Torture, pt 1

In the boardgame Cranium, each move involves responding to one of 4 different card sets. The "Data Head" and "Word Worm" sets require you to answer trivia questions and word-related items (like spelling a word backwards), respectively, while the "Star Performer" and "Creative Cat" involve variations of charades and pictionary, among others. I played Cranium with my former youth group once and we happened upon the Word Worm card that asks for the definition of "tortuous", giving three or four possible definitions. One was something like "twisty or winding" and another was "painful or difficult". The kids chose the latter definition, clearly confusing "tortuous" with "torturous", which is easy to do. I confess that I was thinking of that answer when the question was read. I never really thought much of that similarity until some blogs I've recently come across started discussing torture.

The first was Thom Stark's blog post A Free Iraq, which apparently offended a friend of his. He followed up with an update addressing his friend's views and was then subsequently invited to post a response to Death and the Maiden's question "What is torture and is it necessarily immoral?" Thom did respond, and so have several others (here and here), including one response by a professor who has studied aggression. To those who have not seen any of this, I'd highly recommend giving it a read - at the very least these are interesting and challenging perspectives, particularly to those Christians that believe torture may be morally permissible. Its after reading and pondering all of this that I've come to see how tortuous a logical path a Christians must follow in order to support torturous acts (bet you were wondering how I'd draw that together).

A second confession I need to make is that, in brutal honesty, I was not all that surprised or outraged when the Abu Ghraib abuses first came to light. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was despicable, juvenile and unbecoming a US soldier, but at the same time, perfectly in step with what I had experienced as a soldier on deployment. I was never even in an active war zone (though there were some threats, mostly from old land mines) but the stress of long days, separation from family, culture shock, the inevitable crap the military seems to foist on the junior enlisted and the sheer audacity of the local nationals to think they had the right of way at an intersection when I was clearly armed to the teeth and driving a 5-ton armored vehicle, let's just say it adds up. Now clearly, the last bit of that is facetious, but there's an underlying reality to it. The soldier is on a mission, a mission that has been given priority by command and the weight of official sanction, and it comes from the only people around you that look like you, speak the same language and long for the same home. In a soldier's mind the mission is paramount, like it or not, whether they believe in it or not. They've got a job to do and they're going to do it. But locals do not understand that mission and prioritize the living of their own lives, be that simple survival or going through the myriad social & economic tasks that define anyone's daily life. So they get in the way and become resentful of the intrusion of the soldier's mission into their life. And maybe they start resisting (violently or otherwise), which cannot help but raise the soldier's stress and start them resenting the people they thought they were there to help, which is what I found myself doing on many occasions. Its a series of short steps from standing menacingly with an assault rifle to intimidate possible enemies, to pointing it menacingly, to moving aggressively, to pushing, shoving, hitting all in the name of security. Starting down that path does not inevitably lead to torture, but its a healthy head start. So just based on my own experience in Bosnia, I was not surprised that soldiers would inflict this kind of juvenile aggression on prisoners.

The reason I wasn't outraged, though, had nothing to do with the soldier's experience and everything to do with the victim's. I've related some details of this in the past on this blog, but in Bosnia I was both privileged and damned to participate in the discovery of new evidence regarding previously unreported war crimes. The details of those events are not relevant to this post, though it is quite a story. The details of those war crimes, however, bear directly on my response to Abu Ghraib. Some of the documents we procured described in horrific detail the pointless and wanton torture of Croat and Muslims in a specific region in Bosnia. I say pointless and wanton because the torturers were not seeking any information whatsoever from their victims; they made them suffer for the sheer sport of it. I held in my hands accounts of men & women having their noses and ears cut off, their eyes gouged out, and their arms & legs broken before being driven out to a nearby river where they were shot and left to drown if they didn't bleed to death first. In light of that suffering, being forced to lay naked on the floor with some other men didn't seem all that bad. I bet, given a choice, any of those Croatians or Bosnian Muslims would have chosen Lyndsey England any day of the week.

As with many of the painful things I experienced in Bosnia, I tend to put these horrifying images of torture out of mind. I prefer not to think about it and to avoid those things that remind me of my time there. Which is why reading and writing about torture is actually fairly difficult for me. But, as with the public avowal of my commitment to nonviolence, it is time to start thinking & speaking clearly about those moral issues which impose themselves upon our era. Past eras have had to deal with slavery & freedom, religious liberty, women's rights and scientific advances that changed the landscape of the world. How we respond to terror, not only the terror of the jihadist or insurgent, but the officially sanctioned terror of the government, may well be our legacy to the future.

Reversal

John Howard Yoder coined the term "Constantinianism" to describe the nature of the church that arose after Constantine's edict making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The church and the state became enmeshed with each other, each supporting the other's mission and actions. The state used its coercive power to enforce the state religion on the populace, just as it had previously under pagan rule, and added a specifically missionary component to its dealings with outside peoples and nations. This explicit marriage between the spiritual and political lasted even through the Reformation. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli - all allied themselves with local authorities to propagate their version of the Reformation, even granting political leaders the right to appoint clergy. Yoder draws numerous avenues of critique from this fatal mixing of politics and religion but one of the primary points he makes is the improper understanding of human agency that this arrangement inevitably brings about. Christians are not responsible for making history turn out right. Only One person can accomplish that task; our task is to be faithful to Him. We cannot control the flow of history and any effort to do so is really an attempt to usurp God's control of his creation. Thus, quite apart from questions of violence, Christians attempting to achieve political control is always frought with peril because we will find ourselves in an ongoing temptation to (attempt to) yank the reins out of God's hands, often for very good, "responsible" reasons. Mix in the ultimate issue of causing the death of another human being that we are supposed to be loving and inviting into the Kingdom, and we can see that the tight rope of political power shrinks even more. Yoder thus stands for a principled rejection of efforts to take control and to instead put dynamic trust in a God who will act when he sees fit.

But it must be admitted that one thing I personally struggle with now is how to apply my commitment to nonviolence to my participation in our government as a US citizen. The average Christian throughout most of the church's history really has not had to think about how to direct the state to act; a monarchy precludes popular participation in the decision making process. At most, a Christian had to decide about their level of participation in those activities, ie, whether to serve in the military (though this really wasn't a question for many of less-than-noble birth or means) or whether to join a religious order. With the ascension of democracy in the West, especially a secular democracy, Christians have had to tease out a theology of the state and their participation therein. This is doubly true of Christians committed to nonviolence as many aspects of state power require reliance upon or participation in violent acts. How do we reconcile our citizenship in the US with our citizenship in the Kingdom? At what point must we draw a hard line? a soft line? These are vexing questions, especially when considered in light of Yoder's thesis described above.

