Sarcastic Lutheran

More than watchmen for the morning

My little boy was hospitalized Tuesday for croup (for the third time) He's totally fine now, but I was exhausted by the experience and Thursday I was whining to my sister about my string of humiliations over the past week and a half (only some of which have shown up on Sarcastic Lutheran). She mentioned that perhaps God was humbling me, so that I have planty of practice for when I'm a pastor. My first thought was "thanks a lot bitch". my second thought was "I'm so grateful to have a deeply spiritual sister who can speak the truth to me". I think she's on to something. There are lessons to be learned from the past couple of weeks that would haave been impossible to learn from success-success-success.
Last night I was the volunteer on-call chaplain at the hospital and ended up spending two hours with a young couple who had just lost thier baby...the mother, 7 months pregnant, was in an accident and the baby couldn't be saved from the emergency c-section. Really all I did was sit with them, I'm no ace-chaplain, but driving home I wonder how my spirit while in that room with them and their tiny deceased baby would have been a little different if I had just experienced 2 weeks of utter success in my life.

Dear God,
When I complain about stuff, forgive me.
Teach me to wait for you.
More than watchmen for the morning.
More than watchmen for the morning.
In Jesus' name,
AMEN

Little old ladies

During my last week as a hospital chaplain (during my clinical pastoral education internship), I met a 93 year old woman who was in for...well it doesn't really matter. Let's call her Lucy. Lucy never had children and she's been widowed for over 20 years. The only relative who lives close by is a nephew of her late husband who visits occasionally. Before I realized what I was saying, I asked if I could visit her when she gets out. I've visited her weekly for the last couple of months, with my kids in tow. The problem is that instead of being the kind of person who visits childless old ladies in retirement homes I'm more of the kind of person who likes to think that she is the kind of person who visits childless old ladies in retirement homes. These are 2 very different kinds of people. In other words, I end up dreading the visit, I scold myself for having ever promised this lady that I would, out of the goodness of my heart, come and see her each week, and then I feel like shit for feeling the regret. What I've realized is that this is a spiritual discipline like any other. I am trying to make this woman's life a little brighter not because I'm Julie fuckin' Andrews, but because I'm not and I think maybe that God is using this situation to discipline me. Now, I realize that discipline is not a very cool word, we head strong obstinant, opinionated types cringe at the sound of it, but I think there's something very rich and useful in spiritual discipline. For me it simply means that I am being freed from the bondage of self. Self, in my case, is very centered on itself and profoundly undisciplined. Any freedom from this that I've experienced in life is not a result of my ability to discipline myself, but God's ability to change me, and for this I am deeply grateful. I do, however, have to be willing to participate in God's work in my life. Sometimes I am able to muster this up and other times I am not. So, I guess I'm going to keep visiting Lucy, it means so much to her and I guess I can get over the fact that I'm not really the selfless-big-hearted gal I want to be, and simply be content with being deeply flawed and deeply faithful.

redemption song

In my work as chaplain at the hospital I am finding it much easier to hold the hope for those I meet who are honest about themselves and the choices they've made. How do we speak of forgivnesss or of hope when someone is unwilling to admit their part in life? I know this is dangerous ground and that I am sounding a bit like I;m blamin gthe victim, but I am having difficulty locating the hope in people who feel they are only and totally victims. I love finding redemption in others. I feel like they are participating in God's grace. I had a nasty little drug and alcohol problem for years and have been clean and sober for 14 1/2 years and so know about God's grace first hand. In my religious tradition (Lutheranism) we very much stress that God's grace is a gift freely given and that there is nothing we can do to earn it, we simply live our lives in response to the gift. In a nut shell, this is our theology of grace and I love it and know it to be true. The only reason I am sober is as a result of God's grace. However, I was willing to do a "searching and fearless moral inventory" of myself without which I couldn't have stayed clean. I have seen countless people who are not willing or able to be honest about themselves and their shit and they are basically screwed until then can. I guess I'm questioning what agency we have in God's grace?? Is it by the grace of God that I became willing to be honest about myself? Or did I have to become willing on my own in order to place myself in the position of recieving God's grace? The former feel arbitrary but the later feels a bit more realistic, but dangerously close to sounding like "earning" God's grace. My friend Hal wrote an interesting essay called "Theological Reflections on Ambiguity" in which he claims that human history (including the events of our own lives) is a result of social forces out of our controll, our own choices and God. This triad creates every event, but with each element always having differing effect. If God was the only one acting, then (looking at human history) I would have to question God's sanity, if society was the on ly factor then how could I ever take responsibility for my actions and how would I account for the grace and wonder in life? If it was only me then how would I ever be able to get out of bed in the morning?

