NYC

You might be startled to see, as proven by the bottom photo, that the entire island of Manhattan has tilted since you were last there, likewise the Statue of Liberty.

(Click photos to enlarge.)

Seeking Attractive Gentleman with Rent-Controlled Manhattan Apartment

I returned from school on a Thursday in August; the following Thursday I flew to New York City, visiting for the first time since I was three. Of that trip, I remember only walking on a city street in search of Fred Braun’s shop, which my mother wanted to visit, and I thought I could recall seeing the Statue of Liberty. My father says we did take the ferry to Staten Island, so that must be a real memory, one of my earliest.

It was extremely thrilling when Manhattan came into view from the plane window. The plane landed at LaGuardia, where I was fetched by my esteemed relative Lucy and her fiancé, Ricky, whom I was meeting for the first time, and who I feel is an excellent addition to our family. I really liked him.

Ricky and Lucy dropped me off at Leo House, a Catholic guesthouse in Chelsea where anyone can stay. I was really happy with this place. It cost just $170 a night—it would have been less if I hadn’t chosen a room with its own bathroom—and was clean, old-fashioned and charming. Some of the Yelp reviews said the front desk people were rude, so I made a point of being extra nice to all of them, and they were all very friendly in return.

That evening, which was warm and balmy, I walked to Greenwich Village (I’m in Greenwich Village!) and had dinner at a diner. The next morning, I had breakfast at Chelsea Square Restaurant, half a block from Leo House, and took the subway (I’m on the subway!) to 51st and Park Avenue to have lunch with my old friend Frank. We went to a French café for salads. After lunch, I walked to Central Park. (I’m in … you get the idea). En route, I passed by Fox News. I sat for a while in the park—it was a very hot and rather humid afternoon—and then took the subway to Chinatown and the Bowery. In the evening, Lucy and I walked through Times Square and had dinner at a Thai restaurant near Leo House.

I hadn’t thought I would visit the 9/11 memorial, but when I realized how quick and easy it would be to get to, I decided to go. The next morning, I took the subway there and Lucy and I met in the Oculus. I was staggered by the memorial, which I realized I had never even seen a picture of before. I thought it perfectly balanced extreme somberness with life and energy. Lucy was very kind about pausing often during the day while I took photographs. After the memorial, we walked past the New York Stock Exchange and saw the place where George Washington took the oath of office and also the Charging Bull, or at least the people standing around it.

Then we took the ferry to Staten Island, which does afford an excellent view of the Statue of Liberty. We thought we would have lunch on Staten Island and were both surprised when we disembarked and found—nothing, basically. There were some handsome old buildings now used for municipal purposes, but not the bustling commercial strip with ten restaurants to choose from we assumed we would find. (We learned later that the neighborhood near the ferry landing is considered to be a bad one.) We went a few blocks down the street and visited a grocery store, and then walked back to the ferry.

Back in Manhattan, we found Ricky parked in their car right outside the ferry terminal. He graciously drove us around for the next several hours, though Harlem and all over the Bronx, preceded by lunch in Brooklyn and a spin through DUMBO. Coming back from the Bronx, we drove along Fifth Avenue and passed the Museum of Modern Art and the Plaza Hotel (where Eloise lives!). We passed the handsome dwellings of the one percent. One of them had an orchid in his or her window. (We also passed Trump Tower; I took a photo. My mother said later that I shouldn’t have done that: “Every time someone takes a picture of it, he gets an email saying he’s great.”) And thus I saw all five boroughs in three days!

When Ricky and Lucy dropped me off that evening, Ricky said he had enjoyed the afternoon and that whatever I wanted to do on future visits, he would be happy to participate. He added, “School starts in a week and a half, so if your next visit was before that, that would be convenient for me.” (He is in graduate school, pursuant to being a high school teacher in the Bronx.) I felt sad when they drove away, and hope to see them again yearly. I really appreciate their spending so much time with me and making sure I saw so many things, and I really loved New York City. What a splendid place.

Adobe

A couple of times at school, I have stayed in this building, in the little room on the second floor, which sleeps three.

(Click photo to enlarge.)

The Most Dangerous of All

Our ten days at school in mid-August were packed with interesting presentations and enriching activities. I stayed in a room with three of my fellow students. My bed was right next to the windows, which we left open every night. It was lovely to snuggle under the puffy comforter and feel the breeze on my face and hear the coyotes howling in the morning.

