Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC
I walked two blocks down the street to do advance photography of the venue for a wedding I’m participating in about four hours from now. I may as well have traversed two galaxies.
The ‘venue’ proves to be one of those places where upon entering I promptly lose my breath and wonder what suddenly happened to cause an explosive decompression of the atmosphere. The Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle is variously described as one of the ten largest Catholic Churches in the world, one of the most beautiful. Crammed into a downtown location with nothing around it but narrow alleys, the exterior context gives no hint as to what beauty lies within. Its interior is opulent almost beyond conception; I was in photographic nirvana for the next ninety minutes.
After finishing my work inside I walked all the way around the cathedral, hoping to find a Bishop’s garden or some other quiet place of gentle repose. There was none, only barren asphalt, brick walls with faded graffiti, smelly dumpsters, and sheets of cardboard. I did find a very different kind of repose going on, but not one lending itself to thinking all is well in the world. On several sides of the cathedral I found grown men fast asleep on pallets of old cardboard boxes, covered up with thread bare fabrics of long-forgotten vintage. I suddenly found myself being especially quiet; tip-toeing through the bedrooms of strangers. Sleep is often the only refugee for the homeless. The last thing I want to do was take that away from them, I managed to avoid doing so.
As I walked back to my fine corner suite in the historic Mayflower Hotel, I found myself wondering intensely about inequity. How is I can be staying in a suite with a going rate of $10,000 a month, hard-wired Ethernet access, three windows looking out onto the streets of Washington power and prosperity, enjoying $20 club sandwiches, yet grown men are sleeping on old cardboard, their entire worldly goods in a few frayed plastic bags? Suddenly a wave of cognitive dissonance washed over me, amplified when walking past the Godiva chocolatier just putting out his sandwich board promoting a frequent buyer program for truffles. I will soon put on my fine Vanjulian suit and walk back over to the cathedral. I wonder if these men will still be in their sleepy refuge from reality.
Am I any better than these guys on the cardboard? Does a fine suit really make the man? Mark Twain said, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” Is there some middle ground between naked and Vanjulian? I would like to think so.
I want to believe that in the Kingdom of God clothes don’t make the man. In fact, Jesus got in the face of those who brown-nosed the well dressed and brought them to the best seats in the house. Jesus suggested there is much greater merit in finding those inclined to sleep on cardboard and bringing them into the feast instead of the well-heeled. He went on to say getting into Heaven is an especially tough challenge for the rich.
As the crowded smelly exterior of the cathedral gave no hint of what lies within, the smelly weather beaten exteriors of those sleeping on cardboard gives no hint as to the beauty lying within these men. These men were once young children capable of laughter, dreams, hope, possibilities. I experienced great dissonance, wondering what part they may have played in their life journeys bringing them to the asphalt outside St Matthew’s Cathedral. Is it their own fault? Am I to be lauded because I sleep in a goose down cloud in the Mayflower? Nyet on both.
The inner beauty of these men has been encrusted by the barnacles of life. In my recovery work, I’m always astounded at the immense inner beauty emerging in those who find the inner spiritual strength to gain liberation from the additions and mental illness so often afflicting those on cardboard pallets. I can’t but wonder what would happen for these particular men if someone lit hope in their lives instead of votive candles inside the cathedral. I was close at one time to utter hopelessness; used cardboard could have easily become my personal reality. Another man lit the candle of Hope in me, and now I have an amazingly large life.
Life happens on life’s terms. I don’t know why I sleep in goose down clouds while some sleep on cardboard. Powerlessness about how life turns out is a hard teaching for each of us to embrace. Some of us seem to be dealt much better cards. Why? I’ve no idea.
What I do know emphatically, is I’m not powerless to show compassion to those sleeping on cardboard. There is One has already shown us what we can do about those around us who are living the darkness of hopelessness. We can freely give away that which has been freely given to us.
I think I need to dress now to be on time.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
“For I know the thoughts I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘thoughts for good and not for evil, plans that will give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.”
“Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Came to Believe 5-11-14
Anderson, South Carolina
Mother’s Day is a happy day of abundant pink and red carnations for mothers in churches across the land. Relieved of unrelenting responsibility, if but for ninety minutes, mothers are taken out for a meal and feted as queen for a day. Industrious families will even do the cooking themselves on mom’s day. Mothers have perhaps the most important job in any civilized culture; transmitting values, guidance, providing nourishment, safety, and perhaps most importantly, a sense of self-worth. As on Super Bowl Sunday, accretions of cars were seen at many houses, evidence of mothers being fawned over by adoring adult children.
I celebrated this day in a very different way; lighting a votive candle for my mom and going to the dump.
A dear friend was raised in circumstances of extreme wealth and social privilege, attending the finest boarding schools in Europe, having virtually every option money can buy, except for the freedom to believe in herself. Money, power, and social expectations at the top crushed her spirits and for decades she has struggled with being a disinherited economic refugee in another land, despite a chance to own factories and palaces.
Mothers have a primary role in the formation of our self image. It will take a lot more than a pink carnation to overcome a mother’s belief a young daughter is responsible for a wealthy father’s violent suicide. It will take more than a truckload of red flowers to help this daughter see her innocence in this tragedy.
I was raised in very ordinary lower middle class circumstances by a struggling single mother who desperately wanted to be part of the very economic social caste which destroyed my friend’s sense of self. Furs, diamonds, Cadillacs, and a short paragraph in the Social Register never did a thing to change our economic or social realities; the Cadillacs got repossessed and the checks bounced. I don’t remember Mother ever being in a church to get pink or red carnations. We weren’t allowed to call her Mom.
About a week ago I received an ignominious box of priority mail at the post office from one of my brothers. I was instantly reminded of an anonymous crate I received twenty years ago containing what I thought to be all the physical evidence of my existence in a family that had me believe I was an unwanted afterthought. What a surprise on Mother’s day Eve twenty years later to be recipient of compelling new fifty—year-old evidence that what I had come to believe all these years was no less destructive than what an industrialist’s daughter believed; I could only be included in family if I was willing to give up my own dreams and go along with the script laid out for me. I instantly realized the destruction of one’s dreams happens just as easily in lower economic castes as it does in the stratosphere of great wealth, it has nothing to do with finance.
I gave more than fourty years attempting to follow the script, only to find this was never good enough. My industrialist refugee from the other side of the world, from another economic realm, and the other end of the educational spectrum also found following the script was not good enough. We both found ourselves crushed, clueless as to whom we really are.
In opening that box, fifty years of frozen memories sublimated and I was reminded my status as a familial refugee was very real fifty years ago and remains so into the present era. I was reading in 10 pt blue courier font on laid linen paper, my mother’s beliefs that I have a fundamental inability to manage life, that I am inferior to my siblings’ abilities to manage their affairs.
During those fifty years I spent a whole lot of hours in the offices of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and clergy; attempting to embrace the possibility I might have some justification for remaining on this world; that I did not have to follow someone else’s script. For some years now I have actually come to believe I might have written new beliefs; that I did not have to justify my place in society. Alas, in the space of minutes I was to find my work is yet incomplete. The dull ache seeping in around the edges of my soul while reading that 10 point courier font told me I am still a work in progress.
It then occurred to me I’m no longer required to honor those ancient messages of incompetence and inferiority; I stopped reading. Most of those letters written to me during my first years in one of our great universities remain unread this Mother’s Day. I went to the church. Next to the buckets of carnations I knelt down and lit a votive candle for Mother and offered a short prayer for her soul.
I then took those fine linen papers with their 10 pt blue courier font to the recycling dump. While placing them in the “Mixed Papers” bin, I called my industrial refugee and together we decided it was time to let go of ancient messages we are no longer required to believe. I came to believe “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.”
I left the dump and went and enjoyed a fine Mother’s Day dinner at a table where I can believe what I want.
Blessings
Craig C. Johnson
Mother’s Day is a happy day of abundant pink and red carnations for mothers in churches across the land. Relieved of unrelenting responsibility, if but for ninety minutes, mothers are taken out for a meal and feted as queen for a day. Industrious families will even do the cooking themselves on mom’s day. Mothers have perhaps the most important job in any civilized culture; transmitting values, guidance, providing nourishment, safety, and perhaps most importantly, a sense of self-worth. As on Super Bowl Sunday, accretions of cars were seen at many houses, evidence of mothers being fawned over by adoring adult children.
I celebrated this day in a very different way; lighting a votive candle for my mom and going to the dump.
A dear friend was raised in circumstances of extreme wealth and social privilege, attending the finest boarding schools in Europe, having virtually every option money can buy, except for the freedom to believe in herself. Money, power, and social expectations at the top crushed her spirits and for decades she has struggled with being a disinherited economic refugee in another land, despite a chance to own factories and palaces.
Mothers have a primary role in the formation of our self image. It will take a lot more than a pink carnation to overcome a mother’s belief a young daughter is responsible for a wealthy father’s violent suicide. It will take more than a truckload of red flowers to help this daughter see her innocence in this tragedy.
I was raised in very ordinary lower middle class circumstances by a struggling single mother who desperately wanted to be part of the very economic social caste which destroyed my friend’s sense of self. Furs, diamonds, Cadillacs, and a short paragraph in the Social Register never did a thing to change our economic or social realities; the Cadillacs got repossessed and the checks bounced. I don’t remember Mother ever being in a church to get pink or red carnations. We weren’t allowed to call her Mom.
About a week ago I received an ignominious box of priority mail at the post office from one of my brothers. I was instantly reminded of an anonymous crate I received twenty years ago containing what I thought to be all the physical evidence of my existence in a family that had me believe I was an unwanted afterthought. What a surprise on Mother’s day Eve twenty years later to be recipient of compelling new fifty—year-old evidence that what I had come to believe all these years was no less destructive than what an industrialist’s daughter believed; I could only be included in family if I was willing to give up my own dreams and go along with the script laid out for me. I instantly realized the destruction of one’s dreams happens just as easily in lower economic castes as it does in the stratosphere of great wealth, it has nothing to do with finance.
I gave more than fourty years attempting to follow the script, only to find this was never good enough. My industrialist refugee from the other side of the world, from another economic realm, and the other end of the educational spectrum also found following the script was not good enough. We both found ourselves crushed, clueless as to whom we really are.
In opening that box, fifty years of frozen memories sublimated and I was reminded my status as a familial refugee was very real fifty years ago and remains so into the present era. I was reading in 10 pt blue courier font on laid linen paper, my mother’s beliefs that I have a fundamental inability to manage life, that I am inferior to my siblings’ abilities to manage their affairs.
During those fifty years I spent a whole lot of hours in the offices of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and clergy; attempting to embrace the possibility I might have some justification for remaining on this world; that I did not have to follow someone else’s script. For some years now I have actually come to believe I might have written new beliefs; that I did not have to justify my place in society. Alas, in the space of minutes I was to find my work is yet incomplete. The dull ache seeping in around the edges of my soul while reading that 10 point courier font told me I am still a work in progress.
It then occurred to me I’m no longer required to honor those ancient messages of incompetence and inferiority; I stopped reading. Most of those letters written to me during my first years in one of our great universities remain unread this Mother’s Day. I went to the church. Next to the buckets of carnations I knelt down and lit a votive candle for Mother and offered a short prayer for her soul.
I then took those fine linen papers with their 10 pt blue courier font to the recycling dump. While placing them in the “Mixed Papers” bin, I called my industrial refugee and together we decided it was time to let go of ancient messages we are no longer required to believe. I came to believe “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.”
I left the dump and went and enjoyed a fine Mother’s Day dinner at a table where I can believe what I want.
Blessings
Craig C. Johnson
Panning For Gold 1-27-14
Disclaimer - My observations are about typical food behaviors of American consumers and are not intended to make any statements about the ethics, efficiency, or merits of any fund raising effort or its volunteers. This particular event even recycles spent oyster shells as construction aggregate.
Anderson, South Carolina
In mid 2012 the National Resource Defense Council issued a report indicating Americans throw away nearly half their food every year, waste worth roughly $165 billion annually. Dana Gunders, a scientist with the NRDC food and agriculture program states, “As a country, we're essentially tossing every other piece of food that crosses our path. That's money and precious resources down the drain," said Dana Gunders, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council's food and agriculture program. The average American family of four throws away an equivalent of $2,275 annually in food.
A 15 percent reduction in U.S. food supply losses would save enough to feed 25 million Americans annually. Elimination of waste altogether would feed a hundred million. Reducing calorie intake to healthy levels would feed even more. Evidence suggests there’s been a fifty percent jump in U.S. food waste since the 1970s.
Elimination of waste would lighten landfill burdens, where food waste makes up the largest component of solid waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency website, more food reaches landfills and incinerators than any other single material in municipal solid waste. In 2011 alone, more than thirty-six million tons of food waste was generated, with only four percent diverted from landfills and incinerators for composting.
Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the Bureau of Applied Research in the University of Arizona spent ten years measuring food loss in America. Jones examined farming practices before evaluating practices food production, retail, consumption, and waste disposal. His findings revealed hundreds of billions of economic losses, which if curbed, could feed tens of millions of us sustainably and reduce a major solid waste management problem.
The definitive study to date, funded by the USDA, provided the best estimates in decades of how much food is wasted in America. “Even without including losses on farms and orchards and losses in wholesaling and manufacturing, over 96 billion pounds of food is discarded each year. Yes, that’s billion. Not only is this a tragic loss in terms of the number of hungry Americans who could benefit from this food, but such waste also increases disposal costs by an estimated $1 billion a year for municipalities across the Nation.”
Many non-profits have discovered the easy revenue generation possible from staging oyster roasts on cold winter days. Several of these are annual winter events in my town. One of these has been a long-standing feature of my late January days. Tickets ranging from $35 to $75 offer individuals the opportunity to indulge in as many oysters, shrimp, bowls of chili, and cups of beer as they can handle. My primary volunteer role in this event each year is to oversea the management of the solid waste generated by nearly seven hundred people. Hundreds of beer and wine bottles are sorted by color for recycling; pizza boxes, steel food cans, aluminum drink cans are separated and hauled to a recycling center.
Seven hundred people eat a lot, consuming 8,750 pounds of oysters, cases of jumbo shrimp, uncounted gallons of beer and wine, thousands of disposable plates, bowls, cups, spoons, rolls of towels. A lot of waste happens; incredible waste. It’s been a long-standing practice of mine to save all organic food waste for either composting or reuse as farm feed, mostly farm feed. Many of our patrons and volunteers would consider my ‘job’ the most disgusting and degrading; I have the most rewarding job of all. I spend eight hours culling through food waste, Styrofoam bowls, oyster shells, panning for gold. The yield is incredible. I end up with pails of organic waste consisting of shrimp peelings, half eaten bowls of chili, spoiled crackers, half-eaten shrimp, apples, pizza crusts. I keep farm animals very happy.
I also end up with opportunities to be an urban archeologist/anthropologist, just like scientists at the University of Arizona; only this field work happens in real time. Watching Americans relate to their food is often disquieting. They tend to take vast portions of things and once satiated, discard anything remaining. If food temperature drops below piping hot, it’s pushed away. If someone else reaches into a bowl of shrimp or sauce, it becomes ‘unclean.’ Don’t even mention the concept of ‘left-overs.’
At oyster roasts, patrons are coming and going from the same wooden tables for six hours. Patrons have their fill, leaving bowls of now very cold shrimp on the table. Succeeding patrons want nothing to do with someone else’s abandoned cold shrimp. They want nothing to do with steamed oysters gone cold. In the case of an oyster roast, they get swept into one of a hundred plastic trash drums, unless I’m around. For six to seven hours, I move at the speed of light to stay ahead of this avalanche of unwanted shrimp and oysters. I cull unopened oysters from spent shells, collect uneaten cold shrimp from swept aside bowls. Discarded shrimp is often tossed directly onto tables where sand, mud, and grit from the bottom of Galveston Bay seriously erode their curb appeal. Happily, during winter, it’s colder outside at the roast than inside my refrigerator, so food safety becomes a non-issue. This year my refrigerator was about ten degrees warmer without including the sub-zero wind chill factor.
Along the way I pour off gallons of wasted beer and wine into galvanized basins to make trash handling less disgusting. I collect food scraps for farm feed. Hundreds of aluminum cans get rinsed and crushed. Glass is pulled as well. I harvest abandoned gourmet bottles of horseradish, cocktail sauce, and dozens of small very thick terry cloth towels. A dozen pairs of nice work gloves were left behind as well.
I can’t but wonder about a culture so incredibly callous about precious resources such as food, and in this case sublime expensive food. Jumbo U-2 gulf shrimp retail for $17.95 a pound. Shelled oysters fetch a dollar a piece at retail outlets. As with gold, one washes away sand and grit to get refined product. When my recycling and panning for gold was finished at midnight, I found myself with seven pounds of jumbo shrimp with a retail value of $126 and two pounds net of oysters fetching about $45. In a restaurant on shell they would fetch $150. Oysters are served with saltine crackers to provide salt. Nabisco premium saltines retail for $3.29 a pound. Those little sandwich baggies with discarded saltines I found blowing around the parking lots and in the cans added up to nine pounds, a retail value of $30. Assorted abandoned sauces added another $25.
