parish

46. A Higher Level of Care

~ toddgoddard ~ 1 Comment

The Pitt is a masterful rendition of a fast moving Emergency Department. Like its predecessor, ER, the pace, emotions, and procedures reflect my own experiences in ERs around the region. With my wife, with over 40 years of Labor and Delivery experience, and my experience running EMS and Psychiatric Assessments, we love to watch each episode, call out bull shit when we see it, fill in blank spots in our knowledge. To a large extent, Hollywood gets it right. 

Shout out to ED staffs of doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and techs. I loved them all. Some became more than professional acquaintances; friends even. There would be middle of the night calls, when everything was settling down and paperwork was complete, when one would pull up a chair and we’d begin to talk about theology, family, politics, cases. 

It was always a huge relief to transfer care to ER staff, professionals with a higher level of care than my meager Intermediate Life Support Emergency Medical Technician certification allowed. Responsibility for life and limb weighs heavy on every medic. Training only goes so far; it kept me focused in the center of the hurricane, yet, each and every one of us responding to the cry for help from a neighbor remained deeply human. I felt, and cared, deeply for the human hurt and pain I heard and experienced.

—

The man sitting on the gurney opposite from me in the small psychiatric ER room was dressed in uniform. He had just completed his work day, jumped into his pickup truck and drove straight to the ER. He knew he was in trouble, just as serious as if he had crushing chest pains and difficulty breathing. 

Except, he didn’t. 

This soft spoken member of the law enforcement community had been hearing voices recently telling him to kill his wife. He knew they were not real, for he could not locate any source of the voices outside of himself. His experience, he reported to me, was more real than mere fleeting thoughts that could be brushed away by refocusing on a different tasks. He reported to me that he heard these voices plain as day. They began when he woke, continued through the day and into the night. 

He loved his wife, and children. From his world view there was no reason to want to bring harm or violence to his wife or family. Unnerving. Frightening. Terrifying, even. With no history of mental illness, this gentleman came to me desperate for help.

“The voices tell me to shoot her,” he reported. “They are breaking me down, and I’m afraid the only way to make them stop is to do it, even though I don’t want to.” My heart broke for this man, all the while, my brain is franticly searching for cause, treatment, and a path leading to a healthy outcome. He checked the homicidal box, had the means, and desire to carry through on his plan. 

Doing nothing wasn’t an option. He was also armed. 

People who experience homicidal ideation can be very dangerous, not only towards their target, but also to anyone else on the sidelines. Experience and crisis intervention training taught me to establish a non-anxious presence, de-escalate and maintain calm, and compassionately remove the threat. My affect was laid back and empathetic, words were soft and eyes expressed kindness. My brain was praying for God’s mercy to work in and through me. 

My legal pad was full of notes taken, a life spilled into my lap, emotionally flailing in an attempt to find a way out. Even during our interview I could see him wince, blink hard, when he heard his command hallucinations. Maybe he was attempting to block that which was assaulting him. 

“Give me one moment,” I said as I stood and stepped towards the door. “I’ll be right back.” And I left him, sitting in silence, on a hospital gurney, in a small ER room, armed with a gun. 

I went straight to the attending ER doctor, pulled him aside and gave him the brief run down. “And he’s armed,” I told him, driving home the life held by a thread, serious nature of the patient. Fear wasn’t on my radar. Training and experience kept me laser focused. Yes, there was mortal danger, but thinking about that could be postponed to later. Then I could collapse in the staff lounge with a case of the he-be geebies. 

No. He-be geebies cannot be found in the clinical manual of psychiatric disorders. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real. “I’m on it,” doctor Mark told me. “Go back in and keep him calm.” 

So I re-entered the exam room, pen and legal pad in hand. Memory fails regarding what we spoke about, but it must have been effective because he remained calm and quiet. Time passed, as if I could hear every tick of a sweep second hand on the clock. Our conversation was almost casual. There was a knock at the door. 

