Three days left of CPE, thanks be to God. It was a lot of hard work and not so fun to see people suffering several days a week, but I learned a ton and I understand why it's an ordination requirement.

Some things I learned in no particular order: lots of people are homeless because of untreated mental illness; lots of people develop addictions because they're trying to self medicate mental illness; there are a lot of pastors out there telling people really dumb stuff, like, you'll know your dead baby granddaughter is okay if you see a shooting star at midnight, or, if God had wanted you to have a new liver, God would have given you a liver; gratitude is transformational; our healthcare system is way screwed up; the church universal has let a whole lot of people slip through the cracks; I say I'm sorry a lot and often for no good reason; you can be shot and killed over a fish sandwich; there are a whole bunch of people shooting a whole lot of hard drugs into their veins and they come from all socioeconomic backgrounds; I still pass out if I see images of IV drug use, especially if I haven't eaten; you can be young, attractive, successful, married to a seemingly good guy, an avid churchgoer and still drink yourself to death, literally; men who don't believe in "lady pastors' will nevertheless talk nonstop to a lady chaplain for an entire hour, which is totally okay, since the talk is not happening in a church; I don't really like talking about my feelings; people trying to decide whether to withdraw life support for their mother/father/daughter/son/sister/brother/spouse will ask you what they should do if you happen to tell them you're a chaplain; lots of people are really scared to talk to God; lots of people believe God is punishing them; I'm a little gun-shy about my "pastoral authority"; lots of people don't believe God loves them unconditionally, and so don't believe God loves them; I'm more certain than ever that whatever you did, whatever you didn't do, God loves you anyway.

Also, here's a sermon I delivered for UAB's Episcopal Campus Ministries service earlier in the summer. The campus ministries chaplain asked if I'd talk some about CPE, which is why so much of it is focused on that. Also, I'm very excited to take homiletics this year and to work on sermon writing.

June 23, 2013
Luke 8:26-39

I just finished my first year at Virginia Theological Seminary. Back at VTS in the fall, my New Testament professor made a comment to me and a few other students that I sort of laughed off. She said, “Typically, we have a group of VTS students who go over to the Dominican House"—and the Dominican House is a place of study for young men hoping to become part of the Dominican Order in the Roman Catholic Church—"and take the exorcism class they teach there.” She went on to say that “if you’re really unlucky in your career as a priest, you may have to perform one exorcism. It’s really a much better idea to take a class on a gospel instead.”

And it seems true that Episcopal priests, at least the ones I know, and I think most clergy, just don’t assume that all that many people will be asking them to perform exorcisms. So I was a bit taken aback when someone asked me if I would in fact perform an exorcism a few weeks ago. I very much hope that doesn’t mean I’m unlucky.

  I’ve been here in Birmingham since the end of May working as a hospital chaplain at UAB. I’m completing what is called “clinical pastoral education,” or “CPE,” as part of the ordination requirements for the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi. CPE, which usually takes the form of hospital chaplaincy, is an ordination requirement among most, if not all, Episcopal dioceses, and is also required of those seeking ordination among several other denominations and traditions.

So I am here working at UAB to meet my CPE requirement. And it was during my very first night on call at the hospital, when I was thankfully shadowing a more experienced chaplain, that I met a young woman who very earnestly and seriously asked me and the other chaplain if we would please perform an exorcism on her.

As you might have imagined, this was on one of the hospital’s psych units. This woman was young and quite beautiful and clearly very intelligent, and unlike a lot of people I’ve seen on the psych units at UAB, she kept saying, “I realize this sounds crazy. I know this makes me sound crazy.” (Most of the people I see on the psych units don’t seem at all worried about sounding “crazy”—her word.) So she would talk about sounding crazy, and then she would recount some very odd incident—such as her boyfriend’s serving her communion, and this boyfriend was someone with split personalities and the communion-serving personality was evil—and all that in her mind proved that she had been, in her words, “marked by the beast.”

“I feel like I’ve been marked by the beast,” she said over and over again. “I know that I’ve been marked by the beast and I’m scared that I can’t get back to God and Jesus and that I will burn in hell.” And that notion clearly terrified her.