Two dozen thick white towels washed in bleach and discarded laundry soap will keep me from ever thinking about buying paper towels. Two hundred aluminum cans added about $3. My panning netted about $275 of gourmet grade food, towels, and gloves already launched into the American solid waste stream.
When looking at the kinds of food I ended up with, the work of the NRDC, Timothy Jones, the EPA, and the USDA takes on a very real, compelling relevance. It could make one weep. I think of One who once said, “Forgive them, they know not what they do.” Will we wake up to our callous attitudes and behaviors in a world where seventeen thousand children will die of starvation before nightfall?
Given the unorthodox way I captured this wondrous food, out of begrudging respect for people’s idiosyncrasies about food, I will never offer it to guests at my table, but I will with grateful heart enjoy some incredible meals during the next year. It’s no coincidence the miracles of Jesus most often had to do with the amplification of available food. I like to think my disgusting degrading job is really nothing short of intercessory prayer at its best.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Anderson, South Carolina
In mid 2012 the National Resource Defense Council issued a report indicating Americans throw away nearly half their food every year, waste worth roughly $165 billion annually. Dana Gunders, a scientist with the NRDC food and agriculture program states, “As a country, we're essentially tossing every other piece of food that crosses our path. That's money and precious resources down the drain," said Dana Gunders, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council's food and agriculture program. The average American family of four throws away an equivalent of $2,275 annually in food.
A 15 percent reduction in U.S. food supply losses would save enough to feed 25 million Americans annually. Elimination of waste altogether would feed a hundred million. Reducing calorie intake to healthy levels would feed even more. Evidence suggests there’s been a fifty percent jump in U.S. food waste since the 1970s.
Elimination of waste would lighten landfill burdens, where food waste makes up the largest component of solid waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency website, more food reaches landfills and incinerators than any other single material in municipal solid waste. In 2011 alone, more than thirty-six million tons of food waste was generated, with only four percent diverted from landfills and incinerators for composting.
Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the Bureau of Applied Research in the University of Arizona spent ten years measuring food loss in America. Jones examined farming practices before evaluating practices food production, retail, consumption, and waste disposal. His findings revealed hundreds of billions of economic losses, which if curbed, could feed tens of millions of us sustainably and reduce a major solid waste management problem.
The definitive study to date, funded by the USDA, provided the best estimates in decades of how much food is wasted in America. “Even without including losses on farms and orchards and losses in wholesaling and manufacturing, over 96 billion pounds of food is discarded each year. Yes, that’s billion. Not only is this a tragic loss in terms of the number of hungry Americans who could benefit from this food, but such waste also increases disposal costs by an estimated $1 billion a year for municipalities across the Nation.”
Many non-profits have discovered the easy revenue generation possible from staging oyster roasts on cold winter days. Several of these are annual winter events in my town. One of these has been a long-standing feature of my late January days. Tickets ranging from $35 to $75 offer individuals the opportunity to indulge in as many oysters, shrimp, bowls of chili, and cups of beer as they can handle. My primary volunteer role in this event each year is to oversea the management of the solid waste generated by nearly seven hundred people. Hundreds of beer and wine bottles are sorted by color for recycling; pizza boxes, steel food cans, aluminum drink cans are separated and hauled to a recycling center.
Seven hundred people eat a lot, consuming 8,750 pounds of oysters, cases of jumbo shrimp, uncounted gallons of beer and wine, thousands of disposable plates, bowls, cups, spoons, rolls of towels. A lot of waste happens; incredible waste. It’s been a long-standing practice of mine to save all organic food waste for either composting or reuse as farm feed, mostly farm feed. Many of our patrons and volunteers would consider my ‘job’ the most disgusting and degrading; I have the most rewarding job of all. I spend eight hours culling through food waste, Styrofoam bowls, oyster shells, panning for gold. The yield is incredible. I end up with pails of organic waste consisting of shrimp peelings, half eaten bowls of chili, spoiled crackers, half-eaten shrimp, apples, pizza crusts. I keep farm animals very happy.
I also end up with opportunities to be an urban archeologist/anthropologist, just like scientists at the University of Arizona; only this field work happens in real time. Watching Americans relate to their food is often disquieting. They tend to take vast portions of things and once satiated, discard anything remaining. If food temperature drops below piping hot, it’s pushed away. If someone else reaches into a bowl of shrimp or sauce, it becomes ‘unclean.’ Don’t even mention the concept of ‘left-overs.’
At oyster roasts, patrons are coming and going from the same wooden tables for six hours. Patrons have their fill, leaving bowls of now very cold shrimp on the table. Succeeding patrons want nothing to do with someone else’s abandoned cold shrimp. They want nothing to do with steamed oysters gone cold. In the case of an oyster roast, they get swept into one of a hundred plastic trash drums, unless I’m around. For six to seven hours, I move at the speed of light to stay ahead of this avalanche of unwanted shrimp and oysters. I cull unopened oysters from spent shells, collect uneaten cold shrimp from swept aside bowls. Discarded shrimp is often tossed directly onto tables where sand, mud, and grit from the bottom of Galveston Bay seriously erode their curb appeal. Happily, during winter, it’s colder outside at the roast than inside my refrigerator, so food safety becomes a non-issue. This year my refrigerator was about ten degrees warmer without including the sub-zero wind chill factor.
Along the way I pour off gallons of wasted beer and wine into galvanized basins to make trash handling less disgusting. I collect food scraps for farm feed. Hundreds of aluminum cans get rinsed and crushed. Glass is pulled as well. I harvest abandoned gourmet bottles of horseradish, cocktail sauce, and dozens of small very thick terry cloth towels. A dozen pairs of nice work gloves were left behind as well.
I can’t but wonder about a culture so incredibly callous about precious resources such as food, and in this case sublime expensive food. Jumbo U-2 gulf shrimp retail for $17.95 a pound. Shelled oysters fetch a dollar a piece at retail outlets. As with gold, one washes away sand and grit to get refined product. When my recycling and panning for gold was finished at midnight, I found myself with seven pounds of jumbo shrimp with a retail value of $126 and two pounds net of oysters fetching about $45. In a restaurant on shell they would fetch $150. Oysters are served with saltine crackers to provide salt. Nabisco premium saltines retail for $3.29 a pound. Those little sandwich baggies with discarded saltines I found blowing around the parking lots and in the cans added up to nine pounds, a retail value of $30. Assorted abandoned sauces added another $25.
Two dozen thick white towels washed in bleach and discarded laundry soap will keep me from ever thinking about buying paper towels. Two hundred aluminum cans added about $3. My panning netted about $275 of gourmet grade food, towels, and gloves already launched into the American solid waste stream.
When looking at the kinds of food I ended up with, the work of the NRDC, Timothy Jones, the EPA, and the USDA takes on a very real, compelling relevance. It could make one weep. I think of One who once said, “Forgive them, they know not what they do.” Will we wake up to our callous attitudes and behaviors in a world where seventeen thousand children will die of starvation before nightfall?
Given the unorthodox way I captured this wondrous food, out of begrudging respect for people’s idiosyncrasies about food, I will never offer it to guests at my table, but I will with grateful heart enjoy some incredible meals during the next year. It’s no coincidence the miracles of Jesus most often had to do with the amplification of available food. I like to think my disgusting degrading job is really nothing short of intercessory prayer at its best.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Seeking True Value 1-10-14
Anderson, South Carolina
One has read awe-inspiring stories about a customer buying a painting in Goodwill for $4 and finding it worth $85,000. An abjectly poor woman in England lived in government subsidized housing for sixty years. The small pot she used to prop open her screen door proved to be museum-grade Ming Dynasty porcelain worth $800,000. A fellow found an original print of the Declaration of Independence in the back of a picture frame moldering in an attic. I recall it fetching about $7 million at auction.
I bought some old prints in a Saturday flea market in Vienna in 1984. Languishing under a pile of used clothing on an outside table I gave little thought to them. At $4, I did not feel a compelling need to establish provenance or valuation before buying. They proved to be Armand-Durand impressions of Rembrandt etchings from the 17th century worth at least $25,000. Today was another one of those days.
Being a known scavenger and recycler, people often call on me to clean out their accretions from too-much consumer living; knowing I can always find good homes for just about anything. This week a fellow asked me if I wanted to go through his junk before he took it to the dump. He declared emphatically having no interest in any of it, having inherited it decades ago. He is cleaning out a huge house; feeling a strong need to sell it to avoid financial calamity.
Over and over he reiterated having no interest in the things he was pulling out of attics, cabinets, closets. He also admitted to having no knowledge of porcelains, silver, china, or any of the other residues from privileged gilded living. I could have easily told him this stuff was suitable for the nearest thrift store or dump after all. He was quite willing for me to haul it away, no questions asked.
He took me around this grand house pulling out things. I felt like a scorched earth clearing would have happened if I had not been present to slow him down. He wanted this ballast out of his life. To him it was just dead weight, baggage from the past; to the dump we go.
He rooted around in the back of a closet behind some sporting goods, which I ultimately took to the Salvation Army thrift store. He came out holding a large tray with a bunch of oxidized teapots and smallish bowls and lids. It took no time at all to realize this was something once grand and beautiful. What he brought out proved to be a magnificent antique Hampton Court sterling tea service in mint condition. I almost wilted when I realized it was solid sterling with maker’s marks on all the pieces. This was the stuff of museums. I could hardly fathom how many pounds of silver were contained in this service. This was no silver-plated hollowware bought with green stamps seventy years ago.
Not much later he brought out a modest chest made of mahogany. It may as well have contained Spanish doubloons. It contained Hampton Court sterling table service for twelve or more. On a bad day, low-ball bullion valuation of this chest alone is $7,300; perhaps far far more for its antiquity premium. I could hardly make myself go to bed; caught up in determining valuations for this treasure.
As heady as it is pre-empting this museum treasure from going to the dump or being sold as scrap kitchen ware in a thrift store, I found something of far far greater value while on this mission of urban archeology – honesty and integrity.
Did I think I could rationalize and withhold my priceless knowledge from him? After all, he had declared his near contempt for the artifacts I had unearthed; they were going to the dump. I had gone to a lifetime of effort to acquire this knowledge about such objects. My knowledge was my knowledge. I went into a charity thrift store ten years ago and saw a nice bowl for sale at $3. Flipping it over revealed it to be solid sterling with maker’s mark. Revealing this information to the clerk with the advice to reprice the bowl a hundred fold only got me an impatient response, “We don’t change prices!” I paid the $3 without guilt. What about this current experience? After all, I knew to flip over those oxidized pots and squint. Should I not benefit from this? I did.
I was given the opportunity to take the higher road, seeking those things with true value. I found honesty and integrity capable of withstanding a really powerful temptation. If I had allowed this man’s ignorance and my knowledge to work against him and hauled away these finds, I would have lost my honesty and integrity. I would have traded the most priceless things I have, things which moths and thieves cannot steal, for a bunch of cold metal spoons and tea pots. Every time I would have used them I would have been given a cold metallic reminder I had traded down in life big time.
Pausing, I told him what he had brought out of his closets was museum-grade sterling and could easily represent financial freedom for him. Knowing the full possibilities of this treasure, he still sent it home with me to get evaluations. Want to guess how our friendship is doing today? We are both far richer. Today I cleaned all of his treasures and made printed valuation sheets for them. I gave the sheets to my friend and we did another archeology field gig in his house today; nothing quite as spectacular turning up. We hauled it to several charity thrift stores. We both had a good day, learning trust, honesty, and integrity are the true treasures. They will never turn up in a pawn shop.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
One has read awe-inspiring stories about a customer buying a painting in Goodwill for $4 and finding it worth $85,000. An abjectly poor woman in England lived in government subsidized housing for sixty years. The small pot she used to prop open her screen door proved to be museum-grade Ming Dynasty porcelain worth $800,000. A fellow found an original print of the Declaration of Independence in the back of a picture frame moldering in an attic. I recall it fetching about $7 million at auction.
I bought some old prints in a Saturday flea market in Vienna in 1984. Languishing under a pile of used clothing on an outside table I gave little thought to them. At $4, I did not feel a compelling need to establish provenance or valuation before buying. They proved to be Armand-Durand impressions of Rembrandt etchings from the 17th century worth at least $25,000. Today was another one of those days.
Being a known scavenger and recycler, people often call on me to clean out their accretions from too-much consumer living; knowing I can always find good homes for just about anything. This week a fellow asked me if I wanted to go through his junk before he took it to the dump. He declared emphatically having no interest in any of it, having inherited it decades ago. He is cleaning out a huge house; feeling a strong need to sell it to avoid financial calamity.
Over and over he reiterated having no interest in the things he was pulling out of attics, cabinets, closets. He also admitted to having no knowledge of porcelains, silver, china, or any of the other residues from privileged gilded living. I could have easily told him this stuff was suitable for the nearest thrift store or dump after all. He was quite willing for me to haul it away, no questions asked.
He took me around this grand house pulling out things. I felt like a scorched earth clearing would have happened if I had not been present to slow him down. He wanted this ballast out of his life. To him it was just dead weight, baggage from the past; to the dump we go.
He rooted around in the back of a closet behind some sporting goods, which I ultimately took to the Salvation Army thrift store. He came out holding a large tray with a bunch of oxidized teapots and smallish bowls and lids. It took no time at all to realize this was something once grand and beautiful. What he brought out proved to be a magnificent antique Hampton Court sterling tea service in mint condition. I almost wilted when I realized it was solid sterling with maker’s marks on all the pieces. This was the stuff of museums. I could hardly fathom how many pounds of silver were contained in this service. This was no silver-plated hollowware bought with green stamps seventy years ago.
Not much later he brought out a modest chest made of mahogany. It may as well have contained Spanish doubloons. It contained Hampton Court sterling table service for twelve or more. On a bad day, low-ball bullion valuation of this chest alone is $7,300; perhaps far far more for its antiquity premium. I could hardly make myself go to bed; caught up in determining valuations for this treasure.
As heady as it is pre-empting this museum treasure from going to the dump or being sold as scrap kitchen ware in a thrift store, I found something of far far greater value while on this mission of urban archeology – honesty and integrity.
Did I think I could rationalize and withhold my priceless knowledge from him? After all, he had declared his near contempt for the artifacts I had unearthed; they were going to the dump. I had gone to a lifetime of effort to acquire this knowledge about such objects. My knowledge was my knowledge. I went into a charity thrift store ten years ago and saw a nice bowl for sale at $3. Flipping it over revealed it to be solid sterling with maker’s mark. Revealing this information to the clerk with the advice to reprice the bowl a hundred fold only got me an impatient response, “We don’t change prices!” I paid the $3 without guilt. What about this current experience? After all, I knew to flip over those oxidized pots and squint. Should I not benefit from this? I did.
I was given the opportunity to take the higher road, seeking those things with true value. I found honesty and integrity capable of withstanding a really powerful temptation. If I had allowed this man’s ignorance and my knowledge to work against him and hauled away these finds, I would have lost my honesty and integrity. I would have traded the most priceless things I have, things which moths and thieves cannot steal, for a bunch of cold metal spoons and tea pots. Every time I would have used them I would have been given a cold metallic reminder I had traded down in life big time.
Pausing, I told him what he had brought out of his closets was museum-grade sterling and could easily represent financial freedom for him. Knowing the full possibilities of this treasure, he still sent it home with me to get evaluations. Want to guess how our friendship is doing today? We are both far richer. Today I cleaned all of his treasures and made printed valuation sheets for them. I gave the sheets to my friend and we did another archeology field gig in his house today; nothing quite as spectacular turning up. We hauled it to several charity thrift stores. We both had a good day, learning trust, honesty, and integrity are the true treasures. They will never turn up in a pawn shop.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Special Knowledge 11-16-13
Anderson, South Carolina
The middle of a cold dark night at 3 AM can be a most disquieting place for those of us with inclination towards sleep issues and over-thinking heads. It seems also to be fertile ground for purveyors of special knowledge. Commentators on TV infomercials fill hours with claims of special knowledge on how to find fountains of youth or unbounded riches. Talking heads on AM radio expound the latest conspiracy theory. Access to Truth is as near as the 1-800 toll free number, with operators standing by. The latest DVD or book promises us knowledge on how to be younger, richer, even better prepared when the Islamists or some other foreign force comes to take over the land. There’s grand profit being made by those exploiting the fears of survivalists.
I recently received a text message from a long-time friend now involved for several years in a religious group claiming special knowledge and understanding of ancient holy writings. As her increasing sense of exclusive knowledge has manifested, our friendship has waned to nothing more than a rare text message on my phone claiming special knowledge I should be paying attention to.
On Halloween Day I received a deadly serious text indicating I should be watching for a complete failure of the national power grid on Nov 14th because of a conspiracy by energy companies. I was also to watch for the coming of war because the tail of the comet ISON is pointing towards Mars. This same text also warned of the ominous nature of the hybrid solar eclipse taking place on Nov 3rd, with its center of totality being near Jerusalem.
A Google search of ‘power grid disruptions’ showed nothing more than a few small scheduled outages for disaster training. On Nov 16th there’ve been no disruptions to the power grid and my dividends from the largest power companies continue without interruption.
