Chaplincy Residency: The First Week

I've just completed the first week of Chaplaincy Residency at United Hospital in St. Paul. It's been maybe a category II hurricane of change for me, windy, calm, then windy again, and maybe (just maybe) the promise of blue sky ahead, or other weather on the way. Most of the gusts this week were due to outside events, such as the Republican National Convention, which delayed the residency start date and complicated many new employee procedures. But now there are five of us working together as resident chaplains for this 450 bed hospital.

It's an exciting group of residents, with folks from a variety of religious backgrounds: Catholic, Presbyterian, and Buddhist. I feel less like an outlier in this group than in the larger group of my previous CPE experience, where all were Protestant. The group dynamics are promising too. The group is willing to work together to solve problems and sort out things. An example: we had to decide who was going to staff the various units. This resolved very quickly and creatively, as we each got what we wanted, or more wisely, what we resisted.

In my case, I struggled with counseling and supporting people dealing with mental illness in my parish internship, and wonder if I avoided truly engaging in that work. Yet there was a call to this, a sense I needed to go deeper in this. I volunteered to take the Psychotherapy area, along with Neuroscience, which is mostly involved in treatment of epilepsy. Since no one else desired or needed these areas, the choice seems right on multiple levels.

Photo: United Hospital, Allina.com