A piece of my mind

Sitting with Patients: A Lesson for Doctors

Posted March 24, 2017 by heysonnie
Categories: Blogroll, Cancer, Health Care, Hope, Life
Tags: ACA, AHCA, Cancer, colon cancer, Health Care, Hope, Life, Obamacare

As Colon Cancer Awareness Month draws to a close — AND as the House of Representatives is poised to vote on the terrible AHCA — I’m reposting this. It has to do with any kind of hospitalization — or even office visits.

It was 2001. After being sick for awhile Melinda rushed me to the ER. They kept me, soon saying, “This is your diagnostician” and “This is your surgeon.” And “Cancer…” I had meatball surgery since there was no time to prep, and it was almost too late. Then a week in an induced coma. Next was a CCU room. I had tubes running in and out of me, and I still didn’t know if I would live. Melinda had to get some work done, so I was alone and crying softly to myself when my surgeon came in on her rounds. She had stood before, but this time she pulled up a chair, sat down, and held my hand. I don’t know if she was there for seconds or minutes or an hour, but I felt better. I had hope that I’d have a future.

The Importance of Sitting With Patients

By Dhruv Khullar, M.D. March 19, 2015 4:32 pm

I had never seen someone so yellow.

It was as if someone had taken a highlighter to the whites of her eyes and coated her skin with a layer of mustard. In actuality, the cancer in her colon had crept to her liver, where it blocked bile from taking its natural path out of the body, causing the ominous yellow chemical to spill into her blood and tissues. She had left the hospital two weeks ago, hoping to die at home, but came back with worsening pain and bloating in her belly — and because she couldn’t stand to look at herself in the mirror.

“Doctor,” she said softly — it was a title that still didn’t feel quite comfortable to me, a newly minted doctor, especially coming from a patient several decades older than me. “You remind me of my nephew.”

She asked me to sit for a few minutes and, shamefully, I hesitated. I had eight more patients to see before rounds and was already running behind. But I sat — listening to a dying woman’s fondest family memories, my mind racing through a seemingly endless list of boxes I had to check that morning. When my pager went off five minutes later, I excused myself, promising to return in the afternoon to finish our conversation.

But I didn’t.

There were new patient admissions. Emergencies on other floors. Notes to be written, consultants to be called, outside hospital medical records to be procured.

When I got home that night, I kicked myself for forgetting to stop back to see her. I briefly considered going back to the hospital but, exhausted, told myself she’d be asleep by now and vowed to arrive early the next morning to spend extra time with her.

She died that night.

The most draining aspect of medical training, it turns out, is not long hours, brash colleagues or steep learning curves — it’s the feeling that you’re often unable to be there with and for your patients in the way you want, in the way you’d always imagined you would be.

For hospitals to run efficiently, it is widely thought that they must operate like companies. There’s a certain number of patients to be seen, doctors to see them, diseases to be managed, procedures to be performed, and hours in which all this must occur. For patients to feel cared for, we must treat them like family — with all the time, energy and compassion that entails.

It’s a tension with which doctors at all levels of training struggle. But the problem may be most acute for new residents who are generally the ones expected to gather, relay and document patient information; to enter orders and coordinate care between medical services; to be the first to respond to patient, family and nursing queries.

So far, residency educational reform has focused on the quantity of hours worked, not necessarily improving the quality of time spent at work. But limiting how long residents spend in the hospital may have actually exacerbated the problem. By squeezing the same clinical and administrative work into fewer hours, do we inadvertently encourage completion of activities essential in the operational sense at the expense of activities essential in the human sense?

It’s no secret that trainees now spend less time at the bedside than ever before. Residents today spend eight minutes per day with each patient — or about as much time over all seeing patients as they do walking around the hospital, and a quarter as much as they do sitting behind a computer screen. The next wave of reform must focus on understanding how best to ensure resident time is spent on direct patient care and meaningful clinical activities.

Part of the answer may be reducing individual workload by training more residents. But, without extending already lengthy training programs, this also carries the risk of precluding residents from managing enough clinical encounters to graduate as competent independent physicians. More promising reforms are those that allow trainees to focus on the types of activities they chose careers in medicine for by off-loading or eliminating other activities. These may include: improving the ease of communication with nurses and consulting medical services; enlisting medical scribes to assist with documentation; minimizing admission and discharge paperwork; streamlining transitions to outpatient care; and automating certain routine procedures and processes.

On some level, though, efficiency-empathy trade-offs are an inevitable and inherent tension in medicine — a function of busy hospitals with complex patients and limited personnel and resources. But I wonder also if this is a trade-off we too readily accept and whether the pendulum has swung too far toward the alter of efficiency.

