Following up on the post below about answers (and seeming non-answers) to prayer, I would like to share with you three interventions in my life, only one of which came as an answer to prayer. The other two seemed to be gifts given without request, and for those amazing and unexpected gifts I am highly grateful.
While I have read much literature on the topic, unexplained (miraculous?) healings become much more meaningful when they happen to you.
The first incident happened as I was driving to see my gynecologist for a determination of surgical date to remove my 27-year-old IUD, the last 10 years of which it had been so entangled in uterine tissue that no doctor had been willing to remove it because it would have required removing the uterine lining as well. However, now the decision had been made that it simply was time (about 22 years past time) to remove the thing, and the doctor I had found was considered the best of the best and able to handle such things. So, I was not really focused on the medical problem at all but thinking about life and work and children and other things in general as I drove through past open fields enroute to the doctor's office. Suddenly, a streak of blue light appeared out of nowhere, ran through the entire length of my body, and disappeared. I was startled but not enough so to drive off the road. I arrived at the doctor's office on time and had pretty much put the incident out of my mind as perhaps my imagination--except that it was too "real" to be imagination. The doctor did a quick check prior to hooking up a scanner that would help him determine just how complex an operation he was in for. He looked at me, startled, and said, "We don't need an operation. The IUD is exactly where it should be. I can just pull it out in two seconds," which he did. Clearly, the blue light was not my imagination since I have medical records of long discussions with four doctors in two states about the entanglement of the IUD in tissue and now I have a second entry in a record from from a very surprised doctor who found the IUD all of a sudden totally free of tissue.
The next incident I want to relate here was not documented by anyone other than by me, but that is enough for me. I was in a very rural area of Russia, hours from medical care, when I developed a urine infection. It became worse and worse over 4-5 days and on the fifth evening my bladder seemed to shut down. I collected a urine specimen because I knew doctors would need that, and it looked very infected. (Having had a UTI before that sent me to the emergency room, I knew the symptoms.) There was no option for local care, and regional care was not only hours away but would not be available in the middle of the night. I tried to fall asleep, but the pain was too severe for that. After two hours of tossing, turning, running to the bathroom in the hope that my bladder would start working again, and trying hard to ignore pain that kept increasing in intensity, I prayed for the strength to tolerate the pain until morning when I could seek help. Suddenly, I was not alone. A male figure in a brown robe and sandals was with me. He laid his large hands on my abdomen, and I felt warmth spread through my body. Nearly immediately I was asleep. I awoke a few hours later, totally refreshed, and in no pain. Even my bladder was working. I collected another urine sample--perfectly clear. Convinced that I must have been dreaming the infection, I double-checked the urine sample from the day before. It was clearly infected.
The third incident, like the first, is medically documented and occurred very recently. I had fallen and injured the rotator cuff of my right arm, an injury that, I am told, rarely fully heals and often requires surgery. The local clinic sent me to a specialist in the city. The city doctor took two more x-rays, confirmed the diagnosis, and set me up for an MRI the following week. Saturday I attended mass with my youngest son. I often feel God's presence at our mission church; many people do. However, this time, while kneeling, I felt His presence right beside me along with a brief touch on my right shoulder. I leaned over to my son and asked if he had just felt the same presence, and he said he had. When we stood to say the Lord's Prayer, I noticed that for the first time in three weeks I felt no pain in my right arm. Then, during the kiss of peace, I hugged a friend who was in the pew in front of me. "Be careful for your arm," she warned me, knowing that I had not been able to lift it about waist level since the injury. "It doesn't hurt," I told her, "and it is moving now." Once I walked out of the church, I rotated my arm in all directions with ease and no pain. Nonetheless, I followed through with the MRI, the result of which was that no injury showed up on any of the scans. The orthopedic specialist was really spooked. I thought he might want to know what happened, but he did not. He offered no explanation and seemed eager to have me leave his office as soon as possible. Even though I am an extravert, I was unable to engage him in any conversation, and he had difficulty even looking me in the eye. I thought it a very odd reaction, but then, I suppose, he is not used to rotator cuff injuries simply disappearing.
All of these incidents were surprising because I did not ask God to heal me at any of these times. (Of course, who does not want to be healed, whether or not one asks?) Essentially, God answered an unexpressed request. Amazing! Moreover, in all cases, I was given hard evidence or medical documentation of the healing. (God knows I am a skeptic at heart; without evidence, I am not quick to believe.) I guess this is why my Sufi friends tells me that God spoils me. God does. I don't ask why. I just say "thank you!"
I know my experiences are not unique; I have met some other people with such experiences--and we have had such experiences among family and acquaintances in my prayer group, as well as at church and at my work place. However, I never tire of hearing about God's amazing grace. So, I invite you to please share your experiences with me and the readers of this blog!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
And God Said "No"
The teenagers in my First Year Confirmation religious education class often come with a chip on their shoulders toward God. It nearly always come from what they perceive as unanswered prayers. They have yet to realize that "no," "wait," and "let's substitute an answer other than what you specifically asked for" are all answers to prayer.
