Nick Zehner, MDiv ‘16

“Before, I focused on how religion divided people, how it oppressed people, how it created otherness. And here at HDS we’re not a glossing over differences, but I think there’s more of a focus on how religion can really enrich peoples’ lives.”

Nick Zehner, originally from Indiana, served in the Peace Corps for three years teaching elementary-level reading courses and upper-level sex education in the Dominican Republic before coming to Harvard Divinity School. During his time at HDS, he completed field education placements locally as a chaplain at Spalding Cambridge Hospital and internationally in a malnourished children’s program in the Congo. Nick graduated with a master of divinity degree in May 2016 and will begin medical school at Stanford this fall.

Family Matters

I’m a Hoosier. The town I grew up in was a big automotive town and everything after NAFTA tanked. My dad’s job wasn’t affected, but a lot of my friends’ dads’ jobs were. I think between my time in first grade and high school, the city lost 15,000 people. It was a ton of people, and it was all people that could leave, not the people that didn’t have the funds to. I think seeing that kind of triggered some sensitivity to the fact that not everybody has the lifestyle that you see on TV, like Family Matters or Home Improvement.

Christian College

After high school I went to a small Christian college. I never figured out what that meant, like with that word “Christian” in front. But it meant something. It meant we went to chapel twice a week. I went in thinking I might become a pastor, and then I didn’t become a pastor. I studied chemistry and philosophy. I became disenchanted. I grew up in an Evangelical Christian home, and that was what the school was about. It was like the mascot. Jesus was the mascot of that school—but a version of Jesus I didn’t particularly care for. I took this class about images of Jesus, and we looked at how different communities have appropriated Jesus for their ends. We even turned the lens in on the school.

From Peace Corps to Divinity School

But by the end of college, probably my junior year, I was completely done. I was done. I was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. Completely gone, just not interested in anything to do with religion. So I went into the Peace Corps and I was really content with just doing—trying to do, I should say—nice things for other people. It’s pretty hard to do. Actually, I didn’t realize that when I went in. You think you’re going to do something great. But really not so much—you help a couple people out, maybe a little bit.

I was in the Dominican Republic in a mountain coffee community. Most of the people picked coffee and avocados. I’d never eaten an avocado before moving there. Aguacate, the word for avocado in Spanish, is what an avocado is to me. I ate a ton of those, and I ate a lot of mangoes, too.

While I was there I lived with a family for a while, and then I moved out into a little place just down the road from them. I was there just shy of three years, and I didn’t like the churches there at all. I really hated them. Tried to steer clear of them. So probably for the majority of that time I had no interest in anything that could be connected to a place like divinity school. And then I went back home and had lunch with a philosophy professor that I had in undergrad. I was kind of complaining about how the community I had lived in had a lot of brain drain. But the professor encouraged me to see things differently.

So I read a couple of my favorite theology books from college. Have you ever heard of Bultmann? I love this guy. Bultmann changed my life. He talks about demonthologizing the New Testament. His book reminded me that there are more access points to the tradition that I grew up in. Then I read Letters and Papers From Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, and that book really affected me.

That started my path to divinity school. I applied to HDS and a couple other schools, but only the schools in the country that aren’t affiliated with a particular tradition. I was surprised to get accepted. I couldn’t check my internet, the email, so my dad would check my email account and he was like, “You got an email!” And then he opened it and was like, “You got in!” He was really happy. That was a weird way to find out about it.

Beliefs

In college, a professor talked about a sermon that I’ve never been able to find. He said if there really was a hell, and God sent people to hell, that Jesus would go be in hell with them. And he said that’s Christian love. Like, when you go with the people that are most cast out. And I thought—that’s something I could buy into.

I know a lot less than I used to know. I think I know a lot, lot less, which is uncomfortable. I’m pretty certain on a few points on what I don’t think God is. I don’t believe in some kind of embodied God somewhere that I could go touch; that belief went away a long time ago. But it’s difficult for me to conceive of a life worth living that didn’t have some kind of plane of divinity in it. I probably wouldn’t go that far to talk about God on a throne. In life there seems to be something more than just the parts. Like, when we add it all together there seems to be something else going on.

