![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today was exhausting- excellent, but tiring in a variety of ways. This morning began with training on the communication devices that we use- they're somewhere in between hands-free cell phones and glorified walkie-talkies. They're actually pretty nifty, and I don't feel anywhere near as stupid or silly using one as I thought that I would. So for the rest of the summer, I'll be walking around during the work-day with a 4 inch plastic thing around my neck, but they feel sort of reassuring, rather like a necklace that weighs on your chest a little.
[Interruption:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jakal88 just called to make sure I got into the apartment alright. It's such a lovely thing, knowing that he's thinking about me, even though he's almost certainly still in the lab...)
After the training, we did a tour of some more of the hospital. While I know that at this point, that tour wouldn't help me actually navigate the hospital, I know that later, it'll help me put the pieces together. We didn't finish the tour, but it was a valiant start. We stopped early so we could be on time for noon-time worship.
Noon worship was where my culture shock hit. That it was in a circle and had no fixed liturgy, I could deal with just fine- different from my usual, but since it's a different format, that was pretty easy to accept. That it was also being televised inside the hospital was a bit unnerving, but fairly easy to mostly ignore. However, we were all handed cards with people's prayers to read, which I thought was lovely, except that we needed to end each one with "we pray to the Lord" and everyone responded "Lord hear our prayer". It was lovely- but it felt Very, Very Christian. And yes, I was the only non-Christian in the room, so I get that that's normal and good. However, getting up the courage to read and remember that format, which I'm pretty sure (from my peers' reactions and from the one mass that I saw) is a very normal format for the other folks in the room was quite difficult for me, especially since I was having a hard time focusing on the prayer itself, reading it fluidly, the appropriate ways to begin and end it, and not feeling like a total phoney. It was really a lot to handle, even though it seemed like a very simple thing to do. It was followed by the Lord's Prayer (I listened respectfully- it really is a lovely prayer, and has no actual Content that I have trouble with- just the associations), and a hymn. The hymn sounded very classically hymn-like, in a way that sounded rather odd to me. It was interesting to hear and think about, but musically, it was rather uninteresting and yet still sort of hard to follow.
After worship, a referral came in for a rabbi, so our associate rabbi (he also works at the neighboring hospital) was called, and we all followed him through his visit with the family of a dying gentleman. I'd met him (the rabbi) yesterday, and we'd established that he was also a JTS grad (quite a while ago- he's probably in his late 50s), and that I'd be welcome and was interested in helping him with Erev Shabbat televised services on Fridays aroudn noon. So I'd met him before, but he's a quiet man, so neither of us struck up a real conversation. So we went with him to meet the folks, and listened to him talk with them. It was quite interesting to watch- he used Psalm 23 and a mi sheberach, and I actually saw someone ask "what does Judaism say about..." and him answer. It was a very different sort of pastoral care than I experienced or heard about last semester, and quite interesting to watch. It felt very natural, both as far as flow goes and as far as authenticity goes.
Afterwards we had a staff meeting, which was lovely, and a nice chance to meet some of the rest of the chaplaincy staff. Following that, we did some stuff with learning the relevant paperwork and locations of materials around the office and chapel and then we learned how to use the relevant computer program for documenting our patient visits.
On the walk home, I stopped in the park and had a snack and did a chunk of my reading of our binder with information on our program and the like. It was gorgeous out, and made focusing on the reading for a while quite easy and pleasant. I still have more to do, but pretty soon I think I'll maybe go explore the area a little bit- I haven't seen my neighborhood at all yet, besides the path to the hospital...
[Interruption:
jakal88 just called to make sure I got into the apartment alright. It's such a lovely thing, knowing that he's thinking about me, even though he's almost certainly still in the lab...)After the training, we did a tour of some more of the hospital. While I know that at this point, that tour wouldn't help me actually navigate the hospital, I know that later, it'll help me put the pieces together. We didn't finish the tour, but it was a valiant start. We stopped early so we could be on time for noon-time worship.
Noon worship was where my culture shock hit. That it was in a circle and had no fixed liturgy, I could deal with just fine- different from my usual, but since it's a different format, that was pretty easy to accept. That it was also being televised inside the hospital was a bit unnerving, but fairly easy to mostly ignore. However, we were all handed cards with people's prayers to read, which I thought was lovely, except that we needed to end each one with "we pray to the Lord" and everyone responded "Lord hear our prayer". It was lovely- but it felt Very, Very Christian. And yes, I was the only non-Christian in the room, so I get that that's normal and good. However, getting up the courage to read and remember that format, which I'm pretty sure (from my peers' reactions and from the one mass that I saw) is a very normal format for the other folks in the room was quite difficult for me, especially since I was having a hard time focusing on the prayer itself, reading it fluidly, the appropriate ways to begin and end it, and not feeling like a total phoney. It was really a lot to handle, even though it seemed like a very simple thing to do. It was followed by the Lord's Prayer (I listened respectfully- it really is a lovely prayer, and has no actual Content that I have trouble with- just the associations), and a hymn. The hymn sounded very classically hymn-like, in a way that sounded rather odd to me. It was interesting to hear and think about, but musically, it was rather uninteresting and yet still sort of hard to follow.
After worship, a referral came in for a rabbi, so our associate rabbi (he also works at the neighboring hospital) was called, and we all followed him through his visit with the family of a dying gentleman. I'd met him (the rabbi) yesterday, and we'd established that he was also a JTS grad (quite a while ago- he's probably in his late 50s), and that I'd be welcome and was interested in helping him with Erev Shabbat televised services on Fridays aroudn noon. So I'd met him before, but he's a quiet man, so neither of us struck up a real conversation. So we went with him to meet the folks, and listened to him talk with them. It was quite interesting to watch- he used Psalm 23 and a mi sheberach, and I actually saw someone ask "what does Judaism say about..." and him answer. It was a very different sort of pastoral care than I experienced or heard about last semester, and quite interesting to watch. It felt very natural, both as far as flow goes and as far as authenticity goes.
Afterwards we had a staff meeting, which was lovely, and a nice chance to meet some of the rest of the chaplaincy staff. Following that, we did some stuff with learning the relevant paperwork and locations of materials around the office and chapel and then we learned how to use the relevant computer program for documenting our patient visits.
On the walk home, I stopped in the park and had a snack and did a chunk of my reading of our binder with information on our program and the like. It was gorgeous out, and made focusing on the reading for a while quite easy and pleasant. I still have more to do, but pretty soon I think I'll maybe go explore the area a little bit- I haven't seen my neighborhood at all yet, besides the path to the hospital...