Computer Parts

Want a piece of the wb, go bid on my old, dead Sony Vaio pieces at EBAY.

It will help me get my new toy.

CPE meditation: Mending Walls

Good afternoon and welcome to the place of prayer. I am chaplain Wesley.

This past week, for some reason, my favorite poem has been resonating in my heart. Many of you all may have heard this poem before, it is one of Robert Frost’s famous poems called the Mending Wall. I wanted to share portions of it with you today (full poem).

>Read Poem<
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to all the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.

There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pine, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors”

Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love all,
That wants it down.

While most times poetry flies right over my head, this particular one has stayed with me for years. It always reminds me of how often we try to create, build and mend the walls around me. Even when it does not make sense, we are like the neighbor in the poem believe that “Good fences make good neighbors”

So, we often create walls without stopping to think what we are walling in or out.

Now, I am not talking about literal walls, but rather the ways in which we separate ourselves from each other. How we keep even the closest people away from our true selves.

I think the hospital often exposes these walls because as we face our own struggles, we suddenly realize the ways we have walled people out of our lives. We might remember old hurts, or see broken family dynamics, or realize the fragility of our own lives.

And so we try to keep our own emotions of doubt, fear, anxiety secret from even ourselves. Yet like the man in the poem, if stop to see the ways in which have walled people out, we may discover how futile these walls are.

I believe that is often we when recognize these things that we discover there is someone/something more powerful breaking through these insecurities, these walls.

For it is when our insecurities crumble, when we face big situations, when we face difficulty and pain that we see there is a God here among us.

My favorite line in the poem is “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”

I believe that something is God. God wants our walls down so God may draw close to us during these times of uncertainty. God desires to mind old hurts, to mend disrupted family dynamics, to mend our lives.

God has plans for each us, plans which allow us to succeed and not to harm us, plans which give us hope and a future.

God does not want us to hide behind these walls, but God wants to expose them so that we will have to rely upon our family, our friends and upon God for support during these difficult times.

One important way in which we are able to tear down these walls is through prayer, so would you please join me as we turn to God in prayer.

God, we come to today asking that you would remove any rocks, any struggles, and walls we may have that separate us from you. Open our hearts to feel your presence with you wherever we go. Help us catch glimmers of hope throughout the day. You who created us know our deepest need and deepest pains. Hear our hearts as they cry out to you and hear the words that have been written in this book. We pray all of these things to you, our God. Amen.

Thank you for your time, and I would like to invite you to join us again tomorrow at noon for a meditation.

Week 25

week 25
still on pace
500.1 miles accomplished

I could have run from Princeton to Caratunk, Maine.
What is in Caratunk, Maine? I am not sure, but I coulda run there and found out.

You must be mistaken

     I met a patient the other day with an interesting and difficult story. As we were talking she began to share that her husband died four years ago, this past June. They had been married for 46 years. Five months later her oldest son passed away from a tragic accident, which the family would never disclose to her. Another one of her children, her daughter, had disassociated from the family twenty years ago. As an aging woman, she understandably missed her husband and eldest son, and was angry that her daughter would estrange herself from the family.
     Then, strangely this woman's demeanor totally changed when she began to speak about her youngest son...the "mistake" she called him. Her husband and her had figured that she was no longer fertile back in the day, because of a medical procedure she had undergone. It seems that God showed them, and surprised them with a third child.
     It is this son, the mistake, who has been her daily support system over the past four years. He visits her in the hospital nearly everyday; when she is home he comes over to cook for her everynight. He tends to her pets, and cares for her home. As if that is not enough, She said he treats his own wife to the same doting.
     Having cried throughout the stories of her other children, and having longed for her husband, she smiled as she regailed me with stories of this "mistake."

     For some reason, her story resonates within me. Perhaps it is because I am the youngest son whom was occassional refered to as the "pleasan surprise" (a little transference?) by my parents, or perhaps it is because this story seems to represent God's message.
      There are times when we will be alone, when all else seems to have failed, when family members disappoint, when friends die, when things do not make sense. But it is during these times when God is trying to reveal himself through the mistakes.
     The gospel message is riddled with "mistakes." The great-grandparents to the nth degree, who disobeyed God's one order. The drunk captain who rescues two of every animal. The great liberator who killed a man. The prostitute who hid the spies. And it culiminates with the story of Christ, for Christ was born to an unwed mother, ran with fishermen (After my time at the bluewater tournament in Amelia Island, the term "fisherman" means a whole new thing!), broke the most basic religious rules, was someone "undesirable" [Isaiah 53:4], and died the death of a criminal.
     But that is gospel story, that through "mistakes" redemption and salvation occurs. So while this woman's youngest son probably has many flaws, her story has a familiar tune to it.