Figuring Things Out at Divinity School

At HDS, I’ve figured out the power of the good stuff in religion. I think I had always focused on the negative things, and I think I had done that so much that I had become skeptical of any good in it at all. And I think the great tilt toward secularism in our country today is because of that. Now I think so much of the good things, like Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a deeply committed man to his religion but was incredibly socially engaged. I don’t think those two could be divided for him.

Before, I focused on how religion divided people, how it oppressed people, how it created otherness. And here at HDS we’re not a glossing over differences, but I think there’s more of a focus on how religion can really enrich peoples’ lives. Like my mom, she’s a deeply faithful woman, and there’s a reason that she is, because she gets something out of it. I didn’t get anything out of it for a long time. And that’s why I went away. But I feel like at HDS there’s a real focus on positive aspects, both individually and socially—probably even more so socially. This is a socially engaged place, but there are a lot of people doing individual ministry too.

Field Education

Right now I’m a chaplain at Spalding Cambridge Hospital. It’s for people who are going to be in the hospital a long time but are too sick to go to a nursing home. It’s significantly more challenging than I anticipated. Just being around that sick of a population. As a chaplain there’s nothing I could do to fix things. The physicians can’t fix the people or fix their problems. These are people that are never going to walk again, these are people that are never going to breathe on their own again, these are people that have a limited horizon for life. In other areas of my life my strategy has been: If you’ve got a problem, let me fix your problem. In chaplaincy, there’s none of that. You just cannot fix peoples’ problems. I can’t make this woman walk again. I can’t give this man a couple extra months to live. So that has been a challenge.

I also think in a place where a lot of people don’t have religious connections or affiliations it’s been interesting to try to meet people where they’re at and be useful. There’s been a lot of, “I don’t want any of that,” like, “Get out.” That kind of hurts my feelings; just personally it’s tough. Just that tension. I wish people would be open a little bit more. But it’s not about me; it’s about them. But my time at Spalding Cambridge Hospital has been one of the high points of my degree, because it’s about as rubber to the road as there is. It’s tough, but I feel like there’s a huge learning curve to be able to get caught up to speed. But I definitely feel stretched. I feel very incapable and inadequate at times. I guess that’s why its field education, because if I didn’t feel that way then I wouldn’t be learning anything.

Presence

I took a class called “Compassionate Care of the Dying” with Professor Cheryl Giles and Chris Berlin. It’s a Buddhist course. My first instinct when I see suffering is to turn back and run away or pull back—both because I don’t want suffering in my life and because in many instances I am incapable of alleviating the suffering. In this course, they talked about being present for other peoples’ suffering, and not only being present but actually leaning in to the suffering.

In my “Meaning Making” class, we went through this book called The Art of Theological Reflection, where you take meanings from your traditions and try to connect them to experiences of suffering. And I got this idea of Jesus. who was someone who really never avoided suffering, both in his own life and in the lives of others. And that was a very powerful image for me. And so it’s something I’ve carried around with me at Spalding Hospital.

There’s a gentlemen who was just so discouraged. A lot of these people come in and think it’s going to be a week, and then they’re there nine months or two years. And their lives get turned upside down. This man was just so unhappy. He was far away from his family, and he was so tired and in pain and couldn’t breathe on his own. I tried to put myself in his shoes. I would have been miserable. When I was with him I didn’t even say that much. I just sat there and listened to him, and I prayed with him. I’ve seen him four times now and it’s not like everything’s perfect now, but I feel like our relationship is developing and I’m excited to see where it goes. At the very least, it seemed like he felt some relief in being able to share that with somebody. He’s Catholic, so we prayed some of those prayers together. So that was a really positive experience for me. He keeps asking me back.