Lenten Disciplines

It's that time of year again. Here in Central PA, today is Shrove Tuesday and involves a)pancakes; b) fasnachts ( and the variant spelling fausnachts); or for the trendy, King Cake with purple, yellow and green sugar ( the safest version of NOLA, but a good way to get the Chicks ready for the Lutheran Youth gathering in the "Big Easy" this summer).
Often times people give something up for Lent, as a way of invoking discipline and returning to God, and a way to conjure up the sense of separation from blessedness in this season leading up to Easter. A time of penitence and contemplation.
While I hope to be diciplined, my thoughts are these: First, I should repent of the things that keep me from maintaining relationships, real and virtual. So to that end I hope to be more faithful in nuturing the true sense of my life with God and with those in my midst- be less self-absorbed, and less distracted. I also hope to pay more attention to my physical self which seems a little out of kilter these days. There is a sense of giving up, but it is a giving up of the things which draw me from God and those whom I am blessed to know.
If I am able to be attentive to this, I will not feel like I gave up as much as I gained. For those Lutheran among us, I encourage you to also join me in the Book of Faith Lenten Journey, which focuses our hearts and minds upon the Lord's Prayer. Each day of the journey involves journaling. I hope to do some of that here- and hope maybe a few of you lurkers will join me on the journey. To close, I quote the words of Henry F. French-" May your Lenten journey be an adventure that leads you to Easter and beyond in the grace of God."

Where is God and How do we Know?

Today I met a man in the ER who rolled his car, but was going to be OK- banged up but no broken bones. My job among other things is to catalog a patient's belongings. On his laptop case was a Bible. It was important enough to carry as he commuted to work, and to his appointments among the Amish farming community. In spite of his miraculously being spared any injuries that would have admitted him and caused anguish, when I asked him if he wanted me to offer prayer for thanksgiving, he said no- because he was OK.
Later in the morning I visited a man who has some undiagnosed intestinal problem. He is homeless and suffers from mental distress. He eagerly accepted a visit and shared with me his faith, and pictures of his cat, a stray who found him. Though he occasionally was a little disordered, and his faith was labeled as a "religious preoccupation" by nursing, it was hard to see that this man's faith was just about mental illness. He asked me to pray, he held the Bible and knew it's stories. He told me that I was the first person to visit him. He chided me that Jesus conmmanded that we remember the poor, hungry and homeless. He challenged me as to whether I would stay and listen to him or would I call him crazy. He insisted I look at his blackened toenails- his concern of the day.
He thanked me for listening and for praying.
During our visit, he sat in a chair, as did I. At one point in the visit, a batik cloth he had draped on the foot of the bedrail, spontaneously slid off. I caught it and he professed this as proof of the Holy spirit in the room, and of my being someone open to the Spirit.
It mught be easy to lump him together with other "crazy" people. But I wonder. This man who has nothing and no reason to believe in God, professes the presence of God in his life.
One whose life was spared, carries a text that does not speak to him in a moment defying rational possibility.
Who sees God for who God is?
And how do we know?

And After Internship Matching..the Wait

Ready for Speed Dating

Today and tomorrow are times of concentrated effort as our middler class spends time interviewing with congregations from across the country who are graciously willing to have an intern for the coming year. In this year in particular gearing up has taken an added strenuous times as the economy has in some instances decimated the ability of parishes to support interns. And it has become more challenging for interns to contemplate who to have some level of viability in the year on internship. Given the ages of my children, with LC#1 being a high school senior next year, I am not free to travel just anywhere. Yet, I feel blessed to have six possible locations for my learning experience. Though some see our region as being fairly homeogenous and monolithic, in fact each of these flocks is vastly different from the other, and a few are in very transitional times. From my perspective this translates into my feeling that there are many exciting and challenging opportunities in which I may be stretched and formed in new ways. In the good old days, our internship matching process has been called "the meat market" though I prefer the updated phrase " speed dating."
I have read the profiles, and looked over whatever else the congregation provided as a glimpse into their world, and I have visited websites, talked to old interns and acquaintances of supervisors.
In short, I have done everything I can do. Which is I think the main point. So much of this process is not up to me, and not even up to the supervisors or field education team, but is, I hope and believe, the work of the Spirit in our midst.
Some of my classmates are dealing with great anxiety as they sort out their situations in relationship to the notion of being ready to "mobilize."
I am again reminded of the story in the Gospel of Mark in our recent lectionary of the calling of the first disciples. "Come and follow me on the way" What are the nets we find it hard to cast down? Are we so preoccupied with them that Jesus needs to yell to get our attention?
Jesus says come and FOLLOW me. Even in ministry it is hard to remember that we are called to follow God's lead, not to try to lead God where we want to go. To prepare myself for the way I was blessed to spend two hours with Taize and contemplative prayer and walking the labyrinth by candlelight with some friends in our chapel in the evening. And now, it is time to listen to where God is calling. Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Requiem for Buddy Beagle