In explanation of what appear to be "no" answers, I suggest the following possibilities:
(1) sometimes if God were to give us what we ask for, God would be interfering with, walking back, or setting aside the system of free will and genetic selection that He put into action centuries ago;
(2) God's love for us is separate from what God does for us and so our love for God should not be contingent upon whether He answers our prayers the way we expect or at all;
(3) sometimes we do not see the answer to prayer because it was not the one we expected;
(4) sometimes what we ask for is not in our best interest (good parents also say "no" to their children when kids ask for something that is bad for them or dangerous).
Sometimes these explanations work. Other times, though, a teenager is really angry at God about something bad that has happened that he/she believes that God should have prevented. Last year, for example, one lost a cousin and the other a classmate in car accidents. They wanted to know why God "took" or "killed" their relative and friend. Obviously, God did not go out and kill these chldren. They were taking risks and lost; God simply did not intervene.
So, readers, what have been your experiences? How have you explained such things to your own children, or, if you are a catechist, to the children you teach? I would love to have additional insights.
In explanation of what appear to be "no" answers, I suggest the following possibilities:
(1) sometimes if God were to give us what we ask for, God would be interfering with, walking back, or setting aside the system of free will and genetic selection that He put into action centuries ago;
(2) God's love for us is separate from what God does for us and so our love for God should not be contingent upon whether He answers our prayers the way we expect or at all;
(3) sometimes we do not see the answer to prayer because it was not the one we expected;
(4) sometimes what we ask for is not in our best interest (good parents also say "no" to their children when kids ask for something that is bad for them or dangerous).
Sometimes these explanations work. Other times, though, a teenager is really angry at God about something bad that has happened that he/she believes that God should have prevented. Last year, for example, one lost a cousin and the other a classmate in car accidents. They wanted to know why God "took" or "killed" their relative and friend. Obviously, God did not go out and kill these chldren. They were taking risks and lost; God simply did not intervene.
So, readers, what have been your experiences? How have you explained such things to your own children, or, if you are a catechist, to the children you teach? I would love to have additional insights.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Wishing Fourth of July Blessings to All
Because of my work-related travels, it is rare that I am in the USA for the Fourth of July, let alone have the day off! So, today is an exciting, if unusual, one for me.
Donnie and I are preparing for an afternoon BBQ. Shane, wife, and kids will come -- and yes, our little disassembled granddaughter, now in one piece, will be here, too! (We now have a name for what her "issue" is: OEIS complex. For those of you who can speak medicalese, you can find out more about it here. For those who prefer a lay description, that can be found in my earlier posts.)
Then, after mass, Donnie and I will drop in on an evening party thrown by one of the supervisors who works for me, an Iraqi born on the fourth. Somehow, being with Iraqi immigrants on our Independence Day is both ironic and appropriate. Iraq has yet to experience its day of independence, but perhaps it will soon, insha Allah (God willing), as Arabs say whenever they refer to the future. Insha Allah, freedom of speech will become a way of life for them. Insha Allah, they will experience the freedom to worship God each in his/her own way, without Shia and Sunni being pitted against each other and together against Christians and with Kurds, Sorranis, Assyrians, and Arabs all respecting each other.
It reminds me of my days in the former Soviet Union although there are significant differences. In the USSR, unlike in Iraq where people kill each other over religious denomination, religious practice was banned. Believers carried Bibles inside folded newspapers. The Moscow Baptist Church--there was only one during the heyday of the Cold War when I was there--was located in a warehouse; unless one knew that the church was there, one would never suspect it. The Orthodox churches were closed down and locked up, except for those few that had been kept open as tourist traps, such as St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. (My favorite picture of St. Basil's depicts an era before Russia was sovietized, and, as in so many cases in life, the beautiful outside is far different from the dark inside, which is mostly dirt from the erosion of time and the effects of a series of wars.) I remember when Orthodox friends of mine (a family with three children) fled Moscow for Leningrad in the summer of 1982 after a friend of theirs was arrested for her active participation in the then-underground Orthodox Church. My friends feared that they might be next. The series of events are permanently fixed in time for me. As my friends were fleeing, I was retiring to bed in my University of Moscow "blok" (dorm suite in which my roommate and I each had our own small bedroom and a shared bathroom and shared toilet room) when I saw a frightened face, seeming to ask for help, in my dorm window. I turned on the light, but the face remained. I ran to my roommate's bedroom and asked her to come see, but by then the face had disappeared. I knew that the face belonged to an acquaintance, but I did not put two and two together until the following week when my roommate and I were visiting Leningrad. As "luck" (?) would have it, my roommate ran across the mother of the fleeing family on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street of Leningrad; the mother asked my roommate to have me meet her in front of the Hermitage, the USSR's most famous art gallery, the next morning. I came and recognized instantly that it was her face I had seen the week before. An art historian, she gave me a wonderfully detailed tour that few docents could have given. Open discussion in the USSR being difficult and definitely prohibited, as we moved from room to room she sandwiched into the tour the details of what had happened to her neighbor, her fear for her family, and her plans for leaving the country through the help of a friend from Germany whom she had been able to contact after arriving in Leningrad. I asked her where she had been at 8:00 the evening of July 18, the time that I had seen her face in my window. She replied that she and her husband had hastily packed a few possessions and their children that evening, purchased tickets, and were at the very time I had "seen" her on the train to Leningrad where she was thinking very intently about me, hoping that I might be able to help her. As it turned out, I did not need to help her. An alternative had been found. Nonetheless, knowing that I was within reach seemed to comfort her. We exchanged coordinates in the way that coordinates were shared in those days: we took the time to memorize each other's personal information (she gave the me the phone and address of her German friends, which I recited until I knew them as well as I knew my own address and once I left Soviet soil wrote it down; being caught at customs or passport control, or even in my dorm room, with that information is not something that would have had a pleasant outcome).
