Anderson, South Carolina
In many indigenous North American traditions it was common practice to thank an animal for making the supreme sacrifice of its body so that members of the tribe could have sustenance, even life, for another few days. Particularly notable was the extreme care then given to ensuring none of the animal’s substance was wasted. The consumption of resources exactly matched needs. Animals were not over hunted and people didn’t waste or horde. There was no recreational hunting of life forms just for target practice or sport. Animals were not stuffed and mounted on walls as trophies. A sacred view of the world and its living beings precluded such a trivialized treatment of our world.
In the early 16th century the ability to present copious amounts of food to guests was considered a powerful measure of one’s wealth and social standing. Henry the VIII wasted no time in having an extension of elaborate kitchens built at Hampton Court just for that purpose. Fifty rooms of some 36,000 square feet employing 200 people processed an inconceivable amount of provisions. Vast amounts of food and large stands of trees were consumed to prepare epic banquets for the 1,000 plus that needed to be impressed. The largest of several bakery ovens was more than twelve feet in diameter.
According to records in the Eltham ordinances, “for a first remove, the kitchens served up 15 dishes from a choice of bread and soup, beef, venison, red deer, mutton, swan (alternating with goose or stork), capon, coney and carp. The remove was completed with a custard or fritters. This was followed by the second remove of nine dishes. These were composed of jelly, spiced wine and almond cream, followed by a selection from practically every bird in the sky - pheasants, herons, bitterns, shovelards, partridges, quails, cocks, plovers, gulls, pigeons, larks, pullets, and chickens. To this was added lamb, kid, rabbit, venison, and tarts. Supper was a variation on dinner, with the addition of a blancmange pudding, butter, eggs and perhaps quinces or pippins in season.”
In the northern latitudes of North America among the First Peoples, the ceremonial giving of lavish meals and gifts became so problematic that it was officially outlawed in Canada in 1885 and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful and unproductive. People would spend themselves into bankruptcy in order put on what was known as a potlatch. These vast multi-day frenzies of giving easily bankrupted families.
Some groups used the potlatch as an arena in which highly competitive contests of status took place. In some cases, goods were actually destroyed after being received instead of being given away. Sponsors of a potlatch gave away many useful items such as food, blankets, worked ornamental mediums of exchange called "coppers", and many other various items. In return, they earned prestige. To give a potlatch enhanced one’s reputation and validated social rank, the rank and requisite potlatch being proportional, both for the host and for the recipients by the gifts exchanged. Prestige increased with the lavishness of the potlatch, with the value of the goods given away in it. One could buy into community acceptance.
Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona's Bureau of Applied Research Anthropology conducted an eight-year USDA funded study of food waste. He followed food from farms to retailers and into the mouths and trash cans of Americans. He estimates Americans are throwing out more than $100 billion in food each year and that 15% of food is never opened or even touched. 40% of all food produced in the United States is never eaten, amounting to a staggering 29 million tons per year. The study found food waste in fast food restaurants runs as high as 40%. Kevin D. Hall and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Biological Modeling, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, estimate that U.S. food waste accounts for one quarter of all fresh water consumption and 300 million barrels of oil per year. In the United Kingdom a recent estimate suggests 6.7 million tons of purchased and edible food is wasted each year.
It has become a point of competition in restaurants to offer outlandish portions, resulting in much plate waste. Restaurants’ massive portions fill their large plates, our stomachs, and then their dumpsters. Every day American restaurants throw out 6,000 tons of prepared foods. Ever wonder what happens to all that steaming scrumptious aromatic food still on those massive all-you-can-eat feeding troughs five minutes before closing time? Five minutes after closing it will go into a locked dumpster. We don’t want to risk a homeless person looking in it for something to eat on a winter night and then suing the establishment for an upset tummy. 17% of solid waste in landfills consists of perfectly good food.
Non-profit organizations in recent years often promote themselves by putting out expansive larders. The waste I have seen at these events is sometimes stunning. I was at a reception last week. The caterer had set up an entire smoked pig containing about ninety pounds of chopped BBQ as part of an African emphasis month beginning here in town. The patrons were put off by seeing the source of their meat. The result was seventy pounds of very finely prepared meat being left behind.
I made a slightly tentative query about the fate of this meat. I was told it was five minutes from the trash. Could I have it? The caterer was absolutely elated that someone wanted it. We ended up loading the whole critter into a truck for the night - one benefit of cold winter temperatures. The large group medical that sponsored the event is hardly thinking about caring for food and its proper use. I think about it all the time. I’ve seen six year old boys in Haiti weighing nineteen pounds. I wondered about a pig being raised to simply be discarded, no thought being given to his ultimate sacrifice. I wondered about how well those boys were going to do in school, if they ever got there.
Are we doing the next right thing with the right attitude if our actions cause our landfills to be clogged with the life substance that should be going to little boys in Haiti or perhaps those on the other side of our streets? Does it create community for us to do as the First Peoples did in their potlatches; receive something of great value and then destroy it rather than caring for it and giving it to someone else in dire need?
What’s for dinner? A lot of Haitians would love to know?
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Moving Ahead in Cange 1-16-10
Consolidated Field Reports
Anderson, South Carolina
I heard from Cange twice today. It would seem that people are already showing up in substantial numbers. The church has been made into general wards and the school is closed and it has been proposed to adapt it as a post-op recovery facility. Fifty orthopedic cases are expected almost at once. It is within a hundred yards of the hospital and will work rather well for this. It would seem a very different kind of learning is going to take place for a good while.
Our region (Cange) of Haiti is probably going to become ever more important as people figure out we have a fine intact hospital with intact air conditioned operating rooms, good staffing, and supplies at present. People and resources are getting in through the back door via the Dominican Republic. Two orthopedic surgeons are en rout this way. I would think they might be on site sometime Saturday night or early Sunday. The port and air field at PAP are totally clogged up.
I specifically had asked about the infrastructure in Cange. The dam and extensive staircase down to it are intact. The water turbine is operating and the roadside pipes are intact. At present there is good water available. The storage cisterns appear to be in good condition. The art center does have some ‘ominous’ cracks in it. I was not told if there was any structural risk associated with these. The bridges at Mirablais midway between Cange and Port au Prince are apparently useable. This is all important as that road is the national Highway #3 and is going to be most strategic now.
Father Lefontant’s house in PAP is still standing but not considered safe. He and Mamito were sleeping outdoors but both have made it back to Cange.
The accountant Poteau in Cange lost his sister. Willie (the Cange computer guru) lost his uncle, the one who saw him through university and if read right all his children were lost. Dr. Thierry lost his aunt & uncle and the little cousin is being treated in Cange.
It is suggested by some of those in Cange that Partners in Health is getting wide support for national level response and that support of the Bread and Water campaign through the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina is perhaps most needed. Intermediate and long term, the patency of the water infrastructure in Cange is going to be mission critical to the sustaining of operations in the hospital compound. The already very fragile water infrastructure is now at increased risk due to the recent geological insults and to the increasing demands that will come from the influx of people from Port au Prince. The Bread and Water initiative is intended to replumb the entirety of Cange including a new dam (already in place), re-lay high pressure pipe from a new pump house to the town some eight hundred feet above and a mile behind the dam. New cisterns and eight public taps are included in the project. This process needs to be fast-tracked to an earlier completion to insure safe water for the ten thousand or more present at and around the hospital compound. Without water, everything else is moot.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Checks (marked Bread and Water - Cange Rescue) can be sent to:
The Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina
115 Marion Street
Columbia, South Carolina 29201
One can obtain a view of the ground level conditions in Haiti at EDUSC.org
Anderson, South Carolina
I heard from Cange twice today. It would seem that people are already showing up in substantial numbers. The church has been made into general wards and the school is closed and it has been proposed to adapt it as a post-op recovery facility. Fifty orthopedic cases are expected almost at once. It is within a hundred yards of the hospital and will work rather well for this. It would seem a very different kind of learning is going to take place for a good while.
Our region (Cange) of Haiti is probably going to become ever more important as people figure out we have a fine intact hospital with intact air conditioned operating rooms, good staffing, and supplies at present. People and resources are getting in through the back door via the Dominican Republic. Two orthopedic surgeons are en rout this way. I would think they might be on site sometime Saturday night or early Sunday. The port and air field at PAP are totally clogged up.
I specifically had asked about the infrastructure in Cange. The dam and extensive staircase down to it are intact. The water turbine is operating and the roadside pipes are intact. At present there is good water available. The storage cisterns appear to be in good condition. The art center does have some ‘ominous’ cracks in it. I was not told if there was any structural risk associated with these. The bridges at Mirablais midway between Cange and Port au Prince are apparently useable. This is all important as that road is the national Highway #3 and is going to be most strategic now.
Father Lefontant’s house in PAP is still standing but not considered safe. He and Mamito were sleeping outdoors but both have made it back to Cange.
The accountant Poteau in Cange lost his sister. Willie (the Cange computer guru) lost his uncle, the one who saw him through university and if read right all his children were lost. Dr. Thierry lost his aunt & uncle and the little cousin is being treated in Cange.
It is suggested by some of those in Cange that Partners in Health is getting wide support for national level response and that support of the Bread and Water campaign through the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina is perhaps most needed. Intermediate and long term, the patency of the water infrastructure in Cange is going to be mission critical to the sustaining of operations in the hospital compound. The already very fragile water infrastructure is now at increased risk due to the recent geological insults and to the increasing demands that will come from the influx of people from Port au Prince. The Bread and Water initiative is intended to replumb the entirety of Cange including a new dam (already in place), re-lay high pressure pipe from a new pump house to the town some eight hundred feet above and a mile behind the dam. New cisterns and eight public taps are included in the project. This process needs to be fast-tracked to an earlier completion to insure safe water for the ten thousand or more present at and around the hospital compound. Without water, everything else is moot.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Checks (marked Bread and Water - Cange Rescue) can be sent to:
The Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina
115 Marion Street
Columbia, South Carolina 29201
One can obtain a view of the ground level conditions in Haiti at EDUSC.org
Haiti - A Happy Remembrance 1-15-10
Anderson, South Carolina
One of my happiest memories in Port au Prince occurred while wandering in the school yard at the Episcopal School attached to La Cathedrale De La Sainte Trinite. There the happy cacophony of childish laughter bounced off the walls of the courtyard as hundreds of children pranced about in their clean crisp uniforms of emerald green, so full of hope and promise. That such an oasis could exist in the surrounding squalor was a testament of the power of faith and vision. The school with its children and the cathedral with its magnificent artwork are total losses. Enjoy these images below of what once was so promising in a land of dark hopelessness. You don’t want to see what is there now.
