CPE - Wk. 7

Another week of Clinical Pastoral Education is over. This week held some emotional encounters with patients who knew there was nothing left to do to keep them alive, patients with young children who will soon have to grow up without their father figure in their life. It was sad. Very sad. But I held it together until the photo album came out. My colleagues are wonderfully supportive.

I appreciate the support and truly hope I give it as well as I receive it. But I now realize that support and goodwill do not always mean that the person standing with me understand what my issues are. For that, I have to speak up and say exactly what is going on for me. As do my colleagues with their issues.

We had a didactic on prayer in which we discussed what prayer is in our traditions and for us personally, how it is shaped, what it means, what it is meant to accomplish. Each of us shared prayers from our own tradition. Among the prayers I shared was my Prayer of Remembrance, that I wrote for Memorial Day Sunday at Carbondale Unitarian Fellowship. Despite its different shape from the prayers my colleagues brought from their nondenominational Christian, United Methodist, liberal Catholic, and Reform Jewish traditions, they all accepted it graciously. My liberal Catholic colleague said that is more how he prays in his personal prayers. The ambiguity and/or absence of addressee did not bother my colleagues. Our theologies are varied, but there is an amazing amount of overlap. Our ELCA supervisor found the Prayer of Remembrance a very good prayer...

On Thursday we visited BJC Extended Care and received training from the chaplain there concerning differences in chaplaincy in long-term care, as opposed to a hospital setting. It was a rewarding excursion, a good day outside the hospital. And at the end of the day I found out that my middle daughter Elisabeth and my son-in-law Derek have now found out the sex of their third child who is expected to enter this world in November. It's going to be a girl! No announcement concerning a decision on a name. I think they're planning on waiting for that.

Friday evening at Central Reform Congregation, Rabbis Susan, Randy, and Ed were all gone. The service was led instead by Rabbi Dale Schreiber, a member of CRC who serves as chaplain on the oncology unit at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, heads a small synagogue that meets one Friday a month in St. Peters MO, and serves other small congregations as an itinerant rabbi.

Artwork by a deceased member of CRC

I had arrived a half hour early because I was just a bit discombobulated after the day at the hospital. I was the first person to arrive. So I went into the synagogue library. Suddenly I knew what I was doing there then. I had agreed to give the teaching at the Friday evening service on August 5 but had been stymied. I knew the general topic I wanted to expound on, but I wanted to find a way to tie it in with the week's Torah portion. But much as I had tried, I just couldn't see the connection I wanted. There in the library, though, I took Rashi's commentary off the shelf, and within fifteen minutes, he had led me to the perfect connection to the parsha for the shabbat when I would give the teaching.

While I was reading Deuteronomy and Rashi's commentary on it, Rabbi Dale walked in, saw I was studying, and asked if I was studying the portion for that shabbat. I explained, not that one but one a few weeks later. She smiled an almost ecstatic smile and said, "How wonderful just to be studying Torah!"

Rabbi Dale's own teaching that evening was also dealing with a difficult parsha - the portion where the zealotry of Pinchas is celebrated. And then I wondered, are there any Torah portions that are not a challenge? Any parsha that does not require the serious student to "wrestle" with the text to make it work for us living now rather than against our values?

The service had a little different flavor as Rabbi Dale had selected some different tunes for the prayers than are commonly used at CRC. Andrew Bollinger and Leslie Caplan served beautifully as cantors, as always, as they led us in the new and sometimes intricate melodies. At the end of the service, they led those of us who had not immediately left the sanctuary in a version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" with alternate lyrics written by Leslie Caplan. Beautiful!

After oneg conversation, I got in the car and drove home to Mt. Vernon.

Saturday afternoon we bathed the dogs. Both seemed to love it. That's a new development! Maybe it was just the level of physical attention they were getting after my being away in St. Louis for such a duration. Then Saturday night I was up till almost 4:00 AM today writing the sermon to deliver at CRC at the 7:30 PM service on August 5, 2011. A little bit of tweaking to do, certainly, but I'm happy with the sermon as it now stands...

This morning I attended at Mt. Vernon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, my home congregation. Since I entered the stream that is supposed to carry me to the shores of UU ministry, it has been so rare when I can go to my own church. I was nice to be there today. The service was an open reading service. The readings included: 

• a piece on UU history;
• a set of several poems by Mary Oliver;
• a piece on the interconnected web of life told via the story of the parachuting of cats into Borneo to combat the increase in rats that were the result of major ecological imbalance that resulted from spraying DDT to control malaria-carrying mosquitos;
• I spoke on my CPE experience, my synagogue attendance, my struggle finding an in to the Torah portion for the service where I will preach, and I led a responsive reading related to translating between religious idioms;
• there was a reading that focused on the character of various trees, translated from the Finnish;
• a reflection on an artwork by a member;
• and a recording of "Let the Mystery Be" by Iris Dement.

It was a wonderful service followed by wonderful conversation. There's no place like home, Dorothy.

Lunch out with Walter. Coffee at home. Now it's about time for some ice cream before hitting the road to St. Louis. Maybe I'll get back in time for Compline this evening at Trinity Episcopal Church in the Central West End...