Chasms

Here's this morning's homily. The Gospel is Luke 16:19-31.

*

Most story-tellers have favorite themes they use again and again, and Jesus is no exception. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, he uses ideas we recognize from many other places in the Gospel. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Love your neighbor as yourself. Whatever you have done for the least of these who are members of my family, you have done for me. This story is, first and foremost, about the obligation to care for the poor, a duty as urgent in our own time as it was in Jesus’.

It would be easy to use this Sunday’s Gospel as the occasion for yet another homily about poverty and homelessness. These are, as most of you know, preoccupations I share with Jesus, and I probably become as repetitive on the subject as he does. But when I read this parable, what captures my attention isn’t Lazarus’ dire earthly condition, or even his joyous ascension. The image that haunts me is that gap, the distance between Lazarus and the rich man in torment. “Between you and us,” Abraham tells the rich man, “a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”

“A great chasm has been fixed.” If one of my freshman composition students wrote that sentence, I’d underline it and write in the margin, “Fixed by whom? Avoid passive voice!” The grammar doesn’t tell us the source of this chasm. Who has made it so impossible for the rich man to receive comfort? God? Personally, I’m uneasy with the idea of a vengeful God who tosses the rich man into Hades, slams the door, and says, “You got what you deserved, buddy. You wouldn’t share your scraps with Lazarus when he was right outside your front door? Fine, then. Don’t come crying to me or mine for help.” As natural as it might be for any of us to feel this way, I suspect that kind of psychology is human, not divine.

My hunch is that the person who fixed the chasm is the rich man himself. He fixed the chasm when he refused to bend down to feed the poor man on his doorstep. By refusing to bend even a few inches, he has created the uncrossable abyss between himself and Lazarus. Because the rich man would not close the distance between them, when he could have done so easily, Lazarus cannot close the much wider gap between them now. All things are possible with God; but God has given us free will, and if we use that gift to deny and avoid our kinship with God’s other children, we are denying and avoiding God Himself. We’re on one side of the chasm. God’s on the other, desperate to reach us, stretching out a hand or a lifeline, always there. But we have to reach back. We have to accept God’s embrace.

To me, this is the most sobering message in this morning’s Gospel. The rich man, denied water, asks that Lazarus to be allowed to warn his brothers. Abraham says, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus himself have commanded us to care for those in need. This is not an obscure or difficult point of doctrine. It’s bedrock. If we’ve missed that message, all the miracles in the world won’t convince us. If we’ve missed that message, the fact that Jesus has risen from the dead, to feed and comfort and teach us, won’t convince us either. Jesus cannot say “love your neighbor” any more plainly than he already has.

And yet I suspect all of us still struggle with the message, at least sometimes; I know I do. “Oh, come on, God. I know I’m supposed to love my neighbors, but surely you don’t mean those people over there?” All of us have people who make us recoil, who send us into furious bouts of searching for shovels so we can start digging moats and chasms. “God can’t mean me to give handouts to these lazy bums who won’t get off the sidewalk and get a job! God can’t mean me to accept people who don’t accept God in exactly the same form I do! God can’t mean me to help those who hurt others!”

These chasms run through every part of our lives: through international affairs and national politics, through our workplaces and our families. It’s easy to believe that our inflexibility is a virtue, that by refusing to bend a few inches, we’re keeping the moral high ground. Imagine the protests of the rich man: “You want me to feed Lazarus? But that would be wrong! Charity would just encourage him to keep lying there, instead of looking for a job!” Or, more simply: “I’ve worked for my money! I deserve my wealth! What’s Lazarus done?”

We all have people who make us recoil, but if we can learn to recognize why, maybe we can also try to bend a little, to keep from automatically reaching for our shovels. One of the behaviors that has always made me start digging is religious intolerance. I hate it when people dismiss me because I’m Christian, and I hate it when Christians dismiss those of other faiths. Since 9/11, I’ve been especially distressed by anti-Islamic bigotry, by people who assume that all Muslims are terrorists. One of the finest students I’ve ever had was a young man who grew up as a Muslim in Tennessee, and who endured terrible cruelty and prejudice at the hands of so-called Christians. When I hear the word Muslim, I don’t see a faceless mass. I see Nael, who stayed so thoughtful and loving in the face of hatred. I see my Muslim student Nadia, a Republican who served in the U.S. Navy. I see my friend Pamela, a progressive Muslim feminist. These are people, not stereotypes. And so when I hear others stereotyping them, my first instinct is to grab the nearest shovel, to dig a chasm and then assure myself that there’s no way to cross it.