Next March, my cohort will receive the Zen precepts in the ceremony known as jukai. To prepare for this, we have to do several things by the end of this December: create a chart representing the traditional lineage of male ancestors, starting with the Buddha and ending with our own teacher (who will write my name at the very bottom before she returns this document to me during the ceremony); create a chart representing notable female ancestors; make an artwork or produce a piece of writing about those who have influenced our own spiritual paths; hand sew a rakusu (a small biblike traditional Japanese garment); and write a gloss about each of the precepts, along with the Three Refuges and the three Zen Peacemaker Tenets.

We were advised to try to complete the patriarchs’ and matriarchs’ charts while we were at school in August. You are allowed some artistic license with the latter, but the former has to be just so, and involves drawing a long winding “bloodline.” (Traditionally, people had to draw this line in one stroke, but we were allowed to lift our red markers from the long scroll of rice paper as needed.) I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. one night and got both of them done. We also began sewing our rakusus, and here I must pause to appreciate our sewing instructor, someone who went through this two-year chaplaincy training several years ago. There are 23 people in my cohort, plus at least three people who will be joining us for jukai, which means one person is trying to assist people at 26 different stages of doing this sewing project, any number of whom are freaking out at any given moment, yet she never seemed at all flustered.

Working on our lineage charts and rakusus gave rise to joy, tears, quiet and not so quiet satisfaction, frustration, gratitude and many kind offerings of emotional support, encouragement, sympathy, and instruction from those farther along. It was a beautiful time of teamwork, group effort, and deepening relationships. Really, it was fun. Now that I’m working on my rakusu at home by myself, I am very grateful that my mother taught me how to sew. There are people doing this who have literally never threaded a needle before. There are people who don’t own an iron or ironing board.

For basting thread, I am using red thread that was in the very first sewing kit my mother ever bought me, when I was maybe eight years old. I am using scissors she gave me, and my sewing stuff now resides in a handsome round wicker basket that she made. Most of all, I am using the knowledge she imparted to me. We have an excellent online guide, yet inevitably, some things are assumed. For instance, I don’t think it explicitly says how to make a knot in a piece of thread. (We can email our sewing instructor if we get stuck, and she will also do a video phone call with us.)

During my week at school, my childhood home in Ann Arbor was sold, and the father of my very oldest friend died. One of our teachers is a famous Zen gardener who writes for Tricycle and other publications. (There will be a story about her time at school with us in the next issue.) In her corn kernel necklace, she afforded a fine example of a person evidently being exactly and delightfully herself. (“If this sounds woo-woo, deal with it.”) I can fall into thinking that being a chaplain requires a certain piety, or even at times a funereal manner, but am pretty sure that what is almost always most needed and welcome is authenticity, practiced in an ethical manner.

This teacher led us in building up a compost heap, preceded by a ritual in which we called upon the powers of the four directions. Those who wanted to could make a clay sculpture representing something they wished to let go of; these were placed on the compost heap before the final layer or two of stuff was added. While we were working on the compost heap, our teacher divided us into three groups for singing. The first group sang something like, “Rot, rot, rot, rot!” The second group sang a somewhat more complicated but still applicable phrase. To the third group, she said, “You’re the most dangerous of all!” Members of this group were instructed to shriek “Get down!” as the spirit moved them. We loved her.

My parents are avid gardeners who always had a compost heap in the yard of the home that was just sold. Getting to participate in making a compost heap helped with grieving the loss of that enchanted, quiet place, with its beautiful fruit trees, grapevine, flowers and vegetables.

Santa Fe Motel Parking Lot

(Click photo to enlarge.)

Hairdon’t

At the end of July, I had breakfast with one of my former Clinical Pastoral Education peers, who raved over my new very short hairdo. Others have also complimented it, but it hasn’t been a hit across the board. One young hospital patient called me a “dyke-looking bitch with goofy glasses.”

I’m starting to think that, in some ways, holding babies, which I do most weeks in the NICU at County Hospital, is harder than being a chaplain. I twice held a baby who was withdrawing from drugs. He has since left the hospital, and I found myself thinking about him, picturing him crying while his mother shoots up. The thought of this baby being unhappy caused me some moments of real anguish.

Early in August, I headed to school in Santa Fe two days early so I could spend some time with Mason, one of my two peers in my first unit of CPE. Landing in Albuquerque, I experienced the worst turbulence of my life, as evidenced by the fact that never before have I clutched the arm of the stranger sitting next to me and burst into tears. The plane was bucking and corkscrewing and lurching up and down. A flight attendant making an announcement over the PA broke off in the middle of a sentence and rushed down the aisle, holding onto both sides of the overhead luggage bins.

