Scary

Before coming to graduate school, I worked for over one year on a Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatient Unit. Working there, for a measly $8.25 an hour with a college degree, was one of the best and worst experiences of my life. Best, in that it motivated me to want to change the system and not become stuck working there my whole life. Best, in that I feel I actually did get to be useful to some kids and adolescents who were stuck in a horrible place during the worst time of their lives.

But, the worst, in that I have seen the mentally ill disrespected, held violent children against their will for their safety and mine, seen grown men and women reduced to something less than the humanity they possess, and even been the last staff member to actually do my job and do rounds, only to have the next shift fail to do so and have a patient die on their shift due to aspirating on his own vomit. I was the last person to see that man alive and talk to him. I still don't quite know how to deal with that.

So, it hit me especially hard when one woman, who was hired to replace me and several of my coworkers who left the hospital around the same time, was murdered. In her own apartment. Now, they're thinking it could have been a patient. I remember being threatened by patients, their parents, and others. I remember the night the lady whom I was left alone with in the intake room was found to have the foot long butcher knife stuck in her bra. I weep for this family, and I weep that there seems to be no good and respectful way to find her killer. Johnia Berry was trying to live her life, just like I was while I worked there. And it may have cost her her life.

*Sigh*

In response to the VT shootings, I would hope that we would all be contemplating how to grieve and make meaning together. I would hope that we would be evaluating what it must be like to live in one of the many places in the world where the deaths of hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of people a day is a part of life. I would hope that we would examine how our disconnected society may have contributed to a young man who was possibly mentally ill feeling so rejected and bitter that he believed he had to exact revenge in such a traumatic way. I would hope we, as the Church, would be comforters to the suffering, proclaimers of the only hope that we have in the face of such a tragedy, the hope that there is something eternal for which we long in the aftermath of something so senseless. I would hope that we would learn lessons from the past, lessons of forgiveness in the midst of unimaginable grief and loss.

But, I am dissapointed that we seem to be discussing instead, how to react in fear and arm ourselves against an insidious and invisible enemy that cannot be controlled. To embrace fear and control instead of hope, love, and faith is a travesty that lets evil triumph.


TN moves to allow guns in public buildings

By News Sentinel staff
April 18, 2007

NASHVILLE — In a surprise move, a House panel voted today to repeal a state law that forbids the carrying of handguns on property and buildings owned by state, county and city governments — including parks and playgrounds.

"I think the recent Virginia disaster — or catastrophe or nightmare or whatever you want to call it — has woken up a lot of people to the need for having guns available to law-abiding citizens," said Rep. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains. "I hope that is what this vote reflects."

Read the full story in Thursday’s News Sentinel.

It's busy up in here.

End of the semester means lots of things to do and little time for the Internets. ;) So, I thought you might enjoy some of my pastoral care paper on my vision of soul care.

The soul care giver is to enter into relationship with others in a deliberate way so as to nurture and love them while providing gentle correction for the broken ways of relating evident in their lives. The soul care giver, as explained by St. Gregory the Great (1978), engages in relationships where “discourse…should be adapted to the character of the hearers, so as to be suited to the individual in his respective needs, and yet never deviate from the art of general edification (p. 89).”

...

The role of the soul care giver is also to be the voice within the Church that speaks for the spiritual disciplines, prayer, silence, and simplicity. In today’s raucous society of efficiency and production, the soul care giver works to make space within the institution of the Church for instruction on spiritual practices, and is the constant reminder of the true purpose of humanity in creation. Richard Foster (2005) uses the term “passion to possess (p.3)” to describe contemporary society’s need to own and produce and its inevitable outcome of producing a fractured and fragmented way of life. As Lisa McMinn states in her book, The Contented Soul,

To see our selves as a soul that belongs is to accept an invitation to hold life, relationships, and possessions loosely, hands open, recognizing that nothing is really ours but that we belong to God and to all that is around us—our family, neighborhood, communities of work and worship, our country, our neighbors in the world, and the earth that sustains us all. A soul that belongs is a contented soul living in a place of quiet joy, and it invites, welcomes, and calms those who draw near (p.22).

The soul care giver strives to be a person that lives a life of simplicity and authenticity that draws people to the calming contemplative way.

The soul care giver carefully holds all of these important goals, and is only able to do so with even tenuous success if she is a person who practices and strives for holiness through spiritual disciplines. The soul care giver ultimately is one who seeks out intimacy with God, and who conducts a ministry that supports, loves, and cares for others in ways that encourage them to engage more intimately with God. The soul care giver makes no promises that the spiritual way is easy, but only that she will walk with and care for parishioners no matter where their journey leads, even through such horrible afflictions as the Dark Night of the Soul. As Evelyn Underhill states in her book The Spiritual Life:

The spiritual life then is not a peculiar or extreme form of piety. It is, on the contrary, that full and real life for which man is made; a life that is organic and social, essentially free, yet with its own necessities and laws. Just as physical life means, and depends on, constant correspondence with our physical environment, the atmosphere that surrounds and penetrates us, the energies of heat and light, whether we happen to notice it or not; so does spiritual life mean constant correspondence with our spiritual environment, whether we notice it or not (p. 41-42).