Independence and freedom did come to Russia, and there has been quite a revival of Orthodoxy in Russia, along with the introduction of many new religious faiths. The Soviet Union today is but a memory (not always a pleasant one) for Cold War veterans like me and my daughter, Lizzie, who spent time going to school there one year when I was conducting research at the Academy of Sciences. It is even less than that to the young people of today both in Russia itself and in other countries. (One, of course, hopes that Putin will not walk back too far the flamboyant freedom that has overwhelmed Russia for nearly two decades now.)
No one thought that the Soviet Union would fall, that freedom would roam Russian streets again and come home to live in Russian cities. But it did. And, so it seems, it will in Iraq, as well. Insha Allah.
Donnie and I are preparing for an afternoon BBQ. Shane, wife, and kids will come -- and yes, our little disassembled granddaughter, now in one piece, will be here, too! (We now have a name for what her "issue" is: OEIS complex. For those of you who can speak medicalese, you can find out more about it here. For those who prefer a lay description, that can be found in my earlier posts.)
Then, after mass, Donnie and I will drop in on an evening party thrown by one of the supervisors who works for me, an Iraqi born on the fourth. Somehow, being with Iraqi immigrants on our Independence Day is both ironic and appropriate. Iraq has yet to experience its day of independence, but perhaps it will soon, insha Allah (God willing), as Arabs say whenever they refer to the future. Insha Allah, freedom of speech will become a way of life for them. Insha Allah, they will experience the freedom to worship God each in his/her own way, without Shia and Sunni being pitted against each other and together against Christians and with Kurds, Sorranis, Assyrians, and Arabs all respecting each other.
It reminds me of my days in the former Soviet Union although there are significant differences. In the USSR, unlike in Iraq where people kill each other over religious denomination, religious practice was banned. Believers carried Bibles inside folded newspapers. The Moscow Baptist Church--there was only one during the heyday of the Cold War when I was there--was located in a warehouse; unless one knew that the church was there, one would never suspect it. The Orthodox churches were closed down and locked up, except for those few that had been kept open as tourist traps, such as St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square. (My favorite picture of St. Basil's depicts an era before Russia was sovietized, and, as in so many cases in life, the beautiful outside is far different from the dark inside, which is mostly dirt from the erosion of time and the effects of a series of wars.) I remember when Orthodox friends of mine (a family with three children) fled Moscow for Leningrad in the summer of 1982 after a friend of theirs was arrested for her active participation in the then-underground Orthodox Church. My friends feared that they might be next. The series of events are permanently fixed in time for me. As my friends were fleeing, I was retiring to bed in my University of Moscow "blok" (dorm suite in which my roommate and I each had our own small bedroom and a shared bathroom and shared toilet room) when I saw a frightened face, seeming to ask for help, in my dorm window. I turned on the light, but the face remained. I ran to my roommate's bedroom and asked her to come see, but by then the face had disappeared. I knew that the face belonged to an acquaintance, but I did not put two and two together until the following week when my roommate and I were visiting Leningrad. As "luck" (?) would have it, my roommate ran across the mother of the fleeing family on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street of Leningrad; the mother asked my roommate to have me meet her in front of the Hermitage, the USSR's most famous art gallery, the next morning. I came and recognized instantly that it was her face I had seen the week before. An art historian, she gave me a wonderfully detailed tour that few docents could have given. Open discussion in the USSR being difficult and definitely prohibited, as we moved from room to room she sandwiched into the tour the details of what had happened to her neighbor, her fear for her family, and her plans for leaving the country through the help of a friend from Germany whom she had been able to contact after arriving in Leningrad. I asked her where she had been at 8:00 the evening of July 18, the time that I had seen her face in my window. She replied that she and her husband had hastily packed a few possessions and their children that evening, purchased tickets, and were at the very time I had "seen" her on the train to Leningrad where she was thinking very intently about me, hoping that I might be able to help her. As it turned out, I did not need to help her. An alternative had been found. Nonetheless, knowing that I was within reach seemed to comfort her. We exchanged coordinates in the way that coordinates were shared in those days: we took the time to memorize each other's personal information (she gave the me the phone and address of her German friends, which I recited until I knew them as well as I knew my own address and once I left Soviet soil wrote it down; being caught at customs or passport control, or even in my dorm room, with that information is not something that would have had a pleasant outcome).
Independence and freedom did come to Russia, and there has been quite a revival of Orthodoxy in Russia, along with the introduction of many new religious faiths. The Soviet Union today is but a memory (not always a pleasant one) for Cold War veterans like me and my daughter, Lizzie, who spent time going to school there one year when I was conducting research at the Academy of Sciences. It is even less than that to the young people of today both in Russia itself and in other countries. (One, of course, hopes that Putin will not walk back too far the flamboyant freedom that has overwhelmed Russia for nearly two decades now.)
