Kiss your campus nurse...after you wash your mouth out with soap, or, part I of II regarding health care at seminary (this one's good)

"The LORD said to Moses, Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the cars with which you are playing on top of the table, and go. I will be standing there in front of you in Room 100 of Gullixson Hall. Strike the table with your lip, and blood will gush out of it, so that you may water the carpet with blood.' Moses did so in the sight of the elders." ~Exodus 17:5,6 (NRSPEVT)

Something good about Luther Seminary volume XIV: The Parish Nurse

Today during discipleship group my son Toby decided to leap from the chair upon which he was seated playing with cars and double smacked his head. The latter contact was a harmless bonk on the back of the head delivered by the floor. The first, however was one of dramatic proportions. The edge of the table greeted Toby's lower lip with a profound firmness and gashed him open. Blood began pouring out (as it does when an injury occurs on the head, where much blood flows) and his cries of injustice went up to the silent skies. I applied several tissues to soak up the blood and left the Discipleship Group meeting I was in. Finding ourselves outside of Gullixson Hall with excess blood on hand we were not sure of our next step.

Until...we remembered the office of the Parish Nurse located conveniently on the first floor of Bockman Hall. Aha, to the nurse we went, seeking empathy, advice, and a bandage (preferably one featuring Bruce, the recovering fish eater on Pixar/Disney's motion picture release, "Finding Nemo").

And there she was, the cracked door of her office shining forth, like the exalted Christ at the Transfiguration, Karen Treat. As the Luther Seminary website will tell you, "The Parish Nurse Ministry at Luther Seminary is a holistic approach to health care, bringing together aspects of faith and health through education, counseling and assisting members of the seminary community with health care choices." Karen wisely directed us to Toby's health care provider for stitches, blessed us with bandages, and wished us well.

We did as instructed and now Toby is sportin' his first soul patch, two slender, black fishing lines holding his skin together. The Parish Nurse here does much more (e.g. provide guidance for clinically obese persons such as myself to avoid 42 year old angioplasty) but today her simple presence and guidance helped out a couple bloody-shirt wearing dudes.

If you see Toby around in the next week be sure to give him respect for enduring novacane in the lip and fishooks through his foreskin (I mean the skin that enters a room first, the chin). And give thanks to God for the seminary's Parish Nurse.