The End

Well folks, I'm done. Last year on June 15th I began a year long CPE residency as a hospital chaplain at Spartanburg Regional Hospital. Here on June 11th 2010 I leave the hospital for the last time as an employee. The End.

It's been a long year, a short year, and eventful year, a tough year, a year full of learning and new experiences. I dare say, this year has shaped the kind of person I am, the kind of life I will lead. I've been challenged in ways I didn't even see coming, and I've learned things I didn't know I needed to know. And best of all, I've gotten a lot, I mean a lot, of good blog posts from this experience.

And that's what CPE is: an experience. The strange part is, many of you out there still don't know what CPE is. And I still can't explain it; but, I can tell you some of the things I've done this year and how many times I've done them.

I was on call 60 times. That's two months sleeping away from home. I made ~2,600 total visits this year. Approx. 120 were deaths, 107 were traumas. I helped about 30 folks with advanced directives.

I sat with people sad people, counseled with grieving people and spent time with countless people on the worst days of their lives. How could anyone enjoy this work? I don't know, but I love it.

This year I have learned about my inner-self and found God in that deep sometimes dark place within me. I've learned to manage my own feelings/emotions so that I can better serve others to deal with their own. This part of the training is priceless. I've wrestled with my own inner-deamons and learned how my family of origin impacts me everyday.

I have read 19 books, written countless weekly self-reflection papers, 20 virbatim accounts, 106 blog posts, sat under 5 greuling committees evaluating me, cried a lot, authored over 60 pages of theology with my sister, read article after article on topics ranging from ethnic diversity to theological reflection to dream interpretation to how people respond pschologically during crisis just to name a few.

I've bonded with Vicki, who taught me that my voice is valuable. She showed me how to honor other people listening and listening well. Her inner drive to get things done is inspiring, and she is an example of trustworthiness. She honored our relationship enough to tell me she was angry with me, and I thank her for her constant gift of resoucefullness.

I've gained a new friend in Erin who puts a smile on your face whether you want one or not. She's gregariously interested in how everyone's doing and fights off dullness with wit. Her sarcasm always brought the gift of laughter and her pastoral nature cared for our group like she cares for her family.

I've learned so much from Cathie, a steady and reserved motherly reservior of life experience encased in a strong regality who sets goals and hits them. Her inner confidence is something I will strive for, and no better teacher of compassion can be found.

All good things come to an end, they say, and so it must be with this residency. After saying many goodbyes and doing some decompressing therapy, my learning and growth for this year will end with a sense of finality. I am a healthier, more whole person because of this program. Every minister should have at least one unit of CPE (I've now done 5). I think the best thing I can do to honor the growth from this year is to keep growing and keep learning. I will use what I've learned as a spring board of opportunity to continue doing inner work, theological reflection and spiritual integration.

Thank you Robin, Carson and Lizzie (dept. staff) for showing me love in times of self-hate, grace after my bumbles and for showing me what kind of growth is possible. By offering me love, by offering me yourselves, you have offered me God.

(Here are the links to Vicki's final blog and Erin's goodbye blog.)

Hands

Hands. Our hands are so very precious and yet so under appreciated. Our hands are a vital part of who we are. Our finger prints are each one unique. Our hands are blessed parts of our body.

One way our department each year tries to show the nursing staff how much we appreciate them is by leading them in a service to bless their hands.

Hands are a major theme in scripture. The hand of God represents power. The work of our hands signifies our livelihood, it's how we live. We lay hands on people to bless them and offer healing. We say hello and goodbye with our hands; and the holding of hands is a timeless display of intimacy. Hands are important. In the hospital, nurses give and sustain life with their hands.

St. Augustine said, "What does love look like? It has the hands to help others." After these few words of appreciation I anointed each of their hands with olive oil from Israel, a treat for them. To each nurse I recited, "I bless your hands as they give life and love in this place," and I shared a quick memory of working with that person.

This was in my favorite unit in the hospital. These were my favorite nurses. Words cannot say how much my heart was warmed by their faces, and smiles, and girly sighing "aawwees." This will make it much more difficult to leave in two days.

It last only 7 minutes, but it meant the world to them, and to me. In seven short minutes one nearly cried, one hugged me before I finished, another asked if there was anyway I could stay on at the hospital (sadly no), and when it was over the last thing I wanted to do was leave. I wanted to cry. Officially, I was the one blessing them, but in doing so I received a blessing more meaningful than I expected.

And finally, if they needed for anything else, I was able to bless their stomachs with the brownies I brought!

