knees first...

The first time I ever saw more water in one place bigger than my bathtub occurred when I was six at the Pacific Ocean. Then the water never ended. My father gave me one rule- I couldn’t go into water deeper than my knees. For a girl from the desert mountains of Wyoming, that seemed like a great freedom and daring act. And at age six the enormity and rush of the waves terrified me enough to follow directions gladly.  Since then I’ve ventured deep under the waves and salty surface of oceans.  The act doesn’t seem quite so heroic, but the process into the water has stayed the same.  Knees first.

I can see myself on multiple occasions walking into the ocean or lake, tenderly placing my feet into the chilly water. It’s not that bad. A bit deeper to my calves and my knees and Oh my! Am I sure I need to get wet today? Really? If I reach my belly, I’m shrieking, shivering, and totally committed. Count to three. 1, 2…*dunk*…Gasp! Such a calculated journey to total immersion. 

This week’s orientation to be a hospital chaplain has allowed me to settle my toes in long awaited and still surprising information and then venture in to my knees, a little deeper with those hard topics of death and meaning of life and crisis conversation. I’m up to my belly with a full schedule, pager, and computer access.  Now it’s time to go and do the serving. 

As much as I am excited from the moment I approach the beach, I know getting to the all wet stage takes time, serious consideration, and positive self-talk. (I’m not a run until I splash-fall into the waves.) Such is my sense with this situation, too. I want and need to meet people, converse with families, feel tension and paradox, empathize and feel suffering, and share and see hope.  That is what the ocean is for- it has great expanse to enfold me in the power and mystery of it all. Monday that immersion fully begins.

Knees first, and all of me now.

handbooks, handshakes, humans

Two of three days of orientation can be crossed off the calendar.  Such time has been like a fire hose with incredible amounts of information, procedures, and a good deal of internal reactions and surprises. Tuesday turned out to be a little tough due to sleep deprivation. All day we went through the handbook.  Infectious diseases can be cool, but even that half hour lecture had me nearly nodding off.  But still I had a special opportunity to meet and connect with my cohort of other interns- Tracy and Brother Donald- and hear wisdom from seasoned and passionate chaplains. I hope I retain such words, but by grace of one chaplain, we are to give ourselves, “Patience, patience, patience.”

Such advice I had to remember yet again today as we dove deeper into the training of chaplaincy. First was the hospital tour. Hospitals can be like malls- confusing layouts with elevators and stairs in random, hard to find spots, and only one food court.  Thankfully we shook some hands of security officers and charge nurses as be oriented ourselves to the units.  We got lost and found a couple times and followed the color tiles in the floor. It’s a bit like the yellow brick road but with a variety of colors designating the path to different units. We shared our faith maps with each other: the interns, residents, and our supervisor together, and then figured out our schedule for the next 3 months. I’m sure I’ll say more about it when the time comes, but one requirement is on-call duty from Friday, 5pm- Monday, 8am. And how will I get called? A pager! The technology still works AND is used!

The afternoon session comprised of a lesson and conversation about organ and tissue donation.  What a gift donation can be to people! What a scary decision that might seem to be for someone who just lost an unregistered loved one! In our training we walked through the careful donor plan, the benefits of donation, and the ways to have this conversation with families.  All of a sudden, life and my service at the hospital were real. Oh yeah- we are connecting with humans. I tried to role play and found my tongue tied and default words such as "humane" and "procedure" replacing more appropriate words of "care" and "offering." 

I realize even this story doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We are all dealing with hardships and suffering- some minor and other major. So to ramble on about recovering organ and tissue donations without affirming the human life that this might require or gift would miss the point.  At 4:23pm I felt that trembling heart of fear that what I say mattered and who I spoke to deserved more than a book answer.  Yes, the role-play lacked the reality of death. However, it did not fall short of being a keen reminder than handbooks are a tool to move into shaking a hand and speaking humbly of our humanity. 

Gate to Gate

“We will arrive in two hours, ten minutes, gate to gate,” chimed the flight attendant. In such time I would reach my destination in Denver, my new job, my new home. I realized with her words that the only other time I’ve flown one-way to my new home occurred back in July 2007 when I joined African Children’s Choir.  I have driven to every other new home I’ve ever had. Whether it was to college in Spokane, Zion National Park for a summer job, or just down the street to a new apartment, my journey has been a gradual move from one place to another. With these trips I often spent hours jamming to music and cruising through the nation’s diverse landscape. Those hours also gave me the luxury of great thinking time and a gradual shift into what would be a very different life.  This gate-to-gate transition, however, felt anything but gradual.

Life in general is very much like a gate-to-gate move. Out one slimy gate only to reach the pearly one somewhere on the time continuum.  Along the way we embrace, sometimes with boredom, the routines such as brushing our teeth, waking up for work, or smiling for pictures just as a flight attendant services on-flight beverages.  We meet a variety of people along the way, those who inspire us in conversation, simply want to yak our ear off, or glide on by in their parallel universe, ear buds in.  At moments (some longer than others) we endure turbulence or joyfully embrace the highlights along the way. With this new perspective, the trip I took this afternoon was a blip on the timeline, and yet the tears wanting to pop through their gates tell me otherwise. The expanse of my current gate-to-gate just doesn’t seem to be the right timing.

Throughout my life I’ve wanted weeks to speed toward Friday or days to slow down to a crawl. When I think about my vocation or God given purpose, I’m filled with urgency.  Tomorrow I will begin an internship that forces people to respond to an unexpected shift in their gate-to-gate journey. As a chaplain in a community hospital, I suspect to encounter people dealing with some very similar emotions and questions that I face during my two-hour flight.  At times the quick change of bodily and emotional wellness will be completely debilitating. In other circumstances, patients will have had time to get use to the idea of their illness and the consequences.

When I began this post, I didn’t quite get the significance of the gate-to-gate journey. I thought I was simply taking advantage of time-efficient machines and choosing to courageously leap from one life to another. Now I realize that this quick trip forced me to think differently about transitions, life experiences, and perspectives of our time on earth. I had tapped the reflective resources of the 13-hour drive routine to the next home.  Likewise, my emotional and experiential capacity to engage in my new destination will benefit from my quick airplane transition.

Over the next several days and weeks, I hope to share more reflections about life’s gate-to-gate experiences.  Not only does this allow me to engage with my present moments, but also I find it a special and helpful way to stay to connected to those far from my new home.  My days may become routine in my eyes, but hopefully I can continue to tap into reflective resources along the way.