A Student’s View of CPE

Todd Eames is a recent CPE graduate and he was a speaker at the Art of Caring Dinner we hosted last week. I thought that those who couldn’t make the dinner might like to hear his entertaining and informative words. Enjoy!

For those of you who don't know, I recently completed Clinical Pastoral Education, otherwise known as CPE. This is a program provided through Crossroads of Caring, and is designed to help clergy and chaplains learn about pastoral care by placing them in hospitals and then repeatedly asking them, "But what were you feeling?"

Before CPE, I thought ministry was about helping other people. After CPE, I learned it's apparently about writing verbatims and discovering why I felt annoyed by a patient who reminded me of my seventh-grade gym teacher. When I started, I thought I knew myself pretty well. I was wrong. Within the first week, my supervisor, Rachel, had gently guided me through enough self-awareness to make me wonder if I had accidentally enrolled in therapy… with homework.

The first lesson of CPE is that every feeling is important. The second lesson is that there are apparently many more feelings than I knew existed. Before CPE, my emotional vocabulary included hungry, happy, sad, and angry. The proof of my emotional capability was recognizing that Hungry, happy, sad, and angry are all usually connected to one another. Now, under the wisdom and tutelage of Mary Ann, I can confidently identify feeling apprehensive, conflicted, vulnerable, disoriented, guarded, hopeful, wistful, and "slightly activated." (and, they can also be connected to hungry.) In fact, after CPE, I can identify my emotions so precisely now that I no longer simply have a bad day. I have a complex emotional response rooted in family systems, and my narrative history, that were triggered by unmet expectations. Progress. Right?

And then there are verbatims. For the uninitiated, a verbatim is a detailed account of a pastoral visit. You write down everything that was said. Everything. You record what the patient said. You record what you said. You record what you wished you had said. You record what you were thinking while pretending to listen. Then you hand this document to your classmates and invite them to examine your soul. It's a remarkably efficient process. One paragraph into a verbatim and your peers can uncover childhood experiences you didn't know you had. Yet somehow the process works. Painfully. Beautifully. Relentlessly. You begin noticing patterns. You begin hearing what you missed. You begin understanding yourself. And that, I suspect, is why CPE changes people.

Not because it teaches perfect techniques. But because it teaches awareness. You become more aware of patients. More aware of systems. More aware of suffering. More aware of yourself. Particularly yourself. The hospital itself is also an education. CPE teaches you that hospitals contain every human emotion imaginable. Joy. Grief. Fear. Hope. Confusion. And whatever emotion occurs when you've been looking for a room number in a sequence created by cats using the Dewey Decimal system. I became convinced that hospitals are built according to principles of sacred mystery. Every hallway looks identical. Every elevator goes somewhere unexpected. Every nurse somehow knows exactly where they're going while chaplains wander around looking like tourists with the wrong map. Every room holds a universe. Every person is carrying something invisible. Hope. Fear. Love. Loss. Regret. Faith. Questions. Sometimes all at once. You meet people on the best days of their lives. You meet people on the worst days of their lives. And occasionally you discover that both can happen in the same room. The longer you're there, the more reverence you develop. Not only for patients. For nurses. For physicians. For environmental services staff. For receptionists. For families. For everyone doing the difficult work of caring. You begin to see that compassion is not a personality trait. It's a practice. A discipline. A choice made repeatedly. Especially on hard days. And there are hard days.

One of the great discoveries of CPE is that silence can be powerful. Before CPE, if there was silence in a conversation, it was my job to fill it. After CPE, I learned to sit quietly. A patient would say something profound. I would nod. Then we would sit in silence.

For a long time.

An uncomfortable amount of time.

A silence sometimes so long that the IV pump became uncomfortable and started to beep.

But eventually I learned that people often need space more than solutions.

Which brings me to another lesson. People rarely need us to fix them. This was disappointing news. Many of us enter ministry with a secret belief that we possess wisdom. CPE quickly corrected that misunderstanding. It turns out most people don't need answers. They need presence. And presence is much harder than answers. Answers allow you to talk. Presence requires you to listen. Answers make you feel competent. Presence reminds you that you're human. And perhaps that's the greatest gift of CPE. It teaches humility. It made me a better human. Every day you encounter people whose courage exceeds your own. People facing diagnoses, losses, fears, and uncertainties with such remarkable grace. I learned that Chaplaincy isn't about having the right words. It's about showing up. It's about sitting beside with people in moments that matter. It's about being willing to enter holy ground with empty hands.

The group learning process is another unique experience. Where else can a collection of strangers gather weekly and collectively decide to become emotionally transparent? It's like a support group, a classroom, and reality television all rolled into one. We laugh together. We cry together. Sometimes we accidentally cry while trying to laugh. We learn each other's stories. We learn each other's defenses. And you quickly realize that the person who says, "Can I offer some feedback?" is about to change the trajectory of your entire week. Yet somehow these groups become communities. People who began as strangers become companions. Because vulnerability has a strange way of creating trust. Especially when everyone is equally confused. Of course, along the way, you'll cry unexpectedly. You'll question yourself regularly. You'll overthink every conversation. And you'll spend at least one class wondering if you're the topic everyone is carefully avoiding. But eventually you realize everyone else is wondering the same thing.

So tonight I raise a metaphorical glass to my fellow CPE students, as well as all those who have CPE'd before me. To Mary Ann, an extraordinary educator, who needs no last name. To the verbatims that exposed us. To the supervisors who challenged us. To the peers who supported us. To the families who loved us. To the patients who ordained us. And to the emotions we discovered were hiding in places we never thought to look. May we continue to offer compassionate care to everyone we meet. May we continue to grow into more full humans. And may we someday enter a hospital and immediately find the unit we're looking for. Thank you.