One the one hand, there is the unavoidable call to live lives that witness to the reconciling love of Christ. This love is expressed and demonstrated mainly in interpersonal ways, through the building of direct relationships and in direct encounters. It is face to face and hip to hip. But when this call to witness is introduced into a democratic environment, we have on the other hand the insidious temptation to wield our power as citizens to force the state to act on our behalf. Needless to say, such activity by the state cannot help but be impersonal, devoid of personal relationships and encounters, except by those employed by the state on its behalf. Take the current situation in Gaza and Israel. There is the strong temptation to attempt to influence the Bush administration to take a line that (rightly) acts to counter the suffering of innocent Palestinians presently trapped in Gaza. Here again is that horribly attractive proposal to be "responsible." We have an obligation as witnesses to the Christ that reached out to the poor and downtrodden to reach out to the poor and downtrodden in Gaza, so why not get out government in on it? Or, taking another current example, there is a relatively strong movement aimed at getting the US out of Iraq and opposing any military escalation with Iran. It varies from person to person, but a common thread coming from pacifist Christian camps is that since violence is wrong for the church, then it is our duty to act to prevent the US from acting violently.

At this point, it strikes me as glaringly obvious that these pacifists have themselves fallen for the Constantinian trap. They are attempting to wield state power on behalf of the Kingdom. Even granting its nonviolent impulses, how is this truly any different from the problems Yoder addresses? The church is conflating itself with the state, trying to use a power other than Christ to influence the world in favor of Christ or on His behalf. Yes, it aims to use peaceful means to bring about these "responsible" acts, but it is not the means that really matter. We once again return to the issue of trying to control history, to make things turn out right.

And this is where I struggle. I believe, with Yoder, that we are not called to a retreating quietism. We are called precisely out of separatist movements into direct engagement with the world around us. But what are the limits of that engagement? Can we engage in local politics? state politics? Should we attempt to serve on school boards or city councils? Should we hold elected office? Should we attempt to influence the national course through protest & demonstration? Or through letter writing & phone calls to our representative? Or not at all? Where and when can we act through the state and when can we not?

Here are some others who are working through similar issues:
Our Christian Discipleship as Political Responsibility
Toward a Cultus Publicus
The King Reigns From the Tree

Miracle?

This afternoon, a patient transferred over into the neuro section I was working in. He is a young man - probably mid 20's by the looks of him - who had, in the middle of a fight with his girlfriend, put a gun to his head just above the temple and pulled the trigger. The bullet went pretty cleanly through the frontal lobe of his brain and out the other side, leaving an amazingly minimal amount of exterior damage. The mere fact that he is still alive, even on intensive life support, is, well, nothing short of miraculous. If he survives he could spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state, or perhaps, be consciously trapped inside a fragmented and broken mind.

Is his (initial) survival a miracle in the true God-acted sense of the word?

New job....sort of

There's this older episode of Scrubs where all the characters reflect on their best day in medicine. They start off with some funny moments or stupid moments, but eventually all come to think about this one particular patient and his young son. For me, the best moment I've had in medicine took place at my previous job. Most of those patients were on the upswing after a lengthy ICU stay, so both patients and families were settled in for the long haul of recovery. For families sometimes those initial moments of loss, fear and doubt are the hardest to deal with, and sometimes it is trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel as your loved one struggles through yet another day where progress is measured in millimeters, if at all. I walked into a room with a patient and his wife to answer the call light. This man had had a host of problems and infections, leaving him short one leg, severely weakened and with a bad case of C. diff (I won't describe it; let's just say its bad stuff). The wife was standing, looking out the window and I could tell she was crying. So casual-like, I start talking about the progress her husband has made, how getting well is sometimes a three-steps-forward-two-steps-back kind of thing with the elimination of a major problem causing some minor ones and how, once this problem was nipped in the bud, he'd start really getting back to his old self and going home. I spent 30 minutes in that room, which was 25 minutes longer than I needed to accomplish my task but not one second less than I needed to do my job. By the end of our conversation, the wife was smiling and laughing and I think finally able to see the twinkle of light off in the distance.

That is my best moment in medicine so far, so I'm not sure why I find it so surprising that I'm not particularly liking my present position. For the last 6 months, I've been working in the ICU as part of a student nurse program. Its been a great experience and I've enjoyed all the new things I've had the chance to learn. We have a diverse patient population, including traumas (car accidents and the like, including the occasional shooting or stabbing), post-op heart and cardiovascular patients and a neuro-ICU where we have stroke & brain injury patients. There's a fair amount of excitement with codes and bed-side procedures and always something new to watch or do. But pretty much everyone is unconscious or intubated, which makes developing relationships with the patient difficult, to say the least. And visiting time is severely restricted, not just because we're in and out of the rooms so much and with families things just get too crowded, but also because we do do so many bedside stuff that other patients' privacy would be compromised. So again, not much room to develop relationships or help them find hope. I really expected that all the technical expertise that goes into being a critical care nurse (and its a lot, let me tell you) would be fulfilling for me, but it just isn't. There are parts that can be quite satisfying, but overall, its just not making me look forward to work as I have in the past.

Thankfully, I've been able to change my position so that I will now split my time between the ICU and the oncology floor. If I really enjoy oncology, I may simply go to work there full-time. I'm hoping that oncology will give me the best of both worlds; most patients are still in relatively critical condition and oncology requires its own unique expertise, but most patients are also alert & oriented, which makes conversations a whole lot easier. I should start there in a few weeks, just as summer school is wrapping up.

Old man

On my way to work, I pass by a nursing home. It sits right on the corner of a large, busy street that is the main thoroughfare on this side of town, and a smaller street that fronts older homes and a few small businesses. The nursing home is, by any standard, a handsome building. It is a three story brick Victorian with 2 rounded turrets and a wide porch that wraps around the front of the building, filled with wooden rocking chairs. The trim around the many windows is done all in white and there are two large bay windows on the second and third floors that face out onto the street. It looks like a pleasant place to live and offers a similarly pleasant name; something with "sun" in it, I think.

While not well-known, but certainly not held secret, the third floor of this nursing home is an Alzheimer's facility. As everyone does know, Alzheimer slowly eats away at your memory and mental capacities, making you in turns forgetful, delusional and, finally, nearly vegetative, until your brain can no longer tell your body to keep on living or you die from something else. Alzheimer's patients have the rather disturbing tendency to go wandering, and given their deteriorating mental state, many will not know where they're going or possibly even who they are. Which is why all of the exterior doors on an Alzheimer's wing are alarmed and why most of the patients have bed and chair alarms to alert the staff if the person tries to get up.

It has happened a few times that on my way home from work, I have seen an old man in a wheelchair seated at the third story bay window, looking out over the intersection. Since I travel the smaller street, I have had a couple of minutes to consider him as I wait for the light to turn. He sits, unmoving, possibly asleep. There is no one else around him. If he is awake, he sees to his right (and mine on the corner) a gas station. Diagonally across the street he sees a low grassy hill that partially obstructs a large, squat church that clearly spent money on space and not aesthetics. To his left, across the busy street, is an old office building. The exterior of this building is completely covered in a grey mesh made of either concrete or metal. Whether artistic or meant as an insulative layer, from this distance, it makes the building look like a cold featureless box. And at this time of day, there are no cars in the parking lots of the office or the church. The traffic on the main road flies by while people wait idly for their chance to speed across the larger road on their way home. As the window faces east, he does not even get to see the beauty of the sunset, but instead, the steady encroachment of the coming night.

