A Sunday Quote

Yep!

Some days...

...all I want to do is play music and 

forget all the craziness, drama, 

disagreement, and dysfunction of the world.

Whether it's my trumpet or iTunes, it makes things better!

A Quote For Our Days

It's Still Called Music!!

From Prairie Home Companion on October 4: The Gibson Brothers and "They Called It Music"....

... and fortunately it is still music! There is power in the old songs-

It was honest, it was simple, and it helped the hard times heal!

Changing the Laguage

This came across my Facebook feed today about language and addiction. It was in the Science of Us section of New York Magazine online.

Think of the words and phrases we use to describe drug and alcohol addiction: “clean and sober,” “addicts,” “junkies.” It’s a vocabulary loaded with moralistic connotations. This isn’t good, argue the authors of a new editorial in the journal Substance Abuse, because the use of those terms can inadvertently lay the blame solely on the behavior of the person with the drug or alcohol addiction. And when people struggling with addiction internalize that attitude, it can undermine recovery.
-Link

My first thought was it reminded me of language usage 30 years ago as the AIDS epidemic was just ramping up and becoming really scary. The general phrase "AIDS victims" was often used at first. Then the AIDS activists decided that gave a bad morale to the individuals with HIV/AIDS. From then on it became "People with AIDS" or PWAs. It worked so well that I had to stop for a moment to even remember what we used before PWA. It also changed the face of AIDS in the country, most prominently for the people with AIDS themselves.

Victims is not what we want to make people with a disease feel like. That can engender self-pity, ongoing victimization,hopelessness.

I then put the two thoughts together in my head and realized the power of that insight. Dirty -vs.- clean? Drunks and junkies -vs.- people with addiction? The article even goes on to talk about the results of urine drug screens. For many years the phrase has been, a "dirty urine." (As if there is such a thing as "clean urine?") It is the difference language places on things. Dirty is bad- inherently bad. It is a negative state of being.

We have been working for years to change the metaphors of addiction language. We have been struggling to get beyond the ancient and incorrect moral judgements that we have often put on addiction and alcoholism. We have been wrestling with the greater society as well as the medical field itself to see the disease as real and not just some immorality.

Maybe part of it can become the language we decide to use. Even moving from a pathology to a healing language can help.

Here's a quote from another section of the editorial itself:

Recovery-oriented language refocuses the lens from pathology and suffering to resilience and healing. Recovery-oriented language also changes the discussion from one rooted in notions of one-time, acute treatments or interventions to one that appreciates the long-term modalities and strategies needed to sustain recovery.
-Link

Crumbs of Grace

Sunday's Gospel text was the story of the Phoenician woman who pleaded with Jesus for his healing. He refused with a somewhat snide remark.

It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.

But she was quick with a comeback:

Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.

Which led me to think the title of today's post. All any of us get in our day to day lives is truly nothing more than a few crumbs of grace falling, I believe, from the bounty of God. Crumbs of grace.

Yet it is enough. It is always enough. Grace is never deficient.

I have never thought,

Gee, if only I had a little more grace today. Things would go so much better.

Nor have I thought, (out loud, anyway!)

I deserve more grace. Look at all I have done. Look at how wonderful I can be. Surely there's more grace set aside for me.

I know that when I write that it sounds downright silly, if not idiotic. We all know (intellectually) that grace is unearnable. It's free, a gift, far beyond anything we deserve -or would get if justice were based on our human standards. Yet I have heard many people over the years make statements, in coded language of course, but the message is clear:

Look at me, I deserve more grace.

Sunday evening then I was doing some research for a presentation this fall that includes a look at "feminist ethics." As I was reading the description and insights of feminist ethics, it struck me that in the scene from the Gospel on Sunday, we were seeing an example of the "ethics of care" that the woman was presenting.

The "old ethics" was that this woman was below any attention. She doesn't even deserve grace. (I know, that's an oxymoronic statement!) But her ethic is far stronger. Her ethic is based on relationships and healing, not strength and force. Her ethic is based on caring for her daughter. So, in essence she says to Jesus and the disciples:

I don't care what your ethic is, mine is to take care of my daughter. It is as good as your ethic. Maybe better? Even the dogs get to eat the scraps, and Jesus, you are a man of grace and have a lot to share.

I then came across a quote in my reading that, for me, summed up the difference between her ethic and the ethic of force and wielding power:

grace is a healing power rather than a saving force.

What a statement. Healing vs. saving. Force, or a gift. Perhaps if we were more attuned to the Canaanite woman's ethic, we would be more open to caring for those around us in a more helpful way.