I was one hundred percent positive I was within a minute or two of the end of my life, and accordingly had a word with my deceased grandmother, whom I expected to see in person imminently. I asked if it is safe to die and she again assured me that it is (as she does just before I board any plane). I put my cell phone in my jacket pocket, so my family might have a chance of identifying my body, and considered how I would like to spend my final 30 seconds. It was immediately obvious that human connection is most important, so I said to the fellow next to me, who was clutching the seat in front of him, “If we crash, can I hold your hand?”

He said, “Yes.” Then, in what sounded like an afterthought, “Hope we don’t.” We did not, and that evening, Mason and his brother and I had dinner at a pizza place recommended by one of the Sandia shuttle drivers.

The next day—a blisteringly hot one—I had breakfast in the grand dining room at La Fonda and then Mason and his brother and I saw the oldest house in the country (from the 1600s), and the oldest chapel, which is next door. We saw a church that was the first Gothic structure built west of the Mississippi, and we went to the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and to the state capitol, which is full of art. We drove out to Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese spa and restaurant, just to have a look at it.

We had lunch at Souper!Salad! and that evening I had dinner at Tomasita’s with four of my fellow chaplaincy students and two of our teachers.

Fog Plus Wildfire Smoke

Note the little stripe of more or less blue sky at the horizon.

(Click photo to enlarge.)

Letting Go of Technique

My boss recently hired two additional per diem chaplains, bringing the total to four. We learned that we would also have four CPE students starting in September (though it turned out that one of them later thought better of this, so we actually have three). She did a reorganization such that several people will work only during the day and never be on call. The CPE students will handle most of the on-call duties during the work week, and the plan was that we four per diems would duke it out for the remaining evening and weekend on-call hours; we would not have the possibility of working weekday shifts.

It took a while for this to sink in, but I finally realized that I would be going from working once or twice a week to potentially working as little as twice a month. I also am no longer assigned to certain units, where I have come to know staff members and long-term patients, but will go to different units on different days. Further, since all of our team meetings are on weekdays, I realized I would probably never see the rest of my group again. Three simultaneous losses: of money, of connection with my team, and of connection with my units. Also, if I was only going to work night shifts, while I’m all in favor of being paid for sleeping, that wouldn’t be much time with patients.

If my boss hadn’t made it clear that she thinks I’m doing a good job and would like me to apply for a job with more hours per week once I’m done with school, I would have been really upset about all of this, sure that she was trying to get rid of me. But since she has made her favorable opinion clear, I decided to continue to do my best, with a good attitude. Things seem to change often in this line of work, so I figured this would not be the situation for very long, and if I really didn’t have enough patient care hours, I could always add a second day at County Hospital.

And then about two minutes later, my boss offered me a steady day of work each week, and then we lost the fourth CPE student, so I will work a second day of the week now and then, plus some nights. So there definitely was no reason to be concerned, and I even came around to thinking it will be fine to go from hospital to hospital. It will be an opportunity to meet a lot of staff members currently unknown to me and to become familiar with a lot of different units.

One thing that happens very regularly is having a great conversation with a patient and thinking, “Now I’ve got it!” Whatever seemed to “work” with that patient, I then try in the next visit—and invariably find that it doesn’t have the same effect at all.

When I speak with patients, I frequently leave plenty of silence, which often results in their saying things not directly elicited by me, sometimes very important things. With a patient one recent day at the county hospital, I was mentally counting to five after he finished speaking, then ten, then fifteen. I realized a quality of stubbornness had arisen in me, even a mild aggression: I am going to sit here without speaking until this person says something! And then it occurred to me for the first time that maybe the reason a patient speaks during a period of unusual silence—a period far longer than would occur in a social conversation—is not that he feels invited or free to do so by the lovely, calm silence, but because he feels anxious!

With mild chagrin, I realized that deliberately leaving a certain amount of silence, while often effective, is a technique. When I say it is effective, I mean that it results in the patient doing something I think he should do, but how do I know that’s really what would be beneficial? Employing this procedure is also about reducing my own anxiety, because, having decided in advance what to do, I don’t have to experience confusion or unease.

Now that I have realized this, I intend to hold my toolkit of techniques much more loosely and to remember the council guideline (we often do council at school) of speaking spontaneously. A healing conversation cannot be forced, but arises from the relationship co-created by myself and the patient, which in turn depends on my willingness to risk authenticity and vulnerability (practiced in an ethical manner). I will try to practice the kind of patience that allows for intuition to arise, and that gives a feeling of aliveness and spaciousness, rather than steely determination. Can I trust my innate wisdom and good heart? Can I trust that the whole universe is permeated with benevolence and regularly offers delightful surprises, including intuitions that arise at just at the right moment?

