What did you want to be when you grow up?

A lot of the prompts that have been put forth by NaBloPoMo for the posts this month relate to thinking about the past.  Today I am thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I was never one of those kids who had a specific idea of what I wanted to be.  I had some vague ideas, like I wanted to help people and something to do with health care.  I have been lucky to have worked in several fields that allow me to care for people: human services, case management, nursing, parish ministry, and now chaplaincy.

I think I have the best job in the world.  I get to spend time with other people for a living.  My work as a chaplain frees me to care for the souls and emotions and minds of my patients. I actually get to be a PERSON for a living. The greatest qualification for my work is to use all of the emotional intelligence and mental intelligence that I have to meet another person right where they are. I have been a master's degree, an Mdiv, and have been prepared in a variety of ways for this work, including 1600 clinical hours and approval by my judicatory.  I am currently working towards board certification in chaplaincy, a standard for any discipline in healthcare.

I think I am dangerously close to becoming a grown-up.  I am into my thirties, I have several degrees, including a graduate degree, and I am self-sufficient. I am also thrilled to say that my vocation, chaplaincy, is what I want to be when I grow up.  What a gift.

What does a chaplain do anyway?

A.Hanson, Minnesota 2014

What does a chaplain do anyway?

I get this question a lot in the hospital as well as outside the hospital.  The answer is that I do tons of different things.

Here is a snapshot of what I have done in the last week:

Discussing a patient's wishes for their medical care should they be unable to speak for themselves. Helping them to complete paperwork to appoint a healthcare agent (MDPOA).

Brought a teddy bear to a toddler in the ER who fell off her bed and knocked out several teeth.

Did detective work to figure out the identity of a John Doe patient in the ER. Called county sheriff and asked them to send an officer to the listed address. Found a family member and met them at the doors of the ER.  Connected them with healthcare staff.

Found a buddhist monk to visit a buddhist patient.

Read psalms and sang hymns to an agitated elderly patient at the request of a nurse, to assist nursing staff in calming the patient enough for treatment.

Had a discussion with the husband of a patient who was dying.  The patient's husband wished she could be at home. Talked about how to make the hospital more home-like. Advocated for patient and family with nursing staff to make these wishes happen (patient's own pajamas and blanket, and being held by her husband).

Sat with a family for hours while doctors attempted to stabilize their loved one who had suffered cardiac arrest. Prayed with them, held their hands, and brought them water.

Prayed with a family whose matriarch had just died.

Visited a teenager who had an accident that left him paralyzed.

Blessed the Cath labs at the request of the staff after they had experienced several tough deaths there.

Served as a designated requester for Donor Alliance, to ask for consent for tissue and cornea donation, from the family of a recently deceased patient.

Called to Proclaim Belonging: A guest post for Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries

Photo credit to Emily Ann Garcia

A few weeks ago I was asked to write a guest post for the Proclaim blog on the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries site.  The post can be viewed here in its context on that blog or appears in full text below.  

As I write this post I am just a few short weeks away from finishing my internship at First Lutheran Church, in St Peter, MN. I am the first intern for this congregation. When the congregation began discerning the possibility of having an intern long before my arrival, they compiled a profile that said, “We believe that our conviction of welcome and designation as a Reconciling in Christ congregation makes us makes us an ideal site for an LGBTQ intern.”  My interview went very well, and as I walked home, I thought, “I have found my internship site.”  On that very same day, Pastor Alan stated to the congregational council, “I have found our intern.” 

One of my fears prior to internship was that I would be known only as “the gay pastor.”  I was afraid that all of my work and my pastoral formation would be filtered through that part of my identity.  In a world that so often forces LGBTQ people to apologize for who they are, before they can even begin to live into their vocation, I have seen, heard, and experienced something exciting at First Lutheran Church.  This congregation’s convictions about hospitality and welcome are real, and they are living out the Gospel. In this place, I am Pastor Amy first, and a gay pastor second.