And how awful that night must seem to this man. The approaching end (and subsequent beginning) of another day spent in a place that has alarms on all the doors, more like a prison than a home. The approaching night of death. The approaching night of the complete obliteration of the self from an insidious disease. Who is to say which inspires the greatest dread? And what does he do as the waning day gives over to darkness but sit and look over a cold scene, seeing people still in the quick of life hurry past? Does he draw comfort from that? Does this view inspire some hope in him? Does he seek it out? Or does the staff simply park him there, thinking he enjoys it when, perhaps, it saddens or terrifies or does nothing for his diminished mind? And what would he say to me, to us, to a world that has seemingly forgotten him? What lessons, what wisdom, what knowledge is being lost?

I do not know. What I do know is that on the nights I see him, I go home and hug my wife all the harder and am just a little more grateful. And a little more afraid of the coming night.

My new favorites

My new favorite magazine and my new favorite show.

I think I heard about Make magazine on a tv show - can't remember which - and was lucky enough to find it at Border's. Each issue is practically a mini-book and has a bunch of articles on weird, interesting and practical stuff people are making on their own, either through hacking old machines or buying parts and making stuff from scratch. The last 20 or so pages are also filled with step-by-step instructions for projects you can do at home. I've been looking for a hobby and this sure beats video games, so I'm thinking I might try a few of these things out.

Cities of the Underworld is just plain awesome in almost every respect. Each show goes to an old city in Europe (so far, I don't know if they're planning on going elsewhere) and the host, along with his intrepid camera crew and local guide, delve into the buried past. Some of the locations are amazing and you see the foundations of modern buildings that were built on walls that are maybe 1500 years old. I guess they knew how to build back then. You get some nice historical background on the architecture, what happened in the city, why these areas were buried and so on. You also get the frenetic host's rather annoying habit of saying "And nobody knows this is here!" at least 5 times a show. Which is probably true of some of the locations, but in the Paris show, he said that in the midst of tunnel walls that were completely covered in modern graffiti, and I mean miles and miles of graffiti. Apparently somebody knows its there.

Check 'em out.

Hopelessness

For most Americans, when you speak of war, one war in particular comes to mind; World War II. It is the paradigm of war in our national mind and you could hear its echoes in the rhetoric that so many promulgated after 9/11. We were (and in the minds of many, still are, regardless of our national exploits since the end of Hitler) innocent victims, dragged into a war we did not want by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But once the Japanese made that mistake, by golly, we were going to set things right, finish the job, walk the line and oppose those twin evils of Japanese imperialism and Nazi fascism wherever they dared hide. And there is, obviously, no doubt that the German and Japanese regimes were lead by people bent on not just power and conquest, but that they sought those gains on the blood and skulls of the innocent. In Germany, the millions who were murdered in the concentration camps. For the Japanese, the Rape of Nanking and similar atrocities committed against "enemy combatants" in occupied lands. We, the virtuous, aggrieved nation overcame them through the selfless (and it was absolutely that) sacrifice of our soldiers, the ingenuity of our scientists and the savvy of our leaders, demonstrating for good and all the power of good over evil.

Or so the national narrative of WWII seems to go, give or take a few points, in the national mind. There are many points about this narrative that could be debated, not the least of which were some of our tactics aimed against civilian populations or the use of nuclear weapons. But that is not my point. My point is that for most Americans, war is ultimately not about death, politics, liberty or even national survival; war is about hope. War, and the subsequent American victory we have come to expect (the war in Vietnam not withstanding) confirms in our national mind that good really will triumph over evil and that we are on the side of good. Wars then become issues of cosmic significance. They are as much about who we say we are and our hope for the future (both short term and eternal) as they are about the real-world political situation that entails armed conflict. They confirm our national identity, bolster our self-regard and help us to look past our obvious failings. And what else could you expect from a nation that has, almost since its inception, been conflated and confused with the Church? The Church/America is God's kingdom, God's agent of justice, God's prophetic voice to the world and the community of the chosen, the elect. Our victory is nothing less than God's victory, and what surer sign exists of God's blessing? I recognize that I am making a generalization and that this is not true for every American, but I think it is true for most. War may be regarded as a regrettable but necessary evil or a positive force for justice, but behind those statements is the sentiment I have described above. For America, war is hope.

The problem is, war is not that for the rest of the world. War is not hope, it is hopelessness. This is a conclusion I came to during my time in Bosnia, but Dan's post really made me think about it again. For most of the world, war is not about the triumph of good over evil or the vanquishing of some distant enemy; war is about lifelong friends and neighbors one day deciding to kill each other for some very petty reasons. War is about wanting what your neighbor has or blaming him for your low position, and so you set out to take what he has or to punish him for the inexcusable crime of being a Serb/Croat/Muslim/Hutu/Tutsi/Tamil/Timoran/Hindu/Buddhist/Christian/Kurd/Sunni/Shiite, well, you see my point. The list of excuses for killing one's neighbors seems endless and include ethnicity, religion, geographical origin, skin color - all the things that we "peacefully" deal with in America, but elsewhere, are perfectly good reasons to view those around you as expendable. But in many instances, this is little more than fratricide once removed and leads inevitably to despair and and an all-pervasive hopelessness. People cling to their hope, to be sure, as I saw in the Serbs who were willing to live on donated land, building their future homes a few bricks at a time as money barely trickled in from the government or their meager salary. But for most of them, the answer for their children was not to stay and rebuild, to heal the wounds of the past and to try to forge a new future with old enemies, it was to flee to Europe, to build a life and a future elsewhere. What is that but a lack of hope? What greater statement of hopelessness is there than to deny that a homeland, a language, an identity, a family is worth suffering for? That is the reality of war. No matter who wins, everyone loses. No matter what injustices are suffered, no matter what atrocities committed, no matter what horrible enemies are overcome, it ultimately leads to dissolution for both victors and victims. War is not about hope, despite what America seems to implicitly believe.

War is hopelessness and that is why I cannot fight.

Three years old

I just realized that yesterday was this blog's third year in existence. I might need to put together a little retrospective as I've covered a lot of ground in the three years since I started this thing.

I am a pacifist

For many reasons I cannot fully identify, a convergence of factors in my life has pushed me to reveal this little fact about myself; I believe in Christian non-violence. I do not "admit" this because I am in no way ashamed of it. My reasons for not revealing this prior to now have been relatively simple - I didn't want the baggage of the term, I didn't think it really mattered whether or not I made this fact known, and, admittedly, out of a certain self-centeredness. See, I didn't become a pacifist after I left the military, I became on while still in the Army Reserves, on deployment, in fact, and filed for a discharge as a conscientious objector (which is rather frustratingly still pending). This latter information, more than the pacifism, seems to bother most people. Nevermind that I served honorably, even admirably, and with a high degree of effectiveness in my military job. Nevermind that I was recognized for my achievements, that my enlistment was actually extended beyond my initial contract or that I precisely followed the Army's own system for dealing with these kinds of things (as opposed to going AWOL & fleeing to Canada) - an admission to actually filing for the discharge seems, in the minds of a great many Christians, to taint me as a coward, a hypocrite, a de facto Nazi and/or terrorist and an overall worthless piece of garbage not worthy of respect or consideration.* So, not wanting to subject myself to this kind of nonsense and to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of those who would use this knowledge to dismiss my arguments about war (especially our current national endeavors), peace and the marks of Christian love, I kept it to myself. I preferred to make my points, proffer my opinions and debate topics undercover, as it were. Which actually never made any kind of difference since people generally assumed that for all my resistance to this war or this bit of violence I ultimately agreed with them that war & violence are acceptable in general.

