Author: scblair

Sample CPE Verbatim: Allowing for authenticity

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The following is an excerpt from a Level II verbatim I did several years ago to give you an example of how I wrote toward the Level II standards.

This case ended up being one of my most difficult, in that the patient was a child and I was good friends with his mother. His death was hard on all of us. As I have children this child’s age, it cut very close for me. Perhaps a bit too close. This visit is a follow-up regarding her son’s death. I think you’ll see several themes at work:

  1. who is caring for whom?
  2. recognizing defensiveness
  3. allowing space for authenticity and giving permission to be authentic
  4. theodicy – how does God work things out for the good when a child dies?
  5. self care

While I see these themes at work, I don’t think I touched on all of them in the conversation.

Feel free to comment!

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Self care is part of your work

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As important as self care is for Chaplains and other caregivers, it’s probably one of the most neglected parts of our job. And self care is part of our job, because if we don’t care for ourselves we will be unable to do our job.

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Jesus loves you, but you’re still going to die

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Every so often in hospice you get asked a baffling question, one that you don’t have a ready answer for. Sometimes it’s because the answer is simply beyond fathoming or beyond a simple explanation: “why is this happening to me?” or “why does God allow so much evil in the world?” Other times I’m baffled because the answer seems so obvious that I’m trying to understand why it’s asked at all. Such was the question I had posed to me a while back:

“Why does God have to take my mom? She never did anything wrong!”

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Keep your friends close, and your “-ism”s closer

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yes, that's Geneva in the background

I’m trying to work on a new post on Calvinism and having a bit of a hard time, so I thought I’d take a break.

I grew up Calvinist but only because that was the only pool I could swim in at the time. During and after seminary I questioned things more but still held on to a lot of it. Now I’m investigating the other side of the fence – that would be the more Arminian traditions including the Anabaptists – and even the contemplative Catholics like Thomas Merton. All of this has been great, and disturbing at the same time. Continue reading →

We need to rethink grief

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Artist Motol Yamamoto, who created labyrinths of salt to help express his own grief at the loss of his sister due to brain cancer. Click on the image for more information.

In my hospice, as well as in many others, when someone dies we consider the family members involved and rate their grief as low, medium or high. The thought being that if someone is on the low end, they will generally be fine. On the medium and high end though, we need to be more involved as this person may not cope well.

And I’m starting to think this is really missing the point.

There has been research recently in regards to complicated grief – grief that becomes debilitating to the point of becoming a chronic, life-limiting condition. This is the kind of grief that we in hospice are trying to identify, monitor and assist with. It differs from normal grief in that it is much more of a clinical condition, however it has many of the same characteristics as normal grief. The main determinants between the two, putting it simply, are duration of symptoms and the severity of them. Normal grief can involve impulsive crying, sleeplessness, rapid weight loss or gain, and even auditory or visual hallucinations. But they tend to subside over time and generally do not interfere with daily functioning. Complicated grief resembles PTSD, in that it can have these same symptoms but amplified and intrusive to the point where they cannot function normally. Continue reading →

Chaplain certification and other nightmares

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Before I completed my last unit of CPE several years ago I was encouraged to go for my certification through the APC. It’s the “gold standard”, the “union card”, the key to get you in the door of any Chaplain job in the country.

Only I didn’t go for it.

I have plenty of excuses now looking back. I already had a job that didn’t require certification and they didn’t really care if I was. I was the Director of Spiritual Services already and none of the chaplains I supervised had their certification either, so I didn’t feel that pressure. As Director, I was also really really busy and didn’t feel like investing any more time then toward putting all the papers together and so on. I also felt really secure in my position and didn’t feel like certification would really help me where I was. Plus, I also got the feeling that although my job had supported me through part of my CPE, they were done with giving me time and financial support to pursue certification.

Then I got let go. Continue reading →

Why is Christian radio so… frustrating?

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**update**I changed the original title from “Christian music” to “Christian radio”, as that’s more accurately where my complaint lies. Thanks Jnana!