Surely patients want to be seen and treated in a timely manner, but when we sacrifice empathy for efficiency we fuel what lays at the core of patient — and physician — discontent with modern medicine. We hide behind buzzwords like “patient-centeredness” and “shared decision-making” without being able to offer the time that gives these terms true weight. Ultimately, reconciling this tension may mean reconceptualizing “efficiency” to include the tremendous value that exists in having more time to spend with our patients.

When I think back to that morning with my patient, and many mornings like it, terms like efficiency and productivity seem to lose their meaning. I think of the countless opportunities for compassion I squander every day in pursuit of something far less meaningful to patient and doctor. And I think, next time, I’ll sit.

Dhruv Khullar, M.D., MPP, is a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Follow him on Twitter: @DhruvKhullar.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/the-importance-of-sitting-with-patients/

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Hope Where There Is No Hope (or Is There?)

Posted December 2, 2016 by heysonnie
Categories: Blogroll, Hope
Tags: Advent, Diana Bass, Hope, Life, post-election

Diana Bass is an author, speaker, and independent scholar specializing in American religion and culture. She wrote this post on Facebook. Sadly, in our post-election world, she’s had to limit the audience of her posts because public writings have been slammed by trolls. It’s exhausting.

But here she tells a story of a young Black woman who doesn’t have a comparable version of that, who is out there among the trolls on a daily basis. So far this woman has hope. Hope — the theme of the first week of the Advent season. We need to remember this; like Diana, we need to turn from the evil to the light, to acknowledge and lift up those who do the right thing.

__________

I’m in a hotel this morning in Florida where some sort of conservative conference is being held. At breakfast, four older white men were at the table next to me. One was a media activist-pundit (who I think I recognized). They were talking VERY loudly bragging about how they have “total power” and how they are going to destroy everything President Obama did, how easy it is to manipulate people to get them to vote for them and how they planned on taking over every single county government in the state of Florida.

There was a young African-American woman waiting on them. She did her job with thoroughness and kindness. As I watched, they spoke of disgusting racist things and openly extolled DT in front of her — who they seemed to think was invisible. And the more they bellowed their retrograde views, her body actually recoiled as she tried to serve them.

I was VERY angry. VERY ANGRY.

When she came over to my table, I told her that those guys might be white and I might be white but I thought they were assholes and that I wasn’t on board with their plan, how sorry I am about what happened. I told her that wanted to go over to their table and slap them upside the head. She laughed.

She said, “You know, one day all this hate will finally die out. It doesn’t bring life. It cannot survive the long term.”

I said, “I kind of hoped it might die before I do.”

She said, “Well, that’s probably a bit too soon! But I have hope. Hate has no life of its own. Another generation or two. It will die.”

“Meanwhile, we work for our communities. We love our families, care for our neighbors, celebrate life.”

And she went on, “And meanwhile, we work for our communities. We love our families, care for our neighbors, celebrate life. And them?” She gazed over to the table with a mixture of resignation and pain. “They are the last of a dying world.”

As she spoke to me, her back straightened, her eyes glowed, passion filled her voice. And finally she said, “It is really nice, however, that a white lady like you noticed how awful they are. Thank you. We all need to pay attention and do our part.”

She is 27.

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Post post-election words from Anne Lamott

Posted November 20, 2016 by heysonnie
Categories: Blogroll
Tags: Anne Lamott, Election, Facebook post, Prayer

I have passed through the initial five stages of grief: denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance. Now I am in fascination—cobra hypnosis, newly apoplectic every day by the latest. I believe I have actually keened within recent memory. At this rate, I may have a flickering tic in my eye by sundown. Also, I am doing the unconscious eating that everyone I know is doing, whole packages of Oreos for us sugar freaks, whole bags of chips for the salty-fats crowd, oat-bags of dip, whole sides of beef: no little dog is safe in the midst of our voracious appetite for numbness. I absolve everyone: It’s okay for now. We need ballast.

Because we’re all doomed. It’s hopeless.

Oh, wait, never mind.

But what do we do, what do we do?

We have to figure this out—oh wait, never mind. Figure out is not a good slogan (altho certain very tall people in your household and classrooms always insisted that this was the golden path to glory.) (I will not name names.)

Where do we start?

Well, that one I can answer. We start here, where our butts are. We get up and feed the dogs—I said feed them, not eat them.