A casualty number being floated by a senior senator in Port au Prince is 500,000 dead. If this number holds, we will have just witnessed one of the all-time disasters anyplace anytime in our world history. What is important is that the world now mounts an all-time compassionate response to a nation that has lived in misery for nearly the whole of its existence.
I have just heard from Jackie at the Zanmi Lasante facility that the fine large church there in Cange has been made into a hospital. The multi-building hospital in Cange survived and is immediately adjacent to the large church. This grand facility with its beautiful botanical plantings will be an oasis for those able to make it there from Port au Prince. The gracious volunteers working there have been able to provide bed covers and even baths for the wounded that have already arrived. Great work by Sarah Marsh (midwife), Drs. Koji and Thierry and a visiting surgeon who got caught by the disaster, and Dr. Lisbet have enabled a lifesaving hand to be offered to the desperate who have already arrived at the gate, which is open to all who come. Jackie, who normally runs the Artisan Center, teaches French, and does much hospitality work for visitors to Cange, has taken on another kind of hospitality work of the highest order. As she puts it “I’ve taken up bedpan duty.” There is no better place in the country for people to go for healing than Cange. Along with medicine they will get a message of hope for their souls.
One of my happiest memories in Port au Prince occurred while wandering in the school yard at the Episcopal School attached to La Cathedrale De La Sainte Trinite. There the happy cacophony of childish laughter bounced off the walls of the courtyard as hundreds of children pranced about in their clean crisp uniforms of emerald green, so full of hope and promise. That such an oasis could exist in the surrounding squalor was a testament of the power of faith and vision. The school with its children and the cathedral with its magnificent artwork are total losses. Enjoy these images below of what once was so promising in a land of dark hopelessness. You don’t want to see what is there now.
A casualty number being floated by a senior senator in Port au Prince is 500,000 dead. If this number holds, we will have just witnessed one of the all-time disasters anyplace anytime in our world history. What is important is that the world now mounts an all-time compassionate response to a nation that has lived in misery for nearly the whole of its existence.
I have just heard from Jackie at the Zanmi Lasante facility that the fine large church there in Cange has been made into a hospital. The multi-building hospital in Cange survived and is immediately adjacent to the large church. This grand facility with its beautiful botanical plantings will be an oasis for those able to make it there from Port au Prince. The gracious volunteers working there have been able to provide bed covers and even baths for the wounded that have already arrived. Great work by Sarah Marsh (midwife), Drs. Koji and Thierry and a visiting surgeon who got caught by the disaster, and Dr. Lisbet have enabled a lifesaving hand to be offered to the desperate who have already arrived at the gate, which is open to all who come. Jackie, who normally runs the Artisan Center, teaches French, and does much hospitality work for visitors to Cange, has taken on another kind of hospitality work of the highest order. As she puts it “I’ve taken up bedpan duty.” There is no better place in the country for people to go for healing than Cange. Along with medicine they will get a message of hope for their souls.
Community - Do We Find it on Pandora? 1-15-10
Planet Earth
James Cameron’s “Avatar” has in less than a month become the highest grossing film of all time, already clearing $1.3 billion. Part of what has made this film so popular, so utterly captivating, is the quality of the graphics that depict a sublimely beautiful alien world. Cameron has created a virtual world that leaves many viewers despairing when they take off their 3D glasses and return to their own reality - suddenly seen as gray and meaningless. The spectacular success of the film has led to a phenomenon that says much about our world outside the movie house.
“When I woke up this morning after watching “Avatar” for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning.” In a single forum, just one of many, more than one thousand viewers cited what is being called “Post Avatar Depression.” Movie goers are experiencing profound feelings of depression, sadness, meaninglessness, even suicidal ideations. Psychotherapists say the frequency of episodes of depression arising after viewing the film are sufficient to merit concern and to label this as a phenomenon.
For certain, Cameron is not the culprit here. He has brought cinematography to a new level of excellence. What he has unwittingly done is shine a strong light on the true substance of life here on Earth. By creating a believable world of stunning beauty and relational abundance, he has perhaps unintentionally reminded many viewers that they ‘need to get a life,’ here on earth.
We live in a technology-driven era in which true community is eroding. We live in our separate houses with out broadband access and remote-controlled garage door openers. So many of us hide in our forums, playing games with faceless individuals in virtual game rooms. We don’t even know the names of the people living in the houses next to us. Forty years ago the people living in this house set up tables every Sunday in the unfinished basement and the whole street showed up for Sunday dinner. Today the basement is finished, with a high tech theater and broadband access. I’ve never been able to pry loose the neighbors from their cyber-dens to have life outside of the theater or virtual game rooms, to come for Sunday dinner. For the most part, I don’t even know their names. The ones I once knew have passed on or moved on.
One does not have to be an astute observer to see that we have legions of the next generations that struggle with relational and affective skills, yet have a powerful command of technology. Wi-fi’ed they can compete on virtual battlefields with the best of them in virtual worlds of their own making. Cameron just had a whole lot more money and did it a whole lot better. When Cameron’s game is over, reality sets in a bit harder and for some it is very depressing.
“I just watched avatar a few weeks ago and I'm feeling depressed and sad. It's like I want to reach out and be in Pandora. I'd do anything to be in Pandora. I've tried so hard to dream about me being on Pandora but it hasn't worked.”
“Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide, thinking that if I do it, I will be re-birthed in a world similar to Pandora and then everything is the same as in 'Avatar.”
"Because, at this point, there isn't pretty much anything else that can be done. Until the release of DVD/BluRay. But even that won't take away all of the depression. Because you know you can never actually go to Pandora, as it exists only in our imagination."
For a very long time we have been collectively headed for an existential crisis of meaning. Some of us seem to be getting there sooner than others. Our secular materialism has left us in a vacuum, devoid of meaning or purpose. There seems little substance to life beyond the next release of our favorite virtual game and that substance lasts about as long as it takes to peel the shrink wrap off the disk. We have seen ever-increasing rates of suicide in those individuals who have the most options before them in terms of time, health, and opportunity.
Stacy Kaiser, a psychotherapist, suggests “people are forced to look at what is going on in their own lives. If it isn’t the euphoric dream they were hoping for, they end up depressed.” For several generations there has been an increasing preoccupation with self fulfillment and self-gratification. When we don’t get those things we want or are reminded of what we don’t have, we can get into a major, even dangerous funk. Kaiser also points out this phenomenon is not about the film. Follow up phone calls to a number of those in the forum found they were already living lonely, often disenfranchised lives.
One viewer was more balanced. Incredulous that a film could cause depression he said, “You need to go back and revaluate what is important in life to you, go back to the basics of family and other things.” This viewer offers the most helpful advice. Only by honest evaluation of our own lives, can we hope to chart a course that will lead us to a life that has great value and meaning, even here on planet earth.
There are people who never will make it to Pandora, yet are living huge authentic and fulfilling lives, here on Earth. There are eighty-year old ex-pat widows on the ground in Haiti making a difference in the midst of a vast national tragedy. There are single mothers here making it possible for their children to reach for their dreams. Under-paid teachers in American ghettoes find reward in showing children they can do anything they set their minds to. Single women are out there in the African bush doing surgery and improving hundreds of lives. A single woman is living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea with no other Caucasians within a hundred miles, single handedly translating the Bible.
Come on guys, perhaps it is time to power down the computer and get a life, here on earth.
“As a man thinketh, so is he.”
James Cameron’s “Avatar” has in less than a month become the highest grossing film of all time, already clearing $1.3 billion. Part of what has made this film so popular, so utterly captivating, is the quality of the graphics that depict a sublimely beautiful alien world. Cameron has created a virtual world that leaves many viewers despairing when they take off their 3D glasses and return to their own reality - suddenly seen as gray and meaningless. The spectacular success of the film has led to a phenomenon that says much about our world outside the movie house.
“When I woke up this morning after watching “Avatar” for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning.” In a single forum, just one of many, more than one thousand viewers cited what is being called “Post Avatar Depression.” Movie goers are experiencing profound feelings of depression, sadness, meaninglessness, even suicidal ideations. Psychotherapists say the frequency of episodes of depression arising after viewing the film are sufficient to merit concern and to label this as a phenomenon.
For certain, Cameron is not the culprit here. He has brought cinematography to a new level of excellence. What he has unwittingly done is shine a strong light on the true substance of life here on Earth. By creating a believable world of stunning beauty and relational abundance, he has perhaps unintentionally reminded many viewers that they ‘need to get a life,’ here on earth.
We live in a technology-driven era in which true community is eroding. We live in our separate houses with out broadband access and remote-controlled garage door openers. So many of us hide in our forums, playing games with faceless individuals in virtual game rooms. We don’t even know the names of the people living in the houses next to us. Forty years ago the people living in this house set up tables every Sunday in the unfinished basement and the whole street showed up for Sunday dinner. Today the basement is finished, with a high tech theater and broadband access. I’ve never been able to pry loose the neighbors from their cyber-dens to have life outside of the theater or virtual game rooms, to come for Sunday dinner. For the most part, I don’t even know their names. The ones I once knew have passed on or moved on.
One does not have to be an astute observer to see that we have legions of the next generations that struggle with relational and affective skills, yet have a powerful command of technology. Wi-fi’ed they can compete on virtual battlefields with the best of them in virtual worlds of their own making. Cameron just had a whole lot more money and did it a whole lot better. When Cameron’s game is over, reality sets in a bit harder and for some it is very depressing.
“I just watched avatar a few weeks ago and I'm feeling depressed and sad. It's like I want to reach out and be in Pandora. I'd do anything to be in Pandora. I've tried so hard to dream about me being on Pandora but it hasn't worked.”
“Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide, thinking that if I do it, I will be re-birthed in a world similar to Pandora and then everything is the same as in 'Avatar.”