No one thought that the Soviet Union would fall, that freedom would roam Russian streets again and come home to live in Russian cities. But it did. And, so it seems, it will in Iraq, as well. Insha Allah.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
All God's Children
My last post got me to thinking about God's children. I am referring not to mankind as God's children, but to the little ones in our lives and our second generation regardless of age, the ones who call us Mom and Dad (or Ma and Pa, or Omy and Baba, etc.).
In this, I cannot imagine anyone with a greater sense of humor than God. I see that humor unfold in my life time and again. For example, I never particularly wanted children; I had a career lined up for myself (in my mind). Well, had that career happened as planned, it would not have been one iota as interesting as the career that unrolled, in zigs and zags, before me. And had that career not had to zig and zag around child after child, I would have missed the richest moments of my life.
In a display of great irony, the children that came into my life were not your everyday variety. Well, actually, those, too, ended up in my life, but as adults. My birth children, as well as those who came to live with Donnie and me as children and teenagers, were different: highly gifted, mentally and physically challenged, medically needy, discarded, bereft, foreign. First came my own birth children, one after the other, in spite of my best efforts not to get pregnant. (I hated being pregnant -- if I had a half hour of not being sick throughout all four pregnancies, I do not recall it. As best as I can figure, between all the kids, I have spent 26,298 hours vomiting or trying not to vomit.) On the other hand, once the children were born, all those maternal instincts took over and ran way ahead of me.
After my birth children along came Shura (a Siberian teenager with spina bifida),
All of these children I have talked about in various posts and books. The ones I have not mentioned are the ones that came later. They are the ones who need my help (and your prayers) today. Please meet Lana, Ibrahim, and Maha.
Leyla and Shem (not related to each other) are from Iraq. I met them in Jordan, where they worked for me as work-study students at the university where I was the chief academic officer.
Leyla would periodically come into my office and say, "Mum, may I cry in here?" It was usually because she had heard of a new bombing along Airport Road in Baghdad, where her family lived, or an attack on Baghdad University, where her father taught. Her family could not leave Iraq. She could not return, and communications, especially in 2003-2006 were very poor and, at times, totally lacking. Given a tendency to assume the worst, when she did not hear that her family was okay, she assumed that something bad had happened. And so, she started calling me "Mum" and looking to me for advice and moral support. I took to keeping an Islamic prayer rug in my office for her use, as needed, as well as provided guidance and hugs, as needed. Leyla recently ran into legal problems with an expired passport and the inability to return to Iraq to take care of that issue. I was in Jordan earlier this month for business purposes and called Leyla, worried because she has not responded to email for several weeks. Someone else answered her phone, and if my understanding of the Arabic conversation we had was accurate, that phone number no longer belongs to Leyla. I worry about her. She is as much my child now as my own children. I know that God will watch over her and take care of her until I find her again, but nonetheless I would welcome prayers from readers on her behalf.
Shem was my student as well as work-study assistant. An Iraqi Christian (a small and persecuted group), he thrived in school in spite of being separated from his family, graduating with a 4.0. He has done well also in graduate studies and in subsequent jobs. He, too, called me "Mom," although it did not seem like he needed another mother. Still, he was alone in Jordan and lonely. He emails and Skypes me regularly, and his first words are always, "I miss you sooooo much!" Seeing him in Jordan two weeks ago reminded me how families are families, whether blood or not and whether separated by physical distance or not. We spent hours together. It did not matter what we talked about. I do not even remember half of what we said and did. Rather, I savored the blessing of being able to be together, if only for one day and one night, in spite of living half a world apart in cultures that are rather alien to each other.
Maha's situation is much different. She lives in Bahrain, and she became my "daughter" when I was consulting extensively (over a period of 5 years) for the Ministry of Education there. Shia Muslims, her biological family became embroiled in political machinations over a year ago when her brother was arrested in the dead of the night on a trumped-up charge that has yet to have its day in court. The situation is personally emotionally difficult for me--and truly not understandable--for Donnie taught and I was academic dean for many university students from the ruling Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa family. The Shia-Sunni hatred dates back to the struggle after the death of the Prophet Mohammed and the murder of Ali, a tragedy and travesty remembered to this day on the 10-day annual Ashara (the word ashara means ten) when Shias take leave from work and commemorate this piece of history, in part by flailing themselves with branches to the point of drawing blood. One would think that this hatred would have died out after 16 centuries, but emotions still run high. Emotions are part and parcel of the Arab world. And so, Maha's brother has been imprisoned for 14 months, during which time he has been beaten to the point of being almost blind. I tried my best to help, and a friend of a friend convinced a specialist in international human rights to go to Bahrain, but to no avail. The US Embassy did not want to get involved, nor did any other international body, and the Bahraini government repelled any appeal. So, we wait--and pray.
I am sure that I am not alone in having adult children who are experiencing difficulties that require assistance beyond what a normal parent like me can provide. If you are one of those "mothers" or "fathers", what have you done? How has God helped you out with these children?
In this, I cannot imagine anyone with a greater sense of humor than God. I see that humor unfold in my life time and again. For example, I never particularly wanted children; I had a career lined up for myself (in my mind). Well, had that career happened as planned, it would not have been one iota as interesting as the career that unrolled, in zigs and zags, before me. And had that career not had to zig and zag around child after child, I would have missed the richest moments of my life.