We can say a little prayer even if we are not believers: “Help” is a great prayer. “Help me, help me, I am a completely doomed human,” is even better. When my then six-year-old son got his head stuck in the bars of a chair at the dining table of some friends we were visiting, he went unnoticed for a time, and then a tiny voice piped up and said, “I need help with me.” The friends had this calligraphied and framed for us. I say it at least once a month.

I’ll tell you a great praise prayer for the believers, and then one for the Nons.

I have a friend who is a hopeless alcoholic of the worst sort, like me, who somehow like me has put a few years between those cool refreshing beers we had with breakfast, just to get all the flies going in one direction. She went to some sort of “meeting,” and met up with a woman who had had most of her tongue removed during surgery for an aggressive oral cancer. She shared during the meeting that the cancer had returned and she needed another round of chemo. Everyone looked on in dismay, but she flipped her wrist dismissively. “Oh, I’m not worried,” she said. “God’s got it.”

God’s got it. This is so not me. I’m more of a Rube Goldberg machine of herky jerky attempts at control, domination, and, most importantly, assigning blame. But then the pain and isolation of feeling like the Wizard of Oz gets my attention and eventually, I give up. I surrender. I lay down my weapons, and breathe, maybe not like the Dalai Lama, but less like a sturgeon on a dock.

And for the Nons: a dear friend once got a call from a world-famous screenwriter, who, in the throes of grandiosity, had lost or was losing almost everything precious to him. He recounted a litany of troubles and obsessions, from the distant wife to the scary child to the lack of prospects, and then demanded that my friend gave him one good reason to stay here on this vale of tears.

My friend listened attentively, which is pretty much all we have to offer, and then said, “Mornings are nice.”

That’s a gorgeous prayer.

“i thank You God for most this amazing day:” cummings wrote, “for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”

So that’s where we start—here, now, damaged, scared, grateful, surrounded by our beloved, by sad strangers, with lots of poor people to care for, a world to save, a bracing cup of coffee, walks begging to be taken, lonely people to check in with, Oreos and Cheetos to get through, (someone’s got to do it,) a whole new day before us, that we can screw up or not. Sigh. Here we go.

__________

Anne Lamott’s Facebook post, because they’re wise words that I need. Maybe you do too.

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#Orlando #Pulse #Heroes

Posted June 13, 2016 by heysonnie
Categories: Blogroll
Tags: heroes, LGBT, Orlando, Pulse, Queer

Yesterday morning I was still in bed, lying next to my wife as she slept. As is my habit, I grabbed my iPad to check the news. The headlines read something like “20 Dead in Nightclub Shootings,” [a few hours later we learned that the number was 50] and these early articles neglected to mention that the bar, the patrons, the bartenders, were queer people. But they knew… and I knew.

Queer people have magical powers. Among those is invisibility. Sometimes we make ourselves invisible for various reasons (including basic survival), and sometimes it’s other people, and society in general, who can’t / don’t / won’t see us. But one of the things about this magical power is the ability to see levels of reality that haven’t been fully expressed. We frequently can see through others’ invisibility — and through attempts to make us and our lives invisible. Thus, I read through the invisibility cloak cast by the New York Times and other media in their earliest submissions. So did some of my friends in their posts: “Please, God — don’t let this be at a gay bar!” even while, on some level, knowing that it was.

Once upon a time, a long time ago in a world far away, I was a bartender. I worked in a place much like Pulse. The weekend clientele was 75% gay men, 20% lesbians, and a few straight people. Mostly the latter were there with friends, and a few others who just liked the music and the vibe. But there were the occasional ones who were motivated by less-noble factors. Often the bartenders would notice, sometimes a patron would point out someone acting odd, and sometimes it would be a bouncer who knew that this person needed to go. A quiet-ish conversation between bouncer and customer, an arm in the person’s elbow to escort them to the door, and they were gone. And the party continued.

Knowing from my own experience that bouncers are strong, mostly silent heroes, it didn’t surprise me when I read that one of them had knocked down a wall or partition. Behind this wall was an employees-only area — and an exit to the outside, to safety. Unnamed in the story, maybe this was Kimberly “K.J.” Morse — one of those who died. (Or maybe not.)

I hated that the media was already turning to the evil, to the perpetrator, focusing on the “terrorism” (by which they meant a dark-skinned “radical Jihadist” because those are the only terrorists, right?) aspect of the story. That, and guns and other angles can and will be the subject of other conversations. But just then I wanted to know something different. I wanted to see hope. I wanted to see humanity. I needed to see the heroes.

By then I was up, flipping through the TV channels.

