 This is State Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. I should join her, and we are navigating the journey. Navigating the journey is dedicated to exploring the options and choices for the end of life care, and to assist people to talk about their wishes. It's time to transform our culture so we shift from not talking about dying, but to talking about it. It's time to share the way we want to live our lives at the end of our lives. It's time to communicate about what kind of care we want, and what we don't want for ourselves and for our families. We believe that the place to begin this conversation is not, not in the intensive care unit, but together we can explore the various paths to life's ending. Together we can make these difficult conversations easier. Together we can make sure that our own wishes and those of our loved ones are expressed and respected. So if you're ready, we ask you, navigate the journey. Medical aid in dying in Hawaii, it's 20 years since Oregon's death with dignity law went into effect. Those of us who are committed to seeing medical aid in dying in Hawaii can work to see us achieve the success that has been seen in Oregon and beyond. Oregon's law paved the way for authorization in five other states in the District of Columbia as well. We still have work to do to ensure that medical aid in dying in Hawaii finds support in the 2018 election. Legislative session, our goal here in Hawaii, as it was 20 years ago, is to have this bill allow people at the end of life to make their own choice, not mine, their own, not to have a doctor decide on terminal sedation. We want doctors and institutions to honor the beauty and meaning of life as much at the beginning as it is in the end. And so today we are going to talk to my dear, dear friends, Sister Joan Shatfield, Amerinol Nan, a living treasure of Hawaii, and her many, many years of education and community service and advocacy in Hawaii. Currently, Sister Joan shares the Commission on Public Life and Ethics in Interfaith Alliance. How's that? That's a good one. Sister Joan, I am so delighted and honored to have you with us today. My pleasure, my pleasure. You have had history and the hutzpah, the courage to stand up to the Catholic Church on any number of issues and remain in the Catholic Church. That's right, that's right. That's very important. Yeah. Those prepositions are very valuable. So that we look at their stance and they've been very public about this. Yet, now you correct me if I'm wrong, yet my understanding is in the Bible it says that we have free will that God created us with this really wonderful thing called free will. We get to choose right or wrong. The Bible teaches us what is right. We get to decide because we were given that option. How is it that the Church says that we don't have that option, that they make the decision? How do we get there? What happened? Well, you know, there's the story of the umbrella that it only works when it's up. You know, unless you use it as a cane, which is okay. But if you're going to put an umbrella up and you put it over you, whatever it is that you're preventing comes down outside of you. So the umbrella concept of theology is not spoken of usually in those terms because people like very serious theological principles. The principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition are fundamentally within the umbrella. So you're standing there and the other stuff goes outside, but you're kept if you want dry or if you want cool or whatever you want the umbrella to do for you. So for people to understand why different religious traditions, and that would go from A to Z, from Animus to Zoroastrians, you don't care which one of those along the way. They each have their understanding of what their umbrella does for them. Now the anguish has come recently, partially because of the way people communicate now and because we can talk so openly like in a medium like this and a lot of people hear it. They forget that the legitimacy of the umbrella is for the person underneath it. It can't keep those people dry or cool. So therefore when the Catholics or evangelicals or anybody else takes a position with a group and then they say everybody should take this position, say wait a minute, no, no, no. You should say, you know, if you're a member of my church, my church is saying this and if you want to be a member of my church, you have to tangle with that concept in my church. And things do change. People forget that, you know, look at what's happened to celibacy, it's going up, it's going down, it's going up and maybe it's going to go down with this pope, I don't know. But Peter had a mother-in-law, so come on, you can't get a mother-in-law unless you married a wife. Yes. Therefore we must have had not only married clergy but married popes for God's sake. Well yeah, Pope Boniface had a family in the Vatican. Right. You know, in other words, you think in terms of the internal. So that's, if you get that basic principle straight and then you take the topic into the legislature, which is for the people, then that's where the rubber hits the road. That's where the gravity is hard because probably the people who want to object to something really think they're objecting for themselves, but really they're trying to object it for everybody. And I say, you know, take a look at that umbrella again, it's such a simple image, it's such a simple thing. The umbrella has to work where you are in that community. Now once you're a member of a society, we went through the same thing with the GLBTQ legislation and gender equity. And I was with somebody not too long ago that they had just decided after 26 years of fidelity they were going to get married. And I said, okay, let's get real about this. Why did you now decide to get married? And he said, well, it's going to save us 32,000 on taxes. Where do the taxes come from? Government. Government. Yes. And this guy happens to be a practicing