One Friday evening, Tom, Ann Marie and I saw the second half of Angels in America at Berkeley Rep. Carlos’s niece was again playing the role of the angel. I had to beg Tom not to leave during the first intermission, and really beg him not to leave during the second. I didn’t want to find myself walking alone at 16th and Mission after midnight.

Complaining, Too

In mid-July, I went to a continuing education event called “Cultivating Resilience and Compassion” at UCSF Medical Center, hosted by the Department of Spiritual Care Services. I saw a zillion people I know: fellow CPE students from my own cohort and the ones before and after, my former CPE supervisor and other supervisors, people from County Hospital, and people from my paying job, including my boss.

The first half of the day was led by chaplain Rev. Denah Joseph, the second by Rev. Maureen Jenci Shelton. Denah reminded us of the signs of burnout: exhaustion, numbing / depersonalizing others, impaired sense of engagement, meaning and accomplishment. Resilience is built from self-compassion, pro-social emotions (such as gratitude and optimism), and reflective practice and emotional processing: What did I learn from my experience? What were my intentions? Denah said of her work, “I get more than I give. There’s a generative quality to compassion.” (Someone in the audience raised his hand and said, “I knew this job was dangerous when I took it.”) Someone, maybe Denah, described a cartoon where someone is saying, “I know life is suffering, but isn’t it also complaining?”

Denah stressed the importance of community: of finding one’s people and sharing with them. She said that 75 percent of chaplains are introverts, so this can be a challenge. Introverts tend to process internally, and need to make an effort to talk with others. She said the very most important factor in resilience is positive, supportive and nurturing relationships: stay connected.

There was a lot of merriment during the day. The head of the spiritual care department said that if anyone had a crisis, they could page UCSF’s on-call chaplain, “who will rush to your side and ask, ‘Why did you page me?! You’re surrounded by chaplains.’”

In line for the bathroom, I realized that this event could just as aptly have been called The Comfortable Shoes Fashion Show.

A few days later, I went back to school for just three days, for a calligraphy class taught by the famous Zen circle guy. I actually did not enjoy it that much; I mainly chose it because it fit well into my schedule. It did of course actually apply to chaplaincy, since everything does. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the paper I wrote about the class afterward:

Practicing calligraphy, I can make whatever preparations seem appropriate—set up ink, brush and paper; have an example to look at—but I can’t do anything to affect the actual stroke of the pen or brush until it begins, and even then, it’s largely out of my control. My intention is only a small factor even though “I’m” the one who’s doing it. The stroke will end up being as it is due to how much I have practiced before, the state of my nervous system at that moment, how well rested I am, if I am happy or sad, how warm or cold the room is, who I’m sitting near, what happened earlier that day, and many other things that may seem completely unrelated.

How far does what affects my work, whether art work or chaplain work or cooking or writing, extend? Given that everything is inextricably connected, it is probably literally true that if someone in Japan is having sencha instead of genmaicha with her breakfast, my brush stroke will be different. Can I bring this expansive view to my time with a patient, humbly remembering that there is a tremendous amount I do not and cannot know about her?

I had thought that of course I didn’t need to take a raincoat to New Mexico in July, but it turns out that of course you do have to have your raincoat at that time of year. It did rain; it rains or snows in Santa Fe every month except for May or June.

I sat in the front seat of the shuttle going from the sunport in Albuquerque to Santa Fe, and the driver told me that about the weather. He said that when the humidity drops to a certain level, they close the roads that go up into the mountains in order to prevent fires, and indeed they hadn’t had any yet. He pointed out a bright green expanse in the Sangre de Cristo mountains ahead of us as we traveled north and said that this was an area of aspens, which he said grow after there has been a fire; the fire may have been long in the past. He said the darker green elsewhere was ponderosa pines. He said that when the mountain appears to be brown, people think they’re seeing dirt, but it’s actually trees with bare branches.

One day, I saw a large black beetle inside the building where I was staying, near a door. The next day, there were two of them. And when I came out of the zendo one time and put on my Timberland boots, I felt that there was something in one toe, which proved to be another large black beetle. My roommate, who was fantastic, said, “Hmm, what message are the beetles trying to give you?”