CPE Meditation: worship

Attempt number two (here is one)

     Good afternoon, and welcome to the Place of Prayer, I am Chaplain Wesley, and I wanted to spend a few minutes this noontime to think about worship.
     For many of us worship is a set time during the week or the year. We come from a such a rich background of religious traditions, that worship means and occurs in such different manners. For some of us it falls on a Friday, for others it is on Saturday, for some it is Sunday, and for some there is no set day. Some people worship around the dinner table with family, while others worship while kneeling, others stand, and still others worship in pews. But worship is more than just these traditions.
     Worship is praise
     I believe that too often we limit worship to something we observe rather than live.
     Worship can occur throughout the day, anytime and anyplace. Worship can be as simple as opening our eyes to a new day, because worship is our praise to God.
     Whether that praise is made verbal through prayer, kept silent in meditation, enacted through the lighting of a candle, or embodied, it is all worship.
Worship is praise for what God has done in our lives and will continue to do in our lives.
     I know that right now it may be difficult for some us to worship God, because of the fear we may have regarding a procedure, or perhaps we are mourning the loss of a loved one, or maybe it is difficult to worship God because we have doubts of who God is to us.
     Well even those emotions: fear, mourning and doubt can lead us into worshipful experiences because those emotions become your words of praise to God.
My guess is you may be wondering how fear, mourning and doubt can become praise.
     I believe that we are praising God when we face our fears, when we admit our doubts and when we mourn together, because we are ultimately giving our emotions and ourselves to God. Our emotions are one way in which we can connect with our deeper self. Worship begins with God, but its end and goal is the transformation of human life so that we may feel God’s presence with us, wherever we go.
     That is how these emotions are able to be transformed into worship, it is when we see who God, our creator has been in our life. One poem, a song, from my tradition worships through these words:

“Come let us sing to the Lord
Let us give joyous shouts to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come before God with thanksgiving
Let us sing God psalms of praise
For the Lord is a great God,
The great king above all else.
God owns the depths of the earth,
And even the mightiest mounts are Gods.
The Sea belongs to God, for God made it.
God’s hands formed the dry land, too.
Come, let us worship and bow down,
Let us kneel before the Lord our maker.
For the Lord is our God.
We are the people God watches over,
The sheep under God’s care.
Oh,that you would listen to God’s voice today!”

     The writer of this poem was able to see that worship can occur anywhere, because God is the Creator. Even in the depths of the earth, in the darkest hardest places, God is there. Even in the sea, the chaotic, tumoltous ocean, God is there. God is there in the ER, in the operating room, in our offices and in ICU. Here at JFK, God is here, for God has made all things.
     God, the creator of our lives, watches over us. So even in our deepest feelings of hurt, fear, mourning, and doubt God is there with us. It is this realization which allows us to live lives of worship. One which is not bound by a set time or place, but one that struggles to live a worshipful life at all times.
     I imagine that hospitals can seem like large, scary and lonely places. But please know that God is here with you. This closeness allows us to worship through praise and prayer to God.
     So let us turn to God in prayer now.
--Prayer--
     If you are struggling to see where God is, or how you might worship God in your own way during these difficult times please know that there is a Pastoral Care office here for you. And if you are able to come, the Place of Prayer on the Second floor is always open and available for people of all faith traditions to worship their God.
     Thank you and may God bless you.

chaos into order

Reformed or Presbyterian worship is also worship that is marked by order,dignity and decorum. Presbyterians may at times laugh in a service and Presbyterians enjoy worship, but Presbyterians have traditionally understood their worship as something rendered before the very throne of God, and we are not people who are inclined to hop and skip with abandomnet before the Holy One. God is, we believe, a God of order and not chaos, and the worhsip we offer up to God is marked by order rather than confusion.

What? Huh? Are you serious?
     As a Presbyterian who tends to end up worshiping with one hand in my pocket and one hand raised in praise to God, I feel as though I have been trapped by the self-righteous, "order and decorum" worship police.
     I came across this quote in Presbyterian Worship: a Guide for Clergy, and I found it rather bothersome because it expresses what I think most Presbyterians feel and believe regarding worship transformation.
     Too often they quote 1 Corinthians 14:40 and forget about David who dances with uninhabited joy in the streets (2 Samuel 16:16 and 1 Chronicles 15:25-29). [by the way, isn't "decently and in order" a bit of proof texting a Pauline statement regarding prophecy?]
     Dudley Weaver Jr. has it wrong.
     Because it seems to me that: Yes, God is the God of Order; but that does not mean that our worship, our theology and our lives have to be one of order. Rather the amazing thing is that the Holy Spirit makes order from our chaotic lives, and therefore can and will transform disorder into beauty.