There was this guy, the guy in the hat on the left. He was interviewed (I think on CNN, but I was in a channel-flipping blur, so I can’t be sure), and he talked about escaping, running to safety — but then he saw someone else bleeding, so he stepped out of his safety zone to help carry this person to the back of a pickup truck to be taken to the hospital. All the ambulances were full.

NY Daily News photo gallery

Next I heard a story about a man who came to the scene to see if he could find news about his brother. He managed to get closer, inside the crime tape barrier, nearer to where there was still an “active shooter” situation. Even while searching for his loved one, he too helped to transport a messy, bleeding person away from the scene.

Then I heard this hero’s story:

Other heroes and sheroes include the many people who stood in line in the hot sun for hours so that they could donate much-needed blood. Some of these were people visiting DisneyWorld; some were Muslims during their Ramadan fasting time. No one did it for the accolades.

It took some hunting behind the story that the media was intent on telling, the story of the bad guy. But I loved these stories of ordinary people, queer and not, who found themselves in ugly, extraordinary circumstances and stepped up — some even in the face of danger.

In the introduction to David Copperfield, Charles Dickens wrote, “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” Even in our times when it often seems like darkness prevails, there are stories of light — stories of ordinary people who do the right thing, thus becoming our heroes, and the heroes of their own lives.

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Chambers of Prayer

Posted January 23, 2015 by heysonnie
Categories: Prayer
Tags: chambers, Prayer

I’m one of those people who believes in the power of prayer. “Prayer” is an interesting concept, meaning different things to different people — and taking different forms. For the most part, I’m not a formal pray-er, nor even someone who prays with words. I certainly don’t want to be telling God what to do. I’m more of an “attitude of prayer” pray-er. I can’t even say meditative. More like contemplative, or maybe I should say ruminating.

There are two definitions of ruminating: one is disciplined thinking and caring about something; the other is when an animal like a cow has already eaten something but not digested it, so she brings it up from one of her ~~two~~* four stomachs to chew it more. From a chamber with one purpose to prepare it for a chamber with a different purpose. Prayer as sitting outside in the sunshine, “chewing something over” to make it more functional, while at the same time mulling, caring.

I also frequently say that I hold someone in my heart as a form of prayer. We talk about our hearts as our emotional centers, but that’s just a metaphor. In physical truth, our hearts are four-chambered organs vital to our existence. But I say it because it has shared meaning — not something I need to explain.

But this is the one I like most. Prayer as the chambered nautilus.

A newly hatched nautilus wears a shell divided into four small chambers. As a nautilus grows, it gains more living space by building new chambers connected to the old ones; adult shells have 30 chambers (from the Monterey Bay Aquarium website).

Here we have an ocean-dwelling creature that starts out small, with four chambers (like the human heart), but as it matures, it grows more and more of these beautiful, pearlescent chambers — separate, yet interconnected — as many as needed. A wonderful image to visualize as my form of prayer.

And so when I say that I hold someone in prayer, this is what I mean.
__________
* Funny how certain “facts” we’ve known forever end up to be untrue. A friend informed me that cows have four stomachs. Doesn’t change my metaphor, but it’s fascinating nonetheless.

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GA 220: Intertwining our lives

Posted June 27, 2012 by heysonnie
Categories: Presbyterian
Tags: General Assembly, LGBT, Marriage Equality, PCUSA

But those who wait For Yhwh
find a renewed power:

they soar on eagles’ wings,
they run and don’t get weary,
they walk and never tire.

Isaiah 40:31
The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation
Priests for Equality

“Wait” in Isaiah 40:31 is the transliteration from the Hebrew qavah, which can mean to twist, to bind, to braid like a rope. This verse reveals the active nature of intertwining one’s life with the life of God. When this intertwining is being done, that person is made strong. Those who “wait” upon God—intertwine their lives with God’s—are made strong.

To “wait” for God can also be seen as the cultivating of an attitude of hope and patient expectation—the very definition of faith. Hebrew words often have multiple meanings. The verb qavah can also be a waiting for God to act, to bring vindication or to rescue the people from oppression; here, however, it is more a kind of quiet inaction: by waiting for God’s empowerment instead of relying on one’s own resources, one receives an inexhaustible supply of strength.

How often do we in the church hear the words “I’m tired” or “we’re tired”? I remember at the last General Assembly in Minneapolis when the Committee on Marriage and Civil Unions report came to the plenary: almost immediately, a commissioner came to a microphone and proclaimed, “Friends, I’m tired: we’re tired,” followed by a motion to table everything that came out of that committee’s hard work throughout the week.

I wonder:
How often do the words “I’m tired: we’re tired” really mean
“I’m afraid: we’re afraid”?

What must it have felt like to have served on that committee to then have their work disregarded like that?