Some may recall that over the summer we thought Buddy beagle was not long for this world. Miraculously we saw him through kidney failure in May (when he ate the underwear and got ill). That was the time we had the cell phone on vibrate during the LTSG graduation service because we just weren't sure he would pull through. Then we saw him through liver failure this summer right around when we were headed to Lutheran Summer Music, and we were afraid we woudl be called in Minnesota with bad news. Each time he pulled through and we changed what he could eat, and dealt with medications. Last week he developed gastroenteritis, and it was back to vet before it was time to be at LTSG, then home to make new special food and administer meds and re-work the schedule between my beloved and I for seeing that Buddy got his several small meals a day and meds. But each time he has rebounded.
As Buddy has aged, his walk has developed into the stiff walk of the person with arthritis, or hip trouble. Turning around had become a process. We began carrying him up and down stairs to avoid a fall after a couple wipeouts on the hardwood floors. We changed the height of his food bowl so he could eat more easily until he decided he preferred to just lay down and eat. I chuckled as he developed a new strategy for relieving himself when he was too unsteady for the tripod. He kind of looked like a ski jumper just before the lunge off of the ramp.
Yesterday, I was doign some much needed housecleaning after we got some new storm windows installed. As I was working I realized I heard toenails clicking up the stairs, and suddenly there was Buddy having climbed the 16 steps without assistance. While I was surprised to see him, my mood quickly changed as he promptly settled down on the freshly laundered linens. I have always been his human Mommy, but this was not a good time or place for him to pick. I encouraged him, OK, shushed him out into the landing and got back to my work.
However within a minute I heard panting and howling and scratching of nails on the floor. I came around the corner to find Buddy splayed on the ground, trying desperately to stand, in distress, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, and going to the bathroom.
It became clear that he could not stand, the back half of his body appeared to be useless. And my always unflappable beagle was now moaning and howling and drooling.
Of course it not easy to deal with vet issues on Sundays, but we are blessed with a local vet who has a love of beagles, who agreed to meet us at the animal hospital in 15 minutes. We loaded Buddy onto an old sleeping bag and made the trek, with me sitting in the back seat with him, just like when my kids were little.
After lots of poking and prodding and listening, it seemed that he may have had either a blood clot break loose, or an embolism, and we need to make a decision. It is time to say farewell to a much beloved friend before heading off to seminary for the week.
Last night I realized that though it drives me crazy and interrupts my sleep, my beagle's snores were not a part of last night. There was no little old man on the pillows next to our bed, harumphing through the night. The silence was deafening. This morning I kept thinking I would hear the clicking of toenails on the floor that lets us know it is time to get up and take Buddy out. As I cooked in the kitchen, I realized that it did not matter that I had dropped food on the floor, no one was there to fight me for it, or clean it up either. There was no faithful friend, under my feet, threatening to trip me as I move from room to room. No clanging of the food bowl craning for that one..last..bit that was missed, as though somehow more would materialize. There will be no tufts of grass brought in from the romping on one's back in the yard on a warm day. No squirrels will be sent scurrying by the wheezing bark of our sentinel.
The one thing that I do have though is the tricolored beagle hairs that follow me everywhere, seemingly selectively shed so that no matter what I wear a little bit of Buddy can be ever with me.
I remember one of the hardest things when our last dog died. The sympathy card from the vet, telling us how much our pet meant to them over the years too, and the sadness of knowing that they mean it. And another collar and foodbowl will go in the basement- we cannot get rid of them, though we don't really know why we keep them. And the empty crate will stare at me like the empty chair of Tiny Tim.
After I wrote this the vet called to say Buddy had just passed away in his sleep. While I am sad for this leaving, I am grateful that we did not have to make a decision for him. Farewell, faithful friend.