Turning to stand and open the door, it exploded open and in rushed the A-team. Cops, hospital security, lots of big burley men. I slipped out, unseen. It was over before the patient knew what was happening. He was restrained and disarmed, not of just one handgun, but two. Later, his pickup truck in the parking lot also sported a cache of firearms and ammunition, now secure. Whew!

A tragedy was averted that evening. A story was written that never made the evening news. A tortured mind was made safe, and I can only hope and pray, he was able to find the cause of his hallucinations, to be effectively treated, and to return to a life filled with love and family. 

Why? I wondered. There are many possible causes for such a condition. Medical, chemical, disease, abuse, hereditary, you name it. UTI? Brain tumor? Late onset Schizophrenia? Sometimes it is nearly impossible to nail down a cause, let alone treatment. There but by the grace of God goes any of us. It was by that same grace that I was effective and safe that hot summer evening so long ago in the ER. 

Thank you, Lord. 

—

Every lap in the pool this morning was shared with a fellow traveler on this journey called life. He was kind is offering to share a lane, faster than me – aren’t they all? – completing three laps to my every two. 

Each time we passed I squeezed tight to the lane markers, compensating for the violence of water, splash, and wave. It was as if his displacement pushed against me. It wasn’t intentional, just physics. 

Water has to go somewhere. I reflect on the wet spring we are experiencing, breaking records I hear from the evening weather report. Streams, running chocolate brown, fill their banks full to overflowing. Low dams that used to support mills long since gone have been swept clean of debris, water swift, flowing so fast over the crest it registers as hardly a bump. Low lands, fields, and lawns flood, basements fill, and rain continues to fall. 

Pool water refreshes. River water cleanses. Filtered water nourishes. Baptismal water stakes a claim. 

—

All the classroom training cannot prepare an EMS medic for the full reality of traumatic injury and death. Experience is the only calming effect I know of. Debriefing helps reduce the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress. But that comes after the fact. This is where having experienced leadership is essential to the effective deployment of an emergency medical services agency. 

We were blessed with Vince and Jean. Retired, but not inactive, a husband and wife duo who had been in on the ground level of emergency medical services in the 1940’s and 50’s, when local undertakers gladly passed responsibility to someone else, anyone else, usually to volunteer fire departments! The ubiquitous black hearse with a gumball light would be replaced with municipally funded, hand crafted ambulances, complete with trained medics and drivers, lights and sirens. Trauma medicine had advanced by leaps and bounds during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. It was making the leap into every neighborhood and community in the country. 

Vince and Jean, lifelong members of the Reformed church, had seen it and done it all. Some new bucks rebelled against their authority, but quickly were told to toe the line or get out. That’s what the other ambulance service in town was for; our rejects, and it showed, or so we believed. 

Her name escapes me. She was alive when I got to her. Her elderly body trapped by steel and plastic, covered with cubes of broken safety glass, violence now ended, leaving her with exposed bone, blood, and brains. But, she was breathing and had a heartbeat. “Launch Mercy Flight,” I requested in my radio. Standing back, ever the leader and safety officer, Vince agreed and relayed my request to dispatch. 

Our rescue crew fired up the Jaws of Life, its small engine powering a hydraulic set of pincers, coughed and came to life. All I could get at was covering her nose, or what was left of it, with a non-rebreather mask and 16 liters of pure oxygen. A fireman threw a blanked over the two of us, shielding us from shards of glass and flying plastic parts. Her vehicle had been obliterated, engine separated from frame, axels departed, steel twisted, steam hissing, electrical connections severed, one wheel 150 feet down the road resting in a ditch. 

Pulling into the path of a car doing 55 will do that to a vehicle. I know, from personal experience, both as a medic, and, later in life, as a patient. 

Firefighters set up a landing zone a few hundred yards away on a driveway well clear of overhead obstructions. Mercy Flight landed with sound and fury, just as my patient was freed from entrapment. C-collar. Back board. The non-rebreather reservoir inflating and deflating with every breath, until it didn’t. 

Shit. Respiratory arrest, I called out. The Bag-Valve-Mask (BVM) came out and we took over breathing for our unconscious patient. Unbelievable, but she had a pulse. 

