The Plight of a Hospital Chaplain During the Coronavirus Pandemic
The New Yorker‘s Elizabeth Barber profiles Kaytlin Butler, a 26-year-old hospital chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital who is on track to be ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Normally she ministers to oncology and hematology patients, but since the pandemic began, all the hospitals chaplains have also become COVID-19 chaplains. Barber writes, “Recently, a nurse asked Butler where God was in all this. Butler does not believe that there is one right answer to that question. ‘For myself, I don’t see the disaster as something that is made or wrought by God,’ she said. ‘I think God shows up in the places where people are trying to save lives and clean up this mess that others have mismanaged.’ Butler told the nurse that God was right here, crying with us.”