Catholic. He's right up there in the front view of the church every day or every week. I don't know about the day, but in other words, he's a member of the community. But he says, no, I'm going to do this. 32,000 is worth it. So, okay, so with that example, now let me get to the topic at hand. What has happened has been here. We have another entity here. We normally have the churches saying things. We not only have the government struggling with how to do this, but we also have the medical profession, which has had kind of an ownership of death and dying they have. Thank you kindly. And in fact, hospice was the first real breakthrough where people understood that it was perfectly legitimate to have palliative treatment at the time of death. That there was your first step. That was like how you got them closer to the umbrella. So I think we're moving towards this, but I say, and as I've said before, the real issue is what tools do you, the individual, what tools do you have to face the end time? And I'm willing to say that the people who have the tools of their religion, they're not going to use, right, the death. They do have no tradition or who have been hurt so that they can't stay in the tradition that they were born into or even converted into. I call myself the chaplain of the nuns, not N-U-N-S, but N-O-N-E-S. The people who are nuns because they've been so hurt by organized religion that sometimes has what I call it's P-A moments, which I suppose I shouldn't say, but if you don't know what P-A means, I say it means the pompous ass moments. I'm going to remember that a P-A moment. I have to watch my language on television. But seriously, when you get right down to it, nobody knows anybody who's going to live forever. That's a given. That's a given. Nobody knows what it is that keeps them alive because what gave them their birth is still a mystery when they're getting ready to die. You know, those 23 grams. You remember the movie 23 grams? The almost dead body and the already dead body, there was only 23 grams different. Whether they were 100 pounds, 200 pounds, 300 pounds, 500 pounds, 600 pounds, 23 grams. That's a little over now. What was that? That was the spirit. The spirit. Well, yeah, maybe. But what's spirit? Well, we don't know. That's the whole point. So I say the most important part of this concept and this argument, this discussion is to keep it all open. And so when I say yes to come on to your program, they say, oh, you're going to go and you're going to speak. I said, you know, would you listen to the program? I hope you're listening. Because that's where we learn. That's where we stretch. That's where we stretch. And so isn't it interesting that in Oregon where the people are in a program where they and their additional doctors have designated that they're at end of lifetime and they are given the pills that they could take? Okay. Right. That only 6% of the people use the pills. The others have the pills there because why it is there? I call it their security blanket. They're too bad they could. But you know, they're just about ready. Oh, God, I can't take this one more day. And then the little grandchild comes in. Oh, grant that, you know, whatever. We don't know what these circumstances of extension are for the person in conflict. But for some people, having the pills there for them is what I have in my Catholic heritage of God's grace. Those are my pills. Okay. All right. We have to take a break and we will be back in just a moment. Good. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We're back with my wonderful friend, Sister Joan Chatfield. And I have told everybody that when I was in the convent, if nuns were like Sister Joan, I would be a nun. I just love... Don't tell your children that. Yeah. They're all grown and have children of their own. Yeah. But the ability to be an activist, the ability to stand up for what is people's choice. Not your choice, but what the people's choice. So we've asked Sister Joan to come back and talk to us some more about the evolution in the church for the last 2,000 years. Well, see, you know, evolution by its name always raises a few hackles. People think of, if you're too much of an evolutionist, you're busy with the monkeys and the chimpanzees. No, we're not going there. We're not going there. That's not it. No. The following is the concept that the creator, nameless, genderless, immensely powerful, immensely creative. The creator gets named in many groups by different names. But the phenomenon of a creator is the creator wasn't created. And they say, oh, you people just made it up. You know, the enemies of believers say that. And I said, well, you know, maybe you think that, but if that's really true, not such a bad idea. I mean, when you think, and for example, this has nothing to do with the topic, but it has to do with how we learn, how we learn, how we change. Dr. Hubbell put the telescope up, was vilified, was ridiculed, and a fellow human being said, you know, come on, Dr. Hubbell. I've got these people you need to talk to, and he took them out to high schools and colleges and got them to talk about the thing in neutral. These kids didn't know whether he was being vilified. Okay. And one day, a sophomore in a college said, Dr. Hubbell, have you ever thought of doing da-da-da-da-da-da? And he says four or five things. And Dr. Hubbell went, young man, I think you have. I think that might be the idea. I'm going to go home and work on it right away. He did, and with that spark, it changed, and the thing went for not 20 years, but 28 years. It's just now retired. He's already in heaven. So I made up this little scenario, and I said, what happened when Dr. Hubbell met the creator? And I said, you know what? He said, you wouldn't believe all the things that are out there. You know, we've got that machine, and it's out there. It's light years beyond. Light years beyond. It's going to take him 60 years to even figure out what's beyond there. It