Thank you CCU nurses, you're the best!

Outside

Here's a poem that I authored a while back when we spent some time outside and were asked to reflect on it. Where is God when you're sitting with the trees, the grass, water and the sky? The picture is from the interweb, though it does resemble a place I visited which served as poetic inspiration.

Enjoy.

I see trees with green
blades of grass
bushes and leaves.
I see God’s favorite colors.

I see blue sky when I look at the water,
silhouetting my own distorted reflection
dancing in the pond of nature’s lowest common denominator.
I see God’s caricature of me hanging in the sky.

I feel the wind with a tinge of warmth
engulfing everything ubiquitously tight
like Ol’ Mother’s sponge holds water.
I feel we are all connected.

I hear the percussive plinking sound of water on rock
and then again on water
orchestrated with the overture of a breeze.
I hear the Divine’s symphony.

I like this poem because I see God as both the creature of nature, but perhaps also as nature itself. Whatever the case, I experience God as I experience God's creation.

Be blessed.

Inappropriate Chaplain

For each visit we make in the hospital, we have to log it into a computer program called Midas to keep up with our activity. We use Midas as a verb around the office. Every chaplain Midases differently. At the end of the week I usually check my Midas count, and everytime, the entire year, chaplain Crawford has the highest amount. I must confess, I believe she has a small competitive side to her. But as long as the rest of us get our 50 per week, everybody's happy. Chaplain Crawford just happens to usually have near 100.

it being our last week, I decided that, for once I was going to have more Midas entries than her. So, I began making them up and entering them into the computer. They got a little zaney, so I thought I'd share some with you. I'll probably enter a number of bogus ones each day and keep track of the count to be sure I'm ahead of Chaplain Cathie Crawford.

Enjoy.

(I put an "*" by the bogus entries for tallying purposes later. And if you can't figure it out, Pt. = patient, and RN = nurse.)

*Told my wife a bunch of HIPPA violating pt. information
*Tried on pt.'s shoes while he was intubated
*Had bizarre lustful thoughts toward elderly pt. in ICU
*Laid down in bed with pt. who had died to see what being dead was like
*Tried making an authentic smile with pt.'s false teeth in my mouth. Taste: not bad
*Had recurring lustful thoughts about same elderly woman
*Cut holes in bed sheet and walked around pt.'s room pretending to be a holy ghost
*Another recurring lustful thought. This time about a man
*Tried on hospital gown while naked. Think I had it on backwards
*Felt nice but chilly breeze through backwards untied hospital gown. RNs said it was normal
*Tried to faith heal pt. God responded with, "You had me at 'hello.'"
*Pretended to be MD, told a pt. he was supposed to have been discharged yesterday but was accidently taken to surgery today.
*Asked family if I could kiss unconscious pt on forehead. They said, "Only if it's not hard." (That's what she said.) So I did. And it wasn't hard
*In the morgue: played hide and go seek in the dark
*Another recurring lustful thought toward old women
*Realized I had put on two left shoes this morning
*Followed chaplain Crawford around the hospital for an hour without her noticing
*Switched one of my left shoes with a pt's right shoe so that my feet felt better
*Followed chaplain Crawford during a pt visit, but hid in the bathroom the entire visit
*Pretended to be the pt in one of chaplain Crawford's rooms when she came for a visit
*Tried to go the whole day as a low-talker
*At lunch I put on a chef's uniform and served chaplain Crawford her food without her knowing
*Messed up the sheets in the on-call room on one of chaplain Crawford's nights
*Stole gun from lock box outside of behavioral health unit
*Blamed gun theft on chaplain Crawford
*Tried to convince CEO of hospital to come tail chaplain Crawford with me
*10 months ago I slipped drugs into chaplain Hesse's food to make her faint in middle of night
*Went an entire day introducing myself as chaplain Crawford
*Pretended to be a trauma pt when chaplain Crawford was responding to pages
*At employee health: tried to convince them I had a new disease no one's ever heard of: got referred to a specialist
*Snuck into chaplain Crawford's apartment with CEO of hospital and tried on her clothes

There's nothing else to say. Perhaps I'll add some more tomorrow.

Parting

Heather and I love movies. During our 4-years of marriage we have never paid for cable TV. This is mostly because we can't afford it, but now more so, we don't care for TV all the much. We care for movies.

I imagine it's safe to say that most people have those things that you collect, or accrue over time, things that seem to build up in your home. Ours is DVD's. Every Christmas, birthday, and sometimes anniversary, you can expect that there will be movies given and received. The result: we have a lot of movies. Our old neighbor used to come to us instead of Blockbuster to get movies she hadn't seen.