The Assembly then adjourned with prayer and the singing of John Bell’s hymn, “The Summons”:

Will you come and follow me
If I but call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know
And never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown,
Will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown
In you and you in me?
Will you leave yourself behind
If I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind
And never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare
Should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer pray’r
In you and you in me?
Will you let the blinded see
If I but call your name?
Will you set the pris’ners free
And never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean,
And do such as this unseen,
And admit to what I mean
In you and you in me?
Will you love the ‘you’ you hide
If I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside
And never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found
To reshape the world around,
Through my sight and touch and sound
In you and you in me?
Lord, your summons echoes true
When you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you
And never be the same.
In your company I’ll go
Where your love and footsteps show.

I wonder how many of the commissioners thought of those impacted by their refusal to deal with the issues before them—LGBT people and our relationships—as they sang the words, “will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?” Not many, I think.

That was pretty much it, and we all went home. On the way out the door I talked with a heartbroken minister who lives and serves in a state where same gender marriage is legal; she expressed her deep disappointment in what had taken place, saying “We need guidance from the denomination; we feel like we’re out here on our own.”

And so we wait. We wait for the start of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. Some are commissioners, some are advocates for overtures or AIs, some are behind-the-scenes workers or committee staff, some are observers. (I’ll be there as an observer and part of That All May Freely Serve.) As we wait, let’s all take some time to reflect on our lives being interwoven—braided together as one with God and with one another.

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Synchroblog: The Resurrection Hoax

Posted April 10, 2012 by heysonnie
Categories: Synchroblog
Tags: Easter, John Dominic Crossan, Resurrection, synchroblog

Here’s the invitation:

For the April Synchroblog, we want to explore this question in more detail. We want to ask, “What if the resurrection is a lie?”

The invitation to write continues, “We believe Jesus rose from the dead. But what if it was all a hoax? How would the world and our lives be different?”

I’ve heard people say that if they had cancer or were faced with some other dramatically life-altering experience, then they would respond in certain ways. Here’s the thing: no one can know unless they’ve actually stood face-to-face with those things. We can guess, and we can hope — but we can’t know for certain.

In the same way, it’s impossible for me to respond to some questions. What if I hadn’t been born with blue eyes? What if I’d grown up rich, or on the East Coast, or what if I were deaf? I can vaguely speculate, but I certainly can’t definitively say, “Here’s what I’d be like, and here’s why,” because those aren’t part of my existential reality.

What is part of my reality is that I grew up Christian, going to church every week. I grew up in a time when that’s pretty much what people did. There wasn’t the proclamation that “America is a Christian nation” in the same way as we often hear it now — because there was no need to state what was pretty much obvious. I left the church because of life circumstances I’ve talked about elsewhere, but I never lost my faith. I returned to the church twenty years later, again because of life circumstances, and was deeply involved for another twenty years. Right now I’m in limbo. Or on a sabbatical. Take your pick. But I haven’t lost my faith. As a matter of fact, separation from the institutional church and the resultant self-examination only makes my faith deeper.

But… here’s the thing: I don’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I also don’t believe that God created the world in seven days, or that the earth is flat or many of the other things that the bible says.

However, I do believe in the resurrection of the Christ. To me it’s not a hoax at all. I believe that the Christ transcended death and went to rejoin the Almighty One after being with us here on earth. I believe that the Christ appeared to the women, to the twelve, to those on the road to Emmaus. I believe that the Christ sent the Paraclete — the Advocate — the Comforter — to be with us. I believe that Jesus was and is the Christ, one of the three “persons” of the Trinity.

The introduction to a forgotten novel I read a long time ago said something like, “Everything you read here is true, whether it happened or not.” We tell stories in ways that help us to understand what we think and, more importantly, how we feel. In my life that is the part that matters, and how I can describe how I relate to the resurrection story. Maybe I’m wrong, and I know that many would describe what I say as heresy. Maybe Jesus the human being was lifted up in bodily form. God is infinite, and does many things that I cannot comprehend. I know that. But, again — to me that doesn’t matter. What matters are the consequences of the resurrection. Christ was born; Christ is risen; Christ will come again… and again.

It’s different than what I’m saying, but related… Far better than I ever could, John Dominic Crossan answered our question in this way:

The Communal Resurrection of Jesus

In the great Rotunda of the ancient Church of the Resurrection — or Church of the Holy Sepulchre — in Jerusalem is a tiny free-standing shrine known as the Aedicule or Chapel of the Tomb and Resurrection of Jesus. It is a tiny space and pilgrims are usually lined up waiting their turn to enter a few at a time.

