Finding Peace in a Pandemic

The spread of this disease can be prevented by personal behaviors.

So said an Alabama State Health Department spokesman this morning. That statement is true on many levels. Not the least of those is the mental health and attitude we bring to the situation. I heard this as I was just finishing making a list that I called Finding Peace in a Pandemic.

·      Do what’s right. Always!

·      Don’t take undue risks.

·      Think about others and how we all impact each other.

·      Keep informed, but don’t obsess.

·      Turn off the constant news chatter for at least several hours at a time.

·      Take a walk outside or read a good book.

·      Keep in touch with family and friends.

·      Trust God and let go- whatever that means to you.

·      Take care of yourself and your family.

·      Keep engaged, or get reengaged with hobbies.

·      It is not the end of the world.

·      Meditate on the beauty of the world even when it feels dark.

·      There is light out there- and within you.

·      Maintain your spiritual, emotional, and physical balance.

·      Be wise, not rash.

·      Don’t judge- we all cope in our own ways.

·      Don’t deny what you’re feeling. Talk about it but don’t obsess on it.

·      If you can’t do something about the situation, don’t try to.

·      Practice and live peace and mindfulness in all that you do as much as you can and let the rest just be there.

Calendar of Saints: Mayo and Meninger Families

Periodically I post a quote from a saint from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. I connect it with a picture that I have taken as a kind of poster. These are meant to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Mayo and Meninger Families
Pioneers in Medicine
March 6

William Worrall Mayo (May 31, 1819 – March 6, 1911) was an English born medical doctor and chemist, best known for establishing the private medical practice that later evolved into the Mayo Clinic. His sons, William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, joined the private practice in Rochester, Minnesota in the 1880s.

William James Mayo (June 29, 1861 – July 28, 1939) was a physician in the United States and one of the seven founders of the Mayo Clinic. He and his brother, Charles Horace Mayo, both joined their father's private medical practice in Rochester, Minnesota, USA, after graduating from medical school at the Univ. of Michigan in 1883. In 1919, this private medical practice became the not-for-profit Mayo Clinic.

Charles Horace Mayo (July 19, 1865 – May 26, 1939) was an American medical practitioner and was one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic along with his brother, William James Mayo, and others. He graduated from the medical school of Northwestern University (now called the Feinberg School of Medicine) in 1888 and joined his father, William Worrall Mayo, and older brother, William James Mayo, in their private medical practice in Rochester.

The Mayo Clinic came to be regarded as one of the foremost medical treatment and research institutions in the world. Within Mayo's lifetime it registered one million patients. The idea of medical specialization was developed by this group of medical pioneers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Charles F. Menninger (July 11, 1862 - Nov. 28, 1953), with his two sons, founded the Menninger Clinic in 1925 in Topeka, Kansas. This was one of the first places which sought to treat psychiatric maladies as illnesses which could be cured, rather than simply providing custodial care. ... He sought collaboration with local Topeka doctors, who tended to reject him due to his homeopathic background. As a consequence, he became enamored of collaborative group practice, such as he saw at the Mayo Clinic. This would later strongly influence his own clinic.

Karl Augustus Menninger (July 22, 1893 - July 18, 1990), born in Topeka, Kansas, was an American psychiatrist and a member of the famous Menninger family of psychiatrists who founded the Menninger Foundation and the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

William Claire Menninger (Oct. 15, 1899 - Sept. 6, 1966) was a co-founder with his brother Karl and his father of The Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas.

Personal note: I am humbled to be employed by the Mayo Clinic with its rich history of health care innovation. The spirit of the Mayo Family continues to be felt strongly throughout the clinic's work. I also remember Karl Menninger and his influence on many of us entering ministry in the 1970s thanks to his amazing book, Whatever Became of Sin?, published in 1973. Google Books says:

Menninger's renowned book questions what is wrong with our ethics, values and morality and asserts that the answers lie within ourselves

Perhaps it is time to re-read that and see if it holds up to 43 years.

Mental Health or Terrorism?

• A 20-something white kid wraps himself in a Confederate flag and spouts white supremacy- and kills people in a church.
• A 20-something Middle Eastern kid wraps himself in ISIS ideology and kills Marine recruiters.
• A 20-something white kid in Colorado with no apparent ideology walks into a movie theater and kills people.

Is it terrorism or is it mental health?
Is it true ideology or is it illness.

 

We don't seem to know how to answer that. All of the above cases- and countless others from Sandy Hook to Columbine have one thing in common- the clear presence of mental illness. There are events that are clearly terrorism-based. There are attacks against the event promoting images of Mohammed, the Middle Eastern soldier attacking his base, the shoe bomber, September 11. These are terrorism. As were the Oklahoma City and Boston Marathon bombings.

 

But most are not.

 

Someone out there has no doubt done the research and can tell me how many of the attacks are truly acts of terrorism and how many are the acts of individuals who may be attracted by extremist, violent ideology, but who are acting out there own violent illnesses and racist or religious ideologies and prejudices. These are often loners, perhaps even bordering on anti-social or psychopathic loners.

