Elephants have always captured human imagination—not just for their size and power, but for their emotional depth, family bonds, and surprising spiritual parallels to our own human experience. From the savannas of Africa to the dense forests of Asia, elephants—though separated by distance and species—share striking similarities and differences that mirror the diversity and commonality we find in spiritual care and chaplaincy.
African elephants, with their large fan-like ears, broader bodies, and wrinkled gray skin, differ from their Asian relatives, who are smaller, have rounded ears, smoother skin, and sometimes bear a lighter hue. Yet despite these outward differences, both species are deeply social, emotionally intelligent, and bound by a connection to family and memory. One of the most haunting and beautiful behaviors shared by elephants is their journey back to their birthplace, or sometimes to a “graveyard” of sorts, sensing their own approaching death. There, they prepare to lay down their immense bodies, as if longing to return to the sacred ground where life first began.
There is something profoundly spiritual about this act—a pull toward home, to origin, to completion. In many ways, chaplains witness a similar journey in the lives of those they serve. Patients nearing the end of life often find themselves retracing their emotional or spiritual roots, longing for closure, seeking home—whether that home is a place, a memory, or a reconciliation with God or loved ones.
But the connection between elephants and chaplains runs deeper still. Just as elephants are known to be present in ways that are sometimes felt more than seen, the metaphor of the “elephant in the room” speaks to the silent, unspoken realities that hover in patient rooms, classrooms, and spiritual care settings. In CPE students often encounter these “elephants”—unspoken grief, unresolved family conflicts, fear of death, unaddressed trauma, or even personal biases—that shape interactions and care, whether they acknowledge them or not.
Sometimes chaplains, like elephants, sense what is unseen—grief that is not spoken, anger that simmers beneath polite words, the quiet desperation in a patient’s eyes. And just as elephants approach their dying kin with reverence and care, chaplains are invited to step toward those emotional and spiritual “elephants” with curiosity, compassion, and courage.
The challenge—and the gift—of chaplaincy is learning to recognize the elephants we carry and the ones that stand quietly in the rooms we enter. What remains unspoken can be the very thing that needs tending. And it is in facing those elephants, naming them, and allowing space for their presence, that true spiritual care emerges.
Like the elephant, the chaplain is called to be present—to witness, to accompany, and sometimes to help another return home, however that journey looks. Both are creatures of memory, of connection, and of deep listening. And perhaps the greatest lesson the elephant teaches us is this: that in the sacred work of holding space for others, there is room for grief, for wonder, for the unspoken—and for the quiet, powerful presence that makes it safe to face what we might rather avoid.
