Apr 11 | Closing Time

Why why why WHY do I always end up staying up so late? I’ve been a night owl for years, but because my mother is a morning person I can at least move around and even have a conversation with someone before 9am. Just don’t expect me to remember it. That’ll be the first thing I tell anyone I work with.

I guess I was just thinking about today. It was the last Community Worship of the year, and my last as the sacristan. It’s someone else’s now – even if I wanted it, I couldn’t do it, because it’s a work study position and I’ll only be part time next year.

I’ve already registered! My last year has two fall classes with one Denominational course requirement (a little class that basically fills a weekend), and the spring term has two Denominational requirements (same deal). I’ll be taking Wendy Fletcher’s “Theology and Spirituality of Hospitality” and Public and Pastoral Leadership: Integration, which is the last big paper of an MDiv career at VST. I’m excited to get started on that – maybe even more excited than when I wrote my Major Exegesis. I get to write my  heart, not just my brain.

Anyway, it was also the last worship service for this year’s VSGlee. We will meet again to sing for the VST Convocation – to sing this.

It’s weird to be gearing up for the last year. Of course my year isn’t even quite over yet. I still have to turn in three papers and have an “in-class interview” (as well as finish up some dangling coursework for that class). I’ll be glad when it’s over and I can get started on my next project. I did receive an email today from the CPE program I wanted to get into!!! They want to meet me for an interview! SHRIEK! It’s sort of silly – I’m a pretty good candidate for CPE and so shouldn’t be so nervous about being accepted, but that conditional thing always worries me a bit. I really REALLY hope I can do it this summer. Although I love academia and want to be a prof, my pastoral presence needs a shot in the arm. Something seminary does to me (and indeed to some others I’ve met) is make it almost impossible to talk about anyone but yourself in many situations! You’re so used to constant questions about who you are, what you believe, why you’re doing what you’re doing, and what your feelings and emotions mean in that given moment. I try to appear pastoral and I know I can, but I inevitably get wrapped up in my own BS and get sidetracked. Being a crisis counselor on the phone was helpful because there was no room for your own self to be there – you were all about the other person and their problems, and it was easy because they couldn’t even see you. I’m curious to see how my presence will change when I am in the same room with someone. I have done pastoral care before, but it wasn’t the same – one person was a lovely old lady who needed someone to tell stories to, and the other was someone who was a long-time friend and wanted to know all about school and family and everything else. Sometimes I would get her to talk about her own stuff, but it happened rarely. I think she liked distracting herself with my stuff so she wouldn’t get too focussed on her own. My most spiritual and holy moment with her, though, was as she lay dying in her bed in the hospice and I held her hand. She actually didn’t die until several days later, but she was mostly incoherent and I had no idea if she was quite aware who I was, or if she knew the whole time that I was in the room with her. At one point, she murmured, “I need to heal.”

In times like that, I find silence to be a good and faithful friend. I’m always on my soapbox about how silence is not appreciated in our culture. Other cultures or classes of people (like monks) will not speak unless what they have to say is really important. It seems like, increasingly, we speak more and more but about less and less important things. So few of us are brave enough to squeeze someone’s hand and say, “I need to heal.”

I miss my friend.

-Clarity

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