I not only realized that my debating strategy was ineffective, but I also realized, thanks to a re-reading of The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder, that my understandable aversion to being electronically spat upon is also an understandable aversion to bearing my cross. If I truly believe that a key component of the Gospel is a call to non-violence, and I do, then I should be unafraid to make that known. I should be honest about that not only because I should be prepared to suffer for my King and the message of His Kingdom, but also because letting people know about my commitment to non-violence is in itself a way of preparing them to ask some hard questions. Part of the Army discharge process for a CO is an interview by a chaplain and the chaplain I spoke with had clearly never been presented with even the possibility that Christians may not be able to participate in violence. He seemed genuinely surprised that such a view existed, outside maybe the Amish or some similar group. So to state my pacifism (and like Hauerwas, it is not a word I like) is to refuse to answer the questions as they are posed by our present culture by showing that there more possible choices than just 'A' or 'B'; there are, in fact, entirely different questions to be considered.

So, there it stands. I am a pacifist. I will tell more of how I got to this point in the future, as well as discuss some specific issues or works that I'm reading. If you have questions, suggestions or just want to debate, you can email me - littlefights@gmail.com, or leave a comment.

*I was called all of these things and more on Christian web-forums when I discussed my then plans to seek a discharge.

Last week was hard/weird

The semester is finally over. Last Tuesday I took my final and managed to squeak through the class with an 'A'. Which is no mean feat when 93% is an 'A' and your teacher, bless her heart and her obvious devotion to preparing good nurses, writes what can generously be described as only mildly-horrible tests. At least 10% of the questions on every test have two right answers. Not one answer is better than the other, which I'm told is a frequent occurrence on the RN licensing exam - you know, which is the first, best thing you should do when your patient is coding or something. No, these are questions like "A common symptom of liver failure is?" and jaundice and elevated serum liver enzymes are offered as separate answers (both are right, by the way). Normally we can argue these questions when we get our tests back and she will occasionally see our point, or the book's point, or her lecture note's point, and allow both answers. But there is no chance for that on the final since we don't ever come back to class. I was borderline going into the final, knew there would be at least a few questions that were just a blind guess and thought there was a good chance I would guess incorrectly between two correct answers, thus scoring poorly enough to drop my grade. I didn't find out what my final grade was until Thursday, so it was a somewhat tense couple of days.

So that was Tuesday, but the week actually started out on a much less promising note. We've been looking for a church here for some time now, and we decided to try a new one that is part of the denomination the wife grew up in (and for which the father-in-law still works). This church was also highly recommended to me by a nurse I work with. So we went. It was nice. Good music, good mix of ages and family situations in the congregation, casual but not too casual, people were friendly - all those little things that are nice to see on your first visit. Until the pastor got up to speak. In reality, there was absolutely nothing wrong with this pastor. He was finishing up a series on parenting and made some really good points about the role of parents in the family - setting up boundaries, consistency, fairness, communication. He was energetic, passionate, engaging and had the unfortunate quality of sounding, and even looked a little, like the pastor that fired me 2 years ago to the day. Bizarre coincidence. And a rather upsetting one. I know that whole situation wounded me pretty deeply and for reasons that are not always easy to articulate, but I honestly thought I had gotten mostly past that. I feel like I've dealt with it. I can generally think about it without getting angry or sad, and I frequently don't think about it for weeks at a time. The wife and I are in a pretty good place in our lives right now and I'm thankful to be here, doing what I'm doing. No, its not my absolute ideal, but it feels right. So I was caught completely off guard by the range of negative emotions just listening to this pastor speak brought up in me; anger, sadness, frustration, anxiety - all the tumult I felt back then was right back, center-stage. It wasn't like picking a scab off of a wound; it was like getting shot in the same place again. It kind of put a funk on the whole afternoon and left me and the wife feeling just wrong. Needless to say, I don't think that is where we'll end up.

So I go from the unpleasantness of Sunday morning, to an entire Monday of cramming for finals on Tuesday. Tuesday comes and goes, which is a relief, but I'm left the tension of not knowing my final grade for the class. I'm mostly an 'A' student and potentially missing one by a few points is very frustrating to me. I'm scheduled to work Wednesday-Friday because I had to juggle my school schedule to accommodate studying for finals. I show up Wednesday morning, everything is going fine until lunch time, when a code-blue is announced overhead. The way things work in my hospital is that when someone codes (ie, dies or gets well along in the process of dying), the floor nurse calls the operator, who makes an announcement overhead, which sends a designated ICU nurse, a respiratory therapist (RT) and a pharmacist scrambling for their respective supplies as they make a mad-dash for the elevator. Once on scene, the ICU nurse takes charge of the code until a doctor arrives. My nurse was assigned codes for that day, so when the call came in, we went running. Another ICU nurse and 2 student techs also came along to assist & observe (participating in a certain number of codes is required for a few different professional accreditations). We get to the room, which quickly becomes crowded by the 7 of us, another RT, at least 3 nurses from the floor and a number of doctors. One of the other students begins compressions, but she is a rather slight thing and we're working on a larger patient (a woman in her early 40's), so I am put in to take over for her. This is the first time I've ever done compressions, first time I've ever seen a code. And it is nothing like you see on TV.

The CPR is fast and furious, with RT's alternately bagging and trying to intubate while we compress like mad. No 1-2-3-4-5, breathe - they're forcing it in as we're pushing on the chest. Monitoring patches are put on, an automatic defibrillator set up and still the compressions continue. I could feel/hear her ribs crack under my hands, but no matter, you keep pushing, pushing, pushing. Ribs will heal but her body needs the blood. I compressed for probably 10 minutes straight, pausing only long enough for them to shock her or try to get the breathing tube in. The shocks were not dramatic - no exaggerated arching of the back, no loud thump or sound of electricity. Just a whine from the defibrillator indicating it had charged, followed by a "Clear!" and then the lady's arms twitching when the shock was applied. And then back to compressions. I was drenched in sweat when another student stepped in to take my place. We rotated through the three of us then, every couple of minutes, though by the end, none of us were lasting more than 30 seconds. My arms burned, my shoulder felt like jello and my whole body was drained. Still, you push. The entire episode turned into nothing more than pushing, shocking and injecting drugs in a kind of organized chaos - all heads turned toward the monitor, hoping, praying for a rhythm, anything other than the horrible, small wavy line that indicated nothing but random electrical activity in the heart. We worked for 35 minutes before the doctor finally called it.

