Otter's Rock

I've been recommended for Endorsement! That means that I can continue my seminary education and go on Internship next year in preparation for becoming a rostered minister in the ELCA. There wasn't much doubt that I would be recommended for Endorsement (if my candidacy committee or my professors or my CPE supervisor thought there were problems or room for doubt, they would have told me so that I could do something about it). It is still a great relief to get through it. The process is this: your academic advisor and two people from your synod's Candidacy Committee go over your transcripts, your ten-page Endorsement Essay, and your CPE final evaluation. They talk about them for about ten minutes without you, then bring you in and ask you about them and anything else they have questions about. The question-and-answer portion lasts about 45 minutes, and can include anything they think is relevant to being a pastor and/or anything that gets brought up. Then they send you out and discuss things, before bringing you back in and letting you know what they're recommending. Then they give their report to your committee as a whole, and the committee votes on it (the vote is basically a rubber stamp; I've never heard of anybody getting recommended for Endorsement who doesn't actually end up getting Endorsed). It's pretty important; without being Endorsed, basically, you can't progress any farther towards ministry.

( This semester as a whole )

I preached last Sunday the 21st; here's my sermon.
( Sermon for Sunday, October 21, 2007 )

So, at the beginning of your second year of seminary, Lutherans have this thing called "endorsement" where they look at your first year's academic transcripts, your CPE evaluation, talk with your advisor, read a ten page essay you've written, interview you, and decide whether or not you get to go on with the program and eventually become a pastor or not. It's more than a bit nerve-wracking, even when you know your evaluations have been positive and that your candidacy committee likes you. (Because I have seen my evaluations, and my candidacy committee does like me. That doesn't make it any easier, alas.)

I am currently writing the essay. It is a maximum of ten pages, double-spaced. The guidelines and instructions for writing it are two and a half pages long, single spaced. That's right, folks, two and a half pages long. Anyone who thinks it is possible to write a coherent essay that covers all of what they want to see in sufficient depth to be worth anything and still fit into ten double-spaced pages, please raise your hand.

Yeah. That's what I thought.

I'll just be over here in the corner agonizing over this whole thing.

Well, I reached a milestone in my chaplain internship at the Oregon State Hospital today: my first warning that one of the forensic patients has fixated on me and I need to steer clear of him. Joy. I don't even know the guy; never heard his name before, couldn't pick him out of a crowd if my life depended on it. Apparently, he heard me singing in chapel and liked my voice. You can imagine how warm and fuzzy this makes me feel. Not.

My supervisor is a great guy who really knows his job, both as a chaplain and as a teacher of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). If you're having a problem dealing with a patient he's a great resource. He's also good at teaching chaplains. The main point of CPE is to help the interns work through any issues they might have that might get in the way of their pastoral care, and Roy's good at getting to the heart of things. We have about 16 hours of class with Roy per week (the rest of our time is spent on the wards in one way or another), plus homework such as weekly reflection papers designed to make us really think about what's going on and how we interact with other people. Roy is pretty good about getting to the heart of what's really going on, and he doesn't take any BS. At all. He's nice about it, but he doesn't let it get past him. I find myself torn by this. On the one hand, I know I'm going to learn a lot. On the other ... CPE would be a lot easier, and a lot more comfortable, if he wasn't so good at this. I've never been on the receiving end of things, but that'll change as the program goes on.

The main thing that's bothering me, though, is one of the patients in the geriatric ward I'm assigned to. She's 75, but in excellent physical health for her age (a rarity on the ward), intelligent, and perfectly aware of her surroundings (an even greater rarity). Her main problem is severe clinical depression, one of the main components of which is a fixed delusion that she is such a horrible sinner that God can never forgive her. And I mean fixed. There is no budging her absolute certainty. Even ignoring the fact that her "sins" aren't sins at all by the most stringent definition I can imagine, there is no sin that God cannot forgive if the sinner truly repents (in layman's terms, "turns away from"). And boy, has she repented. As a pastor, I am called to preach the Good News of God's grace and forgiveness, which she desperately needs. But she doesn't listen; her depression is so severe she cannot possibly conceive of any possibility of forgiveness--not even a glimmer of hope. There is a psychiatrist assigned to the ward, but his hands are full (more than full!) just keeping the patients properly medicated (or at least trying to figure out the right balance of meds) and seeing to their physical health. There is a part-time psychologist in the ward two days a week, but he's got his hands full just running the group sessions, never mind individual therapy (which she needs--groups just ain't cutting it for her). The social worker and the nurses and the mental health technicians do their best but they're swamped--they're very understaffed, and only get by on lots of overtime. Basically, there's no one but me, a first-year seminarian, to minister to this woman. Everybody's very nice and helpful and has lots of advice, but that doesn't change the fact that it's up to me to implement that advice.

I have a problem at the hospital, and it's all my Dad's fault. Really. It is. He's a big guy (6'2"), played football in high-school and a little in college. Can be very loud. Little bit of a temper, at times. Lots of people find him intimidating.

He's also a complete teddy bear. Seriously. Ask anyone who knows him well.

So when I'm interacting with a guy a lot bigger than me with a loud voice, it doesn't occur to me that there might be a problem or that I might be unsafe in any way. Even if I intellectually know that something's wrong, it's not exactly real to me. Because, hey, I'm used to my Dad's growling.

We did some role-playing yesterday and talked about it some more today as part of orientation, and I got critiqued for not paying enough attention to things like staying out of range of patients and making sure I always had an escape route. And clearly, it is all Dad's fault.

I've been unable to post or comment to LJ without first logging out, deleting all cookies, and refreshing the page twice first since receiving the latest Firefox update a few days ago. I think the problem is fixed, now, though I'm not sure what changed.

Coming Soon: News from Oregon State Hospital, where they filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And where I am interning this summer.