Plenary nunc dimittis

Had planned to sit in at least some of the governing council sessions, be a good soldier. But my guts, under a potent combination of rich hotel food plus the ubiquitous jalapeños in many of the dishes, cast a dissenting vote. So I have an excuse from my innards to hide out and enjoy the antiseptic solitude of my room, mine for another 2 1/2 hours at least, when "my room" abruptly becomes someone else's room.

Hotels and motels create a jarring sense of ephemeral "home". They use lots of homey images and gestures of hospitality, and they are sincere so long as the terms of the transaction remain in force. If the card is declined, then relations become far less warm.

But this is thus far not the case, and so I have a few more moments to reflect in solitude before travel and the rest of life take their hold.

At risk of being somewhere between melodramatic and credulous, I feel this conference has changed me. The shape of this change has been...

a) Belonging: I have, almost to my surprise, a new tribe, one that overall I like and find admirable and with whom I have a surprising amount in common. This commonality is related to profession; to a similar desire to dig deeper within ourselves, among one another, and with the people we serve; and to a genuine sense of being on a journey.

b) Challenge: the Tavistock material, although I am far from being able to say "I get it", is rich and compelling and is deeply germane to my present life and work. Uncovering the depth of dream and of body-knowledge, "body within a body within a body", and experiencing vocation as interplay of self, role, and larger structure makes sense. The points of stress and crisis, wherein an individual or a structure reverts to fight/flight especially, I recognize as playing out in my former parish, in the hospital, and in many other aspects of my personal and professional life. It's visible in national life now, as people talk openly of fleeing the country in case of a Trump presidency. Much to masticate, and to try and put "on the road", step by step.

c) Future: most of the folks I met are in process, towards clinical certification as chaplains, or as pastoral counselors, or as "diplomates" or CPE supervisors. And some with whom I spoke accomplished much of their supervisor-in-training work on-line. Two years ago I found myself pondering seeking CPE supervisor certification, but decided I did not wish to move across the country and/or take a drastic salary cut in order to do so. Discovering that just maybe things could be "worked out" is very intriguing indeed!

One of many "ahas" that I experienced here is that, at age 57, I had begun to see myself as old and done with further vocational development. I think that is far from true and, whereas I do not intend to go $40,000.00+ into debt to get a PhD, I could go in some other directions that would be a better fit for my gifts, passions, and circumstances.

Who knew that Salt Lake City could make one younger? I don't think even Brigham Young imagined that.

Plenary IV

At breakfast, a woman from New Jersey said "You know everybody!"

I laughed aloud and told her that my advantage was that I know nobody. As such I never have anything to lose, and I can sit down with any group and start with a clean slate, tabula rasa. "Hey, I'm -------, and you are?" That, and name tags are my friend.

So today I present, and am looking forward to it. Last night I opened my mouth to say "Me" in the group, but two other people were quicker on the draw. But last night I was grateful, as each presentation has allowed me to ask the question, "Is this really what I wanted to present?"

I thought I would chat about spiritual assessment and my exploring a narrative-based approach to assessment. But my slow-growing "aha" is that what I need is to share my own "assessment", ask for some insight about how to tell the story of my transitions of the past several years, how I find myself still slightly out of breath back in this clinical chaplaincy world after a 25+ year break. How to integrate, what needs re-telling, what needs healing, what needs reconciling, what needs re-owning, what needs to be left behind?

People are already starting to come and go for their own reasons. Most folks seem replete with input, many speak of struggling to understand the Tavistock material while appreciating the presenter's thoroughness and obvious mastery of both the material and the art of presenting.

Much undercurrent as well as, at lunch yesterday, speech about CPSP having come through turmoil in 2012 centering on mission and identity and resultant structures and procedures. I assume that the new certification process with a reviewing board is one of the results of this. The dynamics of the conversation are familiar to me--the stress and strain and anxiety that accompanies re-interpretation and some breaks of custom with the founding customs. It's hard, engenders anger and flight/flight, and apparently has given birth to a new spin-off group. What pleases me is my impression that everyone is trying hard to be civil and to keep speaking to one another. I met one person who is certified in and participating in both groups.

