Summer Life in CPE

"Here, I have something for you.” My CPE mentor handed me a black and white photo copy of two puffin penguins. I had been handed a lot of paperwork in the last two weeks including hospital employee regulations, job descriptions, and lists of funeral homes, but there was something about being gifted a Bing stockphoto of two birds that felt even more alien than the new foreign land of scrubs and crash carts that I found myself wading through. “I saw them online and printed an extra copy for you to have."

"Oh...thank you." I stammered out. I grabbed some scotch tape and stuck them on the wall next to my CPE calendar. Even in the black and white still frame the aviaries look wild. They are serenely perched on a rock, but could be diving into churning waters or tottering along the shoreline in only a few moments. They felt out of place on the beige wall of the hospital pastoral care office, but then again so do I, I thought, as I straightened my 'Chaplain' name badge on my freshly ironed yellow cardigan.

Little did I know that these flightless fowl would become my confessors and companions for the next eleven weeks, silently witnessing my struggles and triumphs as I sat, or sometimes paced, the small office. As I walked the hospital hallways, greeting staff and making my way to and from my assigned units, I was often reminded of Colossians 1, “He is the image of the invisible God…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” There were many days when I couldn’t help but look at the humanity around me and wonder, “These bodies God?” These feeble keepers of our souls which bleed, and bruise, and sometimes gasp for air? Is God pleased to dwell here? And if I were to give an image to an invisible infinite being it would most certainly not be my susceptible, vulnerable makeup which on occasion needs needles, stitches, and tubes. This was one of many lessons I learned over the course of the summer however: our God does not quiver in the sight of our full humanness, but embraces it, and through it invites us home.

This does not mean that the presence of God is always easy to find, far from it. Sometimes the still, quiet voice of God was nothing more than a faint whisper. I witnessed this in the smiles of strangers I passed in the hallway. I saw the subtleness of God in the warmth of loved ones holding each other’s hands, helping each other through another day. I watched the sun rise and set through the filter of hospital windows, and marveled that although so many lives seemed to have had been put on hold, uprooted from their usual routines, the love which invites each new day into being was still present and calling to us.

After particularly long days I found myself telling familiar Godly Play stories. I would whisper the ingrained words out loud on the way home, or as I prepared for dinner or began my homework. The parable of the Good Shepherd was often an appropriate fit with its promise of protection and guidance. It is the Good Shepherd who knows each of us by name and leads us to green pastures and the cool, still water. If one of us is lost it is the Good Shepherd who would leave all the other sheep behind in order to look for us, even in places of danger. And when we encounter the wolves of our world, the wolves of self-interest and discord, the wolves of fear, shame, or doubt, and even the wolves of chaos who bring cancer or other ailments that turn our lives upside down, it is the Good Shepherd who sets out to find us. It is this Good Shepherd who stays between the wolf and the sheep, and would even give his life for the sheep.

Perhaps the truest and most relatable part of the story of the Good Shepherd is that there is no promise of guaranteed safety. The Good Shepherd does not commit to ridding the world of wolves, nor does the Good Shepherd say that we will never get lost. You don’t have to live in this world for very long to find hardship and discomfort, whether it be yours or your neighbors. The Good Shepherd gives us an alternative however. We can and will at some point in our lives experience pain, but we do not have to bear it alone. This is the hope of the Good Shepherd: not the absence of despair, but the promise of presence.

At the end of week eleven as I began to gather my items out of the office I took my bird friends down last. During a meeting my mentor shared a piece of wisdom with me that I will hold onto for a long while, “Before you walk into a patient’s room remember you have more in common with them than not.” This not only greatly helped me in coming to understand pastoral ministry, but I came to feel this way about the wild birds as well. I entered the hospital feeling unprepared for the journey that laid ahead of me, but with much prayer, support, and a willingness to allow myself to be carried by God’s grace, I found that even penguins can find a home in hospital chaplaincy.