriously ill people. The fifteen profiles of dying people were narrated by Paul and written up by John. The conclusion, which is an interview between Paul and John, speaks for itself. The names of people and their families who are described in this book have been changed to protect their anonymity.
In preparing this book for publication, we have been assisted in manifold ways by many people. Paul thanks Bob, Carol, Fr. Charlie, Sr. Ellen, Gordon, Hilare, Jerry, Mike, and Pat. John is especially grateful to his wife, Mary, an English composition professor, for reading the entire manuscript, and to his daughter Cora for reading many of the profiles. Their sharp eyes improved it immensely.
Though we come out of different communions, we know that nothing emerges without communities of support, and we give thanks to all those who have nurtured us and supported our endeavor to describe a few people who testified to their hope and courage as they made the last journey of life.
Paul A. Scaglione
John M. Mulder
Introduction
Paul: The Priest Who Listens
John M. Mulder
“Call me Paul.”
So began our somewhat unlikely friendship—the Reverend Paul A. Scaglione, a Roman Catholic priest, and me, a Presbyterian minister. I was searching for “spiritual formation” from a “spiritual director.” I quickly learned that Paul rejected the term “spiritual director” for “spiritual adviser”—my first indication of his humility and rejection of pretense. I needed spiritual formation and advice in the aftermath of a profound crisis in my life. I had crashed in my mid-fifties. I was killing my self—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. At the depth of my crash, counselors described me as “spiritually bankrupt” and afflicted with “a toxic level of shame and guilt.”
Spiritual writer Mary Margaret Funk calls this acedia—“self-icide,” not suicide. Paul Scaglione taught me to choose life, a new life—a new relationship with my self, my family, my friends, and God—all provided through God’s grace and kindness and the forgiveness and love of people I had hurt.
Paul gave me a new life by listening to me. No other act better describes the heart of his ministry. At the end of our very first session, in which I talked incessantly, he asked me to meditate on these words from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God.”
In less than an hour, he had seen the heart of my problem—relentless work, manic achievement, constant expression. I could not shut up; that was my problem. I had spent my life and ministry speaking and writing. In truth, I was shuttered up, shut down, broken down. I had to shut up and listen—to God. I had to listen with my heart, attentive to God’s faithful yet subtle direction. I had to develop lev shomea (Hebrew for “a listening heart”).
As the years went by, our one-sided relationship—Paul listening, me talking—became reciprocal. I learned about him and his unusual ministry—the spiritual lives of dying people. It is a formal retreat ministry for the chronically ill, as well as Paul’s personal mission as a pastor to accompany fellow believers at the end of their earthly journey. He listens to them, prays with them, and encourages them to listen to the movement of God in their transition. In doing so, he nurtures their ability to listen to themselves, to others, and to God.
Paul’s gift of listening has been honed by his own life experience and has become the unique and surprising focus of his ministry. By listening, he helps people find God in the face of death. He is the listening priest.
It began in his own family. Paul was a chosen child. Born in 1947 in the wake of World War II, he was adopted by a childless Italian-American couple in New Jersey, Carmen and Grace Marie Scaglione. They subsequently adopted another child, Judy, and later Charlie was born into the family. “I always considered them my parents,” he says. It was a conventional childhood for a Catholic kid raised in the midst of the postwar American religious revival—family, church, and Catholic school. His father owned a printing business with his brother. His mother was a homemaker, a gardener, and the center of their selected family and extended family. It was all very Italian and very Catholic.
In October 1966, when Paul was nineteen and a sophomore at Brescia University in Owensboro, Kentucky, tragedy struck the heart of his family. One day as his mother was engaged in fall housecleaning, she felt sick and lay down on her bed. Within an hour she was paralyzed from the waist down. She never walked again. From that fateful moment, her life changed permanently. Others would care for her basic needs. She had to be bathed and dressed. She never gardened outside her home again. And her spiritual life was never the same.
“I saw someone with a chronic illness,” Paul recalls. “I saw the effect this has on a family. It played a major role in my decision to study for the priesthood. I bargained with God. ‘God, if you will cure my mother, I will offer myself to you.’” He adds self-consciously, “I know that’s pretty primitive, but it’s true. I’m not there now.”
His mother’s illness consumed the family—her husband Carmen, her children, her siblings, her relatives and friends, and Johnson, a devoted African-American home health aide