During one of my recent shifts as a volunteer chaplain at the hospital, I met a man, alone in the ER, who believed that he was dying. He told me briskly that he didn’t need to talk, thank you -- but then he talked my ear off for thirty-five minutes. He told me about his childhood, about his hobbies, about his family. Quite early in the conversation, he told me that he’d cut off all contact with one of his grown daughters when she married “a raghead.”

I felt my spine stiffen. I felt my hands itching for a shovel. And then I remembered that I was working as a chaplain, that I wasn’t allowed to abandon a patient just because he’d made a comment that infuriated me. And so I said, as matter-of-factly as I could, “You know, some of the kindest and most gentle people I’ve ever met have been Muslim.”

The patient squinted up at me. “Really? But why do they all want to kill us?”

“They don’t all want to kill us,” I told him. “My Muslim friends are as upset by Muslim terrorists as any of us. Their lives are harder because people think they must be terrorists, too.”

The patient grew thoughtful. “Yes, that’s true. I was in Japan during WWII, and those people were nothing like what I expected. You know, they have quite a society over there.”

“Yes,” I said. “They certainly do.” I listened to him wax enthusiastic about Japanese culture for a few minutes, and then I asked, “Have you met your son-in-law? The Muslim one?”

The patient recoiled. “Oh, no! I don’t want to!”

“But you might like him,” I said. “He might surprise you, just like the Japanese did.”

“No,” the patient said, shaking his head. “I’ll never meet him. I have no desire to.”

I don’t know what other issues there are in this family, what else may have happened to estrange father and daughter, what bitter words may have been exchanged before the marriage. I suspect the situation is more complicated than I know, that the religious differences are an easy way to explain deeper hurts. But I do know that this patient has dug a chasm that he refuses to cross, that his daughter and son-in-law cannot or will not cross, and that, therefore, God himself could not cross. And I only pray that before the patient dies, he or someone in his family will bend down to start throwing dirt back into that hole, or to start building a bridge.

And what of me? Normally, I would have recoiled from this man as soon as he used the hateful term “raghead.” But because I had a job to do, I stayed and listened to him instead. And I discovered that I genuinely liked him. I wanted to help him. I prayed that he and his family would be reconciled, that they would allow love to fill the chasm between them.

I’m not claiming as any huge moral victory the fact that I managed to act like a human being, that I overcame my own bigotry and didn’t turn away from a patient facing death. That would be like the rich man priding himself on giving Lazarus his leftovers. I simply did my job. But I would suggest that as Christians, we must always remember the fact -- one I all too often forget -- that we are never off duty. Jesus has given all of us a job to do, and that job is to love our neighbors just as Jesus has loved us: not to dig chasms, but to reach down to those who need help, and to reach out to those who seem to be standing a world away.

Amen.

Cute Critter, and Knitting Update

Here's the bunny who was in our neighbor's yard yesterday afternoon. I tried to get closer, but of course he took off.

This morning, I taught myself to cast on, knit, and purl! At least, I think I'm doing everything right. At the moment, I'm using some really junky ribbon/yarn my sister and I got at the dollar store, with chopsticks as knitting needles. I have the stitches down (I think). I'm having some trouble switching between knit and purl, but I gather that's to be expected. The process will undoubtedly be easier when I'm using the proper equipment!

After dinner tonight, I may go to a craft store and try to pick up some real needles to practice with, so I'll be ready to start my first shawl when my mail-order supplies come.

Knitting is fun! I love it! Gary and my mother are very encouraging; my father's exasperated. "When are you going to find time for this, with everything else you're doing?" Well, I don't know, but it's really relaxing, so I'll do the best I can.

Oh, and my polyester suit came today and fits perfectly. Yay!

Info on Prayer Shawls

In response to the comments on my last post, here's a photo of a prayer shawl, taken from this page, which tells you all about them. This is where I ordered my supplies.

