It's been a long week...

If I had to put a title to my week I think I'd call it something like, "Coming to terms with the end-of-life and the realization of my inadequacies."

On Monday I attended an IOPO (Indiana Organ Procurement Organization) conference in South Bend. It was an all day meeting, but my supervisor and I skipped out a little early once we'd had enough. I am all for organ donation, but the thing that bothered me a little was that because these people deal with this stuff all the time they seem to forget that someone actually has to die in order to make organ donation possible.

On Tuesday afternoon I was at the hospital and the oncology case manager flagged me down to tell me that there were three end-of-life cases that were in need of a chaplain's presence. I didn't feel altogether comfortable doing all of those visits by myself so I paged my supervisor and I shadowed while he took the lead.

This first half of this week was reading week so I didn't have class on Wednesday. I spend the greater part of the day researching for my Atonement paper on "what does the atonement mean at the end of life?"

On Thursday I attended a funeral that my practicum supervisor officiated. We'd been talking about funeral planning and I asked if it would be possible for me to come to a funeral as an observer of the clergy's role. That evening I finished a book that I had been working on over the last week or so, titled "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom which is an excellent book about one man's journey at the end of life and the lessons he passes on to his student.

On Friday I spent the morning and afternoon in my Spiritual Guidance Practicum course and then later in the afternoon I had an appointment with my own spiritual director where I finally had the chance to process my week. There I was able to say, "I feel so incompetent at times" and "I have so much to learn," and she was able to ask me "Where have you sensed God in all of this?"

After an intense week I was in need of an evening of relaxation and distraction. Earlier in the week my practicum supervisor at the hospital invited Carrie and I to join him and his wife at the performance of Handel's Messiah at the University of Notre Dame on Friday evening. It was an amazing evening and I enjoyed it immensely. It was a good reminder that in the midst of death and dying there is still new birth.

p.s. While Carrie and I were waiting for the concert to begin we saw a fellow CMU alumnus. She is studying at the graduate school at ND and her husband was singing in the choir. Such a small world!