Today as I sat down after coming off the unit, I let the energy of my encounters roll off of me, through my feet, and into the ground like I do with Healing Touch. As I did so, I felt something in my body shift. Energy spread across my shoulders and throughout my core. I felt like God was present, near me and inside me. The Spirit passed through me. It was so strong. Probably sounds ridiculous to write here, but it’s what I felt.
Later, I finished reading the article on hope one of my classmates had sent to use last week. It was a chapter from a book that teaches caregivers of all types how to be “hope providers.” It was a really great article (I’ll post a summary of the chapter later), and it made me think about how beautifully people are made. The article had a couple of sections on how trust and emotional health is built in early infancy and childhood. From the moment we are born we are hardwired to need love from each other. To me it does not seem like a simple biologically explainable thing. It’s not that we grow up without these things and are merely socially hampered. Many of the babies who do not receive it simply die. We need each other, not merely as food-gatherers, milk producers, and mobile survival kits for each other. We are specifically created to need each other – not just as speechless physical presences but loving, engaged, focused, smiling hope providers. I’ve had two patients tell me how important smiles are from their caregivers.
:)
-Clarity
Today I had a pretty interesting revelation. I noticed that, as I went about the unit and into rooms, I was clutching the Bible I always brought along with my patient list very close to my side. I hadn’t even thought about why; I didn’t even really notice until I shifted the books from one arm to the other and noticed how much it ached!
I ended up mentioning it to my supervisor when I noted that I had been entering rooms with my hands clasped and didn’t like the way it made me look. As we worked it out together, I came to find that it had to do with my closing up, perhaps to protect myself from the strong emotions of others. I came to the sudden realization that just because I was familiar with sadness didn’t mean I was comfortable with it! I am beginning to learn that my emotions are not something to be afraid of – they are neutral things that happen. If I am gentle with them and accept them without trying to shove them down or escape them, I do not feel the same need to protect myself from the emotions of others.
Today some of my classmates and I played at a memorial for a nurse that passed away quite tragically. As we played, I became aware of how hard and powerful the grief in the room was to be with. Instead of closing myself off, I decided to let it wash over me. I opened myself up and allowed the energy to pass through me into the floor. I thought of the crucifixion and living a cruciform life. This is not taking on the shackles of someone else’s pain – we cannot do that. We can, however, allow it to pass through or over us and then roll off us, like rain water.
-Clarity
Today was a beautiful day. I spent a long time on the unit, much longer than usual. I had some good long conversations, and right now as I write about it I want to go up there again! I might change my tune next week when I spend my first week on-call, heh heh.
I wonder if I’ll have to respond to a Code Blue or arrange a viewing. Several of my colleagues have already arranged viewings. I think I’m ready. There was a little scare this morning when one of the clients seemed to be having some trouble breathing. I wondered briefly if we would be hearing the Code Blue go out – and I was standing right outside the door. But it worked itself out, I think.
It’s all still hard, but I’m beginning to find my groove. I feel a lot less self-conscious on the unit, more a part of the team. Those first couple of times I felt really weird and even illicit – wandering around reading and writing in people’s charts while all these doctors and nurses bustled about looking very official in their coats and scrubs. Now they say hello, or I do, and ask them how their day is going.
I re-connected again with that first client I had and we talked for a very long time. What a difficult life this person has had. The client said that something was different since that first encounter – it’s different for me too.
I feel I still make mistakes sometimes in my encounters, but I don’t dwell on them and fret about them the way I usually do. I feel like I belong, and am where I need to be. Could it be connected to the fact that my supervisor said that very thing to me in IPR on Thursday? :)
-Clarity
I have so come to treasure the group. It is a beautiful thing. I am finally coming to accept my emotions and not label them as negative or positive – simply as emotions. Previously, I had labelled things like anger as “negative” emotions, and my supervisor gently challenged me: “Why is anger negative? Why is it not simply an emotion we experience? It is not a bad thing to be angry.” I feel safe; my supervisor is a good, safe pastoral presence.
I am slowly learning who I am, and as I sit and remember the conversation I had yesterday with my spiritual director, he said that sometimes I think and analyze too much when my heart doesn’t need this level of consideration – it just knows and accepts. Today my supervisor asked me who I was, and I said, “I don’t know who I am, but I know who I belong to.” I don’t know what I would do without God.
I have been visiting and making lots of connections on my unit, and I pray for them. They are beautiful and a gift. Am I beautiful and a gift?
My motto for learning in this course was “Share the light of the world.” How can I share it if I don’t believe I have it within me?
-Clarity
I connected with a few people today. One person could barely speak but was so sweet. We prayed together – and I remembered to mention the Virgin Mary this time!
