By: Rabbi Howard A Cohen (Deputy Chief, ret.) AFM Virtual Training Coordinator
I am a rabbi. For those not familiar with term, a rabbi is a person trained in Jewish law, ritual, tradition and the chief religious official of a synagogue. I’ve served congregations in Alaska, Massachusetts, Vermont, and I was a prison chaplain for five years. I was also an active firefighter for twenty years. I entered the fire service world as a department chaplain, and I retired as a deputy chief. For my well-being and spiritual health I am now an instructor for Africa Fire Mission. I share this about me so you understand that I’ve been exploring matters of spiritual health in diverse settings, especially the fire service world, for a long time. This does not make me an authority, by any means. It does, however, afford me a certain perspective on the topic of spirituality and the fire service.
Spirituality is one of those words that everyone thinks they know the meaning of but have a hard time defining. This is not surprising since how we understand spirituality is highly subjective. So for the purpose of this article, I am defining spirituality as a sense of meaningful connection to something beyond or bigger than ourselves.
For many of us in the fire service what we do is not merely a job, it is a vocation. We do what we do, and we face the challenges that we face, because it is a calling. We are called to help others and we are self-sacrificing as we do this. We train to save lives under extreme conditions. Every time we respond to an emergency we are answering a “higher” calling.
We may not think of what we are doing as spiritual work, but in the eyes of those we help during the worst hours of their lives, our work must be spiritual because to them we are practically divine agents. Moreover, though we tend not to use words like spirituality, higher calling and holy when we are thinking and talking about our work, in my humble opinion, the fire service is nothing less than holy work.
I’ve also observed that beyond the “holy” nature of our life saving work, there is something spiritual in the way we bond/connect with our colleagues. We trust our lives to one another. The lives of those who we are called upon to aid depend on our ability to work together. And at the end of a day of soul wrenching experiences, we cry, hug, and support one another. We do this because we have a spiritual connection to one another.
In the fire service there is a lot of talk these days about emotional wellbeing. What’s the difference between emotional wellbeing and spiritual health? I suggest that emotional wellbeing is about cultivating a frame of mind, which can broaden your outlook and help you to connect to something larger or beyond yourself. Emotional wellbeing involves accepting and exploring who you are, enhancing your inner resources to reduce stress and maintain a positive outlook on life, and awareness and acceptance of the way that you feel. On the other hand, spirituality and spiritual health are about actively seeking meaningful connections with something larger or beyond yourself which can result in positive emotions and personal growth. At the risk of oversimplification, another way to explain the difference is that spirituality starts with looking outward, while emotional wellbeing starts with looking inward. Nevertheless, they are deeply integrated and, in fact, reinforce one another.
Unfortunately, the daily challenges of being in the fire service take their toll on us. Newness and adrenaline only carries us so far. Eventually after so many encounters with fires, car crashes, accidents, damaged bodies, and death what began as a calling starts to give way to the feeling that it is just a grunt of a job. What is happening is that the demand of the profession is slowly chipping away at our spiritual health. The nature of being a firefighter not only brings us into direct contact with much trauma and tragedy, but the need to act, not feel, requires that we put our feelings aside.
Over time, as we become habituated to not processing our emotions, our emotional wellbeing and spiritual health begin to suffer. Left unchecked, this leads to “burn out” and/or secondary traumatic stress that will impact our health and relationships. Our work will start to feel meaningless. The connections to our colleagues will start to fray. We are literally becoming dispirited.
As dire as this sounds, there is good news. There are numerous ways to regain and sustain spiritual health. Here are several practices you can incorporate into your daily life to strengthen both your spiritual well being and emotional health. While I can’t say any one of these is necessarily better than the other, I’ve listed them in order of my personal preference.
1) Develop a strong sense of gratitude: This can be as simple as making a point of expressing gratitude every day to the many people with whom you come into contact. Take a little time every day to reflect on all of the work others do for you. Express gratitude for them to yourself. Let them know how grateful you are as well.
2) Embrace rituals: The life of a firefighter is filled with important daily safety tasks that need to be done. Embrace these tasks as sacred rituals. As you go through your checklist, visualize how this connects you to your colleagues and what might happen to them if you didn’t do this task right.
3) Foster empathy for others. Develop empathy by paying close attention to the people who surround you. Expand the empathy you feel for those you know to encompass those you haven't met.
4) Invest in your Relationships: Invest time and energy into the people who love you and whom you love.
5) Meditate and/or Pray: Work on your spiritual health by questioning, affirming, and revising your beliefs. Drill down on troubling thoughts, don't hide them from yourself. Share them with someone you trust, and discuss your concerns together.
Throughout this article I’ve used terminology that is evocative of organized religion. While spirituality may incorporate elements of religion, they are not the same thing, nor are they entirely distinct from one another. Religion is about following a prescribed set of rules, traditions, or beliefs. Spirituality is entirely subjective and can be defined in just about any way you want. Some people choose to express their spirituality by keeping the aspects of traditional religion that they enjoy, like the practice of prayer or a belief in God. This is fine. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to seek out spiritual meaning. It will be different for each individual.
About the Author
Howard retired from the Bennington Fire Dept as a deputy chief. He spends a lot of time writing and teaching various aspects of firefighting. He religiously works out every morning, doing a mix of high intensity interval training (HiiT), dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells and cycling. When he is not doing something for the fire service or working out he is the rabbi of two small congregations.