Thinking about Grief...

In group today, myself and my fellow intern chaplains discussed grief and grieving. After my experience working with Hospice, I have a few things I believe strongly enough to pass on, and now, I'm gonna pass them on to you.

Grief used to be a pretty normal experience. People tended to die at home, and so growing up kids learned how to deal with it almost instinctively. Some were hit harder than others, of course, but in general people knew what they were feeling and why.

Then came the advent of modern medicine, and things got a bit cocked up. Sure, we were better at curing diseases, but death became a thing that happened away from the home, and children were shielded from it. And even with all our advances, people kept dying. Only now, we didn't know what to do.

Nowadays, most people don't believe that they are gonna die. Popular culture has told us that death really only happens to bad people, unlucky people, or those who make bad decisions. We, the general, run of the mill, basically good people, probably won't die. We've had our shots, we've paid our taxes, we don't hurt people, we'll be fine. Small wonder we don't know what to do when other people like us die deaths that don't fit into that moral worldview.

When others around us grieve, we feel bad and we feel awkward. We kinda want them to feel better, and we REALLY want them to feel better so that we can feel good about feeling good. So we try to "fix" them, try to say the magical thing that makes them happy, and if it doesn't work, we suspect that we just didn't say the right thing, and/or that their grief is REALLY bad and they need a professional.

As a kinda/sorta professional, let me tell you now. There IS no right thing. Grief is a wound that cannot be healed with a bandage, it only heals by being permitted to grieve. You can bottle up feelings for awhile, but eventually that dam will burst and those feelings WILL be expressed, often violently.

So go ahead and feel what you feel, and don't let anyone tell you its wrong. Also, if someone near you is suffering in such a way, make sure they know its okay to feel as well, that they aren't doing anything wrong. It'll be the best thing you can say to them.

Got a push on Facebook...

After my last post, is it a bit ironic that this blog got left by the wayside for awhile? Leave comments, they help me keep going...

So where was I...

Oh yeah. Recovering from St. Patrick's. I mostly behaved myself yesterday, and though I have a bit of Guinness Karma still working on me I expect I'll be in good shape come my shift at the hospital tonight, though between all the singing, shouting, and second hand smoke, I think my voice has dropped an entire octave.

Yeah.

A(nother) New Project!

Ok, so here is the problem with me if you didn't already know it. I am a highly creative person, involved in a great number of creative projects. Short stories, novels, text adventures, video games, songs, movie ideas, you name it, if it is a form of story telling I have had an idea at some point or another as to how to implement it. That's not a problem, it actually is a great way to keep busy. (You know, cause this whole chaplaining thing really wasn't enough to be getting along by in the first place.)

The problem is that projects are easy to start and hard to finish, and I rarely have time between my first moment of inspiration and the next to keep going on any one project for any extended period of time.

So tonight I was hit by yet another inspiration for a video game that I have started plugging away at. Yeah. The last one is barely even begun, and I fully intend to keep working on it, but in a flurry of creative frenzy I am going to get the next one started now, and that is, kinda sorta, driving me insane.

I love this moment, the initial rush of creation that comes with the moment of inspiration. I wouldn't give it up for the world.

I would, however, like to FINISH a project at some point.

I'm just sayin'.

Go Packers!

Sure, it doesn't have a lot to do with being a chaplain, but what the hell. Super Bowl wins are few and far between. Go PACKERS!

Now where was I...

I actually watched most of the playoffs in the Hospital this year, and it was a definite change of pace for me. For starters, answering to Trauma Pages meant that unlike my usual MO, Football actually couldn't be the only thing in my universe. I checked scores in waiting rooms between visits.

During the Green Bay-Falcons game, I actually had to flee the Cafeteria due to the large number of cancer patients present watching as well, most of them Falcons fans, and knowing me I'm pretty sure I'd rub it in their faces.

So I think I'm growing. That said, excuse me. Gonna go attack my Pittsburgh Native Dean of Students with Cheese.

Being Inclusive VS Being Generic

Recently I've been thinking about some of the things that we talked about during the didactic session regarding worship. While putting the service together, I did my best to avoid direct mention of Jesus, and settled largely on God and Father language. For the hymns, Father was the most commonly used word just based on what I had to work with.

