red capacity alert

On my long drive down the mountain today I listened to a sermon on Hell.   (Baptist peer pressure maybe?:)  John Ortberg taught inspiringly about the lengths God has gone to win us and how much He values our free will.  He talked about the church not being a building but a group of people so won over by God's lavish love that they go on a rampage to win others.  He talked about us being so passionate to spread the news that "nothing can separate us from the love of God", that we assault the gates of hell and batter them down. 


A few hours later I was sitting at my desk in the resident's office when I heard the familiar "Red Capacity Alert" over the intercom.  This alerts the hospital that the ER/trauma facility has reached maximum patient capacity and can not receive any more patients. As I heard the alert, I pictured the gates of hell bursting at the seams with sickness and death and fear. I thought about our coworker who is anxiously waiting test results for his wife.  I thought about our teacher who is transferring her mom from ICU to Hospice.  I thought of the wife of 65 years, whose hand I held today as she was told her husband didn't make it.  I thought about the slash marks on a behavioral health patient's wrists and the tiny tubes that intubate the NICU babies. I thought about the tears and devastation that I had witnessed in the last few days. Hell is overflowing. 


Then I heard Ortberg's words ringing in my ears.  It seemed so necessary that there should be people in God's name banging their fists on the gates of Hell reminding others that "nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  Not trouble or distress, not death nor life, not height nor depth, or anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."


I was proud to be an assaulter today.  And grateful to be surrounded by such dedicated gate bangers each day.  Rock on church.

And...on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  Matthew 16:18  ESV

old soul

The dreaded second quarter evaluations were upon us.  We answered our 20 questions, wrote our five pages, spent half a day getting feedback from each other and then sat before the Professional Advisory Group. 


And as everything in CPE is, it was nothing like we expected. (dreaded.  see Jackhammered post)  This particular group was inquiring and encouraging.  They asked deep questions and listened intently.  They applauded the handling of a sticky situation I'd been in.  They commended the steps I was taking toward my goals.  They witnessed to the value of my ministry here. 

At the end of our hour together, one of the Advisors, a Rabbi, said to me "Erin, this may sound a little mystical.  But I feel you have been here many times before....." 

It does sound mystical.  And I'm not sure what it means.  But I like the sound of it....

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say,  "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.  Ecclesiates 1:9 and 10

little prayers

Yesterday I set the world's record for most chaplain prayers ever shared in a hospital setting.  Maybe.  At least that's what it felt like.

Most of the time I love praying for a patient.  Sometimes holding their hand.  Sometimes with my arm around the shoulder of their anxious loved ones.  I love stepping with them into the realization that we are on holy ground.  As I personalize their petitions, I remember how healing it is to be prayed for by name. But at the end of a day like today, on the 100th prayer, I peevishly pictured God saying "You again?  Take a break girl!"

The following comes from Eugene Peterson's Living-Message- It reminds me that every prayer, no matter how brief, is heard and valued.  A reminder I needed!

"One of the indignities to which pastors are routinely subjected is to be approached, as a group of people are gathering for a meeting or a meal with the request, "Reverend, get things started for us with a little prayer, will ya?" It would be wonderful if we would counter by bellowing William McNamara's fantasized response: "I will not! There are no little prayers! Prayer enters the lion's den, brings us before the holy where it is uncertain whether we will come back alive or sane, for 'it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.'"

Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place. Psalms 28:2

tangled

    This week we fininished reading and discussing A Fine Balance.  An incredible, horrible book which changed our world view and our office language (Hai Ram!) and warped us forever.  And somehow, in the middle of this 603 pages, written in another country, in another time, I found a passage that summed up my year - the angst, the mercy and the joy. 