And then it was over. The room cleared. We gathered our equipment and left. For 35 minutes every person in that room was focused on doing anything and everything to bring that lady back. People were handing up supplies, pushing drugs through her IV, adjusting the equipment, asking & answering questions, relaying information to people in the hall - just a hundred different things going on at once. And in the time it took a single man to utter a single sentence, it stopped. It was done and she was gone. The whole drama of life and death and all of eternity opening up for this person was over in less than a second. The quiet that ensued was such a stark contrast that you'd almost think nothing had happened, that we had all gathered in this small room around this metal bed for no apparent reason and now, realizing that our presence served no purpose, were leaving, back to our jobs and daily routines, befuddled by our pointless presence.

In my less-than-2-years in the medical field, I have handled at least a dozen dead bodies. I have washed them, removed IV lines, catheters and readied them for transfer to the morgue. I have put them in body bags, affixed toe-tags, packed up their belongings and carted them down to a large walk-in cooler in the basement. Most of these deaths were expected, even planned in a way. The families had decided to remove life support and on a set day and time, the machines were unplugged, the tubes removed and the person died. Sometimes quickly, sometimes they lingered for hours or days. But everyone knew death was coming soon and there would be no announcement overhead, no mad scramble for supplies or sprints to the elevator. That was the key difference - this lady still had hope, or at least there was hope to be had. It was a struggle to walk away from that bed, to renounce that hope. I came out of that room a changed man; now, more than ever, will I fight to keep that hope alive in those entrusted into my care by their families and Creator. I will push until all hope is gone.

Things that should never be said in church again

The wife and I checked out a new church on Sunday. And by new I mean brand new. It was started not too long ago by the former youth pastor at my in-law's church. I'm not sure what all lead him to quit his old church and start this new one, but I do recall something about his wanting to reach out to the pomo generation, do the emergent church thing or something like that. I wanted to go mostly out of curiosity because of that and because the church presently meets in a really nice movie theater. It was, admittedly, more than a bit disconcerting to walk into "church" and see a bunch of movie posters and gigantic cardboad cutouts of kids moview characters. But there were a lot of younger couples there, which was encouraging to the wife and me. We've been here close to 2 years and really haven't made any new friends not directly related to work or school.

The service was fine. The sermon maybe started a little rough but he got it together pretty quickly and came to a good, challenging conclusion at the end. The music was also good, with, I think, a good song selection, not too much repetition and worshipful without that overly forced worshipfulness that seems to afflict a lot of worship leaders nowadays. One thing it definitely was not was 'emergent.' It seemed pretty straight forward and evangelical to me, just with a younger pastor and congregation. There are a few other churches we want to check out, but its made the short list of those that warrant a repeat visit.

Couple of things that bugged me and the wife, though. There was the ubiquitous church bulletin with the little card asking for name, address, interests, 'faith response', etc. First, they asked everyone to fill out the card so that "we'll have a record of your attendance." A record of my what?! Am I back in grade school? Am I going to get a perfect attendance award at the end of the year? No. At least I don't think so, though that might draw more people to come. A nice little trophy or a plaque of some sort could be just the thing to fill the seats. I never got one in elementary school - now might be my chance!

The second annoying thing was that at the end of this otherwise good and challenging sermon, the pastor asked everyone to "journal our thoughts" on said little card and to drop them in the offering basket as it comes by. Now, this isn't a large card. It isn't even a 3x5 card. It was 3x3, maybe 3x4, but that was pushing it. And one side was completely covered in the name-address-faith commitment-interested in serving stuff. Heaven forbid you actually wanted to "journal your thoughts" you wouldn't have had room to do more than a line or two. Three if you wrote really, really small. And they immediately transitioned into a song that the worship leader asked us to stand up for. I'm not sure what kind of journalling response they were hoping for but I'm pretty sure they didn't get it. Don't try some new little activity unless you're actually going to structure things to do that little activity. So no more journalling in church. Unless you really need that 'A' to make up for a bad attendance record.

The Twilight of Atheism

A couple of months ago, I downloaded a lecture by NT Wright from "Open Forum", which is hosted by City Church of San Francisco. Also on the page is a lecture by Alister McGrath. I recognized the name and decided to download his as well. I listened to them both several times during my workouts and was struck by McGrath's discussion about Richard Dawkins, who is apparently a rather militant atheist. I remember picking up his book, A Devil's Chaplain while at Borders a couple of years ago and found it rather unimpressive from a cursory examination. McGrath is presently a theologian, but once pursued a career, and graduate degrees, in the sciences and came to faith as a result of his studies. He is well spoken, irenic and not a little funny in the audio file, so I decided to see which of his many books were available at our brand new downtown library.

I checked out The Twilight of Atheism and have been working through it for the past couple of weeks. It begins with an abridged review of the history of atheism, starting, surprisingly enough, with the early Christians who were accused of atheism for not supporting the imperial cult of the emperor or the Roman pantheon. He moves onto the French Revolution, the rise of modernism, communism and the ways in which the natural sciences became battle grounds in the alleged war between faith and reason. He highlights the works of 3 iconic atheist figures: Feuerbach, Marx and Freud, and examines their main arguments. He touches on some other figures, such as Nietzsche, Carl Jung and others that contributed to the rise and power of atheism in the last 2 centuries.

The book itself is rather short, only a few hundred pages, and the first half is devoted mainly to this historic review. The second half of the book, which I'm just about finished with, focuses on the present day situation of atheism, the waning of modernism and the rise of postmodernism, and the ways in which the church is generally responding. It must be said that McGrath, while a devoted Christian, is not above seeing the shortcomings and failures of Christians and the church. He offers a fairly lengthy discussion on the ways in which the Reformation actually laid much of the foundation for the rise of atheism and identifies the key weaknesses that still plague the mainline Protestant churches. He criticizes some of the early Protestant churches for creating a theology that effectively cut God out of the world in their zeal to eliminate Catholic ways of thinking and possible abuses. For instance, Calvin and Zwingli focused so heavily on the role of scripture in the life of the Christian that they eliminated the potential to encounter God in the natural world. Encountering God outside of the Bible could lead to a Christianized nature-religion, as did develop in parts of Europe and elsewhere. This desacralized nature in the minds of many Christians and McGrath argues it was but a short step to move from a distant God to no God at all.

I'd recommend the book, though there are some portions which are a bit sloppily edited; there are some redundant sections and the flow isn't all that great. The main thing I think I've taken away from this book involves the ways in which Christians have hitched themselves to the dominant cultural themes in their respective times. Simply put, we have to avoid doing that because as believers, we have a strong tendency to dogmatize. Modernistic Christians have built an immense edifice based on reason, rationalism and the pursuit of an absolute, objective knowledge. They have tended to treat God more as an object of study than a person to be worshipped and experienced. As the culture shifts away from modernism's ideals, the ties between theology & reason have become so tightly woven that the fall of modernism starts to pull on faith as well. The same is true of the current political and scientific strategies that many Christians have undertaken. If those scientific underpinnings change, as happened when Darwin initially came upon the scene, what happens to the church and the faith she holds? If we dogmatically link our theology to a specific scientific principle, then disproving the latter inevitably damages the former. I think we should still engage in apologetics, particularly in the natural sciences, but we have to do so with a fair degree of caution lest we inadvertently lay the groundwork for a future assault on the faith.

