2nd week . . .

Today ended my 2nd week of CPE . . . it was a short week in a way . . . had Monday off for a holiday (although I had call on Sunday from 8am to 8am), Tuesday was the hospital orientation and Friday (tomorrow) I have off because I worked Sunday.

Our assignment this week was to write our spiritual autobiography . . . among the seven of us mine was the longest . . . at first I thought perhaps it was because I was older than other people, but I really am the third youngest of the group . . . perhaps it is just that I am more verbose . . . or perhaps it is because of what I have gone through in the last several years and my re-entry into therapy I have been more reflective about those things that have and are shaping my faith.

Next week we begin on the unit . . . we have made it to the unit, but it has been somewhat disjointed . . . two men I have met have recently been diagnosed with cancer . . . they are both in palliative care (changes are that they won't live) . . . both believe in God, neither are involved in a community of faith . . . both have few contacts beyond their immediate family (for one it is a wife, son and elderly Mother and for the other only a daughter -- who hasn't visited). As I was thinking and praying for them tonight, I had to wonder if their hospital stays would be any different if they were involved in a community of faith. I wonder "why" they aren't. I worry about the hundreds and thousands in our communities who aren't . . . who have no "Body of Christ" to support and with with them through these difficult time.

When my brother was dying of cancer he didn't have a church home, but their was a smaller membership Presbyterian Church who knew about his diagnosis and prognosis and many members of the congregation knew me . . . in fact, they sent me checks to help buy my books when in seminary . . . each week -- it usually would arrive on Monday, a different women in the church would send a handwritten note telling him that he was being lifted up in prayer . . . how he looked forward to this . . . it was for him an expansion of his supportive community of family, friends and his place of work . . . I thank God for the faithfulness of this smaller membership church where these woman took time out to be Christ to my brother.

Lydia