      If time were a bolt of cloth," said Om, "I would cut out all the bad parts.  Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable.  Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily."
     "I'd like a coat like that," said Maneck.  "But which parts would you cut out?"
     "The government destroying our house, for sure," said Om.  "And working for Dinabai."
     "Hoi-hoi," cautioned Ishvar.  "Without her, where would the money come from?"
     "Okay, let's keep the paydays and throw out the rest."
     "What else?" asked Maneck.
     "Depends how far back you want to go."
     "All the way.  Back to when you were born."
     "That's too much, yaar.  So many things to cut, the scissors would go blunt.  And there would be very little cloth left."
     The evening sky darkened, summoning the streetlights.
     "Some things are very complicated to separate with scissors," said Maneck.  "Good and bad are joined like that."  He laced his fingers tight together.
     A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry


And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose.  Romans 8:28

water power

For our last Pastoral Image class we had to submit an image we portrayed in a hospital experience.  Here is one I shared.

Water comes in so many forms.  From the tiniest raindrop to glaciers of ice to warm ocean waves.  All water has the potential for amazing force and energy which maybe harnessed for incredible movement.

Water can be part of a gravity driven process that moves solids and deposits them elsewhere.  It is a transformer of nature and a reformer of the landscape.  To do this it has to be persistent, constant and creative.

The family that stays in my mind were the James’.  My pastoral care started as a little droplet when a nurse on Neuro paged me and told me the family had just received the bad news that Mrs. James had suffered a brain aneurism and would not wake up.  She asked me to come be with them in the consult room.

When I entered the room and introduced myself I could feel the resistance.  They shared that they were not religious, and I could sense uneasiness with a chaplain present.  I gently persisted, got them talking, answered their questions, helped them make plans.

Later I walked them to the patient’s room, carefully eroding some confusion, fear and a resistance to openly grieve. I asked for stories about Mrs. James and their memories brought laughter that washed over us all.  As the end came we cried together and our tears bonded us. 

In the 5 days between first call and Mrs. James’ funeral, we continued to share waves of emotion and experiences.  Rivulets of trust had displaced unease.  I was no longer a stranger, but a familiar current that carried them securely through the hospital and funeral experience.

The Lord says "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."  Isaiah 43:19

holes

Dante's epic begins with the narrator saying:
In the middle of the journey of our life
I came to myself within a dark wood
Where the straight way was lost
Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell
Of that wood, savage and harsh and dense,
The thought of which renews my fear!
So bitter is it that death is hardly more.


We spend a lot of time at the hospital talking about this experience.  We call it The Hole.  It's unlikely you will be in the hospital and not be experiencing some kind of Hole.  But even more then that - we all have Holes.


In classes, verbatims, supervision and conversations we explore our own discomfort with the hollows and caverns in our lives and experiences.  Our fear that if we open those doors we will get sucked back.  Our hesitation to getting in our holes and befriending the pain.  Our reluctance to take what we've learned in our darkness and connect with others who are in that place.


"Hello down there, sorry I can't come any closer.  Too messy for me.  Way too scary.   Hope you can feel my support thrown out miles above you.  Be well!"


This is the most challenging learning edge for me. To use that ladder to climb down in my own life. 
And in my ministry to recognize a person is in the hole, to get invited in, stay for awhile and connect and then to get out.  I'm totally convinced of the utter importance of this for me.


The book Beauty speaks to the dark night of the soul or a wilderness experience.  "A time of bleakness can also be a time of pruning.  Sometimes when our minds are dispersed and scattered, this pruning cuts away all the false branching where our passion and energy were leaking out.  While it is painful to experience and endure this, a new focus and clarity emerge.  The light that is hard won offers the greatest illumination.  A gift wrestled from bleakness will often confer a sense of sureness and grounding of the self, a strengthening proportionate to the travail of its birth.  The severity of Nothingness can lead to beauty.   The ruthless winter clearance of spirit quietly leads to springtime of new possibility.  Perhaps Nothingness is the secret source from which all beginning springs."


Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.  From the ends of the earth I call to you,  I call as my heart grows faint;  lead me to the rock that is higher than I.  Psalm 61:1,2

vending machine

At the hospital sometimes I feel like a spiritual vending machine.

You need a Bible – select 1

Prayer – select 2

Initial visit – select 3

Financial help with prescriptions – select 4

Patience while I listen to you complain  - select 5

Company in the trauma bay family waiting area – select 6

Hug while you weep – select 7

Guidance in the death process  - select 8

For any complaints about the performance of this machine please call 250-2000.

(quit pushing my buttons!)

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.  John 15:7