Good Friday?

CPE: Clinical Pastoral Education- a required experience for those who are Lutheran seminary students preparing for ordained word and sacrament ministry in the ELCA. CPE students work as chaplains in various institutions while regularly attending a touchy-feely group with a supervisor and other CPE students in which there is a great deal of discussion about feelings, issues and emotional baggage.

I am currently working as an intern (CPE) chaplain at the hospital near my home. Recently someone asked me if I being a hospital chaplain was causing me to face the existential issue of my own death. Not really. This is not to say that I haven’t been pretty freaked out by the experience, only that this mortal coil isn’t existentially unwrapping in my mind around my own mortality. The possible death of my husband, children, siblings or parents is another matter - I’m fairly certain that I would not recover from that sort of blow and even the thought of it can turn me inside out. In providing spiritual care for those who are ill or for the families of those who have died suddenly, or who have had a massive stroke out of the middle of nowhere, I have been completely torn open around the suffering and grief involved in losing those we love. I have found myself in the ER trauma room watching life going in and out of the person on the table whom the doctors and nurses are violently attempting to resuscitate and in that messy chaos my role is to stand there and be aware of God’s presence in the room. Kind of a weird job description, but there it is, and I’m strangely qualified. I’ve found myself having various difficulties with this. I can’t help but feel God’s presence in the trauma room, but I find myself sensing God’s presence in other rooms too. In the little white room with just enough space for 4 love seats and as many boxes of tissue, we bring the families of those who are dead, or might be dead, or should be dead, or died and are now not dead but we don’t know for how long. I sit with these people who are consumed with the fear of loss, and sometimes they are then consumed by loss. Their 60 year old father has just died. Their spouse of 51 years has just experienced a brain aneurism. Their sister has just swallowed 4 bottles of pills and they are waiting to hear if her body is dead, or just her brain. So in this pit of pain, I am the chaplain. What can I do? I’d rather die myself than simply spout some standard pastor bullshit that sounds an awful lot like “it’s God’s will that you are experiencing this unspeakable pain and that your life is pretty much fucked from here on out” which is just some freeze dried bullshit if you ask me. I have no answers for these people. I bring them water, make some calls for them, keep bugging the doctors to give us more information or a compassionate update, but words of wisdom I have none. I feel the unfairness of it all. I feel the uncontrollable terror of loss. I feel the finality of never having a father again. I feel the sadness that is both poetic and grotesque. I stand by and witness the disfiguring emotional process we politely call grief. I am aware of God’s presence and I want to slap the hell out of Him or Her or It, not out of anger as much as out of defense. Maybe if God senses that I’m not a girl to fuck with my loved ones will be spared. But then in a slice of a moment, I am aware that God isn’t feeling smug about the whole thing but is there in the messy mascara-streaked middle of it feeling as shitty as the rest of us. It is this awareness of God which torn me open last night during the Good Friday service. I was feeling the sorrow of so many who I had encountered in the last few weeks and when the choir sang I began to weep and I didn’t finished that up until 20 minutes after everyone else left (except the other wretch who couldn’t manage to find her legs and stand the hell up). I wasn’t weeping for myself but for OUR suffering which in some beautiful horrible way is shared with and in Christ. I experienced the readings last night as God’s heart breaking for our suffering through Christ’s suffering and the beauty of it spilled out in my tears.
Happy Easter