Free An Unholy Mission by Judith Campbell Page A

an old and very rude joke, my friend.”
    “I didn’t know ministers told rude jokes.” Luther looked both intrigued and dismayed.
    “Ministers are human, Luther. The calling may be divine, but it’s humans who answer the call.”
    “I think I’d like to know more about the human side of you, Olympia.” The intrigued look became an intense stare.
    “What you see is what you get, Luther, and I think it’s time for both of us to go upstairs.”
    “Can we have lunch some time?” Luther stood, smoothing his jacket and positioning the silver cross in the space above the buttons.
    “Sure,” said Olympia, deliberately keeping her voice casual and impersonal. “We both eat lunch here in the cafeteria; no doubt our orbits will intersect again before the term is out.”
    “I certainly hope it’ll be sooner than that,” said Luther, taking Olympia’s arm and steering her in the direction of the elevator. “I want to know more about Unitarian Universalism, as well. This may be my only chance.”
    Olympia’s momentary discomfort dissipated.  “That, I can talk about at length. You may be sorry you asked.”
    “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Luther. “Try me.”
     
     
    After lunch the six chaplains sat at the table, each with their stack of verbatim sheets in front of them, waiting for Sister Patrick to choose the first to present what he or she had written. Olympia was not particularly nervous. She’d been through this before. But Patrick was different from her first supervisor, and until she knew exactly what the woman expected, she, too, was just the tiniest bit on edge.
    The nun began by explaining that they would each take turns having their verbatims read in the manner of a play script or radio drama, with different members of the group taking the parts of the people on the lists. No names, of course. Then she turned to Olympia. 
    “I’m going to ask you to go first, Olympia, mainly because you’ve done this before.” To Olympia’s skyrocketing eyebrows she said, “That doesn’t mean I expect it to be perfect, but at least it will show the others how the process works.”
    Five sets of shoulders dropped visibly.
    Ugh! Thanks for setting me up, thought Olympia. She gathered up her papers and began passing copies to the people seated around the table.
    “Do you want to assign parts, or shall I?” asked Patrick.
    “I’d much rather you did,” said Olympia, flashing an engaging smile at her supervisor, “I may have done this before, but it was a while ago, and I’m sure you have your preferences.”
    “As a matter of fact, I do,” said the no-nonsense nun.
    Olympia wasn’t surprised.
     “I think the person who wrote the verbatim should listen to it rather than be one of the readers. It makes more of an impact when you hear your own words read back to you by someone else.”
    Olympia didn’t bother to say she had used this technique all through her twenty-five years plus of teaching. She said only, “My, what a good idea.”
    Patrick assigned the parts of chaplain, nurse’s aide and patient, the three persons involved in the interaction Olympia had described in her verbatim, to the three other women in the cohort group. Then she reminded everyone once again that because of patient confidentiality and the intense and very personal nature of Clinical Pastoral Education, they were never to use an actual name, not even their own, when writing or reading a verbatim.
    When they finished reading Olympia’s case, Patrick commented only that she found it to be a spiritually healthy interaction and that Olympia did well to allow the patient to direct the conversation; but in the future, she said, a chaplain should always remember to offer to pray with a patient before leaving them. After that, the other cohorts asked contextual questions about the patient and the nature of his or her illness, but other than that, they had little to add.
    “We have time for one more. Luther, why don’t you go?