In a display of great irony, the children that came into my life were not your everyday variety. Well, actually, those, too, ended up in my life, but as adults. My birth children, as well as those who came to live with Donnie and me as children and teenagers, were different: highly gifted, mentally and physically challenged, medically needy, discarded, bereft, foreign. First came my own birth children, one after the other, in spite of my best efforts not to get pregnant. (I hated being pregnant -- if I had a half hour of not being sick throughout all four pregnancies, I do not recall it. As best as I can figure, between all the kids, I have spent 26,298 hours vomiting or trying not to vomit.) On the other hand, once the children were born, all those maternal instincts took over and ran way ahead of me.
After my birth children along came Shura (a Siberian teenager with spina bifida),
All of these children I have talked about in various posts and books. The ones I have not mentioned are the ones that came later. They are the ones who need my help (and your prayers) today. Please meet Lana, Ibrahim, and Maha.
Leyla and Shem (not related to each other) are from Iraq. I met them in Jordan, where they worked for me as work-study students at the university where I was the chief academic officer.
Leyla would periodically come into my office and say, "Mum, may I cry in here?" It was usually because she had heard of a new bombing along Airport Road in Baghdad, where her family lived, or an attack on Baghdad University, where her father taught. Her family could not leave Iraq. She could not return, and communications, especially in 2003-2006 were very poor and, at times, totally lacking. Given a tendency to assume the worst, when she did not hear that her family was okay, she assumed that something bad had happened. And so, she started calling me "Mum" and looking to me for advice and moral support. I took to keeping an Islamic prayer rug in my office for her use, as needed, as well as provided guidance and hugs, as needed. Leyla recently ran into legal problems with an expired passport and the inability to return to Iraq to take care of that issue. I was in Jordan earlier this month for business purposes and called Leyla, worried because she has not responded to email for several weeks. Someone else answered her phone, and if my understanding of the Arabic conversation we had was accurate, that phone number no longer belongs to Leyla. I worry about her. She is as much my child now as my own children. I know that God will watch over her and take care of her until I find her again, but nonetheless I would welcome prayers from readers on her behalf.
Shem was my student as well as work-study assistant. An Iraqi Christian (a small and persecuted group), he thrived in school in spite of being separated from his family, graduating with a 4.0. He has done well also in graduate studies and in subsequent jobs. He, too, called me "Mom," although it did not seem like he needed another mother. Still, he was alone in Jordan and lonely. He emails and Skypes me regularly, and his first words are always, "I miss you sooooo much!" Seeing him in Jordan two weeks ago reminded me how families are families, whether blood or not and whether separated by physical distance or not. We spent hours together. It did not matter what we talked about. I do not even remember half of what we said and did. Rather, I savored the blessing of being able to be together, if only for one day and one night, in spite of living half a world apart in cultures that are rather alien to each other.
Maha's situation is much different. She lives in Bahrain, and she became my "daughter" when I was consulting extensively (over a period of 5 years) for the Ministry of Education there. Shia Muslims, her biological family became embroiled in political machinations over a year ago when her brother was arrested in the dead of the night on a trumped-up charge that has yet to have its day in court. The situation is personally emotionally difficult for me--and truly not understandable--for Donnie taught and I was academic dean for many university students from the ruling Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa family. The Shia-Sunni hatred dates back to the struggle after the death of the Prophet Mohammed and the murder of Ali, a tragedy and travesty remembered to this day on the 10-day annual Ashara (the word ashara means ten) when Shias take leave from work and commemorate this piece of history, in part by flailing themselves with branches to the point of drawing blood. One would think that this hatred would have died out after 16 centuries, but emotions still run high. Emotions are part and parcel of the Arab world. And so, Maha's brother has been imprisoned for 14 months, during which time he has been beaten to the point of being almost blind. I tried my best to help, and a friend of a friend convinced a specialist in international human rights to go to Bahrain, but to no avail. The US Embassy did not want to get involved, nor did any other international body, and the Bahraini government repelled any appeal. So, we wait--and pray.
I am sure that I am not alone in having adult children who are experiencing difficulties that require assistance beyond what a normal parent like me can provide. If you are one of those "mothers" or "fathers", what have you done? How has God helped you out with these children?
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
More from the Land of Splat!
Most of my life I have lived with my family in the Land of Splat! One day we may be able to cross over the border to some other place, but for now, we have developed the survival skills that allow us to be almost comfortable here--and definitely happy.
How can one be happy when popping out from a childhood of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse into an adulthood rife with financial, medical, and career challenges? Easy! One looks for the blessings that are under one's nose. We all have them, no matter how difficult and dark life seems to be at times. Mainly we don't see them because we are covering God's light with our own gloom.
Examples, please? Certainly! I have filled one book (Blest Atheist) with them and am working on a second (Tending God's Sprinklers). Let's take just a couple here.