A processional banner was hanging to our right as we entered that shrine-chapel in May, 2008. It is kept there, presumably, to be used in liturgical celebration on Easter Sunday. It is bright red with golden lettering down either side. To left is the word “Christ” and to right “Is Risen” — both in Greek upper-case letters. No surprise there since that is Easter’s celebratory greeting in Eastern Christianity. But in between those words, in the center of the banner, is a diamond-shaped image. And it surprises us.

That image does not show Jesus arising in splendid triumph from an opened tomb. This is not — even in miniature — a Titian or a Rubens with Jesus emerging in muscular majesty. But emerging, however majestically, in magnificent and lonely isolation. Instead, four other individuals are with him in this parabolic vision.

Jesus himself is at the left of the icon. He holds a small cross in his left hand and stands on the bi-fold gates of Sheol, Hades, or Hell which are shattered into a cross-shaped structure beneath his feet. Jesus is bending forward — gently, tenderly, graciously — and, stretching out his right hand, he grasps and pulls on the rather limp wrist of Adam. Beside Adam stands Eve. Behind the two of them stand a youthful Abel, with shepherd’s staff, and an older John the Baptist, with beard and long hair. They are the first martyr of the Christianity’s Old Testament and the first martyr of its New Testament.

At the top of that diamond-shaped image, lest there be any mistake about meaning, is the word Anastasis, Greek for “resurrection”. But is not Easter about the absolutely unique resurrection of Jesus alone, so why are any others involved and, if others, why precisely these others? The answer reveals a major difference between Easter Sunday as imagined and celebrated in Eastern Christianity as opposed to Western Christianity. It also reveals for me the latter’s greatest theological loss from that fatal split in the middle of the eleventh century.

When you look at Eastern Christianity’s images, either for the great feasts of the liturgical year or for traditional events in Jesus’ life, they are all — save one — quite recognizable to Western as to Eastern eyes. The great exception is how Eastern Christianity portrays the “Resurrection,” that is, in Greek, the “Anastasis,” of Jesus. Across vast stretches of time, place, art, and tradition, icons and illustrations, frescoes and mosaics show always a communal and not an individual resurrection for Jesus. We can watch that magnificent tradition develop across half a millennium — from 700 to 1200 — before its varied elements and successive stages are fully established.

First, the various elements of the tradition. Jesus is shown breaking down the closed and bolted gates of the Underworld — as Sheol, Hades, or Hell — the abode of the Dead, the prison of “those who have slept” — that is the same Greek term used for them in both Matthew 27:52 and 1 Corinthians 15:20. The personified Hades, Prison-warden and Gate-keeper of the Dead, is shoved to one side or even walked on as Jesus barges in to liberate his prisoners. Jesus is usually carrying a cross, his wounds are often very evident.

Only six individuals are identified from the crowd responding to Jesus’s arrival among the dead — they appear chronologically across the tradition’s development in this sequence. First, bearded Adam and youthful Eve appeared. In almost every single image, Jesus grasps the wrist of Adam to pull him alive from his tomb. Later, David, with crown and a beard, along with his son Solomon, with crown but without a beard, were added. Finally, as seen above, those twin martyrs, the Shepherd and the Baptist, joined the others. So, in summary, two ancestors, two monarchs, and two martyrs are singled out from the crowd. Still, if Adam and Eve are freed, who is not?

Next, the successive stages of the tradition. In the first stage Jesus is always approaching — as we just saw above — and grasping Adam’s wrist. A next stage shows him leaving — often looking backward or forward as he drags Adam by the wrist with the others looking on. A third or facing stage is similar to that last one except that now Jesus looks not backward or forward but straight out of the image — at you, the beholder.

Finally, there is the last or doubling stage and I must admit that it is my favorite. Jesus has put down the cross — sometimes an angel holds it for him — and Adam and Eve are now on opposite sides of Jesus instead of, as earlier, both on the same side. Each gets a hand at this stage. We finally have an equal-opportunity resurrection of the dead.

In the western Christian tradition we call that tradition the Harrowing — or Robbing — of Hell and keep it carefully distinguished from the individual Resurrection of Jesus. “He descended into Hell,” says the Apostles’ Creed, “on the third day he arose from the dead.” But in the eastern Christian tradition it is the communal Resurrection of Jesus. We, to our loss and my grief, have forgotten that corporate vision of Easter.