The impeccably coifed flight paramedic approached from behind and snarled at me, “what did you call us for? She’s in arrest. We can’t transport a patient in respiratory arrest.” 

“Well, she wasn’t when I called you,” I responded, anger rising. Now he was on the scene, as a paramedic, he was a higher level of care than me, so the ball was in his court. His call. What was he going to do?

First things first. A is for airway. We loaded her temporarily in our ambulance so he could sink an Endo-Tracheal tube. That meant starting an IV and the paramedic pushing drugs that sedated and paralyzed her. We worked like demons with the house on fire. Success meant a possibility, however slim, for life. Failure, and, well. We might just as well call the undertaker and go home. 

Oh. Yeah. There was blood, bone, and brain all over the place. But she still had a heartbeat. 

“We fly,” he decided, as he looked at me and said, “and you’re bagging her all the way to the hospital.” 

My heart jumped. The prospect of flying in a helicopter, a new experience. “Sure,” I smiled, wiping away the sweat dripping into my eyes.

Bagging was made easier because the BVM was connected to the ET tube. We extracted from the ground ambulance, and with the assistance of big, burley firefighters, rolled the gurney to the idling helicopter, helmeted pilot still in his seat. We ducked beneath the blades, and steered clear of the tail rotor, just as instructed in training, ball caps removed and secured under the belt. The backboard slid between the clamshell doors. I entered the starboard side door, of a very small, cramped compartment. As the patient slid into place, I resumed respirations, knees sandwiching her ears, hunched over, head above her belly. The paramedic behind me monitored the EKG, drugs, and IV lines.

I couldn’t move, shift my weight, or adjust my position. Other than my hands squeezing the breath of life into our critical patient, I became one big cramp. If only I could have looked up or out a window.

The flight to Strong Memorial Hospital was all business. We landed with a thump. Only when the patient was slid from beneath me was I able to move, barely. Fortunately, plenty of hospital personnel took over and I was freed to work my aching muscles.

The broken woman delivered to trauma care remains nameless to this day. I don’t know if she lived or died. If she lived, God help her, for her broken body and bones, and lacerated brains, would need something more than the balm of Gilead.

The turn around was fast; much faster than I was used to on a ground ambulance. The roof top helicopter pad needed to be opened as soon as possible. “Let’s go,” the aeromedical paramedic said to me. Up and out we went.

He helped me strap in and dawn a flight helmet, complete with intercom. “Welcome to my bird,” the pilot said to me. “Time to go home.”

“Can you take me back to Palmyra?”

“No can do, buddy. Rules say I have to take the chopper back to base in Canandaigua. Don’t worry, we’ll get you home.”

“Okay, then,” I said, thinking to myself that my little joy ride just made a three hour ambulance call into a six.

“No worry,” the pilot replied. “Rules don’t say I can’t give you a guided tour back home.”

And so we went, flew up and straight south-east, out of the Rochester airspace. Over Mendon, not quite half way, the pilot began to dive and swoop, banking left and right, giving me a joy ride unlike the best rollercoaster anywhere. It was glorious! I laughed until I cried. The views were fantastic.

The pilot straightened up approaching the Canandaigua airport, set the skids down on a wagon slightly bigger than a Radio Flyer, shut down, and a John Deere lawn tractor towed us into the hanger. I wondered how that was done. Now, I knew!

The owner of Mercy Flight, Paul H., met me as I got out of the aircraft. He shook my hand and thanked me for the help. Hey, I was free labor; why wouldn’t he have a smile on his face? Paul was nice and offered me a ride home to Palmyra. “Sure,” I smiled. “Thank you.” We talked EMS and Mercy Flight all the way back.

I was dropped off at the fire station and everyone crowed around, welcoming me home. “How was it?” “Enjoy the ride?” “Did she make it?”

All the while Vince and Jean stood back, arms folded across the chest, waiting, quietly smiling. When the crowd thinned, then dispersed, Vince came over and said to me, “Good job, Todd. You did real good.”