(1) A friend of mine told me when my daughter-in-law was pregnant with our first grandchild that there is great pleasure in being a grandparent, even more so than in being a parent, and that is because, unlike one's own small children, grandchildren can be sent home. They are not your responsibility, and so you can just have fun with them. That does resonate, but now that I have two grandchildren, I find that the greatest pleasure in being a grandparent lies somewhere else: in watching your own children be good parents (even improving on your parenting). Now the latter (improving) can be quite an achievement when the unthinkable happens, such as your children giving birth to their own handicapped children, as has happened with my son and daughter-in-law, whose son was born with hydronephrosis (eliminated by five surgeries at the University of San Francisco Medical Center) and daughter with a failure-to-close-at-midline defect that involved many of her organs, some aspects of which will be with her all her life. We call these our million-dollar babies because the son's surgery cost more than $1 million and the daughter's to date $3.2 million. Thank God for insurance, for ways in which hospitals and doctors are willing to reduce some costs and take long-term payments on others, and the fact that I earn a good income and can help out. And while we seem to be always scrambling for money to live on, there have been times that money to handle seemingly impossible situations has drifted down onto us like manna from heaven (yep, another possible topic for a post and certainly one covered in Blest Atheist, the book). Those are a few of the blessings: that we can manage these serious problems as a family. The trails through the Land of Splat! may be rocky, but together they are navigable--and God sheds light on our path all the time. Help comes frequently from the most unexpected sources (such as with Maury, the INS overseer who showed up unbidden just when we needed him). I expect that my granchildren, like their aunt and uncle before them, will turn out to be a blessing for other people, too. It has been amazing watching even the most crotchety people turn gentle in their presence, and they have, each according to his/her talents, been able to handle other people in concrete ways, serving as a model for their more physically and mentally capable peers. Good from bad, I think that must be one of God's mottos.
(2) The learning that comes from living in the Land of Splat! is tremendous. The latest proof of learning is my 7-year-old grandson who quizzed a new NICU (newborn intensive care unit) nurse, who was on duty when his sister was discharged after nearly three months at Stanford University Hospital, about an orange light on the monitor of another baby. "Why is the orange light on?" he asked. "The monitor lights tell us when babies need our help," she replied. "No, you don't understand," he answered patiently, "her sp02 level is not low enough to trigger an alarm, so why is the orange light on?" The nurse turned to my son and said, "He's a genius!" "No," answered Shane. "He has just been here too long." Like my grandson, I have learned a lot from being around challenging situations, and I have been able to use that knowledge to save my children's lives at times (yes, really) and to help many other people find the coping mechanisms and medical or educational treatments that they need. Once again, good from bad, the motto that floats around the Land of Splat!
Now, it is your turn. Have you ever spent time in the Land of Splat!? What are your examples?
How can one be happy when popping out from a childhood of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse into an adulthood rife with financial, medical, and career challenges? Easy! One looks for the blessings that are under one's nose. We all have them, no matter how difficult and dark life seems to be at times. Mainly we don't see them because we are covering God's light with our own gloom.
Examples, please? Certainly! I have filled one book (Blest Atheist) with them and am working on a second (Tending God's Sprinklers). Let's take just a couple here.
(1) A friend of mine told me when my daughter-in-law was pregnant with our first grandchild that there is great pleasure in being a grandparent, even more so than in being a parent, and that is because, unlike one's own small children, grandchildren can be sent home. They are not your responsibility, and so you can just have fun with them. That does resonate, but now that I have two grandchildren, I find that the greatest pleasure in being a grandparent lies somewhere else: in watching your own children be good parents (even improving on your parenting). Now the latter (improving) can be quite an achievement when the unthinkable happens, such as your children giving birth to their own handicapped children, as has happened with my son and daughter-in-law, whose son was born with hydronephrosis (eliminated by five surgeries at the University of San Francisco Medical Center) and daughter with a failure-to-close-at-midline defect that involved many of her organs, some aspects of which will be with her all her life. We call these our million-dollar babies because the son's surgery cost more than $1 million and the daughter's to date $3.2 million. Thank God for insurance, for ways in which hospitals and doctors are willing to reduce some costs and take long-term payments on others, and the fact that I earn a good income and can help out. And while we seem to be always scrambling for money to live on, there have been times that money to handle seemingly impossible situations has drifted down onto us like manna from heaven (yep, another possible topic for a post and certainly one covered in Blest Atheist, the book). Those are a few of the blessings: that we can manage these serious problems as a family. The trails through the Land of Splat! may be rocky, but together they are navigable--and God sheds light on our path all the time. Help comes frequently from the most unexpected sources (such as with Maury, the INS overseer who showed up unbidden just when we needed him). I expect that my granchildren, like their aunt and uncle before them, will turn out to be a blessing for other people, too. It has been amazing watching even the most crotchety people turn gentle in their presence, and they have, each according to his/her talents, been able to handle other people in concrete ways, serving as a model for their more physically and mentally capable peers. Good from bad, I think that must be one of God's mottos.
(2) The learning that comes from living in the Land of Splat! is tremendous. The latest proof of learning is my 7-year-old grandson who quizzed a new NICU (newborn intensive care unit) nurse, who was on duty when his sister was discharged after nearly three months at Stanford University Hospital, about an orange light on the monitor of another baby. "Why is the orange light on?" he asked. "The monitor lights tell us when babies need our help," she replied. "No, you don't understand," he answered patiently, "her sp02 level is not low enough to trigger an alarm, so why is the orange light on?" The nurse turned to my son and said, "He's a genius!" "No," answered Shane. "He has just been here too long." Like my grandson, I have learned a lot from being around challenging situations, and I have been able to use that knowledge to save my children's lives at times (yes, really) and to help many other people find the coping mechanisms and medical or educational treatments that they need. Once again, good from bad, the motto that floats around the Land of Splat!
