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in si de ha lto n. co m O ak vi lle B ea ve r | T hu rs da y, D ec em be r 10 ,2 02 0 | 22 OAKVILLE 2525 Old Bronte Rd, Suite 110 905-842-4280 MILTON 725 Bronte Street S. 365-777-9777 Enjoy 2.5% Loyalty Points on all onLInE oRDERS EAT-IN/PIck-uP/DELIVERY www.triacafeandbakery.com Geographic restrictions apply Get the Toronto Star weekend home-delivery for just $399* AWEEK FOR12 MONTHS YOU'LL GET: • Saturday and Sunday home-delivery • Starweek Magazine print edition • Complimentary 7-day ePaper edition • Complimentary 7-day access to thestar.com website *Plus HST. This introductory offer is not available to existing Toronto Star subscribers. Save 40% off the newsstand rate for Saturday and Sunday delivery. This offer includes Starweek Magazine. The New York Times International Weekly or Book Review section are not included. This offer is for a 12 month term and includes complimentary access to thestar.com and the Toronto Star ePaper edition. 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View our subscriber agreement terms at www.thestar.com/ agreement. Toronto Star is committed to protecting your personal information. View our privacy policy at www.thestar.com/privacy. Offer expires January 31, 2021. SAVE 40% OFFTHE NEWSSTAND RATE SUBSCRIBE ONLINE: thestar.com/2daysave OR CALL: 416-367-4500 and quote code 2DAYSAVE for weekend home-delivery for 12 months Faith is what grounds Dr. Erica Roebbelen in the practice of medicine, which often connects her to some of Hamilton's most vulnerable. She is not only a family doctor in the city, but has been acting director of Hamilton's Shelter Health Network, and is passionate about "providing health care to Indigenous, under- resourced and new Cana- dians." Anyone in medicine and in front-line positions can feel overwhelmed at times, the Oakville native told interviewer Moira Brown during a virtual version of the annual Oak- ville Prayer Breakfast Dec. 2. When the world seems broken, "when there is an urgent sense of this is not the way the world should be .... and our efforts only go so far," Roebbelen said she takes a step back and looks at "the trajectory of where we know the world, and we know that history, is going as Christians. "My faith has been a re- ally important part of how I deal with this." It was the direct teach- ings of Christ in the Gospel that led her to want to work with the poor and the mar- ginalized, she said. "Christ taught us that the kingdom belongs to the least of these, to the poor, to the broken-hearted, to the oppressed .... He's also taught us that the kingdom will not be easy to enter for those of us who are privi- leged. In some ways I feel like, as a person who does have a lot of privilege, I need to align myself with the poor, with the needy; they're teaching me what the kingdom of God looks like ... ... I feel like I'm learning what it looks like to love the way Christ wants us to love through my work with those pa- tients." Through the sufferings of the most vulnerable, she finds amazing resil- ience -- people willing to trust although they've been given no reason to trust in the past -- and generosity, though they might not have much, she said. "I'm very privileged to be able to work with this population." For her own personal growth and development, Roebbelen is also taking her master of theological studies at the University of Toronto "in a very part- time way." "In medicine, the expe- rience of being with pa- tients who are sick and suf- fering has brought up so many questions that medi- cine does not have answers to, questions of chronic pain, questions of all sorts of different things about suffering. "It makes me want to in- terrogate those aspects of the human experience in ways other than the scien- tific method. To me, study- ing theology and the church's approach to some of these difficult issues, has been really rewarding and actually informative to my practice, not always in a direct way, but I do think that both things ac- tually inform each other." Entering medical school armed with a strong Christian faith, she had a sense "that it might be a bit of a battlefield, or I might have to be very close- lipped about my faith, and I think I've been really pleasantly surprised to ac- tually not feel that way. There are so many people of faith in the world of med- icine, not just Christian faith." Throughout the pan- demic and the grief, suffer- ing and loneliness it has unloaded, Roebbelen has had many encounters where she can only be "a listening ear; there's not a lot else I can offer, which also feels challenging be- cause as a physician you want to do something, you want to offer solutions. "It's certainly a practice in humility when we just don't know. The other thing that COVID brought up is our fear of uncertain- ty ... we're all creatures who crave definitive an- swers," she said. "As peo- ple of faith, hopefully we're people who are well equipped to sit with that uncertainty." GROUNDED IN FAITH, DEVOTED TO HEALING Dr. Erica Roebbelen was the guest speaker at a virtual version of the annual Oakville Prayer Breakfast. Screen Capture/Metroland KATHY YANCHUS kyanchus@metroland.com COMMUNITY LOCAL DOCTOR PASSIONATE ABOUT CARING FOR SOCIETY'S LEAST PRIVILEGED