Unity08 - Can't we all just get along?

I received the January/February edition of the Atlantic last week - probably a little late due to it being a Christmas gift-subscription. This issue has a special focus on the state of the union, highlighting 4 critical areas: post-Katrina education reform in New Orleans serving as an experiment for the rest of the nation, Chief Justice Roberts' views on judicial temperament and his goals for leading the Court, a profile of a gene-mapper and his efforts to use this technology to help find new energy sources, and a brief exploration of Unity08. All of these articles are interesting, especially the education & court readings, but Surprise Party was probably the most intriguing, at least at first. Apparently a group of old-time political operatives and campaign managers got together for dinner just before the mid-term elections, voiced their concerns and frustrations with the way campaigns (and politics) are being run at present and decided to do something about it. The players are Doug Bailey, who worked for President Ford, and Jerry Rafshoon and Hamilton Jordan. The latter two worked for President Carter's campaign.

What they want to do is field a bi-partisan ticket, chosen by the first online political convention made up of anybody who gets on the website and signs up. Their goal is to retake the center of American politics by putting up centrist candidates who, due to the bipartisan nature of the ticket, will appeal to voters firmly in the middle. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Its a Goldilocks kind of political endeavor. They're hoping that America will be largely dissatisfied with the candidates the main parties pick, thus building momentum for their ticket and giving the middle a voice. They're also avoiding money from PAC's and businesses, and are instead relying solely on personal donations to fund the campaign. Due to the novel nature of their endeavor and their reliance on the internet, they think they should be able to do this on the cheap, which sounds reasonable for the initial stages.

The article is rather upbeat, painting a rather rosy picture with poll numbers, innovators that have gotten onboard with the group and even making comparisons with the feel-good Clint Eastwood movie "Space Cowboys." For anyone dissatisfied with the current political climate and the way money & special interests seem to trump common sense and whats-best-for-the-nation, Unity08 sounds like a winner.

At least until you visit the website.

A brief survey of the online forums reveals that all this come-togethery-feel-good-ness isn't quite working out as planned. The old, contentious and deep running issues still come to the fore. Will Unity08 be pro-choice or pro-life? Its looking to be pro-choice, with most pro-life members getting flamed or accused of religious bigotry (perhaps not too surprising given one of the major fundraisers is Roger Craver, a man who helped create and fund NARAL and NOW). The same is true of the issue of gay marriage. Many are willing to cede that the word "marriage" should not be used to describe gay civil unions, but most of those also want to eliminate the word from all legal references as well. Essentially, they want the government to recognize nothing but civil unions, regardless of the participants, and leave "marriage" up to those religious folk who choose to call their unions such. Those who have their doubts or concerns are roundly ignored.

Is Unity08 for or against troop withdrawals, time-tables, surges and all the other stuff swirling in debates about the Iraq war? You honestly can't pin it down to any one plan, but it seems to be landing well on the side of a near-term withdrawal. Personally, I think that's a good idea for reasons I may explicate in a later post, but I don't know how that's going to play to middle America, especially if there isn't a lot of sound reasoning behind it.

There are, of course, many other issues that need to be discussed, but from what I've seen, most of the participants are ending up left-of-center in their views, which does not bode well for Unity08's chances. It is also not clear how having a Republican president and Democrat VP (or vice versa) will result in any more bipartisanship than we currently see. Whoever is the top man (or woman this time around) still wields the greatest power and is still at least somewhat beholden to his party and its base. There is nothing to say or require that the VP will have any more power or say in the way things are run. If the President doesn't want to let them throw their 2 cents in, they will be sidelined.

Representative of this problem is the attitude of many on the website who don't even want to hear opposing views. One such poster requested a function to screen all comments from "those who aren't contributing positively to this movement." Many of the threads seem to be degenerating into little more than ad hominem attacks, petty stereotyping and the airing of old grievances. Is this any way to build a new political movement? One that aims to shake up the current system and retake the executive office for the center of American politics that seems to be largely ignored? It sure doesn't seem like it. I don't know how Unity08 can expect to overcome these issues, especially with a nearly non-existent presence of the founders & leaders in the web-forum. Since these forums are the only way Unity08 can build a platform or identify the qualities they want in a candidate, these seems tantamount to suicidal incompetence.

Ultimately, I hope Unity08 is able to shake things up a bit. I'd like things to not be so caught up in the extremes of either party. But I also seriously doubt that this kind of ground-up democracy can really work in such a polarized era. Unless the leadership takes on the burden of seriously trying to build a bridge and find constructive ways forward, I think Unity08 will end up as little more than an interesting historical footnote.

Does attendance = approval?

Driving home from clinicals this afternoon, I was hopping around the radio dial and ended up on a Catholic AM station. I would normally listen to NPR when I'm in the mood for talk, but they were discussing the new diet drug "Alli" and I've dealth with more than enough fecal incontinence to not need to hear about it on the radio. A caller revisited a topic the host had discussed in a previous show, wherein he told someone that it would be wrong for him/her to attend a wedding of a Catholic to a non-Catholic. The caller, who described her family as "very Catholic", was troubled by the host's statement because her son (himself apparently quite Catholic, as well) is engaged to a non-Catholic and she found the idea that she should boycott the wedding, and possibly the reception, to be "arrogant, harsh, legalistic and unloving." The host's response was rather lackluster and it wasn't entirely clear whether or not a Catholic marrying a Protestant or Orthodox is more acceptable in his mind than marrying a Buddhist or some such.

Initially, I favored the argument of the mother. How is it witnessing to the love of Christ to refuse to attend your own son's wedding? What kind of message does that send to the would-be daughter-in-law? I'm not one for an overly pragmatic view of things - what's right should be done regardless of how others perceive it - so the question is what's right? Is communicating disapproval of the marriage right? I agree there are some serious problems with the marriage of a believer to a non-believer, problems internal to the marriage, to the individuals and externally to the community of believers. So if the disapproval is correct, is this the best way to communicate that? Is showing love right? Of course, is that really showing love? If you truly believe that Christ is the answer to the most important questions and that the marriage relationship incarnationally expresses God's relationship with those who believe he is the answer, well then, it really isn't very loving to let someone go on thinking that they're okey-dokey without him. Denying your beliefs for the sake of some culturally-arbitrary definition of "loving" sure doesn't make the grade. But all of these questions are murky, with nebulous boundaries smudged by shoddy thinking and poorly grounded faith. I doubt that many people in today's America are really able to think clearly on these issues, especially not people of my generation. We've got too many different influences, most of them well-intentioned but still hopelessly wrong, to be able to chart a clear course. And if, by miracle or luck, we are able to faithfully and thoughtfully find a position we think corresponds to God's, it is highly unlikely that our arguments will seem convincing to many others. (I know this sounds pretty negative, but frankly, after listening to my peers discuss deep and difficult ethical questions surrounding the beginning and end of life, I realize that my generation not only doesn't have the intellectual and moral ability to think through these subjects, they don't care to even try.) So arguing, as the host and caller did, from a utilitarian perspective is, in itself, not very utilitarian; it just won't get the job done. One person is talking about hammers and the other about screwdrivers and they frequently don't realize they're on different subjects.