They provide a knitting pattern, but you can also crochet these. That's what my friend at church does. Since it's basically just a big rectangle, it looks pretty easy! I'm sure all of you can make them, too!

See also the Prayer Shawl Ministry website. If I enjoy this, I'll probably try to join or start a "prayer shawl circle," maybe at the hospital.

But that's way down the road. My first challenge is to see if I can cast on, knit, and purl!

Oh, and Lee: If I like knitting, I'll be doing it in addition to writing . . . hopefully not instead of writing!

Wish Me Luck

So I just took a bold step towards learning a new skill, and ordered some knitting needles and yarn from an online knitting store. This outfit also has handy-dandy online knitting instructions, and they make it very easy to order the supplies for their free online patterns.

Don't ask me when I think I'm going to have time to learn to knit. I don't have enough time to do everything I want to do as it is. Still, ever since my ceramics class got cancelled last summer, I've been itching to do something tactile, and with cold weather coming, knitting's appealing. And the supplies weren't very expensive, so it's not like I'll be out a lot of money if, as is entirely possible, this stuff only gathers dust on a shelf, or if I wind up in a hopeless snarl of needles, yarn, and pouncing cats.

My two immediate goals are:

1. To learn to knit prayer shawls. A friend at church does this, and they're beautiful.

2. To learn to knit simple, safe stuffed toys for kids at the hospital. This will be more fun and meaningful (if more time-consuming) than buying them at the dollar store.

If I get good enough at knitting, maybe I'll be able to knit my way through dull meetings at work, as some colleagues do. My mother knit her way through her high school classes; this annoyed her teachers no end, until they realized that she was absorbing more than other kids who were taking copious notes. (She was valedictorian of her class.) She knit a lot when I was growing up and made beautiful sweaters for me and my sister. I think one reason I've been nervous about learning to knit is feeling as if I'll never be as good at is as Mom!

However, the two projects I have in mind are rated "beginner," and the point's to bring comfort much more than to be pretty or perfect. That goal should help ease some of my anxieties.

Use the Force, Luke! (You too, Matthew, Mark, and John!)

This bit of fun courtesy of my friend Arthur Chenin at UNR, who got it from a friend's LiveJournal.

Today's Scary Food Factoid

Actually, I learned this several weeks ago, when I showed up early for a meeting at the med school and heard a family-practice doc talking to some residents about nutrition.

Guess what the leading source of Vitamin C is in the American diet?

Did you guess orange juice? Wrong!

Multivitamins? Wrong!

Yummy veggies like carrots, spinach or peas? Wrong again!

The correct answer, children, is . . . French fries.

I swear I'm not making this up.

Be very afraid.

How I Learned to Love Polyester

Like most lap swimmers, I've been in the habit for years now of buying three or four suits whenever I find a good sale, and then rotating them in the pool. "Good sale" means $29.99 for a smallish piece of nylon and spandex; that's still a ripoff, but not nearly as much of a ripoff as $66.00 for a full-price Speedo.

Indoor swimming pools eat these things. Even rotating them and rinsing them out after each swim, I've learned not to expect more than a few months of life from a suit before the chlorine dissolves the fabric.

Before our first trip to Hawai'i eighteen months ago, I'd done my annual suit stock-up. One of the four suits I bought had a slightly different texture than the others, but I didn't pay much attention to it. I did notice, though, that this particular suit was much more durable than its fellows. Three of the four suits died exceptionally quickly, sagging and stretching and shedding little bits of elastic. The fourth one -- the least attractive of the set, unfortunately, although who cares when you're swimming laps? -- kept its color and shape.

Then, one day in the gym, I complimented a woman on her suit. She told me it was polyester and chlorine-proof. Polyester suits, she said, don't fade or stretch or dissolve in pool water.

So I checked the tag on my ugly-but-durable suit. Sure enough, it was half polyester, whereas the ones that had died were the usual spandex/nylon combo.

After a year and a half of steady use, the suit has finally begun to show signs of wear; the elastic in one shoulder strap has broken, although the fabric's still bright and resilient. So I went online and ordered a 100% poly suit -- a pretty one! -- from a swimming site. Buying a suit without trying it on first is a bit of a gamble, but this is a fairly standard racing tank and shouldn't present too many surprises, and I trust that the company has a reasonable return policy.