One More Week for Now

I am coming to the end of one full quarter (13 weeks) of being at work "full-time" even though I went to a type of "semi-retirement" last December. By this time next week (actually Thursday at 4:30) I will be back as a supplemental employee working one to three days per week, depending on the week. I got back from our month in Alabama back in March to find that I was needed to come back and do some filling-in for a colleague on leave. I said yes for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was going back to the position I held for about 4 full years that I loved the most of all that I have done in 20 years as an addictions counselor. It was also still winter around these parts, but that was only a small part of the reasoning. I truly liked the job and was excited to get one last chance to go back and do it one more time.

So, for the past 13 weeks that is what I have done. I have not regretted it for a moment.

Over there on the right sidebar is a quote that for me describes what I have been doing for most of my adult working life.

Some want to live
within the sound
of church or chapel bell;
I want to run
a rescue shop
within a yard of hell.
-- C. T. Studd

As a pastor and substance abuse counselor I have been along one of those front lines where people come to do something unique and different with their lives. Most of the time these amounted to standing with them as they attempted to turn from the "gates of hell" itself. When I first saw that quote about 10 years ago it jumped at me, grabbed me, and I knew it was mine.

It brought to mind an incident back about 22 years or so ago. A member of the church was in a bad situation and was threatening suicide. They showed up at the front door of the parsonage and I spent the next three hours talking with them in my living room, attempting to contact a counselor they had been working with and finally contacting a treatment center in a neighboring community. At the end of those three hours I took them to that center for an evaluation and care.

A few days later I was at my own therapy appointment and was describing the event to my therapist. My counselor looked at me and said that she never thought about those of us who were there on the front line of situations like that. She, as an outpatient, hospital-based counselor only saw people after they were stabilized, "talked-down" so to speak. She commented on how important that front-line work was.

I remembered many other such times. Some were being there with a family as their loved-one died. Sometimes it was sitting in the ICU waiting room as life was artificially upheld long enough to make arrangements for an organ donation. It has also been the young mother who has discovered her husband was abusing their daughter and was shaking with anger and a sense of deep betrayal. Or it was baptizing a baby who may not make it. Once it was being a "shaman-like" presence in a wind-swept cemetery as a few family members, the funeral director and myself paid our last respects to a recently found homeless relative who had died of tuberculosis or AIDS or both.

I could go on and on. There are many I no longer remember in detail but in that spiritual place in my memory where rest the spirit of those souls who were facing the gates of hell. These moments of seeming hopelessness, fear, sadness, panic or just plain numbness at the depth of ones soul need not be faced alone. We humans have known this for millennia. We seek the people who can stand with us and the places where a sense of peace can begin to permeate the emptiness that has suddenly or even slowly taken over our world.

To be a counselor, a presence of hope and healing with those facing the devastation of addiction and alcoholism is to be at the same kind of junction of hope and despair, life and death. No, I don't believe that is too strong. Many people in that position are at the place where life is teetering. They are facing hell- or perhaps realize they have just stepped back from an abyss that can only be described as hell. They do not know if they can make it. They are aware of a sense of powerlessness. To be there with them is at once humbling, scary, and challenging. It is a place where the deepest compassion and acceptance is needed. But they must be tempered with a willingness to speak to the truth of what they are facing, to not sugar-coat it or make it seem less dangerous.

It is to run a rescue station at the gate of hell- their very own personal torment of hell.

So for the past 3 months I have had that privilege one more time as a full-time counselor. It was developing the helping and healing relationship that can hopefully break through denial and uncertainty.

It is a great way to work and I am grateful I had the chance to do it again. I am sure there will be other ways I am called to do that work in the future. But for today, as much as part of me doesn't want to stop, I know it is what I am going to do next that needs my attention.

Back in December I spoke of my move to part-time employment as beginning my Third Career. I have no doubt it will continue as part of my lifelong call to be part of that rescue shop. It may not be as immediate or quite as close to the gates as I have been, but it is where I have been called.

So it's back to semi-retirement. I have lots of music to make, especially over the next two months, lots of genealogical research to do for those ghosts in my family that are nowhere to be found prior to 1940, time with my wife and daughter and her boyfriend, time to write and read and dream of more ways to be what I am called to do next. Yet always to be one who can help bring healing and to continue to build my life in secular ministry- ministry beyond the doors and walls of the institutional church where I am now called to serve.

Third Wednesday of Lent 2014- Healer

Healer

A Neat Video

Earlier this week a video came across the Facebook feeds of some of my friends. It was a video I had been showing to patients to describe the power of yoga and Tai Chi as part of a strong recovery program. I realized I hadn't shared it here.

