In the world of Emergency Medicine it is common to refer to paramedics as “Paragods,” in deference to their ability to restore life to the dead and cure the sick and injured. When Death knocks on a family’s door and the ambulance arrives, delivering a modern day messiah, everyone breathes again because “It’s OK… the paramedics are here.
But our dirty little secret is we know it’s not OK, because we know that we’re more like idiot deities than gods.
We know we don’t make a difference in the grand scheme of the cosmos, life is fragile and short, and men and women do not have the power to overcome Death no matter how much science and technology they can wield.
Death, to a hero, is not some foreign concept… it is a co-worker. A work day without Death seems like a waste of time and energy. We’ve trained to fight him. We spend hours and hours memorizing the medications, training with the tools, learning the latest ways that science and medicine has discovered to allow us to do battle with Death.
We feel guilt because saving lives is a lie and it’s addictive. We feel more alive in the presence of Death than with our families.
You call us heroes because we save lives and protect people..
We feel like failures because we know the truth… that the monsters always win. We feel separated from you because we’re tainted by Death. We feel unworthy.
Denied by the Priest Three Times
Recently I began a course at a local church. The course is designed to teach people interested in the faith more about the beliefs and traditions of the church and to eventually lead them to a profession of their faith and union with the community of the church, a brotherhood of believers.
I began attending not because I need a relationship with Jesus Christ, or because I believe I’m a lost soul. I began attending because I felt that perhaps after attending the Catholic Church for the last twenty years, baptising my children in the Catholic Church, and seeing the beauty and majesty of their form of celebration, maybe my Protestant upbringing had been lacking. I was feeling drawn to it.
Catholic Churches are magnificent, beautiful, and inspiring. No one who has ever stood in one of the old medieval cathedrals of Europe, such as Notre Dame, could deny that there is a feeling of awe and humility in those spaces that brings one’s soul closer to the ineffable. I wanted to know more about that state of relationship with God.
In our class I learned that Protestants were encouraged to approach the priest during the Eucharist with crossed arms and receive a blessing from him. Protestants are not allowed to receive communion in the Catholic Church but I decided that it would be good to be blessed by the priest.
The devil works hard to keep us away from God, a blessing couldn’t hurt.
Maybe I Am Unworthy
As I stood before the priest in anticipation he nodded towards the aisle as if to say, “Move along son.” At first I wasn’t sure what was happening so I dallied in front of him and again he shrugged his head to the left and glanced in the direction of the exit. I began to wonder if he was really telling me to get on my way and finally he did it a third time and at that moment I was sure that something in me was disgusting to the priest and I was, in his estimation, not even worthy of a simple blessing.
Many emotions ran through my mind as I sat in the pew for the remainder of the service… confusion, sorrow, embarrassment, anger, denial, but I finally accepted it. I had been denied three times.
Three is spiritually significant. It represents completeness, totality, finality. It is a caution against spiritual overconfidence as in the gospel account of Peter denying Christ after claiming he would never do such a thing. It is a call to search your heart and soul for the truth of your faith and your convictions.
So I did.
I grew up in various Protestant denominations. I was baptized as a Methodist. I have never fully agreed with any church’s or denominations dogma but I call myself a Christian. I believe there are two things in every Christian church, one is God, the other is the devil. I’m still not sure who I encountered that day but I feel strongly encouraged to claim myself to be a Christian, to adhere to the teachings of Christ and to put my faith in God rather than in men.
Perhaps this was a heresy that the priest objected to. Perhaps he has seen this website and believes that I am aligned with the devil. I don’t know his reasons.
Brotherhood?
Perhaps I’m not meant to find brotherhood in the church. Perhaps, my place is not there and the only brothers and sisters I will ever have are the so-called “heroes,” those of us who’ve worked in the darkness.
I don’t think that the priest’s intention was to drive me away from the church but it may have been. Maybe he was trying to exorcise me from the presence of his flock because I was a dangerous influence. Maybe he can see into my soul and knows that I am already doomed.
All I can say is that I’m doing the best that I can and I realize that doing my best may not be enough. I won’t know until I stand before God and I’m judged.
I’ve said all this to illustrate one more way that those of us in the “heroic professions” feel separated from the rest of you. We are stained, and we know it. We hope that you don’t notice it but we can’t understand how you don’t see our imperfections and flaws because they are all too noticeable to us. We are supposed to hold the power of life and death in our hands, to save lives, prevent and ease suffering… but we can’t. We are only imperfect idiots created in the image of God.
What I do know is… men are not the ultimate judge.
I will atone for my sins one way or the other… how is up to God.
“I will never fit in with the flock.”
I thank the priest for his denials. He opened my eyes. I now know that I will never fit in with “the flock.” I accept my position because I am a servant of the shepherd, not a sheep.
Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves
I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage that there are three types of people in this world; sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves.
Sheep tend to wander around with their heads down, eating grass and clover, and trusting in the shepherd to protect them and to provide for them. They never kill each other or their enemies. They live and let live. They follow the shepherd without question and generally don’t have many problems in life… until the wolves show up.
Sheepdogs are vigilant, respectful of the sheep, but they work for the shepherd instead of simply relying on him. They are his arms, legs and teeth when needed. They know the taste of blood, the smell of death, and the pain of battle.
Wolves live for the taste of blood. They thrive on the thrill of the hunt and the killing of helpless sheep. They spend their days planning ways to separate the sheep from the shepherd and his sheepdogs.
The heroic professions are the sheepdogs. They are under the command of the shepherd. Many of them were formerly sheep but they’ve tasted blood and will never be sheep again.
I pray that I don’t become a wolf.
This Site is for Wounded Crusaders…
… broken heroes, warriors, paramedics, firefighters, law enforcement, and first responders.
Yeah, we’re different.
You got a problem with that?
We make no apologies for the things we’ve seen and done. We’re different from you because we’ve spent time in dark places that you don’t want to go.
We’re broken… not abnormal… and not beaten.
We sometimes gaze into the abyss without warning and get lost in memories of horrors you can’t imagine. We’re healing… licking our wounds. We don’t need to be retrained to be like you or to think like you. We’re buffering… processing… reliving the terror to analyze it and compartmentalize it and try to find a weakness that we might exploit the next time we have to fight a dragon.
We scare you. We’re inconvenient necessities. You keep us around because we’re useful when dragons appear but you wish we wouldn’t come out into the light when dragons are sleeping.
We are wolves with manners if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky you’ll see the wolf.
Our office is in Hell and we go there voluntarily day after day. We fight monsters so you don’t have to.
Hope
So if after all that you’re still interested in peeking inside the mind of someone who is stained, tainted, different, and unworthy… someone who is a self-proclaimed idiot formed in the image of God or if you are a brother or a sister that shares the feeling of not belonging then welcome to my nightmare.
I hope my words and my journey can help in some way… those who need them.