As I sat down to write this, I just couldn’t think of an appropriate word to express myself regarding Christian music. Segregated? Balkanized? Overlooked? Mediocre? None of these are accurate, and that leads to the main point of my frustration. Christian music is in a hole.

Growing up I listened to a lot of Christian rock. My first real concert was a Rez Band show in Pittsburgh at Soldiers and Sailors Hall. I also dug a  lot of Christian punk (MXPX, Altar Boys, One Bad Pig). I even used some money I got to start a music library for our youth group. I did that because it was so hard to find good (or at least what I thought was good) Christian music on the radio.

Unfortunately I think that’s still the case. Not Christian music, but Christian music radio. At least here in Pittsburgh, we have only one station devoted to Christian music, the grand mammoth that is K-Love. Our other Christian stations are devoted to teaching and preaching, though one has music on the weekends. But on the weekends it sounds just like K-Love. Continue reading →

Cancer from both sides: Joanie Baldwin Branch

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I wanted to feature a post and blog from a friend of mine who is dealing in her own way with terminal cancer. I worked with her in hospice, she as a nurse and I as a chaplain. After she was diagnosed with her own cancer I encouraged her to write about it. This post I thought would be a great introduction. You can catch up with her at joanbaldwinbranch.blogspot.com.

More Cancer Lessons:
I have so many thoughts running through my mind with the underlying theme being; I must start writing all of this down. So, here I go not knowing what will come out of my head or where to start this.
Since I have cancer, I think a lot of the things one thinks of if they know their time here on earth is limited. It was then that I discovered what a blessing this time is. If you know you don’t have all that much time, you tend to, at least mentally, write a ‘to do’ list. On that list are things like funeral arrangements, writing letters to my children, thinking about what songs you want played at the service, etc. The introspection is phenomenal. I am getting to know me at last. Just knowing me has been something that I have often pondered doing. Now it becomes a reality. I find so many things funny. I laugh long and often. Poking fun at yourself & this disease is so freeing. It has been influential with having my family members stop denying that I am going to die. They are learning to accept this diagnosis. There is no ‘elephant in the room’. We make jokes about my baldness and my chemo brain although my grandson, Ryan, says that I was forgetful before I ever had cancer & chemo!

Handling authority and conflict: another CPE verbatim

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In the beginning…

First I want to thank those of you who read my posts. I have two blogs that I write on, and while this is the one which I update the least (until recently) it is definitely the more popular one. That said I am going to look in to ways to make posts easier to find and rework the design a bit in the process.

That said, I wanted to post another CPE verbatim as an example. This is one that I wrote in my 3rd unit at the Pittsburgh VA which I took at level II.  I chose this particular one because I think some might find it helpful to see how to write toward the competencies (I used footnotes) and also because of the context. Most chaplain interactions are seen within the chaplain-patient context, but this one happened within a supervisor-supervisee context. So I also wanted to include this an example of how you can use the CPE environment to look at many different areas. It also included several people, so it was pretty complicated. Feel free to comment.

I don’t deal well with conflict and my main question going in was “did I handle myself appropriately?” If you’re interested in familial roles, handling personal and professional authority, trust and handling conflict you’ll find this interesting. Oh – and I later on ended up firing this person (ok, if you ask her she resigned before I could fire her but that was only because she hadn’t made it back in to the office that day). Intrigued? Read on-

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On Donald Miller and Christ outside the church

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image: Amy Corron Power

Donald Miller recently wrote in his blog, “I don’t connect with God by singing to Him.” Well Don, I don’t either.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t sing to God. But I find that the only time I do is in church on Sunday for about 20 minutes. At times I find myself being drawn closer to God by music, including Christian music, but those songs somehow never make their way into the worship center.

Plus I don’t sing well. While I knew this all along, it became glaringly obvious to me when I attended a Reformed Presbyterian church in college. At RP services no hymns are sung, and there is no musical accompaniment. The congregants sing the Psalms a-capella, often breaking into multiple lush harmonies as the verses change. I just stood and listened. It was beautiful, but I was a spectator, not a participant.

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