Moving Forward

Field Placement Blog 3

Week 3:           Moving Forward

Right off the top, plans change. No trip to El Cajon this week! Hopefully, next week. Monday morning, we reshaped the plans for the week, organizing tools for my tasks. I will be updating the templates for the services at the Manor, the Villa, and the Senior Day Program, printing the originals, and making copies. While this doesn’t demand new learning, it is a pleasure because it facilitates the worship services provided for these locations. At the Manor and the Villa and the Plaza, Fr. Jason celebrates Eucharist. At Senior Day and the Villa are devotional services with singing, scripture, and prayers. This week we used the Collect and Lessons for Independence Day. No services were held on the 4^th due to closures on the holiday. Everywhere we visited, preparations were in the works for bar-be-ques or other celebrations. We were also able to get some of the workshops planned last week on the calendar and I’ll get those flyers complete and posted first thing next Monday.

My other task this week was writing an article for the next Messengerissue which will focus on St. Paul’s. Our article is toward an effort to enlist an altar guild to help Fr. Jason tend the services demanding stain-free linens and clean cups and patens. It turns out that some volunteers have stepped up to help the Manor chapel. But the other chapels still need help, so the article will proceed as planned. 

 Twice this week I visited residents at McColl and the Villa. I requested suggestions from front desk staff and was given a short list of names and room numbers. Upon arrival at the rooms, some declined a visit, others welcomed me. One woman who is likely to die soon mostly slept during my visit. She responded when spoken to and agreed to a prayer on her behalf. Otherwise, I simply sat with her, being present to a few of her remaining moments. The CNA came in to take vitals and had difficulty getting her hands warm enough for a reading with the electronic device he used. As I sat with her, I wondered about her—who she would be leaving behind; how she had lived her life. Her breath was regular, assisted by an oxygen machine. After a time, I said goodbye and moved on. I had hoped to return to her room the next day but did not. I’ll check in next week. 

I also chatted with a man waiting in the lobby for a ride to get some tests. There had been a scheduling snafu, so his wait was longer than expected. But he was in good spirits. He volunteered details of his interesting past working in amazing places around the world doing several different things. He was anxious to get this test done so he could, hopefully, soon go pick up his RV and relieve friends of tending his dogs. Don’t we all want life to get back to normal when our foot is bandaged up or our nostrils are attached to a machine or our whole body just isn’t cooperating?

Another woman I had previously met at Eucharist. She remembered me, and we had two engaging conversations. The first day I visited she was feeling poorly, uncomfortable, and frustrated with herself and the conditions she felt forced to live with. Isn’t this just the way that we often think when our bodies betray our desires, our age insists on its limitations? She had very recently been much more active and was suffering the loss of her mobility and freedom. The next day she was up in her wheelchair, dressed and lipsticked! She was less frustrated with her residence, but more so with her son who was having frustrations of a different kind. As we talked and she shared bits of her life, I reflected on the emotional ties that both hold us together and bind us perhaps unnecessarily. This is a woman of great faith who is particularly curious about me and my role as chaplain intern. She contrasted what I shared with ideas she once held about what she might have done in service had she had the chance. 

Sometimes upon arrival at a room or scheduled event there is a delay and we wait in the hall or the foyer or the lobby. Even in the waiting there is ministry—time to pause and take stock of “the list”, time to stop in the bath room or get a drink of water or reply to a text that we’ll be 15 minutes later than planned—ministry to self and others waiting on the other end of the day’s agenda or week’s calendar or summer’s field placement. It is our life’s surround that holds us firmly in place and makes us able to drive back tomorrow and try again. It is God's grace that strengthens us to walk into a darkened room to minister to a stranger.