This is sort of funny to me due to the fact that for the last few years such a worship service would have set off every major alarm I have been fitted with by Columbia, and the more I think about it, the more i feel it was a weak point of my service, not only for reasons of gender inclusivity, but because Islamic reading have several clear points where they state that Allah does not beget as is not begotten, and Father language not only would have been a tripping point for some women, but nearly every Muslim.

I think the next time I lead worship, rather than trying to put together a service that would be vaguely acceptable to everyone, I think that I will put together a service with some clear points of connection for as many people as I can manage. I think that this would be more spiritually helpful than a service aimed at "to whom it may concern" and that a few stumbling blocks are worth it if everyone has a couple more points of contact.

I am pretty bushed this week, and having just completed my Exegesis Ordination Exam I haven't had as much time to put into reflecting on CPE as I would normally prefer to have. Now its all over, I am looking forward to focusing back on CPE, Pastoral Care, and ways I can link up spiritually with my patients, rather than just hoping not to offend them.

Weekly posts, eh?

And this one just to procrastinate work on my Exegesis Ordination Exam? Yikes. What AM I thinking?

Primarily, I'm thinking that one of the larger components of this exam is not normally a critical part of my exegetical process. It's called the "Faithful Interpretation," an essay on the meaning of the text, with only the barest nod to the context I'm writing for. Apparently, for some people, this is hugely helpful, allowing them to bask in their academic brilliance before getting down to the humdrum of making that degree work for anything meaningful.

If I sound bitter, maybe its just because I don't have any academic brilliance to bask in, which is why I am in the 8th year of a 3 year program.

I HATE this part of the exam. Some of my exegesis Professors strongly recommend this step of the process but it has never once been helpful for me. I live mainly in context... I read the text, find the bits that are speaking to me, and run with them. The rest amounts to pre-writing, which any of my High School English teachers will attest that I only ever did grudgingly.

Did you ever have to do that? Pre-writing? I despised it. All those word webs and pre-essay essays that my teachers assured me would improve the grades I got on my papers. But I always got A's on my papers. What was there to improve? I just didn't think that way, and their process slowed me down considerably, to the point where I started writing my pre-writing AFTER the main paper, which was much easier, and faster.

So do that now, you say? AHHHH, very clever of you. Already done. Except that this needs to be concise... it is essentially a de-contextualized version of the paper, they want about a thousand words, and I ran out of things to say around word 500. For the love of God, there are only 11 verses I have to work with here.

Of course, this Blog is already at least 500 words long. Maybe Anger fuels the beast...

Worshiping with Miracles

So this past Sunday I led my first worship service at the Hospital.

Interfaith worship services are interesting. Given that I am in Atlanta, GA, it is usually safe to assume that most attenders will be Christian, but that does not eliminate the possibility of others attending as well. We have patients of all faith backgrounds, and for many, our Sunday morning services are the only worship venue they can reasonably get to.

The lion's share of the congregation on any given Sunday consists of folks from the Rehab wing, people who have been around for awhile, sometimes months, and have built a sense of community. They come, often with their families, and quite regularly with their nurses. Sometimes they'll come down with a physical therapist who will do their work while the patient sits there. Most of the equipment is modular, and so you'll have beeping monitors, IV drips, suction machines...

All in all, its a pretty interesting worship venue.

It is in the midst of all of this that the chaplain must put together a worship service that is accessible to people from any faith background, but still a meaningful act of worship. You tend to go back to basics for this. The Hebrew Scriptures are a good place to start, given that they are revered by two faiths and honored by three. Prayers speaking to the power of God and of Love are usually strong to. The Hebrew Shema knocks the requirement out of the park. You talk less about the face of God and more on the power and love of God as it relates to the context you're standing in.

Oh, and you can't just wing it, basing what you say on who shows up. Sunday services are run by the on-call chaplain, and it is entirely possible that you could get called to the Emergency room during the service. If that happens, one of the music therapists (your musicians) will take over in a pinch, but she needs to know what to do next, and her training wasn't in liturgy. It all sounds like a nightmare to plan. It did to me. And it was.

But then I got there, and I found myself talking to people who are, all of them, in the midst of crisis. They are hurting, tired, and scared, and in that context they sought God, God's love. They sought not only prayers for their conditions but to pray for the conditions of others, which for some of them was the only power they had. They did it happily, joyfully, and worshiped God together, regardless of what those around them thought of when presented with the word "God." They were hurting, they were seeking, they were finding. They were miracles.

And I got to lead 'em in worship.