小小的举动,深深的感动

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StoryCorps is made possible through funding from State Farm—the Atlantic philanthropies and the Corporation for public broadcasting, and most importantly, through the support of participants and listeners like you nationwide.

In this episode of the StoryCorps' podcast, we'll hear from Janet Lutz.

Janet worked as a hospital chaplain(牧师) for 30 years and just before she retired, Janet came to StoryCorps with a friend, Lori Armstrong, to talk about her career—ministering the hospital staff. "One of the things we do is we go around and bless the hands of all the people who working in the hospital. I go around and find the people in the basement and people who are cleaning the toilets and people who are serving the food. And when I go around finding people wherever they are, they are often startled (震惊的)and then really touched by it. As am I."

And in the basement of the hospital in a windowless room, they pack the surgical(外科手术的) instruments before surgery. Each surgery has a list of all the instruments they need and at the top of the list is the patient’s name and the technician is given this list, and it’s up to her or to him to pack these instruments and take them up to the OR(Operation Room) for the paticular surgery.

One of the women told me that as she packed these instruments and she knew the patient's name, she would pray for that patient and that she had been doing that for 40 years.

And I thought no one knows that she is doing this, here she is, a person who has been working at that hospital for longer than most of us, who is doing this incredibly important job that has be done precisely and carefully.

As she is doing this, she is praying for the patients she will never meet, and the patients that she will never see, she will never know the outcome, she only knows that she is helping to make their surgery possible.

And then I found out that most of them did it. You know people work really hard and are so essential but often not seen by patients and families, they just assume these people are all doing their work and they don't realize how rich their lives are and how rich their stories are.

What would you say to your colleagues that you are leaving behind?

Carefully tend to those kinds of moments, to not brush them off, to let them happen, to not be so busy that you miss it. Sometimes just sitting and listening to somebody else is very very important.

That’s Janet Luzt and Lori Armstrong in Atlanta Georgia. You can read Janet’s story in the first ever StoryCorps book–Listening Is an Act of Love, out in paperback now. Learn more about the book and make reservation for your own interview at storycorps.net.

Major support for StoryCorps is provided by State Farm and the Corporation for public broadcasting. Our podcasters are supported by the Fetzer Institute as part of its Campaign for Love and Forgiveness. Learn more at loveandforgive.org.

Our StoryCorps interviews are housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and you can catch StoryCorps on the radio Fridays on NPR's morning edition.

For the StoryCorps podcast, this is Michael Garofalo. Thanks for listening.