Coloring books and being a chaplain

I can see those two fancy squatty buildings on the west side of the metro that I see as we drive on highway 100. I can see a half dozen cranes that look like they’re protecting the new football field construction in downtown Minneapolis. I can see the roofs and windows of hundred-year-old buildings that have been refurbished, repurposed, and reconstructed over and over again to house the now world-class medicine-organization, which is the hospital that I work for this summer. This is my classroom. This is my parish. This is by far the weirdest class credit I’ve ever taken. This is by far the most high-stakes class credit I’ve ever taken.

Since switching from the Master of Arts back to the Master of Divinity, I get to take the pastor-track-related credit, Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), which many refer to as the, “just get it done” credit. Just get through it. Take it in the summer – it’s longer hours but fewer weeks. Sounds good to me.

But once I got here, got my badge, my employee parking pass, my pager, and our rotating on-call pager and code blue pager, something felt different than, “just get it done.” Once I saw the list of patients names who wanted a chaplain to visit them, once I read why they were there, once I heard their stories of purpose, desires to walk, meaning, oops, oops again, heartache, the people they miss at home, and the people they wish would move out, I realized this is much more than “just get it done.”

True, this is chaplaincy. My task in this credit is to be a chaplain, which is a different flavor of pastoral-congregational ministry, the route most consider when they enter the MDiv program. I’m the chaplain for my assigned unit, and each intern, resident chaplain (super intern), and board certified chaplain has an assigned unit. At my unit I’m the one who usually asks nurses and physicians, “What’s going on with them?” before I say hi, and sometimes I get asked by nurses and physicians, “What’s going on with them?” Here, I am becoming known. I’m their chaplain. I hope I get so lucky as to be missed come August.

Instructions for life, and for chaplaincy, I think!

Sometimes a chaplain visit is requested on my unit, but more often than not my day is guided by following energy. I follow the energy as a nurse struggles to finish out recording a note and connect with other units and we talk about how lame it is when shifts don’t end when they’re supposed to. I follow the energy as a patient just glows at the mention of walking around the lake, and she tell me it feels like “freedom,” and then we draw pages together in a nature coloring book (yes that happened, it was awesome). I follow the energy when I pass a waiting room and glance at the serious folks in there, and then walk back to merely sit and talk about whatever they want to talk about for 20 minutes.

In the midst of this, Timothy (The best. Spouse of the year. Thanks for letting me beat you at tennis later.) and I are calling moving truck people and looking up on Google maps the distance between stops between here and Washington state, as we start a new chapter out there in September. That will come soon enough.

But for now I’m just trying to be as much Allison as I can while also being a chaplain. I’m sure some use CPE to “try on” what it means or feels like to be a pastor or a chaplain. I don’t think that’s for me. What I think is working, is being myself, while showing up in the world through this vocation as a chaplain/pastor. Who knew it took so much courage to show up as yourself. But it’s a good challenge, a good opportunity. And I get to use colored pencils and talk about where we want to live when we grow up.

I’m not sure what’s next. I just know who will be there: 1. Allison, 2. God.

Pen Pals and Hope

So I left my last blog post with a quandary, searching for a new fun topic I’d reflect on for next time. Of course now that I’m at the “next time,” I’ve strayed from those three options and I’ve wandered into a different vein of thinking that has hit close to home this evening. It has to do with pen pals and hope.

This whole business about finishing a new fancy shiny graduate degree is exciting. But it’s also terrifying – because, as you’re fresh from growing pains and armored with this new set of ideas and sense of smartness, you’re called to not just think but to do all of these wonderful things that you’ve written hundreds and possibly thousands of pages about.

I breathe theology. I eat theology for breakfast. I think about theology in Zumba class as I listen to lyrics about empowerment, love and lifting each other up (to a very zesty, infectious salsa beat I might add). So it’s no surprise that my Master of Arts is in systematic theology, and I loved every minute (almost every minute) of my theology classes at PLU and Luther Seminary.

One theological topic in one of these classes stood out above the rest, in my last two theology classes at Luther, taught by Dr. Lois Malcolm. The idea is that as a Lutheran, I share in Christ’s death, life, baptism, waking, sleeping, and ultimately Christ’s power and authority over structures of oppression, sin, death and the devil. We are co-heirs in Christ’s authority (1st Corinthians 3:21-23). We can have hope for a new day, knowing Christ conquered sin and death so that we might not live in depression, anxiety, broken, abusive relationships, terror, but that we might live into new life of Christ where there is reconciliation, where there is liberation, where there is hope. Christ is not only present in our most vulnerable and anxiety-ridden moments that remind us of our mortality and humanity. Christ is saving through Christ’s transformative liberating of all people, all creeds, and all nations (Joel 2:28-29, 2nd Cor. 5:17-21).

Perhaps it wasn’t the theological idea of “sharing in Christ’s power and authority” that struck me the most. Perhaps it was the fact that it was Dr. Malcolm, a female in a male-dominated profession, like me, a woman, who was teaching from her heart and soul about power. This somehow made her embody power – where so often men have been in her shoes, as professors, teachers, preachers, teaching about power. Men teaching about Christ’s power. That doesn’t really phase me. But to hear a woman so passionately speaking about the power of Christ that we share in as step into life with Christ – that is something that is unique, counter-cultural, and powerful.

It’s amazing how quickly I forget this (that was May). Fast-forward 6 months. After hearing so many “no”s in my call sales job, I was feeling like the most unqualified, inexperienced person ever in the history of humanity to sell advertising space in a burgeoning, growing, at-the-front-of-a-movement magazine for women in ministry leadership. Sometimes I feel I have no authority or power to hold my own and help people see, whom I’ve never met, that we share a vision: serving, supporting and resourcing women in leadership makes a difference to the women themselves, the communities they serve, and the world at large. I love sharing this vision with people. I can’t tell you how much life it gives me when I’m given a shot to explain to someone whose probably scrambling to get through their own day, that the two of us doing ministry together will strengthen our influence on the world whether we’re selling robes and vestments or providing low-income counseling/leadership services to clergy who work at 50-60 hour work week.

Amidst this internal struggle, I get a letter in the mail from my pen pal, Amanda, who is far, far away as a pastoral intern at a very, very lucky church. She thanked me for my encouragement in my last letter as I told her what a fabulous sermon she wrote on vocation that I LOVED to pieces. She said she appreciated my reiteration that she’s a child of God who is capable and lovable, and I told her that Christ’s new life was in her just shining on through her rockstar ministry. In her letter today, she wrote to me that she appreciated the support, and she wrote “I guess this gospel thing really does have power.”

Sure, pen pals might be most popular among middle schoolers, but I think they’re awesome among post-graduate students. It’s because of Amanda’s words that I felt like I have hope that tomorrow will be better. I hope that Christ will offer me new life tomorrow. Not in a ‘gosh that would be awful, I sure hope thing’s will be better’ but hope, as in the kind of hope that only faith in an ultimate trust can bring. I am so thankful for my pen pal and how she reminds me that I share in Christ’s authority and power, as I step into new life in Christ, with humility and with courage. But above all, in hope.