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.

Back to school

Growing up I was terrible at keeping new years resolutions. Now I think I’m getting better at it. I’m not sure why this is so important to me, but the last couple years have been really important to me. I chose the resolution for 2015 (let’s be honest, one resolution is enough) by browsing through Pinterest (I think I searched “awesome quotes”). This one grabbed me:

Simple. Succinct. Direct. Stay rad: my resolution for 2015.

I took stock of my behaviors and values in 2014. Were they rad? Since graduating in 2012 from Luther Seminary with a MA in systematic theology, I served at Trinity Lutheran in Stillwater, MN in lifelong/adult learning and helping churches collaborate with each other over a theology curriculum. That role ended in August 2014. I got to be a coach, an editor, a trainer of trainers, a facilitator, a learning experience designer, a creator, a preacher, and a colleague.  Since then, I joined a team of workshop facilitators/coaches at brightpeak financial (Thrivent is the umbrella company) and serve young couples in their emotional connections with money.

In the last couple of years especially I’ve discovered that I love helping adults see that God isn’t done forming and molding them. School might be done or almost done, but the opportunities to learn from life and people and experiments are just beginning. Facilitating adults in their learning was (and is) fun, but without the leadership identity as an ordained person it felt like I was a fish constantly hitting the glass of its fish tank.

In the realm of married life, things were not as rad. Timothy weekly heard my complaints in the car after church about worship that he would design at Woodlake Lutheran as an interim worship and music director. Why did you use those words of confession? That part of the service doesn’t align theologically with that part of the service? Why is communion so short?

I realized that I could complain about how the church is “doing it wrong” (what does that even mean?) for the rest of my life, or I could contribute my leadership by making a significant contribution in the role that church people currently turn to for guidance, vision, direction (whether they should or not): the ordained pastor. In order to curate a community of faith that truly embodies the priesthood of all believers and takes vocation as a core vehicle of learning, growth, worship, and leadership – I have to jump into the sandbox and step into the leadership that most congregations recognize as “the” leader: the ordained congregational pastor.

I hope in this I can have that first-hand authentic experience of being a pastor so I can best coach and walk alongside pastors in their own lifelong learning, journey to health, growth, leadership, and contribution. I’ve done coaching/facilitating with kid and adult leaders here and there, but not in so focused of a way that I hope to do. Put simply: I want to stay rad.

I have ten credits left. This consists of coursework in spring, summer, fall 2015, and internship starting January 2016. I will turn in my M.A. in systematic theology (and will still draw a lot from that experience) for an M.Div. with a concentration in systematic theology. Yes, I feel weird about it, but I honestly feel more hopeful than mad; this will position me to be the most Allison, be rad, and make the biggest impact I can hope to make with these people and these places I call church, my home, my people. The church is called to big things. I want to be a part of shaping that response, and I want to help others see (pastors or not) that they’re capable and worthy of shaping that response, too.

This is the lens that I bring to my second round of seminary. I think the catalyst for shifting to wholehearted living and healthy living in congregations comes from walking alongside adults. Kids watch them like sponges, and emulate them as they grow up. If adults don’t know their gifts, their capacity for leadership or the roots of their theology and sense of spirituality, how should we expect today’s youngsters to have lives of faith, self-awareness, curiosity, adventure, and service? This leadership vacuum, articulation of your personal theology vacuum, naming your gifts/strengths/stories vacuum – we have a lifetime-plus of effort/work/energy to do, and I just might find my life’s work in this.

That’s why I’m grateful that Prof. Mary Hess agreed to instruct an independent study with me called, “Adults and Lifelong Learning” (.5 credits). I’ll be honest, I don’t get how adults do it: be responsible, autonomous, community-serving, approachable, leading, retreating, confident, full of questions, vulnerable, courageous, all without slipping into deep depression or anxiety. I’m an adult (sort of?); should I know how to do this “adult” thing already or did I miss a class along the way? I don’t understand how our culture expects adults to be done learning after they graduate from school, and they should be done vocationally discerning because they should have careers by now. If they’re in careers should they stay there because why would they want to leave that security? These are the questions I’m wrestling with right now.

The outcomes of the learning experience this Spring with Mary are:

1. Demonstrate a new understanding of the challenges and opportunities of adult lifelong learning ministry & 2. Create and curate material for degree portfolio.

I have a feeling that what I learn will ripple out into more questions and more curiosities and more learning about what it means to be an adult, and what that means for how churches interact with them. I’ll have four posts on the topic of adult learning between now and May. I hope to share with you what I’m learning, and hear what your wonderings and such are about adult learning too. I hope you learn and ask question with me!