As a board-certified chaplain who completed the process just under the wire of the new regime, I feel like I straddle both worlds.

Meanwhile, it snowed a little last night, and today I heard that Trump and Cruz and Rubio and the rest of the Little Rascals are coming into Salt Lake City tomorrow. That'll make the airport just delightful! Woo hoo!

Plenary Deax: surprise and exhaustion

The first evening was replete with surprises.

CPSP serves good Irish whiskey.

CPSP folk are from all over, and even though there is a venerable white male contingent with whom I fit uncomfortably well there is some significant diversity of skin tone, language to a limited extent, gender, and experience.

It rains CPE supervisors. I remember those folks being less accessible. Or maybe I was, out of intimidation, oh so many years ago.

I sat down with a circle of elder statesmen on a patio and sipped Jamesons. A Ken, a Dave who is Co-President-Elect, a George who turned out to be from Ireland and proved it with a disarming unself-conscious way of storytelling. An Al, who asked me to remember him to Kevin Henne and said something about palliative care.

A young man who is a "Community Chaplain" in urban New York. Still want his stories.

The day proved rich and it started at breakfast. Ate with a couple of exuberant personalities, a sophisticated multi-lingual tall man from Quebec named Orville and a delightfully gregarious woman named Paula and I spoke first about their work. Both supervisors, they told of the joy upon seeing both new ministry dawn in their own lives as well as seeing realization and insight and integration dawn in their students' lives.

Something clicked inside of me. I thought of how I had assumed that, at age 57, I was on the downward slope of my active years, that my present job was my last gig, and that if I made it to 65 tops with my health intact I would be hanging things up, doing a little dabbling here and there.

I resonated with their description of bringing something to birth inside of seekers, as that has been my greatest joy lo these many years, whether with youth or with parishioners earnest about deepening their lives with Christ or with those seeking a more explicit and public ministry or with Academy students in the Diocese. I spoke aloud the word "midwife" and both of my companions stirred, reacting. I spoke also of the dual role of midwife and hospice worker in the context of leading a congregation, the slow death and new life visible there, and they understood. Orville remarked on how the Plenary process begins early.

And so it did.

The speaker, Richard, is quietly compelling. Near as I can ascertain this early in, the "Tavistock approach" he represents invites the unacknowledged and unintegrated experience of individuals and groups. The starting point is the body, somatic experience. Tavistock explores how the experience of the body, intersecting with the mind, engages one's role, which is an expectation or charge within an organization. One "embodies" an organizational role, and there is a dynamism between the individual impacting organization and the organization shaping (or contorting) the individual, often in suppressive ways.

If that is all wrong, I shall be interested, or should I say "curious", to be further enlightened.

Didactic sessions alternate with group work, for the essence of change, according to this understanding, happens in relation to individuals.

The day was long and exhausting, but very rich, and after dinner with a pair of Mormon CPE students, who patiently answered my questions about the Mormon epic historical narrative of the 19th century, I dove into solitude, grateful for my private room. I intended to 'blog last night but found myself exhausted and instead gazed glassy-eyed at an impenetrable sci-fi movie then tried to sleep.

In spite of my exhaustion sleep proved harder to come by than I had hoped. I had my journal at hand, intending to catch a dream, as there is a dream-workshop built into the morning. I think my unconscious decided to be mischievous and petulant, irritated at my intent to violate its privacy. But I did catch a dream in the wee hours of the morning, suitably bizarre to be grist for the mill, and so type sleepy but satisfied, sipping the cup of hotel-room coffee that the little machine obligingly chugged and huffed for me.

