Greetings to all!

How can I begin to tell about my adventures in CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at the Corvallis Hospital?  After having me shadow four patient visits, my clinical partner said, “I’ll be gone for the afternoon.  You go visit patients.”  I was thinking, “Egad!  Really?  I don’t know how to do this!  Who do I choose?  What do I actually say?  What’s the wrong thing to say?”  But, I did it anyway.  Like walking in molasses . . . but even that first afternoon visits got easier.

I have weeks left to go, and hope to gain more skills for finding spaces in conversation to open up a safe place where patients can talk about whatever is heavy on their minds or souls or hearts. I have been privileged to learn life stories from people with many different journeys. One amazement is how often we discover our life journeys have common threads . . . that we’ve lived in the same place at the same time, know people in common, been to the same event.  These emerge, even as I work to keep the conversation about the patient and her/his needs.

Two or three hours a week I spend at the Cancer Care Center visiting over a jigsaw puzzle with patients while they are waiting for radiation treatment.  I’m in awe of the courage and generosity of spirit in these people, each of whom has a heavy burden s/he is carrying every hour of every day.   Yet they truly enquire how I’m doing, ask what brings me to be a student chaplain there, and wish me well in my seminary journey.

I am gearing up for classes for Fall Semester.  I have registered for an online class (my first) through Luther Seminary . . . found out that being an admitted student in good standing at PLTS allows me to register for classes there.  I’ve signed up for Pentateuch class and am waiting to hear if there is room in  Foundations of Pastoral Care class.  I will also sign up at George Fox for Christian History and Thought and also Theology and Stewardship of Creation, both of which are taught by Dan Brunner, a Lutheran Pastor. Those and Teaching Parish should keep me plenty busy.

Please know I do appreciate your prayers and support.  God’s blessings and peace to each of you.

Katherine B,

Seminarian