Things have been so busy lately that I realize my blog has suffered. I have to admit that the blog is pretty low on the priority list, but I have a few minutes this evening to give a quick update on what I’m up to. As a part of my seminary formation I am doing a program called Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE. I work fulltime as a hospital chaplain at Research Medical center in Kansas City and am part of a group of similar students. This is what I will be doing all summer. Part of the program involves classroom learning, but mostly it’s hands on experience in every different kind of medical situation you can imagine.

As a part of the chaplain staff at the hospital, I am also “on call” at least once a week. The hospital where I work is a level 2 trauma center, so being on call can involve responding to all kinds of emergencies. Being paged to the ER at 3AM can be pretty intense and you just never know what is going to be on the other side of the pager. It also tends to wear me out, so if I’m not as faithful to my blog this summer, you’ll know why. Still, as a part of our program we will be doing a lot of reflecting and writing, so I will try to put some of my reflections up here to give people an idea of what life is like in hospital ministry.

One of the nice things about this summer is that I am getting to live at Cure’ of Ars parish again where I did my internship last year. It has a very nice feeling of coming home. I was just having fun with the youth group kids this evening and enjoying time away from the hospital. Other plans this summer include brushing up on my Greek, finishing the Pope’s new book, and reading several other books I’ve been wanting to get to. One of the drawbacks to CPE is that it does take up your entire summer. I don’t finish until August 17th. So, I will have to work in some fun where I can get it, and maybe even some blogging. We’ll see. If there’s anything specific you would like me to write about, just let me know.