And I’m actually not even sure the word terrified does justice to the fear I saw in this woman’s eyes. “I don’t want to burn in hell,” she kept saying. “I believe in God. I want to follow Jesus. But it’s too late. I’ve already been marked.” Terrified. And no wonder. She was completely and utterly convinced that she had moved to a place beyond the reach of any saving help, certainly beyond the reach of society, and even beyond the reach of God.

In that way, she believed herself to be in a place very much like the place where we find the man possessed by demons in tonight’s gospel lesson. This is a man whom the gospel writer tells us lives in “the tombs,” completely removed from the rest of society, except of course for the guard who ensures society is kept safe from the man. This is a man the community has given up on, a man literally living among the dead.

And why not? Clearly, he seems unfit for any other kind of existence. This man, who can’t even manage to clothe himself, is teeming with unclean spirits, and as such, he is continually breaking his chains and being driven off into the wild. He clearly is not in his right mind. He is in fact so totally overcome by his afflictions, his demons, he is unable even to say his name when Jesus asks. Instead, the demons themselves respond. The man is completely and utterly overcome, seemingly, like the young woman on the psych ward, beyond any saving help.

Whether the young woman on the psych ward and the man in the gospel were actually afflicted by demons or by mental illness, each was in a truly dark place, a place they believed to be beyond the reach of God’s saving mercy and love. I would hazard a guess, that while these are no doubt extreme cases, all of us have at some time felt that we, or maybe at least some small part of us, something about us, within us, is beyond God’s reach. If you are like me, you may have a demon or two or three.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann says that “We may imagine, in contemporary context, the demons are any form of addiction—drugs, sex, money, power, control, self-promotion. Such demons preclude much of the life that we want to live.” But,” Brueggemann says, “Jesus has the power to give the man a new life of freedom, beyond the grip of all the demons.”

And Jesus does in fact give the man a new life of freedom. In healing the man and casting his demons into the abyss, Jesus shows the man, the Garasenes, and us that there is no darkness that cannot be overcome. Whatever our demons—and we all have them—Jesus has power over them.

Brueggemann says, “In the extremities of our life, we are powerless for ourselves. Just so the man with Jesus is powerless in the face of his demons. But then freedom, restoration, and new life flow through.” Freedom, restoration and new life flow through despite however dark or bad or sinful we may believe our demons to be. Jesus brings us freedom, restoration and new life, whatever our demons, despite how many our demons, despite a whole legion of demons. There is nothing in us that the love of God through Jesus Christ cannot make new. And we do well to remember—I do well to remember—that there is no one so far gone, even on the psych ward, even on our streets and in our prisons, that the love of God can’t reach, can’t restore, can’t make new. And because we, as Christians, have been made new, we like the man in the gospel must proclaim this.

I don’t know how the girl I met that night is doing. I know that she went home a few days after I saw her, and I assume she got at least some of the help she needed. I know that we didn’t have to do an exorcism, but I don’t know exactly how much improved her mental and emotional state were when she left the hospital. I know that I was scared for her that night, because she was so scared and so convinced she was beyond any help. But I was also hopeful, am hopeful, because I know that what she said was not even close to true. There are no demons that Jesus can’t cast out.

During the weekdays at the hospital, I'm seeing psych patients and also pulmonary patients, including many with cystic fibrosis. On the weekends while on call, though, I go wherever needed. Here's part of my journal entry after my first solo on-call (one of the CPE writing requirements is a weekly journal entry):

Over the weekend, I dealt with four deaths, all in different stages: a family viewing their deceased mother; praying with another family whose husband ended up dying in the night; praying with the husband and sons of a woman with an unexpected brain bleed and listening as the neurosurgeon let them know she would not recover; praying with a woman whose husband had coded and who likely would not make it. It was a lot and I cried as I drove home and again as I showered. Seeing all that made me want to be with my own family, made me want to be home with them. And it made me fear my being in the shoes of one of the loved ones I’d prayed with through the course of the night.

I wanted to be at UAB in part because it is a level-1 trauma center and I knew I’d get a great deal of experience with patients and families dealing with extremely difficult situations. But death is scarier and harder than I’d anticipated. Watching people say goodbye is moving and powerful but certainly no fun. I hurt for them and selfishly I fear for my own loved ones. I thought that as the chaplain, I would be able to offer comfort, and I think I have, despite a few missteps, and despite feeling pretty inadequate in each situation. But I didn’t anticipate how comfortless I would feel.

