August 18, 2014
By the grace of God I managed to complete my summer unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (a hospital chaplaincy internship and much more) on Aug. 1. It was intense, and difficult, and helpful, and painful, and I’ll never forget it. I am sitting now on the porch of the student house at St. Mary’s on the Lake, summer home of the Paulist Fathers on Lake George, N.Y. What a place to be – then, and now. What a contrast. What a summer. What a life.
In some ways it feels much longer, but it was only a few weeks ago that I found myself walking home from the hospital at 3:30 a.m. in a literal and metaphorical fog. I can’t really say much about what I was called in for, only that it was sad and stayed with me. It occurred to me that night that full-time hospital chaplains are a bit like Spiderman – not just because of the power/responsibility angle of the 2002 installment, but because chaplains help people in darkness, and few will ever know.
Perhaps because of my own foray into the darkness of human experience this summer – death, illness, tragedy – the sun over Lake George these last few days has felt blindingly bright. It feels that way now as I look over the lake, the majestic Minne-Ha-Ha steamboat chugging through my view as it has reliably done each of my few years here. My light-sensitive Irish blue eyes have some play in the matter, no doubt, but I wonder also if the brightness blinds me because the eyes of my heart are readjusting again to the luminosity of the world going about its daily business of being beautiful. There is still some transitioning and some perspective-making to accomplish on my part.
This transition, I confess, already feels different from others. It is heavier. In the grander scheme of things, the program did what I think it was meant to do: I am on a good pastoral road that feels surer now than it did when the summer began. The road to getting to that road, however, has been paved with days of bringing up a good deal of not-insignificant pain from my own history and health, and feeling those difficult parts of my life co-mingle with the darkness and struggle of those I have been walking with in pastoral ministry. The whole thing has been a powerful reminder that for better, and sometimes for the worse (or at least the more difficult), God has chosen to sustain the world through the people he created. Some of us will plant trees, some of us will sell lemonade on the Minne-Ha-Ha, and some will do this business that I am presently about of being formed for priesthood. Each allows for holiness; each allows God to speak and be present to his children.
With each passing assignment I find myself being increasingly sustained by the sustenance God has chosen to provide His people through my own hands, my ears, and my lips. I don’t entirely understand it, and I don’t feel worthy of it; but it’s not all about me. It’s about God and the decision he made long before I came along to chase us wherever we lay: in light or in darkness; in sickness or in health; asleep or awake on the streets of New York in the wee hours of the morning. I am thankful to be sustained by God. I pray that I might see him everywhere.