That was all I needed to hear.

Thank you Lord, for great training and the support of a professional team, all volunteers. Thank you, for higher levels of care. Thank you, for Vince and Jean.

40. Homicide and Mental Health In the Parish

~ toddgoddard ~ Leave a comment

About 2:00 am on a Saturday night my pager went off. It was always on alert, charged, by the side of my bed. “Man down. Main Street; in front of the Baptist Church. Police on scene.” Holy cow, this was a mere fifty yards from my parsonage, tucked in behind the United Methodist Church on the opposite corner. 

I put on my coveralls and shoes, grabbed the pager, and headed for my truck parked around back. Too close to drive, I fetched my medic kit, oxygen tank, automated external defibrillator (AED), and radio. In the self-made medic kit were a stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, gloves, trauma dressings, forceps, a flashlight, glucose in squeeze tubes, and other assorted supplies.

“Palmyra 1415,” I called dispatch, “I’m on the scene,” even as I rounded the corner. I was close, but still had not laid eyes on what was going down. I was prepared for anything.

Or, so I thought.

I rounded the church to find a police cruiser with lights flashing, driver side door open, radio blaring, parked half in the street and half in the driveway next to the Baptist Church. On the sidewalk laid a man, face down. No cop to be found. Where was the perpetrator? Where is the village cop?

I thought to myself. Is the scene safe? This is one of the foundational lessons of Emergency Medical Services. One does not need to become a second victim.

I carefully approached, finding no one around. The man had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. I rolled him over on his back and noticed a blood stain growing on the left side of his chest. “Palmyra 1415,” I called again, “expedite the rig, start Advanced Life Support, and hit our pagers again for more help. CPR in progress.”

Then I started one person CPR.

What is taught in class is far different than the real thing. I’ve probably done CPR more than two hundred times. Never is it sanitary, especially in the elderly. Ribs get broken. People spew. The patient before me had been drinking beer all day, I later learned, and he responded like Vesuvius. Fifteen and two, was the standard of the day for one person CPR; fifteen compressions, followed by two breaths. Two mouth-to-mouth breaths. No, I did not have a CPR mask.  

Just hurl and get it out of your system, I learned early on. So I wretched to the side without breaking stride. Fifteen compressions, followed by two more breaths. What is also neglected in training is how exhausting CPR can be. Relief is necessary to maintain effective, uninterrupted compressions and breath. I was quickly losing steam. 

Then, a pair of shoes appeared next to me. “Jump in,” I asserted quite forcefully, “take over compressions.” No need for someone else to be covered in bile and vomit. “Palmyra AM-24 on the scene,” I heard on the radio. The scene was bathed in halogen headlights. Help had arrived. I didn’t even hear them calling dispatch that the ambulance and crew was responding.

Sirens, police cars, cars driven by my crew with flashing blue lights descended on the scene. It was like the cavalry was arriving. My crew took over CPR. Trauma scissors removed the patient’s shirt and pants, exposing one entry wound on the left side, between ribs. The open wound was oozing blood. The AED pads were applied and the machine was turned on. “Halt CPR,” I ordered. Asystole appeared on the screen, or, as everyone else knows it, flatline. Asystole is not a shockable cardiac rhythm. His heart had stopped beating and no amount of electrical charge could get it started again. 

With every compression, he continued to spew. The Endo-Tracheal tube slid between his vocal chords and was firmly placed, exactly as advertised. Thank you, Lord, for bright headlights and near perfect anatomy. The Bag-Valve-Mask (B.V.M.) was attached, making reparations much easier.  

As he was being packaged on a backboard and lifted onto the gurney, I got an I.V. established. There was no flash of blood, telling me his blood pressure was non-existent. Yet, the D5W dripped into his collapsing veins. Off we went in the ambulance. No Advanced Life Support was available, hence, the cardiac drugs would have to wait until the emergency room. My certification allowed me to start I.V.s and sink E.T. tubes, not pass pain relieving or cardiac medications. My crew did the thump and pump all the way to Newark Wayne, the closest hospital. We were all covered in spew. 