In each case last night, I prayed for the family and the patient to know and feel God’s presence. I pray that for myself. I believe God is with me and I do take comfort in that, but the question of theodicy comes up. How can so much suffering occur in just a few city blocks in such a short period of time, much less all the suffering going on outside the hospital walls, throughout the world?

I do believe, or at least very much want to believe, that all the suffering of this life will amount to nothing once we see God face to face. all the death over the weekend also made me think about how short life is and how suddenly it can end. We are here to make connections and help one another in that very short time, I believe. God calls us into community and we are to love and support one another as best we can. Hopefully, whatever support we can give one another in this life is just a tiny inkling of the love and support and complete feeling of wholeness of the next. Hopefully.         

I made it through my shift okay, but was pretty sad and anxious still on Sunday afternoon, after my shift was over and after I’d slept a few hours. But, thankfully, I was reminded of God’s overwhelming love Sunday night at the 13^th anniversary celebration of the Beloved Community United Church of Christ, where I went with a VTS classmate from Birmingham. I was reminded that there really is nothing to fear, that there is nothing that can happen to us in this life—not death, not psychosis, not terrible pain—that can separate us from the love of God. For that, and for the opportunity to minister to people in crisis, I give great thanks. My hope and prayer for that ministry is that my presence can in some very small way let people know that there is nothing to fear.

I've been in Birmingham for a couple weeks now, after a short stint in Vicksburg, and will have my first solo 12-hour on-call shift tonight at the hospital. It's been kind of a sad day for me and I'm a little nervous about tonight. Thursday, while finishing the required new-to-UAB scavenger hunt to try to find different units of the hospital, I walked in on a code. All the staff chaplains and chaplain residents were in a staff meeting and I was in a part of the hospital that requires either a 15-minute walk or a shuttle ride. All that is to say I was it as far as chaplain support for a while.

The code involved the husband of a woman who was really scared about losing the one person who had been there for her. She had some family a few hours away but her husband was really the only person she had, and she clearly loved him. She didn't know what she would do, and I of course had no answers for her. On top of her being alone, it was clear she had very little in the way of financial means. I was able to keep it together to be with her but she's been on my mind most of the day. All I can think to do for her is pray.

It wasn't the first death I'd seen here; I think it maybe was the third. But the thing about this death was this woman, who seemed so small and shaky and frightened in the corner of the hospital room, where she sat and rocked as no less that half a dozen doctors and nurses tried to revive her husband. I left about 40 minutes after meeting her, soon after the chaplain assigned to the unit arrived, soon after her husband passed. Again, all I can think to do is pray that she will feel the presence and peace of God.

So among the many things I've left undone is this blog, for which I ask forgiveness. There just seems to be no free time ever. This quarter, like the three before it and like August term, has flown by. I credit having come (almost) to the end of the first year of seminary to all of you who are praying for and sending good thoughts my way. Thank you.

The plan is to leave Alexandria a week from tomorrow. I have one more class tomorrow, then two reading days, then finals Thursday (Hebrew and Foundations for Theology), Friday (New Testament and Monday (Old Testament). I hope to leave after my final Monday morning. Thankfully, I don't have to drive the 15 hours to Vicksburg by myself--my mom is flying up Friday so she can also enjoy said drive. Hopefully, we'll arrive safely in Vicksburg early Tuesday morning. I'll spend a few days there before heading to Birmingham for CPE. That's the plan, anyway.

I've been trying to think about all the stuff I've learned this year. Aside from being able to read Hebrew a little and having a much better understanding of and appreciation for Paul, for example, I've been trying to figure out how I've been "formed," which is what is supposed to be happening. Living away from home in community is not easy. There is lots to complain about, lots to grieve, lots to feel insecure about, lots to criticize. You get the idea. In the words of my friend Susan, "Some days I just don't feel like being formed." Amen and amen.

But there is so much more to be thankful for, and I try in spite of my overly critical nature, to hang on to that. Some days it's easier than others, for sure, but I am thankful to be here learning how to love people who don't agree with me, whose ideas seem kind of wacky, or who just drive me nuts. And I am thankful they are all trying to love me in return. Hopefully, at the end of our three years together, after worshiping, studying, eating, celebrating and commiserating together, we will have formed one another into pretty decent priest material.