I think during my first encounter I experienced a form of stigmata – not in my own flesh or even in the patient’s, but in Christ’s. I felt he was in the room, and his palms were bleeding. If it wasn’t stigmata, then it was the Sacred Heart. (Can you tell I’ve been working in a Catholic hospital?) I’ve been doing some reading on the Sacred Heart, and while the penitential aspects of it are a bit much for me, I can get into the pierced, bleeding, immolated heart of God’s love. It may seem unsettling to some, but when you’re on the unit you get used to the everyday reality of pain and being mangled. After all, what is surgery but mangling, to some degree and with the best of intentions? To see God in that reality is ecstatic and beautiful to me – God’s great burning heart, wilfully bared, sweetly pierced. I may have to come up with an Anglican spin on it myself – perhaps I’ll work it into my position paper this fall! I find it affects me most because I had prayed for an experience like this – a true and mystical experience of the sweet pain of God’s presence (pain because of its deep holiness, which leaves us transformed, maybe a little scorched). I received it, and it was not a supernatural thing necessarily, like Padre Pio’s bleeding palms or, flippantly, seeing Jesus in a piece of toast. Such a sight, I think, would only really have been meaningful to me and those who truly believe in that kind of thing. An experience like the one I had would touch all people.
I’m so glad I’m an Anglican! We can take what we like from Catholic tradition that works, but I can still be ordained!
-Clarity
I was sick for much of this week and so yesterday was my only day of visits. I saw a bunch of people but only really has conversations with four of them. One of them was the patient from my last entry, who was in much better spirits this time around, and smiled a little, but still had an aura of sadness. It’s not surprising, considering the nature of the surgery – it was a major life change. I also had the great honour of being asked to speak to some medical students from Kwantlen about what the Pastoral Care Services team did. They were just great and had wonderful questions. I was fascinated by the demographics – out of about eight there was only one man and one Caucasian (they were not the same person, heh heh).
I am uncertain sometimes about how I am to be with people, at least in a care situation. Sometimes I defer and go back to my broad liberal expansiveness, using my non-committal Crisis Line demeanour. I think I need to be more than this but hold onto the non-judgemental and promiscuously loving atmosphere! With the first person I saw, I felt like I had become a priest, but I also felt like I acted inappropriately at times by being too direct or intrusive. I worry about looking patronizing in my verbatim, and yet the patient seemed to respond positively.
I can’t help but wonder if my desire was just the inner authority/majesty of God shining through. I went in expecting to meet Jesus, and I did. But maybe the patient did too! Why in my mind is it “okay” for me to see Jesus in the patient’s countenance, but somehow not okay to consider the possibility that this person might have seen Jesus in mine?
-Clarity
I had my first walk through the unit and met with my mentor today. All of that was about as expected – my mentor is wonderful, a perfect Romanian mystic.
Then I was done and headed downstairs, wondering what to do with myself, so I started scrolling through the patient list on my unit when my first referral came in. I checked the patient list and then went on up to find someone waiting for me to give me the run-down. The patient had just undergone some major and rather traumatic surgery and was in some distress. This patient had some conditions that required me to wear a gown. I asked about gloves, and they said it was up to me. I told them I thought I should like to touch the patient, so they told me to do so. I put those on and went in. It was a little weird to do that.
Being with this person reminded me a lot of being on the Crisis Line, but it was far more beautiful than that. Instead of a voice on the other end of the line, there was a living breathing person there in front me – and in this case weeping. My hands were held, squeezed, and kissed.
This patient had to be the strongest, most faithful person I had ever met. Although the weeping and yelling were almost constant, this person’s faith never wavered – the only desire was to be closer to God. We prayed together – “More prayers, please, more prayers,” was a refrain – and we sang songs together.
It was such a great gift.
-Clarity
My first week is almost over and I’ve already been to one viewing. It was odd how at the time it didn’t have a huge effect but I became aware and weird about it later. On my way to Christ Church Cathedral that night I found myself listening to “My Boy Builds Coffins” on repeat, unable to shake the face from my mind, or the feeling you get in a morgue – the heaviness of those bodies like cinderblocks on your brain. I wondered briefly what the damn point was, and how we are all dust.
The next morning, as I sat on the bus, I noticed a little girl, maybe 9 or 10, and an older man – maybe in his late 40s. She had a paper fortune teller in her hand, and he was pointing to the folds he wanted her to open. She played with it with one hand, because she was holding his other hand.
I thanked God for that sight, as she leaned against him clearly feeling perfectly safe. I must have written God’s answer to my earlier sadness in three different places in my book: LOVE IS THE ANSWER.”
“Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be quick to love, and make haste to be kind.” -Henri-Frederic Amiel
-Clarity
PHEW! This week has been a doozy and it’s not even over yet!