"Because, at this point, there isn't pretty much anything else that can be done. Until the release of DVD/BluRay. But even that won't take away all of the depression. Because you know you can never actually go to Pandora, as it exists only in our imagination."
For a very long time we have been collectively headed for an existential crisis of meaning. Some of us seem to be getting there sooner than others. Our secular materialism has left us in a vacuum, devoid of meaning or purpose. There seems little substance to life beyond the next release of our favorite virtual game and that substance lasts about as long as it takes to peel the shrink wrap off the disk. We have seen ever-increasing rates of suicide in those individuals who have the most options before them in terms of time, health, and opportunity.
Stacy Kaiser, a psychotherapist, suggests “people are forced to look at what is going on in their own lives. If it isn’t the euphoric dream they were hoping for, they end up depressed.” For several generations there has been an increasing preoccupation with self fulfillment and self-gratification. When we don’t get those things we want or are reminded of what we don’t have, we can get into a major, even dangerous funk. Kaiser also points out this phenomenon is not about the film. Follow up phone calls to a number of those in the forum found they were already living lonely, often disenfranchised lives.
One viewer was more balanced. Incredulous that a film could cause depression he said, “You need to go back and revaluate what is important in life to you, go back to the basics of family and other things.” This viewer offers the most helpful advice. Only by honest evaluation of our own lives, can we hope to chart a course that will lead us to a life that has great value and meaning, even here on planet earth.
There are people who never will make it to Pandora, yet are living huge authentic and fulfilling lives, here on Earth. There are eighty-year old ex-pat widows on the ground in Haiti making a difference in the midst of a vast national tragedy. There are single mothers here making it possible for their children to reach for their dreams. Under-paid teachers in American ghettoes find reward in showing children they can do anything they set their minds to. Single women are out there in the African bush doing surgery and improving hundreds of lives. A single woman is living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea with no other Caucasians within a hundred miles, single handedly translating the Bible.
Come on guys, perhaps it is time to power down the computer and get a life, here on earth.
“As a man thinketh, so is he.”
Haiti - Pulling Together in Community 1-14-10
Anderson, South Carolina
In lieu of an essay today, it seems appropriate to share some field reports about matters in Haiti and options for your participation.
As you may know, a number of us have been involved in the miracle of Cange, some have given decades to this model of empowerment and development in the mountains to the east of Port au Prince. When I last saw Cange and Port au Prince, both were quite intact. As you know, Port Au Prince (with 2 million residents) is now essentially a total loss, with death estimates as high as 100,000. The Episcopal Cathedral, the large school associated with it, the Roman Catholic Cathedral in the next block, and the National Palace just down the street were lost along with a very substantial number of lives. The airport in Port au Prince is operational for heavy jets and is open to relief operations. I think it goes with out saying that the usual daily AA service and others are off-line.
The town of Cange two hours east has survived and its magnificent hospitals appear to be structurally intact and are presently operational on generators, which are running low on fuel. The location of Cange to the east on the opposite side from the earthquake epicenter suggests the hospital will become a major recovery catchment facility and can handle perhaps two hundred victims from Port au Prince (known locally as PAP). Problematic to Cange and its ability to maintain services for the 8-10,000 people there will be access to medical supplies, food, water, and moneys to maintain what could easily become a completely overwhelmed health system and town infrastructure. Most of the highway from PAP to Cange has been recently repaved and the town is going to be an oasis of hope for millions in dire straits. Your contributions to the all-consuming needs will make a huge difference, right now. There are people on the ground and enroute who know Haiti, know how to work within the systems, such as they are, and can provide maximum assistance in this critical season before the onset of the inevitable disease epidemics. Partners in Health was started in Cange and has become one of the premier models of empowering aid and development in the world as being emulated across the world.
Please go to PIH.org and you will see a big button on your screen. Click on it and help us keep people alive.
Go to http://PIH.org to donate now
Phone services and many roads are non-functioning. Some wireless internet and cell phone service has allowed sketchy reports to get out of other regions. I received several reports yesterday that I will include here as sent to me. Your response to this vast need will make the difference for thousands who may not make it to Valentine’s Day or Easter this year.
In lieu of an essay today, it seems appropriate to share some field reports about matters in Haiti and options for your participation.
As you may know, a number of us have been involved in the miracle of Cange, some have given decades to this model of empowerment and development in the mountains to the east of Port au Prince. When I last saw Cange and Port au Prince, both were quite intact. As you know, Port Au Prince (with 2 million residents) is now essentially a total loss, with death estimates as high as 100,000. The Episcopal Cathedral, the large school associated with it, the Roman Catholic Cathedral in the next block, and the National Palace just down the street were lost along with a very substantial number of lives. The airport in Port au Prince is operational for heavy jets and is open to relief operations. I think it goes with out saying that the usual daily AA service and others are off-line.
The town of Cange two hours east has survived and its magnificent hospitals appear to be structurally intact and are presently operational on generators, which are running low on fuel. The location of Cange to the east on the opposite side from the earthquake epicenter suggests the hospital will become a major recovery catchment facility and can handle perhaps two hundred victims from Port au Prince (known locally as PAP). Problematic to Cange and its ability to maintain services for the 8-10,000 people there will be access to medical supplies, food, water, and moneys to maintain what could easily become a completely overwhelmed health system and town infrastructure. Most of the highway from PAP to Cange has been recently repaved and the town is going to be an oasis of hope for millions in dire straits. Your contributions to the all-consuming needs will make a huge difference, right now. There are people on the ground and enroute who know Haiti, know how to work within the systems, such as they are, and can provide maximum assistance in this critical season before the onset of the inevitable disease epidemics. Partners in Health was started in Cange and has become one of the premier models of empowering aid and development in the world as being emulated across the world.
Please go to PIH.org and you will see a big button on your screen. Click on it and help us keep people alive.
Go to http://PIH.org to donate now
Phone services and many roads are non-functioning. Some wireless internet and cell phone service has allowed sketchy reports to get out of other regions. I received several reports yesterday that I will include here as sent to me. Your response to this vast need will make the difference for thousands who may not make it to Valentine’s Day or Easter this year.
Solidarity - The Catalyst for Community 1-13-10
Our World
I see that horrific image of the crushed Presidential Palace and wonder how that dear little country can handle any more. That Palace was one of the few really decent looking buildings in the poorest nation in the western Hemisphere, perhaps the world. My theology does not know how to handle the idea of a nation exhausted by the relentless pounding of hurricanes, poverty, corruption, and spiritual darkness now being literally shaken to its foundations.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful places on earth is to be found there in that ravaged little mountainous country, a place where a man’s dream blossomed into community and safety for thousands. I think of the little squatter settlement of 800 refugees back in the 1970s fleeing to the mountains to avoid flooding of their valley by a US Army Corp dam project. With nothing but the mud under their feet, these people were given spiritual hope and a vision that life could be better. It became so in a place called Cange. That squatter settlement became a town of 8,000 with a newly emerging middle class, the finest hospital in the country, magnificent schools available to all, good jobs, clean water; because an old Episcopal priest dared to get outside of himself and create community from his dreams.
I have had the fortune of travelling in fifty nations and perhaps none capture my imagination like this one, a place where the most verdant roses of hope have grown up from the abject ashes of poverty, oppression, and corruption. There are few places on earth where cooperation has been so clearly shown as the higher way to better living for everyone. With a spirit of cooperation and community the gates of Cange were open to all, to receive education, healing, employment, fair traded goods, nutritious food. In our more pervasive systems of competition and hording, those gates would never have been opened.
I wandered around in the miracle that is Cange for eight days, entranced that this botanical paradise with its magnificent buildings for schools and hospitals and housing was once nothing but an absolutely barren wasteland of mud that eventually gave way to dust clouds during the dry season. I wonder if in the space of twenty five seconds the work and dreams of thirty years have been lost. Has Cange survived? Is that beautiful oasis of hope still there? Do the people still have water? Did the new dam built on the backs of hard manual labor survive? Do we have to rebuild everything? Yet, again? I can’t but wonder how it is that people pick up the pieces and make another go at building a better world when the foundations are so shaky.
Perhaps from this cloud of dust we can again see that co-operation and solidarity yields life abundant, for Haitians and for the rest of us.
I see that horrific image of the crushed Presidential Palace and wonder how that dear little country can handle any more. That Palace was one of the few really decent looking buildings in the poorest nation in the western Hemisphere, perhaps the world. My theology does not know how to handle the idea of a nation exhausted by the relentless pounding of hurricanes, poverty, corruption, and spiritual darkness now being literally shaken to its foundations.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful places on earth is to be found there in that ravaged little mountainous country, a place where a man’s dream blossomed into community and safety for thousands. I think of the little squatter settlement of 800 refugees back in the 1970s fleeing to the mountains to avoid flooding of their valley by a US Army Corp dam project. With nothing but the mud under their feet, these people were given spiritual hope and a vision that life could be better. It became so in a place called Cange. That squatter settlement became a town of 8,000 with a newly emerging middle class, the finest hospital in the country, magnificent schools available to all, good jobs, clean water; because an old Episcopal priest dared to get outside of himself and create community from his dreams.
I have had the fortune of travelling in fifty nations and perhaps none capture my imagination like this one, a place where the most verdant roses of hope have grown up from the abject ashes of poverty, oppression, and corruption. There are few places on earth where cooperation has been so clearly shown as the higher way to better living for everyone. With a spirit of cooperation and community the gates of Cange were open to all, to receive education, healing, employment, fair traded goods, nutritious food. In our more pervasive systems of competition and hording, those gates would never have been opened.
I wandered around in the miracle that is Cange for eight days, entranced that this botanical paradise with its magnificent buildings for schools and hospitals and housing was once nothing but an absolutely barren wasteland of mud that eventually gave way to dust clouds during the dry season. I wonder if in the space of twenty five seconds the work and dreams of thirty years have been lost. Has Cange survived? Is that beautiful oasis of hope still there? Do the people still have water? Did the new dam built on the backs of hard manual labor survive? Do we have to rebuild everything? Yet, again? I can’t but wonder how it is that people pick up the pieces and make another go at building a better world when the foundations are so shaky.
Perhaps from this cloud of dust we can again see that co-operation and solidarity yields life abundant, for Haitians and for the rest of us.
