“I do not deserve the plaudits given to me tonight, but I will take them to distribute among the sisters with whom I have worked so many years to make Saint Mary’s Hospital a house of God and a gateway to heaven for his many suffering children.”
~ Sr. Mary Joseph Dempsey
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The other day, a fellow faculty member posted an eloquent commentary on the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk, decrying the hateful responses to that heinous act from some on the political left and lamenting the lack of authentic free speech on so many college campuses.
It’s telling that my colleague felt compelled to remain anonymous out of fear of professional retribution. What a sad commentary on the ideological climate at Saint Mary’s College.
It seems clear to me that the only way things will get better at SMC – the only way to build community, promote the free exchange of ideas, reduce hostility between ideological opponents – is if faculty (and staff and administrators, let alone students) who hold unpopular, inconvenient, or even “unacceptable” views are free to speak up. “We will never be able to solve all the other problems, including the violence problems that people are worried about, if we can’t have a clash of ideas safely and securely,” said Utah’s Governor Cox at a press conference yesterday. “Even especially, especially, those ideas with which you disagree. That’s why this matters so much.”
In other words, we need more speech, not less. Especially at colleges – especially at our college, a Catholic college which, in the words of Pope St. John Paul II, should be rooted in “a common dedication to the truth, a common vision of the dignity of the human person and, ultimately, the person and message of Christ” (ECE 2). The person and message of Christ is about freedom: “For freedom Christ has set us free,” writes St. Paul to the Galatians (5.1). It’s that kind of Christ-centered freedom that fosters a community truly “characterized by mutual respect, sincere dialogue, and protection of the rights of individuals” (ECE 2) – not official pronouncements, trendy workshops, onerous compliance, and self-censorship.
I love my students, and I love accompanying them as they discover and embrace the nursing profession. I want to stay at Saint Mary’s, yet not at the cost of towing the party line and keeping my mouth shut. I love truth and I love my faith more than I love my job. And Charlie Kirk? I don’t have an exhaustive knowledge of his positions and opinions, but it seems like every time I watched one of his videos – the countless videos of him jovially discussing, debating, disagreeing with all comers – I ended up nodding my head in agreement: DEI, LGBTQ+, abortion, you name it. Even the 2nd Amendment.
Still, his positions and opinions are not the point. The real point – and one of the many reasons why Kirk will be so missed – was the simple fact that he was having those friendly debates in the first place. And so the best way of honoring his memory and legacy, I think, is to carry on in the same vein – especially at Saint Mary’s. “We will not promise you happiness. We will not wish you security,” wrote Sister Madeleva. “For we remember that ‘security is mortal’s chiefest enemy.’ And we know that you can be secure only when you can stand everything that can happen to you. If your school has prepared you for this, it has been a good school.”
Let it be so.
“Real carnivals might involve riotous celebration, but they’re also tinged with sadness.”
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“My dear God, how stupid we people are until You give us something. Even in praying it is You who have to pray in us.”
~ Flannery O’Connor
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“I could have done more. This regret will follow me to my death…. Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.”
~ Irena Sendler
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“Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that he who give himself totally to you may receive you totally.”
~ St. Francis of Assisi
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The following is adapted from a faculty reflection delivered at the Saint Mary’s College Pinning ceremony on May 17, 2024.
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Congratulations, class of 2024 nursing graduates! You made it!
Remember when I got to address you at your White Coat ceremony? Your first clinical courses were just under way, and maybe you were wondering if you’d survive until this day.
But you did! All the late-night study sessions and early clinicals, so many exams and papers, the good times and the not so good times, but now the joy – and relief – of here and now. You made it indeed! Praise God!
It’s a tremendous honor to be addressing you as a class today – I am truly grateful. Before I begin, I want to make a quick shout out to Morgan’s Grandpa Bob, who goes to my parish. I know his steadfast daily prayers supported his granddaughter and, by extension, all of us these past years – me included! Many thanks, Bob – and that goes for everybody here who has been supporting and praying for these graduates – and Saint Mary’s – over the years.