It was my first week of CPE this week, and tomorrow is my first day on my unit. I’m so excited but a little nervous as well! It’s going to be a bit chaotic – one of my learning goals is to develop a non-anxious presence – but I’m sure I’m in good hands. I’m really excited to meet my mentor, a Romanian Orthodox priest who has like twenty of his own gorgeous paintings festooned all over his office.
This week was long and intensive, but helpful. We actually witnessed a viewing on Tuesday, and were taught how to prepare a body for a viewing. Being in a morgue is a very strange thing. The shapes under the sheets are recognizably human, but they are so very still. My brain ended up playing weird tricks on me, because it wasn’t used to seeing such human forms being so still. I knew on a primal level that they were more than objects or dolls – somehow the brain understood that they were people, but they were all wrong somehow. It was like having cinderblocks on my brain – I could turn my head but feel their presence there behind me or beside me – heavy and sombre.
Preparing a body for a hospital viewing is also a bizarre experience. Although, again, it was clearly a person, I actually had no problem seeing the face. Somehow it was so much more horrible to see the bag being unzipped and that quick flash of yellow, loose skin. Once the face was visible, it wasn’t that bad. It was only the second body I had ever seen. Some time ago I had played at an open casket funeral, but it was obviously quite different. That person had been made-up, dressed in nice clothes, and surrounded by flowers. She looked like a doll, maybe even like she was just sleeping. The mortician had done a good job. Here in the morgue, of course, there was no glamour, no softness, no pretending death was anything but inevitable. We had no makeup, no flowers, no nice clothes. Our supervisor draped a blanket over the body, propped the head up with a towel or two, and gave the hair a quick comb. He tried to close the mouth, which hung open – the person was elderly and had no teeth left. It wouldn’t work, which was unfortunate – the person really didn’t look as peaceful as we would have liked. There was nothing to do about it, though.
Once the body was prepared, the sheet was draped over the face and the cart rolled into the viewing room. We went up to meet the spouse, who was with a couple of social workers. We all went down to the viewing room together, and our supervisor gently pulled the sheet back.
As the spouse wept, everything suddenly changed. It was no longer a body, but a person – a beloved, a spouse, a child. We all got quite teary-eyed. It was incredibly moving. Even now I get teary-eyed thinking about it, whereas when I was writing about the preparation, once again I found myself simply recording what I saw. Every minute was very holy – the preparation included.
So before I write about my first time on the unit, I’ll let you know one of my learning goals, which is self-reflection. To do this, I’ll be keeping a journal, and I decided to share some of what I write on this blog. I will likely not share everything I write, and all personal information about my classmates and the people I visit or minister to will be kept to a minimum with no identifying information given. If names are included, they are changed. The journal is more for tracking my own growth.
So if you’re interested in taking CPE, read through any of the marked entries and see if it’s right for you, or give me a buzz! I fully expect it to be one of the most profound experiences of my life and education.
-Clarity
I haven’t posted any of my other sermons here yet! This is actually from last year’s Easter 6, but it’s still about the Farewell Discourse so it kind of works, even though we read from Chapter 17 today, not 15.
***
Director James Cameron, during an interview with National Geographic, described his journey to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean in the following words: “So here I am in the most remote place on planet earth, that’s taken all this time and energy and technology to reach, and I feel like the most solitary human being on the planet: completely cut off from humanity, no chance of rescue, in a place that no human eyes have ever seen. And my wife calls me. Which of course was very sweet, but let that be a lesson to all men: you think you can get away, but you cannot.â€
This sounds funny to us, but let’s maybe take a moment to ponder this. Down, down, down, into the abyss we dive – an abyss that is likely familiar to many of us, an abyss with many names. The depths are no longer blue but black. The pressure is excruciating. There is no light or warmth – nothing that can sustain us but metaphorical “marine snow†that drifts down with agonizing slowness, long dead by the time it reaches us. In these depths there is little life. It’s barren sand as far as you can see – not that you can see. It’s silent. It might as well be nothing.
But still, you hear a voice. It’s a voice you know so well that your heart flashes briefly, like the last few seconds in the life of a lightbulb. The voice calls you by name. You think you can get away, but you cannot.
This is the nature of God’s love. If it frightens you, you’re doing it right. For us Cascadians, it might help to picture a mother Grizzly bear. This is a terrifying love – terrifying in its ferocity not against us, but against whatever seeks to limit or enslave life and light.
Now when we think of love in church, we might think of 1 Corinthians 13 (so popular at weddings), or “Jesus loves me.†Like last week’s sheep, it appears warm and fuzzy at first glance. And who’s to say that sometimes it isn’t? Check out those Hallmark Christmas cards with a pink-cheeked baby Jesus snuggled up in the hay, or blonde Jesus on the meadow with us, his fluffy white sheep. We’ve all felt that, I’m sure. But friends, it is so much more.
