The past few days for Monnie Moore can best be characterized as, same old-same old … brand new.
That’s since a new fixture was constructed at her place of employment, Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital.
Moore has worked 30 years at the rehabilitation facility on Van Voorhis Road.
Her employer helps patients make their way back from those sudden events that change everything: Strokes, paralyzing car crashes.
Moore said it’s nice to have a centering, uplifting room in a place where things don’t come easy.
Under this roof, two extra steps in a rehab session — or two fewer steps from the session before — can set the tone of the entire day.
So, for her, every morning, it’s the same.
Moore, the director of pharmacy services at Encompass, walks through the front doors, hails a hello to the main desk, then makes a slight right.
The route takes her through the doorway of the room she was talking about earlier — the facility’s new chapel.
“It’s just a special place,” she said.
A sacred one, also.
“I can stop in for a minute and reflect before I get going,” Moore said. “And I love the Joshua passage.”
Joshua 1:9, from the Bible: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged …”
Philip Goldberg, the author who writes about all things spiritual, says a sacred space can be anywhere: A mud puddle or a lone tree. An empty ballfield.
Or, a chapel in a hospital or medical facility.
Especially a chapel in a hospital or medical facility, as he penned in a recent issue of Spirituality & Health magazine.
“Oxygen is everywhere,” he wrote, “but it’s easier to breathe deeply in some places than others.”
Moore and several other staffers looked on as Encompass Health made the chapel official Monday morning, with the prayers of hospital chaplains Allison Anderson and Kathy Kerzak.
Anderson is the director of spiritual care and education at J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital.
Kerzak oversees pastoral and spiritual care at Mon Health Medical Center.
Both talked about how the new chapel has a grounding, calming effect, no matter one’s faith — or if one is religious at all, even.
Moore, meanwhile, lingered a moment and entered the chapel at the end of the brief ceremony.
She unconsciously echoed Golberg.
“I can breathe,” she said. “I can get centered.”
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