A Long Time Has Passed

Yes, a very long time has passed since I last wrote here on my blog. I'm not very consistent, am I? Still, I love to write; and just today, wrote to two old friends. One did not have an email so I enjoyed writing to her via "snail mail." That's something I still enjoy doing, although - yes, I know, I know! - it is slower and not as timely as email or twitter or whatever. The other person did have an email that I found on her website (she's a priest in upstate NY) and enjoyed catching her up on my life and doings.

One is Melanie, a former colleague in my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education, for the uninitiated) year, 1991-1992 at Abbott-Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. It was a very intense year for us five residents; Melanie joined us after our first quarter together, and what could well have been disastrous - to have someone enter the program after the rest of us had had three months together - proved to work out all right. Part of that was due to Melanie's competence and willingness to jump right in with us. She also proved to be a dear and trusted friend and colleague. She is ELCA, and I remember her vividly telling us her former parish, "Lord of Life" should have been renamed "Lord of Lie." Previously to my year of CPE residency, I too had served in a not-so-cordial place; so Melanie and I had many notes to compare. I was amazed at her maturity for one so young; after all, I had racked up twenty years in parish ministry and fancied myself somewhat of an "expert," especially in things that could go wrong!

I have Melanie to thank for helping me to keep my sense of humor throughout that year. Working with sick and dying people - and with hospital administrators and bureaucrats - can be a trying experience. I was happy that Melanie and her husband Scott, also an ELCA pastor, were graduates of "my" seminary, Yale Divinity School. (Now, I must confess that I am something of a "stepchild" of Yale, being a graduate of Berkeley Divinity School the year before it affiliated with Yale's divinity school; now it's known as "Berkeley at Yale" and I can legitimately use that as my seminary. Of course, there's some snobbery involved in all of this, but I won't go there right now!) Both Scott and Melanie, he fulltime and she part time, are on the pastoral care staff of a large hospital in Minneapolis, in the suburb of St. Louis Park; I can imagine both are doing great work, too.

I did not pursue the path to become a supervisor as Melanie and Scott did; it was not my vocation, and would have provided me with more than I wanted or needed in terms of angst! So I was happy to do the one year, knowing it would be an excellent foundation for future ministry. I had dreamed of combining hospital chaplaincy with parochial ministry, but that "just wasn't in the cards." Instead, I returned to fulltime parish ministry, first in Michigan, then here in Portland, Oregon.

It was fun to recount this in my letter to Melanie. Writing such things brings to one's mind wheere one has been and, we hope and pray, where one is going, even if one is 69 and "pushing 70" as I now am.

My email to Julie, a former student at Berkeley/Yale, whom I supervised in my Connecticut parish in the eighties, took a rather different tack. I'm glad to say that Julie is a parish priest in Syracuse, is serving half-time there and is the mother of two boys, 11 and 17. I was amazed to read her newsletter online that said she was "approaching 50." What I recall was a young woman, not yet 30, bright, pert, upbeat, finishing her seminary career, engaged to Brian, and suffering many physical ailments through it all, including a hospitalization. She demonstrated a great strength, coping with all of this.

After I wrote my email to her, I noticed in the webpage-newsletter that her younger son suffers from migraine headaches, and that at the tender age of eleven! Julie is the one to be his mom, though, and I'm sure she does more than simply "keep her head above water." It's good to realize that her year with us a St. John's, North Haven, shortened as it was by her circumstances, is part of her story and that I was part of it too.

I shall always remember her mother phoning me at the end of that academic year and thanking me "for all you have done for Julie." This was in Czech-accented English, I believe, and Julie's mother's name was "Dagmar," which I found enchanting. I had to say to Dagmar that I really didn't do all that much to "help" but was just "there for Julie." And that was quite enough. Her father, also a priest, was in Horseheads, NY - I won't go into the derivation of the name of that town, other than to say it's a suburb of Elmira. When I was interviewed at an Elmira parish in 1985, I met him to get his view on the parish and the diocese. I saw there a kind, understanding man who seemed to be "just right" for that very economically depressed area; he was also a psy-chiatric social worker. I've thought since that such a profession would be invaluable in parish ministry, and I rather envied him in that.

So, I'm happy that today I re-connected with these two wonderful persons. Perhaps we all should do this every now and then: put pen to paper, fingers to a keyboard, get into cyberspace or slap a stamp on an envelope, and communicate with old acquaintances. Moreover, it's always nice to hear back from them. It warms an old man's heart! Now I'll cease, lest I get maudlin!