Worship While Sick

I was walking down a long corridor with my grandmother on my way to see my great aunt in the hospital. We parked on the wrong side of the hospital and when we got inside the help desk informed us that my great aunt was on the other side of the hospital. We were calm because my great had just been taken yesterday because of feeling weak. As my grandmother and I were walking down the corridor to get to the emergency room we passed a room labeled “meditation center.” As my grandmother sped on to see her sister I was only able to catch a glimpse before I had to move on or risk being lost in a gigantic hospital. As you can see, because of the pictures posted above, the room is really simple and was closer to the waiting room. There was an organ, a couple sofas, and a stained glass window. The room was void of all religious symbols that could be connected to a single religion. My guess is this to make the meditation room user friendly to the many religions of the patients and family members that enter the hospital. This is a thoughtful touch to accommodate patients who may have an extended stay in the hospital but finding anything religious in a place that seemed so devoid of religion was an odd. I asked one of my house mates about what he thought and he also agreed that this was weird. However, he also commented that hospitals are still businesses and they have to appeal to the masses. The meditation space, for my housemate, was more of an aesthetic gimmick than a serious attempt to accommodate the religion of visitors and patients. Crispin Paine talks about the museums being mutual places of education for all (Paine, 99) . Paine states that museums have come to accept that they cannot remain neutral and should be explicit about the values they are trying to portray (Paine, 99). Although hospital sacred spaces do not have the same educational goals as a museum, the spaces can still teach us about the changing dynamics of religion in the United States. Originally the worship spaces were being used by Christians only because they were the majority. However, since the demographic has changed the Christians are no longer the only religion and to accommodate this rather than create separate worship spaces that are explicit in their accommodations the hospital decided to make a neutral place for all. Although cost effective, I wonder how well these religion neutral spaces work for a highly symbolic religion such as Judaism, Islam, or Christianity.        

1 C. Paine, Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties (New York, New York), 99.