Chaplain shared in suffering

By Susanna Ray

Herald Writer

EVERETT — Tim Serban spent two weeks balancing on a tightrope pulled taut by terrorists.

A chaplain from Everett sent to New York to provide healing in the rubble of the World Trade Center, Serban was an emotional dumping ground for the workers clearing wreckage and looking for the lost.

In 15-hour shifts for 14 days straight, he tried to remove the mental debris while making sure the workers didn’t collapse from the weight of their own grief. He wanted them to open up, but his job also was to keep them from unraveling.

Walking the valley of death’s shadow

Tim Serban, the director of spiritual care at Everett’s Providence Medical Center, recently returned from a two-week trip to New York City, where he served as a Red Cross chaplain. Here is an excerpt from a prayer he scrawled onto a yellow legal pad on Oct. 11, the one-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed thousands:

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Truly Psalm 23 comes to mind when reflecting on this incredible journey.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want for anything. … For he is preparing a great table before me in the presence of my fears, in the presence of great evil, and in the presence of my foes.

And just when I thought this was tough enough, you lead me on to walk in the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death,’ where death is like a shadow in this pile of destruction. Where families yearn to connect with the body of the one they love, and even that hope becomes an impossible shadow. And your servant David says, ‘I will fear no evil,’ but here in this valley, with these families, and at this landfill, I have yet to arrive at his conclusion, for I do fear this evil. This evil that is beyond any magnitude and scope I have ever encountered, where small signs of lives once lived are like grains of sand lost in a sea of twisted metal.

… whether or not I believe it now, in my blindness, all I can do is trust your lead to stretch out, for your hand to reassure me in the midst of this great storm. … Amen.

In Everett, Serban is the director of spiritual care at Providence Medical Center’s Colby Campus. In New York, he was a member of an eight-person Spiritual Care Aviation Incident Response team for the Red Cross.

While taking grief-stricken families on tours of ground zero, comforting weary workers and helping to manage a fleet of 600 volunteer chaplains, there was one question Serban said he didn’t try to answer: "Why did God let this happen?"

"You can’t go in with any idea that there are answers," said Serban, a soft-spoken man in a hulking frame. "There are none."

He could come up with an entire theological treatise on why there is evil in the world, he said. But even if a message came from the sky explaining why thousands of people died on Sept. 11 and why thousands of others were saved, it wouldn’t make anyone feel better about the situation or walk away feeling satisfied.

"The real answer is being able to hold them in the midst of their pain," he said. "I love the word ‘compassion.’ It means ‘to suffer with.’ To walk with them and walk in their shoes. And I literally wore out a pair of shoes while I was there."

Serban has been a chaplain for 13 years and a Red Cross volunteer since 1999, but this was the first major catastrophe he has reported to.

"The whole devastation is just beyond comprehension," he said. "When you see it on TV, or in photos, it’s like looking at it through a straw.

"When you’re in the midst of it, the magnitude is so huge that you almost shut down just to hang on," he added.

After spending the weekend sleeping and holding his wife and 2-year-old son, Serban went back to work Monday to care for the spiritual needs of those hospitalized here in Everett.

The balloons, flowers and signs filling his office exemplified the support he said he has received from Providence employees since he first realized that as a Red Cross volunteer he might be called on to help with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"I felt it was my way of bringing the support from the Northwest and Providence to those families in New York," he said.

Chaplains are nondenominational and "focused on spirituality as opposed to religion," Serban said. They are required to have an understanding of and respect for all faiths and traditions. They also need to be prepared for all manner of reactions.

"Any range of emotion is acceptable with this," he said.

The workers yearned for human touch during their breaks from sifting through the wreckage, Serban said. But sometimes that touch came in a fuzzier form.

Trained comfort dogs — "big, fluffy, furry comforting dogs that people could hug" — moved from lap to lap and were enough to melt even the toughest firefighter, Serban said.

Chair massages from volunteer masseuses also helped workers deal with emotions. One masseuse used religious terms for the craft, Serban said, telling him, "All of us need to experience the laying on of hands."

But what about the needs of Serban, who absorbed the heartbreak of some 30 to 40 victims’ families each day?

"Right now is a time to find that inner peace in the midst of the storm," Serban said. "When the ocean has its greatest waves, the calmest waters are just below the surface. And sometimes we just need to go below and hang on. And that’s what I did."

Serban said he clung to stories giving "glimmers of hope in the midst of all that rubble."

He told of a ring of beams from one building that had all broken into perfect crosses. And he related stories of survival amid the carnage. One group of police officers was racing toward the World Trade Center towers when their brand-new van suddenly broke down for no apparent reason several blocks away. They were working frantically to get it started again when the towers collapsed. The unexplained delay saved their lives.

"And they said, ‘You can’t tell me God doesn’t exist,’" Serban said.

The experience has definitely changed Serban’s life, just as it has changed the country. "But to what degree, no one knows," he said, "until we take more time to live it out."

You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 425-339-3439

or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.