Now, it is your turn. Have you ever spent time in the Land of Splat!? What are your examples?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tareq Died Today
To protect the privacy of the individual involved and that of his family, I will use an alias--Tareq--to share with you a remarkable story.
Tareq was one of my employees, and it came as no surprise that he died. For more than three years, he battled tumors and heart disease and rarely missed a day of work. What was a surprise was that Tareq managed to spend three years with us that he supposedly did not have. More than that, Tareq was a reminder to all of us of God's love and power.
I came to know Tareq right after I had taken up the position as his boss's boss's boss. I suppose, given the managerial distance between us, I should not have come to know him at all. However, early on, Tareq had a problem, a serious one. An immigrant to the USA from Iraq, he had family members back home, ones who had not wanted to leave Iraq. Among them was a son. Somehow, members of the insurgency learned that Tareq was working with an organization in support of the US government and targeted his son. (Of course, just being Christian in northern Iraq has, even before the war, been enough to put one in danger.) In the case of Tareq's son, first threatening messages were left. Then, another relative was killed, a case of mistaken identify. Tareq's son went into hiding, pretty much in the same area where Saddam Hussein was able to go undiscovered for weeks. Tareq went to his supervisor for help; the situation was overwhelming for that supervisor, and he sent Tareq to his supervisor. In this manner, Tareq was passed upward until he rather quickly landed in my office in pretty desperate shape. Rather than send him to my supervisor, the "proper" thing to do, I helped him call the Washington office of our senator, which I considered the proper thing to do. It would be much faster, and the worst that could happen to me would be a reprimand for working out of channels. In the interim, we just might be able to save Tareq's son--and we did. The senator leapt into action, contacting the US Embassy in Iraq, which was able to ferret Tareq's son out of the country (one of those exciting adventures that does not get reported and should not, for the safety of all involved, be reported in any more detail than I have provided here).
And so, I knew Tareq, and Tareq knew me. In fact, after that he felt bonded to me in some way, as to a protector, both because of my assistance with his son's rescue and also because I extended his contract a couple of months past the surgery period so that he could continue to get medical benefits. Therefore, it should have been no surprise that he would want to say good-bye to me. He had worked every day throughout his period of chemotherapy for cancer, but once the tumors were shrunk, he was cleared for a long-needed quadruple by-pass.
On the morning before his surgery, Tareq cleaned out his office. He did not plan to return to work, the doctors having given him only a 3% chance of survival, the cancer and heart trouble being a deadly combination. He said an emotional good-bye to his colleagues, then headed for my office. I was out of the office. He left a note. I found the note and went to his office. He was gone, saying good-bye to other colleagues. I left a note. And so it went all morning until he had to leave without saying-good-bye.
The last thing he sent from his computer was an e-mail note to me, thanking me for my support and asking me to pray for him. Now, I had a dilemma. I work in an organization where not only is separation of church and state expected, it is required, and as the senior leader in my division, it is up to me to enforce it (along a myriad other rules). Was the prayer of one person enough? I asked myself. Well, yeah, probably it was, but I wanted more for Tareq. I wanted the prayers of his colleagues. And so, using careful wording to avoid raising many objections, I forwarded Tareq's note to the 400 employees who work for me with a request from me: "If you have a belief system that will allow you to honor Tareq's request, please do so."
Well, many people (actually, most people) responded to that request. We had Christians of several denominations, Jews of various persuasions, and Sunni & Shia Muslims all praying together, often in the same office. Even Buddhists joined in. They prayed, as well, in their churches, synagogues, and mosques and relayed that information to Tareq. We also sent flowers and cards to Tareq. All this cheered him up during his recovery. It was the prayers, though, that were special. They not only bonded all of us to Tareq but also bonded all of us to each other. My organization went from a place where religion had been sidelined to a place where one could feel the spirituality of those working there as soon as one walked through a door.
Three weeks later, I happened to be in the office area where Tareq used to work -- and there sat Tareq. "What are you doing here?" I asked in surprise.
"I beat the odds," he grinned, "and the doctors are still in shock!"
Those extra three years that we have had Tareq with us have continually reminded us of the power of prayer, of God's love, and of how God's people can work together, regardless of religion, for the good of each other and for the glory of God. Since that time, God has always come to work with me and with most of my employees. Not that God was not that before, but now we allow ourselves to speak of God, turn problems over to God, and deliberately include God in our work life. As a result, our organization has gone from being a business-as-usual, impersonal, unemotional set of offices to an involved, gentle, loving, happy, huge family of God where coming to work is something to look forward to every day.
Tareq was one of my employees, and it came as no surprise that he died. For more than three years, he battled tumors and heart disease and rarely missed a day of work. What was a surprise was that Tareq managed to spend three years with us that he supposedly did not have. More than that, Tareq was a reminder to all of us of God's love and power.
