I interviewed Kathleen Ennis-Durstine on Good Friday of Holy Week. Kathleen is ordained in the UCC and serves as senior chaplain at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C. I met Kathleen in 1998 while I was interviewing for Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Programs in Washington, D.C. I was still in my last year at Union but Bob and I knew we would be moving down to D.C. post Columbia and Union graduations. I needed and wanted to do CPE so I started the interview process in January. I had two final face-to-face interviews, one at the Washington Hospital Center with Don Clem and one with Kathleen at Children's. I clearly remember my interview with Kathleen, feeling really connected to her plus her theology and view of chaplaincy. During our interview, she gave me a tour of Children's and I remember walking through one of the ICU's, seeing the dark cubicles with machines and having a flash back to my car accident in first grade. I hadn't seen one of those "dark cubbies" since one was my home for two weeks post-accident.

While I felt a pull to be with Kathleen at Children's, I decided to do CPE at the Washington Hospital Center with Don Clem, a Presbyterian pastor and the most incredible CPE supervisor ever. I had an amazing experience, even running out of the hospital on one Friday afternoon because I was shaken to my core with my greatest fear-- dying alone. Early on in CPE, one of my peers asked me where I had interviewed. I said Washington Hospital Center and Children's. My peer said, "You know Children's has one of the hardest programs to get into in the country. Why didn't you go there?" Oops.

I loved my experience at the Washington Hospital Center, so much so I planned on doing a year long residency program until I got my job at Pilgrims.

Over these past ten years, I have stayed connected to Kathleen when I've needed insight in how to handle experiences of grief. She also did this incredible two week series on children and grief at Pilgrims several years ago.

Why have I stayed connected? Children's is a deep, powerful place where the human condition seems most palpable-- joy intersects with suffering. Just walking into Children's takes my breath away--watching kids and their parents/caregivers walk through the hallways. Kids don't come to Children's for well visits. This is a place for really, really sick kids. The complexity of suffering, fairness, healing and faith collide within the walls of the hospital. Kathleen is present with children and youth when their cells, blood, skin, neurons, arms, legs, brain, heart, organs, emotions all need the presence of a chaplain. Humans so on the fringe of life and death. Children's challenges all the "rules" of faith: rational, intellecutally-based, linear theology and ethics don't cut it in a place where lives are at stake. It's a place where joy is felt with something that may seem as insignificant as a child pee'ing (shows the body is functioning) and grief is mind numbing like the death of a child. Now that I am a parent, if we were ever at Children's I would want my kids to have Kathleen as their chaplain.

I've thought that if/when I take a sabbatical I would love to do two months of chaplaincy at Children's with the supervision of Kathleen then take a a month to decompress with some therapy and spiritual direction and a hell of a lot of yoga.