POST 21: "If I Can Dream"
CHAPLAIN MINISTERING AT BEDSIDE
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CHAPLAIN MINISTERING AT BEDSIDE
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CHAPLAIN RESIDENTS DISCUSSING THEIR VERBATIMS
“The very fact that God has placed a certain soul in our way is a sign that God wants us to do something for him or her. It is not chance; it has been planned by God. We are bound by conscience to help him or her.”
― Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living
In 1990 as I caught wind that Barry was schlepping the world performing to sold-out shows in England, Japan and then in Las Vegas, I was pregnant with my first child, Andrew. I enrolled in a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), training that usually leads to certification as a chaplain, but one unit is normally required of candidates for ministry. I was assigned to Lenox Hill Hospital on the East Side of Manhattan.
My team was comprised of other ministry students: a Unitarian woman, a young man studying to be a Dominican Roman Catholic priest, a woman studying to be a Reform Jewish Rabbi, and our supervisor was an Orthodox Rabbi, whose in-your-face, confrontational style frightened the shit out of me. Yet it also was alluring and challenging. We wrote verbatims, “I said/he said” reports, and then reflections that made it plain what mistakes we made, what we missed, or how we had actually ministered well.
We learned how to listen and observe. We trained on how to build trust and join a patient’s story but also how to develop a “bullshit-ometer.” We studied the craft of story. That everyone has a story. How a story can heal. How to listen to a story. How to help connect a person’s story to the sacred story. This sort of training continued at the Columbia School of Social Work. I just ate it all up like greedy Augustus Gloop stuffing his face with chocolate in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
In the course of my studies I came under care to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church, USA. Part of the process is a series of psychological testing that was carried out at the Northeast Career Center, in Princeton, NJ. The test results were laid out before me. I was an “idea innovator” and “analytical & investigative.” I was told that my intelligence was an asset. The psychologist drew a bell graph on a piece of paper and pointed to where my intelligence lay. I just stared.
No one had told me I was smart before – on the contrary.
I was 29 years old before someone said I was intelligent and this was good. This became part of the reconstruction surgery that would go on for years, even decades. Now for those of you who are reading this, if you have children, or anyone you care about in your life for that matter: stop.
Right now, stop.
Go and tell them something good about themselves.
Give them a compliment. A hug. Name their gift. Children need to hear this. Often. Do this. Repeat it as often as necessary.
End of lesson for today.
Notes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa?page=6
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.
― Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living
In 1990 as I caught wind that Barry was schlepping the world performing to sold-out shows in England, Japan and then in Las Vegas, I was pregnant with my first child, Andrew. I enrolled in a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), training that usually leads to certification as a chaplain, but one unit is normally required of candidates for ministry. I was assigned to Lenox Hill Hospital on the East Side of Manhattan.
My team was comprised of other ministry students: a Unitarian woman, a young man studying to be a Dominican Roman Catholic priest, a woman studying to be a Reform Jewish Rabbi, and our supervisor was an Orthodox Rabbi, whose in-your-face, confrontational style frightened the shit out of me. Yet it also was alluring and challenging. We wrote verbatims, “I said/he said” reports, and then reflections that made it plain what mistakes we made, what we missed, or how we had actually ministered well.
We learned how to listen and observe. We trained on how to build trust and join a patient’s story but also how to develop a “bullshit-ometer.” We studied the craft of story. That everyone has a story. How a story can heal. How to listen to a story. How to help connect a person’s story to the sacred story. This sort of training continued at the Columbia School of Social Work. I just ate it all up like greedy Augustus Gloop stuffing his face with chocolate in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
In the course of my studies I came under care to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church, USA. Part of the process is a series of psychological testing that was carried out at the Northeast Career Center, in Princeton, NJ. The test results were laid out before me. I was an “idea innovator” and “analytical & investigative.” I was told that my intelligence was an asset. The psychologist drew a bell graph on a piece of paper and pointed to where my intelligence lay. I just stared.
No one had told me I was smart before – on the contrary.
I was 29 years old before someone said I was intelligent and this was good. This became part of the reconstruction surgery that would go on for years, even decades. Now for those of you who are reading this, if you have children, or anyone you care about in your life for that matter: stop.
Right now, stop.
Go and tell them something good about themselves.
Give them a compliment. A hug. Name their gift. Children need to hear this. Often. Do this. Repeat it as often as necessary.
End of lesson for today.
Notes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa?page=6
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
info@manilowmusicproject.org
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.