The soul care giver practices the spiritual life and draws attention to and makes intentional for others the spiritual environment so that we might benefit more from it, and so that awareness of God and his whisperings will be more acute.


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Soul care ministry focuses on ways to deepen believers’ knowledge and openness to God and His work. Soul care is also the part of the Church that deepens an understanding of one’s self and others in order to grow toward conformity of character and inner life in the image of Christ. Doing so, besides being a command of Christ, ultimately benefits the global Church and the local congregation.

The benefit comes in that a body of believers who are listening to God and seeking God’s direction become less concerned with programs, logistics, and the “doing” of church. A congregation that has a pervasive and appropriately integrated soul care ministry supports and develops Christ followers who long after God and God’s work in their lives. They serve joyfully where God has instructed. They express love to the community around them. For it is only through soul care and its call to the contemplative traditions that can produce a faith community where God dispenses his grace through us, and changes the world through us. Soul care has to offer the church the dream of a body who loves so well, people are drawn closer to God through Jesus Christ.

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In his book, Letters to a Young Evangelical, Tony Campolo (2006) calls for a reclaiming of the contemplative (predominantly Catholic) traditions that were removed from Evangelicalism at the reformation.

After the Reformation, we Protestants left behind much that was troubling about the Roman Catholicism of the fifteenth century. I am convinced that we left too much behind. The methods of praying employed by the likes of Ignatius have become precious to me. With the help of some Catholic saints, my prayer life has deepened. Ignatius and other Catholic mystics such as Teresa of Avila have been of incredible help to me in developing a kind of praying in which God becomes a real and felt presence (p. 31).

Although I have now become a member of a very nontypical Christian church, it remains the same Evangelical tradition. Although there exists a growing appreciation for the spiritual and contemplative, there remains little structure, instruction, or support for pastoral care. The church incorporates more psychological ministries, including support and recovery. However, there remains a vast emptiness concerning pastoral care.
I hope to follow the example set by the atypical Evangelical leader Tony Campolo in his personal ministry and writings, for a pastoral care ministry that incorporates an acute sense of social justice and the Church Universal in addition to having an intimate relationship with Christ. Campolo (2006) suggests the practices of centering prayer, contemplative Bible study, and an accountability group that helps you maintain spiritual disciplines for consistent Christian living.

A day late...

and a dollar short. But almost a year and a Flickr pro account later, I've uploaded all of our Hungary pics from last year.

Check them out!

The World Conspiring Against Me

The world, the Fates, God, or whomever is conspiring against me lately. A couple of weeks ago, I had some weird pains in my back on the left side. The pains struck me the early morning (3am!) that we departed for our trip to Philly/New York. It was uncomfortable, but I drank a lot of water and felt fine after awhile.

Then, Easter morning, I woke up with those same pains, only multiplied. It felt like someone was sticking a flaming poker in my lower back. I fought off the pain with water and ibuprofen, but yesterday, the pain migrated to my lady bits. Hot searing pain! By now some of you experienced people know, it was a kidney stone. I go me to an urgent care around 7:30pm. The pain! The xrays! The bloodwork! The peeing in a cup! I left at 9:15 with some paper urine filters and two prescriptions: cipro and vicodin (hello, good friend!).

By this point, I was dying. Or was wishing to die from the pain. But, I had yet to eat dinner. I drove to Wendy's. But the people in front of me were taking FOREVER at the drive thru. I seriously contemplated rolling down my window and yelling to get on with it. Then, then....it became clear that this truckload of young men were in the drive thru only to flirt with the ladies on duty. ARGGGGH. Overwhelming hunger, searing pain...I will kill you!!

Then, I drove to Walgreens. I was told the wait would be 1/2 an hour. I looked at the tech incredulously, mumbled something about pain oh the pain, and went to sit in the fetal position in one of the uncomfortable chairs. I paid $40 for Cipro..which at Meier Pharmacy is free. Why did I do this? Because Meier Pharmacy closed at 9pm. Then, I also paid $179.99 for my monthly prescription for my endocrine disorder that I had called in earlier in the day. Thanks, Walgreens, for raising that price $10. I'm sure you really really needed to do so. After repeating for the umpteenth time that I. Have. No. Prescription. Benefits. Yes. I'm. Certain. I finally got to come home. (Oh, and the Vicodin, nectar of the gods? $11).

Sweet Vicodin, thank you for the 16 hour pain-free stupor. Thank you for the grunting responses I made to our insurance agent who must be really confused after calling today. Thank you for everything.

It's now been 12.5 hours and counting since the last pain meds. So far, so good. Here's praying for a fast recovery. Otherwise, that History of Pastoral Care paper might be quite entertaining if written while on Vicodin.