I am reaching out to 1,000 friends, preachers, activists and community organizers to ask for a minimum donation of five dollars towards my seminary journey. And my commitment to ending Global oppression. The money will be used for books, travel and all related expenses.

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Because of your Donations, I was able to complete my Clinical Pastoral Care Unit at Beth Israel Hospital. Your donations went toward was the 926.00 application fee, living expenses and transportation to and from the work sight. The journey is not over and we still need your support!

 My first unit of CPE ended two weeks ago. It became a bit overwhelming trying to do political activism, write verbatim, do group sessions and to complete the other life and ministerial tasks that go along with being a chaplain intern while living in New York City for the summer.

CPE has been the most rewarding and in many ways challenging experiences of my vocational journey. I believe that everyone who feels a pull toward a vocation in ministry, social work or even health care administration or health care marketing should do Clinical Pastoral care. Because it demands that you look within yourself at the stuff that stands in our way of caring for people. So much of CPE relays on individual wiliness to learn about oneself by embracing "the journey".

"The journey is a process that is referred to as the Clinical Pastoral care of Learning, and forces us to deal with our personal baggage that we are more than likely bringing to our ministries. It demands us to be mindful of how our personal baggage impact how we minister to patients, their families, staff and even our congregations. In the CPE journey we become reflected upon the words we use, the words we hold back, the existing we do during times of trauma are the uncomfortable we feel when a person in crisis is trying to speak their truth. We explore parts of this during our verbatims. A verbatim is a line by line written account of conversations with a patient. Our Peers read/act out the dialog and then the CPE Supervisor and colleagues offer insights and constructive critiques of the encounter.

I wish I would have read and truly understood the description but was not as through when understanding the process and writing expectations by knowing the language before I jumped in as to be prepared.)

I was very blessed to work with an extraordinary group of chaplain peers who were from all walks of life and the faith community. One was a 29 year old Jewish Seminarian student, the others were- 49 Disciples of Christ seminarian from Union Theological Seminary who was trying to figure out his vocation call. Two catholic one was becoming a Priest and the other was a women seeking to fulfill all CPE requirements so that she can be a board certified Chaplin and an Episcopal Deacon meeting his ordination requirement. I was also fortunate to have a CPE Supervisor who taught us that it was most important that we figure out our triggers both collectively and individually.

This was not easy because we had to confront our demons and the demons that we saw in one another. Furthermore, these demons that I am referring too are our emotional baggage that our pieces of why many of why many of who feel called to be healers to be healers in the first place but yet also cause us to stop short in the healing process of becoming the kind of healing agents in the world.

It was very easy to get defensive during this process and feel as though you're being personally attacked when colleagues and the Supervisor offer criticism. Once you realize that this is about you looking deeper in to your own past, hurts, agendas geared toward getting you to explore why you approach patients. I also learned the importance of self care. Boundaries in terms of saying no patients are expressing relational limits was also an important technique in terms of caring for the patients, ourselves as ministers and our families. In fact our supervisor says there must always be healthy bounders. For example, we should never be giving out our contact information our ending our relationship with patients when we leave the hospital.

Along with the new relationships that I've made with peers throughout this facility, I will miss the hundreds of patients and families that have allowed me to be present during their most challenging of personal times. While many of these faces will fade with time. I am certain that there will be some that will never leave me. Like the man who lost his daughter of alcohol poisoning, the ninety five year old Tuskegee airman, are the eighty seven retired Episcopal Priest who was seeing visions of his Mother stand in a beautiful peaceful green field. And yes the little lady who pointed up to heavens and said I know that my redeemer liveth....