Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is almost my entire world right now. I'm working full time at a major hospital which is the region's trauma center. We students spend some mornings in group processing our experiences, some mornings in education, but all afternoons and some mornings visiting patients (and every 10 days we spend an overnight as the on-call chaplain for the whole hospital.)
I've been assigned a unit where I see a lot of people who were in car accidents and are recovering (or not.) Seeing the grave consequences of a moment's inattention, I've become a MUCH more cautious driver!
After I overcame the first week jitters, and the many hours of wandering around feeling lost (literally and figuratively,) I've begun to be enfolded in the awe of the work that chaplains do. We are witness to acts of courage and love. We are there to hear heartbreaking stories and to celebrate with a person who didn't expect to live.
The 23rd psalm addresses the feeling well: 'though I walk through the valley of death.' When I walk through that valley, I will fear no evil if I know someone is walking with me. For some people God walks with them. For others, their family and friends fulfill that role, and for many, having a chaplain there to "walk" with them connects them to their God or other source of grace.
In CPE, so far, I've begun to understand the metaphor of walking together religiously in a much more concrete way. We may be walking together when we are attending the same church, but we are truly walking together when you can be present with me in my times of fear and pain and despair and anger.
I hold a strong image of "walking together" from the Civil Rights museum in Atlanta. There are full size statues of the people walking together on the march to Selma. The art installation is of about 15 people, but it includes people from all walks of life, able-bodied and differently abled, young, old, men, women...
It may be time to add to that image of 'walking together' the image from a childhood book about Florence Nightengale: the lady with the lamp. In that image I see a compassionate woman, walking between the beds of the wounded and dying, ready to sit with a soldier, and to tend to his body or to his heart.
I am doing a very small part on my two units. Every day I regret that I wasn't able to talk with more patients or to sit with more families. At the same time, I am grateful that I have the gift to listen, and the honor to walk with those who welcome this hospital chaplain into their journeys.