 

They are encouraged by the attention it gets and want to go out in a blaze of glory, taking their "enemies" with them, even if those enemies are other students, innocent bystanders or kindergarten kids. These are not sane individuals. These are terrorists in the broad sense of the word- people who are spreading terror. But they are not terrorists in the world-wide sense of that word.

 

They are fed and watered by our news media's need for big stories. They are nourished by a gun culture that even sees the answer to the violence as more guns and more potential for violence. I saw where one small town even tried to pass a local law that the head of every household should own a gun and know how to use it.

 

I would have been asked to leave that town as I would have refused.

 

Allow people to carry guns into movie theaters and these maniacs won't get away with it. But as the old saying is re-interpreted: Build better laws and protections against maniacs and you will simply promote better maniacs.

• What we need is a serious discussion on our culture.
• What we need is reasonable laws that help curtail gun violence and gun registration.
• What we need is a group like the NRA to be the group that starts putting together serious, thoughtful regulations and guidelines that can have an impact, not the mindless, unquestioning antipathy to any and all attempts to make sense of this insanity.

 

We are not having that. We are seeing people on both sides of the issue making extreme- and at times extremely stupid- statements that are meant to engender fear, not dialogue; disagreement and not unity.

• What we also need is an improvement in insurance coverage for mental health issues.
• We need better ways of identifying and treating those who may be in the midst of mental health crises.
• Finally, we need a greater awareness that mental illness is a disease that needs to be treated on a parity with other illnesses.

This will not eliminate mass shooting like we have seen, but it may reduce their frequency and give us a more healthy and open attitude in the country about how to deal with this serious issue. Stop the name-calling; stop the anger-inducing rhetoric; stop our unwillingness to face the issues. We can do this!

A Last Minute Post

Well, last minute in the sense that I am actually writing this just prior to posting it. Most of my work on the blog is, by nature, done ahead of time. That way it doesn't become a rush to get something written and posted at the last minute before midnight.

But because of scheduling up ahead of me over the next 10 days, I knew that if I waited to post these thoughts, it might be "old news."

So I decided to post this one today. That way it really is current events.

• It's about that lion in Africa and the Minnesota dentist who paid $50,000 to have it lured from a sanctuary so he could shoot it with a bow and arrow then track it for 40-hours in its agony and then kill it.

• It's also about the Cincinnati university police officer who has been arraigned for murder in a traffic stop gone bad.

• It's about the insanity of the alleged Planned Parenthood videos that purport to show that the organization is a venal, baby-killing group out to make money from fetuses.

• It's about the presidential [sic] candidates calling Mexicans rapists and accusing the sitting president of leading Jews to the ovens over a nuclear arms deal.

• It's about denying climate change because it will hurt business and profits to do otherwise and the hell with the health of the planet.

• It's about having to have 30+ women claim to be raped by a well-known celebrity- and even then saying it didn't happen until his own words describe exactly what they have claimed.

It's about our human tendency for hypocrisy, prejudice, narrow-mindedness and the belief that I am right and everyone else is wrong. (Myself included).

What got me started was seeing the incredible world-wide and national reaction to the lion killing. The reaction was far beyond that for any of the other killings we are hearing about. The reaction to a lion (and I AM an animal conservationist!), even a "famous" and protected lion, raises more anger than much else that is REAL news. Every time three is a mass killing somewhere in the country we are told to pray and NOT politicize. Yet every killing like that does have a political side to it. We are told to remember that all lives matter, not just black lives, even when it is the black lives that seem to be of far less value in how, when, and where they are killed.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• all black lives matter, and when they are being killed in traffic stops or as the result of incredibly far-fetched traffic stops, THEY matter and we need to pay attention.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of billions on the planet matter when we are facing potentially catastrophic changes to our environment that will put those lives in severe jeopardy.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of the Israelis and the lives of millions of others in the Middle East matter enough to work hard at preventing nuclear weapons from continuing to proliferate and putting all of them at risk.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE, why do we ignore the cries of

• women who have been raped, 
• veterans who have been denied health services, 
• poor people who can't get health care, 
• police officers who are under incredible pressures and need better support, stress assistance and training for their difficult jobs, 
• bullied gay youth, 
• the mentally ill who are seen as crazy and to be held in contempt, 
• prisoners in overcrowded prisons that are filled with non-violent offenders incarcerated because they possessed marijuana
• the immigrants who, like most of OUR OWN ancestors are here to build the American dream and rape and pillage?

I could go on. I can rant on this for hours, but all I will do is get myself all worked up and feel like I am helpless and powerless to do anything about it. I had to get it off my chest, now, when it is news.

• Pray for peace
• Work for peace
• Uphold peace
• Make peace a reality 
• Live peace each day

We all matter- let's act that way and not just say it as a way to reinforce our ideology or put down someone else's life.

Let's live today as if each person we meet has a life that matters and then treat them that way.