I came to know Tareq right after I had taken up the position as his boss's boss's boss. I suppose, given the managerial distance between us, I should not have come to know him at all. However, early on, Tareq had a problem, a serious one. An immigrant to the USA from Iraq, he had family members back home, ones who had not wanted to leave Iraq. Among them was a son. Somehow, members of the insurgency learned that Tareq was working with an organization in support of the US government and targeted his son. (Of course, just being Christian in northern Iraq has, even before the war, been enough to put one in danger.) In the case of Tareq's son, first threatening messages were left. Then, another relative was killed, a case of mistaken identify. Tareq's son went into hiding, pretty much in the same area where Saddam Hussein was able to go undiscovered for weeks. Tareq went to his supervisor for help; the situation was overwhelming for that supervisor, and he sent Tareq to his supervisor. In this manner, Tareq was passed upward until he rather quickly landed in my office in pretty desperate shape. Rather than send him to my supervisor, the "proper" thing to do, I helped him call the Washington office of our senator, which I considered the proper thing to do. It would be much faster, and the worst that could happen to me would be a reprimand for working out of channels. In the interim, we just might be able to save Tareq's son--and we did. The senator leapt into action, contacting the US Embassy in Iraq, which was able to ferret Tareq's son out of the country (one of those exciting adventures that does not get reported and should not, for the safety of all involved, be reported in any more detail than I have provided here).
And so, I knew Tareq, and Tareq knew me. In fact, after that he felt bonded to me in some way, as to a protector, both because of my assistance with his son's rescue and also because I extended his contract a couple of months past the surgery period so that he could continue to get medical benefits. Therefore, it should have been no surprise that he would want to say good-bye to me. He had worked every day throughout his period of chemotherapy for cancer, but once the tumors were shrunk, he was cleared for a long-needed quadruple by-pass.
On the morning before his surgery, Tareq cleaned out his office. He did not plan to return to work, the doctors having given him only a 3% chance of survival, the cancer and heart trouble being a deadly combination. He said an emotional good-bye to his colleagues, then headed for my office. I was out of the office. He left a note. I found the note and went to his office. He was gone, saying good-bye to other colleagues. I left a note. And so it went all morning until he had to leave without saying-good-bye.
The last thing he sent from his computer was an e-mail note to me, thanking me for my support and asking me to pray for him. Now, I had a dilemma. I work in an organization where not only is separation of church and state expected, it is required, and as the senior leader in my division, it is up to me to enforce it (along a myriad other rules). Was the prayer of one person enough? I asked myself. Well, yeah, probably it was, but I wanted more for Tareq. I wanted the prayers of his colleagues. And so, using careful wording to avoid raising many objections, I forwarded Tareq's note to the 400 employees who work for me with a request from me: "If you have a belief system that will allow you to honor Tareq's request, please do so."
Well, many people (actually, most people) responded to that request. We had Christians of several denominations, Jews of various persuasions, and Sunni & Shia Muslims all praying together, often in the same office. Even Buddhists joined in. They prayed, as well, in their churches, synagogues, and mosques and relayed that information to Tareq. We also sent flowers and cards to Tareq. All this cheered him up during his recovery. It was the prayers, though, that were special. They not only bonded all of us to Tareq but also bonded all of us to each other. My organization went from a place where religion had been sidelined to a place where one could feel the spirituality of those working there as soon as one walked through a door.
Three weeks later, I happened to be in the office area where Tareq used to work -- and there sat Tareq. "What are you doing here?" I asked in surprise.
"I beat the odds," he grinned, "and the doctors are still in shock!"
Those extra three years that we have had Tareq with us have continually reminded us of the power of prayer, of God's love, and of how God's people can work together, regardless of religion, for the good of each other and for the glory of God. Since that time, God has always come to work with me and with most of my employees. Not that God was not that before, but now we allow ourselves to speak of God, turn problems over to God, and deliberately include God in our work life. As a result, our organization has gone from being a business-as-usual, impersonal, unemotional set of offices to an involved, gentle, loving, happy, huge family of God where coming to work is something to look forward to every day.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
All God's People
At the risk of alienating Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews all in one post (that would be a feat but likely more easily accomplished than one might think), I would like to suggest that perhaps God does not care as much about HOW we worship as we care or about how we worship as that we DO worship. On a regular basis, ecumenical questions arise in my prayer group or in general conversation among people in my parish, and I find myself defending Jewish and Muslim believers. Last week, I found myself doing the same thing in Jordan: defending Catholics and Jews.
Yes, there are significant differences in beliefs and practices among the Abrahamic religions, but we all do originate from the same forefather and the same geographical region. It would seem that we could, then, respect each other, if not love each other as brothers and sisters and worshippers of the same God whether we use the name Lord, Allah, or Yahweh.
The greatest irony, it might seem to others, is that it was a Sufi Muslim who started me down the path that led to the Catholic church. To me, though, it is no irony at all, for we are all God's people.
Yes, there are significant differences in beliefs and practices among the Abrahamic religions, but we all do originate from the same forefather and the same geographical region. It would seem that we could, then, respect each other, if not love each other as brothers and sisters and worshippers of the same God whether we use the name Lord, Allah, or Yahweh.
The greatest irony, it might seem to others, is that it was a Sufi Muslim who started me down the path that led to the Catholic church. To me, though, it is no irony at all, for we are all God's people.
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