The questions raised by the caller made me think back to a few years ago when my wife and I attended a wedding of a Catholic to a non-Catholic (Protestant, in this case). It was held at a Catholic church, presided over by a Catholic priest and, contrary to what I thought was the norm, was over in less than 30 minutes. Probably more like 20. Anyways, the reason it was so short its because the Mass was not performed. There were vows, some music, an exchange of rings - you know, the traditional stuff. Except it isn't traditional at all. These elements were divorced from the truly traditional context of worship that culminated in the Eucharistic sharing of Christ, with the added significance of this newly forged marriage-relationship that is but a shadow of the relationship between Christ and His church. That service was not the spectator sport that weddings have presently become. It was an entrance into a sacrament, a new way of relating to God and to this wonderfully made spouse, experiencing like never before God's love for us. The ceremony I saw was essentially a civil proceeding being overseen by an official, who happened to also be a religious leader, who had been invested with the legal authority to witness 2 parties entering into a contractual relationship of a domestic nature, in front of a group of onlookers. Though both of these individuals were (and are) Christians and their marriage bears the fruit of that comingled faith, the ceremony itself was not Christian, not really. Though we were there as a community, we were not there to worship. Though we all (or only some)believed in Christ, we did not share in His body - either in communion or as a church.

This, I think, is where the host's argument should have been made. Thinking more broadly, the marriage of a Christian to a non-Christian isn't really "marriage" from the perspective of the church precisely because the joining cannot be made as, and in the prescence of, the church. It cannot be done in worship and communion. And if that is how marriage is supposed to begin - as a celebration of God's love and relationship with man - and if that is how it is supposed to be lived, then it is very difficult for me to conceive of any situation wherein such a wedding can have the sanction and blessing of the faithful. No ceremony or ritual can overcome the distance that truly separates these 2 people, or the church body from the non-believer. So participating in a religi-fied ceremony that takes on the trappings of the church's worshipful celebration without any of its content is problematic at the very least. Looking at things from this perspective, I tend to favor the host's view, though I see several difficult questions that our present cultural context raises and certainly agree that such a position can come off as harsh and arrogant.

Can Christians participate and/or attend purely civil marriage ceremonies? Is our presence an implicit blessing of that union? Or is it merely being a spectator and demonstrating our love for one (or both) of the parties involved?

The shadow

I was at the gym earlier today and while I was working out, I started listening to a lecture by NT Wright given at Open Forum on his recent book Simply Christian. In the opening remarks, Bishop Wright makes a point about the shadow that hangs over our existence. Even when things are working out perfectly, which they often aren't, there is always a shadow hanging over us. Be it death or the inevitable disappointment that things aren't quite as wonderful as they first seemed, there exists a certain hollowness in all of our endeavors that is engendered by the inevitable march of seemingly infinite time. He raises the example of a person who loves music, particularly the works of Bach or Beethoven, who deeply desires the opportunity to study the work of these masters in college. But as these studies unfold, the magic of the music is lost, its engaging mystery fades and the once-ardent passion is blighted, sometimes taking years to regenerate, if ever. I think that accurately describes my own feelings towards nursing at the moment.

With the start of this semester, I am struggling to find the draw that propelled me so forcefully through the previous three. My new job is, I think, one of the reasons for this dwindling motivation. I now work in a surgical-trauma intensive care unit as a student nursing assistant. This job not only pays more, but affords me the opportunity to practice many more hands-on nursing skills. With appropriate supervision, I assess patients, chart their condition, administer medicines, hang IV's and review labs & diagnostic procedures. I get to see the stuff I'm studying first hand. And I'm discovering that this work is very different than what I thought it was. It is quite challenging at times, with some patients requiring constant vigilance and activity to keep them from going bad, but in many situations, the work is actually quite tedious. We administer drugs, we monitor for complications, but their doesn't seem to be many opportunities to develop relationships with the patients or their families. There isn't much of a chance to alleviate fear or to offer support. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to my own lack of knowledge and experience in this setting. I can't tell a family member that things are looking up or that the patient is making improvement because I honestly don't know if they are. I don't know if certain complications are normal or extremely worrisome. I don't know enough to be able to offer an opinion that is worth anything. And while I know intellectually that this will change, that my knowledge and experience will grow and that this will afford me more opportunities to engage the human elements of nursing that I love, that day seems very distant right now. Right now I'm slogging through the entirely mundane elements of school and learning, focusing on the little details of conditions, medicines, charting, etc, that, when added together, make for a strong nurse, but when taken individually, as I am forced to at the moment, are disheartening and dull.

In a way, I know this is good. I am learning more about myself, more about what kind of nurse I want to be and what setting I will thrive in. But right now, looking at the calendar of 3 more semesters of long, hard work, it is a heavy weight.

Reluctant Saint - The Life of Francis of Assisi

I picked up Reluctant Saint at a used bookstore because, frankly, I had a lot of extra credit with them and needed to use it before they switched to a new system. It looked good, so I picked it up and put it on the shelf to read at some future point. Which I finally did over the Christmas break. Having read it, I would now gladly have paid the retail price for the book.

Spoto, who is apparently better known as a celebrity biographer (his subjects include Audrey Hepburn and Hitchcock, among many others), has also written The Hidden Jesus, in which he calls Jesus the "man no one knows." From that simple statement, one can get a sense of his more liberal theological views, which, thankfully, do not assume a bully pulpit in Reluctant Saint. For the most part, Spoto is willing to let the simple and devout faith of Francis explain his actions without interjecting his own interpretations. Spoto does offer his opinion from time to time, but generally his views offer only a slightly skewed look at what most faithful Christians would overwhelmingly support. There are bits of dross to be picked out, but the remaining substance has clearly been influenced by the amazing life of St Francis.

And Spoto writes well. His prose is clear and engaging, painting a very intimate portrait of a deep, troubled and holy man. He deftly sums up details and arguments that could easily grow tedious to the casual reader while clarifying the issues and showing how they were relevant to the involved parties. All in all, Spoto recreates a very present Francis, tracing through his conflicted youth, to the first inspired steps of a beggar-saint, to the reluctant and eventually rejected leader of a movement that would have a far-flung and lasting impact. I would highly recommend this book if only because the life that inspired many thousands of others to forsake all in pursuit of living the Gospel is still so very inspiring.