Windows open, exhaust fans on high, the AC cranked to 10; nothing could mask the smell. I made the radio call to the hospital and it must have sounded on the other end like I was in an open cockpit airplane. In the age before cell phones, we called in our patient reports to the emergency department over the open radio. Everyone with a scanner was privy to identity and health care information.

The backup alarm pulsed as my driver backed us into the ER bay. The doctor opened the back doors as soon as the rig came to a stop. His mouth was agape, surveying the organized chaos before him. He, too, turned shades of green, but refused to wretch. Wheeled into the trauma bay, the backboard and patient slid to the table under the bright lights of broken biology. 

Experience taught me to make the verbal report, then bow out and head to the janitors sink to fully immerse myself under pouring water, washing the offending fluid down the drain. The crew followed my example. We became like showered rats. 

Burned forever in my memory is the sight I witnessed while under the blessed stream of cleansing water. The patient was on the table, his left ribcage was lifted, and the doctor was up to his elbows reaching into the victims chest to message the heart. Rural EDs are often staffed with general practitioners, not specialists or surgeons. My doctor this evening literally had more than a handful. 

“Call it,” he told his code team. “The left ventricle is cut in two.” His gloved hand withdrew from the cavity. Without a left ventricle, blood can’t be pumped into the circulatory system. Life isn’t possible. He was dead before I got to him. 

A few weeks later, I’m gathered with my clergy colleagues around the breakfast table at a local diner. Bacon. Scrambled eggs, covered in Tabasco. Wheat toast. The same order for the past fifty years. We talked of church, parishioners, town gossip, the state of the country. Love was our common language, Jesus was our common redeemer. 

The door was awkwardly pushed open. In walked an elderly woman, assisted by a walker. She scanned the dining room. She set eyes on us and began to shuffle our way. “Don’t look now, but, I think we have a visitor.” We all tried to look innocent, uncertain what was to unfold. 

The woman stopped at the end of our table and asked, “Are you the group of ministers from town?” “Yep,” we all shook our head in agreement. “Is one of you Reverend Goddard from the Methodist Church?” She asked. Others sighed in relieve while I looked up and squirmed. “What can I do for you,” I asked, trying to force a smile. 

“You’re a medic on the ambulance, aren’t you?” 

“That would be me.”

“Were you on duty the night my son was killed?” She asked. Pause, then silence.

“Yes. Yes, I was,” I whispered.

He and his girlfriend had been drinking beer all day and had a fight late at night. The domestic dispute came out the back door and into the front yard. Neighbors called 911. She pulled a steak knife and sunk it into his chest. As he collapsed, she threw the knife into the bushes and ran. The police officer pulled in, and commenced to pursue, leaving just the victim for me to find. 

“Did he suffer?” she whispered.

It was like the Oxygen was sucked from the room and everything moved in slow motion. Carefully, gently, I responded, “No ma’am. Your son did not suffer.”

“Oh, thank you,” she surprise me. I rose to her embrace. “I’m so glad he didn’t suffer and that you were with him when he died.” Thank you, she repeated, wiping away the tears. Thank you.

You are welcome. 

—   

The pool felt good this morning. Lap after lap slid by, the silent count drummed by in my brain. Water walkers were in the lane to my left, swimmers churning water, passed me on my right. 

Slow is how I like to go. Deliberate. Disciplined. Holding back my full potential. 

Lent is a season of discipline, I remind myself.

Speed and strength are but memories of my youth. Wisdom keeps me in my place, protecting my geriatric frame and muscles from injury or harm. Head up. Eyes up, straining to look forward. Reaching, pulling, flying my hand over the surface back to the water before me. 

My hand skimming over the water, like the breath of God in the Creation. Ruach. 

The wind blows where it will. We neither know from where it came, or where it goes. That’s what Jesus said, so scripture informs us. 

Reach. Breathe. Pull. 

Where is it that I am going? Do we pull, or, are we pulled?