Like most LGBTQ people I have struggled with belonging.  Belonging in our families, churches, communities, and workplaces. The church is a particularly painful place for many of us. In representing my congregation as a Reconciling in Christ site at the Southwest Minnesota Synod Assembly, I had the opportunity to talk with many people about what it means to be a safe place of welcome for all people. As many lamented that their congregations might never openly welcome LGBTQ folks, and tears were shared for family members and friends who left these congregations, I was able to share some hope that there is a new day dawning in the church.

 Part of my sense of call is to unceasingly proclaim to all the beautiful, broken, and beloved people of God who feel pushed aside by our culture or the church itself, “You already belong.  You may feel like you are on the margins, but you are part of the Body of Christ.”  My call is also to baptize and serve Holy Communion to equip this Body for their own work for justice, peace, and mercy in the world.

My experience as an intern this year, as well as my participation in Proclaim, has given me the confidence to live boldly into my calling to ministry.  I no longer apologize for being who God created me to be, but instead give thanks that I am who I am, that I have this call and have this sacred task before me.

Lent 2: Vocation

This week's portion of the Lenten disciplines asked us to reflect upon vocation.  This is something that I think about a lot, because I am engaged in an entire year's worth of vocational formation as I do this internship in parish ministry.

Author Frederick Buechner said that vocation is where your deep gladness and the world's deep needs meet.  I think this is my operating definition of vocation as well.

My understanding of vocation has also been shaped by Martin Luther who writes that vocation is not limited to clergy.  We all have a vocation, and that is to serve our neighbor.

So vocation is about knowing your gifts and how they can be of service to the world, while also paying attention to the needs around you.  I think it is this second part of vocation that is all too easy to forget.  When I lived in intentional community nine years ago with seven other young adults (wow, that feels like a lifetime ago!) we had a sign in our kitchen that read, "See the Need…Meet the Need."  It partially had to do with cleaning up messes in the kitchen, but also had to do with our lives outside of the Ogden Street house. Lives of service in organizations serving those experiencing homelessness and poverty.

Vocation: It is about seeing the need and meeting the need. Using your gifts to meet the needs of the world.

Ordinary people….extraordinary things: a sermon on Matthew 4:12-23

Grace, peace and mercy are yours from God who is the light of the world.  Amen.

All four Gospels have a version of today’s text, Jesus calling his disciples. It’s a pretty important story, how Jesus selected the people who would accompany him in his ministry.  While each Gospel account has its own details, they all emphasize Jesus interrupting the disciples in their work and these men dropping whatever they are doing, and following Jesus. No arguments, no protesting, not even a single claim of, “Well, I have a few loose ends to tie up at home. I’ll see you in a couple days.”

I think we’ve all heard this text in sermons many times. It’s a favorite of preachers attempting to exhort their flocks of parishioners to get out into the world and DO something. And it’s a favorite of Sunday school teachers everywhere because of its fun imagery (fishing nets! boats! Jesus!) and simple message: When Jesus comes calling, say “YES!”, drop everything you are doing and follow him.  You just have to DO it.  Easy enough, right?  Yeah…I don’t think so.

Maybe this message isn’t so simple after all. I think that the disciples are often cast as these models of piety and religious observance and we are told that we should do everything in our power to emulate them. James and John didn’t seem to take issue with leaving their father behind, we are told that they “immediately left the boat and their father and followed Jesus.”   And we don’t hear about these disciples packing a U-Haul, so we can assume they left behind the comforts of home and most of their possessions. Simon Peter and Andrew were hard at work using the tools of their trade, and they “immediately left their nets and followed him.”