Chocolate - The Legal Elixir of Community 1-12-10
A Nearby Nursing Home
Research studies have suggested there may actually be a scientific basis for chocolate craving in some individuals, especially women. It is suggested that perhaps as many as 40% of women have a neuroreceptor, which when filled with a ‘molecule’ of chocolate, causes an affective change that feels really really good. Andrew Drewnowski at the University of Michigan looked at some of the 380 compounds found in chocolate. There are some compounds in chocolate that actually activate a neurohormonal cascade that is most pleasurable. Chocolate induces the brain to produce natural opioids, chemicals in the same class as those making opium of such high value on the street. Researchers at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego found three compounds in chocolate produce effects nearly identical to that of marijuana’s active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but in lesser degree. There are also two chemicals in chocolate which inhibit the natural breakdown of anandamide, a naturally occurring substance in the brain that can make one feel really good - ‘high’ is the usual street parlance for such affective states.
Ellen Kuwana who writes about neuroscience states, “Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, a chemical related to amphetamines. Like amphetamines, this chemical causes blood pressure and blood-sugar levels to rise, resulting in a feeling of alertness and contentment. Phenylethylamine has been called the "love-drug" because it quickens your pulse, as if you are in love.” These effects may well explain why chocolate is an essential nutrient in some people and why some chocolateurs can charge absolutely outlandish prices for their therapeutic wares.
I have recently seen chocolate fetching as much as $129.44 a pound in specialty shops, not including tax or shipping. I am certain one can spend far more if so inclined. It seems that substances with powerful affective therapeutic powers do have a high street value. One may need be concerned about fiscal side effects if over-indulgence becomes problematic. Most insurance policies will not include chocolate in their standard drug formularies. Fortunately, one will not incur legal expenses or have altercations with law enforcement as these formulations are still street legal. It is most fortunate for me that these compounds are legal because I have taken to mid-level distribution of them to some of the most vulnerable people in the world, eighty and ninety year old bed-ridden women stashed in the back halls of nursing homes.
Every Sunday I visit a large sprawling nursing home near my house, taking communion to those who never will have the opportunity to visit their churches again or to come back out into this grand world we live in. One of the things I have been doing for years as adjunctive therapy for these dear souls confined in institutions is to bring them brightly colored fresh flowers. Their spirits seem to rise almost at once. The grayness of spirit that is so prevalent with institutional life seems to dissipate, if for but a season.
Only recently, I have found even better front-line therapy for older women facing the affective blues - chocolate in several forms. Wrapped in plain brown wrappers, I have no problem getting it into the buildings and have found no resistance from the staff at my sweetening up their patients. I do make some reasonable efforts to avoid creating insulin crisis in patients with diabetes or other issues of sugar metabolism. That aside, I am fairly fast and loose with my distribution, carrying a Tupperware box with my sweet lode inside.
Unwittingly, I just found an effective way to administer chocolate. I gave a chunk of chocolate to a nearly mute older woman tethered to an oxygen bottle behind her wheelchair. It became evident during the next number of minutes that she did not have the dexterity to even unwrap my little elixir from the outside. It became evident that the properly formed bar of chocolate was now a semi-viscous thing that was quickly going to loose its street value. With no alarm, unwrapping the gooey thing, I told her that she was going to get sweetened up - now. Obviously struggling with some sort of neurological challenge, she even had a hard time with my getting the chocolate into her mouth. What she did not have a hard time doing was breaking into an authentic half smile and locking eye contact with a deep delicious sense of gratitude for reminding her that she was still visible and of value. It is so very easy to feel invisible when living in an old drooping overweight body that no longer talks and no longer has the ability to control itself; sequestered in the dark shadows of a nursing home.
A thick layer of what was essentially chocolate syrup covered the bit of brown foil and by turning this inside out, I was to get most of it into her mouth, wasting precious little. During the process she ended up with a perfectly painted set of very wide dark brown lips. I told her she looked like a five year old girl caught smacking on the chocolate pudding that was being saved for dinner. She again smiled as best as she could. Not chiding her, I simply suggested dark brown was not the best shade of lip gloss for her. She smiled again. Getting some moistened paper towel, she was easily tidied up. I told her we would stick with natural lip color for the rest of the day.
Magically, eighty years of wear and tear fell away. Suddenly, an enchanted five year old was smiling, knowing the universe could be sweet and friendly after all. For the rest of the day she did not have to wear an invisibility cloak. The fleck of community I enjoyed with Margie was sublime. For certain, I will always show up with plain brown paper wrappers in the future, just for her.
Remember, chocolate is not just for Halloween or Valentine’s Day. It is for every day that you want to remind someone special the universe is a friendly place and she is part of it. It’s legal.
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Research studies have suggested there may actually be a scientific basis for chocolate craving in some individuals, especially women. It is suggested that perhaps as many as 40% of women have a neuroreceptor, which when filled with a ‘molecule’ of chocolate, causes an affective change that feels really really good. Andrew Drewnowski at the University of Michigan looked at some of the 380 compounds found in chocolate. There are some compounds in chocolate that actually activate a neurohormonal cascade that is most pleasurable. Chocolate induces the brain to produce natural opioids, chemicals in the same class as those making opium of such high value on the street. Researchers at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego found three compounds in chocolate produce effects nearly identical to that of marijuana’s active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but in lesser degree. There are also two chemicals in chocolate which inhibit the natural breakdown of anandamide, a naturally occurring substance in the brain that can make one feel really good - ‘high’ is the usual street parlance for such affective states.
Ellen Kuwana who writes about neuroscience states, “Chocolate also contains phenylethylamine, a chemical related to amphetamines. Like amphetamines, this chemical causes blood pressure and blood-sugar levels to rise, resulting in a feeling of alertness and contentment. Phenylethylamine has been called the "love-drug" because it quickens your pulse, as if you are in love.” These effects may well explain why chocolate is an essential nutrient in some people and why some chocolateurs can charge absolutely outlandish prices for their therapeutic wares.
I have recently seen chocolate fetching as much as $129.44 a pound in specialty shops, not including tax or shipping. I am certain one can spend far more if so inclined. It seems that substances with powerful affective therapeutic powers do have a high street value. One may need be concerned about fiscal side effects if over-indulgence becomes problematic. Most insurance policies will not include chocolate in their standard drug formularies. Fortunately, one will not incur legal expenses or have altercations with law enforcement as these formulations are still street legal. It is most fortunate for me that these compounds are legal because I have taken to mid-level distribution of them to some of the most vulnerable people in the world, eighty and ninety year old bed-ridden women stashed in the back halls of nursing homes.
Every Sunday I visit a large sprawling nursing home near my house, taking communion to those who never will have the opportunity to visit their churches again or to come back out into this grand world we live in. One of the things I have been doing for years as adjunctive therapy for these dear souls confined in institutions is to bring them brightly colored fresh flowers. Their spirits seem to rise almost at once. The grayness of spirit that is so prevalent with institutional life seems to dissipate, if for but a season.
Only recently, I have found even better front-line therapy for older women facing the affective blues - chocolate in several forms. Wrapped in plain brown wrappers, I have no problem getting it into the buildings and have found no resistance from the staff at my sweetening up their patients. I do make some reasonable efforts to avoid creating insulin crisis in patients with diabetes or other issues of sugar metabolism. That aside, I am fairly fast and loose with my distribution, carrying a Tupperware box with my sweet lode inside.
Unwittingly, I just found an effective way to administer chocolate. I gave a chunk of chocolate to a nearly mute older woman tethered to an oxygen bottle behind her wheelchair. It became evident during the next number of minutes that she did not have the dexterity to even unwrap my little elixir from the outside. It became evident that the properly formed bar of chocolate was now a semi-viscous thing that was quickly going to loose its street value. With no alarm, unwrapping the gooey thing, I told her that she was going to get sweetened up - now. Obviously struggling with some sort of neurological challenge, she even had a hard time with my getting the chocolate into her mouth. What she did not have a hard time doing was breaking into an authentic half smile and locking eye contact with a deep delicious sense of gratitude for reminding her that she was still visible and of value. It is so very easy to feel invisible when living in an old drooping overweight body that no longer talks and no longer has the ability to control itself; sequestered in the dark shadows of a nursing home.
A thick layer of what was essentially chocolate syrup covered the bit of brown foil and by turning this inside out, I was to get most of it into her mouth, wasting precious little. During the process she ended up with a perfectly painted set of very wide dark brown lips. I told her she looked like a five year old girl caught smacking on the chocolate pudding that was being saved for dinner. She again smiled as best as she could. Not chiding her, I simply suggested dark brown was not the best shade of lip gloss for her. She smiled again. Getting some moistened paper towel, she was easily tidied up. I told her we would stick with natural lip color for the rest of the day.
Magically, eighty years of wear and tear fell away. Suddenly, an enchanted five year old was smiling, knowing the universe could be sweet and friendly after all. For the rest of the day she did not have to wear an invisibility cloak. The fleck of community I enjoyed with Margie was sublime. For certain, I will always show up with plain brown paper wrappers in the future, just for her.
Remember, chocolate is not just for Halloween or Valentine’s Day. It is for every day that you want to remind someone special the universe is a friendly place and she is part of it. It’s legal.
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Community - No Man Is an Island 1-11-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Nearly sixty years ago Japanese researchers studied the behavior of macaques on Koshima Island. Reports were popularized that once a critical number of monkeys (the hundredth monkey) learned a new behavior, it was instantly adopted by all monkeys, even those physically isolated on other islands. New Age writers popularized these reported findings. Claims of this behavioral phenomenon spread with the appearance of Lifetide, a 1979 book by Lyall Watson. In the early 1980s Ken Keyes published his book The Hundredth Monkey. His book was about the devastating effects of nuclear war on the planet. In it Keyes presented the “Hundredth Monkey Effect” story as an inspirational parable, applying it to human society and the effecting of positive change. For a season the phenomenon was embraced, even in academic sources. Many were hopeful that the introduction of a positive empowering behavior could transform the relational experiences of millions. Alas, closer scrutiny of the original Japanese work by Elaine Myers in 1985 suggests wishful thinking on the part of observers of that work resulted in misinterpretation of the original field work. For the most part, the hundredth monkey phenomenon has now gone the way of urban legend.