I can’t say for certain war needs to be ruled out or ruled in because of the orbital mechanics of a comet tail. Irrespective of orbital mechanics, I can say war is likely; humans have made it an international exercise to wage war since the very beginning of human history. Comet ISON was hyped to be a grandly brilliant comet, widely visible to earth viewers. It’s not likely that will happen. However I will be paying attention with cameras on tripod at the end of the month, hoping to get another example of our Creator’s sublime beauty. I sure won’t be thinking about war.
I was out at sunrise to observe the hybrid solar eclipse. Despite a clear view of the sun’s disk I saw nothing unusual despite indications my area would have a view of this interesting event. Our local viewing maps and the text message were in error. The area of best viewing was several hundred miles southwest of Liberia in the South Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of miles away in Jerusalem, it was just another day. I went home and made a nice hot breakfast.
Several years ago an acquaintance put me onto the Global Information Network. Self described as “a “Unique Success Club” for “entrepreneurs, small and large business owners, professionals, people who are self-employed, commissioned sales people, managers of people, anyone that wants to start their own business.” It was presented to me as a way to gain access to knowledge other people did not have. The GIN website itself even states, “Some of the member benefits are described on the Global Information Network website. Most member benefits, however, are confidential and revealed only to members in good standing.” In other words I have to pay first, then find out what I am getting. Joining is amazingly expensive, with a high entry fee and monthly dues. If my memory serves me correctly, this can be thousands of dollars. The GIN is a multi-level marketing scheme rewarding current members with incentives for sponsoring new members at the $1000 or higher level within sixty days through its Get 3 program. The knowledge within GIN is so special I can’t even find out what it costs to join or what I’m getting without a sponsor or without talking to an account specialist (salesperson).
Another text message back in May declared a small group of individuals was leaving man-made theologies behind. This text advised me the names of books in the Bible were wrong and there are 613 seeds in every pomegranate, corresponding to the 613 laws of the Torah. I fought off the urge to run to the nearest grocery and find several pomegranates to verify this text. First, I don’t especially care for pomegranates. Secondly, it would take a lot of time to do careful repeated measures to accurately count the seeds of several pomegranates; time put to much better use giving away my own special knowledge.
In my work with those in recovery, it’s my daily experience to encounter a lot of desperate people in deep pain. Is a struggling young newly sober uninsured mother without access to health care, with a sudden unexplained fifteen percent weight loss, going to gain hope from knowledge of how many seeds are in a pomegranate? Is an addict who burned through $100,000 in six weeks buying cocaine and meth for his friends and spent six years living under a tarp in the woods going to benefit from advance knowledge of a power grid disruption? Are the marginalized and disenfranchised of society going to benefit by my gleefully prancing about and proclaiming I have special life changing knowledge? Only $1000 down and it’s yours too.
In our increasingly competitive individualistic society, the ascendancy of the Information Age has given incentive to many to seek gain of one kind or another over those around them. Being the first to report catastrophic news allows one to be an important messenger. Having exclusive religious knowledge allows illusions of being God’s chosen ones. Having insider knowledge from one of hundreds of expensive financial newsletters might allow me to retain my investment fortune while watching you lose yours. Having special insight might allow me to charge you $1000 a day for continuing education seminars. Following the rantings of a conspiracy theory pundit might allow me to horde food, water, guns, and fuel, having a jump on you when bread is selling for $100 a loaf.
Yesterday an e-mail declared I could sit with other water color artists for a few hours and get pointers on improving my ability to paint boats; only $375. I supply my own materials. As a photographer, I often come across other photographers who will share their trade secrets for as much as $1000 a day on walk-abouts. Travel expenses are on me.
Thirty-five years ago Govindappa Venkataswamy, an ophthalmic surgeon, founded the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India as an eleven bed clinic in his brother’s house. Presently, Aravind consists of nearly a dozen hospitals with more than three thousand beds delivering the highest quality ophthalmic surgery in the world to all who seek care; sixty percent of Aravind patients pay nothing. Patients are free to pay or not pay. There are no classes of care. All receive current state-of the art care with ocular implants. In 2012, three million outpatient visits and 349,000 surgeries were completed with outcomes equal or better than in North America or Europe. Average cost of a hospitalization including all services, intraocular implants, surgery, and follow-up is $35. The Aravind system is financially self-sustaining, generates a substantial operating surplus despite giving away most of its care and accepting no public moneys. It gives world class care for less than a penny on the dollar. As the largest provider of eye surgeries, the Aravind Hospitals provide seven percent of all eye surgeries in the world.
Perhaps most impressive is the willingness of the Aravind system to share any and all knowledge of any aspect of its operations with anyone on earth, including its direct competitors at no cost. A large training center is made available to all who would like on-site training to replicate the Aravind model of health care. Its industrial secrets are there for the taking, one does not have to pay $1000 down, get a sponsor, or count seeds. The place is an open book. One merely shows up with a desire to learn a better way.
The whole dynamic of recovery work is for those who have gained and maintained long-term sobriety to show newcomers exactly what they did to gain life beyond addiction. One cannot stay sober unless he shows others how to do it. A mantra in recovery is, “You can’t keep that which you don’t give away.” A lot of recovered alcoholics and addicts have figured that out. Govindappa Venkataswamy figured that out and he was not even in recovery.
The apostle Paul made it pretty clear closely-held special knowledge or action doesn’t count for much. He specifically declared, “if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” He goes on to say even burning one’s body without love yields nothing. There’s a strong intimation creating barriers to life enriching and affirming knowledge is the worst investment in the world.
Knowledge is a very special resource. Giving it away costs me nothing but gains me everything. If I share all my special knowledge about something with you, then there’s twice as much knowledge as before, perhaps far more if you in turn share it with others. As Govindappa Venkataswamy demonstrated, his special knowledge was amplified millions of times and continues to be amplified, despite his being deceased nearly a decade. Best I can tell, Jesus never gave Webinars, set up member-exclusive databases, did infomercials, or practiced insider trading. His life was an open book.
Perhaps, special knowledge is the wisdom gained from spiritual clarity, from living selflessly. I get to keep only that which I give away; no one was able to tell Rockefeller how to take his riches with him. The guy under the tarp eventually showed others how to live sober. Dr. V. allowed others to see their hands. I’m allowed to show others the world with my cameras.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
The middle of a cold dark night at 3 AM can be a most disquieting place for those of us with inclination towards sleep issues and over-thinking heads. It seems also to be fertile ground for purveyors of special knowledge. Commentators on TV infomercials fill hours with claims of special knowledge on how to find fountains of youth or unbounded riches. Talking heads on AM radio expound the latest conspiracy theory. Access to Truth is as near as the 1-800 toll free number, with operators standing by. The latest DVD or book promises us knowledge on how to be younger, richer, even better prepared when the Islamists or some other foreign force comes to take over the land. There’s grand profit being made by those exploiting the fears of survivalists.
I recently received a text message from a long-time friend now involved for several years in a religious group claiming special knowledge and understanding of ancient holy writings. As her increasing sense of exclusive knowledge has manifested, our friendship has waned to nothing more than a rare text message on my phone claiming special knowledge I should be paying attention to.
On Halloween Day I received a deadly serious text indicating I should be watching for a complete failure of the national power grid on Nov 14th because of a conspiracy by energy companies. I was also to watch for the coming of war because the tail of the comet ISON is pointing towards Mars. This same text also warned of the ominous nature of the hybrid solar eclipse taking place on Nov 3rd, with its center of totality being near Jerusalem.
A Google search of ‘power grid disruptions’ showed nothing more than a few small scheduled outages for disaster training. On Nov 16th there’ve been no disruptions to the power grid and my dividends from the largest power companies continue without interruption.
I can’t say for certain war needs to be ruled out or ruled in because of the orbital mechanics of a comet tail. Irrespective of orbital mechanics, I can say war is likely; humans have made it an international exercise to wage war since the very beginning of human history. Comet ISON was hyped to be a grandly brilliant comet, widely visible to earth viewers. It’s not likely that will happen. However I will be paying attention with cameras on tripod at the end of the month, hoping to get another example of our Creator’s sublime beauty. I sure won’t be thinking about war.
I was out at sunrise to observe the hybrid solar eclipse. Despite a clear view of the sun’s disk I saw nothing unusual despite indications my area would have a view of this interesting event. Our local viewing maps and the text message were in error. The area of best viewing was several hundred miles southwest of Liberia in the South Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of miles away in Jerusalem, it was just another day. I went home and made a nice hot breakfast.
Several years ago an acquaintance put me onto the Global Information Network. Self described as “a “Unique Success Club” for “entrepreneurs, small and large business owners, professionals, people who are self-employed, commissioned sales people, managers of people, anyone that wants to start their own business.” It was presented to me as a way to gain access to knowledge other people did not have. The GIN website itself even states, “Some of the member benefits are described on the Global Information Network website. Most member benefits, however, are confidential and revealed only to members in good standing.” In other words I have to pay first, then find out what I am getting. Joining is amazingly expensive, with a high entry fee and monthly dues. If my memory serves me correctly, this can be thousands of dollars. The GIN is a multi-level marketing scheme rewarding current members with incentives for sponsoring new members at the $1000 or higher level within sixty days through its Get 3 program. The knowledge within GIN is so special I can’t even find out what it costs to join or what I’m getting without a sponsor or without talking to an account specialist (salesperson).
Another text message back in May declared a small group of individuals was leaving man-made theologies behind. This text advised me the names of books in the Bible were wrong and there are 613 seeds in every pomegranate, corresponding to the 613 laws of the Torah. I fought off the urge to run to the nearest grocery and find several pomegranates to verify this text. First, I don’t especially care for pomegranates. Secondly, it would take a lot of time to do careful repeated measures to accurately count the seeds of several pomegranates; time put to much better use giving away my own special knowledge.
In my work with those in recovery, it’s my daily experience to encounter a lot of desperate people in deep pain. Is a struggling young newly sober uninsured mother without access to health care, with a sudden unexplained fifteen percent weight loss, going to gain hope from knowledge of how many seeds are in a pomegranate? Is an addict who burned through $100,000 in six weeks buying cocaine and meth for his friends and spent six years living under a tarp in the woods going to benefit from advance knowledge of a power grid disruption? Are the marginalized and disenfranchised of society going to benefit by my gleefully prancing about and proclaiming I have special life changing knowledge? Only $1000 down and it’s yours too.
In our increasingly competitive individualistic society, the ascendancy of the Information Age has given incentive to many to seek gain of one kind or another over those around them. Being the first to report catastrophic news allows one to be an important messenger. Having exclusive religious knowledge allows illusions of being God’s chosen ones. Having insider knowledge from one of hundreds of expensive financial newsletters might allow me to retain my investment fortune while watching you lose yours. Having special insight might allow me to charge you $1000 a day for continuing education seminars. Following the rantings of a conspiracy theory pundit might allow me to horde food, water, guns, and fuel, having a jump on you when bread is selling for $100 a loaf.
Yesterday an e-mail declared I could sit with other water color artists for a few hours and get pointers on improving my ability to paint boats; only $375. I supply my own materials. As a photographer, I often come across other photographers who will share their trade secrets for as much as $1000 a day on walk-abouts. Travel expenses are on me.
Thirty-five years ago Govindappa Venkataswamy, an ophthalmic surgeon, founded the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India as an eleven bed clinic in his brother’s house. Presently, Aravind consists of nearly a dozen hospitals with more than three thousand beds delivering the highest quality ophthalmic surgery in the world to all who seek care; sixty percent of Aravind patients pay nothing. Patients are free to pay or not pay. There are no classes of care. All receive current state-of the art care with ocular implants. In 2012, three million outpatient visits and 349,000 surgeries were completed with outcomes equal or better than in North America or Europe. Average cost of a hospitalization including all services, intraocular implants, surgery, and follow-up is $35. The Aravind system is financially self-sustaining, generates a substantial operating surplus despite giving away most of its care and accepting no public moneys. It gives world class care for less than a penny on the dollar. As the largest provider of eye surgeries, the Aravind Hospitals provide seven percent of all eye surgeries in the world.
Perhaps most impressive is the willingness of the Aravind system to share any and all knowledge of any aspect of its operations with anyone on earth, including its direct competitors at no cost. A large training center is made available to all who would like on-site training to replicate the Aravind model of health care. Its industrial secrets are there for the taking, one does not have to pay $1000 down, get a sponsor, or count seeds. The place is an open book. One merely shows up with a desire to learn a better way.
The whole dynamic of recovery work is for those who have gained and maintained long-term sobriety to show newcomers exactly what they did to gain life beyond addiction. One cannot stay sober unless he shows others how to do it. A mantra in recovery is, “You can’t keep that which you don’t give away.” A lot of recovered alcoholics and addicts have figured that out. Govindappa Venkataswamy figured that out and he was not even in recovery.
The apostle Paul made it pretty clear closely-held special knowledge or action doesn’t count for much. He specifically declared, “if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” He goes on to say even burning one’s body without love yields nothing. There’s a strong intimation creating barriers to life enriching and affirming knowledge is the worst investment in the world.
Knowledge is a very special resource. Giving it away costs me nothing but gains me everything. If I share all my special knowledge about something with you, then there’s twice as much knowledge as before, perhaps far more if you in turn share it with others. As Govindappa Venkataswamy demonstrated, his special knowledge was amplified millions of times and continues to be amplified, despite his being deceased nearly a decade. Best I can tell, Jesus never gave Webinars, set up member-exclusive databases, did infomercials, or practiced insider trading. His life was an open book.
Perhaps, special knowledge is the wisdom gained from spiritual clarity, from living selflessly. I get to keep only that which I give away; no one was able to tell Rockefeller how to take his riches with him. The guy under the tarp eventually showed others how to live sober. Dr. V. allowed others to see their hands. I’m allowed to show others the world with my cameras.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Infinite Vision 9-9-13
Anderson, South Carolina
Fifteen years ago while getting ready to go to my office in the hospital my central vision suddenly dropped out. Thinking myself in the midst of an evolving stroke, I went to the emergency rooms in a severely agitated state of mind and body. Very expensive testing and evaluation revealed I was instead having an ocular migraine; a rare variant with the auditory and visual manifestations, but none of the usual intense pain. The experience provided a powerful learning experience in the value of vision and knowledge. Since then I’ve had hundreds of these without pain and or fear. Knowing what they are has reduced them to curious neurological experiences. As I write this, I am seeing the scintillations and other curious phenomenon associated with these poorly understood neurological firestorms. Just now it was a challenge lining up the toothpaste with my brush.
An estimated forty million people in the world are living with permanent blindness because of a much slower process, the crystallization and hardening of their eyes; cataracts are the largest causes of treatable blindness. For those living in the developing world, blindness is tantamount to a death sentence. Those who cannot see to work are abandoned by their families, marginalized by desperately competitive and under resourced societies. In India blindness is seen as a terminal disease; life expectancy being little more than two or three years after onset. Blind people are referred to pejoratively as ‘mouths without hands,’ liabilities in desperately poor environments where everything is scarce.
Three years ago I was wandering around in the great orthodox cathedrals of Russia and its former satellites taking photographs when I mis-stepped off an unseen altar dais, stepping down hard a mere eight inches. That night I began seeing stars where there were none. Unlike the fascinating scintillations I have seen hundreds of times these stars were ominous and taken as warning of something more sinister; a wisp of dread spread over my being. I had retina surgery the day I returned to the United States.
For more than a century there’s been a vast disparity between quality and accessibility of medical care in the developing world and that available in Europe and North America. Retina repairs and cataract removal are outpatient procedures in the developed world. In the most populous nations on earth their unavailability because of finance barriers or lack of facilities and trained surgeons make easily corrected ophthalmic problems into death sentences. I got on a plane, crossed eight time zones, and had surgery the same day for a $35 co-pay.
Sixty years ago Govindappa Venkataswamy was discharged from the Indian army because of a severe crippling form of rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. V. as he was known locally, also had vision, infinite vision. He believed it possible to treat all forms of preventable blindness, making care accessible to all economic and social strata of society, even in India where a long entrenched caste system and widespread poverty has made access to healthcare and sanitation little more than a distant daydream for hundreds of millions. Despite crippling arthritis in his hands and feet he successfully performed more than one hundred thousand cataract surgeries. Thirty five years ago he founded the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India as an eleven bed clinic in his brother’s house. He mortgaged the family jewelry when banks wouldn’t touch his eccentric business model.
Presently Aravind consists of nearly a dozen hospitals with more than three thousand beds delivering the highest quality ophthalmic surgery in the world to all who seek care; sixty percent of Aravind patients pay nothing. Patients are free to pay or not pay. There are no classes of care. All receive current state-of the art care with ocular implants. In 2012, three million outpatient visits and 349,000 surgeries were completed with outcomes equal or better than in North America or Europe. Average cost of a hospitalization including all services, intraocular implants, surgery, and follow-up is $35, and this is optional to the patient. The Aravind system is financially self-sustaining and generates a substantial operating surplus despite giving away most of its care and accepting no public moneys and giving world class care for less than a penny on the dollar. As the largest provider of eye surgeries on earth, the Aravind Hospitals provide seven percent of all eye surgeries in the world.