—-

Life settled down the eight years I served the parish in Palmyra. Church attendance hovered around ninety every Sunday. We were an active congregation, engaged in numerous local and distant missions. Church leadership liked to complain a lot, but we held it together for the common good.

We hosted twice a year chicken BBQs to bolster income, directing cars though the parking lot to a place where packaged dinners can be run out to the car. We cooked 625-750 chickens each round, halved, and flipped on huge home made wracks. Members of the parish were generous with donations of their time, pies, and all the makings for coleslaw. Our parsonage smelled like BBQ chicken for two weeks after each event.

My wife, Cynthia, was making the commute to her labor and delivery job in Geneva. Our son was taken to and from daycare in Canandaigua. There were church meetings a couple of times a week, senior citizens Bible study down at the high rise apartment complex in town, hospital and shut-in calls, worship planning, and sermon writing. I leveraged my math and computer science undergraduate to build a church web page right after Al Gore invented the internet. We were one of the first church web pages in existence. Email was delivered to my computer; too bad, in the early years, few were online to send it. There was no time for slowing down. In my early 30’s I felt invincible, professionally on an upward trajectory. The sky held no limits.

Except, I felt like I wanted more.

So, I did my medic thing and answered fire calls. I answered more than three hundred ambulance calls and over a hundred fire calls a year. House fires, car wrecks, heart attacks, strokes, childbirth, flooded basements, brush fires, mutual aid, homicides, suicides, you name it. Code 2479 meant “calling hours are from 2 to 4 pm, and 7 to 9.” The adrenaline rush was addictive.

I was the chairperson for the district Board of Ordained Ministry, the first committee beyond a local church were a person begins to explore a potential call to ordained ministry. This was a responsible volunteer job, balancing the reports and responsibilities for about thirty people at a time. The bishop placed me on the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry, a front row seat where all the sausage is made. Who gets in? Who’s in trouble? Who gets their ministerial status changed?

And yet, I wanted more. What about my seminary training and experience at Eastway Community Mental Health (Dayton, Ohio) conducting crisis interventions and psychiatric assessments? Though there was plenty of mental health concerns in the parish, I was wondering what kind of opportunities existed in the community.

A newspaper ad caught my attention. Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic (CSHC) was looking for part-time Psychiatric Assessment Officers (PAOs). It felt like the heavens opened and the voice of God spoke. It wasn’t about the money; the church was fairly compensating me. My empathy for people suffering mental health crisis ran deep, especially those who faced the challenges of chronic disease. It was more about the thrill of busting into somebody’s mess and being the one to make everything better.

I applied and was hired. After a period of orientation in the day clinic, I was signed up on the rotating call schedule. Every third night between 7:00 pm and 7:00 am, I was the PAO on call for the emergency department. Everyone in psychiatric crisis from a three county area were brought into our ED for assessment. They came by police, ambulance, or they just walked in. Because of my role on the volunteer ambulance, I already knew and liked the ED doctors and nurses, and they liked me. In time, the psychiatrist I worked for grew to know and trust my work. If it was my opinion that a person was in need of involuntary treatment, with the power of a physician’s signature, they were taken away, most often never to be seen by me again. I was in and out of a persons mess in one hour or less; and that was the way I liked it.

Some nights on call, the pager was silent as a stone, and I’d get a good night sleep. Other nights, I’d get called in five or six times. Often, I’d be assessing one patient, or writing up my notes, when another person came in to the ED. In good weather, I loved to zoom in on my Honda CB-750, dressed in leather and helmet. The doctors called it a “donor cycle.” That always made me smile. I didn’t care; I looked and felt bad-assed.

Major depression was probably the most common complaint. A lot of people will have a major depressive episode in their lives, where they might lose weight, inability to sleep, feel long periods of depressed mood, or might have pervasive homicidal or suicidal thoughts. If untreated, depression can become chronic. Note to self: if overwhelmed by depression, get help. Get treated before an episode of depression changes brain chemistry and you’re left with a life-long, chronic disease. Assessment is straight forward. Treatment is effective. Medication and counseling works wonders. And medication is improving all the time.