Eastern Christianity’s tradition of the resurrection of Jesus reminds our Western Christian imagination that only poetry — be it verbal or visual — speaks to our profoundest hopes, deepest dreams, and greatest insights. It also reminds us that theology is — no more and no less — the poetry of transcendence.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-dominic-crossan/the-communal-resurrection-jesus_b_847507.html

I’ll post a list as others post on this synchroblog topic.

Here is the list of the other posts on this topic:

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Abbie Watters – What if the Resurrection were a lie?

Carol Kuniholm – Risen Indeed? The Hermeneutic Community

Christine Sine – If the Resurrection did not happen, how would the world be different?

Ellen Haroutunian – Is There a Christianity Without the Resurrection?

Glenn – Kingdom Come or Kingdom Now?

Jeannette Altes – What if…

Jeremy Myers – What if Jesus Did not Rise?

Josh Morgan – The Role of the Resurrection

Kathy Escobar – Jenga Faith

KW Leslie – Supposing Jesus is Dead

Leah – Resurrection – Or Not!

Liz Dyer – The Resurrection I Firmly Believe In

Marta – On Faith Seeking Understanding, Truth, and Theology

Minnow – Resurrection Impact

Sonja Andrews – The Resurrection and the Life

Tim Nichols – How Would Life be Different if Jesus did not Rise?

Travis Mamone – If the Resurrection was a Hoax

Comments: 10 Comments

World Water Day: some random thoughts

Posted March 22, 2012 by heysonnie
Categories: Blogroll
Tags: World Water Day

Today is World Water Day. Water is not ubiquitous for everyone — issues with water present a crisis to 300,000,000 people in emergency situations every year.

Three hundred million people is a little over 4% of the people in the world. Just for reference, it’s also the approximate population of the United States; imagine if everyone in the United States didn’t have access to clean water… Most of us do, but some people don’t. For example, think about homeless people living on the streets or in their cars. For them, water isn’t a matter of walking in to the next room and turning on the tap.

I lived in Sonoma County years ago during a severe drought. I lived out in the country, and we got our water from a well. It didn’t take too long for the well to go dry. As a result of this, we had to have water trucked in every week for our basic needs. This wasn’t considered safe for drinking, so we also got bottled water delivery. I was in college then. The campus was only a few miles away and, ironically, had a large aquifer running underground. We went to the gym there to shower. In Marin County just to the south of us–one of the most affluent locales in the country–water rationing was in effect, limiting residents to 50 gallons per person per day (we averaged 22 gallons per person per day).

This went on for a couple of years. And then it started raining again. As a matter of fact, we went from drought to flooding. At first, people continued to use much less water than they had prior to the drought–but then our old water-use habits began to sneak back in. Even so, I never thought about water in quite the same way.

5 [Jesus] stopped at Sychar, a town in Samaria, near the tract of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph, 6 and Jacob’s Well was there. Jesus, weary from the journey, came and sat by the well. It was around noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 The disciples had gone off to the town to buy provisions.

John 4:5-8, The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation

This bible passage continues to tell of an infamous woman caught in a web of sexual sin and lies. But these verses are also important in both what they say and what they don’t say. Jesus is frequently searching for some alone time in scripture. Here he is, catching a few of those moments, sitting under the relative coolness under a shade tree to take refuge from the blistering noontime heat and sun. He’s in Samaria, but at a site that has historic significance. Walking through the desert has made him thirsty, and when a woman shows up to draw water from the well he asks (or demands, depending on which translation) that she give him a drink.

“Every day, all around the world, women are connecting with water. Indeed, water is at the core of women’s responsibilities in many societies, and millions of women and girls spend their days collecting and preparing water for cooking, cleaning, drinking and maintaining sanitation.” –The Nature Conservancy

The activity of water collecting and hauling is and always has been an important part of “women’s work” in much of the world. Not only is it critical in providing for their families, but it is also vital (e.g. vitas, “life giving”) for the women themselves–providing them an opportunity to be with other women for a brief time. This Samaritan woman had been shunned, not allowed to go get water when the other women were there in the cool of the morning; she had to go later, alone, during the heat of the day.

In the orthodox church, this woman later becomes St. Photina (Greek) / St. Svetlana (Russian), names that mean “light” and “pure.”

Interestingly enough, ultraviolet light is being used to make water pure, a technology that may well provide drinking water to many people around the globe. Maybe this invention should be called the Photina.