I have to admit that Francis' commitment to poverty and simplicity of life & action is something that is just as necessary and relevant today as it was during his lifetime. In a society of conspicuous consumption, where for many what we own defines who we are, what greater challenge to the world can there be than someone who intentionally rejects the pursuit of stuff? And having rejected all that the world says we so desperately need, goes on to serve those that the world has rejected and the One whom it rejected, and does so with quiet joy? I think it is that last point, the joy, that is actually what is so challenging about Francis. He was wracked by physical illness, frequently rejected by the world and eventually rejected by the very movement he founded, his personal hopes and dreams (I never would have guessed Francis made a failed effort at participating in a Crusade!) lay unfulfilled and yet he lived and died devoted to and joyful in his Lord. And it is joy that the world truly covets. Contentment & security is what drives the consumption machine either in an effort to mask the profound sense of alienation and fear that permeates the world or to alleviate it, if only for a few moments.

And Francis unequivocally, unambiguously states that there is no joy to be had in things, indeed, in the very pursuit of joy itself. Joy is a by-product of a life lived against the grain of the world. This is very challenging to me, not in the least because Francis' life of poverty does not lend itself to caring for a family. How do I take the lessons that Francis teaches and apply them to my own life?

13 days

Today marks my first day off in, you guessed it, 13 days. We had a little trip home to Arizona which inadvertently overlapped with the first day of school. The day after we got back (on the first day of class - that'll teach me not to double check a school start date before booking tickets) I started 2 days of clinical orientation, then 4 straight days of work to make up for the hours lost while we were in Arizona - and for which I have no PTO since I just started the job - then 3 days of class/clinicals, then more work until my first day off in 2 weeks. Which has been spent in blissful inactivity.

This semester should be much more manageable than the last, thankfully. Only 1 class instead of 2, and I started a new job in a student nurse program at a nearby hospital. I'm working in the surgical-trauma ICU which has already provided excellent hands-on experience and learning opportunities. The nurse to patient ratio is always 1:2 or 1:1, and I basically follow one nurse and do whatever he/she needs me to do. As I progress through school, I will be more or less given the less intense patient to care of almost independently while the nurse oversees me and double checks my assessments. While this work is much more challenging mentally, it is less physically demanding than my old job which had me hopping to take care of up to 11 patients on any given night, so I've been less tired. And I'll be able to pull 2 twelve-hour shifts instead of having to work multiple days of doubling up on class & clinicals, so things should be a lot less intense this semester.

Which will hopefully allow me to achieve my goal of posting at least once a week on either Sunday or Monday, which will be my 2 days off. I'm wanting to be a lot more consistent and this semester, I shouldn't have too many reasons not to be.

Finals

Well, I just completed my last final for this semester. In my nursing fundamentals class I'm almost guaranteed an A. In my pharmacology class, its all but impossible that I get an A. Even with a possible extra credit assignment, I would need to have scored 98% on my final to get an A, which is pegged at a frustrating 93%. I've been unable to break 91% all semester long. So I guess I'll be happy with a B. Well, not happy exactly, but its acceptable.

Sign of the times, though. In preparing for the final, I was typing up answers to a painfully comprehensive study guide. For those of you unfamiliar with the drug naming system in use today, they're all made up and frequently quite unusual. Just about every drug name I typed into Word gave me one of those red-squiggly-hey-idiot-did-you-mean-to-spell-"the"-"teh"-? things, except for the really common ones like acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Oh, and viagra. Yup, viagra has become so commonplace its even on Word's pathetically incomplete dictionary.

Baby dedication?

This last Sunday at church - which is a rather largish Missionary congregation that was planted a few years ago - a number of families participated in "baby dedications". Basically, the moms & dads stood up front cradling their little one while the pastor prayed for them. It didn't last very long. The main gist seemed to be something about us as a church community coming around the families to support them in prayer, in material ways and in setting a good example of the Christian life for their children and that the parents are committing to raise them up as Christians.=. Nothing at all objectionable or unreasonable. My wife prefered the way the congregation of her youth did it - each child was prayed for separately - and felt that it emphasized the community aspects of the dedication much more effectively. Not growing up in a church that practiced baby dedications, I really have no opinion on that. All I do know is that I just plain don't get it.

What is the point, really? Regardless of whether the parents make a public profession of their intent to raise their children in the faith, they are still commanded by God to do so. Its good that they want to make a public declaration of that fact, but it is of no real consequence; the commitment they made when they had the child far exceeds any mere statement to that effect in front of a group of people. And accountability-wise, those parents should still be accountable to the leaders of their congregation and to those godly men & women God has put in their lives to support, guide & correct them in many other areas. On the plus side, they are introduced to and prayed for by the entire congregation, which is certainly a good thing. But even that functions as a kind of pseudo-entrance into church membership. This child, while likely not getting any voting rights in a congregational lead church, is still treated like a member of the community. So its not like the dedication is any way a preparatory step towards the final goal of church membership. The faith of this child is not presumed against in any way; they are treated like members of the church and full followers of Jesus Christ.

Which is probably why it just really seems to me that child dedications are deritualized baptisms. Instead of serving a spiritual purpose, ie, the child being reborn into Christ and thus better armed to live their faith, it serves the psychological needs of the parents. The parents want to do something for their child, they want the child to be part of the church and they want their child to be prepared for the life of faith, but aside from some informal prayers that frankly could be said by anyone, at any time of an individual's life, child dedications don't actually do anything for that child. No spiritual reality changes for that child. They get some prayers, some people who coo at them a bit and that's about it. Like I said, I don't get it.

If anyone has a different perspective, I'd be interested to hear it.

Ted Haggard

Of course, everyone has heard about it. The news plays the story ad nauseam not least for the wish of political fallout during this election cycle. Ted Haggard's gay maybe-not-quite-a-tryst-but-close-enough is the latest big deal. The wife has been following it more closely than I. I understand he has resigned or been fired from his pastoral position and as head of the NAE, which is as it should be. The drug purchase by itself would warrant some fairly serious disciplinary action. Stepping over into adultery - yeah, lets just go ahead and take your name off the office door.

I feel bad for the man. There are not many whose personal sins and temptations would make for such national display. And I daresay there are probably even those celebrating the revelation of his hypocrisy. He's got to feel incredibly low right now and I hope he is able to make it through this crisis with a solid faith. He seems to have been blessed with a remarkable and faithful wife, so he's incredibly fortunate in at least one way. I hope he picks up the pieces, spends a lot of time in prayer and finds a way to move on.

What I don't hope, however, is that the man makes some kind of return to public life. Ever. I don't mean that harshly, but I think its fair to say the man has defamed the name of Christ, demonstrated some blatant hypocrisy (which we all do, generally speaking, almost daily) and given a lot ammo to people that already had too much mud to sling. I believe that God can and does heal us of sin. I believe God can and does restore fallen people and that someday, after a suitable period of reflection, prayer and renewal, Ted may even be spiritually fit to step back into a pastoral role. So my reasons for hoping he stays under the radar are entirely due to the cultural backlash his return to prominence could bring. We don't need another national figure with egg on his face, no matter how old.