I thought about it and concluded that beetles are quiet little creatures who never undergo a turbulent plane ride to go to another state: they were trying to tell me not to travel. I know this is the correct message because it arose from my own psyche. Another person might see the same beetle and conclude that he should spend more time in nature, or that she should paint her Volkswagen shiny black, and those would be the correct messages for those people.

On the plane ride home, the flight attendant advised us as to where to find the sick bags, something I haven’t heard a flight attendant mention in decades, or maybe ever. The young woman next to me said, “The what?” Honestly, I would rather just be at home with Hammett. Also, I fundamentally don’t like the weather in New Mexico. It’s always either too hot, too cold, too windy or too suddenly wet. (Speaking of complaining.)

Zero Drop

One day at work, I made the mistake of asking a patient a question the answer to which was a detailed description of his near-Whipple surgery. As happens now and then, I began to feel sort of queasy and urgently distressed. (This actually was the first time this has happened since I got this job; it happened two or three times during Clinical Pastoral Education.) I thought I might have to say, “Oh! I just remembered I have to wash my hair,” and leave the room. But instead—I was pleased with how this worked out—I consciously made room for the intense sensations in my own body, and gently directed his story away from the mechanics of his surgery by calling attention to other aspects of his experience, such as his emotions, and, thankfully, he forgot to finish explaining what his surgeon had done.

The shoes I wear for work are Ecco men’s shoes which I have found very comfortable for more than a year, but a few months ago, as I was tromping up and down the stairs at the hospital, I suddenly began to have pain in two of my toes, including a big toe. I consulted my father, who has made quite a study of foot comfort and health—once again, I must remark that my parents, between them, know everything—and he said I might want to try Lems shoes. This stands for Live Easy and Minimal; their shoes are zero drop and have roomy toe boxes. My father, my mother, and at least one of my siblings wear the Lems Primal 2 and love them, so I got a pair. (They run small, so I got one European shoe size larger than the largest European size I have ever worn, and that was perfect.)

They are incredibly comfortable and my toe pain is 98 percent gone. I can feel everything through the soles, which seems like it might cause discomfort, and it still might, but so far, there are no ill effects, and while I’m wearing them, my feet and my whole self feel fantastic. When I was leaving Rainbow recently, a fellow with long blond hair came along and said, “Nice rack!” (He meant my bike rack.) He looked like the type of person that San Francisco used to be crammed with, who now have vanished. It was so striking to see such a person that I thrust out my hand and introduced myself. I wondered who he was, where he lives, what he does. Maybe he just looks like a hippie-anarchist but is actually a venture capitalist or the CEO of a tech company.

I said to him, “I see that you, like myself, are wearing zero-drop shoes!” I added that it seems like I’m in a better mood when I wear my Lems. He agreed enthusiastically. He said, “Yes, I feel grounded, but also whooo!” and here he grinned and gestured toward his head, indicating how it might joyfully float off into space due to the good vibes coming from his feet.

On a beautiful sunny day, I went in a Zipcar to Novato to see Carol-Joy. We had breakfast at Toast; I had huevos rancheros. Then we went to see Ocean’s Eight. We saw the trailer for the new Tom Cruise Mission Impossible film—I’m totally seeing that—and also a trailer for a movie about an army chaplain! I will have to see that, as well. After the movie, we went to her house to play cards, and then back to Toast for dinner. I had a spinach salad and bleu cheese fries. Both were delicious.

Because I’m studying in a Zen context for the next couple of years and having to attend a sesshin yearly, I’ve decided to practice zazen instead of a more Theravadan manner of meditating. As far as I can tell, this mainly means having less focus on an object, and sitting with my eyes open. (Since drafting this post, I’ve decided it means having quite upright posture (which I usually have, anyway), not moving, and being aware that I am sitting. Maybe one big difference is making a point of not moving.) At first, I really didn’t like sitting with my eyes open. I’ve tried it before, and it seemed not special enough: Here I am, sitting on a chair, seeing what’s in front of me. How is this different from any other moment of the day?

I have gradually realized that its very ordinariness is what makes it so powerful. This is more or less what I do the rest of the day, so there is the opportunity while sitting to observe my wish that something more profound or more thrilling or more unusual would happen, and to remind myself that just this is my life.

And then the rest of day, I can practice doing what I did while meditating, which is to be aware that I am present in a body, seeing stuff and hearing stuff—to spend fewer moments lost in thought, which is directly applicable to my work as a chaplain, but also has slowly but surely increased a sense of dazzled wonder: Wow! I see this! I hear this! I am awake! This is my life!