I did not know what to expect coming here--a gathering of good old boys/girls and walking about politely among a lot of back-slapping, insider-talk about the inner politics of an organization that I have joined without knowing much about beyond the life of our Chapter, some speaker speaking. There have been elements of all of these, but frankly there has been so much more. I did not expect the almost-audible "click" of shared call, insight and inner exploration, and new possibilities. I like this group of people, the geographic and ecumenical mix, the variety of ministerial and professional experience, the graybeards (among which I get beginner seating due to my own hoary hairs), at least some diversity of faiths and skin-tone and language.

I like the openness and frankness of many of the conversations, the commonality amidst diversity. It's already worth the journey.

Plenary blues

So I told Chi and Julie on the way back from Chapter that yes, I have a 'blog, and as quick as that I had agreed to 'blog posts from the Plenary.

So here I sit in the sumptuous yet rather arid comforts of the Sheraton, having been wished most sincerely a good stay by most sincere staff, sincerely.

I am sure I am grumpy because I was oddly nervous traveling today, even though by air standards Salt Lake City is not much more than a good steep climb, enough level flight to hand out the peanuts and come back around, attendant toe almost tapping, to collect the trash (none from me--I palmed the peanuts in an odd regressive scarcity gesture worthy of my Irish aunt). Then down, and I somewhat grudgingly admit that the mountains surrounding the Salt Lake City are impressive in a more stark and fierce desert way that our lush green peaks in Portland.

I awoke this AM feeling very grateful for my life, and for my vocation, and for our lovely jumbly chaotic family life in our aging little SE Portland house that is now worth a ridiculous amount of money because it is Where It Is. I left my wife engaged in a final push to finish her teaching Masters synthesis project, so it is well that I am out of her hair.

I know I was rattled because a lazy, glutinous drop of dark blue juice splotting on my lap, as well as all my feelings, so disheveled me that I forgot my hat, my brown pub cap, somewhere in the airport. I liked that hat.

So my head feels naked amidst the Stetsons and Caterpillar Tractor and other miscellaneous male headgear strutting about the lobby and the premises. Perhaps it is symbolic--bare vulnerable head. This is a passel of people unknown to me save for a couple of e-mail exchanges here and there. But I'll fumble through just like I've fumbled through all the new starts of my life, and there have been many.

The organizers had advertised an early registration to satisfy us compulsives rolling into town early, so once having been checked in and checked out and keyed and sincerely welcomed I dragged my rollie-bag off to find it. Empty halls.

I stood relishing not having a clue, when a grizzled 21st century Western type made his way slowly up the stairs. He mumbled something about "a conference" and "CPSP" and hauled out a cellphone, spoke into it for a few moments, then with something of a cowboy swagger moved with authority down the hall. I grinned, suspecting that in this new club of mine my Lone Ranger was probably Somebody, and decided to take the same trail back to the lobby. He deigned not to interrupt his reverie to address me, so I left him to seek his own destination and found my room.

Free WiFi, not bad. But I had forgotten how desolate a hotel room alone can be. But not so desolate that I want a roommate; I already feel the need to feed the introvert.

So writing this 'blog post feels good, like a connection. In a few minutes I will see if praying Evening Prayer from my Episcopal Daily Office Book will help me feel better oriented. I'll be on the lookout for the clinical cowboy figure later, and if indeed he turns out to be Somebody or at least Somebody You All Know I shall be sure to update you.

But damn it. I really liked that hat.

the solitude

When I am with others, there are usually ample opportunities to have hope confirmed for me. There may be moments of praise, or the quiet affirmation of work well-done, or the simple joy of being with co-workers whose presence makes me happy.

In the evening, when the hospital quiets, solitude falls like a familiar, comforting blanket.

I quietly choose when I shall eat, if at all, when I shall sit at the computer terminal and peck away at the endless charting that is the repetitive task of all health care workers. I remember to breathe deeply, to relax my shoulders which is where my tension gets stored, sit more upright, and move through my list the way one would move through an overgrown garden pulling weeds.