For years, I've spurned polyester in favor of natural fabrics. But now I've seen the light!

Old Home Week

In the past week, I've gotten e-mail from two of my TAs from my first semester of college.

My English TA, who was a graduate student then and is now a professor at another school, contacted me because he's on a tenure-and-promotion committee, and a question came up about a candidate's science-fiction publication. He didn't know how to evaluate the magazine (is it peer-reviewed? is it any good?), and e-mailed me to ask about it.

My Physics for Poets TA -- yes, I really took this course! -- is living in Europe now, and has stayed in touch sporadically over the years. He e-mailed me because he'll be in Reno for a conference in November and wondered if he could get together with me and Gary.

I've known both of these guys since freakin' 1978. That's almost thirty years.

Gracious, I feel old!

But I'm also genuinely touched that both of them remember me and went to the effort of contacting me.

Happy Anniversary, Grand Rounds!

Grand Rounds, the weekly best of the medical blogosphere, celebrates its fourth anniversary with a splendid anniversary edition. As always, I'm delighted to be included.

Enjoy!

The Best Sound in the World

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning: slept far too late after staying up too late to grade, which meant that I didn't have time to get to the gym. Instead, I'm still in my jammies, drinking coffee, about to dash into the shower to start getting ready for work.

I'm bummed about the gym, but an extra rest day probably won't kill me.

But while I was sitting at my desk, Figaro curled up in a pool of sunshine there. I put my arms around him and rested my head on his side while he kneaded my shoulder and purred for all he was worth.

Listening to a purring cat is one of the best medicines I know. If I'm ever really sick or in a coma, I want somebody to tape the sound of a cat purring and play it for me over headphones. It's the sound of contentment, "all's right with the world" made audible, without words.

Although I love all animals, this is one reason I prefer cats to dogs. Purring is so much more pleasant than barking! And Bali even loves to fetch, although he rarely wags his tail.

When You Least Expect It

Last week's hospital shift began fairly quietly. For the first two hours, the pace stayed calm: the same patients in the same beds, more or less, no apparent crises, mellow staff. Halfway through the shift, I'd visited every patient in the department, plus a few in Fast Track, so I decided to take a cafeteria break.

Volunteers get $4 meal coupons that can be redeemed after four hours of service, and I'd worked many more than four hours since redeeming my last one. I always feel a little funny taking a break during such a short shift, but on the other hand, I tell the charge nurse where I'll be if anyone needs me, and if I heard a code, I'd certainly respond. So I'm still available, even if I'm not in the ED proper.

I went to the cafeteria and waited in a line rendered ridiculously slow by a broken cash register. Several other ED staff were there too. When we all got our food, the medical folks went back to the department, and I sat down by a window to eat my fruit and chocolate-chip cookie, anticipating that the rest of the shift would be mellow, too.

Nope. When I got back to the department after half an hour away, all hell had broken loose. Ambulance gurneys lined the hallways, and three more were coming in the door. A hysterical family member was standing outside the ED doors with a patient, hunched over in a wheelchair and vomiting, who hadn't been able to keep anything down for twelve hours. "Why can't we get back there? What's going on? We shouldn't have to wait this long!"

As I walked back into the department, a nurse who'd seen me in the cafeteria gestured at the gurneys in the hallway and shook her finger at me. "See what happens when you take a break?"

"Yeah," I said, "this is all my fault." She laughed.

It turned out that another hospital had gone on ambulance divert, so we were getting hammered with patients who normally would have gone there. And hammered is the right word: calls from incoming ambulances were coming in every two minutes. I don't think I've ever seen it that busy.

In the middle of the chaos, yet another ambulance call came in. I was near the radio, and heard the paramedic describe a patient whose chief complaint was a headache. The patient was ambulatory. The paramedics hadn't started an IV.

The nurse at the radio shook her head, rolled her eyes, and said, "Bring the patient to triage, please. Do not come back here." (Moral: If you call an ambulance because you have a headache, you'll still go to the ED waiting room. You'll just have a very, very large transportation bill.)

Needless to say, I didn't take any more breaks during that shift. But driving home afterward, it struck me that the sudden change in the tempo of the department mirrored the experience of ED patients themselves. You're going along in your day, thinking you have everything more or less under control, and then, wham, everything turns upside down. You're hit by a car, a stroke, a seizure. Life as you know it dissolves into pain and chaos. You don't know what tomorrow will look like, and you may not know if you'll live to see tomorrow.

