What's With the Pirate Chaplain Thing?

Now we come to the point in the blog where I re-introduce myself and come clean about all the craziness that you see upon this blog (I have a mental image of many people exiting this page as quickly as possible!). Why pirates? You're a chaplain? Who would hire YOU as a chaplain? All these questions will be answered, along with the big one, "What did you do to the guy who told you how to edit HTML and then caused your last blog to crash?"

Well, maybe all questions will be answered. Let's just say that dead men tell no tales and leave it at that! : )

Let's start with the last one first - no, not about the vict- , er, I mean friend. I mean the chaplain questions.

Yes, I work for a VA hospital as a chaplain, currently in the unrelated hospice, substance abuse, long term care and psychiatric units. Occasionally I tell stories of things I've seen or done here, but I try to keep it as anonymous as possible in order to keep my job safe. At least while I'm looking for a permanent position. I'm a resident chaplain, you see, with a one-year, renewable term. Not very stable, and I would like to hang onto this as long as possible.

I became a chaplain about three years ago, after serving in churches as a pastor for a total of eight years. Never did do well in churches. Always felt that I was doing more to remain popular with the congregation than remaining true to my thoughts and beliefs (more on that later). Inevitably, things went south fast, with the first church getting grumpy over racial issues (I was trying to foster interracial dialogue and joint worship services in a rural southern community) and the second growing hostile over the whole gay rights thing that exploded during the 2004 election. So, in order to protect my sanity, I took a job as a chaplain at a hospital and found that I loved it.

Now I've always liked pirates, pirate movies, tall ships, and the like. I'm a fencer, though there is nowhere in my current location to fence affordably, so for now my buckles go un-swashed, as it were. In Virginia, I fenced with a wonderful group of people over at the Isle of Wight Fencing Club. If ever out that way, check them out, and tell them I said hi.

But what really got this Pirate Chaplain thing going was a meeting where I presented a case study on a patient who claimed to have a religious experience. Somehow the conversation wound around to what I believed. It became apparent to the folks around the table that I don't really believe in religious experiences, since so many times they can be explained by other means. The patient in question was a recovering alcoholic and drug abuser with a history of psychosis (alcohol related). While I validated his experience and the meaning he attached to it, internally I doubted that it was anything more than changes in his thought processes due to the cessation of drug and alcohol use and his current medical treatment.

While some of my colleagues expressed shock and dismay at my lack of faith, I felt strangely liberated. Were I in the church, I could never have been free to disagree with certain theological or highly valued tenets. I had to tow the line, or risk losing my job - or at the very least inviting a world of grief from parishoners and other clergy. There I felt contrained, on my own in a chaplain setting I feel free to by myself and live by my own beliefs. As one psychologist who was sitting in on the meeting said, "You're a maverick, then." Damn right, buddy.

So then it dawned on me that in some respects historically, and definitely in fiction, pirates are depicted as people who don't fit in and ran by their own code. Yes, they stole and looted and pillaged and plundered and murdered, so there are plenty of negatives to go with the image. François l'Olonnais, for example, was very much the sociopath, and probably deserved what he got (eaten by cannibalistic Native Americans). Sam Bellamy, on the other hand, was well known for his mercy and generosity - his crew called themselves "Robin Hood's Men" for their tendency to be generous towards their prisoners.

Anyway, I digress. If one can assume that your average pirate is one who didn't fit in as a crew member of a "traditional" vessel - either a merchant ship or a military ship - where discipline often ran to levels of sadistic cruelty, and decided to strike out on his or her own, than I am a bit of a pirate. I decided I didn't like "traditional" work that someone with my education should do, and decided to do something different. For a variety of reasons, I do not subscribe to many of the beliefs of Christians in this (and many other) areas, and so do not fit in well. And that's why I'm out on the bleeding edge of the map, figuring out the meaning to life, death, and everything else to the best of my ability.

And that's why I'm a pirate chaplain. That and it's just so dang cool to be one!