Summer Then, Summer Now

A year ago I'd be getting ready to head over to the VA hospital for my first day of CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education. I blogged about it during my first week, then it was brought up in a group meeting that I was blogging my positive observations, that VA officials higher up the chain were monitoring. I was writing on my own computer, during my off hours, so I decided to be even more careful. I didn't use the VA computers for anything other than entering patient notes and checking VA e-mail.So, for future scholars, reading last summer's blog posts, wondering why I wasn't writing more, there's the story. I did some offline journaling during the summer, but for the most part, I was too exhausted by being a VA Hospital chaplain to do too much in the way of writing at all.I'm still not sure why this kind of training is seen as essential for ordination in the ELCA version of the Lutheran church. Chaplaincy is VERY different from visiting parishioners in the hospital. Throughout last summer,…