CPE in Alaska: An Overview

Edited from an on my experiences in CPE that was written for The Trumpet, the monthly newsletter of Holy Trinity Parish in Decatur, Ga. (my sponsoring parish).

This summer, I am doing CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. I chose to do CPE in Alaska because my husband lived here for nine years, but I had never been to Alaska. Spending a summer here would allow me to get to experience this area that was a big part of his life. It also helped that when I called last fall to inquire about CPE, I discovered that the program at Providence sounded like a really excellent program – and it is.

The CPE program here supports both residents and summer interns. There are five CPE residents who are here for at least one year each (two Catholic priests, a Baptist minister, a Methodist minister, a Disciples of Christ minister, and a Presbyterian lay person), and six of us summer interns.

The Spiritual Care staff at this Catholic hospital includes a Catholic priest, three Lutheran pastors (two ELCA, one Missouri Synod), a Methodist deacon, a Russian Orthodox priest, and a United Church of Christ minister. There is also a professional therapeutic musician on staff, who plays the harp for patients who are in pain or dying.

My CPE summer internship group includes four other seminary students (two Lutheran, one Methodist, one Presbyterian) and an Evangelical Free Church pastor who is considering making a career change from parish ministry to hospital chaplaincy and will continue after our summer unit to do a year-long residency. We are wonderfully diverse in our theologies and perspectives on life, and bring a rich variety of experiences to our group interactions. I believe I can speak for all my colleagues in saying that the experience has been a tremendous growing process for all of us.

Our CPE group and our supervisor, Fr. Al (far right).

Each of us summer interns is assigned to a particular floor that is our primary area of responsibility as a chaplain. I am on the first floor of the hospital, which is the maternity center: labor & delivery, prenatal care (for women with pregnancy complications), the mother-baby unit (post-delivery), and the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). I spend a lot of my days greeting new mothers in the Mother-Baby Unit and congratulating them on their new babies – a nice treat considering so many people are in hospitals for not-so-happy reasons! I also support families of babies in the NICU and women who may be stuck on our prenatal unit for months, every day another day closer to a viable baby who will be able to survive if born early.

In addition our floor duties, all the chaplains take turns carrying the spiritual care office’s main pager, where we get requests for chaplains and general pages about emergencies to the ER. I also work one overnight shift per week (Tuesday nights), when I am the only chaplain in the hospital from 8:45 p.m. to 7:15 a.m. and I must respond to any and all calls that come over the pager for a chaplain. So far, on my night shift I have done everything from sitting with a family after the death of their father to making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for a 6-year-old boy in the ER (I happened to have PB&J in my office since I eat it for lunch every day). You never know what you will be called to do as a chaplain!

Additionally, since this hospital is an explicitly faith-based organization, there are daily prayers over the loudspeaker at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Chaplains take turns saying these prayers, and I have used many prayers from the Book of Common Prayer’s Daily Office over the hospital’s loudspeaker this summer. There is also an ecumenical worship service on Sundays at 1 p.m. that the CPE interns take turns leading. I led a service in mid-July in which I used the New Zealand Prayer Book and music from Taize and the Iona Community to create an atmosphere of calm, centering meditation.

Overall, CPE has been a wonderful learning experience for me. I had been a bit wary of CPE since I generally get queasy and anxious in hospital settings, but I have been handling it much better than I thought I would. The experience has also helped me develop my prayer life, and I have begun to say the Daily Office more faithfully than I have in the past. I find that this practice has increased my sense of calm and inner peace, even in the midst of difficult situations.

I am learning new communication skills for supporting and being present to people and am working on “taking myself out of the picture,” so to speak, and focusing instead on the patient I am with and their words and feelings and thoughts, and opening myself to God’s direction. Although I certainly do not feel a call to hospital chaplaincy at this point (bloody trauma in the ER is still not my thing!), this experience has affirmed yet again my calling to parish ministry and has helped me to develop skills and confidence for that calling.

I feel an inner transformation taking place, slowly but surely, as I am being molded and “formed” into a priest. As I reflect on how much has changed for me in the past year since I started seminary, I feel much more confident that the entire formation process as a whole (discernment groups, seminary, CPE) will guide and mold me into the priest God is calling me to be by the time I graduate from Sewanee in 2012.

Sermon: Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C

This sermon was delivered at the Our Lady of Providence Chapel at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, AK, as part of a Sunday afternoon worship service I led during my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education).

This afternoon, we heard the story of Mary and Martha. Women in the church often encounter this passage in Sunday School classes or women’s retreats in which we are asked to reflect on whether we are “a Martha” or “a Mary” – which is church code language for asking whether you are a “Type A” personality, organized and task-oriented, or a “Type B” personality, more carefree and process-oriented. The assumption is generally that both are equally valid ways of being, just different, and your task for the retreat is to find which type of woman you are.

But I don’t think that’s what’s going on in this passage at all. It seems pretty clear to me that Jesus is not saying that both Mary and Martha’s ways of being in this passage are equally valid. He says, “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).

The “better part” that Mary has chosen is to sit at Jesus’s feet (which was the position of a disciple) and to listen to his teachings. Martha, in contrast, is busily rushing about the house getting things done. She was probably doing all the appropriate things a woman would be supposed to do in that culture to prepare for a house guest. In the passage from Genesis, we get a glimpse into ancient Mediterranean hospitality traditions – preparing a meal, washing the guest’s feet, offering the guest a place to stay. There is a lot of work to be done to offer proper hospitality to a guest.

So is it bad that Martha wanted to do these things? Not at all. Jesus critiques Martha not because she is task-oriented, but because she is “worried and distracted by many things.” We have no way of knowing from this passage whether Mary was really a “Type B” kind of person; maybe she was just as task-oriented and organized as Martha at times. The point here is that Mary – whatever her habits or personality type – has not lost sight of the forest for the trees, so to speak. She has not gotten so caught up in preparing for Jesus’s visit that she forgets to actually enjoy Jesus’s visit and spend time with him – as her sister Martha has done.

Can you relate to this story? Have you ever found yourself so caught up in the details of what you are doing that you lose sight of the big picture? Are you so “worried and distracted by many things” that you forget to take time for God in your daily life?

The good news for us as Christians is that the spirit of Christ dwells in us and works through us – so we no longer have to carry the burden of feeling like we have to do all the work! As the apostle Paul writes in his Letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:19-20). Paul is describing what happened to him at his baptism, when he died to sin and was born to new life in Christ and the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. Being a Christian is about allowing Christ to live in us. We don’t have to do all the work! Christ in us will do the work, if we simply allow him to. If we give to Christ those things that worry and distract us and allow him to work on them instead of us, we will be freed to worship and learn from him as Mary did in our Scripture reading today.

What things are you “worried and distracted by” today? I invite you into a time of silence to reflect on that question. During this time of silence, I invite you to write down things that are distracting you from spending time in God’s presence. After this time of silence, we will sing the words of Psalm 46:10 – “Be still and know that I am God.” As we sing, I invite you to bring your pieces of paper forward and put them in this bowl of water, symbolizing your giving them over to God. As you watch the water begin to dissolve the strips of paper, imagine your worries dissolving in the abundant waters of God’s love.