A partial group met on Monday at the mentor's house. No small feet consider San Antonio traffic at 6pm, but most of the group made it and mostly on time. There is one other first year student as well, so it will be good to have someone to bounce the interpretations of readings off of. I have the tendency to over analyze and dig too much, perhaps, though with my schedule at school I might be prevented from doing that by shear logistics.
Anyway, we spent the meeting sussing out the truly important things- can we meet at 1800 or should we wait til 1830 to allow those who work downtown to get all the way to the north side of the city in time. Can we meet on Saturdays for the life time lines? A resounding yes until I mentioned I am in pediatric clinical rotation from 1300 to 2300 every Saturday until mid November. And then finally to the most important issue at hand of them all- who is bringing next week's food and how do we feel about having the occasional glass of wine. All sorted out in almost un-'pisky like alacrity. S. K. bring the food and yes, the occasional- or even not so occasional- glass of wine is perfectly acceptable. I decided to wait until next week to spring onto them the fact that they just might prove to be my test subjects for the dinner my friend and I are guest cheffing for in November. Russian Night at the Southtown Cafe- should be a grand time I hope. We already have a good portion of the menu worked out between us and a lot of experimenting to do ahead of time. Back to the matter at hand: Information and papers were handed out and I quite look forward to reading them on Sunday and Monday (the two days I set aside for EfM studies).
Tuesday I spent at a local elementary doing hearing and vision screenings. I forgot how much I love being surrounded by kids. Third graders aren't quite my old high school students, but it was close enough to pull at my heartstrings a bit. I dearly miss interacting with the little snotters every day. Though you couldn't drag me back into teaching by the nose hairs. Wednesday was spent in Labor and Delivery. Which was eyeopening. I watched two new lives enter our world. And under very different circumstances. One being given up for adoption, the adoptive parents there so desperate to bond with this brand new boy and the birth mother so desperate not to. The father in the corner asleep through so much of the birth and not interested in watching the life he created enter the world. And the other boy, so desperately wanted by the parents. The father so eager you couldn't help but to smile at his bumbling about like an over eager puppy. And then the crushing fear as the baby was whisked away to transitional NICU for a minor problem.
It makes one wonder, what would I have done? As a nurse there is so much that you are responsible for- monitoring the mother and the baby, co-ordinating care, maintaining paperwork- that it is sometimes hard for the nurse to really be there for the patient. I don't mean to say that the care is poor, for it isn't. But the nurse is so busy that they can't or don't or perhaps even won't really open themselves emotionally to the patient. To watch the fear in that mother's eyes and watch the nurse go about her routine as though nothing were wrong- well, I don't know if I could have done it, paper work be damned. Sometimes I wonder if we don't loose something when we transition from student to nurse. Maybe its just that we loose time, maybe its that we loose the ability to really be there with the patient in what ever emotional stew they happen to be in at the time. All I know is that I fear loosing that ability to be there. There is a time to push aside emotions, but there is a time for them to come into play as well. All I know is that when that mother took my hand and thanked me with tears in her eyes for fetching her mother, for blocking her mother-in-law, for bringing her ice; I knew that what she was thanking me for was just being there and with her fully and emotionally during her time of greatest fears. I know that this is what I am most afraid of loosing.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Mutterings and Ramblings
Fr. Doug is about to return to the parish from his vacation to Mexico which means that I am about to start discernment and training to be more involved- lay eucharistic ministry and lay reading were definately mentioned. But now that the time for considering discernment comes closer, I find myself ill prepared to speak aloud about my beliefs and callings. Its not, I think, that they are weak as much as I am not able to fully articulate them.
I know I was put on this earth to make a difference. Not a big one, I don't have the huge dreams I did when I was a teen. I want to make a geranium's difference. Small, not immediately noticable. But one whose effects last in the manner of a habit. Again I am not explaining myself well. Geraniums are those hearty flowers that are unloved in the gardening world. They don't smell like a rose, aren't flashy, and are common. You see them everywhere. My grandmother's house wouldn't be the same without the rows of geraniums out front baking slowly in the San Antonio August heat and humidity. The broad, fuzzy leaves giving off the hot and slightly spicy aroma of dirt and ozone somehow mixed together. You see them everywhere in Texas. Mainly because you can forget to water them, forget to bring them in out of the direct summer sun that melts the asphalt into goo, forget them utterly- and yet, when you do remember them they are still there, patiently waiting for you. All it takes is a bit of water and pinching a few leaves and the plant blooms vibrantly. Those are my aspirations now. For my life's work to be painted quietly in the background. Something reliable that produces vibrancy. Something that makes the parish home.
