Everything No One Ever Told You About CPE...

People here at Luther always talk knowingly about CPE. I mentioned in a previous posting how many warn against fulfilling this requirement during the semester. "CPE is really tough" "All I can say is CPE is intense." "So, you're doing CPE ? How are you?" Why are people so unable to articulate the intensity, struggle and growth of CPE? I have no idea, but for my sake and those to come after me I will attempt to concisely communicate the intensity of Clinical Pastoral Education.

CPE is both tough and intense. (Now you know everything I knew four weeks ago). One loses the control and predictability of the classroom and many other types of learning experiences. Chaplains are being thrown in as a pastoral presence to those in great need. As such, they are likely neither ready for, nor intelligibly (or emotionally) prepared to deal with such situations . This experience can be an accomplishment, a big fat failure, or somewhere in the middle. At the same time, group work with other chaplains brings out all kinds of parties I don't want to attend (you can decide for yourself). As a pretty well-put-together and grounded young woman (that is a self assessment-possibly way off), I was not really worried about digging up those "skeletons" and modeling them for my group mates.

My group members see plainly that which I hate most about myself and the ways I most often fail. They bring it up. It is terribly uncomfortable. I cry. We talk about it. We move on - doing it to someone else. This is how we learn and grow. We look at our enneagram results and use them to explain the worst aspects about ourselves. So, hopefully now you understand in part how the emotional toil of pastoral care and counseling and deep group reflection are so intense, as they say.




(notice how Feist discusses her enneagramatic wings)