I stand, gather myself, not forgetting my loose-leaf binder with my lists and census. I have colleagues who seem to keep this in their heads. I congratulate them--long ago I made peace with having a 1.0 memory in a 3.0 world.

I quietly pad down now-empty hallways trying not to tromp in my worn Keen hiking shoes. I pass through units, checking on any so-called "hot spots" where a patient's acuity or a family's distress has emerged.

Or I seek a patient who has asked for one of us. As they go about their evening, poking at the remnants of dinner usually with the TV droning eternally in the background, I enter, utterly unknowing as to why I have been called. Loneliness? Religious devotion? Fear of an upcoming surgery? Confrontation with the truth of their lives, the isolation or the regret or the broken relationships or the deep disappointment upon realizing that they have lived their lives and they are far closer to its ending than its beginning? This last is the hardest. "This has been my life..." The most awkward and destructive lie our culture teaches is that life is endless possibility and in a sense never-ending. Many's the time I have sat in silence with someone whose rage or tears or silent despair fills the room as they realize that they have lived their life, and there it is, and what if any sense is made by all those empty promises of unending possibility?

All these conversations, disclosure of deeply human realities, face me with my own questions, draw from me moments of connection or identification or recognition.

Their solitude becomes mine as I pad about. If the encounter fills me to the brim with their own desperation and despair, I may stop in the chapel and, respectfully, ask the Silent One to allow all that pain to pass through me into the bottomless depths of the Divine Heart. I can't carry it.

If an urgent need does not drop from the ceiling or come at a run into the ICU or whip with a screaming siren into the ED, I leave for my solitary drive home. Solitary, except for the mute little grey box that may suddenly awaken and beep insistently, calling me back to those halls for God only knows what. But, if it sleeps, I shall sleep.

And that is the solitude. That is the life. Who heeds the solitary chaplain coming and going, walking the empty halls, quiet but ready? Solitude descends like a comforting cloak. For it is my turn to take this shift.

But that is the solitude. That is the life.

sympathy for the devil

Kerlin Richter's homily on the first Sunday in Lent gently turned the "temptation of Jesus" narrative on its head. Acknowledging that we generally place ourselves in Jesus' shoes when we hear this text, thinking on how we deal with our own temptations, Kerlin invited us to see ourselves in the devil's shoes, or cloven-hoof Crocs as it were (perhaps the devil does wear Prada).

Are we the accuser who wants stones turned to bread, who wants our God to give us what we want or crave when we want it? Do we want a super-hero God, one who flies in to fix all our ills? Do we want a rock-star personality who easily gathers our worship, gathers crowds and paparazzi wherever he goes, no matter what cost to his integrity or vision?

The homily left open these questions as well as this: what will we do when Jesus proves to not be any of those things? What if the Liberator is poor, humble, humiliated, and above all ordinary? "Hey Fred, you still have those heavy nails and those wooden beams lying around?"

But mercy is shown richly to all, even to those of us who are, to our shock, in sympathy with the devil. Thomas Merton noted once that Saint Antony the Great, the early hermit whose life-story took the late classical world by storm, remarked that even the devil has some good in him since God created him. I'm told that the Eastern Orthodox believe that the mercy of God is so boundless that even the devil shall be redeemed.

Some Western Christians no doubt would find this thinking disturbing, because we prefer our theology and world-view to consist of winners and losers, we prefer to have a villain who wears black and is terrifying and utterly evil, we prefer a shining hero who will destroy him (usually him) and confirm our view that there is light and darkness, the old dualism that is far more Manichean than Christian. That dualism, where it is clear and clean who are the good guys and who are the baddies, and where ultimately we deserve the rescuing we hope for as we are of course part of the good guys...well, I don't think this has any place in the world of the Gospel, and I don't think the world can withstand any more of this kind of thinking. The earth is littered with the bones of those slain because we in the West have adjudged them to be on the side of darkness, or they unfortunately lived too close to those allied with darkness and they are, in that terrifying banal phrase, "collateral damage." See the towns and fields of Syria for one.