Or has it? Is it, in fact, possible in this cyber age for the behavior of a very small number, perhaps even one individual, to be adopted by millions? Unlike monkeys isolated on separate islands we humans are all on a single island called Earth, connected by broadband technology. Much of the bandwidth and airtime of conventional media is given over to describing aberrant behavior of individuals in remote regions of the world. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that even a single athlete, entertainer, or dictator can have a profound effect on the behavior of millions.
Many academics have made careers of studying the influence of mass media on behavior. Peer review academic literature is filled with emphatic statements about the patency of media in influencing behavior. For example, “Short-term exposure increases the likelihood of physically and verbally aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions. Recent large-scale longitudinal studies provide converging evidence linking frequent exposure to violent media in childhood with aggression in later life, including physical assaults and spouse abuse … the scientific debate over whether media violence increases violence is essentially over.” Media is immensely powerful at influencing behavior, for better or worse.
In the cyber age we are real-time observers of media figures who are seen as nearly mythical. The aura surrounding the death of Michael Jackson was far greater than that of countless individuals who lived quite exemplary lives. Because of his long stay in the klieg lights, Jackson received inordinate attention from millions and to many he was heroic, irrespective of how he may have conducted his personal life.
Perhaps even more heroic in the eyes of millions are professional athletes who convey to the arm-chair dreamer the idea that the good life is just one commercial away. If one buys the sponsor’s product, one can vicariously live a life of fame and fortune.
Recently, we have observed the fall of what some sports writers call the greatest athlete in decades. The ability to consistently pound little white balls into little tin cups in the ground has made an ordinary man into a billionaire hero. Corporate America has been falling over itself for several years to affiliate its corporate images with this man who could convince the world that buying their products would yield life extraordinaire.
We have long been caught up in the myth that we are autonomous beings, free to do what we want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. We believe privacy is the ultimate perk in life. What I do with my private life has nothing to do with my public life as an elected official, heroic athlete, or revered entertainer. Does someone in the enviable position of being declared the greatest athlete in the world have the right to conduct his own life as he sees fit or does his position of great privilege come with some responsibilities to the community at large, even the yet larger world with millions of fans in a hundred nations.
Is what I do behind locked doors in my house your business? It is if your retirement account has stock in companies that have asked me to endorse their products. A University of California economist’s estimates suggest that the market capitalization of nine companies that sponsored an adulterous golfer have declined by more than $12 billion. In recent weeks in attempts to do damage control, many sponsors have dropped our erstwhile hero and bolted for the exits. Sports writers have wondered out loud what the missteps of one player might do to damage the game of golf.
Far more important than transient effects on market capitalization, are the longer term effects on the moral and ethic bearings of those who have placed a young athlete on a pedestal, not unlike the ancient Greeks often did. Does the misconduct of a public figure translate into tacit acceptance of that behavior? A year from now will our fallen golfer be swinging again on the links and off? Will his dalliances in some way contribute to the decisions of many of his fans to follow him into green pastures where they have no business wandering?
Who are my real heroes and where do I put my money? Am I merely acting like one of the monkeys or one created in the image of God? For certain, my life did not work at all when I acted like I was living in the trees.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
I Th 4:3-8
Nearly sixty years ago Japanese researchers studied the behavior of macaques on Koshima Island. Reports were popularized that once a critical number of monkeys (the hundredth monkey) learned a new behavior, it was instantly adopted by all monkeys, even those physically isolated on other islands. New Age writers popularized these reported findings. Claims of this behavioral phenomenon spread with the appearance of Lifetide, a 1979 book by Lyall Watson. In the early 1980s Ken Keyes published his book The Hundredth Monkey. His book was about the devastating effects of nuclear war on the planet. In it Keyes presented the “Hundredth Monkey Effect” story as an inspirational parable, applying it to human society and the effecting of positive change. For a season the phenomenon was embraced, even in academic sources. Many were hopeful that the introduction of a positive empowering behavior could transform the relational experiences of millions. Alas, closer scrutiny of the original Japanese work by Elaine Myers in 1985 suggests wishful thinking on the part of observers of that work resulted in misinterpretation of the original field work. For the most part, the hundredth monkey phenomenon has now gone the way of urban legend.
Or has it? Is it, in fact, possible in this cyber age for the behavior of a very small number, perhaps even one individual, to be adopted by millions? Unlike monkeys isolated on separate islands we humans are all on a single island called Earth, connected by broadband technology. Much of the bandwidth and airtime of conventional media is given over to describing aberrant behavior of individuals in remote regions of the world. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that even a single athlete, entertainer, or dictator can have a profound effect on the behavior of millions.
Many academics have made careers of studying the influence of mass media on behavior. Peer review academic literature is filled with emphatic statements about the patency of media in influencing behavior. For example, “Short-term exposure increases the likelihood of physically and verbally aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions. Recent large-scale longitudinal studies provide converging evidence linking frequent exposure to violent media in childhood with aggression in later life, including physical assaults and spouse abuse … the scientific debate over whether media violence increases violence is essentially over.” Media is immensely powerful at influencing behavior, for better or worse.
In the cyber age we are real-time observers of media figures who are seen as nearly mythical. The aura surrounding the death of Michael Jackson was far greater than that of countless individuals who lived quite exemplary lives. Because of his long stay in the klieg lights, Jackson received inordinate attention from millions and to many he was heroic, irrespective of how he may have conducted his personal life.
Perhaps even more heroic in the eyes of millions are professional athletes who convey to the arm-chair dreamer the idea that the good life is just one commercial away. If one buys the sponsor’s product, one can vicariously live a life of fame and fortune.
Recently, we have observed the fall of what some sports writers call the greatest athlete in decades. The ability to consistently pound little white balls into little tin cups in the ground has made an ordinary man into a billionaire hero. Corporate America has been falling over itself for several years to affiliate its corporate images with this man who could convince the world that buying their products would yield life extraordinaire.
We have long been caught up in the myth that we are autonomous beings, free to do what we want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. We believe privacy is the ultimate perk in life. What I do with my private life has nothing to do with my public life as an elected official, heroic athlete, or revered entertainer. Does someone in the enviable position of being declared the greatest athlete in the world have the right to conduct his own life as he sees fit or does his position of great privilege come with some responsibilities to the community at large, even the yet larger world with millions of fans in a hundred nations.
Is what I do behind locked doors in my house your business? It is if your retirement account has stock in companies that have asked me to endorse their products. A University of California economist’s estimates suggest that the market capitalization of nine companies that sponsored an adulterous golfer have declined by more than $12 billion. In recent weeks in attempts to do damage control, many sponsors have dropped our erstwhile hero and bolted for the exits. Sports writers have wondered out loud what the missteps of one player might do to damage the game of golf.
Far more important than transient effects on market capitalization, are the longer term effects on the moral and ethic bearings of those who have placed a young athlete on a pedestal, not unlike the ancient Greeks often did. Does the misconduct of a public figure translate into tacit acceptance of that behavior? A year from now will our fallen golfer be swinging again on the links and off? Will his dalliances in some way contribute to the decisions of many of his fans to follow him into green pastures where they have no business wandering?
Who are my real heroes and where do I put my money? Am I merely acting like one of the monkeys or one created in the image of God? For certain, my life did not work at all when I acted like I was living in the trees.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
I Th 4:3-8
Friday, January 8, 2010
Community - Taking One’s Assigned Seat 1-8-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Not so long ago I had the grand fortune of going to Kelowna, British Columbia. While there, riding my bike up and down the surrounding mountains, I had the happy experience of encountering a three-day dragon boat festival that is put on each year. Dozens of long boats from all over the world show up each year to compete. Entrancing to me was the care given to the placement of the twenty two rowers in each boat. Great attention is given to maximizing the strengths of each rower and in placing them optimally so that their weaknesses are complimented by the strengths of a rower sitting just opposite. Everyone knows their places and contributes maximally to the success of the team; not unlike those who participate in an orchestra, knowing their places and giving sway to the guidance of the conductor.
Every Thursday for decades, a group of ‘chronologically gifted’ men has gathered for lunch and prayer in the somewhat spartan parish hall of a local church. These men are far more gifted than merely in the eight plus decades they have strapped onto their life resumes. When these men with average age of about eighty-two years pray, God listens. At least those who are suffering catastrophic life challenges think so.
Every week these quiet gentle intercessors bring the requests of countless people to the group, those who have specifically asked this group to pray for them as they traverse the ravages of cancer, neurologic terrors, failing hearts, and failing economies. As in the E.F. Hutton ads of the 1980s, it seems that everyone stops to listen when they speak. These ‘victims’ of life seem to believe God stops what he is doing in running the universe to act on behalf of those who have encountered staggering misfortune, simply because two dozen men turn up rain or shine with their little brown bags to petition for acts of mercy.
Every year countless books have been written about the power of prayer, testifying to its efficacy. Even well outside of the domain of theology and spiritual practice, one finds books written about the power of this speaking out, of interceding on behalf of those who are no longer able to speak for themselves. The well-known physician Larry Dossey has spent a life time studying the efficacy of prayer. His many books strongly suggest that prayer can be a most powerful therapy for those who have run out of medical options. The compelling question comes to be why prayer is so often used as a last adjunct to treatment instead of as front line therapy. In his works such as Prayer is Good Medicine, and Beyond Illness, Dossey presents a lot of evidence that merely believing in the power of words can be profoundly healing. In his work Space, Time, and Medicine, one is presented with strong evidence suggesting organic disease does not have the last word. The men who gather for lunch on Thursday certainly believe that.
Other secular studies have clearly demonstrated that spoken words of prayer, of blessing or cursing, have profound effects on life forms of many kinds. The power of the spoken word is well documented and the octogenarians who gather on Thursdays have long since move on in their faith and let little get in the way of their convening each week.
A number of times our faithful 91 year old leader of the group, Earle, has mentioned that he prays for all of us every single night by name. As a visual learner, he makes it a point to go around the six tables in his mind, visualizing each of us in our usual place and then making petitions that are often heard. Some of us have been through the most unimagined nightmares in life and the prayers of Earle and those of our fellow intercessors have brought many of us back from the abyss.