Heather and I are also planning/hoping on moving this summer. Part of moving is cleaning out lots of stuff we don't need. And we have vowed to thin out some of our 200+ DVD collection. To my surprise, THIS IS A PAINFUL PROCESS.

We went through all our movies sorting them into three piles: Keep, Maybe, and Sell. You can probably guess, the sell pile is the smallest and putting each movie in it was like saying goodbye to a long time friend. We talked and debated over sooo many in the Maybe pile, and my prediction (if I know us) is that most of those will move back over to the keep pile.

That old quote, "Parting is such sweet sorrow," is ringing true in my ears. And the silly part is, they're just movies. They're things, media, products of popular consumeristic capitalist culture: things I'm not a big fan of. But they're also part of our relationship. Many of these movies we went on dates together to see. We laughed and cried together during these movies and grew closer together. We've bonded over so many in our collection, that when it came time to part with many of them it was like getting kicked in the gut.

We first held hands during that movie. I put a move on her during this one. I grew up watching another. This one changed our view of the world, and I've never cried so hard as during that one. Yes they're just things, but somehow, we have an emotional attachment to our movies.

Anyway, here's the Sell pile. First of all, do you see any you'd like to buy? And second, what is a fair yard sale price for DVDs? I'm thinking like $3-4 per movie. What do you think?

Here we have the Maybe pile. We might be able to part with more of these if someone offered us a little more money.

And finally, here's what we couldn't part with for one reason or another. What can I say. We love movies!

Presence

Yesterday, while driving home I noticed that there was a strong police presence in I-26 after I crossed into NC. A state trooper watching for speeders, a car pulled over in the other traffic direction, a semi-truck pulled on an exit ramp, there were a lot of them.

And then, after about 5 minutes of driving carefully and watching my speed like a good citezen, I saw something daunting in my rear-view mirror. It was another trooper. He tailed me for a mile before making to pass me; but, after coming alongside me to take a look at me (a suspicious character I'm sure) he moved back behind me and soon turned on his lights.

Arg! I wasn't doing anything wrong! I hadn't been speeding. Then I remembered my sister who (I think) once got a ticket for going 1 mile over the speed limit from a cop trying to meet his quota for the month. This is not what I needed.

Very politely the officer greeted me through the passenger window and said why he'd pulled me over: "North Carolina law states you can't have anything blocking or covering your liscence plate." Oh. A fair rule I sure; however, I wasn't aware that my liscence plate frame which says Tar Heel Alumni on it was blocking my plate. He asked if I'd like to see what he meant, and I agreed. Behind the car he pointed out that, yes, the lower bar on the cheap plastic $6 frame was indeed covering the bottom half of the still-clearly-intelligable words North Carolina.

Apparantly, I was doing something very wrong. So now, you are indeed reading the blog of, yes, a criminal. I confess I was concealing my liscence plate in a devious attempt to carry out my master scheme of......concealing my plate. I understand if you quit reading from here on out and don't want to be associated with me anymore. I, personally, wouldn't want to be involved with such riff-raff myself, but apparantly I do reside in a den of theives.

The officer issued me a warning and indeed wrote on it that this violator's violation was to "cover/conceal registration plate."

My real guess is that the armada of state troopers was attempting to make known their presence on this stretch of highway. They did a good job. Presence noted.

But this got me thinking on the power of presence. Because I know more keenly of the troopers' presence on the highway, I will surely be driving more prudently during my last week to-and-fro from Spartanburg. Presence can make a big difference. For instance, there are times in the hospital when the security guards hang around the ER or the cafeteria (to keep people from stealing 24-packs of soda), and I'm convinced they make a difference. Because of the vast amount of shady characters who enter the ER I've no doubt the staff feels a bit more secure with a security presence.

Presence is also a big part of my role as a chaplain. When a baby dies, or there's a horrible car accident, or when someone's wife passes away after a long bout with cancer, when heart attacks take the life of a loved one or when someone is terrified about a risky surgery there's usually not much I can say that will do much good. No, words are more often less helpful than simply my presence.

My presence is the best and most life giving gift I have for sufferers in the hospital. My presence let's them know they're not alone, let's them know that I'll walk with them step-by-painful-step through these few hours. Often my stays with people in the ER begin with my asking, "Do you mind if I just sit you with?" and they end with someone hugging me tightly and saying "thank you" even if they can't articulate what the thanks is for.