I am more comfortable, on this first Monday of Lent, acknowledging my sympathy for the devil, because today I choose to trust in the mercy of God and since this mercy is boundless I am capable of owning my kinship with the accuser who gazes skeptically at the solitary dusty figure of Jesus fasting and trembling in the desert. That devil, that tester, poses questions out of my own hopes and fears and prejudices. I think I am safer here, rather than holding out for a hope that is cleaner and more powerful and more, well, unreal, a Jesus who belongs more in a Marvel Comic than in the pages of the Gospel.

And I'm not feeling pessimistic or despairing about any of this. This Monday starts gently as I am not due at the hospital until 11:30. Am continuing with Merton's journal readings daily; today the selection ends with "I am happy that I at least want to love God. Perhaps that is all I've got, but it is already all that is essential. And He (sic) will take care of the rest."*

*A Year With Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo ed., p. 47.

Lent, rants, and solitude

I've spent a lot more time thinking about what Lent is not, rather than what Lent is.

The way we "do" Lent as North American Christians, especially privileged North American Christians who understand our lives as being filled with choices, ends up being very individualistic. We trade thoughts on "what am I doing for Lent?" Frankly I think this tends to water down Lent for us. Lent becomes my exercise and connection with what everyone else is doing is nebulous. I have frankly envious of Islam in this regard: Ramadan is something they do together, as a community, with clear demands upon each believer mitigated only for the very young, the sick, and the elderly. Perhaps there are First World Muslims who chat on some level about "what I am doing for Ramadan", but I myself have never heard a word of such conversations breathed. The community engaging in Ramadan is reinforced by evening gatherings after sundown to share food and common identity, the "iftar". In the late 1970's, in the international student dorms at Stony Brook University, I remember the Iranian guys gathering in small groups, sometimes only two or three, and cooking food together in the student lounge at the end of the hallway. It looked comforting amidst the disjointed fragmented nature of life in the dorms.

In my parish days I longed for something similar, a communally expressed Lent. Some echo of this occurs when a congregation adds a weekday evening "soup supper" and devotion or study group, a nod to the notion that we are all in this together. But God help us, here we are, individualistic and entitled (for the most part) developed world Christians, we are who we are, it is what it is, and the question remains--what are we to do for Lent? What am I doing?

I find that, even after all these years, I am still a recovering Roman Catholic and at no time is this made more clear than during Lent. In the Irish East Coast Roman Catholicism that was my initial formation back in the mythical land called the mid-20th Century, the message was heard loud and clear, conveyed in both words and attitudes by church publications as well as my mom's attitudes, that if you're not suffering somewhat in Lent then you're clearly not with the program. "What are you going up?" peppered conversation before and even, for the procrastinator, shortly after Ash Wednesday. And you weren't supposed to cheat by giving up canned beets or spinach or the opera--it had to hurt. Twinkies, baby, or Snickers bars at the very least.

If one was unwise, one mentioned this to one's mother, who would kindly offer you the precious gift of shame if your hand reached out to the forbidden rack at the check-out line: "It's Lent, what are you doing?" Then would follow what, for my mother, the phrase that I now know helped her make meaning of suffering self-inflicted or visited on her by her exhausting life: "Offer it up."

"Offer it up." Oh great. All this stuff must be making God happy on some petty and nasty-spirited level. Springtime on Long Island consisted of long months of school with summer only a distant hope, chilly sunlight, and the creeping fear that I was not, on a growing daily basis, putting enough numbers up on the heavenly suffering scoreboard.

