A Review of Michael Goldberg’s Raising Spirits: Stories of Suffering and Comfort at Death’s Door, Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2010

Abstract

Michael Goldberg’s collection of stories, at once self-revealing and inspiring, is drawn from his years as chaplain in a hospital, nursing home, and hospice. Supremely readable, this slender volume illumines the precious gifts a chaplain may bring to persons who are suffering and in need of “comfort at death’s door.” From his gripping personal accounts we discern that the author is indeed engaged in “raising spirits.” Rabbi Goldberg defines the human spirit or spirituality as that which “enlivens and animates us, what gives us a zest for living, in other words what generates our desire to live at all.” He knows that the human spirit can be crushed by illness. While this book amply documents the pathos of the human condition, it also bears stunning witness that a wise and compassionate pastor has the power to heal the spirits of those touched by his ministry. These narratives, far from being an effort at self-vindication, reveal a person of genuine humility who shares his moments of stumbling—occasions when he realizes in retrospect what he should have said or done. Such honesty lends even more authenticity to Chaplain Goldberg’s many demonstrations of the art of healing at its best. Goldberg notes that the psychiatrist who taught his seminary course in pastoral counseling confronted those future rabbis with this challenge: “Suppose you’re visiting a patient who says, ‘I’m here because God is punishing me,’ you must say right away ‘that’s not true.’” The instructor reduced all such questions to a psychotherapeutic challenge. He cast his students as “para-therapists ever alert to interpreting professed spiritual responses as symptoms of a deeper psychological issue.” Goldberg counters that the proper response to the question is “what makes you say that?” Perhaps the patient is being assaulted not by neurotic guilt feelings but by an awareness of having violated an order of life that he was properly taught to regard as a sin. If so, while a causal relation between the physical illness and his moral lapse may be questioned (there is so much undeserved illness and suffering in this world), a person may still need to confront the moral lapse behind the question, and follow a path to repentance and divine forgiveness. Pastoral Psychol (2011) 60:305–307 DOI 10.1007/s11089-010-0323-6