Week One Done

I was planning on updating before now, but it's been a long week at the hospital. We've gone through hospital orientation (one full day) and then four days or so of pastoral office orientation. Some training in all sorts of things like what HIPPA is and how it applies to us and how to use certain kinds of software along with here's what you can and cannot do as pastoral care givers. For example, we cannot give anyone water just in case they're fasting before a test or surgery. Didn't know that a week ago. What I didn't know a week ago and what I do today could fill a book. Maybe several books.

This weekend I've been working some events on campus. All music stuff. Rehearsals, concerts, and piano recitals. I've also been playing quite a lot of video games and letting my mind go blank. This pastoral care stuff is not as easy as it looks sometimes.

CPE

Tomorrow I begin CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education), a 12-week hands-on internship at a local hospital.

Preparing for this experience has been difficult. I can count the number of times I have entered a hospital on one hand, but I have some great friends and mentors around here and back home who have been helping me. Of course the full year of seminary under my belt helps. Mayhaps that's easy to say now before I begin. I'll keep you informed.

Pentecost!

Today is Pentecost which is one of my favorite holidays. On Pentecost we celebrate the coming down of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples (Acts 2). At Plainsboro Presbyterian they have been folding origami cranes for prayer doves for weeks, and they were installed yesterday in the front of the church. They asked people to write prayers in any language they speak or read on the white side of the origami paper. The theme was that the church is a house of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7). They were beautiful and colorful, and they had several members of the church read prayers and scripture in their first languages.

At Pentecost the Spirit empowered the disciples to overcome the barriers of geography and language to preach the Gospel. And not everyone received the Gospel the way we would normally think. People openly sneered at the disciples and said they were drunk. Some completely dismissed the good news they were hearing, and some heard and believed and were transformed. Their lives were transformed by the power of the Spirit, and the patterns of their behavior changed. That is the beauty of Pentecost. The Spirit working in our lives and in other people's to overcome barriers and to change us inside and outside.
May we be fired up and empowered to preach the Gospel in all we say and do. May we be changed that every thought and action be made into the will of Jesus Christ.

Graduation Choir

Today I sang at PTS' graduation with our choir. The graduation was in the Princeton University chapel which is enormous and beautiful (with incredible acoustics). It's sad to know that more than a few of my friends are leaving, but it's also great to see how God has been working in their lives to lead them into the next chapter.

I'm looking forward to a restful couple of weeks before I start CPE.

Almost done

We are in the home stretch, everybody. This is the last weekend. I am studying for my first spoken examination. I've only had those in language courses in high school, and it's a very different type of studying than for an essay exam.

Yesterday some friends and I went to lunch at an Indian restaurant to celebrate our friends who are graduating and a successful completion of the school year. When we came back, my friend Craig said he heard music in the air. So I naturally starting singing that wonderful song that I know from Call Me Madam, but it turns out that there really was music in the air. Some students had decided to throw an impromptu concert in the grassy area in the middle of our campus. (see picture) That was really nice. It has been raining all week, but yesterday was beautiful. It was wonderfully relaxing thing to come back from a fun lunch and sit in the grass listening to music.

Ok. I'm almost done. I'm going to make it!

Books

Books wait for you until you need them. Buying books is not always about what you need right at that time. It's more of an art than anything else. The past few days I have been working at the PTS annual Book Sale. For months people have been donating books, and the students have been sorting them into topics such as preaching, theology, and Christian life. Many retiring professors and clergy use this book sale to clean their libraries out. All proceeds go to international seminaries to build their libraries. All volunteers got paid in books, so now I have a storage problem for texts such as The Writings of Medieval Women, The Complete Works of Josephus, Scotland: A New History, The Book of Common Prayer, and The History and Character of Calvinism.

In other news, it's the May short term... so I'm very busy with my class about the sacraments. More about that later.

The Farm

The May Term is pretty intense, so it's important to find ways to relax. Yesterday my friends Sarah and Marie and I went to Terhune Orchards, a local farm with 200 acres. They were having a kite flying festival with cider and animals to pet. Beautiful apples were on sale. One of the best things, though, were their cider donuts.

It's hot out here, and our A/C hasn't been turned on yet. I hope it's cooler where you are.