is just absolutely amazing, the creation of it. Do you know all that? He says to God, and God says, yeah. End of story. No, we didn't put all that stuff up there. Well, we did not put medical profession. Nobody made the medical profession do what it does. It does marvelous things. I'm sitting here as a miracle because somebody found out what was wrong and fixed it. So, all right. Now, if they find out they can't fix it, the medical profession has a hard time letting go of that decision. They keep thinking one more time, one more treatment, one more this, one more that. We'll do it, and you don't want to know something? It's appropriate that somebody, and so the people who say, you know, I'm not going to do that. The doctors get really upset. Yeah, they do. It's like saying, you know, I'm going to go on a starvation diet if you're in prison. The logic means I'm not going to participate in your stuff anymore. So I think that's part. I don't think the medical profession has been drawn into the discussion appropriately, so they're on the defensive too much. So we need to have some more programs with doctors because the doctors are fine treating the people who want to be treated. But when somebody doesn't want to be treated, they get really, they get hoo-hoo. Well, and now, though, what is legal is terminal sedation. So if the hospice nurse calls the doctor and she says, the Mrs. here is in really bad shape. She's suffering, so the doctor says, well, give her some morphine. And then they do. And then a couple of hours later, the nurse calls back and he says, give her more. And they give her more and they give her more. This has been going on since morphine was invented. Yes. So now she's gone. Yes. So the doctor made the decision at the end of life, not the patient. And I think that's where we get stuck. You're right. They don't want to let go of that power. The doctors have been treated like they are God. MD. Yes. Mighty DD. Oh. Okay. But yes, that's right. And so for them to let go and have the patient say, this is what I want, or this is what I don't want. That's hard for them. Yeah. Especially if they haven't had a relationship with the patient. If they've had a relationship with it, it probably is easier. But the ones that get to take care of this patient at end of lifetimes. Yeah. Because you think that if a person has terminal cancer, they've had this doctor for a long time. You would think that has gotten them through all of the stages of the cancer. And so there's, I think there's a different relationship there. Then like you say, some doctor that just comes in at the end. Yeah. And also look at what's happened with cancer used to be the big C. And it was people didn't even want to use the word. Yes. They didn't want to use the word for tuberculosis. They didn't want to use the word for plagues. I mean, we tend to go, we didn't want to use the word AIDS, you know. We're moving. We're moving. There was progress. Yes, progress. My first cancer, the doctor said, oh, it's the big C. I said the big C. What was that? Yeah. And then he said, oh, and then he just walked out the room. Yeah. He couldn't, he couldn't say it. And it hasn't been that long. I spent 30 some years, but we'd come along. It's an eye flash in the history of medicine. It is. So that's where learning history and pulling out of history, the insights that happen to help people along and why they made the rules they did. Those kinds of things help, I think, as we move towards better understanding. At least that's why I stay in the game. I don't want to, I don't want to abdicate my position as, what a wonderful position you have that, that your, your love for the community and your activism within the community and your willingness to take a stand is beautiful. It is just lovely. We just did a little program of videotaping Sister Rosario Daly, the one sister that I live with, a 94-year-old marionole sister who talks about, well, I'm happy to be alive, but if God wants me tomorrow, that's okay. Or down the road. But in the meantime, I'm doing whatever. Her attitude towards death is so beautiful. She's a patient of Dr. Kozak and Strom. No more surgery. No more. They're not going to fix the hard thing, which they could do except she's a bad patient with no surgery. They're not going to fix it. You know, oh, I don't need it. I'm fine. I'm just fine. Thank you. I'm just like, I'm going slow. I'm not going as fast as I did before. She's teaching me what to do. I'm only 85. I mean, come on. You're a child by comparison. Yeah. I feel that way, that I have enjoyed these 80 years. I have enjoyed every minute of it, the ups, the downs, the ins and outs. Yeah. And when the time comes. That's it. That's it. And with my sense of adventure, I know there's something else out there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's always a pleasure to spend this time with you. So, you know, before the end of the session, we're going to ask you to come back. During the session, we're going to ask you to testify. You said, you know, Della. Bellotti. At all? Yeah. So, will you tell her that it's okay to allow other people? Yeah. I do that carefully only because I am a practicing member of the Catholic Church, and sometimes they manage to get 8,000 people out in the year and screaming, hollering and yelling. So, I didn't publicly testify for the GLBTQ thing, but what I did do was I wrote an op-ed piece. And that, thanks to Carolyn Galoyu, who's an activist in another sense in the gay issue, founder of PFLAG, she sent a hard copy of that to every legislator a week before the session. And I've had many of them say that that logic helped them to understand. Okay. Good. Then whatever is better, you know. Fine. That would be wonderful. An op-ed piece would be fabulous. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. Yes. All right. Again, thank you so much for coming, and we will see you soon. Whatever. Aloha. It's been a pleasure being with you today.