ED staff are far more used to chaos than ED patients are; working in emergency medicine for any length of time requires, I suspect, a capacity to find bedlam invigorating. But it's worth remembering, when a sudden onslaught knocks "normal" upside the head with a 2x4, that the patients aren't used to this, aren't trained for it, and desperately need any reassurance and order they can find. This is one reason chaplains are so valuable: one of our jobs is to stay calm and centered when everyone else is overwhelmed. (I'm not always good at this, but I try.)

Crazy shifts can, if we let them, give us more empathy for what our patients are going through all the time. This isn't, to be sure, a very profound observation. Still, it may help those of us on our feet connect more meaningfully with the people in the beds.

Happy Autumn!

Today's the autumnal equinox. We don't get New England style color here in Reno, but the ivy outside my office window turns bright red, and the aspens go golden and glorious. It's a beautiful time of year.

I hope everyone's fall season will bring abundant harvests!

I got an unexpected windfall this morning in the form of this e-mail from Jonathan Strahan:

Dear Susan,

I am writing to you because I would very much like to reprint your story "Sorrel's Heart" in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Vol 2, which will be published by Night Shade Books in March 2008.

If that sounds okay, please let me know and I'll arrange for contracts to be sent out this week.

Best

Jonathan

What, like I'm going to say no? Jeez!

I'm very happy. Longtime readers will recall that this is the story I wrote on muscle relaxants after a back spasm. Fortunately, I've had other stories in "Year's Best" collections, and none of those were written on drugs, or I might be getting entirely the wrong idea!

Happy Birthday, Guys!

Today is Bilbo and Frodo's birthday. You all knew that, right?

It's also the anniversary of Frodo's setting out from Bag End on the quest that eventually led to the destruction of the One Ring. Beware of tall, dark, hollow strangers on black horses!

Tolkien purists will of course excoriate me for posting a photo from Jackson's film, but hey, I liked the first movie. The second and third were increasingly better as films in their own right, but worse as Tolkien adaptations; I never recovered from what Jackson did to Faramir in the second film.

Okay, so here's something from the book I've never completely understood: Tolkien says that Frodo always experiences wanderlust in the autumn, wanting to set off on adventures. Does anyone else respond that way to autumn? Summer makes me feel that way, but fall makes me want to curl up indoors with a good book, a sweater, a cat, and a pot of tea. The idea of adventuring as the days are getting shorter makes me all chilly.

More Fun with Cats

My posting's been spotty this week because I'm beyond crazed at work (it's good crazed, but still crazed!). As a result, my brain's been oatmeal. However, last night Gary and I found this delightful object in the stairwell, halfway between the second and first floors of the house, and I just had to take photos. I know they're a bit underexposed: sorry about that!

Evidently a Very Sneaky Someone -- or Someones -- wrestled the roll off the cart in the guest bedroom, had his or their way with it, and then fought it down the stairs. Toilet paper vandalism: it's not pretty. (D'you suppose they're practicing for Halloween?)

As you can see, though, Figaro and Harley completely deny any guilt. "Gosh! How'd that get there? We sure didn't have anything to do with it, nosirree. Nope. Not us. We've never even seen that roll of toilet paper before. We are not the cats you are looking for.

"And anyway, if it had been us, the toilet paper would have started it! We would have been acting purely in self-defense!"

Meanwhile, Bali's all: "What're you looking at me for, huh huh huh? I get blamed for everything around here! It's not fair! I never do a thing! It's all that neighbor cat's fault, the gray and white one! Oh, when you're awake, all he does is traipse through the yard and look smug, but when you're asleep, watch out! He breaks into the house and vandalizes the toilet paper! And he eats all our food! All of it! That's why we have to wake you up at 5:00 a.m. by jumping on your stomachs, because the Evil Neighbor Cat has eaten all our food! And those hairballs you find hawked up on the rugs? His! All his! I swear it! Do a DNA test, you don't believe me!"

Elsewhere in the animal kingdom, I've been working on planning our animal blessing service on October 7. I've been asked to preach that day ("Susan, will you preach about animals?" Whaddya kidding? Half the time, I preach about animals even when you don't want me to!), and I'm helping with the blessing, too. Instead of having it between or during services, we'll be having it at 4:00 in the afternoon.

