Monday, May 24, 2004
On Food and Dying
After grilling out last week, I was going to wait a while before grilling again. But then, two things happened. Firstly, for my birthday I received a series of spices - my favorite to be exact - known as Everglades Seasoning (Regular, Fish & Fowl, Heat, Mesquite, and Lite), which can only be bought in FL, and then secondly and because of the first reason, my excitement got the better of me. I got some pork chops and some carrots and a zucchini, seasoned the pork with the Everglades, and then threw it all on the grill. Did I mention I was excited to learn we have a grill? I had a grill in college with the fraternity, but no where to store food or prepare it, so college grilling was limited to the basics. With the pork and veggies slow cooking on the grill, I went back upstairs and popped a cheddar garlic biscuit in the oven. A little while later I had a steaming pile of food; I was a king in my own land with a meal that could only be described as sovereign in its own right! How amazing was it? Incredible! And all finished off with a brownie. Food is good.
Lacking the ability to make a coherent transition to my next topic, I'm just gonna make the leap and hope I don't fall.
Death. As many of you know, I will be starting CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) very soon and have been doing some thinking about it. Pondering, as my brother would say. I know that to those of you who have already done CPE these musings will seem a little funny and maybe even unnecessary, but hey, its my page. I am no doubt going to be face to face with the face of death a lot this summer. My hospital sees a lot of car accidents as it is situated very close to a major highway. It is a Trauma level "highest" (cause I don't know if highest is 1 or 3) and so they take everything. In my Pastoral Care class we are just now starting to talk about CPE and I guess I'm feeling a little underprepared. The book we are reading about it is very helpful, but still, it is just a book. One of the things it said was that in order for the pastor to be effective in caregiving to a dying patient, the pastor must have come to grips with his own mortality. Have I done that? Maybe. To a certain extent, perhaps. I can't say for sure. I lost a dear friend to a car accident my junior year of college and that certainly made me think about my own mortality a bit. And, though my parents will not want to hear me say it, I had to prepare my heart and soul for the possibility when I went to Jerusalem. Now, as it turned out, all my fears were assuaged once I got there and learned that, by and large, it is everyday life as usual. Still, before I went, it was an unknown. Intelluctually, I knew that what we all see on the TV is the sensational, the extraordinary, and not the normal everyday. But, those images are powerful. So, I have done some thinkning about it. But, will it be enough to give good care to those who are dying? Will it be enough to prevent me giving trite, shallow, and unsophisticated answers? One of the things CPE does is get us to experiment with how we do pastoral care and how we react in critical situations. But, the experiment is no simulation. These are real people's lives and if we f-up, we've not only screwed our experiment, we've screwed them. And for them, it's real. All too real. So, needless to say, I am feeling a little nervous and unprepared. For as much as I can legally do, I will document my CPE experience here and maybe you, my faithful readers, can help the experiment by offering your own suggestions or prayers. The latter are particularly appreciated...at any time.
-R
After grilling out last week, I was going to wait a while before grilling again. But then, two things happened. Firstly, for my birthday I received a series of spices - my favorite to be exact - known as Everglades Seasoning (Regular, Fish & Fowl, Heat, Mesquite, and Lite), which can only be bought in FL, and then secondly and because of the first reason, my excitement got the better of me. I got some pork chops and some carrots and a zucchini, seasoned the pork with the Everglades, and then threw it all on the grill. Did I mention I was excited to learn we have a grill? I had a grill in college with the fraternity, but no where to store food or prepare it, so college grilling was limited to the basics. With the pork and veggies slow cooking on the grill, I went back upstairs and popped a cheddar garlic biscuit in the oven. A little while later I had a steaming pile of food; I was a king in my own land with a meal that could only be described as sovereign in its own right! How amazing was it? Incredible! And all finished off with a brownie. Food is good.
Lacking the ability to make a coherent transition to my next topic, I'm just gonna make the leap and hope I don't fall.
Death. As many of you know, I will be starting CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) very soon and have been doing some thinking about it. Pondering, as my brother would say. I know that to those of you who have already done CPE these musings will seem a little funny and maybe even unnecessary, but hey, its my page. I am no doubt going to be face to face with the face of death a lot this summer. My hospital sees a lot of car accidents as it is situated very close to a major highway. It is a Trauma level "highest" (cause I don't know if highest is 1 or 3) and so they take everything. In my Pastoral Care class we are just now starting to talk about CPE and I guess I'm feeling a little underprepared. The book we are reading about it is very helpful, but still, it is just a book. One of the things it said was that in order for the pastor to be effective in caregiving to a dying patient, the pastor must have come to grips with his own mortality. Have I done that? Maybe. To a certain extent, perhaps. I can't say for sure. I lost a dear friend to a car accident my junior year of college and that certainly made me think about my own mortality a bit. And, though my parents will not want to hear me say it, I had to prepare my heart and soul for the possibility when I went to Jerusalem. Now, as it turned out, all my fears were assuaged once I got there and learned that, by and large, it is everyday life as usual. Still, before I went, it was an unknown. Intelluctually, I knew that what we all see on the TV is the sensational, the extraordinary, and not the normal everyday. But, those images are powerful. So, I have done some thinkning about it. But, will it be enough to give good care to those who are dying? Will it be enough to prevent me giving trite, shallow, and unsophisticated answers? One of the things CPE does is get us to experiment with how we do pastoral care and how we react in critical situations. But, the experiment is no simulation. These are real people's lives and if we f-up, we've not only screwed our experiment, we've screwed them. And for them, it's real. All too real. So, needless to say, I am feeling a little nervous and unprepared. For as much as I can legally do, I will document my CPE experience here and maybe you, my faithful readers, can help the experiment by offering your own suggestions or prayers. The latter are particularly appreciated...at any time.
-R
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