St. Alban's, Ramstein..."Go Into the World!"

Notebook

When I get back at 815 I'm glad to be home but I worry the episcopacy will be swallowed up in the admin of the office environment. Don't get me wrong the colleagues here are wonderful but we get our sustenance from the field and so the lasting memory of last Sunday with the St. Alban's congregation at Ramstein AFB in Germany means a lot.

We dedicated the eucharist to Air Force Chaplain Rich and Gina Crozier who are currently assigned there, to Clayton Poteat who was confirmed that day, and to the memory of Alice Phillips Humphreys whose memorial service was the day before. What I wrote in this column about the indomitable spirit of All Saints, Heidelberg counts for St. Alban's, Ramstein too. The deployments of chaplains to Iraq while assigned to Ramstein puts everyone on edge yet they carry on even when coffee hour has to be "re-relocated" to a computer room and not in the much promised and overdue chapel annex. You can't say these folks aren't flexible.

Most stirring is Tonya Parham's performance in her role as lay deacon. With a compact build and forthright personality to match, this longtime member of the congregation strides down the aisle after the service exhorting everyone with, "Let us go into the world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit!"

If she doesn't get, "Thanks be to God!" as a robust reply she will repeat it as often as it takes so you better be ready the first time. Tonya has found her niche but so has St. Alban's as it rises to meet her call. It takes a resilient bunch to continue to go forth into a world filled with the vagaries they face. Thanks be to God!

In other news...I received an update from Retired Navy Chaplain Keith Adams yesterday. He's doing well after his lung surgery and said, "I'm breathing much better!" They drained considerable fluid from his chest cavity. The doctors have ruled out cancer and are still compiling data to determine a best course of action for treatment.

It is always fun to see Alice Harshey-Bischoff our Episcopal Youth Coordinator in Europe. She really enabled the youth program during our chaplains' conference at the Turm Hotel. Her sister, Ellen Johnson, has a bright outlook despite a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Please pray for her, husband Bob, and their fourteen year-old daughter, Rhea.

Today Andrew Hayler is sworn in as a Navy chaplain. After his 10 week schooling in Newport, R.I., he will assigned to the USS Iwo Jima. Welcome to the family, Andrew!

After Visiting Landstuhl Hospital; It's Never the Same

Notebook
Lundstuhl, Germany

It's not the 5 miles of hallway, or the 716 patients they see a month, or the 72 hour turn-around in this military hospital which distinguishes it. It is bed after bed of the young people who are immobile--and maybe for life--with some astounding wounds. I say "astounding" because many of them should be dead but because of the miracle, or curse...now I'm not sure anymore, of medical science they have survived these high trauma wounds. One of the seven I visited had had schrapnel pass completely through his brain and they are keeping him sedated so the swelling would go down. His wife who had rushed to be at his bedside with their two small children from the States didn't know whether he would live past the 72 hour pass through to Bethesda Navy Hospital in Maryland.

Another soldier was the only one of five in his Humvee who survived an IED; naturally he ignores his upper torso wounds and sits, occasionally shuddering, in the chair next to his bed. He is one brave man not for what he has done but for what he will yet undergo during a lifetime of recollection.

One soldier's family had to come back from a return flight they had already boarded because his blood pressure was dropping so perilously. Technology holds them together with the thinnest thread.

And I wonder what are we putting these young ones through?