The vestry has approved my recommendation that our loose-plate offering that day be donated to the Nevada Humane Society; I'm hoping that someone from the Humane Society can attend the blessing to receive the donation in person, although I'm sure they'll be in great demand from other churches that day.

I also, after a fair amount of hunting, found these lovely Saint Francis medals on the Bless Our Pets site. I originally thought I couldn't afford them, so I was looking at some much less expensive, much more generic medals; the problem with those, though, was that they weren't guaranteed pet-safe, and I was afraid they might contain lead. (I'd asked my vet about this and been told to avoid lead and copper.)

So yesterday afternoon I went back to Bless Our Pets, who specify that their medals are pet-safe. Lo and behold, I discovered that I could order in bulk, which brought the price down to $1.00 per medal plus shipping. This was still more than I'd wanted to spend, but the medals are so pretty that I decided to go for it anyway. But by the time I learned about the bulk-order possibility, the medals wouldn't arrive in time, given the three-week delivery timeframe mentioned on the website, especially since I figured they'd be swamped with other orders.

So I sent a frantic e-mail asking if I could arrange for a FedEx shipment. I included my home and work numbers, but figured I probably wouldn't hear anything useful in time, since this surely has to be an extremely busy time of year for this company.

O ye of little faith! When I got back from my swim this morning, I had a message on our home machine from Carol of Bless Our Pets, who told me that she'd ordered an extra 100 tags to meet the seasonal demand and could ship them to me Priority Mail on Monday -- but that she'd have to hear from me soon, before other people ordered them. She'd also left a message for me at work and sent me e-mail.

It's three hours later where she is in Tennessee than it is here, so I called her right away, afraid that I was already too late. But she told me, "I was planning to hold them for you for another two hours," and when I asked what the medals are made of, she told me that they're silver -- and thus very pet-safe! -- and can also be engraved on the back.

Thank you, Carol! And I think that's a very reasonable price for silver.

So I'm quite happy. The tags won't come with collar hooks, but folks at church can acquire those on their own if they want them; lots of critters, after all, don't even wear collars.

I especially like this medal because it includes a turtle. Our friends Ned and Janet have a box turtle named Myrtle, and they bring her to be blessed every year. So the medal's appropriate for her, too!

Grand Rounds

And speaking of nummy treats, this week's edition is up, with a clever grocery shopping theme. I'm pleased to be included.

Happy reading!

Nummy Treats

We've resumed DVD nights on Friday; we've just started watching the second season of Battlestar Galactica. Our friends usually bring snacks and beverages, and this week, folks were especially generous. Our friend Marin brought some of her favorite dark-roast Ethiopian coffee for us to try, in addition to a 70% dark chocolate bar with orange, and some particularly tasty chips. Our friend Rob brought chocolate-chunk cookies (for everybody) and some alcohol-free wine (for me), and our friends Katharine and Jim brought fresh tomatoes and another variety of alcohol-free wine.

Yesterday, Gary and I finished Rob's cookies after a dinner which featured Gary's new soy-cheese French-bread pizza. This was such a hit with both of us that we're now thinking of buying pizza dough and a pizza stone for the oven. (The fact that dairy products send my sinuses into instant-infection mode is one of the great griefs of my gastronomic life.)

This morning, after last night's pigout on pizza and cookies, I discovered that my weight had gone up yet again. Duh! That discovery, plus a load of grading, sent me into a funk; I managed to pull myself back into happy land with a bit of aromatherapy, thanks to the lovely lavender salve my friend Sharon brought over for me yesterday. (Lulu seems to be doing better. Yay!) I also got the grading done, using nearly all of Marin's chocolate bar as fuel.

The forecast for the waistline is grim indeed. But I wonder if part of the funk is decreasing daylight: it may be time to drag the lightbox out of the garage. That was a gift from Rob, too.

My friends are very good to me! Thanks, y'all!

They're Baa-aaaack

Remember last October, when I wrote about the hateful Christians who'd set up shop on campus?