being met

     God meets you where you are, and provides you with what yo ucan handle. Today is my first "on call" at JFK medical. Loathing the day for fear of being riddled with intense situations that I, as a newbie, am unprepared to handle, I was not even looking forward to what I was able to succeed at last week--the pop-in.
     However, God gave me four profound vists this morning that have allowed me to see His presence with me in this journey.
     I got to pray with one patient, who afterwards was in tears. Not because of my rambling, uncertain prayer, but because prayer reveals that God has and is and will be present in her room along this scary journey.
     Two patients were rather stand-offish but eventually warmed up to me and talked with me for over a half-hour.
     One man, however, was the cleverest of them all. When I entered, he quickly tried to dismiss me with little eye-contact and "yeah, thanks" remarks. Irritated that I stil had not left, he came up with the only question that will send a chaplain sprinting from a room, "Could you get me a Bible I could have?"
     Excited to be given this mission for God, I ran to the chaplain office and snagged the Gideons we have stored. Upon my quick return the gentleman asked, "so what faith are you." When I responded with Presbyterian, he said, really? "Me too, well kinda of, I have not been in decades, but am a member at A. Presbyterian." This commonality led to a plesantly brief conversation.
     About ten minutes later he came into the chaplain office with his hospital gown blowing in the wind. He was concerned because the Gideons had stamped, "Please do not remove this from the room." And he wanted to keep the Bible. I informed him that he could most certainly keep the Bible and if the Gideons wanted it back I would get them another, myself.
     Later that afternoon when I had time to reflect. I was overwhelmed by the way God opened up the man's heart so that the patient would be atuned to his own spiritual needs. Being at first uninterested in this "chaplain" standing in his hospital room, eventually led the man to have his own Bible to read--for the first time in a long time--during the long, lonely nights on the hospital ward.
     It is in this random, onnocous encounters that I believe God mets us.

still breathing

Well, I am still standing after 4 days of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education).

     While I get to cover the entire hospital on a once a week rotation, my main focus will be a unit of Rehabilitation, a unit of Medical/Surgury, a unit of Neurology and....drumroll...the ER.
     I believe my supervisor figured since I have not experienced death within my family, and since I am terrified of blood, needles and machines that beep--the ER would be a great growing experience.
     And I already am growing...I no longer feel faint entering hospitals.
     Along with pastoral visits of patients and families, we are also given the opportunity to once a week lead an interfaith "meditation." This is an interesting experience because I have to watch the "Jesus language," and should avoid using any texts other than the Wisdom Literatures (Psalms, Job, Ecclessiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations).
while I expand from my manuscripts, here was my first interfaith stab:

     Good afternoon and a welcome to the time of meditation at the Place of Prayer here on the first floor of the Hospital. Please know tha this space is open for all people of any faith or background who wish to come and worship, pray or meditate.
     My name is Wesley Barry, and I am one of the Chaplain's.
     This afternoon, I wanted to think about community, especially during times of crisis and fear. I think one of the hardest things is when we have to face struggles and challenges alone. When we are not sure if anyone, if even our Creator, is out there, and genuinely cares for us. When we think that we are going through this proceedure, or having to wait patiently on our own, uncertain about what the result or what the future holds for us, for one of our family members or for a friend.
     It is in the places of loneliness where we may find the voice of God seeking to provide comfort through the people around us.
     In a sacred writing from my tradition called Ecclessiastes it says that
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their efforts.
If one falls down, their friend can help them up.
But pity the person who falls and has no one to help her up!
Also, if two lie beside each other, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
     It is strange how at times the hospital can feel like such a large, lonely place when there are so many people constantly moving around.
     And it is here, during these scary and lonely times that it is hard to hold onto our faith.
     We sometimes wonder why God would allow this to happen.
     As we wonder these things, we might find some comfort because we realize that there are people in our lives, like our family, friends, and a community, who will hold on tighter to faith for us during these times.
     At those hard moments we may not be able to even cry out to God, but others will cry out for us.
     We can know that even when we do not feel close to our Creator, that God is here with us. And that a cord of three--us, our loved ones, and God--is not quickly broken.
     And while we often think about our family and friends and community as being outside these hospital walls and back in the real world. We can also know that there is a community here, inside the hospital, that is here to help us. The nurses, the doctors, the ordelies and everyone are here to help us stand when we are unable to.
     The teacher of Ecclessiastes discovered that being alone is a very difficult thing, but with two, with three, with a community we will be able to stand. One phrase that has always stuck with me is "If God is for us, who can be against us."
     So please also know that there are chaplains here who want to help, to spend time listening to your story, praying for you and helping you through this scary and overwhelming time.