Three years ago, I joined the ECUSA. My first church welcomed me with open arms. Of course, they didn't realize I was a wolf in sheep's clothing. I was the social liberal in the most conservative church in town. As my lamb's wool slowly peeled back through the time I was with them, they welcomed me as I was. I felt I served a purpose in the parish as the in house "voice of reason". When rheteric became too heated I would stand and speak as quietly and calmly as I could, despite the fact that sometimes my insides shook with anger. Sometimes I was effective, sometimes perhaps not. However, I do believe I made people think. A small consilation perhaps.
Anyway, time moves as it will, and now I am no longer a high school science teacher. I moved away from West Texas and returned to school to become a nurse and, eventually, a nurse practioner. I found myself skipping from one church to another looking for someplace I could be comfortable. I finally found in at St. Paul's. Despite the fact that for the last two years I had developed the repeated and ever present desire to become a deacon, I felt like I lost my position in the church. What is the point of the "voice of reason" in a place where you agree with the social policies? Why argue for more outreach in a place full of outreach? And nursing was just as pointless. I knew I didn't want to work in a hospital, so what could I do with my life to really make a difference? I finally found it on a course held in Chinle, Arizona. There were whole populations out there whose health services were nonexistant. And they aren't all in distant places. In fact, some are right outside our parish door. In a conversation with the dean, who headed up the course, I found myself trying to explain how I felt a need to serve them. It was she who led me into parish nursing and faith based community nursing. I had a point again. And I was ready to go with it.
There is still a long path. There are still hurdles. But its hard to live life, for me at least, without a goal. Having a goal colors all that I do, gives even the most pointless tasks at nursing school a reason other then "because they told me to". Perhaps this is a move that serves myself more then others. That is something I hope to discover during the course of the year. And, of course, the bishop may decide not to create a deaconate program at all. That is all in the hand's of another. I only pray that I am wise enough to know which path to take and when to take it.
If anyone has read this, which I doubt. First I apologise ahead. I should have placed a boring tag and a warning to stay away. And second, this is nothing more then me trying to get my head around things my heart already knows.
I know I was put on this earth to make a difference. Not a big one, I don't have the huge dreams I did when I was a teen. I want to make a geranium's difference. Small, not immediately noticable. But one whose effects last in the manner of a habit. Again I am not explaining myself well. Geraniums are those hearty flowers that are unloved in the gardening world. They don't smell like a rose, aren't flashy, and are common. You see them everywhere. My grandmother's house wouldn't be the same without the rows of geraniums out front baking slowly in the San Antonio August heat and humidity. The broad, fuzzy leaves giving off the hot and slightly spicy aroma of dirt and ozone somehow mixed together. You see them everywhere in Texas. Mainly because you can forget to water them, forget to bring them in out of the direct summer sun that melts the asphalt into goo, forget them utterly- and yet, when you do remember them they are still there, patiently waiting for you. All it takes is a bit of water and pinching a few leaves and the plant blooms vibrantly. Those are my aspirations now. For my life's work to be painted quietly in the background. Something reliable that produces vibrancy. Something that makes the parish home.
Three years ago, I joined the ECUSA. My first church welcomed me with open arms. Of course, they didn't realize I was a wolf in sheep's clothing. I was the social liberal in the most conservative church in town. As my lamb's wool slowly peeled back through the time I was with them, they welcomed me as I was. I felt I served a purpose in the parish as the in house "voice of reason". When rheteric became too heated I would stand and speak as quietly and calmly as I could, despite the fact that sometimes my insides shook with anger. Sometimes I was effective, sometimes perhaps not. However, I do believe I made people think. A small consilation perhaps.
Anyway, time moves as it will, and now I am no longer a high school science teacher. I moved away from West Texas and returned to school to become a nurse and, eventually, a nurse practioner. I found myself skipping from one church to another looking for someplace I could be comfortable. I finally found in at St. Paul's. Despite the fact that for the last two years I had developed the repeated and ever present desire to become a deacon, I felt like I lost my position in the church. What is the point of the "voice of reason" in a place where you agree with the social policies? Why argue for more outreach in a place full of outreach? And nursing was just as pointless. I knew I didn't want to work in a hospital, so what could I do with my life to really make a difference? I finally found it on a course held in Chinle, Arizona. There were whole populations out there whose health services were nonexistant. And they aren't all in distant places. In fact, some are right outside our parish door. In a conversation with the dean, who headed up the course, I found myself trying to explain how I felt a need to serve them. It was she who led me into parish nursing and faith based community nursing. I had a point again. And I was ready to go with it.