Chapter 15 of John, which we read from today, gives us a taste of this. Although we are in Eastertide now, this reading rewinds us a little bit. Chapter 15 is part of Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse†to his disciples – whom we learn today are no longer servants but friends, or “those who are loved.†This speech is spread out over several chapters, and its structure is like a sandwich, with Chapters 14 and 16 echoing each other to really highlight the importance – the meat – of Chapter 15. There are three very important issues at play in this chapter that I would like to draw attention to.
The first is that verses 9-17, which we read today, occur immediately after “I am the vine.†The community is given a metaphor which they should emulate. They are to be branches of the vine, bearing fruit for the vine-grower. Jesus gives them a clear idea of how they should look as a community after he is gone and what their relationship with him and God should be.
Second, Chapter 15 gives the disciples fairly clear instructions on how they will act once Jesus has returned to the Father. They are given a new commandment: to love one another, as Jesus has loved them. They are even told what the greatest love looks like: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. This is the new “Prime Directive†of the community.
Third, perhaps most important, is that this entire discourse, in a masterful piece of storytelling that lovers of John will recognize, happens at night. Ring your bells. And what’s more, Judas is not present at this point in the discourse. He is, at that moment, betraying Jesus to the religious authorities. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.â€
This is a love that is beyond all fear. This is a love that the Rev’d Dr. Ellen Clark-King once referred to as “promiscuous.†I would push further and say this is a love that might even be a little reckless. It’s the love that the Sufi mystic Rabi’a spoke of as she walked the streets with a torch in one hand and a pail of water in the other in hopes of “put[ting] fire to paradise and pour[ing] water over hell so that these two veils disappear and it becomes plain who venerates God for love and not for fear of hell or hope for paradise.â€Â This love is impossible to escape. The darkness has no power in the inferno of this love. We know this because even at what we might dare to call God’s darkest hour, the light is shining – and speaking love.
Now, for many of us that call ourselves Christians today, these are good tidings. They might not be good news though. After all, if we’re here together now singing these songs and wishing each other peace and sharing this food, this isn’t news to us: we likely know at least something of this love. We might explain to a curious friend that it is out of this love that we are here today. But today, in a less than churchy world, we all know being church is about more than showing up on Sunday to this beautiful building and hugging our beautiful friends. I don’t know about you, but that makes me think, “Oh boy! There’s more?†There’s more than we can ask or imagine!
But what is it? How do we even respond to a love that lays down its life for its friends, or a love that shines in the darkness and is not overcome, a love that obeys the commandments of the beloved for joy instead of fear, a love that has done marvelous things, a love that will not withhold the water of baptism? Again – if this frightens you, or simply casts the great shadow of awe over you, you’re doing it right.
What will our response be? One person’s experience of God is as riotously different and individual as the call. Some hear a gentle “Follow me†and simply leave their fishing nets behind, walking without any fear into a radically new life. Some are met unexpectedly with joy – “I saw you under the fig tree!†Parishes too have different experiences and expressions of the Beloved. However we meet the Beloved on the road, remember: all of us will see greater things even than these. We will witness a love that breaks like the dawn, and we will be called – and empowered – to do the same. Again: how? If I may paraphrase our beloved: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.†Ring your bells for ‘abide.’ It’s a word that signifies the presence of the luminous Beloved – Jesus “abides†with his friends for two days, just as Peter abides with the newly baptized, and the love of God abides with John’s community and with us. The commandments are to love one another as Jesus loves us. Of course that’s a tall order! But remember Jesus promises us the Holy Spirit to give us a hand. We don’t have to do it alone – and thank God for that, for if we did, we might burst into flame.
Now, we need to be honest with John for a moment. Writing in a time of great struggle for identity, the love he spoke of was in his mind to be proclaimed and lived only among the Johannine community. In the lectionary we skip the moments in the Farewell Discourse where Jesus tells the disciples they need to love each other because the world will hate them. It’s an attitude that, taken to extremes, can mire us in close-minded Fundamentalism. We are absolutely welcome and encouraged to remember that the first people we told about the Resurrection were our brothers and sisters in Christ – the disciples. I think today it’s more important than ever to remind each other that Jesus is risen – the light is shining and the darkness has not overcome it, even as we run out of money or don’t get along or quarrel over doctrine or properties. We need to remember to love each other as Jesus loved us. But this love is much too big to remain in these walls. Love sinks into the abyss and rises into space. But if we remember how quiet the voice can be in the abyss, then we are bound to spread the news of this rather scary love. The most beautiful part of this whole concept for me is that we never learn why we are loved! All we learn is that Jesus chose us – the world – to be loved. It is in this love that we have life.
For, if my favourite singer-songwriter Seal and you will permit me: “I need love. Love’s divine. Please forgive me now; I see that I’ve been blind. I need love – love is what I need to help me know my name.”
Amen.