Dispatches from Gennesaret

I just completed my first week of my Clinical Pastoral Education internship at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. It is a gig that will take up a lot of my time through August, and so if you do not see me around much (in person, online, whatever), please accept my apologies in advance. I knew going into this that it would require me putting most aspects of my life on hold while I do this. This is an important summer for me, since hospital chaplaincy is a vocation I have felt compelled towards for years.

Unlike last summer, when I documented a few of my observations and rants about being a pizza deliveryman, I won't be blogging quite so much about my experiences as a hospital chaplain, mostly because of the commitment I made to honor the confidentiality of the patients I will be ministering to.

I will say, however, that one of the reasons why I felt compelled towards chaplaincy is quickly being proven true--that it is possible for people to be at their most authentic in an environment as extreme as a hospital. This obviously isn't always the case--a person may put up walls or a mask to any stranger, including myself, but the patients I have met and worked with have been, with few exceptions, some of the most genuine people. In the hospital, where the chips are often down and people find themselves facing fear, dread, and the possibility of all manner of health concerns, humanness is an absolute godsend. Here, ministry has only an appetite for what is real. And in the voices of my patients, the words they speak and the topics we discuss, there is something both very tangible and very intangible...but still very real. And I am quickly learning that there is no word or term for that particular something. For now, authenticity will have to do.

A quick note about the title of this post--in the Gospel of Matthew (and I think in others, but I need to double check on this), Gennesaret is a region across the sea in which Jesus performed a significant amount of his healing ministry. Even before I began this job, I had seen hospitals as pieces of holy ground, where the extremes of human experience, life and death, loss and joy, are experienced in full. And as I continue to develop my theology of ministry, I pray for the same healing power for my patients as the followers of Christ found from Him at Gennesaret. In this way, the hospital is not unlike a temple, a small bit of holy ground, a burning bush, in the urban wilderness of the city.

Eric

"...and they begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed." -Matthew 14:36