It’s really tough to imagine giving up the comforts of home for the unknown, and leaving behind loved ones, so we are thankful that someone else is doing it.  We don’t have to consider ourselves disciples.  Aside from the practical concerns of whether or not it would be possible or desirable to devote one’s life to being a disciple, we wonder if we would ever be qualified. If Jesus really knew what we were up to, like our doubts about faith or that decade when we didn’t go to church or our youthful indiscretions, would we make the cut? We think we can’t possibly be good enough or religious enough.  Which is why we would prefer that someone else do it. A professional.  Like missionaries or pastors.  But, I will let you in on a little secret, even pastors don’t always feel qualified to be disciples.   Because every single one of us in this room is only human.  We all make mistakes.  We are often wandering around in the darkness of this world and running into walls and tripping over stuff. We will continue to do so.  And if we focus only on the “should’s” and “ought’s” of being a disciple and put ourselves into a punishing routine of morality, we miss what Jesus is up to.

But what is actually happening in the text?  Jesus is walking along the shore of the sea of Galilee when he encounters these men who will be his disciples.  We don’t really hear if he has interacted with Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John in the past.  However, what we do know is that the disciples were not plucked out of some seminary or discipleship training school. There was not a job interview or a competency exam.  Jesus came to them right in the middle of what they were doing.  Jesus called ordinary people right in the middle of their ordinary lives to do extraordinary things.  They were not called based on their stellar qualifications.  And as the Gospel of Matthew moves along, we hear that the disciples are just human.  They repeatedly fail to notice that Jesus is the Messiah.  They just cannot seem to get their heads around the fact that he is a different kind of King and isn’t going to take down their enemies in some show of force.  They fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus asks them several times to stay awake.  Simon Peter, one of the first disciples called by Jesus as we hear today, will go on to deny Jesus three times.  Another disciple, Judas, will actually betray Jesus. 

If Jesus was using accomplishments to grade the effectiveness of the disciples, they would have failed.  But they were NOT called to DO.  They were called to BE.  To be in relationship with Jesus and with all people in the kingdom of God.  Just as we are called to be in relationship with Jesus and with those whom Jesus loves. This is not the sort of personal relationship with Jesus Christ where Jesus is your best friend or your therapist or your fairy Godmother who gives you everything you want if you just pray for it in the right way. This is the sort of real and raw relationship where you die to yourself and what you think you want, and that space of self-determination is filled with Christ.  When your hardened heart is broken and is replaced with a new and tender heart of God’s own, which feels the pain of the world and is moved to love in spite of itself.

We are not called to DO, we are called to BE.  We often want to equate vocation, one’s call to be of service to God in the world, with occupation.  I remember around the time I was graduating from College, when I was looking for the dream job which would be my vocation, my younger sister Katie said something that I will never forget. Katie did not go to college right away.   She went to cosmetology school and at the time I was looking for what I considered my dream job that would change the world, she was working in a hair salon.  It was not a fulfilling job.  It was long hours, grueling work, and often thankless. Katie told me that your vocation was not what you do for work, but how you are connected to other people.  So after many hours of cutting hair and standing on her feet, Katie would volunteer at a nursing home to cut and style the hair of the residents.  She would make residents feel special and beautiful, in a place where many people feel forgotten.  Katie taught me that vocation uses your gifts and qualifications, but more importantly, it uses your connectedness to other human beings. Katie has since moved onto college and graduate school and has taken this understanding of vocation into her career as a speech pathologist, but I will never forget what she taught me. 
            So all of us gathered here are called to different vocations in service as disciples.  Some of us have occupations that match up with our vocations.  Some of us do not.  But what we have in common is a sense of connectedness with the people of God.  So how are you being called into relationship with others in the name of Christ?  How is God inviting you to use your gifts as a disciple? 

But, we all protest, what if I am not useful enough?  Let’s entertain a metaphor.  This quilt that I made ten years ago,  , this was my very first attempt at such a complex sewing project.  As you can see, the squares don’t match up.  The colors don’t exactly align.  This quilt is not perfect.  But its imperfections do not render it useless. Despite the fact that it doesn’t look quite right, it’s been on my bed or on my couch or accompanied me on dozens of picnics for the last decade. 

            People of God, we are like this quilt. We have lots of little pieces that make us who we are.  Sometimes they are messy.  Sometimes they are broken.  But they make up one splendid whole that God uses for good in the world.  We all have a vocation to be disciples. So...go and do likewise!