Five or six major depression assessments in a row tended to make me feel a little depressed myself, so I loved to have the occasional bipolar or schizophrenic patient come along to mix things up. You know, to keep things interesting. Our team and I conducted assessments on children and youth, and elders and the frail. Drugs and alcohol, oh, my, led to substance abuse disorders, self-medicating, and additional poor life choices. The hospital was blessed with an out-patient mental health program, in-patient, a drug and alcohol floor, and even provided electro convulsive therapy (E.C.T.s), an effective and modern treatment for depression. The only mode we had lacking was an in-patient adolescence unit, but then, at that time, few hospitals provided psychiatric care for kids.

My plate was full. In fact, I was juggling a lot of plates. But, for the time being, I was able to keep them all spinning.

31. Lent, a Bat from the Belfry, Tech in the Parish, and the Yates County Fair

~ toddgoddard ~ Leave a comment

Lent is a time of year for personal reexamination of one’s spiritual health, relationship with God, and our personal journey with Christ. It is forty days long that, except for Sundays, grants recognition of Jesus journey in the wilderness, being tempted by the Devil. Every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection, hence, every Sunday is a mini Easter. As Lent progresses towards Holy Week, we spiritually journey with Jesus from the Judean wilderness to Jerusalem atop Mt. Zion. The journey is uphill all the way, and, as such, is only for those who dare. 

Do you have the right stuff?

The wilderness is a windswept gravel and sand mountainous expanse between Jerusalem (to the West) and Jericho (to the East). Four times in my life I’ve been privileged to lead pilgrims to the Holy Lands and to sit quietly on a dusty ridgeline taking in the environment of the wilderness. It is humbling to consider the temptation to eat where there is no food, to drink where water is rare. As the sun sets, oppressive heat is replaced by bone chilling cold.

If Christ could resist the Devil’s temptation to turn stones to bread, can I not resist the temptations of daily living? If Christ could reject a challenge to his sovereignty, can I also not resist challenges to my call and Ordained Ministry? “What wondrous love is this?” My thoughts return to the sacred hymn in the silence of the wilderness that surrounds me. 

Lent in the parish included both a personal call for introspection and a communal call for learning and shared fellowship. We’d host Wednesday evening dish-to-pass dinners followed by a Bible study or an appropriately themed movie. It was a time to be together, to be as one, as the Eucharist liturgy reads, one with each other and one with our God. 

Back in the day (Now you know that I am old!) I had arranged for the delivery of 16mm films to be delivered weekly from the Conference Resource Library. This was years before projectors and Power Point. The church had a cantankerous movie projector that displayed the 16 millimeter film on a flimsy screen. As the dessert was cleared and coffee cups refilled, all settled in for an inspiring Lenten movie. 

The lights went out and we all settled in for the show. People were happy. I was happy, content with myself that I was providing spiritual guidance for my flock.

Suddenly, a shadow swooped across the screen. Then, back again. “What was that?” I heard some startled to awareness. That was a mischievous bat, nothing more than a flying mouse that probably was housed in the church belfry. Children squealed. Mothers ducked for cover. The men entered the gauntlet determined to put a heroic end to the bat’s misadventure. 

It was a free for all!

The lights flew on. Coats were stripped from hangers and a half dozen men began chasing the offender with the hope of bagging him. After several failed attempts, amidst a crowd of now shrieking children and mothers  telling their husbands to “do something,” the men regrouped. What to do? 

“I’ve got a tennis racket in my truck,” one gentleman offered. The rest of us wondered what he had a tennis racket in his truck for? Playing tennis wasn’t exactly a thing in rural Yates County. “The bat’s radar won’t see it coming.” 

The refined dinner and a movie group of parishioners became a cheering crowd as the lone man chased the bat around the fellowship hall, flailing with a tennis racket. Finally, a swift backhand launched the bat across the room, knocking it silly. A coat was quickly thrown over it. A group of victorious men walked the bat-in-a-coat out the side door and set it free into the night air. 