On one level what Arthur does in his own life is develop a strong physical therapy program. But more than that, as we all know, a strong physical treatment program needs a strong spiritual component. That's where utilizing the double-sidedness of programs like Yoga and Tai Chi can be of such a strong benefit.

I have also found a good starting video that is helpful in getting into the early phases of Tai Chi. Embedding is not allowed, but here's the link. It is an 8-minute daily introduction. Well done and easy to follow for a beginner.

Dirt Digging

No, not any gossip. It's just what I did on Saturday. I have mentioned here sometime in the past about the psychologist friend of mine who would talk about the healing quality of playing in the dirt. Gardening was a real source of healing in his opinion. I have always agreed.

Living in apartments for the past 6 years has curtailed my ability to go out and play in the soil. But this year we are living in a place that gets good sun so I bought some containers along with a cherry tomato, a beefsteak tomato and a sweet pepper plant. In the evening, after a few hours of rain, I went out dug my hands into the potting mix, ran it through my fingers breaking up the big clods of it, and planted the plants. For good measure I got some flowers and put them in a big pot. These all sit on my back patio now.

I looked down when done and saw the telltale sign of dirt under my fingernails. A sign that my soul was a little better that evening than it had been just a few hours earlier.

There are many ways our nature deficit can impact us. One of them, I believe along with my psychologist friend, is that when we lose our connections with the earth we lose some important part of what makes us human. To become isolated from the created world is to become isolated from much of what God made around us. The earth and all that is in it are as essential to our lives as food and water. When I "play in the dirt" I am in touch with the stuff we are made of, the raw elements of life.

I don't think it is stretching it too much (or being too "punny") to call that a down to earth reality of our selves. Flowing water, the rolling of the oceans, the songs of birds, the smell of lilacs are similar. They renew our senses and our touch with the Creation.

Truth is True

A quote from John Muir:

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.

It took me back 50 years to the scripture lesson on a Sabbath in August 1961. It was from Deuteronomy 8: 2-3:

Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (NRSV)

I can't say it's been a Watchword, but it never seems to be far away from my awareness. Recently, for example, a term coined by Richard Louv in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, "Nature Deficit Disorder" came into awareness. Originally it was about children (No Child Left Inside) but has since been expanded to all where people don't get out and get into the natural world as often as needed in Louv's book The Nature Principle.

Those words that come from the mouth of God? You can- and will- hear them out there in the wilderness, even the tame wilderness near most of our homes. That natural world is speaking loudly and clearly to those who will stop and listen.

Last winter I decided that I could not manage another whole winter without the healing and hope from the natural world.  So I bought snowshoes and used them until we went south for a few weeks where I rode my bike and did lots of walking.  This winter I had surgery and went south for four weeks. No bike riding, but plenty of walking and sitting listening to the endless sound of the surf. I won't go so far as to say that is why I have healed so well so far from the surgery, but I'm not about to deny its strength in moving me back to health.

Not by bread alone? Not on your life. As Muir noted, we need the healing that goes far beyond food; the hope that goes deeper than today's experiences. Sustenance is for body, mind, and soul.

Recuperation Ended (Mostly): Part 2

Well, maybe not entirely. The main purpose of my recuperation had nothing to do with regaining strength or getting past any pain. I have had no trouble regaining any strength I lost- just keep walking was the key to that. As for the pain, I have already mentioned that I didn't need any prescription pain meds only 18 hours after surgery. The recuperation of the tongue numbness and swallowing issues simply needed time. Yes, all these are important, essential, but there is one more that takes longer than those.

The main, A#1 purpose of recuperation after my surgery was to give the internal fusing of bone and bone the opportunity to occur. When they work on such a relatively large area covering more than a couple vertebrae they want to make sure that all is right. So do I. If I am going to regain my fitness and ability to do the things I was doing (or even more) I need to continue to be cautious.

Well, if this sounds like a rationalization of why I am willing to accept the need to wear the hard collar 24/7 for another 4+ weeks, you can read quite well between the lines. Yes, I went to the medical professionals on Friday and they were well-pleased with what has been healing. yes, I can go back to work tomorrow with no restrictions.

But, no, I cannot get out of the collar yet.

So it goes.

Fortunately the collar is not as bothersome as it was at first. In fact when I take it off to shave or switch to the one I wear in the shower, the fear of doing something wrong keeps me moving slowly. I almost look forward to putting it back on. It has become a security net. Fine by me.

