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Blog postI think incrementally. A step at a time. And I think inductively. Things make sense to me after a bunch of steps have happened. I see the pattern more than I decide what should happen.
Which makes it strange that the word “monumental” came to mind just before I went to sleep the other night. A monumental act is a big thing that often seems to happen all at once. We pile up stones to remember an event, a meeting with God, a boundary between your land and mine. Monument is another word -
Blog postI was talking to a patient’s family. Her son talked about having faith but being analytical. He likes data. He likes information. His wife knew little about God but has faith.
He described in detail what the doctor had said about the inside of his mom’s head. A fall had jostled it in ways that heads aren’t supposed to be jostled. The brain was bleeding in ways that it bleeds only when the head has been jostled.
Later that afternoon, the tube that was helping her breathe was co -
Blog post“I’m completely stuck,” I said.
“When you say ‘completely’,” Tim said, “What do you mean? That you sit in one place, permanently unmoving?”
I wanted to nod, but I understood the irony of having the capacity to walk into Lystra Tea Company and to order a medium bold and to have the money to pay for it.
“Obviously not literally stuck,” I said. “But I am finding it difficult to get to the work that I want to get to. I feel like I am spending hours worrying about pic -
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Blog postI’m writing this between a hospital shift and a memorial service. I’m sitting in the sacristy, a space between the rest of the hospital and the chapel. My list of projects has given me a pile of papers to read between the time they were due and the time my grades are due. We’re living between birth, which chaplains seldom attend to, and death, which chaplains always attend to, at least at our place.
We spend a lot of time between.
I’m curious these days about what I do while I -
Blog postWhen Paul was giving his last instructions to Timothy, he said, “You know all about me.”
It’s easy to read that as an arrogant statement, I suppose, Paul holding up his excellence. It’s easy to read it as confidence or as some other adjectives I can’t think of right now.
But I think that Paul was being genuine. He was acknowledging that, after a couple decades of working and traveling together, Timothy knew all about Paul.
Timothy knew about Paul’s leadership and drive -
Blog postIt’s a phrase we jump past in our efforts to have impact and influence, in our desire to scale our work, to magnify our reach. A man had started a conversation with Jesus. At a pivotal point in there conversation, we read, “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him…”
The disciples and Jesus were packing up to travel. They were heading to Jerusalem, shortly before Jesus was killed. He knew it. They sort of knew it. But it wasn’t the best time for thought -
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Blog postA hospital colleague asked about power-of-attorney paperwork. I answered his specific question. And then, because I know that he may get related questions, I provided a little background and a couple of next steps he can share with patients.
Our work as chaplains includes sending notes to the families of people who have died. This comes in the workflow of charting the interactions we had with the family and coworkers, with taking care of faxing official documents, and processing our o -
Blog postAnd when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So [Zacchaeus] hurried and came down and received [Jesus] joyfully. And when [the crowd cheering for Jesus] saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” (Luke 19)
It makes me wonder. Are there people who are genuinely going out of their way to see Jesus, that Jesus goes to eat -
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Blog postParadise is a nice place to visit. But none of us live there. In fact, only about 411 people do.
Most of us live in the middle of our callings, in less glamorous sounding places like Eckerman. Or Monday morning.
We are called to places that we’d rather not be. Places like homeless and hungry, places like hospital and jail. And we are called to love people that we don’t understand, like strangers and sick and unable to provide for themselves. And we are called to do it as we go -
Blog postJon, Nancy and I have a friend named Glenda. She is amazing. I won’t go into details about everything she has faced and conquered, but a huge trait that has made a difference in her life and in the lives of those who she has inspired is her positive conquering attitude.
Rather than focusing on the challenging aspects of situations, Glenda almost always tunnels through by dwelling on positive aspects of each situation.
A very current example is that the building she and her hus -
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A Great Work: A Conversation With Nehemiah For People (Who Want To Be) Doing Great Works
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