Items

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  Christmas Unbounded

  It occurred to me that the deprivations of the pandemic had some similarities to deprivations in Russia and even to the deprivations in first-century Bethlehem.
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  Merry Covid Christmas, God! A Chaplain's Lament

  I am a hospital staff chaplain. Last Monday (12/7) we had a very difficult day when four patients on the ICU with Covid-19 were removed from their ventilators and died minutes later. Just a couple family members of each patient were allowed to come see their loved one (per hospital protocol) before they were removed from the vents. This was the worse day yet for our nurses and other colleagues on the ICU since the pandemic started. This lament was the result of one: an assignment for a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education that I am currently taking in which I read it to the class on Thursday and they loved it. And two: the deaths on the ICU that Monday and the experience I had in a local store the next. And I suppose a response so far to the pandemic through my eyes as a hospital chaplain who is trying to serve.
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  Journal of the COVID Year

  The author wrote this poem almost daily during the early days of the pandemic, and it expresses that painful reality.