January 31, 2009

It's been awhile (a long while) since I posted, but something new has happened. I had an incident at work Monday where I nearly fainted and had to be driven home from work. Actually, I had bloodwork scheduled for that afternoon at Baptist Hospital, so my driver graciously took me there, a trifle early, before taking me home.

While I was there I ran into Sherri and Charles (I called him "Edward") Willard, from waiting room days several months ago. Please keep praying for them. Sometimes Charles has very long, uncommunicative days because of his situation, and that is hard on Sherri.

I was thinking the reaction was due to my first round of post-radiation chemo, which I completed on the 18th of January, but Ed Shaw said the bloodwork was normal. I had an MRI scheduled for the 9th of February, which he moved up to this past Wednesday evening. I called him about that last night, and he told me that everything on the MRI was hunky-dory, or better. I couldn't ask for more than that.

Which leaves as our lone culprit the little item of stress, which can pile up when you are working a different route every day and splitting it four or five different ways and when the post office does not take into account the travel time needed for all the subs to travel from their routes to the part of my route they're carrying. (These are at least partially excuses, which I will critique later.) But the Post Office has been very gracious and has offered me a light duty position as a custodian until I get back on my feet.

I have another appointment with Ed this Tuesday, February 2, and Priscilla and I will ask him some questions about further treatment, as well as determine when I might go back to work.

I think ultimately all of our maladies are worship disorders, either our own or perhaps traceable all the way back to Adam and Eve, but I certainly have had time to reflect on some of mine. I am sure that at work, much of the stress lay in my inability to worship God in the circumstances rather than trusting in my own strength for the task. Since I've been home, I've noticed some others, like watching TV basketball. I turned on the Wake game today with 6 minutes to go and watched them lose, which disappointed me greatly until I remembered who made the players and the gymnasium and the ball and the uniforms and everything else I was watching. At that point, I had to repent and beg forgiveness for misplaced worship. God, of course, who is gracious above all things, willingly granted.

I've had a chance to do some reading this week from three books: "What I Think I Did," by Larry Woiwode; "Amish Grace," by three different authors, none of whose names I recall immediately, and "End of America," by Naomi Wolf, sent to me by my sister Shelley Tea in Seattle. The one that grabbed me first was "Amish Grace," a book detailing the reaction of an Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to the murder/wounding of ten young female students in a school in southern Lancaster County. (The killer also killed himself in the process.) This community takes seriously Christ's command to forgive, and they went to work right away, walking the few miles, if necessary, to the homes of the killer's wife and parents to offer condolences for their pain and loss.

The work was not that easily completed, most notably for the relatives of the girls who were attacked, and the writers point out that the Amish will be constantly needing to reforgive. But as daunting as this task was, it is still relatively easy compared to the often laborious work of forgiving fellow Amish within their church districts, a work complicated by the fact that the "culprits" have the nasty habit of continuing to live. This book probed the whole Amish process and culture of forgiveness, editorial reaction to the forgiveness, and many serious questions about the whole forgiveness/pardon/reconciliation process. And it offered an overview on the entire Amish community that would be well worth the time to read, particularly since the book is only 203 pages long .

The Woiwode book is subtitled "A Season of Survival in Two Acts," and revolves around an extremely cold winter in southwestern North Dakota and various glimpses into Woiwode's past. There is an absolutely amazing intermission section in which Woiwode talks about the influence of nature on his outlook, particularly as it relates to English poet W.H. Auden's statement that "time...worships language" and Christ as the ultimate language/revelation of God the Father, in nature and in other ways. (The Gospel of John refers to Christ as the "logos," or "word" of God.)

I've got to leave you with one quote from the book. "I feel a pressure behind and turn and there are the cottonwoods and the willows at the far end of the street, along the edge of the lake, flying the maidenhair faces of their leaves into the wind, and beyond their crowns of trembling insubstantiality, across the lake dotted with cottonwood pollen, the blue and azure plain abuts against the horizon at infinity." In this all he sees Christ.

The Naomi Wolf book has two subtitles, "Letters of Warning to a Young Patriot" and "A Citizen's Call to Action." I've read thirty-five pages so far. Wolf's thesis is that Fascist states follow the same predicatable pathway to repression, and that the Bush/Cheney administration has started us down this pathway. I am not on the same ideological page as Naomi Wolf, but Shelley has asked me to read it with an open mind and I am doing that. I did check out one internet clip where she says she would oppose Obama if he attempted to use the powers that Bush had arrogated to himself. That is certainly admirable.

I have meandered on long enough, so let me bid you all adieu. Will keep you posted, hopefully more often.