Three quarters down and one to go, and I'll be done with my junior year of seminary. We at VTS are now on spring break, which coincides with Holy Week this year. The first day of spring break/Holy Monday also coincided with about three inches of snow on the ground this morning and more very wet snow and some rain falling throughout the day. I was out in this with a bunch of other seminarians and even more Episcopal clergy (including about 20 bishops) who walked the stations of the cross from the White House to the Capitol in an effort to protest gun violence. Was good to be out there with everyone but was very hard to hear with such a large crowd and also pretty cold. I'm kind of a wimp and perhaps not the best protester. The other Southerners I was with and I lasted till the Capitol, but did duck indoors for coffee at one point. Here's the story about this:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/25/episcopal-church-procession-aimed-against-gun-violence/

For the rest of spring break, I'll be here in Alexandria, doing some work at my work study job and trying to read some of what I didn't get to last quarter. I'll get to serve at the Cathedral on Easter Sunday and then we'll have Easter Monday off from school and the VTS Seder that night before starting the fourth quarter. Am very excited that fourth quarter means translating the Book of Ruth in Hebrew, even though I'm not the best translator. Also means more NT and OT, a class called the Foundations of Theology (a background in philosophy before going into systematic theology next year) and a Christian ed class on reaching out to those who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. Should be a good quarter, if I can survive one more round of finals and papers.

I'm still getting used to the quarter system (versus semesters) at VTS. Things change so fast around here, with class schedules readjusting every six weeks (and people forever showing up at the wrong time for the wrong class). Things are about to change again; we'll start the fourth quarter after Easter and so there is the mad dash to the end of the third quarter before spring break, which happens to coincide with Holy Week this year. That mad dash includes what feels like a crush of work with papers and finals. 

And back to Easter. I will miss being at St. Peter's, but I am excited and thankful to have the opportunity to serve at the National Cathedral with a bunch of other first-year seminarians (while most of the middlers and seniors serve at their field ed sites for Easter). Should be fun to don our new albs and serve wine at the 8 and 11 a.m. services to hundreds of people from all over. 

I love lots of things about VTS, but one great thing about the seminary is the variety of opportunities that come our way. I will be at the cathedral for Easter but this morning I sat in an abbreviated Quaker worship meeting led by a visitor to the seminary (abbreviated in that we sat in silence only for half an hour). The Monday after Easter, I will take part in VTS's annual Seder. And through Lent, I'm participating in an Ignatian "retreat-in-daily-life" through Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown.

All that's to say it's good to be here and I can't believe how quickly it is all passing. There are of course days when I feel like the community is closing in on me and days when I absolutely don't feel like being "formed." And there are lots of other days when I would rather do anything except read, but as the seniors prepare to leave, as more and more of them land jobs and are ordained as transitional deacons, I'm reminded of how quickly this time will end.

And so it was that on Valentine's Day many of us juniors here at VTS got calls inviting us to serve at parishes throughout the dioceses of Virginia, Maryland and Washington for two years of field education, starting next fall. I am very happy and thankful to have received a call from Peter Ackerman, rector of St. Christopher's in Springfield, VA. Am also very happy that he has invited me (if I want) to start worshipping at St. Christopher's. I do very much want to do that; I've greatly missed being in a parish these last months, and am happy to have a place to spend Holy Week, which is also VTS's spring break.

I am extremely excited about working at St. Christopher's and with Peter. The senior who is the current seminarian there has had a great experience, and Peter is a relatively new rector (since 2010), so it will be an education in and of itself to watch him navigate waters that still may be somewhat unfamiliar to him. 

Interestingly, Peter, who graduated in 2007 completed his field ed across the street from the seminary at Immanuel Church on the Hill under the supervision of Sam Faeth, whose rector once upon a time was Taylor Moore. Peter went on to become the associate at Immanuel before receiving the call to St. Christopher's in 2010. Sam retired about that time, and she and her husband recently became members of St. Christopher's. So, I will be serving at a parish where my supervisor was once supervised by my sending rector's parishioner, with whom I'll be regularly worshipping. As my friend Martha, a priest working on an master of arts degree here at VTS, says, "There really are only six Episcopalians. The rest is smoke and mirrors."

Here's the link to St. Christopher's, with a message from Peter: http://www.saintchristophers.net