What do we owe to people who behave wrongly? That question sits at the center of Bailey Pickens’s University of Chicago Magazine essay about her work as a hospital chaplain. In elegant, searching prose, Pickens describes the challenge of providing pastoral care to patients she has witnessed behaving in racist, sexist, and demeaning ways. Eschewing calls for hostile rejection and condescending sympathy, Pickens argues for “sharp-edged compassion” or the ability to hold people accountable for their mistakes while seeing their humanity. This “double vision,” as she calls it, “requires effort and a willingness to hold onto tension,” but allows for the possibility of growth.
From the Judges
Bailey Pickens deftly describes how it's possible to simultaneously hold seemingly disparate points of view about our fellow humans, so that we may honor their humanity. Through the narrative lens of a hospital chaplain, we see each patient "not as a symptom or a saint, but as a whole person, complete with the pack of small evils all of us contain alongside our better angels." The author doesn't excuse bad behavior or exclusionary perspectives, nor does she romanticize the notion of compassion. This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking essay about the complexity woven into each of us individually and as a collective whole. The narrative is beautifully told.