Yesterday Earle commented on his regular practice of praying for us around the tables each night. He noted that when we are late arriving and don’t take our usual seats, he has some difficulty praying for all of us during his night prayers because we are not where he expects us to be. It seems that we are creatures of habit and we really do tend to sit in the very same places week after week. Earle is a creature of habit and prays for us in a particular sequence each night.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I actually have a special place of my own, not one on a folding chair in the southwest corner of a cinder block parish hall, rather one in the heart of a man that has been seeking the heart of God for nine decades. Suddenly, I knew I was in a really safe place. Suddenly, I knew that by taking my ‘assigned’ place, I was going to have a man of faith acting on my behalf to negotiate the sometimes rather turbulent waters of life. By taking my place I knew my weaknesses were going to be complemented by the strength of his faith grown over ninety-one years.
One of the most revered examples of faith is the account in the gospel of Mark of the paralytic who is let down through the roof of a house on his pallet so he could be near Jesus. The account states the man was healed because of the faith of those who carried him to the roof.
One might question why I, with wavering faith, have been admitted into this august group of septuagenarians and octogenarians with their steadfast faith. Perhaps, they humor me, or have hope that I might finally get with the program. In the meantime I try to experience a coattail effect, much like the paralytic did. During the past years I have been pulled back from more than one vortex. I believe my present good fortune and bucolic life derives in great part from taking a place with this group and making sure I sit in the same place each week.
I plan on making a greater effort at showing up on time so I don’t get bumped from First Class.
“For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, And his ears unto their supplication.”
“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
Not so long ago I had the grand fortune of going to Kelowna, British Columbia. While there, riding my bike up and down the surrounding mountains, I had the happy experience of encountering a three-day dragon boat festival that is put on each year. Dozens of long boats from all over the world show up each year to compete. Entrancing to me was the care given to the placement of the twenty two rowers in each boat. Great attention is given to maximizing the strengths of each rower and in placing them optimally so that their weaknesses are complimented by the strengths of a rower sitting just opposite. Everyone knows their places and contributes maximally to the success of the team; not unlike those who participate in an orchestra, knowing their places and giving sway to the guidance of the conductor.
Every Thursday for decades, a group of ‘chronologically gifted’ men has gathered for lunch and prayer in the somewhat spartan parish hall of a local church. These men are far more gifted than merely in the eight plus decades they have strapped onto their life resumes. When these men with average age of about eighty-two years pray, God listens. At least those who are suffering catastrophic life challenges think so.
Every week these quiet gentle intercessors bring the requests of countless people to the group, those who have specifically asked this group to pray for them as they traverse the ravages of cancer, neurologic terrors, failing hearts, and failing economies. As in the E.F. Hutton ads of the 1980s, it seems that everyone stops to listen when they speak. These ‘victims’ of life seem to believe God stops what he is doing in running the universe to act on behalf of those who have encountered staggering misfortune, simply because two dozen men turn up rain or shine with their little brown bags to petition for acts of mercy.
Every year countless books have been written about the power of prayer, testifying to its efficacy. Even well outside of the domain of theology and spiritual practice, one finds books written about the power of this speaking out, of interceding on behalf of those who are no longer able to speak for themselves. The well-known physician Larry Dossey has spent a life time studying the efficacy of prayer. His many books strongly suggest that prayer can be a most powerful therapy for those who have run out of medical options. The compelling question comes to be why prayer is so often used as a last adjunct to treatment instead of as front line therapy. In his works such as Prayer is Good Medicine, and Beyond Illness, Dossey presents a lot of evidence that merely believing in the power of words can be profoundly healing. In his work Space, Time, and Medicine, one is presented with strong evidence suggesting organic disease does not have the last word. The men who gather for lunch on Thursday certainly believe that.
Other secular studies have clearly demonstrated that spoken words of prayer, of blessing or cursing, have profound effects on life forms of many kinds. The power of the spoken word is well documented and the octogenarians who gather on Thursdays have long since move on in their faith and let little get in the way of their convening each week.
A number of times our faithful 91 year old leader of the group, Earle, has mentioned that he prays for all of us every single night by name. As a visual learner, he makes it a point to go around the six tables in his mind, visualizing each of us in our usual place and then making petitions that are often heard. Some of us have been through the most unimagined nightmares in life and the prayers of Earle and those of our fellow intercessors have brought many of us back from the abyss.
Yesterday Earle commented on his regular practice of praying for us around the tables each night. He noted that when we are late arriving and don’t take our usual seats, he has some difficulty praying for all of us during his night prayers because we are not where he expects us to be. It seems that we are creatures of habit and we really do tend to sit in the very same places week after week. Earle is a creature of habit and prays for us in a particular sequence each night.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I actually have a special place of my own, not one on a folding chair in the southwest corner of a cinder block parish hall, rather one in the heart of a man that has been seeking the heart of God for nine decades. Suddenly, I knew I was in a really safe place. Suddenly, I knew that by taking my ‘assigned’ place, I was going to have a man of faith acting on my behalf to negotiate the sometimes rather turbulent waters of life. By taking my place I knew my weaknesses were going to be complemented by the strength of his faith grown over ninety-one years.
One of the most revered examples of faith is the account in the gospel of Mark of the paralytic who is let down through the roof of a house on his pallet so he could be near Jesus. The account states the man was healed because of the faith of those who carried him to the roof.
One might question why I, with wavering faith, have been admitted into this august group of septuagenarians and octogenarians with their steadfast faith. Perhaps, they humor me, or have hope that I might finally get with the program. In the meantime I try to experience a coattail effect, much like the paralytic did. During the past years I have been pulled back from more than one vortex. I believe my present good fortune and bucolic life derives in great part from taking a place with this group and making sure I sit in the same place each week.
I plan on making a greater effort at showing up on time so I don’t get bumped from First Class.
“For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, And his ears unto their supplication.”
“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
Observations From the Other Side of the Side-by-Side Freezer Door 1-7-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Some years ago Roger Fulgham wrote an exquisitely funny book called Some Observations From Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door. In this collection of vignettes, Fulgham gives the reader some warm hearted insights into human nature and a few culinary forays into late night fine dining while standing at the refrigerator. You will have to get the book for more details on the perfect 2 AM bachelor meal that requires no cooking skills, pots, or stoves. I recently had my own late-night experience at the door that provided a lesson on the safety that comes from community. Perhaps the insights I gained are as compelling as the perfect 2 AM meal. You will have to decide. I opt for the community bit.
My friend Joanne, being in a wheel chair, is challenged by the American dream. She does not do things like climb on the roof with a leaf blower to clean the pine needles out of her gutters. She does not climb ladders and change light bulbs. Certainly, she does not grab the huge side-by-side refrigerator and pull it out to cut off the water supply to the ice maker. But I do all of these things. I have two legs with attached feet that are presently working well.
As part of what has become nearly a year-long habit of great hedonistic value, I open one or the other of the doors to her big side-by side and find all manner of Italian culinary wonders that do involve cooking skills, pots, and stoves. And so it was one night just before midnight I opened the left door looking for a frozen culinary wonder. I found a wonder of a very different and unsettling sort – frozen waterfalls cascading down all of the shelves with all of the culinary delights encased in crystal clear shrouds of ice. My culinary reverie was instantly thawed out and I went into emergency plumber mode.
Differential diagnosis quickly revealed the solenoid valve in the ice maker to have locked into the open position. This allows water to freely flow into the ice maker through that thin little hidden plastic tube one only sees when pulling out the almond colored beast for the every tenth year cleaning. If this frigid cascade had gone on unnoticed all night I would have been able to go ice skating without visiting Rockefeller Center in New York. I grabbed that big side-by-side and pulled it out and found the cut off valve. Joanne didn’t even know that water supplies to ice makers have cut-off valves. I did the requisite chipping and mopping up operation and earned double points for my Heineken beer account. I left Joanne in a dry house with the security of knowing Sears would be on site in the morning to replace the solenoid. I don’t keep spare parts for her particular model I think I could have asked for half the Kingdom and gotten it at that point but I limited myself merely to the promise of a beer the next day.
A couple of days later I installed an anti-virus program on my computer and did what I thought to be the correct procedure. After getting eight viruses and hammered with hundreds of worm messages I figured it was time for major action. The only problem was that I didn’t do it right. I found I could not do anything at all in any of my programs. Visions of ten years of lectures and manuscript work being vaporized by a cyber carnivore loomed in my over-active imagination. I happened to be on the phone with Joanne while going through this cyber-crisis. Joanne claims to have the barest knowledge of computers and manages to do her e-mail and some modest work in Word and has even begun using PowerPoint. But Hotshot here with thirty years of building and working with computers did not know what to do to fix my problem. With the faith of a child, Joanne offered a simplistic solution that left me in awe when it worked instantly – “Reboot.” Others have since told me that nearly all computer problems can be fixed by this procedure of simply turning it off, waiting, and turning it back on. Joanne could have asked for half the Kingdom and gotten it. The computer worked perfectly when it came back to life.
Suddenly I knew what community really was about. Joanne and I were both in circumstances that at the time were very big in our micro worlds. Ice cascades in the kitchen of one in a wheelchair are not a joke. A computer locked up with ten years of one’s work in it is not a joke. The tiniest bit of insight or knowledge on the part of the other brought about an immediate solution. I knew about cut-off valves. She knew about the universal application of “Reboot.”
In the ancient writings of Ecclesiastes we are told that if one sleeps alone, one gets cold. If one sleeps with another, one stays warm. Not so long ago I learned that there are other applications to this than the physics of the heat loss that occurs from excessive surface/volume ratios from sleeping life forms.
For those of you having forgotten your high school biology, college level thermodynamics, and postgraduate quantum physics, a short refresher of this concept is in order. Very very crudely: If a life form has a volume of 10 gallons and a surface area of 1 square foot we could say the surface/volume ratio is 0.1. If another life form has a volume of ten gallons and a surface area of only half a square foot, then we could say its surface/volume ratio is 0.05. With a smaller ratio there is less surface area for the warmth of the creature to leak out of. Tiny birds and mammals spend much of their lives seeking ways to compensate for this heat loss. Often they will sleep together in piles to reduce this ratio and better preserve their warmth. Large animals such as elephants and rhinos spend no time worrying about heat loss, if anything they find a good mud hole to wallow in to get rid of heat. The same physics applies to humans.