Some of the most powerful and inspiring business case studies have been written at Aravind and are used the world over. Biographies of the late Dr. V are page turners, impossible to put down. Alas, what is often missed in these is the true nature of Dr. V’s surreal successes. It had nothing to do with process engineering, outcomes research, huge development grants, or a massive influx of NGOs and experts.
Pavithra K. Mehta in her book Infinite Vision explores the spiritual vision of Dr. V. It’s well documented Dr. V long followed the teachings and precepts of several beloved spiritual teachers and embraced his own daily disciplines of spiritual practice and renewal. One is left wondering how insight and intuition gained from private spiritual practice translate into the most cost effective healthcare delivery system on the planet. Mehta articulates how Dr. V. would often get visions and insights regarding operational decisions years before their fruition. Seeming contradictory or counter intuitive at the time, the wisdom of these insights has long since been validated. One will not find the usual formula. Dr V’s formula was simply this:
Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must also be the joy of doing something beautiful. Being of service to God and humanity means going well beyond the sophistication of the best technology, to the humble demonstration of courtesy and compassion to each patient.
The veracity of these spiritual precepts has informed the life and work of Dr. V. and the Aravind Eye Hospitals since the beginning. Thirty two million patients will ‘like’ Aravind Hospitals if given the chance. When we do something out of love, the outcomes are guaranteed, every time.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Fifteen years ago while getting ready to go to my office in the hospital my central vision suddenly dropped out. Thinking myself in the midst of an evolving stroke, I went to the emergency rooms in a severely agitated state of mind and body. Very expensive testing and evaluation revealed I was instead having an ocular migraine; a rare variant with the auditory and visual manifestations, but none of the usual intense pain. The experience provided a powerful learning experience in the value of vision and knowledge. Since then I’ve had hundreds of these without pain and or fear. Knowing what they are has reduced them to curious neurological experiences. As I write this, I am seeing the scintillations and other curious phenomenon associated with these poorly understood neurological firestorms. Just now it was a challenge lining up the toothpaste with my brush.
An estimated forty million people in the world are living with permanent blindness because of a much slower process, the crystallization and hardening of their eyes; cataracts are the largest causes of treatable blindness. For those living in the developing world, blindness is tantamount to a death sentence. Those who cannot see to work are abandoned by their families, marginalized by desperately competitive and under resourced societies. In India blindness is seen as a terminal disease; life expectancy being little more than two or three years after onset. Blind people are referred to pejoratively as ‘mouths without hands,’ liabilities in desperately poor environments where everything is scarce.
Three years ago I was wandering around in the great orthodox cathedrals of Russia and its former satellites taking photographs when I mis-stepped off an unseen altar dais, stepping down hard a mere eight inches. That night I began seeing stars where there were none. Unlike the fascinating scintillations I have seen hundreds of times these stars were ominous and taken as warning of something more sinister; a wisp of dread spread over my being. I had retina surgery the day I returned to the United States.
For more than a century there’s been a vast disparity between quality and accessibility of medical care in the developing world and that available in Europe and North America. Retina repairs and cataract removal are outpatient procedures in the developed world. In the most populous nations on earth their unavailability because of finance barriers or lack of facilities and trained surgeons make easily corrected ophthalmic problems into death sentences. I got on a plane, crossed eight time zones, and had surgery the same day for a $35 co-pay.
Sixty years ago Govindappa Venkataswamy was discharged from the Indian army because of a severe crippling form of rheumatoid arthritis. Dr. V. as he was known locally, also had vision, infinite vision. He believed it possible to treat all forms of preventable blindness, making care accessible to all economic and social strata of society, even in India where a long entrenched caste system and widespread poverty has made access to healthcare and sanitation little more than a distant daydream for hundreds of millions. Despite crippling arthritis in his hands and feet he successfully performed more than one hundred thousand cataract surgeries. Thirty five years ago he founded the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India as an eleven bed clinic in his brother’s house. He mortgaged the family jewelry when banks wouldn’t touch his eccentric business model.
Presently Aravind consists of nearly a dozen hospitals with more than three thousand beds delivering the highest quality ophthalmic surgery in the world to all who seek care; sixty percent of Aravind patients pay nothing. Patients are free to pay or not pay. There are no classes of care. All receive current state-of the art care with ocular implants. In 2012, three million outpatient visits and 349,000 surgeries were completed with outcomes equal or better than in North America or Europe. Average cost of a hospitalization including all services, intraocular implants, surgery, and follow-up is $35, and this is optional to the patient. The Aravind system is financially self-sustaining and generates a substantial operating surplus despite giving away most of its care and accepting no public moneys and giving world class care for less than a penny on the dollar. As the largest provider of eye surgeries on earth, the Aravind Hospitals provide seven percent of all eye surgeries in the world.
Some of the most powerful and inspiring business case studies have been written at Aravind and are used the world over. Biographies of the late Dr. V are page turners, impossible to put down. Alas, what is often missed in these is the true nature of Dr. V’s surreal successes. It had nothing to do with process engineering, outcomes research, huge development grants, or a massive influx of NGOs and experts.
Pavithra K. Mehta in her book Infinite Vision explores the spiritual vision of Dr. V. It’s well documented Dr. V long followed the teachings and precepts of several beloved spiritual teachers and embraced his own daily disciplines of spiritual practice and renewal. One is left wondering how insight and intuition gained from private spiritual practice translate into the most cost effective healthcare delivery system on the planet. Mehta articulates how Dr. V. would often get visions and insights regarding operational decisions years before their fruition. Seeming contradictory or counter intuitive at the time, the wisdom of these insights has long since been validated. One will not find the usual formula. Dr V’s formula was simply this:
Intelligence and capability are not enough. There must also be the joy of doing something beautiful. Being of service to God and humanity means going well beyond the sophistication of the best technology, to the humble demonstration of courtesy and compassion to each patient.
The veracity of these spiritual precepts has informed the life and work of Dr. V. and the Aravind Eye Hospitals since the beginning. Thirty two million patients will ‘like’ Aravind Hospitals if given the chance. When we do something out of love, the outcomes are guaranteed, every time.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Thinking Out Loud, Fast 6-3-13
Anderson, South Carolina
In the summer of 1976 I was sitting in a multi-screen theater complex in Omaha for an afternoon showing of The Battle of Midway, depicting the stalemate between American and Japanese forces in the Pacific. Sensurround was used to enhance the intense battle sequences about an hour into the film.
Sitting back about a third of the way on an aisle I happened to notice someone open the back door and whisper to a patron sitting nearby during the mid-point of this battle sequence. Surreal was the rate of speed with which the news of an impending real world disaster spread through the six hundred people in the auditorium; a very large tornado was on the ground to the west, drawing a bead on our location. Theater management herded everyone from the auditoriums into the lobby area and had them assume head’s down positions on the floor with rear-ends facing the windows where ominous blue green light suffused angry clouds. The only reason we lived to tell about it is the urban heat island effect causing convections in late afternoon; the tornado lifted from the ground for a short distance. We patrons were in that short space. A search of weather service records indicates this twister to have been an F4. The previous year another F4 did catastrophic damage to Omaha.
Theaters and gymnasiums with their lack of windows and any central supporting structures are especially vulnerable to tornadoes. The sudden drop in air pressure associated with intense tornadoes can provoke an explosive de-pressurization of these buildings; causing the walls to blow outward and the roof to simply drop in on the occupants. It’s better to risk a rear-end full of glass than a head flattened by a collapsed free span roof.
Yesterday I was working in my yard about 2 PM and noticed threatening skies with falling air pressure. I buttoned up what I was doing and went to the nearby community playhouse to do a pre-show raffle before our afternoon matinee. I would be dry and safe indoors, or would I?
I was sitting in the theater office while a live show was in progress to a full house. My phone activated at 4:04 PM advising me a tornado was on the ground, headed to my location, and to take shelter at once. Smart phones function the same as aircraft transponders and their locations are easily determined. The weather service is able to automatically generate appropriate warnings and send them to my phone. A couple of minutes later, variations of the same warning were sent over a radio in the office. I went outside to see a well formed wall cloud just to the west. Blue-green wall clouds to the west of one’s location are not a good thing. These tend to be fertile ground for the generation of tornadoes, especially if they are rotating. Tornadoes spawned in such clouds move to the northeast.
I was feeling we really needed to give the audience a head’s up especially since I felt we should open all exterior and interior doors in case a de-pressurization event was imminent. Several individuals with smart phones pulled up vector maps showing a probable tornado on the ground headed to our location from the south west. Reports were indicating a tornado was on the ground at New Hope Road and Highway 24, a location five miles to our southwest, the worst direction for us.
Several others working the front end of the theater did not want to tell the audience anything. They were insistent on this. They insisted nothing would happen. Torrential rain was falling and the well-formed wall cloud was now concealed behind a rain veil. Several days ago a large tornado in Oklahoma was concealed behind a rain veil. Five people drove into it and were killed. Another dozen or so died.
I stayed near the front entry watching for any evidence of rotation in the clouds. A minute later the tornado sirens were activated. I felt an overpowering need to tell people inside the auditorium with its free span concrete ceiling of an impending life-threatening event, if several reports proved correct. Telling a full auditorium a tornado was drawing a bead on them would be akin to screaming “fire!” There would be risk of pandemonium. Should I defy those managing the theater and take it upon myself to go into the auditorium and announce a life threatening scenario developing outside? I feel pretty certain these other individuals had little knowledge about the behavior of free-span structures in decompression events and I could be certain none of them had previously been in auditoriums during an evolving tornado event.
Based on the data at hand, I went into the auditorium and made it known to the patrons and actors on stage warnings were in place for an impending life-threatening event at our location. A couple of those working the front of the theater were not happy about this. The response of the patrons and actors was really nothing short of astounding – no panic, no hysteria. One young couple left calmly, indicating their three small children were with a sitter under one of the storm vectors. Another individual left as well. After the shortest interval, the actors picked up their lines where they left off and completed the show without event. The show was exceedingly well received and the interruption appears to have caused no damage to the experience of those presenting the show or those laughing in their seats. When the curtain call was concluded; the torrential rains had ceased entirely and patrons could walk to their cars without umbrellas.
At the end of the day the wall cloud was confirmed to have had at least one tornado embedded in it and its location was four miles to our southwest, the most dangerous direction. A storm moving at thirty miles an hour would cover that distance in eight minutes. One of our wheel-chair-bound patrons living four miles west returned home after the show returned home to find significant damage on her street. Workers have been doing remediation work all day. Our patron was emphatic about being much happier and safer in the theater than in her house. She indicates she would have gone crazy in her house. The confirmed tornado did not stay on the ground; perhaps a heat island effect was occurring once again. Eventually it dissipated without causing catastrophic damage. The intense storms we experienced are remnants of the same super storms which have been raking across Oklahoma for days.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty and it’s effortless to draw conclusions about how an event should be handled with a complete set of data points, after the event has played out. Life usually does not offer hindsight or complete data. The management of the multiplex in Omaha could be chided for over-reacting and herding us all out. After all, nothing much happened thirty-seven years ago except for all of us getting a strong adrenaline rush. Nothing much happened yesterday. But in both cases the possibility of catastrophic scenarios was high, in fact, highly likely. Being told a tornado was on the ground four miles southwest was enough to get my attention and to feel compelled as one commenter stated “to give us a choice about our own safety.” Eating dinner with a dear friend tonight, he confirmed the touchdown location just four miles away, and to the southwest. Hindsight showed the information I had been getting from 4:04 PM to be correct, alas that information could not offer accurate predictions about heat islands. Happily, there was one and the tornado did not stay on the ground.
Moral dimensions emerge when one has to decide whether providing potentially too much information, embued with risk of panic and pandemonium vs. not allowing people to make informed decisions with potentially incalculable consequences is the lesser of two evils. Is causing concern, maybe even high grade anxiety, when an event fails to materialize a lesser evil than taking risk of said event materializing and causing far greater loss of life and limb because opportunity was not made to make even modest preparations? Our patrons could not hear the warning sirens and their cell phones were turned off as good theater goers make sure of. Do we risk a false positive rather than a false negative?
Is there an ethical hierarchy involved in preserving one’s ignorance and unfettered experience of entertainment versus putting them at Defcon One for a major life event? Does the opportunity to choose to climb under solid steel chairs attached to the floor and point one’s rear-end up during a period of high uncertainty compel full disclosure of evolving events? Interestingly, a number of people wanted advance warning so they could pray and get their spiritual affairs in proper order. I had not actually thought of this while thinking fast about what should be done.
As it was, cast members and patrons alike told me they were pleased for the warning so they could make their own choices about what to do. As it was, those on stage and our patrons made quiet calm decisions and the show went on. This event ended without consequence for the theater. I can only hope there are no more summer reruns of this kind.
As I have learned from some very wise people, “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, or foolish decisions.”
Sometimes we just have to fly by the instruments and faith.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
In the summer of 1976 I was sitting in a multi-screen theater complex in Omaha for an afternoon showing of The Battle of Midway, depicting the stalemate between American and Japanese forces in the Pacific. Sensurround was used to enhance the intense battle sequences about an hour into the film.
Sitting back about a third of the way on an aisle I happened to notice someone open the back door and whisper to a patron sitting nearby during the mid-point of this battle sequence. Surreal was the rate of speed with which the news of an impending real world disaster spread through the six hundred people in the auditorium; a very large tornado was on the ground to the west, drawing a bead on our location. Theater management herded everyone from the auditoriums into the lobby area and had them assume head’s down positions on the floor with rear-ends facing the windows where ominous blue green light suffused angry clouds. The only reason we lived to tell about it is the urban heat island effect causing convections in late afternoon; the tornado lifted from the ground for a short distance. We patrons were in that short space. A search of weather service records indicates this twister to have been an F4. The previous year another F4 did catastrophic damage to Omaha.
Theaters and gymnasiums with their lack of windows and any central supporting structures are especially vulnerable to tornadoes. The sudden drop in air pressure associated with intense tornadoes can provoke an explosive de-pressurization of these buildings; causing the walls to blow outward and the roof to simply drop in on the occupants. It’s better to risk a rear-end full of glass than a head flattened by a collapsed free span roof.
Yesterday I was working in my yard about 2 PM and noticed threatening skies with falling air pressure. I buttoned up what I was doing and went to the nearby community playhouse to do a pre-show raffle before our afternoon matinee. I would be dry and safe indoors, or would I?
I was sitting in the theater office while a live show was in progress to a full house. My phone activated at 4:04 PM advising me a tornado was on the ground, headed to my location, and to take shelter at once. Smart phones function the same as aircraft transponders and their locations are easily determined. The weather service is able to automatically generate appropriate warnings and send them to my phone. A couple of minutes later, variations of the same warning were sent over a radio in the office. I went outside to see a well formed wall cloud just to the west. Blue-green wall clouds to the west of one’s location are not a good thing. These tend to be fertile ground for the generation of tornadoes, especially if they are rotating. Tornadoes spawned in such clouds move to the northeast.
I was feeling we really needed to give the audience a head’s up especially since I felt we should open all exterior and interior doors in case a de-pressurization event was imminent. Several individuals with smart phones pulled up vector maps showing a probable tornado on the ground headed to our location from the south west. Reports were indicating a tornado was on the ground at New Hope Road and Highway 24, a location five miles to our southwest, the worst direction for us.
Several others working the front end of the theater did not want to tell the audience anything. They were insistent on this. They insisted nothing would happen. Torrential rain was falling and the well-formed wall cloud was now concealed behind a rain veil. Several days ago a large tornado in Oklahoma was concealed behind a rain veil. Five people drove into it and were killed. Another dozen or so died.
I stayed near the front entry watching for any evidence of rotation in the clouds. A minute later the tornado sirens were activated. I felt an overpowering need to tell people inside the auditorium with its free span concrete ceiling of an impending life-threatening event, if several reports proved correct. Telling a full auditorium a tornado was drawing a bead on them would be akin to screaming “fire!” There would be risk of pandemonium. Should I defy those managing the theater and take it upon myself to go into the auditorium and announce a life threatening scenario developing outside? I feel pretty certain these other individuals had little knowledge about the behavior of free-span structures in decompression events and I could be certain none of them had previously been in auditoriums during an evolving tornado event.
Based on the data at hand, I went into the auditorium and made it known to the patrons and actors on stage warnings were in place for an impending life-threatening event at our location. A couple of those working the front of the theater were not happy about this. The response of the patrons and actors was really nothing short of astounding – no panic, no hysteria. One young couple left calmly, indicating their three small children were with a sitter under one of the storm vectors. Another individual left as well. After the shortest interval, the actors picked up their lines where they left off and completed the show without event. The show was exceedingly well received and the interruption appears to have caused no damage to the experience of those presenting the show or those laughing in their seats. When the curtain call was concluded; the torrential rains had ceased entirely and patrons could walk to their cars without umbrellas.