“These graduates.” “These graduates.” It’s so funny to hear myself saying those words with reference to you because wasn’t it just yesterday we were in med-surg together? Back then, your anxieties about starting actual patient care were more than matched by my anxieties as the new faculty guy.
And, although I was new to the faculty, I wasn’t new to teaching, and I came here with 18 years of idiosyncrasies and classroom quirks. One of those quirks you picked up on right away: “But I digress.” It’s a catch phrase – almost a tic – that I latched onto at some point. My wife thinks I stole it from a priest friend of ours in Chicago…but I digress.
There it is! And it’s a mainstay in class, as you know, a regular interjection that marks the drift of my lectures awayfrom the nurse-y subject at hand – pathophysiology, nursing interventions – away from stuff like that to whatever side topic my meandering sub-conscious wanders into.
Maybe a classic movie or some event in the news; perhaps a theological observation or some anecdote about my adventures in lawncare. Often it was something about my family. Often it involved tears.
I wonder: How often did you say to yourself, “Oh, no. Here he goes, off on some tangent again!” I dunno’, but it seemed like most of you didn’t mind most the time. You laughed at it, even expected it, even celebrated it! Ella even made “I digress” stickers for our clipboards and laptops.
Basically “I digress” became a meme of sorts, but, you know, there’s some intentionality behind the joke. Digressions expand the context of what’s under consideration, and it’s one of the big differences between a liberal arts college and a trade school.
Think of it in terms of another familiar phrase of mine: In five years. “In five years,” you’ve heard me say, “nobody will care what grade you got” – on a quiz, on an exam. “What they will care about,” I continue,“is the RN on your badge and the smile on your face.”
It’s true! In five years, do you really think anybody will ask about your GPA when you’re about to give a shot or insert a catheter? Of course not! There’s the RN badge – a sign of the state’s confidence in your knowledge and skills; andthere’s the smile – a sign of your heart, a sign of your willingness to cheerfully serve, even if you’re not feeling all that cheerful at the moment.
You see, that’s the kind of thing that makes nursing school – at least this nursing school – so unusual: It’s not about you knowing everything by the time you graduate – nobody does! There’s always more to learn – always.
Instead, it’s about becoming someone: the kind of someone who not only gets the job of nursing done – the pills, the plumbing, the pest control – but also pours herself out for those she’s caring for.
Consider that passage from Isaiah (61.1-4) that Emma just read. The Prophet describes what the Lord has done for him(and by extension, caregivers like us) – that he and we have been anointed by God to do good things for others: to heal broken hearts, to replace mourning with gladness, to proclaim liberty and release and God’s favor. That’s a pretty decent description of what we try to do beyond our assessments, med passes, and charting.
To outsiders, maybe nursing is mainly about those latter things – the tasks, in other words, the product and the “customer service.” Sure, let ‘em think that’s what it’s all about, and, make no mistake, we do have to provide those things efficiently and effectively.
Yet, there’s a personal, humane side of nursing that doesn’t fit neatly into business models and spreadsheets. And because of that, it can be dismissed as extra, even irrelevant – a “digression,” if you will, from what really matters to the bottom line.
My commission to you, my beloved students, my soon-to-be colleagues – my charge to you is this: Digress anyway. Digress with abandon. Digress in your caring and comforting, listening and loving, soothing and sacrificing. There’s a hurting world out there that needs you to digress in this way. And you won’t regret it. Promise.
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“Valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different.” (Laudato si #155).
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“Why do we educate our daughters? Briefly we educate them for exactly the reason for which God made them: to know, to love, to serve, to glorify Him now and forever.”
~ Sr. M. Madeleva Wolff, CSC
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New nurses tend to focus on getting their tasks done – grabbing a cart for themselves, that is. Eventually, as they get more comfortable and confident in their skills and routines, they’ll begin grabbing carts for others – helping out nurses with busy patient assignments, for example, or going beyond the minimum in their bedside care.
But then, some nurses go even further: They manifest a generosity of spirit and a charitable demeanor that permeates all their interactions with others.
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God-Haunted Lunatic 