It took a while for proper Lenten decorum to be reestablished. When all were settled in, the lights went out, the projector was restarted, and the movie returned to it’s inspirational self. 

—

An athlete I am not. Don’t even pretend to be. I swim my fifteen laps every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, not because I want to, not because I like to, but because my doctor and medical research has demonstrated the importance of regular exercise. 

“If I had it my way,” I thought to myself this morning, “I’d be home in my nice warm bed.” 

This morning I dug at the water, fluttering my kick, raising my heart rate for a half an hour. Three groups of five, my brain tells me, is an easy way to keep pace, an easy way to keep count. Except, I have been known to lose track, lost in meditation or thought.

Reach and pull. Reach and pull. My reach extends my arms as far forward as I am able, stretching sinew and muscle, causing oxygenated blood to surge and flow. My fuselage rolls with each reach, giving opportunity to breath out of the side of my mouth in a rhythm worthy of a drummer. 

Just as quick as it starts, I’m done, leaning against the end of the lane gasping to catch my breath. The lifeguard takes notice. I nod that I am okay. I just need to catch my breath. 

—

There are times throughout my pastoral ministry that I’ve needed to just stop and catch my breath. Periods of hard work and preparation, followed by execution, relief, exhaustion, and nodding to sleep in my easy chair. 

Technology was breaking out all around me. Copy machines became small and affordable. Stencils and ink spewing AB Dick duplicating machines were relegated to the junk closet in every church. Bulletins and newsletters could be typed and copied much easier, much faster. 

I bought my first personal computer; portable it was called. My new K-Pro sported two five and a half inch floppy disk drives and a whopping 16 k of working memory. It weighed in at about thirty pounds. Portable? Just barely.

Programs were on one drive, data was saved on the other. My K-Pro spoke programming languages I was familiar with, harking back to my college days working IBM and DEC mainframes. The only thinks lacking on my new K-Pro were the punch cards and a printer. New daisy wheel printers were expensive, but I bit the bullet and had one delivered to the parsonage. 

Parishioners scratched their heads in wonder. 

Lightyears before email and the internet, it was hard to imagine what a computer and printer could do for a parish pastor. I provided printed spread sheets for finance teams and the Board of Trustees. I began to print a bulletin and monthly newsletter, run it over to the corner store where the one copy machine in the entire village was located, pay five cents a copy, fold and press, and, boom, it was like Jesus turning water into wine.

My volunteer printer and AB Dick bulletin maker, covered in ink when that contraption blew up one morning, spewing ink from head to toe and across the walls and ceiling, thought I was able to walk on water.

Who was I to bust her bubble?

—

The county fair came every July. Each of my two churches ran a food stand on the main thoroughfare, selling hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, macaroni salad, homemade pie, and assorted other things. The question became, which of the two booths were you going to work, Pastor?

I couldn’t prioritize one over the other, neither could my choice reflect any preference or quality of food. The Fidelus Class of young adults, who’s average age was about 65, ran the one booth, while the other was operated as a Y’all Come type of affair. Everyone was expected to volunteer and make donations. If you couldn’t come up with four or more home baked pies, and schedule yourself for 16 hours’ worth of shifts flipping burgers, you’d better send a sizable check. The two concession stands stood on opposite sides, facing one another. My choice would be affirmed by one, at the same time, observed by the other.

What was I to do?

So, I did what any young buck, newly ordained, inexperienced pastor would do; I did both. The best controversary was the one avoided, I naively thought to myself. How soon I would learn different.

The week of the county fair, I rotated on a daily basis between the two booths. No time to prepare for Sunday; I was stuck working twelve or more hours each day hawking food to fair goers. At the end of fair week my first year in the parish, I was beat! Completely and utterly exhausted, and everything about me smelled of grease. The following Sunday should have been a vacation Sunday, but, nope, I was too green to know better and nobody was forthcoming to tell me different.

By God’s grace, each year I learned. Each year, I got better.

I learned to stop and catch my breath.