At the end of the day the wall cloud was confirmed to have had at least one tornado embedded in it and its location was four miles to our southwest, the most dangerous direction. A storm moving at thirty miles an hour would cover that distance in eight minutes. One of our wheel-chair-bound patrons living four miles west returned home after the show returned home to find significant damage on her street. Workers have been doing remediation work all day. Our patron was emphatic about being much happier and safer in the theater than in her house. She indicates she would have gone crazy in her house. The confirmed tornado did not stay on the ground; perhaps a heat island effect was occurring once again. Eventually it dissipated without causing catastrophic damage. The intense storms we experienced are remnants of the same super storms which have been raking across Oklahoma for days.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty and it’s effortless to draw conclusions about how an event should be handled with a complete set of data points, after the event has played out. Life usually does not offer hindsight or complete data. The management of the multiplex in Omaha could be chided for over-reacting and herding us all out. After all, nothing much happened thirty-seven years ago except for all of us getting a strong adrenaline rush. Nothing much happened yesterday. But in both cases the possibility of catastrophic scenarios was high, in fact, highly likely. Being told a tornado was on the ground four miles southwest was enough to get my attention and to feel compelled as one commenter stated “to give us a choice about our own safety.” Eating dinner with a dear friend tonight, he confirmed the touchdown location just four miles away, and to the southwest. Hindsight showed the information I had been getting from 4:04 PM to be correct, alas that information could not offer accurate predictions about heat islands. Happily, there was one and the tornado did not stay on the ground.
Moral dimensions emerge when one has to decide whether providing potentially too much information, embued with risk of panic and pandemonium vs. not allowing people to make informed decisions with potentially incalculable consequences is the lesser of two evils. Is causing concern, maybe even high grade anxiety, when an event fails to materialize a lesser evil than taking risk of said event materializing and causing far greater loss of life and limb because opportunity was not made to make even modest preparations? Our patrons could not hear the warning sirens and their cell phones were turned off as good theater goers make sure of. Do we risk a false positive rather than a false negative?
Is there an ethical hierarchy involved in preserving one’s ignorance and unfettered experience of entertainment versus putting them at Defcon One for a major life event? Does the opportunity to choose to climb under solid steel chairs attached to the floor and point one’s rear-end up during a period of high uncertainty compel full disclosure of evolving events? Interestingly, a number of people wanted advance warning so they could pray and get their spiritual affairs in proper order. I had not actually thought of this while thinking fast about what should be done.
As it was, cast members and patrons alike told me they were pleased for the warning so they could make their own choices about what to do. As it was, those on stage and our patrons made quiet calm decisions and the show went on. This event ended without consequence for the theater. I can only hope there are no more summer reruns of this kind.
As I have learned from some very wise people, “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, or foolish decisions.”
Sometimes we just have to fly by the instruments and faith.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Moments of Spiritual Clarity 5-5-13
Anderson, South Carolina
Moments of clarity come in many forms. Some of them are singularly unpleasant as when an oncologist tells us we have a form of cancer refractory to any known treatment; we realize perhaps too late so much of our time, energy, and finance went to things not mattering in the least. Other times they come a bit more easily as when we find the power shut off because we forgot to pay the electric bill. Caught up in the mindless frantic chaos of consumer living, we failed to put first things first. Occasionally, they arrive as beautiful spontaneous acts of generosity we have no premonition of. When we are open to life messages we become students again: last night I unexpectedly found myself sitting front and center in a grand concert hall experiencing an epic performance, wondering about internal structures of symphonies, repeating rondos, and mottos.
Today I had a lesson, a moment of clarity, in my closet on a Sunday morning. My closet? Usually we think of Sunday morning epiphanies as happening in more elaborated environments than our closets. Having taking care of my usual Sunday morning activities, it seemed appropriate to go home and create a bit of good orderly direction in my life. Some things get done more regularly; flushing the toilet, washing dishes, flossing. Less frequently, I can be found buying groceries, vacuuming the house, cutting the grass. Far too infrequently I can be found cleaning the garage and backing up computer files. Mending laundry, never; just give my tired and poor to the Goodwill and start anew.
Ten days ago the world was giving a very graphic lesson in the high cost of living high. In one of the worst industrial accidents of all time, many hundreds of young Bangladeshi women on the cusp of life died while making my shirts, perhaps yours. The Klieg lights of disaster and broad-band Internet brought well-hidden secrets into our consciousness. A large portion of the clothing we wear in the West is made in virtual slave camps in Asia, the Caribbean basin, and parts of Latin America. I learned the factory gate price of an article of clothing is marked up one thousand percent. I learned millions of women work for $20-38 a month for six days a week of hard toil in unsafe harsh workplaces. I learned whole families live in single windowless cells where two entire salaries of family members go to the slumlord’s rent. I learned the owner of the collapsed Rana plaza has $200 million a year in turnover from his garment factories. I learned eighty percent of Bangladesh’s $20 billion in export incomes derives from thousands of these garment factories.
I learned I am responsible for this.
As one who looks at the world mathematically, it was sobering to realize millions of women toil an entire month under draconian conditions for less compensation than the retail price of an ordinary shirt sold in a European or North American department store. Hundreds ‘gave’ their lives so those of us living in the West can buy fine clothing for the price of a pizza and a pitcher of beer. Uncounted millions of Asians will live out abject lives of the merest subsistence and survival while my closets are overflowing. If I’m willing to spend $40-$70 for a shirt in the mall, my funds will pay the mall operator, department store management and stock holders, trucking companies, overseas shipping container magnates, customs house brokers, power bosses owning the garment factories, fabric manufacturers, and political powers in corrupt governments. Last in line are the cotton farmers and garment workers who get the few crumbs left over. Last in line are the only ones who contribute true value to my life; those actually fabricating well-made clothing. Certainly, the $170 million paid to install an incompetent management team in one of America’s best known department store chains did not improve my quality of life, and, for certain, did nothing for the dear women of Bangladesh.
The Klieg lights have me looking more closely at my own behavior. As it is, I have long known the realities of supply and demand economics and have been careful to avoid creating demand for goods produced in harsh work environments; also wanting to contribute to environmental sustainability. For decades it has been my practice to buy as much as possible second hand or recycled, including all my clothing, something many American consumers find abhorrent.
When my clothing loses buttons, tears, or gets stained, it has been my inclination to simply put it back into the feedstock input of the thrift store infrastructure, figuring it has been used at least a couple of times, and can now be made into rags or insulation.
When a moment of clarity reveals the extraordinarily high cost of big living here in the West, at the expense of exploited millions, my clothes have suddenly taken on nearly the status of icons. I find myself speculating about the young women who made the shirt and pants I’m wearing today. I wonder if they will leave their oppressive factories and go back to their claustrophobic windowless cells for ten hours, before they do it all over again tomorrow; for the rest of their lives. I conjecture if these women have any idea how well we live over here. I’m happy they don’t know I will wear their clothes to a palace on the lake for fine dining today.
Taking out a pair of pants this morning and putting them on, the zipper button was missing. I got out another pair. I knew I must do something different; putting those thrown down pants back into the thrift store feedstock stream was no longer an option. Getting out needle and thread and finding a stray button, I made the tiny repair. I ironed the pants, putting them back on a hanger in the closet. Knowing someone worked a hellish month for less than those pants cost the original purchaser, made it imperative I be willing to give ten minutes to keeping them from becoming rags or insulation. Curiously, I felt like I had offered prayers when finished.
While making repairs to a number of garments, I thought about my role in labor exploitation, consumerism, and just how much I was contributing to economic disparities in our ever-shrinking over-crowded world. I wasn’t thinking about the internal structures of symphonies, rondos, or mottos. I was thinking about how we are all in this together.
I’m guilty for having far more than my share. I’m thankful I get mercy rather than justice. How do I make amends? Perhaps I need to go back into my closet for the answer.
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Moments of clarity come in many forms. Some of them are singularly unpleasant as when an oncologist tells us we have a form of cancer refractory to any known treatment; we realize perhaps too late so much of our time, energy, and finance went to things not mattering in the least. Other times they come a bit more easily as when we find the power shut off because we forgot to pay the electric bill. Caught up in the mindless frantic chaos of consumer living, we failed to put first things first. Occasionally, they arrive as beautiful spontaneous acts of generosity we have no premonition of. When we are open to life messages we become students again: last night I unexpectedly found myself sitting front and center in a grand concert hall experiencing an epic performance, wondering about internal structures of symphonies, repeating rondos, and mottos.
Today I had a lesson, a moment of clarity, in my closet on a Sunday morning. My closet? Usually we think of Sunday morning epiphanies as happening in more elaborated environments than our closets. Having taking care of my usual Sunday morning activities, it seemed appropriate to go home and create a bit of good orderly direction in my life. Some things get done more regularly; flushing the toilet, washing dishes, flossing. Less frequently, I can be found buying groceries, vacuuming the house, cutting the grass. Far too infrequently I can be found cleaning the garage and backing up computer files. Mending laundry, never; just give my tired and poor to the Goodwill and start anew.
Ten days ago the world was giving a very graphic lesson in the high cost of living high. In one of the worst industrial accidents of all time, many hundreds of young Bangladeshi women on the cusp of life died while making my shirts, perhaps yours. The Klieg lights of disaster and broad-band Internet brought well-hidden secrets into our consciousness. A large portion of the clothing we wear in the West is made in virtual slave camps in Asia, the Caribbean basin, and parts of Latin America. I learned the factory gate price of an article of clothing is marked up one thousand percent. I learned millions of women work for $20-38 a month for six days a week of hard toil in unsafe harsh workplaces. I learned whole families live in single windowless cells where two entire salaries of family members go to the slumlord’s rent. I learned the owner of the collapsed Rana plaza has $200 million a year in turnover from his garment factories. I learned eighty percent of Bangladesh’s $20 billion in export incomes derives from thousands of these garment factories.
I learned I am responsible for this.
As one who looks at the world mathematically, it was sobering to realize millions of women toil an entire month under draconian conditions for less compensation than the retail price of an ordinary shirt sold in a European or North American department store. Hundreds ‘gave’ their lives so those of us living in the West can buy fine clothing for the price of a pizza and a pitcher of beer. Uncounted millions of Asians will live out abject lives of the merest subsistence and survival while my closets are overflowing. If I’m willing to spend $40-$70 for a shirt in the mall, my funds will pay the mall operator, department store management and stock holders, trucking companies, overseas shipping container magnates, customs house brokers, power bosses owning the garment factories, fabric manufacturers, and political powers in corrupt governments. Last in line are the cotton farmers and garment workers who get the few crumbs left over. Last in line are the only ones who contribute true value to my life; those actually fabricating well-made clothing. Certainly, the $170 million paid to install an incompetent management team in one of America’s best known department store chains did not improve my quality of life, and, for certain, did nothing for the dear women of Bangladesh.
The Klieg lights have me looking more closely at my own behavior. As it is, I have long known the realities of supply and demand economics and have been careful to avoid creating demand for goods produced in harsh work environments; also wanting to contribute to environmental sustainability. For decades it has been my practice to buy as much as possible second hand or recycled, including all my clothing, something many American consumers find abhorrent.
When my clothing loses buttons, tears, or gets stained, it has been my inclination to simply put it back into the feedstock input of the thrift store infrastructure, figuring it has been used at least a couple of times, and can now be made into rags or insulation.
When a moment of clarity reveals the extraordinarily high cost of big living here in the West, at the expense of exploited millions, my clothes have suddenly taken on nearly the status of icons. I find myself speculating about the young women who made the shirt and pants I’m wearing today. I wonder if they will leave their oppressive factories and go back to their claustrophobic windowless cells for ten hours, before they do it all over again tomorrow; for the rest of their lives. I conjecture if these women have any idea how well we live over here. I’m happy they don’t know I will wear their clothes to a palace on the lake for fine dining today.
Taking out a pair of pants this morning and putting them on, the zipper button was missing. I got out another pair. I knew I must do something different; putting those thrown down pants back into the thrift store feedstock stream was no longer an option. Getting out needle and thread and finding a stray button, I made the tiny repair. I ironed the pants, putting them back on a hanger in the closet. Knowing someone worked a hellish month for less than those pants cost the original purchaser, made it imperative I be willing to give ten minutes to keeping them from becoming rags or insulation. Curiously, I felt like I had offered prayers when finished.
While making repairs to a number of garments, I thought about my role in labor exploitation, consumerism, and just how much I was contributing to economic disparities in our ever-shrinking over-crowded world. I wasn’t thinking about the internal structures of symphonies, rondos, or mottos. I was thinking about how we are all in this together.
I’m guilty for having far more than my share. I’m thankful I get mercy rather than justice. How do I make amends? Perhaps I need to go back into my closet for the answer.
“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Sharing Our Powerlessness When the Sky Is Falling 3-8-13
Anderson, South Carolina
As an unrepentant science nerd growing up in the midst of alcoholism and addictions I found emotional safety by putting my head in the stars. Countless hours were given to finding refuge from chaos in my telescope catalogs, astronomy books, and building my own telescopes from scratch. On rare occasion I was granted use of a car and went to the wondrous heavenly realms contained within the Griffith Park Observatory shops where I worked on the optical trains for my telescopes.
I was long fascinated by a cosmic event that shook the world in 1908. Some sort of cosmic blast leveled 80 million trees covering a thousand square miles in Siberia near the Tunguska River; the detonation being heard a thousand miles distant. The explosion is thought to have been equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs and would have yielded a 5.0 deflection on the Richter scale. At one time it was thought a collision of a small amount of anti-matter might have been responsible for this event. Even more fascinating to me was the world’s indifference; it being more than a decade before any scientists even visited the impact site. I can’t image overcoming scientific curiosity for that long.
The frigid realms of Russia were again visited by a cosmic blast the morning after Valentine’s Day. Unlike the Tunguska event, this one was viewed in real time by hundreds of video cameras. At sunrise a million residents of the grim industrial city of Chelyabinsk, nicknamed Tankograd because it produced the famed Soviet T-34 tanks, saw their sky suddenly turn white hot. Within a second much of the window glass was blown out, subjecting thousands of people to a shower of glass projectiles. Interior warmth instantly dissipated in the sub-zero winter air. Many thought some sort of high tech warfare had commenced. Nearly 1,200 people were reported injured by the shock wave from the explosion, estimated to be as strong as 20 Hiroshima atomic bombs.
At the same time these reports were broadcast, another rock twenty times the size of the Chelyabinsk boulder was tracked making a near-earth miss; coming within the orbits of earth geostationary satellites.
As Chelyabinsk began its healing process, residents of San Francisco worried they might be next. A science institute in Northern California says it received numerous reports of a bright streak of light over the San Francisco Bay area the next night. Cuba apparently experienced a phenomenon similar to the meteorite detonating over Russia. Island media reported startled residents describing a bright light in the sky and a loud explosion shaking windows and walls. In a state TV newscast, residents of the central city of Rodas, near Cienfuegos, said the explosion was impressive.
An asteroid two hundred times the size of the one detonating over Russia three weeks ago is expected to pass near earth tomorrow. Four days ago another asteroid nearly the size of the infamous Russian rock passed near earth. Unsettling is the fact that both colossal rocks were only discover a few days ago. The boulder exploding over Russia was never seen in advance.
Reality and telescopes better than the ones I built show the earth to be entering into a region of space containing millions of very large rocks, at least a thousand of which could produce extinction-level events if they were to collide with the earth. Nearly a thousand have had their orbits mapped and appear unlikely to light up the night sky; a million more remain as unknowns.
A different form of reality comes from owning our powerlessness over cosmic billiard games where the stakes are epic. The sky literally may fall in catastrophic fashion and there will be nothing we can do about even if we have advance warning, yet there’s a silver lining to be found in such cosmic events.
Notable in Chelyabinsk, a grim city described as “a place where people always seem bitter with each other” the falling sky "was one of the rare times when people started to live together through one event." It brought a sense of cooperation in a troubled region; large numbers of volunteers came forward to repair damage caused by the cosmic shock wave. For many, it's provided a reason to roll up their sleeves and get to work repairing more than four thousand buildings in the city and region where windows were shattered, or to provide other services. 24,000 people, including volunteers, mobilized in the region to cover windows, gather warm clothes and food, and make other relief efforts.
In a local church, clergyman Sexton Sergei sought to derive a larger lesson. “Perhaps God was giving a kind of sign, so that people don't simply think about their own trifles on earth, but rather look to the heavens once in a while." When the sky is falling, perhaps we think a bit more about where our life journeys are taking us.
For those who have faced catastrophic events causing the sky to fall in on their lives; cancer, divorce, unemployment, alcoholism, and addictions can have every bit the emotional and physical impact of gargantuan rocks coming out of one’s sky at 50,000 miles per hour. Powerlessness is a hard teacher. Like asteroids, these things often show up with no advance warning; we find ourselves walking about dazed, often struggling to ever regain our footing.
As the citizens of Chelyabinsk discovered, coming together made a grim situation very different, one in which people could start to live together, perhaps for the first time. Those coming out of the grim realities of addiction also discover they can live together in the community of recovery. The Russians learned how the warmth of community and shared effort can thaw the harshest Siberian winter. Those in recovery have long learned the warmth coming from shared recovery can melt the ebony coldness of addiction. They understand community allows them to do things they would never be able to do alone. Powerlessness of the individual is eclipsed by the power and strength of the community.
Perhaps, there is something here to be learned by a nation of self-sufficient independent consumers who wonder why they feel so fragmented, isolated, lonely, and depressed. Perhaps we can learn a better way of living together without having to get in the head first by a big rock.