Last Wednesday I was walking to one of my classes, halfway across campus from the English building. Passing the library, I heard a ruckus. The ranting so-called Christians were back, standing in front of the library waving placards about hellfire and damnation and how anybody who doesn't subscribe to their extremely narrow definition of righteousness will fry forever. Want to see heaven? Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, liberals, feminists, and gays need not apply.

These people send my blood pressure through the roof. The last time they were on campus, I tried to tell them that they'd make a better impression if they tried, oh, feeding people or building transitional housing, which of course got me nowhere very quickly. This year, students sitting on the library steps were trying to argue with them, but the folks waving the signs are very good at not listening.

Funny. According to my reading of the Gospels, the one thing Jesus never did was ignore anybody. But then, the people waving the signs aren't reading the same Bible I am. (I've long maintained that if Jesus came back tomorrow, the Christian Right would crucify him again in about ten seconds, because he'd be hanging out in all the wrong places: shooting galleries, welfare offices, gay bars.) Something truly gnarly must have happened to these people to make them this way, and I know I have to pray for them: but dang. Y'know?

This year, I went up to some of the students on the library steps and said, "I just want you to know that I'm Christian too, and these people don't represent me or my faith. Some of us really believe in love and acceptance." The students smiled and assured me that they know that.

I gave the same speech to both of my classes; my students seemed relieved that someone was addressing the issue, although some just viewed it as street theater. In my freshman-comp class, one woman perked up and said, "Oooooh! The Crazy Christians are back? A friend told me about them last year."

"Yup," I said. "The crazy, intolerant, hateful, homophobic Christians are back." (So much for love and acceptance, right? Mea culpa! As always, the biggest challenge is being tolerant of intolerance!)

Another student said, "All the religious groups on campus should go there and just hold hands in front of them." I thought that was a great idea.

Yet another student told us that somebody had quoted Scripture back at them, gleefully citing some text about false signs and deceivers. Very clever, but of course, since the CCs a) don't listen and are undoubtedly b) oblivious to irony, what good would it do?

Students who'd listened to them longer than I could bear to did assure me that the homophobic rants have been considerably toned down from last year. I suspect somebody told them that outright hate speech isn't allowed on campus, although the anti-Muslim stuff's bad enough.

After my fiction workshop, the class halfway across campus, one of my older students walked back to the English building with me. When we got near the library, she steered me away from the turn I'd usually have taken, which would have taken me right past the CCs. "No, Susan, let's go this way. Don't listen to them. Just don't listen to them. Just breathe. Look at the sunlight in the trees! Isn't that pretty? Okay, we're almost there."

Smart lady. I think she has the right idea.

What if the Crazy Christians had a hatefest, and nobody came?

Another Nice Review

There's a new, smart, and very favorable review of Shelter up on SciFi.com.

The review calls it a "deeply disturbing and profoundly uplifting novel."

Thank you, A.M. Dellamonica!

The Road Ahead

I don't dream about the hospital very often, although my work there certainly occupies a fair portion of my waking thoughts. Last winter, I had two surreal anxiety dreams about the hospital. Sandwiched between them was a dream in which I was driving a car down a two-lane road through a forest; it was dark under the trees, but I could see light ahead. I didn't get there, though, because I stopped at a roadside stand and then my car broke down. In the dream, I was anxious about continuing my trip, but glad to be in the beautiful forest.

As dreams go, this is a pretty banal one -- and other people's dreams are always banal anyway, I know; please humor me! -- but it stayed with me, partly because of its placement between the two hospital dreams. I couldn't discern any connection to the hospital, and I wondered what it was doing there. I finally just dismissed the whole incident as brain-static and forgot about it.

Until some weeks ago, when a patient died in radiology during my hospital shift. The patient had been brought down from ICU; family at the bedside had just left to have lunch, and were supposed to be returning soon. The hospital staff didn't want to wheel the patient's body through the hallways to the morgue for fear of meeting the family, so the body was put in one of the radiology rooms. A nurse dragged me all over the hospital -- ICU, ICU waiting area, cafeteria -- looking for the relatives. We had no luck. We returned to radiology, where a harrassed staff chaplain who'd just been paged to another floor asked if I'd please wait with the body until the family arrived.