I can't really drive, though, since I can't see right or left without turning my whole body and I have been reliant on my wife for being my chauffeur. Talk about someone deserving of a medal of honor- that's her. I have tried playing my trumpet and it seems to be a strong possibility that this will be okay, though most likely not in time for a concert in March.

So, here is where I am today. Stuck in the collar for 4 1/2 weeks. Going back to work. Feeling really good about what has been happening. I have been scribbling notes in my journal about what I have learned from this and will get to that one of these days. Lots of support has come my way and for that I am grateful, including good ideas from Terry and John who both went through this in the past few years. Great advice, greatly appreciated!

So on I go. It's supposed to snow tomorrow evening. But I think the possibilities of snowshoeing this winter are next to none. It will next be back on the stationary bike and elliptical to prepare for spring biking. Then who knows what. Twins baseball; fun outdoors; more reading. Always a lot to look forward to.

Ups and Downs

I have always known from visiting church members following surgery that there are good days and bad days- and they usually follow each other in fairly consistent fashion. Of course in those days, not all that long ago, actually, those were days in the hospital. Not many people were discharged within 2 or 3 days.

Well, my experience with this latest surgery is the same, except now I am going through these changes at home. One day I seem to have enough energy to do just about anything I want. The next, well, the energy can hardly get me to move from one chair to another. Add to that the fact that overall I am feeling fairly decent, and you have a bit of a quandary.

Okay, I'll be honest, there is no quandary. It's back to the old issue of having patience. Simple, everyday acceptance of the way things are that I am not able to change today. Yes, this sounds like a broken record. Any long-time visitors to this blog know my problem. I am not good at just sitting. Yet sometimes that I what needs to be done.

• It is accepting the fact that 3-4 hours of surgery under general anesthesia is a physical trauma to the system.
• It is accepting the fact that I have tongue and throat numbness that impacts my swallowing, eating, and speaking.
• It is accepting the fact that I DO have to wear this hard collar which IS giving me pain in the neck that the surgery didn't.
• And finally it is simply accepting the fact that no matter what I would like to do, it won't help unless I behave and listen to the Doctor.

Sounds so simple. ut that would appear to me at this moment as the way to healing. Let my body do its healing and don't get in the way. At least I still have the computer to do some surfing, books and movies galore, food, and a comfortable bed. Back to basics.

Back to Work

Well, after a little more than three weeks off on medical leave for a back surgery, it was back to work today. Over the last three weeks I

• Started and finished seven books
• Finished three other books that were hanging around
• Took naps almost every day
• Walked at least 15 minutes every day (usually 20-25) for most of the last 2+ weeks
• Didn't watch any movies I had planned on catching up with
• Sat on the balcony and read and took pictures of Eagles and Herons
• Have maintained my weight-loss regimen and did not gain any of the 20 pounds back
• Took it easy

The surgery itself, the second of its kind I have had in the past 2 1/2 years went very well. There was more pain than the previous with a day longer stay in the hospital and a day or so longer in using pain meds. But little if any of the previous surgeries difficulties (sleeplessness, for example, and continued pain in the lower back from the surgery) showed up.

I am grateful, as always, for the support of people around me and at work. I am grateful that people prayed for me and sent me cards. I know that a lot of things go into a successful surgery and recuperation and I have been blessed with many of those.

I have learned for myself something I "knew" but didn't really KNOW. When one is in better physical shape, recovery can be easier. I have been on a consistent daily regimen of working out for over a year and a half. I started a physical fitness and diet regime two months prior to surgery. I have no doubt about the positive impact all that had on my recovery these past three weeks.

Healing has many aspects to it. I am convinced that in each of our own lives, we have to be actively involved in our own daily recovery. That's what health and healing is all about. I am convinced that God wants us as partners in our own healing. That may be at the heart of Jesus' question to the man at the pool, "Do you want to be healed?"

While the answer may seem obvious, unless we go along with our healing and God's will, not much can come of it.

So, I am back on the healthy track. More surgery will follow, perhaps no later than this winter on some of the other back issues that are still hanging around. Until then, again, THANKS for all your thoughts and prayers.

Healing - or Work?

Those nasty old Pharisees. So self-centered. So controlling. So ready to condemn something good if it didn't meet their standards.

Luke 13:14 - Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, "There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath."

So, is healing work? If not, what is it?

Perhaps Jesus is actually talking about the Sabbath rules and how they can be used against even the good and right.

Or perhaps he is talking about all strict, rule-based faith which can get so structured that no one stands a chance at even meeting God.