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.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
As an unrepentant science nerd growing up in the midst of alcoholism and addictions I found emotional safety by putting my head in the stars. Countless hours were given to finding refuge from chaos in my telescope catalogs, astronomy books, and building my own telescopes from scratch. On rare occasion I was granted use of a car and went to the wondrous heavenly realms contained within the Griffith Park Observatory shops where I worked on the optical trains for my telescopes.
I was long fascinated by a cosmic event that shook the world in 1908. Some sort of cosmic blast leveled 80 million trees covering a thousand square miles in Siberia near the Tunguska River; the detonation being heard a thousand miles distant. The explosion is thought to have been equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs and would have yielded a 5.0 deflection on the Richter scale. At one time it was thought a collision of a small amount of anti-matter might have been responsible for this event. Even more fascinating to me was the world’s indifference; it being more than a decade before any scientists even visited the impact site. I can’t image overcoming scientific curiosity for that long.
The frigid realms of Russia were again visited by a cosmic blast the morning after Valentine’s Day. Unlike the Tunguska event, this one was viewed in real time by hundreds of video cameras. At sunrise a million residents of the grim industrial city of Chelyabinsk, nicknamed Tankograd because it produced the famed Soviet T-34 tanks, saw their sky suddenly turn white hot. Within a second much of the window glass was blown out, subjecting thousands of people to a shower of glass projectiles. Interior warmth instantly dissipated in the sub-zero winter air. Many thought some sort of high tech warfare had commenced. Nearly 1,200 people were reported injured by the shock wave from the explosion, estimated to be as strong as 20 Hiroshima atomic bombs.
At the same time these reports were broadcast, another rock twenty times the size of the Chelyabinsk boulder was tracked making a near-earth miss; coming within the orbits of earth geostationary satellites.
As Chelyabinsk began its healing process, residents of San Francisco worried they might be next. A science institute in Northern California says it received numerous reports of a bright streak of light over the San Francisco Bay area the next night. Cuba apparently experienced a phenomenon similar to the meteorite detonating over Russia. Island media reported startled residents describing a bright light in the sky and a loud explosion shaking windows and walls. In a state TV newscast, residents of the central city of Rodas, near Cienfuegos, said the explosion was impressive.
An asteroid two hundred times the size of the one detonating over Russia three weeks ago is expected to pass near earth tomorrow. Four days ago another asteroid nearly the size of the infamous Russian rock passed near earth. Unsettling is the fact that both colossal rocks were only discover a few days ago. The boulder exploding over Russia was never seen in advance.
Reality and telescopes better than the ones I built show the earth to be entering into a region of space containing millions of very large rocks, at least a thousand of which could produce extinction-level events if they were to collide with the earth. Nearly a thousand have had their orbits mapped and appear unlikely to light up the night sky; a million more remain as unknowns.
A different form of reality comes from owning our powerlessness over cosmic billiard games where the stakes are epic. The sky literally may fall in catastrophic fashion and there will be nothing we can do about even if we have advance warning, yet there’s a silver lining to be found in such cosmic events.
Notable in Chelyabinsk, a grim city described as “a place where people always seem bitter with each other” the falling sky "was one of the rare times when people started to live together through one event." It brought a sense of cooperation in a troubled region; large numbers of volunteers came forward to repair damage caused by the cosmic shock wave. For many, it's provided a reason to roll up their sleeves and get to work repairing more than four thousand buildings in the city and region where windows were shattered, or to provide other services. 24,000 people, including volunteers, mobilized in the region to cover windows, gather warm clothes and food, and make other relief efforts.
In a local church, clergyman Sexton Sergei sought to derive a larger lesson. “Perhaps God was giving a kind of sign, so that people don't simply think about their own trifles on earth, but rather look to the heavens once in a while." When the sky is falling, perhaps we think a bit more about where our life journeys are taking us.
For those who have faced catastrophic events causing the sky to fall in on their lives; cancer, divorce, unemployment, alcoholism, and addictions can have every bit the emotional and physical impact of gargantuan rocks coming out of one’s sky at 50,000 miles per hour. Powerlessness is a hard teacher. Like asteroids, these things often show up with no advance warning; we find ourselves walking about dazed, often struggling to ever regain our footing.
As the citizens of Chelyabinsk discovered, coming together made a grim situation very different, one in which people could start to live together, perhaps for the first time. Those coming out of the grim realities of addiction also discover they can live together in the community of recovery. The Russians learned how the warmth of community and shared effort can thaw the harshest Siberian winter. Those in recovery have long learned the warmth coming from shared recovery can melt the ebony coldness of addiction. They understand community allows them to do things they would never be able to do alone. Powerlessness of the individual is eclipsed by the power and strength of the community.
Perhaps, there is something here to be learned by a nation of self-sufficient independent consumers who wonder why they feel so fragmented, isolated, lonely, and depressed. Perhaps we can learn a better way of living together without having to get in the head first by a big rock.
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.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Open Doors 2-8-13
Anderson, South Carolina
For years I’ve driven past a low-profile collection of non-descript cement buildings, each of them ornamented with crowns of ribbon wire, and other prickly apparatus designed to keep things in their place. Society has deemed many troubled individuals in need of confinement for assorted misdeeds committed against those of us living on the outside of the ribbon wire. America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Millions of Americans, stripped of dignity and hope, are confined in concrete fortresses, often with no possibility of liberation.
Zbigniew Drecki experienced the daunting confinement and terror only Hitler and his Third Reich could have conceived. An inmate for nearly five years in the German death camps, Zbigniew came to experience a spiritual awakening, liberation of the kind only possible as an act of sublime mercy and grace. As he describes in his autobiography, Freedom and Justice, “Auschwitz gave me a complete answer, and more important a spiritual feeling that is difficult to put into words … Spiritual Powers existed which were stronger than man, controlling human destiny, and these dominated and superseded any human logic in this world, and our existence on earth. From then on death held no mystery for me … I became certain that the human power did not exist on earth, that could rob me of my life without the sanction of the Creator. In this hell I always felt protected and guarded by Him. Shielded by His Will, human beings were powerless to destroy me or take my life.” Drecki came to believe God had a plan for his life despite a detour through a man-made hell.
Drecki survived the death camps, becoming an accomplished artist. His large Madonna and Child above my chapel altar reminds me every day of the beauty and serenity deriving from a depth of faith even the gas chambers of Adolf Eichmann could not extinguish.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, best known for his classic, The Cost of discipleship, was stripped naked and died at the hands of the Nazis in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, a mere twenty-three days before the camps were liberated. The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” Both Drecki and Bonhoeffer found complete peace and serenity in the Will of God.
Thousands of years earlier, Joseph found himself sold into slavery by his brothers, ending up as a slave in the house of an Egyptian military official. He was prospered by his faith and eventually given charge of the entire household. Falsely accused by the lusty wife of the Captain of the Guard, Joseph found himself stripped of his high station in life and cast into an Egyptian dungeon. Refusing advances by Potiphar’s wife, doing the right thing, Joseph found himself with years to think about God’s plan for his life. In prison, Joseph gained favor with the warden, becoming chief trustee, given charge of all internal affairs of the prison. Joseph proved capable of interpreting dreams. After a favorable dream interpretation for the King’s wine taster, a promise from the cup bearer to advocate for his release from prison was long forgotten. Joseph languished for years. Eventually the King had need of dream interpretation. Recalled from prison, Joseph offered accurate interpretation of the King’s disturbing dreams. In time, Joseph found himself in charge of all internal affairs of the Egyptian Kingdom, reporting directly to the king. He prospered greatly and is credited with saving much of the ancient world from famine by advancing a plan for harvesting and storing millage grains.
During the reign of King Herod in ancient Palestine, the Apostle Peter was imprisoned and put under guard by a squad of sixteen soldiers. It had been Herod’s intent to bring Peter to trial and have him executed to satisfying the growing bloodlust of the populace for Christian blood, to gain political capital with the restive people. “The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. Other soldiers were guarding the door of the jail. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord stood there, and a light shined in the cell. The angel struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Hurry! Get up!” the angel said. And the chains fell off Peter’s hands. Then the angel told him, “Get dressed and put on your sandals.” And Peter did. Then the angel said, “Put on your coat and follow me.” So Peter followed him out, but he did not know if what the angel was doing was real; he thought he might be seeing a vision. They went past the first and second guards and came to the iron gate that separated them from the city. The gate opened by itself for them, and they went through it. When they had walked down one street, the angel suddenly left him. Then Peter realized what had happened. He thought, “Now I know that the Lord really sent his angel to me.”
For more than twenty years reports have come from the gray and rust colored buildings making up the Anderson County Detention Center; reports of immense over-crowding, poor food, ad infinitum. I’ve never had a specific reason for making these ribbon-wired warrens a destination in my travels. I now find reason for the ACDC to be an important travel destination a mere three miles from my house.
Having just returned from my first journey there, I’m in wonderment. Having so often heard of the horrors of this place, I came out enchanted, in awe at how easily God’s love penetrates 2-inch thick bullet proof glass and a lot of cement and steel. The father in an orange prison jump suit on the opposite side of glass needed to know he was not being forgotten by those of us out here; that it matters to us where his journey is taking him.
Sixteen inmates on the opposite side of eight squares of that glass, screamed to be overheard by the forty of us visitors on this side, also clamoring to be heard. Bare cement, steel, and glass made for a nearly deafening circumstance. Yet the man in orange across from me could hear every syllable of hope and promise I launched through the glass. I heard every syllable of faith, trust, and transformation taking place in his life.
In a place where there is nothing but time; there wasn’t enough of it for us. An hour disappeared into concrete warrens with my friend’s jailers. Putting our hands on opposite sides of the glass we declared the supernatural love connecting our very different lives. I can hardly wait to call this man’s wife; telling her of the good work taking place in his life. I floated out of the place, thinking the universe a magical place despite its jailers.
Whether we leave Hitler’s death camp alive as did Drecki or deceased by hangman’s noose as did Bonhoeffer; are released by the King’s good favor and raised to positions of great power, perhaps released by angelic intervention from Herod’s gaol, we all share something in common – faith in the One Who will open the door to His Kingdom, to those willing to simply walk through. The freedom to be found there is liberation from the travails of life at its grandest. The man in orange and I are both banking on it.
‘When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’ Then the King will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me.’
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
For years I’ve driven past a low-profile collection of non-descript cement buildings, each of them ornamented with crowns of ribbon wire, and other prickly apparatus designed to keep things in their place. Society has deemed many troubled individuals in need of confinement for assorted misdeeds committed against those of us living on the outside of the ribbon wire. America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Millions of Americans, stripped of dignity and hope, are confined in concrete fortresses, often with no possibility of liberation.
Zbigniew Drecki experienced the daunting confinement and terror only Hitler and his Third Reich could have conceived. An inmate for nearly five years in the German death camps, Zbigniew came to experience a spiritual awakening, liberation of the kind only possible as an act of sublime mercy and grace. As he describes in his autobiography, Freedom and Justice, “Auschwitz gave me a complete answer, and more important a spiritual feeling that is difficult to put into words … Spiritual Powers existed which were stronger than man, controlling human destiny, and these dominated and superseded any human logic in this world, and our existence on earth. From then on death held no mystery for me … I became certain that the human power did not exist on earth, that could rob me of my life without the sanction of the Creator. In this hell I always felt protected and guarded by Him. Shielded by His Will, human beings were powerless to destroy me or take my life.” Drecki came to believe God had a plan for his life despite a detour through a man-made hell.
Drecki survived the death camps, becoming an accomplished artist. His large Madonna and Child above my chapel altar reminds me every day of the beauty and serenity deriving from a depth of faith even the gas chambers of Adolf Eichmann could not extinguish.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, best known for his classic, The Cost of discipleship, was stripped naked and died at the hands of the Nazis in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, a mere twenty-three days before the camps were liberated. The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” Both Drecki and Bonhoeffer found complete peace and serenity in the Will of God.
Thousands of years earlier, Joseph found himself sold into slavery by his brothers, ending up as a slave in the house of an Egyptian military official. He was prospered by his faith and eventually given charge of the entire household. Falsely accused by the lusty wife of the Captain of the Guard, Joseph found himself stripped of his high station in life and cast into an Egyptian dungeon. Refusing advances by Potiphar’s wife, doing the right thing, Joseph found himself with years to think about God’s plan for his life. In prison, Joseph gained favor with the warden, becoming chief trustee, given charge of all internal affairs of the prison. Joseph proved capable of interpreting dreams. After a favorable dream interpretation for the King’s wine taster, a promise from the cup bearer to advocate for his release from prison was long forgotten. Joseph languished for years. Eventually the King had need of dream interpretation. Recalled from prison, Joseph offered accurate interpretation of the King’s disturbing dreams. In time, Joseph found himself in charge of all internal affairs of the Egyptian Kingdom, reporting directly to the king. He prospered greatly and is credited with saving much of the ancient world from famine by advancing a plan for harvesting and storing millage grains.
During the reign of King Herod in ancient Palestine, the Apostle Peter was imprisoned and put under guard by a squad of sixteen soldiers. It had been Herod’s intent to bring Peter to trial and have him executed to satisfying the growing bloodlust of the populace for Christian blood, to gain political capital with the restive people. “The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. Other soldiers were guarding the door of the jail. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord stood there, and a light shined in the cell. The angel struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Hurry! Get up!” the angel said. And the chains fell off Peter’s hands. Then the angel told him, “Get dressed and put on your sandals.” And Peter did. Then the angel said, “Put on your coat and follow me.” So Peter followed him out, but he did not know if what the angel was doing was real; he thought he might be seeing a vision. They went past the first and second guards and came to the iron gate that separated them from the city. The gate opened by itself for them, and they went through it. When they had walked down one street, the angel suddenly left him. Then Peter realized what had happened. He thought, “Now I know that the Lord really sent his angel to me.”
For more than twenty years reports have come from the gray and rust colored buildings making up the Anderson County Detention Center; reports of immense over-crowding, poor food, ad infinitum. I’ve never had a specific reason for making these ribbon-wired warrens a destination in my travels. I now find reason for the ACDC to be an important travel destination a mere three miles from my house.
Having just returned from my first journey there, I’m in wonderment. Having so often heard of the horrors of this place, I came out enchanted, in awe at how easily God’s love penetrates 2-inch thick bullet proof glass and a lot of cement and steel. The father in an orange prison jump suit on the opposite side of glass needed to know he was not being forgotten by those of us out here; that it matters to us where his journey is taking him.
Sixteen inmates on the opposite side of eight squares of that glass, screamed to be overheard by the forty of us visitors on this side, also clamoring to be heard. Bare cement, steel, and glass made for a nearly deafening circumstance. Yet the man in orange across from me could hear every syllable of hope and promise I launched through the glass. I heard every syllable of faith, trust, and transformation taking place in his life.
In a place where there is nothing but time; there wasn’t enough of it for us. An hour disappeared into concrete warrens with my friend’s jailers. Putting our hands on opposite sides of the glass we declared the supernatural love connecting our very different lives. I can hardly wait to call this man’s wife; telling her of the good work taking place in his life. I floated out of the place, thinking the universe a magical place despite its jailers.
Whether we leave Hitler’s death camp alive as did Drecki or deceased by hangman’s noose as did Bonhoeffer; are released by the King’s good favor and raised to positions of great power, perhaps released by angelic intervention from Herod’s gaol, we all share something in common – faith in the One Who will open the door to His Kingdom, to those willing to simply walk through. The freedom to be found there is liberation from the travails of life at its grandest. The man in orange and I are both banking on it.
‘When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’ Then the King will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me.’
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Celebrating the Light 2-8-13
Anderson, South Carolina
For those having passed through the dark night of the soul, there’s a form of darkness beyond articulation. Words cannot describe the vast depths of void to be found in a dysphoric soul as one frantically paces off the night, desperately waiting for the first edge of daylight to emerge. Hearing the first tease of bird song in the dark hours gives an illusion of hope that relief might come with the rising sun; so often relief is wanting. For those traversing the ebony night of addiction and alcoholism, time stands still; one is held in the tormenting stasis of utter despair. Insomnic nightmares consciously mock us with hopelessness.
My own dark night of the soul and those of my fellow travelers are not unlike near-death experiences. Those having faced into death as a result of traumatic injury or illness often describe finding dear ones travelling with them in spirit through tunnels towards bright light. Often overwhelmed with a profound sense of deep love, they often have no desire to return to this life. Those I’ve known to make this journey return to their broken diseased bodies radiant with courage, fearless, transformed into beings of great experience, strength, and hope.
No so long ago I was travelling by long boat on an alligator infested river in the jungles of Central America. After some hours we made landfall at an unmarked landing in the dense undergrowth coming down to water’s edge. Pushing our way through daunting clouds of giant mosquitoes, we came to ancient blocks of stone carpeted in dense moss. A small aperture in time-encrusted walls admitted us into dense darkness, punctuated only by the piercing sonar of bats. Stepping with trepidation, we trusted our guide to lead us forward safely into the timeless void. After some minutes we suddenly emerged into an emerald realm from another universe. Pyramids, grand plazas, inscripted stellea, archways, and orchids, took us to the threshold of eternity. Aghast at the overwhelming beauty before me, I knew I’d touched one of those sublime moments of life; shared with dearest friends. We had faced the unknown with each other, then coming into the light together, celebrating.