Water Questions & Answers from the USGS

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The women: named and unnamed

Posted March 20, 2012 by heysonnie
Categories: Synchroblog

The inspiration for my post began with Carol Howard Merritt’s recent post “Love and Lent: How my faith was formed in the midst of betrayal.” I highly recommend that everyone read that–whether you continue with my post or not. Go ahead: I’ll wait…

My mother paces the kitchen a few more times. Instead of grabbing the phone again, she picks up a big basin and places our plushest guest towels inside of it. Then she yells out to the quiet house, “Car-ol! Let’s go!”
My mother takes the basin, walks into her friend’s kitchen, and fills it with warm water. She carries it to Margaret’s feet, taking off Margaret’s shoes, she cradles her soles as if they are the most precious things in the world. Without a word, mom puts them in the water and washes them.
Margaret begins to cry and it doesn’t take long before the tears smear all of our faces. Mom takes Margaret’s feet out and dries them on the soft towels. Throughout the entire ritual, we don’t talk, but we know what’s being said. I even understand the depth of it, at my young age. Margaret is about to face some of the worst public betrayal, as people began to pick apart the indiscretions of her husband.
Mom wanted Margaret to know one thing in the midst of it. Margaret would be cherished, even to the end of her toes.

Luke 10

³⁸As they traveled, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him to her home. ³⁹She had a sister named Mary, who seated herself at Jesus’ feet and listened to his words.

John 11

³²When Mary got to Jesus, she fell at his feet and said, “If you had been here, Lazarus never would have died.”

John 12

³Mary brought a pound of costly ointment, pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus, wiping them with her hair. The house was full of the scent of the ointment.

John 13

³Jesus—knowing that God had put all things into his own hands, and that he had come from God and was returning to God—⁴rose from the table, took off his clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵He then poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and dry them with the towel that was around his waist.

So here we are, four weeks into the season of Lent. Lent: the time in the church year when we are called on to walk with Jesus on his road from Galilee to Jerusalem–to see him experience the time of trial, his humiliation, his execution. Even while trying to walk that walk, we know that in the end Jesus will triumph over death in the Resurrection.

But today, thanks in part to Carol’s remarkable story, I find myself thinking not of walking, but of being at the feet.

My beloved spouse Melinda has bad feet. In her job, she calls on customers in manufacturing plants; typically these are cold, concrete-floored facilities. When her day is over, there is nothing she loves more than to have her feet rubbed. Several times a week, I try to save up enough energy from my own day so that I can slather her feet with cream or lotion (“ointment”) and rub them until she can relax and go to sleep more comfortable, so that she can sleep without getting foot cramps during the night. These are intimate moments, most often silent ones, where the only thing that matters to me is trying to make her feel better.

At the end, Jesus washed the feet of his most intimate followers–despite the protestations of Peter–in a demonstration of one of the most important messages of the bible, that of hospitality. This is not only intimate, but it is a way of elevating something unclean to an elegant sign of God’s love. Jesus’ feet were washed by Mary; he, in turn, washed the feet of his friends.

But what happened to Jesus’ male friends after his death? We know that at the very least Mary of Magdala (and maybe other women) went to the tomb to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. Dead bodies were also considered to be unclean, so the preparation for burial was a task performed only by women. Peter and the other disciple came to the tomb after Mary to see that the tomb was indeed empty, but then they left. Mary, who had gone to Jesus to perform an intimate-yet-unclean duty, was the one who then had an intimate post-death, pre-Resurrection encounter with Jesus.

While there are certainly many acts in the bible and now of men who act in faith, today I am inspired by the stories of the Marys as well as the story of Carol’s mother and many other women–women who go about their daily duties–performing their intimate, unclean acts–and I am grateful for their examples.

Bible verses from The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation by Priests for Equality.

This post is part of this month’s synchroblog “All about Eve.” Here’s a list of all the posts:

Michelle Morr Krabill – Why I Love Being a Woman
Marta Layton – The War on Terror and the War on Women
Ellen Haroutounian – March Synchroblog – All About Eve
Jeremy Myers – Women Must Lead the Church
Carol Kuniholm – Rethinking Hupotasso
Wendy McCaig – Fear Letting Junia Fly
Tammy Carter – Pat Summit: Changing the Game & Changing the World
Jeanette Altes – On Being Female
kathy escobar – replacing the f-word with the d-word (no not those ones)
Melody Hanson – Call Me Crazy, But I Talk To Jesus Too
Glenn Hager – Walked Into A Bar
Steve Hayes – St. Christina of Persi
Leah Sophia – March Syncroblog-All About Eve
Liz Dyer – The Problem Is Not That I See Sexism Everywhere…
Sonja Andrews – International Women’s Day
Christine Sine – It All Begins With Love
K.W. Leslie – Undoing the Subordination of Women
Carie Good – The Math of Mr. Cardinal
Dan Brennan – Ten Women I Want To Honor

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The women: named and unnamed

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