Similarly, there's something about the divine presence with us during these moments that has a life-giving result. My role as a minister reminds people that God is also present, also hurting, also wounded. My being present with them is God being present with them. No, I'm am not God; but, by loving them with my caring presence I believe I am in fact incarnating a God who is most often described as just that, love.

Rob Bell, in his book Velvet Elvis writes:

Suffering is a place where cliches don't work and words often fail. I was at lunch last week with a friend who is in the middle of some difficult days, and I don't have any answers. I just don't. I can't fix it for him. I've tried. And we sat there and talked and ate, and I let him know that I'm in it with him. It isn't very pretty and it isn't very fun, but when we join each other in the pain and confusion, God is there...And it is in our suffering together that we find out we are not alone. We find out who really loves us. We find out that with these people around us, we can make it through anything. And that give us something to celebrate.

Phone calls

Cell phones. They're everywhere. I see 12 year olds walking around with Blackberrys and iPhones, eyes glued to the screens, thumbs blazing on the keypad, heads turned down on a fast track to early neck and spine problems.

This generation of children will be stunted in their development of social skills - relationship ignoramouses. Instead of talking during school lunch, high schoolers are now texting and sexting their way to countless inevitably unfulfilling cyber "non-relationships." When you look some of them in the eyes, it's like they don't compute.

Sometimes, I hate technology.

When someone dies in the hospital, usually the first thing people go for is a tissue. The second? You guessed it, the cell phone. We've got to tell everybody, get the word out, and in doing so avoid our body's nature grief reaction to the loss of a meaningful relationship. The cell phone is our portal of escape...we think. But most people can't get through the second sentence. Like Jerry McGuire, grief has them at "hello."

In January, my wife was in a car accident, and I was on the cell quite a bit, telling people and updating, jibber-jabbering and yammering on. I was surprised when I called the first person and tried to say, "Heather was in a car accident." Halfway through the sentence I choked up, got misty eyed and got jerked back to the present. My body was trying to tell me that I was scared, that my world had just been shaken up a bit, and it was going to let me know this whether I wanted to know or not. I'd rather stay busy, do all the calling and conveying, taking care of details and the tow truck. But no, at some point I had to check back in with how Nathan was doing. The answer: not good.

That's how so many people after the death of a loved one respond: what do I need to do, who do I need to call? Details details details. Let's get it done. But when they pick up that phone to call and tell their sister or neighbor or pastor that Johnny is gone, they can't. Like me, most people get choked up good, tears show up and the conversation is over as quick as it began. The person on the other end usually figures it out.

However, there was this one time... A woman's 56 year old husband collapsed on the church softball field and went into cardiac arrest. He was gone before he got to the hospital. When I arrived in the consult room doc was talking with the wife who broke all the grief rules. Shock and disbelief were her chosen grief manefestations, which can be surprisingly helpful at certain times. She was chipper and as even-tempered as someone coming to the doctor for a check-up.

She casually said things like, "I know he's gone, but I just can't believe it," and "I guess I should be crying, but it just ain't happn'n." Then she went for the cell phone. "Uh oh," I thought, "this will get her. No one makes it through the phone calls." Because you see, this is the hardest phone call people ever make. But this woman called her daughter with a level head, and didn't even try to let her down easy. "You're dad's gone," she said in a temperate voice clearly showing concern for her daughter's grief but none of her own. We could all hear the daughter crying on the other end, but mom never budged. Slightly frantically, she answered questions but not in a painstaking kind of way.

Some people, you can tell, do their absolute best to restain their tears and sadness. (I don't know where we got this cultural mindset crap that thinks tears are a sign of weakness.) But this lady was not straining to hold back anything. She was in shock. This is how her body was dealing with it. For the entire hour I spent with her, she never broke. You could tell the grief was there, that she was frazzled, that when she got home and her husband of 34 years wasn't there she would finally cry. But, I've never seen anyone last that long before.

She will go through the greif process, and I pray she does it in a healthy way. It's terrifying to think that a completely healthy man, like her husband, could just drop on a Tuesday evening and take his last breaths for no apparant reason. He is the same age as my parents. Now that's a reality check. From now on, my parents are prohibited from strenuous physical activity. Otherwise, me or my brother, or my sister might be making one of those dreaded phone calls, and I don't know if we're ready for that.

Sorry there's no happy ending to this post. I realize it's kind of a downer, but sometimes that's just the way it has to be. "And now, we are ended." -A. Niska