I am not a Gas Station attendant

I regret that I am not a more regular blogger- somehow there is too much of life happening to crystallize it. The last time I blogged, I was headed into a time when I was to train interns in a shadowing process. Each of those times brought learning for both of us. But the more recent time happened on a snowy day, when I drove through the virtual snow globe and slick roads, watching each of the 10 accidents I passed to predict if it involved people who would be coming to the hospital. I am still not sure what that says about me. After a trip that took three times as long to complete, I had just introduced myself to the intern, and gotten the handoff of patients when the traumas started. Since the other non-student chaplain was stuck in traffic, we were off to the first of 6 traumas in our 6 hour shift. Many involved another patient who was somewhere else in the ER, and the shuttling back and forth to keep everyone who had been torn asunder, connected. Husbands and wives, parents and children. In all of this buzz, there was the family of an older woman who was in the ER and dying, totally unrelated to the swirl of motor vehicle events. The ER is like a beehive when there are multiple simultaneous events, and one must keep one ear to what is happening beyond to know what will soon be told. In the midst was a Code Blue five floors away and the challenge of how to leave and how to be present for a totally different family who doesn't care about my trauma load downstairs. How it is that one is able to shift and be what is needed is truly God's work.
In the midst of this wild ride, I am trying to keep the intern in the loop and check how she is doing. It becomes obvious that this is not at all pleasant for her- in the rare moment of time, I ask how she is doing and learn " I guess I did not prepare myself for the reality of death. I am not ready for it now."
But who among us really has prepared? The fact your beloved has been sick and could die "someday" is not "today." The fact you were hit by another car, but now your mother, the passenger, is dying, is not what any of us can mentally be braced to simply accept. This is what makes us human- to love is to risk. But in the midst of this, what is the word that can be offered?
Recently one of my classmates, in lifting up the merits of parish ministry (which are many) told me that what I do is "just gas-station ministry." In the sense that I am sent by God to fill up your spiritual tank when you feel depleted, or drained, I suppose that is true. The fact we are 24/7 not answering machine, is a reality. But from where I stand, it is not about whether one or another has a "better" or more permanent ministry. After all, who knows what the seeds are that are planted- do they happen because of a great sermon, or a warm handshake at the door each week, or do they happen because when faith was tested in the crucible of trauma, it was restored, or kindled? Only God knows.
For whatever reason my time at the hospital allows me to use a gift. It is not an exclusive gift- but in my time there, I will do what I can to plant seeds, for the patients, for the staff, for the families, for my peers. Often this happens when a pastor cannot come, or at a time when pastors are elsewhere. It takes many of us, each where we need to be, when we need to be, to do what the Spirit desires. If that means I am a gas station attendant, then I guess I pray you will want to fill your tank and that one of us will be there with a smile and an encouraging word for the journey ahead.

Between the Firsts and the Lasts

As this past year drew to a close and I am now halfway through my J-term class, I am halfway through my coursework at LTSG. A semester until internship, and the knowledge that the time after internship will fly. And at this halfway point, lots of things have begun to crystallize in new ways, and perhaps this is my epiphany. This time last year, I like some of the juniors I talked to this year, had that sense of brief relief, having survived that first semester, and discovering that coming back to school was, in some ways, a relief- to be with people who understand this whole "becoming a pastor thing." Yet this year, I am ready to head out to internship, because after the summer at the hopsital "doing," I am itchy to get out where this whole "pastor thing" happens, not just talk about it. And after starting seminary feeling like it was all swirling wildly, knowing that the swirl has a Director. As I listen to those who are in the junior class, I hear them saying the very things my peers and I said last year, knowing that the seniors can say the same about us middlers. There is a certain joy in being able to see where one was, with one foot into the future unknown, when it is framed in discernment in the community here.
But as sure as I say that, I am, I daresay, impatient. Yet, I know that this year is in so many ways a gift. A gift of time to luxuriate in learning. To know that I have traveled from that first day of Greek to probably the last class with a professor who has been a mainstay in my seminary learning, and to bask in that one moment of praise. A time to draw my family close in ways that will not always be possible. A time to enjoy the sparkle of the face of LC#1 and her boy. I gaze upon the Adorable Couple, knowing that this first real "romance" is also a marker of the time which will be the last of high school, far sooner than I expected it. To watch as LC#2 is even more quickly hurtling toward that same direction, or at least it seems that warp speed has been activated.
A time to move closer toward that goodbye to my home parish. And to stand in the tension of finally having preached to the home flock for the first time,and to soak up their welcome, but also to know that I have probably sung my last Christmas Eve with them; my last Christmas Eve solo. Yet, to feel a peace in this new status after many months of angst over it.
And indeed to prepare the inlaws for the reality that we will not be with them next Christmas Eve, and to incur the blast of wrath for "taking them away just because of something you think you have to do." To be shopping with my mother who is still trying to buy me things I will not wear, in the time when there are only so many days outside of clerics. To hear her say she still cannot get that through her head, but to gently tell both women in my family that in fact over the next year, this change will come.
And finally ending the last vestige of my active legal practice- having now articulated when the last work will be for the two communities I represent, which happens to coincide with when my good friend and town manager is retiring, so we will "ride off into the sunset" at the same time, having had what will probably be the last business lunch before we each leave this community in different ways.
Between now and internship, and all of those classes, I continue working several times a month as a chaplain, and to this there is one more first and last. I have gone from the first day of CPE when the facility and all it entailed seemed impossible to fathom, to completing CPE. But now as I did this fall, again this week, I will be helping to train one of the new interns in a shadowing process and to recall where I have been in new ways.
While I am beginning to think about where God may place me for internship, I give thanks for the Spirit's showing that this pattern of firsts and lasts is not one we experience in isolation, but in prayer and contemplation, and in the community with all of those who are placed here in our midst as instruments to that purpose.