There is still a long path. There are still hurdles. But its hard to live life, for me at least, without a goal. Having a goal colors all that I do, gives even the most pointless tasks at nursing school a reason other then "because they told me to". Perhaps this is a move that serves myself more then others. That is something I hope to discover during the course of the year. And, of course, the bishop may decide not to create a deaconate program at all. That is all in the hand's of another. I only pray that I am wise enough to know which path to take and when to take it.
If anyone has read this, which I doubt. First I apologise ahead. I should have placed a boring tag and a warning to stay away. And second, this is nothing more then me trying to get my head around things my heart already knows.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
"And then he said....."
Who hasn't felt the pent up, about to explode feeling? Who hasn't felt the need to let it all out to friends, family, strangers in the grocery line, or telemarketers?
"How am I? I'll tell you how I am!"
And afterwards, we are supposed to feel good again, right? The letting off of a bit of steam- or a lot- just allows those feelings to go away, right? Apparently, maybe not so much.
MSNBC
According to some research venting might not be the cure for mending our broken hearts, stress filled heads or oh-he's-done-me-wrongs. Dwelling on the negative does not appear to be a postive. We spend all of our time concentrating on what we did wrong, what they should have done and its just not fair. All of those insecurities and doubts just seem confirmed by excessive venting because at some point venting becomes obsession. We begin to go over the same events and conversations over and over, ruminating on them and continuously cycling through should haves and could haves. In short, we took a good thing in moderation and over did.
Its hard not to, really. After all, we've been insulted and just plain done wrong! The other party is clearly, clearly in the wrong. And they never liked us anyway. And they dress poorly. And they smell funny.
Familiar?
If you're a member in even moderate standing of the Episcopal Church USA, then it ought to be. We've been bombarded from left and right. The conservatives are rude, bigotted and skismatics. The liberals are loudmouths and, well, liberal! Each side is constantly venting at us through media, internet blogs and even pulpits. We are in the middle of two parties talking too quickly and too loudly to listen. Not to eachother and certainly not to themselves. Each side has painted the other in colors too dark and attitudes to bilious to be believed. Where once there was tolerance, now there is only two backs turned towards eachother.
And the people left in the middle. Where once there existed a fulcrum between the two sides, now there is nothing. Or perhaps it is still there, waiting for the extremes to acknowledge it once again. I fear for ourselves and for many in our country. We have become so polarized of late. Where once compromise was considered a good outcome of debate now its a four letter word. I fear that in our course of venting, we have only succeeding in becoming obsessed.
"How am I? I'll tell you how I am!"
And afterwards, we are supposed to feel good again, right? The letting off of a bit of steam- or a lot- just allows those feelings to go away, right? Apparently, maybe not so much.
MSNBC
According to some research venting might not be the cure for mending our broken hearts, stress filled heads or oh-he's-done-me-wrongs. Dwelling on the negative does not appear to be a postive. We spend all of our time concentrating on what we did wrong, what they should have done and its just not fair. All of those insecurities and doubts just seem confirmed by excessive venting because at some point venting becomes obsession. We begin to go over the same events and conversations over and over, ruminating on them and continuously cycling through should haves and could haves. In short, we took a good thing in moderation and over did.
Its hard not to, really. After all, we've been insulted and just plain done wrong! The other party is clearly, clearly in the wrong. And they never liked us anyway. And they dress poorly. And they smell funny.
Familiar?
If you're a member in even moderate standing of the Episcopal Church USA, then it ought to be. We've been bombarded from left and right. The conservatives are rude, bigotted and skismatics. The liberals are loudmouths and, well, liberal! Each side is constantly venting at us through media, internet blogs and even pulpits. We are in the middle of two parties talking too quickly and too loudly to listen. Not to eachother and certainly not to themselves. Each side has painted the other in colors too dark and attitudes to bilious to be believed. Where once there was tolerance, now there is only two backs turned towards eachother.
And the people left in the middle. Where once there existed a fulcrum between the two sides, now there is nothing. Or perhaps it is still there, waiting for the extremes to acknowledge it once again. I fear for ourselves and for many in our country. We have become so polarized of late. Where once compromise was considered a good outcome of debate now its a four letter word. I fear that in our course of venting, we have only succeeding in becoming obsessed.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
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