The End of CIMT

Well, we have completed Phase 0.

No, that is not a typo. The first portion of the chaplain school, which is known as CIMT (I think it stands for "Chaplain Initial Military Training"), is also called "Phase zero."

No matter what it is called, we're done! We are now onto Phase 1!

The final few days of CIMT were fairly busy. We all still find ourselves losing track of how long ago something occurred. For example, we will have conversations about the victory tower, and we cannot remember if it was one week or two weeks ago.

On the 28th I went to see a physical therapist about my right elbow. Since the victory tower it has been "popping" every so often. The therapist thought that it might be tendinitis. I've been following his instructions but it has not improved, so I will probably go to sick call on Tuesday.

We have started sharing our "sacred communication labs." These are basically practice labs in which a student puts together a church service according to a specific scenario, and with an assigned text. The scenario is that you are with a battalion deployed to Iraq and you are halfway through the 12 months that you are scheduled to be there. Everyone has done a really good job thus far.

We also covered using the Myers Briggs Temperament Indicator. I am an ESTJ which means according to some of the leaders of this program, that I am perfectly happy in my "list-laden life." I have to say that I agree with that because I generally have at least one list going all of the time.

Thursday we focused on pluralism and chaplain regulations. Although some may get nervous around the term "pluralism," what it means in the Army is that we as chaplains we work to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to worship in their style and tradition, as much as possible. One of our instructors put it this way, part of why we are here is to prohibit people from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

Finally, on Friday we had a bit of a graduation ceremony that including the donning of our berets. The black beret is standard headwear when you are at a garrison. We have been wearing patrol caps until now. I kind of prefer the patrol caps, but the berets do look nice.

So, with the beginning of Phase 1 we lose some students who were here just for CIMT (keep in touch everyone), and gain a few new students. We also launch into a lot of new projects, classroom work, and papers. Should be a great learning environment.

Blessings.