Updates

Hmmm, I see it's been awhile since I posted.

• I pulled a muscle in my back and was down for the count for a few days.  It was a bad combination of driving a lot, sitting at the Zentangle retreat, PMSing, having a confrontation with my chaplain supervisor, and standing up too quickly from a nice, long lunch and visit with our hospice priest.
• The benefit of being in bed and taking it easy was that I finished not one but both of my online chaplain modules, about 50 hours total.  And I passed both.  I still have the 300 clinical hours and the weekly class with its assignments totaling another 150.
• My mom came for a 5-day visit, and, though I couldn't go to see Come From Away with her as planned, we all had a good visit.
• Chinese New Year season has ended.  The kids and Mama celebrated in NY with family (the day my mom went to the musical; I stayed home resting.)  Bud performed in umpteen kung fu productions, culminating at Yale last weekend.  We love watching him, but new-year season is exhausting with extra practices and shows all over the state.
• CPE is going well.  I'm getting a real feel for the rhythm of the hospice facility, all the various nurses (charge, managing, director of . . . ) and techs and LPN and CNAs and who knows who else (nutritionists, pharmacists, PT, social workers, arts therapists) and a legion of volunteers who help serve and feed the patients, do the flowers, play the piano or bring guitars, do pet therapy, staff the reception desk, are Loving Whisperers who sit with those actively dying or those who need extra attention.  And they are all starting to identify me.  I also really like our new priest.  He's got a great way with the patients and always wants to be up there with them (our offices are below the rooms.)  Much more engaged that way than the previous priest.  And we have great conversations on art, travel, whatever comes to mind.  In fact, he seems a lot like Pope Francis, in his focus on the poor and his love for all.  And he is fluent in Spanish, which is great for our patients.  He was also wonderful with me when I pulled out my back during our lunch together.
• We found out yesterday that it's time for Sis's pony Murphy to go back to the farm in Vermont.  No, that isn't some horse euphemism; he's actually returning to his home farm because he's older and lame and can't be ridden often.  Sis is heartbroken and will got with her farm owner (and Mama) to drop him off and help select the new horse to come back.  There have been a lot of tears around here, and not just from Sis.  It's so hard to know how much she hurts.  I have been tempted to buy that old pony--most expensive lawn ornament ever, someone said.  And then she can feed him peppermints to his heart's delight and he can grow fat and happy.  But I think that's not the best idea, even if it would be the easiest from a pain/sadness perspective.  Still, he'll always be the first and we're mourning his loss.  She's made a digital picture album that we're having printed but rejected my idea of braiding some of his hair.
• We saw Black Panther and it was marvelous.  Yep, the hype is well-deserved.  Besides being an entertaining movie with beautiful people, costumes, settings, etc. inspired by Afro-futurism and many African cultural traditions (I forget all of the different ones--neck rings, lip disks, ritual scarification, Kente cloth, etc etc, from Benin,)  the movie has thought provoking socio-political ideas on race and gender (and the intersectionalities of such.)  The MLK vs. Malcolm X continuum of peaceful resistance or violent overthrow, commentary on being black in America, and also African-Americans of the diaspora and their literal and figurative distance from Africa.  Plus breaking all manner of stereotypes about black women and men.
• Parkland, Florida.  What can I say?  Emma Gonzalez and her fellow students are having an enormous effect in the aftermath of tragedy in a way that hasn't quite been managed after a school shooting before.  I really appreciate all of the memes about raising these last generations (not just on school shootings, but) on dystopic novels--Hunger Games, Divergent, even in it's way Harry Potter--where students fight back against an oppressive force.  The teens have it!  And we have your back.
• In RE, the kids are studying Hinduism.  I'm learning a lot and look forward to visit a Hindu temple soon.  Next up:  Buddhism.  Then AME (traditional African-American Baptist church), Quakers, earth-based paganism, and I think a last unit on religious cults.
• Less than 2 months to Italy.  It's almost hard to believe--it still doesn't feel real.