The writer of Ecclesiastes was not telling us that we should all hop into bed with each other just to stay warm. There are some moral implications mentioned elsewhere we won’t deal with here. He was making a much more important global statement about the safety, pleasure, and strength that comes from setting aside our insistence on self-sufficiency and entering into a healthy interdependence with those around us.
Reach out to those around you. It just might keep them from freezing up and it might keep your own world from locking up.
“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Some years ago Roger Fulgham wrote an exquisitely funny book called Some Observations From Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door. In this collection of vignettes, Fulgham gives the reader some warm hearted insights into human nature and a few culinary forays into late night fine dining while standing at the refrigerator. You will have to get the book for more details on the perfect 2 AM bachelor meal that requires no cooking skills, pots, or stoves. I recently had my own late-night experience at the door that provided a lesson on the safety that comes from community. Perhaps the insights I gained are as compelling as the perfect 2 AM meal. You will have to decide. I opt for the community bit.
My friend Joanne, being in a wheel chair, is challenged by the American dream. She does not do things like climb on the roof with a leaf blower to clean the pine needles out of her gutters. She does not climb ladders and change light bulbs. Certainly, she does not grab the huge side-by-side refrigerator and pull it out to cut off the water supply to the ice maker. But I do all of these things. I have two legs with attached feet that are presently working well.
As part of what has become nearly a year-long habit of great hedonistic value, I open one or the other of the doors to her big side-by side and find all manner of Italian culinary wonders that do involve cooking skills, pots, and stoves. And so it was one night just before midnight I opened the left door looking for a frozen culinary wonder. I found a wonder of a very different and unsettling sort – frozen waterfalls cascading down all of the shelves with all of the culinary delights encased in crystal clear shrouds of ice. My culinary reverie was instantly thawed out and I went into emergency plumber mode.
Differential diagnosis quickly revealed the solenoid valve in the ice maker to have locked into the open position. This allows water to freely flow into the ice maker through that thin little hidden plastic tube one only sees when pulling out the almond colored beast for the every tenth year cleaning. If this frigid cascade had gone on unnoticed all night I would have been able to go ice skating without visiting Rockefeller Center in New York. I grabbed that big side-by-side and pulled it out and found the cut off valve. Joanne didn’t even know that water supplies to ice makers have cut-off valves. I did the requisite chipping and mopping up operation and earned double points for my Heineken beer account. I left Joanne in a dry house with the security of knowing Sears would be on site in the morning to replace the solenoid. I don’t keep spare parts for her particular model I think I could have asked for half the Kingdom and gotten it at that point but I limited myself merely to the promise of a beer the next day.
A couple of days later I installed an anti-virus program on my computer and did what I thought to be the correct procedure. After getting eight viruses and hammered with hundreds of worm messages I figured it was time for major action. The only problem was that I didn’t do it right. I found I could not do anything at all in any of my programs. Visions of ten years of lectures and manuscript work being vaporized by a cyber carnivore loomed in my over-active imagination. I happened to be on the phone with Joanne while going through this cyber-crisis. Joanne claims to have the barest knowledge of computers and manages to do her e-mail and some modest work in Word and has even begun using PowerPoint. But Hotshot here with thirty years of building and working with computers did not know what to do to fix my problem. With the faith of a child, Joanne offered a simplistic solution that left me in awe when it worked instantly – “Reboot.” Others have since told me that nearly all computer problems can be fixed by this procedure of simply turning it off, waiting, and turning it back on. Joanne could have asked for half the Kingdom and gotten it. The computer worked perfectly when it came back to life.
Suddenly I knew what community really was about. Joanne and I were both in circumstances that at the time were very big in our micro worlds. Ice cascades in the kitchen of one in a wheelchair are not a joke. A computer locked up with ten years of one’s work in it is not a joke. The tiniest bit of insight or knowledge on the part of the other brought about an immediate solution. I knew about cut-off valves. She knew about the universal application of “Reboot.”
In the ancient writings of Ecclesiastes we are told that if one sleeps alone, one gets cold. If one sleeps with another, one stays warm. Not so long ago I learned that there are other applications to this than the physics of the heat loss that occurs from excessive surface/volume ratios from sleeping life forms.
For those of you having forgotten your high school biology, college level thermodynamics, and postgraduate quantum physics, a short refresher of this concept is in order. Very very crudely: If a life form has a volume of 10 gallons and a surface area of 1 square foot we could say the surface/volume ratio is 0.1. If another life form has a volume of ten gallons and a surface area of only half a square foot, then we could say its surface/volume ratio is 0.05. With a smaller ratio there is less surface area for the warmth of the creature to leak out of. Tiny birds and mammals spend much of their lives seeking ways to compensate for this heat loss. Often they will sleep together in piles to reduce this ratio and better preserve their warmth. Large animals such as elephants and rhinos spend no time worrying about heat loss, if anything they find a good mud hole to wallow in to get rid of heat. The same physics applies to humans.
The writer of Ecclesiastes was not telling us that we should all hop into bed with each other just to stay warm. There are some moral implications mentioned elsewhere we won’t deal with here. He was making a much more important global statement about the safety, pleasure, and strength that comes from setting aside our insistence on self-sufficiency and entering into a healthy interdependence with those around us.
Reach out to those around you. It just might keep them from freezing up and it might keep your own world from locking up.
“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Civility 1-6-10
Anderson, South Carolina
A friend of mine nursed a man back to health for weeks after he was critically burned in an industrial accident. His recovery was astounding. He received medicine that cannot be obtained in a little orange bottle from Walgreens. This shimmering example of compassionate community is summed up in a few brief words.
Civility
In horrors of darkest pain,
Your voice was there, soothing.
In vast loneliness of despair,
You held his hand, giving Hope.
With warmth of compassionate heart,
You brought him back from the brink.
In grim darkness of thermal anguish,
You filled him with life's radiance.
They say he healed rather quickly.
I don't wonder why this was so.
The best medicines are free.
A friend of mine nursed a man back to health for weeks after he was critically burned in an industrial accident. His recovery was astounding. He received medicine that cannot be obtained in a little orange bottle from Walgreens. This shimmering example of compassionate community is summed up in a few brief words.
Civility
In horrors of darkest pain,
Your voice was there, soothing.
In vast loneliness of despair,
You held his hand, giving Hope.
With warmth of compassionate heart,
You brought him back from the brink.
In grim darkness of thermal anguish,
You filled him with life's radiance.
They say he healed rather quickly.
I don't wonder why this was so.
The best medicines are free.
The Transmutation of Epstein’s Magic 1-5-10
Anderson, South Carolina
Fred Epstein is one of those guys who believes in magic, but he is a realist in that he also knows magicians have to practice and do their homework to get their tricks to work right. Even as a master magician of his craft, I am not sure he knows just how much his magic has been transmuted into so many different forms in far flung places. I do know he gets an intelligence folder put on his desk each day, suggesting that he does hear of some of it, but I know of some he doesn’t know of.
Epstein is not a teen-age kid living next door trying to figure out how to make cards disappear or rabbits come out of black top hats. His magic tricks have much higher stakes results. He has learned how to make time come out of nowhere, how to give years of precious life to his audiences of one – you see Epstein is a pediatric neurosurgeon who has figured out how to make things disappear, dreaded things like astrocytomas, gliomas, hemangiomas, things that steal time and life itself if left to their own devices. He especially knows how to make these disappear from the brainstem and the spinal cord. Having studied medicine myself and having spent three decades in those tall towers of academic university medicine, I know these words well. I also know enough neuroanatomy to know that you never ever ever want to have one of these monsters show up in the brain stem or spinal cord and you never want to have to use these words with anyone; especially parents who love their kids really hard. There is no way to sugar coat them and make them go down easier.
I am in the magic business myself in a way. I don’t use Cavitrons or retractors or electrocautery units to make neurological monsters disappear, but I have for years used paint, masking tape, old plywood, and, disintegrating two by fours to create make-believe worlds in a community playhouse. I never would have heard of Fred Epstein’s magic if it were not for the fact that I am still plying my own magic trade in the playhouse.
Every year we have a volunteer appreciation party in which we acknowledge the directors, producers, actors, paint meisters, ticket takers and even grunts like me who do magic tricks with old plywood building sets. Last month we had our annual event and it was on the front row of stage left that I first heard about Epstein’s ability to make things disappear – things you really never want to see again. The last thing Epstein ever wants to do is give a repeat performance to the same audience.
The party, the presentations, the food all faded away as I sat mesmerized listening to how this New York magician, who likes to sail his small boat at sunset, had made a monster disappear from my new friend’s brain stem. During the month that has ensued there has not been a day where we haven’t talked for hours on the phone, swapped e-mails, or made assorted expeditions. I learned that Epstein pulled at least nine years out of the hat for Joanne and as far as she knows she can expect another thirty. It would seem Epstein learned his tricks very well.
Joanne’s two boys have grown up with their mother after all. She is able to order pizza for her boys and their friends every Friday night. Yet, brainstem monsters don’t let go easily and they often exact a price. Joanne is in a wheelchair most of the time because she has no proprioception – a nice neurological medical word for describing the normal ability to have an idea how one’s body is oriented to the planet underneath it. But even in her chair Joanne stands taller than just about anyone I have ever known.
She has managed to take Epstein’s surgical wizardry and transmute it into another kind of magic that also transforms lives. Like most states, public education is really suffering from funding cutbacks, teacher burnout, violence, and countless other impediments to learning. As an unpaid volunteer on permanent disability, Joanne shows up at the Centerville Elementary School every day for four or five hours and works in what she describes as “My Magic Room”. She spends the day coordinating the volunteer tutor-mentoring program that gives some of the 729 students in the school a chance of making a way in their young lives. She described to me the case of a 4th grader who did a math test and got every single problem wrong. He was sent to the Magic Room for help. With her own magic Joanne was able to encourage this young math phobic that he didn’t have to be one. She was able to help him in a way that can only be described as magical. He was able to retest in math and get every problem correct - and no she did not give him clues as to the correct answers. Wanna guess what Joanne does every afternoon? She has four different students come to her house for individual tutoring at her kitchen table.