For those emerging from the darkness of addiction, coming into the light of new life is often almost too much to bear. The sense of overwhelm can be paralytic; emotions, colors, sounds attenuated to exaggerated levels. Playing Indiana Jones on alligator-infested rivers of equatorial forests is child’s play compare to the journeys of those intrepid souls embracing sobriety for perhaps the first time in their lives; a difficult journey nearly impossible to make alone.
For those of us having safely crossed over the stellar wastelands of addiction to the far shore, there simply is no greater joy in life than holding hands with lost souls and leading them out into the brilliance of life onto the grand plaza of sobriety. Radiant with wonder, when the agony and angst of soul sublimates in the warmth of new life, we see hope ignite in these once dark souls. The detonation of Joie de Vivre in our fellow travelers is intoxicating beyond the capacity of words to describe.
When coming out of those dark mosquito infested warrens shrouded in time into the brilliance of tropical sun, one feels a decompression, a release of amazing magnitude. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright sought similar effect, creating tiny low passageways and entries into his houses, eventually leading into much larger spaces flooded with sunlight.
So it is for those of us coming into new life. As I first emerged from my own darkness years ago, I recall great envy of those who knew only prisons of concrete and steel. The psychic prison I found my soul in had no jailer, no keys. There seemed no possibility of my sentence being commuted. I dreaded the possibility I might live a normal life span in what seemed nothing more than endless self-absorbed years on death row.
As I was granted liberation from the death camps of addiction and self-absorption I’ve come to learn the only way to remain free is to give away what has been so freely given to me. Others, benevolent guides going before me, showed me the keys to freedom from the psychic hell of addictions in all its forms. Transcending all the wealth in the known world, it’s become my passion to take those very precious keys and give them to others stilled trapped in moldering cells of despair, walking with them through the mosquitoes of detox, withdrawal, the raw nakedness of emotions felt for the first time in decades.
I find myself weeping for joy, celebrating, holding hands with those taking their first tentative steps out of darkness into the brilliance of new life. Watching the claustrophobia, shame, despair, hopelessness, and agony of addiction give way to the hope, esteem, wonder, community, and passion of life in the spirit is nothing short of a peak life experience.
I just spent a rainy cold winter evening with eight celebrants of this new life of faith, intoxicated with their joy and wonder. Holding hands with them, offering prayers of gratitude for their safe journeys to the far shore of Faith, I make sure there are enough tissues to touch those happy tears.
Igniting a flame of hope in a darkened soul is the most brilliant thing you will ever do. Receiving a smile from such a soul is the greatest gift you will ever receive.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
For those having passed through the dark night of the soul, there’s a form of darkness beyond articulation. Words cannot describe the vast depths of void to be found in a dysphoric soul as one frantically paces off the night, desperately waiting for the first edge of daylight to emerge. Hearing the first tease of bird song in the dark hours gives an illusion of hope that relief might come with the rising sun; so often relief is wanting. For those traversing the ebony night of addiction and alcoholism, time stands still; one is held in the tormenting stasis of utter despair. Insomnic nightmares consciously mock us with hopelessness.
My own dark night of the soul and those of my fellow travelers are not unlike near-death experiences. Those having faced into death as a result of traumatic injury or illness often describe finding dear ones travelling with them in spirit through tunnels towards bright light. Often overwhelmed with a profound sense of deep love, they often have no desire to return to this life. Those I’ve known to make this journey return to their broken diseased bodies radiant with courage, fearless, transformed into beings of great experience, strength, and hope.
No so long ago I was travelling by long boat on an alligator infested river in the jungles of Central America. After some hours we made landfall at an unmarked landing in the dense undergrowth coming down to water’s edge. Pushing our way through daunting clouds of giant mosquitoes, we came to ancient blocks of stone carpeted in dense moss. A small aperture in time-encrusted walls admitted us into dense darkness, punctuated only by the piercing sonar of bats. Stepping with trepidation, we trusted our guide to lead us forward safely into the timeless void. After some minutes we suddenly emerged into an emerald realm from another universe. Pyramids, grand plazas, inscripted stellea, archways, and orchids, took us to the threshold of eternity. Aghast at the overwhelming beauty before me, I knew I’d touched one of those sublime moments of life; shared with dearest friends. We had faced the unknown with each other, then coming into the light together, celebrating.
For those emerging from the darkness of addiction, coming into the light of new life is often almost too much to bear. The sense of overwhelm can be paralytic; emotions, colors, sounds attenuated to exaggerated levels. Playing Indiana Jones on alligator-infested rivers of equatorial forests is child’s play compare to the journeys of those intrepid souls embracing sobriety for perhaps the first time in their lives; a difficult journey nearly impossible to make alone.
For those of us having safely crossed over the stellar wastelands of addiction to the far shore, there simply is no greater joy in life than holding hands with lost souls and leading them out into the brilliance of life onto the grand plaza of sobriety. Radiant with wonder, when the agony and angst of soul sublimates in the warmth of new life, we see hope ignite in these once dark souls. The detonation of Joie de Vivre in our fellow travelers is intoxicating beyond the capacity of words to describe.
When coming out of those dark mosquito infested warrens shrouded in time into the brilliance of tropical sun, one feels a decompression, a release of amazing magnitude. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright sought similar effect, creating tiny low passageways and entries into his houses, eventually leading into much larger spaces flooded with sunlight.
So it is for those of us coming into new life. As I first emerged from my own darkness years ago, I recall great envy of those who knew only prisons of concrete and steel. The psychic prison I found my soul in had no jailer, no keys. There seemed no possibility of my sentence being commuted. I dreaded the possibility I might live a normal life span in what seemed nothing more than endless self-absorbed years on death row.
As I was granted liberation from the death camps of addiction and self-absorption I’ve come to learn the only way to remain free is to give away what has been so freely given to me. Others, benevolent guides going before me, showed me the keys to freedom from the psychic hell of addictions in all its forms. Transcending all the wealth in the known world, it’s become my passion to take those very precious keys and give them to others stilled trapped in moldering cells of despair, walking with them through the mosquitoes of detox, withdrawal, the raw nakedness of emotions felt for the first time in decades.
I find myself weeping for joy, celebrating, holding hands with those taking their first tentative steps out of darkness into the brilliance of new life. Watching the claustrophobia, shame, despair, hopelessness, and agony of addiction give way to the hope, esteem, wonder, community, and passion of life in the spirit is nothing short of a peak life experience.
I just spent a rainy cold winter evening with eight celebrants of this new life of faith, intoxicated with their joy and wonder. Holding hands with them, offering prayers of gratitude for their safe journeys to the far shore of Faith, I make sure there are enough tissues to touch those happy tears.
Igniting a flame of hope in a darkened soul is the most brilliant thing you will ever do. Receiving a smile from such a soul is the greatest gift you will ever receive.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Take Two 1-23-13
Anderson, South Carolina
If one takes inventory of Jesus’ miracles, most of them have to do with the preparation and serving of food to large gatherings. His first recorded miracle involved making one hundred thirty eight gallons of wine of such high quality as to cause bewilderment in the mind of a wealthy man’s wine steward. He could not understand why Jesus would waste a fine vintage on a wedding-party crowd already too inebriated to notice or care. Several accounts describe His taking mere specks of food and feeding thousands with it. In one case three small biscuits and two little fish in a boy’s lunch bag proved enough to feed more than five thousand. In those days nothing was wasted; in the same account it’s reported twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered up after everyone had eaten their fill.
The writer of the New Testament historical account of the life of Jesus and the early church describes daily sharing of meals as foundational to intimate fellowship and community living. The Book of Acts suggests this daily sharing was a requisite part of enabling these people to sustain their sense of connection and communion with each other.
For decades I’ve been haunted by the increasing lack of shared meals in churches and Christian bodies. A number of churches have Wednesday night suppers part of the year, usually attended by a tiny fraction of their congregations. Out of the thousand or more meals those church members will eat in a year it’s not likely more than ten of them will be shared with fellow congregants in a significant gathering. It’s long been my observation people tend to hurry away from church to go eat in a restaurant or at home, even if the church has offered a substantial repast on site at no cost. Many churches have shuttered their kitchens. Many churches have shuttered their windows. I wonder if there might not be some causality going on here.
In my doings about town I routinely pass dozens of fast food places; often entranced by the amazing numbers of cars lined up in the drive-through lanes. I’ve seen as many as thirty cars lined up at the one closest to my house. It would be faster to get out, go in and get a meal on a tray and eat it at a table with fresh-cut flowers in a pleasing environment; even having snippets of conversation with those nearby. Alas, most will wait alone more than fifteen minutes, instead getting a crinkly paper bag and eating in their cars while frantically hurrying to the next place in order to get done there and move on to yet another destination in a life lived at 9,000 RPMs.
A long-standing hallmark of American culture has been individualism. With the clarity of a prophet one hundred and seventy years ahead of his time, the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic Democracy in America defined our individualism as “a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows, and to draw apart with his family and friends; so that, after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself.” Nearly two centuries later we struggle with a tsunami of disconnected alienated people, many feeling a loneliness and angst perhaps unprecedented in its magnitude in the human experience. Millions of us feel left to ourselves, detritus of an increasingly self-absorbed culture.
Brian Habig in his contemporary The Enduring Community suggests thinking individualistically is to think of one’s self as independent of others, “calling the shots concerning with whom you will spend time or be committed, and with whom you will not. It is not without foundation that one of the great American icons is the cowboy, alone with his thoughts, and master of all he surveys.”
In a culture where depression and anxiety are pandemic and the twenty pharmacies within walking distance of my house make a fortune selling anxiolytics and anti-depressants, I can’t but wonder if the deep isolation in which so many take their meals and live their lives is not directly causal of so much emotional angst.
It’s long been my practice to feed people. There’s something profoundly satisfying and joyful about meeting the deepest needs of people. For years one of my happiest times during the week has been to put on an apron, glove up, and pack meals for our local Meals on Wheels. Seeing that six hundred and fifty of our citizens imprisoned by age, infirmity, and poverty have something to eat every day creates a rewarding sense of purpose.
As a result of my work with Meals on Wheels it’s been possible for me to gain access to a substantial amount of surplus food from school feeding programs and from suppliers sending things not easily used in a production-oriented institutional kitchen. An even deeper level of satisfaction comes from providing food daily to as many as a one hundred alcoholics and addicts, long marginalized and discarded by our ever harsher society. These people have zero chance of ever getting admitted onto a Meals-on-Wheels route. To get on a route one must live in some kind of structure and have the barest life infrastructure. I’m not aware of our volunteers delivering to any of those people living under bridges, underneath abandoned houses, or sleeping in hospital lobbies and waiting rooms at night.
Today I had opportunity to share some of this largesse with an addicted woman, homeless for four years who slept last night in one of the surgical waiting rooms, and a fellow I’m guessing stayed under the nearby bridge. On a cold winter morning at first light watching them eat my pumpkin bread and drink chocolate milk from Meals on Wheels felt exactly like offering a gilded chalice to a communicant at the altar rail - perhaps better. I recall this tentative man reaching cautiously for a small piece of pumpkin bread. I suggested he take two. I immediately recalled Jesus giving the five thousand their fill. I should be able to take two refugees from a progressively harsher more isolated culture and feed them their fill if Jesus could do so for thousands.
These two homeless diners came back at midday and had a hot lunch with four dozen of their colleagues, enjoying the abundance of treasure I obtained from Meals on Wheels earlier in the day. Suddenly, it’s abundantly clear to me why Jesus made a big deal of feeding people. People can’t hear His message of love for them if the growl in their stomachs is too loud. If I feed them a simple meal then perhaps they can then learn of spiritual food which will satisfy them for all eternity. Jesus understood filling soup bowls should come before filling heads with new ideas, especially ones of hope and faith. Perhaps it’s easier to trust God with our future if we find Him trustworthy in our present.
“Then the King will say to the people on his right, ‘Come, my Father has given you his blessing. Receive the kingdom God has prepared for you since the world was made. I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was alone and away from home, and you invited me into your house. I was without clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’
“Then the good people will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you alone and away from home and invite you into our house? When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’
“Then the King will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me.’
Especially for those living under bridges.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
If one takes inventory of Jesus’ miracles, most of them have to do with the preparation and serving of food to large gatherings. His first recorded miracle involved making one hundred thirty eight gallons of wine of such high quality as to cause bewilderment in the mind of a wealthy man’s wine steward. He could not understand why Jesus would waste a fine vintage on a wedding-party crowd already too inebriated to notice or care. Several accounts describe His taking mere specks of food and feeding thousands with it. In one case three small biscuits and two little fish in a boy’s lunch bag proved enough to feed more than five thousand. In those days nothing was wasted; in the same account it’s reported twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered up after everyone had eaten their fill.
The writer of the New Testament historical account of the life of Jesus and the early church describes daily sharing of meals as foundational to intimate fellowship and community living. The Book of Acts suggests this daily sharing was a requisite part of enabling these people to sustain their sense of connection and communion with each other.
For decades I’ve been haunted by the increasing lack of shared meals in churches and Christian bodies. A number of churches have Wednesday night suppers part of the year, usually attended by a tiny fraction of their congregations. Out of the thousand or more meals those church members will eat in a year it’s not likely more than ten of them will be shared with fellow congregants in a significant gathering. It’s long been my observation people tend to hurry away from church to go eat in a restaurant or at home, even if the church has offered a substantial repast on site at no cost. Many churches have shuttered their kitchens. Many churches have shuttered their windows. I wonder if there might not be some causality going on here.
In my doings about town I routinely pass dozens of fast food places; often entranced by the amazing numbers of cars lined up in the drive-through lanes. I’ve seen as many as thirty cars lined up at the one closest to my house. It would be faster to get out, go in and get a meal on a tray and eat it at a table with fresh-cut flowers in a pleasing environment; even having snippets of conversation with those nearby. Alas, most will wait alone more than fifteen minutes, instead getting a crinkly paper bag and eating in their cars while frantically hurrying to the next place in order to get done there and move on to yet another destination in a life lived at 9,000 RPMs.
A long-standing hallmark of American culture has been individualism. With the clarity of a prophet one hundred and seventy years ahead of his time, the French nobleman Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic Democracy in America defined our individualism as “a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows, and to draw apart with his family and friends; so that, after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself.” Nearly two centuries later we struggle with a tsunami of disconnected alienated people, many feeling a loneliness and angst perhaps unprecedented in its magnitude in the human experience. Millions of us feel left to ourselves, detritus of an increasingly self-absorbed culture.
Brian Habig in his contemporary The Enduring Community suggests thinking individualistically is to think of one’s self as independent of others, “calling the shots concerning with whom you will spend time or be committed, and with whom you will not. It is not without foundation that one of the great American icons is the cowboy, alone with his thoughts, and master of all he surveys.”
In a culture where depression and anxiety are pandemic and the twenty pharmacies within walking distance of my house make a fortune selling anxiolytics and anti-depressants, I can’t but wonder if the deep isolation in which so many take their meals and live their lives is not directly causal of so much emotional angst.
It’s long been my practice to feed people. There’s something profoundly satisfying and joyful about meeting the deepest needs of people. For years one of my happiest times during the week has been to put on an apron, glove up, and pack meals for our local Meals on Wheels. Seeing that six hundred and fifty of our citizens imprisoned by age, infirmity, and poverty have something to eat every day creates a rewarding sense of purpose.
As a result of my work with Meals on Wheels it’s been possible for me to gain access to a substantial amount of surplus food from school feeding programs and from suppliers sending things not easily used in a production-oriented institutional kitchen. An even deeper level of satisfaction comes from providing food daily to as many as a one hundred alcoholics and addicts, long marginalized and discarded by our ever harsher society. These people have zero chance of ever getting admitted onto a Meals-on-Wheels route. To get on a route one must live in some kind of structure and have the barest life infrastructure. I’m not aware of our volunteers delivering to any of those people living under bridges, underneath abandoned houses, or sleeping in hospital lobbies and waiting rooms at night.
Today I had opportunity to share some of this largesse with an addicted woman, homeless for four years who slept last night in one of the surgical waiting rooms, and a fellow I’m guessing stayed under the nearby bridge. On a cold winter morning at first light watching them eat my pumpkin bread and drink chocolate milk from Meals on Wheels felt exactly like offering a gilded chalice to a communicant at the altar rail - perhaps better. I recall this tentative man reaching cautiously for a small piece of pumpkin bread. I suggested he take two. I immediately recalled Jesus giving the five thousand their fill. I should be able to take two refugees from a progressively harsher more isolated culture and feed them their fill if Jesus could do so for thousands.
These two homeless diners came back at midday and had a hot lunch with four dozen of their colleagues, enjoying the abundance of treasure I obtained from Meals on Wheels earlier in the day. Suddenly, it’s abundantly clear to me why Jesus made a big deal of feeding people. People can’t hear His message of love for them if the growl in their stomachs is too loud. If I feed them a simple meal then perhaps they can then learn of spiritual food which will satisfy them for all eternity. Jesus understood filling soup bowls should come before filling heads with new ideas, especially ones of hope and faith. Perhaps it’s easier to trust God with our future if we find Him trustworthy in our present.