Of course I said I would. A CNA waited with me, and we chatted pleasantly about the weather and shopping and shoes, occasionally walking over to gaze respectfully at the corpse, who looked placid and peaceful. Dead bodies don't bother me unless I interacted with the patient while still alive; in that case, the difference is chilling. But by the time I showed up, this patient was already gone.

Occasionally the radiology charge nurse popped in to see how we were doing and to bring us extra chairs and tissues for the family. The radiology people were a little freaked out. Patients don't die on them very often.

At some point I looked around the room and realized that it was the stress-echo lab. In addition to the exam table and various monitoring equipment, the room contained a treadmill. (This is why the room was available as a holding area; most stress echoes happen in the morning, and the patient died in the afternoon.) Taped to the wall in front of the treadmill was a photograph, probably from a calendar, of a two-lane road winding through a redwood forest. The road under the trees was dark, but you could see sunlight ahead, where the road bent out of view.

I blinked. I walked over and examined the photo. I haven't been able to find one that really looks like it on the net; in the photo at the top of this post -- the closest I could find, but only a pale approximation -- the trees are too short, and there isn't enough contrast between darkness and light.

Some thoughtful tech had clearly put the photo there to make the treadmill test less boring for patients, to try to create the illusion that instead of walking in place in a colorless hospital exam room, they were walking on a road through a forest. Looking at the photograph, I thought about the dead patient on the table, and I had a vivid image of the patient still walking on that road, but out of sight now: around the bend, where the road became invisible to anyone still under the trees.

That was also where the sunlight was, though.

I showed the photo to the CNA, and shared my thoughts about it, although I didn't mention my dream. Later, I did the same with the staff chaplain and the distraught family. I don't know if the image meant anything to any of them, and I don't know if talking about it was appropriate. The staff chaplain merely gave me a baffled look, and the family was far too stunned to deal with metaphors.

But now I know what my dream about the road was doing between the two hospital dreams, all those months ago.

Updates, Various

* I got great, moving comments on yesterday's post, and also on Saturday's. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, and if you haven't read the comments, please do!

* Lulu Lavender continues to be a problem plant. I last watered her over a week ago, but the soil's still moist. (How is this possible in Nevada?) Meanwhile, about 75% of her foliage is really droopy, but the other 25%, all on one side, is upright and healthy looking. I want to do something for the droopy bits -- although it may just be a matter of waiting for transplant-shock to wear off -- but I don't want to injure the section that's doing well. Any ideas?

* More mucking about with meds: I'm now on 10 mg/day of Lexapro, and we've discontinued the Effexor entirely. My doc thought the mild nausea I've been having might have been caused by the combination, but I'm still having it. Meanwhile, I'm gaining weight, despite working out almost every morning. Gary's excellent cooking is partly to blame here -- especially since he made a particularly yummy meal last night -- but I suspect the Lexapro is playing a role, since weight gain is a known side-effect. Since my general body type is "stick insect with pot belly," I'm managing to hide the flab with big shirts, but the pot belly's definitely expanding. Oh well. At least I'm happy. (And before someone asks: no, there's no possibility that I'm pregnant.)

* I've been having bizarre dreams. Two nights ago, I had a long, complicated dream about trying to learn to knit, which involved acquiring a very complex wooden frame. Last night, I dreamed that a giant scary robot was roaming through a fancy hotel and I was trying to avoid it. It wasn't actively dangerous -- more like a very large and metallic inquisitive puppy -- but it was scary. I haven't had a scary-robot dream since I was a kid. At the gym this morning, the woman on the elliptical next to me mentioned that she's been having weird dreams, too. Either we're both on Lexapro, or it's something in the water.

* I got a thank-you note from Rita Charon for making narrative medicine the theme of Grand Rounds! She said a lot of people had sent her the link. How cool is that?

* As expected, the Grand Rounds traffic boost has worn off, which means that I've devolved from Crawly Amphibian back down to Flippery Fish. I suspect I may descend another notch or two before too long. But the last shall be first, right?

* The UNR Police have sent out a campus bulletin that there were two bear sightings on campus early this morning. Yikes! Holy Marauding Mammals, Batman! The dry conditions have driven critters down from the mountains; last week, there was another bear sighting in a supermarket parking lot quite close to here. I hope the bear or bears on campus don't cause any trouble, and that the authorities manage to capture and relocate them instead of having to kill them.

And now I'm off to grade.