So, a confession: Lenten renunciations have never worked well for me. Hey, props to you if they do, for whatever they mean for you. Nor do I regard my personal Lenten baggage as, at age 57, a problem that someone can do me the favor of fixing. When I try to adopt some self-imposed measure of fasting, the end result is that it makes me secretly anxious and self-absorbed, and I am of the firm belief that this does no one any good, least of all myself. So other than gently trying to be in some solidarity with my fellow privileged Christians on days such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, I leave the imposed renunciation thing alone for the most part. So if you're looking for someone with whom to have a Lenten beer, I'm your man.

As such I can fortunately bypass Western Christianity's distortion of Lent, which is to make of it a self-improvement project. I'm thinking like "I'll lose 15 pounds for Lent this year", or "I'll give up junk food." One firm conviction I do hold is that Lent is NOT a Christian self-improvement project, a pious Springtime version of New Year's resolutions. Rare is the New Year's resolution that lasts until March, and if we run Lent through the same self-centered sieve I don't think we'll much like the crud left behind. Lose weight, eat healthier, exercise, fine--all great, worthy, but just do this on one's own time and don't enlist Jesus or the church year as one's support group.

Again back in parish days, God always planned a more demanding and authentic Lent than I could ever choose. Lent is when people got sick and died. Lent is when we inhabited the dark and horrifying story of betrayal and torture and execution and cowardice that is what we read in the Gospel during Holy Week. As such, all of us, especially the more wounded and more fragile, got even more fragile and anxious and on edge. Fights and divisions happened. Someone always had a meltdown near or during Holy Week. No accident that clergy resignations nationwide spike up right after Easter. "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more!"

Amidst this, I came to appreciate how Benedict in his Rule phrases it--that "the life of the monk should be a perpetual Lent", but that maybe to tip one's hat to the season, doing something extra small thing may be called for. We all are about the business of following Jesus in whatever confused and foggy fashion we can manage. But yes, maybe something extra. Benedict goes on to say that none of the monks should do anything extra without the abbot's knowledge and permission. I think this is because there are abundant opportunities for pride, self-absorption, and even self-destructive behavior subtle or overt in personally adopting disciplines. In these cases, better to not do anything extra, and just walk around with the humility of knowing that your life is nothing special.

This latter is more like my Lent. I know I am a pretty tepid fellow on most days, and deeply self-absorbed. I do better to stay put and centered in my own life as it is, in its devastating ordinariness, aware of my limitations and, increasingly with the years and with the work in critical care that I do, aware of my mortality.

I think on this especially when I draw the 6 AM shift at the hospital. I like padding down the empty hallway that will soon be filled with bustling staff and patient's families, bearing about their array of emotions ranging from hope to deepest grief. There is something sweet and even innocent about the hospital as it awakened and yawns, stretches. If there are not an overwhelming number of pre-surgeries, I make stopping in the chapel an early item on my list. A man from the neighborhood is often there, praying in solitude. I stand in the back so as not to disturb him, quietly adopt a modified Tai Chi stance so none of my joints are locked and energy can flow. I ask God to allow the divine energy to follow through me to those whom I meet, and in turn I ask that all the pain and sadness and anger and disappointment and regret and fear and despair I will encounter today flow through me and not remain, instead flow into the endless depths of the well of Christ's compassion. I have long learned that if it remains in me, it will son destroy me.

Minute by minute the hallways fill with those arriving to work, arriving for care, arriving to visit. I walk among them all, just another human being, greeting friends, trying to be hospitable to those especially who come wearing bewilderment or fear on their faces. I am, strangely enough, alone, inhabiting myself who am so in need of the minute by minute mercy of God, and who has slowly learned through the years that this mercy may be trusted. But none of this is resolved, none of this is a done deal, none corresponds to some sort of finished self-project that is complete and ready for public consumption.

After the rant about all my objections to Lent, a confession--I have added a small thing, reading the daily quote from "A Year With Thomas Merton." Today the reflection from his journals is about this sort of solitude: "...the solitary knows least where he (sic) is going, and yet he is more sure, for there is one thing he cannot doubt: he travels where God is leading him. That is precisely why he doesn't know the way."