“Then the King will say to the people on his right, ‘Come, my Father has given you his blessing. Receive the kingdom God has prepared for you since the world was made. I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was alone and away from home, and you invited me into your house. I was without clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’
“Then the good people will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you alone and away from home and invite you into our house? When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?’
“Then the King will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me.’
Especially for those living under bridges.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Those People Told Me 1-17-13
Anderson, South Carolina
There have been several dark periods in my life; seasons requiring me to exercise several kinds of faith merely to keep from perishing in some unarticulated calamity; times of inky darkness in which I completely lost my bearings and any ability to keep my wing tips level.
Twenty five years ago it was suggested to me by a neurologist that I had multiple sclerosis. I acted as if my world had imploded. In major respects it did. The end result was my departure from medical school and a radical change in my life trajectory. I faced the daunting prospect of progressive physical disability and dependency. What would I do if I was healthy and of sound mind? I acted as if I still was. I joined a hiking club and frequently traversed sometimes strenuous terrain, even though my hands were so weak as to make turning on faucets or opening bottles difficult. I acted as if I was robust and full of vigor, even when I wasn’t. I applied for a computer engineering job and got it. I was acting as if I remotely believed Someone else could restore me to wholeness.
About fifteen years ago an acquaintance I met on one of those long hikes sent me on another even more arduous journey. Having intense anger because I would not fulfill her inconceivable expectations, nearly losing my house to the fire she set, I found myself cast into a place of profound darkness, confined to a hospital for custodial safety; then finding refuge in a Benedictine retreat in another state. Those responsible for my care and making my decisions suggested I take very seriously the death threats on my life and consider a change of identity and a one-way ticket to another country. The very real prospect of abandoning my friends, life, house, country, and culture because of an ill-defined threat was beyond my assimilation. Ultimately, I acted as if a power greater than myself might actually be the Source of my personal safety. I left the safe anonymity of a distant mountain retreat, tentatively coming back down below to my life here. Over the years I looked over my shoulder less and less. Occasionally, I relaxed into the safe care of Another.
Eight years ago a sequence of events landed me in a distant hospital facing the prospect of major surgery sans insurance and employment. Confinement to a wheelchair was a source of a very different kind of education; lessons in trust and dependency. Worries about medical bills, very real physical limitations, and progressive neurological complications from medications were to send me to a place I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I ultimately found myself locked up in the hospital I once worked in; in one of those secure places without doorknobs, shoelaces, belts, phones, computers, dignity. The only thing I had was the possibility of believing there might be One who actually could restore me to sanity. I acted as if this might be true. I left that hospital on a cold snowy day in February and went to live on the outside trying to grasp a foundational reality, “I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you hope and a future.” I acted as if it was possible for me to move beyond the hellish quicksand of iatrogenic addiction. Angels were sent along side me to show me the Way out of this nightmare. I was no longer alone in my life struggles. I acted as if I might actually find a sense of belonging. It became reality.
For one having worked in twelve teaching hospitals; having been a keynote presenter in a ballroom filled with eight hundred MD/PhDs, wearing my white coat and radiation badges, possessing a cabinet full of academic publications, teaching in splendid medical facilities on both sides of the Atlantic, having a three room suite with a secretary in my last assignment with very good health insurance, I would never in a million years have chosen my current life trajectory for myself.
For certain, I did not take seventeen years of university training just to roam around on the streets looking for people who need to know there are options for them. Yet, my office is now found on the street. Those people who used to so frighten me have become the love of my life. Those caught in the quagmire of alcoholism and drug addiction have become my greatest teachers, my dearest friends. I never cease to be amazed at the clear-headed wisdom and insight coming from those who have discovered the liberation that comes from trusting in a Power greater than themselves to restore them to sanity. On the streets of a small southern town I’ve learned more about a life of trusting in God than I ever did while studying theology in Europe or wearing a surplice and cassock in a high mass. Sharing the pathway of recovery with those who have found the key to good living is more fulfilling than anything in my prior experience.
In the past I acted as if I was important, as if what I was doing made a profound impact on the lives around me. Most yawned and went about their own business. Who cared if I strutted around medical centers in a white coat being self-important? … Right.
Those people told me, “Any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way.” They also told me, “We had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.” On the street? There is this kind of wisdom on the street? It would seem so.
I’ve learned by acting as if God really is in charge of my life results in peace, serenity, and a sense of purpose beyond my fondest dreams. Those people told me, “When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.”
The years of anxiety, panic, paranoia, and akathesia melted away. Some of those people told me, “If I got what I asked for, I would have been short-changed.” They are right. I’ve been granted a quality of life beyond quantifying, a life far beyond that found in my own imaginations.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
There have been several dark periods in my life; seasons requiring me to exercise several kinds of faith merely to keep from perishing in some unarticulated calamity; times of inky darkness in which I completely lost my bearings and any ability to keep my wing tips level.
Twenty five years ago it was suggested to me by a neurologist that I had multiple sclerosis. I acted as if my world had imploded. In major respects it did. The end result was my departure from medical school and a radical change in my life trajectory. I faced the daunting prospect of progressive physical disability and dependency. What would I do if I was healthy and of sound mind? I acted as if I still was. I joined a hiking club and frequently traversed sometimes strenuous terrain, even though my hands were so weak as to make turning on faucets or opening bottles difficult. I acted as if I was robust and full of vigor, even when I wasn’t. I applied for a computer engineering job and got it. I was acting as if I remotely believed Someone else could restore me to wholeness.
About fifteen years ago an acquaintance I met on one of those long hikes sent me on another even more arduous journey. Having intense anger because I would not fulfill her inconceivable expectations, nearly losing my house to the fire she set, I found myself cast into a place of profound darkness, confined to a hospital for custodial safety; then finding refuge in a Benedictine retreat in another state. Those responsible for my care and making my decisions suggested I take very seriously the death threats on my life and consider a change of identity and a one-way ticket to another country. The very real prospect of abandoning my friends, life, house, country, and culture because of an ill-defined threat was beyond my assimilation. Ultimately, I acted as if a power greater than myself might actually be the Source of my personal safety. I left the safe anonymity of a distant mountain retreat, tentatively coming back down below to my life here. Over the years I looked over my shoulder less and less. Occasionally, I relaxed into the safe care of Another.
Eight years ago a sequence of events landed me in a distant hospital facing the prospect of major surgery sans insurance and employment. Confinement to a wheelchair was a source of a very different kind of education; lessons in trust and dependency. Worries about medical bills, very real physical limitations, and progressive neurological complications from medications were to send me to a place I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I ultimately found myself locked up in the hospital I once worked in; in one of those secure places without doorknobs, shoelaces, belts, phones, computers, dignity. The only thing I had was the possibility of believing there might be One who actually could restore me to sanity. I acted as if this might be true. I left that hospital on a cold snowy day in February and went to live on the outside trying to grasp a foundational reality, “I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you hope and a future.” I acted as if it was possible for me to move beyond the hellish quicksand of iatrogenic addiction. Angels were sent along side me to show me the Way out of this nightmare. I was no longer alone in my life struggles. I acted as if I might actually find a sense of belonging. It became reality.
For one having worked in twelve teaching hospitals; having been a keynote presenter in a ballroom filled with eight hundred MD/PhDs, wearing my white coat and radiation badges, possessing a cabinet full of academic publications, teaching in splendid medical facilities on both sides of the Atlantic, having a three room suite with a secretary in my last assignment with very good health insurance, I would never in a million years have chosen my current life trajectory for myself.
For certain, I did not take seventeen years of university training just to roam around on the streets looking for people who need to know there are options for them. Yet, my office is now found on the street. Those people who used to so frighten me have become the love of my life. Those caught in the quagmire of alcoholism and drug addiction have become my greatest teachers, my dearest friends. I never cease to be amazed at the clear-headed wisdom and insight coming from those who have discovered the liberation that comes from trusting in a Power greater than themselves to restore them to sanity. On the streets of a small southern town I’ve learned more about a life of trusting in God than I ever did while studying theology in Europe or wearing a surplice and cassock in a high mass. Sharing the pathway of recovery with those who have found the key to good living is more fulfilling than anything in my prior experience.
In the past I acted as if I was important, as if what I was doing made a profound impact on the lives around me. Most yawned and went about their own business. Who cared if I strutted around medical centers in a white coat being self-important? … Right.
Those people told me, “Any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way.” They also told me, “We had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.” On the street? There is this kind of wisdom on the street? It would seem so.
I’ve learned by acting as if God really is in charge of my life results in peace, serenity, and a sense of purpose beyond my fondest dreams. Those people told me, “When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.”
The years of anxiety, panic, paranoia, and akathesia melted away. Some of those people told me, “If I got what I asked for, I would have been short-changed.” They are right. I’ve been granted a quality of life beyond quantifying, a life far beyond that found in my own imaginations.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
Floundering in the Storm 11-21-12
Anderson, South Carolina
I think I‘ve just had a taste of what it must feel like to have failed at a rescue. There must be a profound angst of heart coming with a failed attempt to throw a life ring to someone floundering in a wind-driven sea. The fading cries in the howling night are devastating. The torment of “if-only” must be overwhelming. Could I have said or done something differently and gained a different outcome?
Awaking, I knew I had a busy morning planned; going to Meals on Wheels to serve up seven hundred turkey dinners for our home bound seniors and disabled. Arriving in the kitchens I found my services not needed as a couple of large families were doing a volunteer project for the Thanksgiving holiday. Leaving our kitchens I drove further into the wrong side of town where I had been told of a feeding program for six hundred in a small struggling church. I arrived eager to help prepare, instead finding the church deserted. Suddenly the entire expanse of my busy morning was freed up. What now? Business as usual?
I’d been back home but two minutes when my phone rang. After seventeen minutes I hung up feeling as if I had not quite thrown the life ring far enough out for one floundering to reach it. I wasn’t even sure if she was actually reaching out for it. I didn’t so much second guess what I shared with this dear friend on the phone as I embraced my utter powerlessness to help her find her way to safety. Yet, I feel like I was supposed to have been home to answer her call instead of feeding the world turkey. I know my waters were parted twice in order for me to be there for her call. I just can’t but wonder if my voice was not louder than those insane ones all around her calling her to certain death.
In my six years of work with addicts and alcoholics I’ve been to plenty of funerals and have experienced the unbounded sadness, even despair, at watching magnificent people systemically destroy themselves with their addictions. Most of the time I can maintain some protective emotional distance from them; sometimes my defenses fail miserably. So it is in this case.
For two years one of our dear women, ‘Cheryl’, has been struggling with rampant drug abuse. For some reason I’ve always had clarity as to Cheryl’s potential and what she could do to carry a message of experience, strength and hope to those still suffering in the storms of addiction. Everything about her suggested she was special in many ways. It’s always been effortless to care about her a lot, perhaps way too much. Bewildered I watch her live with those offering her nothing but slow certain death. Every few months I cross paths with Cheryl, seeing her life journey continuing on an exacting and destructive trajectory. Occasionally she gets near enough to us to grab on and start a journey towards recovery. At one point I felt certain she had both feet on land and was going to begin living a joyous, happy, and free life. Then the insanity-driven waves of addiction would wash over her once again.
Today she called on behalf of a friend having increasing medical consequences of her crack addiction. With no form of ID, no money, no one to care, they find themselves unable to navigate in the world, to gain medical attention. Cheryl called me asking for options. I really have none. All I can do is ask her if she’s really set on dying. I tell her I don’t want to go to her funeral. I don’t want to cry that hard.
Today is her birthday. I ask her if she wants to have another one. Does she want to be alive when her next grandchild is born in the spring? The insane voices of death around her are so very loud. She equivocates, not sure what she’s going to do. She tells me if she is not shooting up tomorrow on Thanksgiving Day she might come to a meeting. Is it okay to bring some of her using friends? I tell her it’s okay to not shoot up and come to meeting today. I tell her it’s today that matters. I tell her she might be dead tomorrow and then it would be too late. She says she will think about it.
I can’t make this dear one reach out and grab the life ring. I can’t make her stay alive. I can’t keep her from making herself dead by shooting herself full of death. I can’t make it stop mattering to me a whole lot whether Cheryl is dead tomorrow, even today, if she hurries up about it. In the insanity of addictions it’s not uncommon to see people hurry their demise.
It’s all about me isn’t it? I don’t want to go to her funeral during the holidays. I don’t want to go to her funeral ever, but I especially don’t want to go look at her in a casket when she should be embracing the Promise of the Advent Journey, not so very far away. The way of Advent promises a way out of those addictive storms which would take us under and suck the very life out of us. . Here at Thanksgiving we express gratitude for the inherent goodness and abundance of life. On the Advent Journey we anticipate the ultimate gift of the One who offers Cheryl life instead of certain death.
I can only hope and pray that tomorrow I get the chance to serve Cheryl some turkey. It would be quite the party if she showed up with her friends and decided on a new way of living. I think it’s time for me to go into my own kitchen and make a major mess. I’m expecting a lot of company tomorrow. I pray Cheryl is in that number.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
I think I‘ve just had a taste of what it must feel like to have failed at a rescue. There must be a profound angst of heart coming with a failed attempt to throw a life ring to someone floundering in a wind-driven sea. The fading cries in the howling night are devastating. The torment of “if-only” must be overwhelming. Could I have said or done something differently and gained a different outcome?
Awaking, I knew I had a busy morning planned; going to Meals on Wheels to serve up seven hundred turkey dinners for our home bound seniors and disabled. Arriving in the kitchens I found my services not needed as a couple of large families were doing a volunteer project for the Thanksgiving holiday. Leaving our kitchens I drove further into the wrong side of town where I had been told of a feeding program for six hundred in a small struggling church. I arrived eager to help prepare, instead finding the church deserted. Suddenly the entire expanse of my busy morning was freed up. What now? Business as usual?
I’d been back home but two minutes when my phone rang. After seventeen minutes I hung up feeling as if I had not quite thrown the life ring far enough out for one floundering to reach it. I wasn’t even sure if she was actually reaching out for it. I didn’t so much second guess what I shared with this dear friend on the phone as I embraced my utter powerlessness to help her find her way to safety. Yet, I feel like I was supposed to have been home to answer her call instead of feeding the world turkey. I know my waters were parted twice in order for me to be there for her call. I just can’t but wonder if my voice was not louder than those insane ones all around her calling her to certain death.
In my six years of work with addicts and alcoholics I’ve been to plenty of funerals and have experienced the unbounded sadness, even despair, at watching magnificent people systemically destroy themselves with their addictions. Most of the time I can maintain some protective emotional distance from them; sometimes my defenses fail miserably. So it is in this case.
For two years one of our dear women, ‘Cheryl’, has been struggling with rampant drug abuse. For some reason I’ve always had clarity as to Cheryl’s potential and what she could do to carry a message of experience, strength and hope to those still suffering in the storms of addiction. Everything about her suggested she was special in many ways. It’s always been effortless to care about her a lot, perhaps way too much. Bewildered I watch her live with those offering her nothing but slow certain death. Every few months I cross paths with Cheryl, seeing her life journey continuing on an exacting and destructive trajectory. Occasionally she gets near enough to us to grab on and start a journey towards recovery. At one point I felt certain she had both feet on land and was going to begin living a joyous, happy, and free life. Then the insanity-driven waves of addiction would wash over her once again.
Today she called on behalf of a friend having increasing medical consequences of her crack addiction. With no form of ID, no money, no one to care, they find themselves unable to navigate in the world, to gain medical attention. Cheryl called me asking for options. I really have none. All I can do is ask her if she’s really set on dying. I tell her I don’t want to go to her funeral. I don’t want to cry that hard.
Today is her birthday. I ask her if she wants to have another one. Does she want to be alive when her next grandchild is born in the spring? The insane voices of death around her are so very loud. She equivocates, not sure what she’s going to do. She tells me if she is not shooting up tomorrow on Thanksgiving Day she might come to a meeting. Is it okay to bring some of her using friends? I tell her it’s okay to not shoot up and come to meeting today. I tell her it’s today that matters. I tell her she might be dead tomorrow and then it would be too late. She says she will think about it.
I can’t make this dear one reach out and grab the life ring. I can’t make her stay alive. I can’t keep her from making herself dead by shooting herself full of death. I can’t make it stop mattering to me a whole lot whether Cheryl is dead tomorrow, even today, if she hurries up about it. In the insanity of addictions it’s not uncommon to see people hurry their demise.
It’s all about me isn’t it? I don’t want to go to her funeral during the holidays. I don’t want to go to her funeral ever, but I especially don’t want to go look at her in a casket when she should be embracing the Promise of the Advent Journey, not so very far away. The way of Advent promises a way out of those addictive storms which would take us under and suck the very life out of us. . Here at Thanksgiving we express gratitude for the inherent goodness and abundance of life. On the Advent Journey we anticipate the ultimate gift of the One who offers Cheryl life instead of certain death.
I can only hope and pray that tomorrow I get the chance to serve Cheryl some turkey. It would be quite the party if she showed up with her friends and decided on a new way of living. I think it’s time for me to go into my own kitchen and make a major mess. I’m expecting a lot of company tomorrow. I pray Cheryl is in that number.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
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