Profile by isabella kuhn

From Actress to Chaplain Sixteen year old Mariah Callison had been sitting backseat of her parents car. She was driving back from Seattle, Washington. Feeling annoyed at her parents, Mariah flees out of the car as

A Profile on

Mariah Callison

they stop for lunch. She tramples through out the woods with anger. Pine trees everywhere as she finds herself in the middle of a perfect round circle of pines.

She falls to the ground.

After an unknown amount of time Mariah finds herself in a zen, peaceful mind states and returns back to the car, ready to drive back. As she gets in the car, she noticed a poking

By Isabella Kuhn feeling on the sleeve of her shirt. She looks down to see a piece of the tree was stuck to her. “It was just the most powerful spiritual moment,�(Mariah Callison) Mariah tells me as she remembers the tender moments of tree.

Trees are a big part of her life. Its roots grows below the earth. We cannot see the connecting paths it takes, but we can everly feel their presence. Trees grow up the sky, branches sprawling upward in many different ways. Trees are constantly growing. Green leaves that would eventually turn brown and drop to the ground so it could sprout new leaves. Providing shade for those who need it. Trees are known as the spiritual connection of 1

the underworld, to the surface, and heavens.

Hospital chaplains are becoming a rarity. In fact only 54% of hospitals have a chaplaincy services.

These services are less common to non-church based and rural hospitals. Between 1993 and 2003 church-operated hospitals were likely to drop chaplaincy programs and services than chaplaincy programs today.

Voluntary chaplains are most common throughout hospitals. Employment of hospital chaplains are mainly supported financially by local religious organizations. Less commonly through hospitals.

With the economically drop in 2008, 54%

of Americans’ household incomes have not recovered at all from the recession.

Five years after the economy dropped, the most serious crisis since the Great Depression, 63% of American economic system is

dent chaplain at John Muir Hospital. After graduating seminary, Mariah joined a year long residency where they help train ministers to be chaplins. The residency is part education, but a majority of her time helping patients with care under supervision.

She reports to an individual supervisor to talk about different situations she encounters. Everyday she gets a list of patients and gets to knock on their door and offer her presence.

Mariah has seen all sorts of reactions towards her work. She often has to explain to the patients

“It was just the

most powerful

spirtitual

m o m e n t � not secure today compared to before the 2008 market crash. Due to an increased amount of job loss, going back to school to switch your major is becoming more common.

Mariah works as a resi-

that nothing is wrong, she’s here to talk, not because you’re sick. Many patients are happy to someone just come in and sit with them.

They are generally grateful for her presence. Even the staff members seems appreciate her; Saying that they couldn’t do their jobs without chaplains.

The rely on chaplains to help debrief difficult and stressful situations.

Straight out of high school Mariah heads down South to L.A. She had been active in the theater in her high school and decided to pursue acting as a career. She’d even acted in community theater plays before she decided to move. “I was pretty sure

take night classes to so she could be certified in respiratory care.

After some time working as a respiratory therapist in a hospital, Mariah begins to start thinking about working in a chaplaincy position. She cared more about the people’s emotional life than their physical illness.

By this time Mariah was married and had two children, Maleah and Morgan. An opportunity came up to do youth ministry at a church where she lived, and ratory therapist. She mainly gladly took it. She spent about nine years organizdelivered medication to ing sunday school, youth people at home. At some group events, service trips, point after loads of audiand camps. Mariah needed tions, Mariah comes to an empithony. This isn’t going to go farther though. She to work. Mariah decided to decided it was final-

I was going to be the next Meryl Streep,” (Mariah Callison) Mariah laughs as she thought of her acting career. As she arrived in L.A. and starting to audition, she realized he needed a stable job. Mariah found work as a home care respi-

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ly time to go back to school and enrolled in seminary.

After commuting 150 miles each way for four years, she graduated last May from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

Now working as a hospital chaplain.

During Mariah’s time at Pacific School of Religion, she got the opportunity to take a class that explores different cultures and their religions.

This class gave her an op-

portunity to travel to India, where she traveled around the country experiencing and embracing the culture.

As she traveled through India she spent some time in an Ashraum, which is a religious community that practices Orthodox Christian traditions with Hindu rituals. An extremely unusual combination in India. Inside the monastery contained long periods of silence. She sat on the floor and would eat her food with her fingers completely in silence. Mariah reveals to

me it was one of her farthest away and different experiences. She slept in a small room, just the right space for two cots, called cells. Even the bathroom was long walk outside of the monastery.

Admittedly, Mariah had a hard time adjusting to this. She felt out of place. Her classmates on the trip seemingly fell into a zen place of routine and love. Mariah didn’t get it. She tried meditating, drawing, and journaling.

Nothing seemed to work, until finally she found a tree. She finally understood what the last three

days meant. In an instant she went from hating the monastery to wanting to go back to the monastery.

“There was this incredible tree, that and the combination of the meditation, maybe just the spirit of the place, I just found myself and found god in that situation and ended up really falling in love with it,” (Mariah Callison) Mariah describes as she finally

found the tree.

Although after her residency is over at the end of August, the future is unclear.

Mariah stays hopeful, she

has many goals

she still wants to accomplish. She thinks about writing, making lesson plans or an autobiography of her spiritual journey.

“I’ve always felt pretty blessed that i was very clearly on the right path. Its been hard and i’ve second guessed whether i have the ability to do it, to do the hard work.

But i’ve always felt that i was on the right track.”

(Mariah Callison)

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