Epstein is able to do his magic in Operating Room 11 on the sixth floor of New York University Hospital, because a teacher believed in him early on. Children are the most prodigious learning machines in the universe, if properly nurtured and encouraged. Because Epstein got encouraged in his early struggles in school, he got the confidence to believe in himself and ended up a brilliant surgeon with a good set of hands, and he was able to allow Joanne the gift of time to do her own magic in the Centerville Elementary School and in her kitchen every day.
I have unwittingly become a beneficiary of Epstein’s magic myself. I don’t have any monster growing in my head that I know of so I don’t need surgical magic, but my life journey has presented me with monsters of the type that can’t be taken out with Cavitrons and a good set of hands. How often I have wished that my monsters could be just taken out with a scalpel and some high tech gadgets in a pair of good hands.
Joanne describes herself to me as “your messenger”. The magic of her message is one that was written down before the foundations of time. “Just believe and all things are possible.” Epstein believed it and has given the gift of time and life to thousands. His wife, Kathy, believes it, and allows him to climb to the top of the mountain. Joanne believed it and took a big risk and now is able to show thousands of insecure school kids in uncertain times that all things are possible. She is showing me that even now, where Cavitrons can’t go, monsters can be made to disappear.
Fred Epstein is one of those guys who believes in magic, but he is a realist in that he also knows magicians have to practice and do their homework to get their tricks to work right. Even as a master magician of his craft, I am not sure he knows just how much his magic has been transmuted into so many different forms in far flung places. I do know he gets an intelligence folder put on his desk each day, suggesting that he does hear of some of it, but I know of some he doesn’t know of.
Epstein is not a teen-age kid living next door trying to figure out how to make cards disappear or rabbits come out of black top hats. His magic tricks have much higher stakes results. He has learned how to make time come out of nowhere, how to give years of precious life to his audiences of one – you see Epstein is a pediatric neurosurgeon who has figured out how to make things disappear, dreaded things like astrocytomas, gliomas, hemangiomas, things that steal time and life itself if left to their own devices. He especially knows how to make these disappear from the brainstem and the spinal cord. Having studied medicine myself and having spent three decades in those tall towers of academic university medicine, I know these words well. I also know enough neuroanatomy to know that you never ever ever want to have one of these monsters show up in the brain stem or spinal cord and you never want to have to use these words with anyone; especially parents who love their kids really hard. There is no way to sugar coat them and make them go down easier.
I am in the magic business myself in a way. I don’t use Cavitrons or retractors or electrocautery units to make neurological monsters disappear, but I have for years used paint, masking tape, old plywood, and, disintegrating two by fours to create make-believe worlds in a community playhouse. I never would have heard of Fred Epstein’s magic if it were not for the fact that I am still plying my own magic trade in the playhouse.
Every year we have a volunteer appreciation party in which we acknowledge the directors, producers, actors, paint meisters, ticket takers and even grunts like me who do magic tricks with old plywood building sets. Last month we had our annual event and it was on the front row of stage left that I first heard about Epstein’s ability to make things disappear – things you really never want to see again. The last thing Epstein ever wants to do is give a repeat performance to the same audience.
The party, the presentations, the food all faded away as I sat mesmerized listening to how this New York magician, who likes to sail his small boat at sunset, had made a monster disappear from my new friend’s brain stem. During the month that has ensued there has not been a day where we haven’t talked for hours on the phone, swapped e-mails, or made assorted expeditions. I learned that Epstein pulled at least nine years out of the hat for Joanne and as far as she knows she can expect another thirty. It would seem Epstein learned his tricks very well.
Joanne’s two boys have grown up with their mother after all. She is able to order pizza for her boys and their friends every Friday night. Yet, brainstem monsters don’t let go easily and they often exact a price. Joanne is in a wheelchair most of the time because she has no proprioception – a nice neurological medical word for describing the normal ability to have an idea how one’s body is oriented to the planet underneath it. But even in her chair Joanne stands taller than just about anyone I have ever known.
She has managed to take Epstein’s surgical wizardry and transmute it into another kind of magic that also transforms lives. Like most states, public education is really suffering from funding cutbacks, teacher burnout, violence, and countless other impediments to learning. As an unpaid volunteer on permanent disability, Joanne shows up at the Centerville Elementary School every day for four or five hours and works in what she describes as “My Magic Room”. She spends the day coordinating the volunteer tutor-mentoring program that gives some of the 729 students in the school a chance of making a way in their young lives. She described to me the case of a 4th grader who did a math test and got every single problem wrong. He was sent to the Magic Room for help. With her own magic Joanne was able to encourage this young math phobic that he didn’t have to be one. She was able to help him in a way that can only be described as magical. He was able to retest in math and get every problem correct - and no she did not give him clues as to the correct answers. Wanna guess what Joanne does every afternoon? She has four different students come to her house for individual tutoring at her kitchen table.
Epstein is able to do his magic in Operating Room 11 on the sixth floor of New York University Hospital, because a teacher believed in him early on. Children are the most prodigious learning machines in the universe, if properly nurtured and encouraged. Because Epstein got encouraged in his early struggles in school, he got the confidence to believe in himself and ended up a brilliant surgeon with a good set of hands, and he was able to allow Joanne the gift of time to do her own magic in the Centerville Elementary School and in her kitchen every day.
I have unwittingly become a beneficiary of Epstein’s magic myself. I don’t have any monster growing in my head that I know of so I don’t need surgical magic, but my life journey has presented me with monsters of the type that can’t be taken out with Cavitrons and a good set of hands. How often I have wished that my monsters could be just taken out with a scalpel and some high tech gadgets in a pair of good hands.
Joanne describes herself to me as “your messenger”. The magic of her message is one that was written down before the foundations of time. “Just believe and all things are possible.” Epstein believed it and has given the gift of time and life to thousands. His wife, Kathy, believes it, and allows him to climb to the top of the mountain. Joanne believed it and took a big risk and now is able to show thousands of insecure school kids in uncertain times that all things are possible. She is showing me that even now, where Cavitrons can’t go, monsters can be made to disappear.
Bookstore Musings 1-4-10
River Falls, South Carolina
I was sitting in the Books-a-Million café Saturday reading a book by a fellow who talked about living life fully after being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. His story resonated with me as it was thought I might have this twenty years ago. I found his insights inspiring. He learned that by facing his losses he could now much more fully live. He mentioned hiking the White Mountains of Vermont while he could and that there would be that day when he could not. It came to pass. But he did push his wheelchair to the view spots along the road when he could. He no longer can do that. He mused that for all of us there would be that last time we would see the grand aureate sunshine of late afternoon. I thought about that as I walked three miles yesterday in that late golden light just before sunset, even though the wind chill was fourteen degrees. I could be in a morgue freezer tomorrow, where it is colder yet. The future is shrouded.
It occurred to me while sitting in the bookstore that I had not been contra dancing since I broke my leg a long time ago; that something else might prevent me from doing that ever again, perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps twenty years from now. To the best of my knowledge nothing would prevent me from doing so that night. I knew where a fine contra band would be playing and where 200 happy people would soon be in an ebullient state of flow. I had a way to get there. I also recall a friend telling me she had never seen me really have fun except when I was contra dancing. I instantly put the book up and went home, made a fast dinner, and headed to the mountains at sunset where I knew there would be happy music wafting from an old rustic dance hall in a small mountain valley next to a tumbling mountain stream.
Listening to an audio tape on “Living in the Mind of God” given to me at Christmas, while driving to the mountains at sunset, was like a mini-retreat. As I was driving northeast, a huge aureate full moon rose in the east, occasionally eclipsed by wispy high clouds. By the time I reached the mountains the moon was platinum and this greatly magnified the numinous wonder of the fresh snowfall covering the surrounding landscape. In but ninety minutes I felt like I had made a journey that far transcended the physical distance between my house and this old weathered dance hall in the mountain forest. The physical world was transformed and my temperament certainly was.
I did dance and did not miss a dance during the first two hours and did not hold back on swinging, stomping, and promenading. My friend was right. I really do have fun when I am out there on that floor and I had happy reunions with some people I had not seen in too long. The drive home was like another mini-retreat, illuminated by the intense silver orb, now guiding me southwest to a warm bed and pleasant dreams.
I sure am glad I got out of the house Saturday night.
I was sitting in the Books-a-Million café Saturday reading a book by a fellow who talked about living life fully after being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. His story resonated with me as it was thought I might have this twenty years ago. I found his insights inspiring. He learned that by facing his losses he could now much more fully live. He mentioned hiking the White Mountains of Vermont while he could and that there would be that day when he could not. It came to pass. But he did push his wheelchair to the view spots along the road when he could. He no longer can do that. He mused that for all of us there would be that last time we would see the grand aureate sunshine of late afternoon. I thought about that as I walked three miles yesterday in that late golden light just before sunset, even though the wind chill was fourteen degrees. I could be in a morgue freezer tomorrow, where it is colder yet. The future is shrouded.
It occurred to me while sitting in the bookstore that I had not been contra dancing since I broke my leg a long time ago; that something else might prevent me from doing that ever again, perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps twenty years from now. To the best of my knowledge nothing would prevent me from doing so that night. I knew where a fine contra band would be playing and where 200 happy people would soon be in an ebullient state of flow. I had a way to get there. I also recall a friend telling me she had never seen me really have fun except when I was contra dancing. I instantly put the book up and went home, made a fast dinner, and headed to the mountains at sunset where I knew there would be happy music wafting from an old rustic dance hall in a small mountain valley next to a tumbling mountain stream.
Listening to an audio tape on “Living in the Mind of God” given to me at Christmas, while driving to the mountains at sunset, was like a mini-retreat. As I was driving northeast, a huge aureate full moon rose in the east, occasionally eclipsed by wispy high clouds. By the time I reached the mountains the moon was platinum and this greatly magnified the numinous wonder of the fresh snowfall covering the surrounding landscape. In but ninety minutes I felt like I had made a journey that far transcended the physical distance between my house and this old weathered dance hall in the mountain forest. The physical world was transformed and my temperament certainly was.
I did dance and did not miss a dance during the first two hours and did not hold back on swinging, stomping, and promenading. My friend was right. I really do have fun when I am out there on that floor and I had happy reunions with some people I had not seen in too long. The drive home was like another mini-retreat, illuminated by the intense silver orb, now guiding me southwest to a warm bed and pleasant dreams.
I sure am glad I got out of the house Saturday night.
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