From Wendell Berry’s essay “Christianity and The Survival of Creation” (Via A. Jacob’s Article):

Good human work honors God’s work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit.

AND

Oliver Burkeman:

In the end, though, it comes down to seeing that many of us carry around a fantasy of “the uninterrupted life” that does nothing but make real life harder than it needs to be. In any case, the fantasy is usually an impossible one: my finitude means I definitely can’t spend as much time on my work and with my family as I’d like – due to maths – and this wouldn’t change were I magically to acquire the power to dictate how every hour of my day unfolded. C. S. Lewis, writing of course from a Christian perspective, summed things up lucidly:

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day.

1. Learning the rhythm of “action, reflection, action.”

2. Working on how to do cold-call ministry by walking up to a stranger and inviting them to talk about God and their emotions with God thru their emotions.

3. The joy and frustration of working in a residency and interdisciplinary team of which I must see myself as a vital member, equipped with agency to change what I don’t like about the system.

4. I’ve learned how to sleep while on call after more than a couple nights spent staring at the ceiling, waiting for my phone to ring.

5. Attending transitions in care and patient deaths and discovering that there are no right words for the moment. When any words do come that aren’t terrible, they squirm, wild and fresh, from the silence and tears shared with those in grief.

6. The new practice of remembering a highlight or something I did well for the day. I’ve integrated this practice into the vocabulary I know from Ignatian spirituality: consolation and desolation.

7. Self-compassion (a Loving, Connected Presence) is a lifelong practice encouraged by scripture. How can I love my neighbor as myself if I don’t account for God’s love given to me, in Christ.

8. Discovering that conversation is prayer wherein I work to overhear and help others overhear what we say out loud.

This week, I started the winter term of the Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) residency. That means I’ve been at it for three months. The final assignment for the Fall was a comprehensive self-evaluation. I found simultanious relief in not having to cram for a final on one hand. On the other, I struggled to give the assignment a fair shake becuase of the simple and searching prompts given to stimulate reflection. One of the supervisors of the program told me that, next term, he would hold my feet to the fire about “Naming what your’e good at.” I heard the words of W.H. Auden:

You owe it to all of us to get on with what you’re good at.

I’ve also learned that the road to full-time hospital chaplaincy requires board certification from BCCI. Along with board certification, one is required to have denominational endorsement. The Presbyterian Church in America offers great resources for that here.