What I Learned in the Hospital

 Nobody likes to be in the hospital, but my recent five day stay gave me important insights.  Surprisingly hopeful lessons came from lying flat on my back.  

On Friday, I went into the ER at Presbyterian in Santa Fe for shortness of breath and was taken by ambulance to the bigger facility down in Albuquerque early the next morning to treat a pulmonary embolism and get emergency surgery.

One thing I noticed immediately is that hospitals look like America in all its multi-ethnic complexity.  Of the half dozen physicians who attended me, three were women.  Two had last names suggesting their families came from India.  Doctor Chen was presumably East Asian..  My night nurse Sarita was African American, like the tech who did my echocardiogram.  The two “candy-stripers” who finally wheeled me out the door were young white guys from Idaho and Georgia, doing six months of volunteer work as part of their church’s young adult ministry.  It wasn’t a perfectly egalitarian society.  The EMT’s who took my vitals and drew blood were earning fifteen bucks an hour, like burger flippers at McDonalds.  But neither did the hospital resemble a plantation model where white, male doctors ruled the roost with women and people of color assigned to menial chores.  It made me think that our country really has made progress in the last century

The second thing I learned was that I could get along with my roommate, even though he was a Republican and conservative Catholic while I’m a Democrat and theological liberal.  Gary was born in 1947, six years before me, but Gary was a popular name back then and one we shared.  We had other things in common, too.  We agreed that the pizza was pretty good, that our wives were gems, and that getting old was not for sissies.  We could encourage each other to get out of bed and laugh about racing each other around the nurses’ station in our walkers.  On the first day, I told Gary that I thought our country would be better off if the average citizen were thrown into a room with a complete stranger and forced to be civil and polite for a while.  He agreed with that.  We agreed that New Mexico had problems with political corruption and that neither party had a monopoly on cronyism.  I asked Gary what he thought about our current Pope and he replied that Pope Francis was a Communist.  I asked him if Jesus was a Communist also, and that seemed to give him pause.  Gary did have some funny ideas about Roswell and aliens, but we tried to disagree without being disagreeable and managed to keep things friendly.  I wondered if our nation couldn’t do the same.

The third thing I learned was that I could leave my wallet and wedding ring in a duffel by the side of my bed for 120 hours unmolested.  I was asleep, drugged and helpless most of that time, but my valuables and personal items were as safe as if in my own home.  Most people really can be trusted to do the right thing, most of the time.

It was initially hard to find a room at the big hospital in Albuquerque.  They have been slammed with covid and are operating with crisis standards of care. But I must have been an urgent case because they admitted me and the staff gave me as much attention as if I were the only patient in the vascular ward. It was heartening to see critical workers doing their jobs with grace under pressure.

Here’s my take away.  There seems to be a sickness in our body politick lately.  Americans are angry and out-of-sorts. We are dis-eased and anxious about the prognosis for our democracy.  Maybe we need a collective visit to the hospital to restore our better, healthier selves. 

You Are What You Love

Have you ever noticed that people look like their dogs?  Some folks are yappy and high strung.  Others are mellow and always ready for a belly rub.  Somehow temperament gets imprinted on physiognomy.  Perpetual worriers look like a Shar Pei with furrowed brow and woeful countenance. Glad-handers resemble Collies with an ever joyful glad-to-see-you expression on their faces. Maybe people adopt animals that have personalities aligned with their own.  But my theory is that we come to resemble the significant others in our relationships.  Whatever (or whomever) claims our day-in-day-out time and attention puts an impression on our lives.  So wives look like their husbands and vice versa.  

Today’s news gave some confirmation for this theory.  A study tracking 33,000 married couples in Japan and the Netherlands found that decades of living together tended to sync the bio-markers for both partners.  Men and women in long term relationships tended to have similar BMI’s.  They shared physical traits like high or low blood pressure and triglyceride levels, as well as psychological characteristics such as tendency toward depression or the opposite.  It’s not surprising.  “For better or worse, for richer or poor, in sickness and in health” are transformative vows, not empty verbiage.  Through an alchemy of time and constantly rubbing shoulders,  coping with both the joys and inevitable irritations of living in tandem, the two truly do become one flesh.  

Ponder this: you are what you love.  The object that commands your daily sacrifice and devotion may be the stock market, the next election, your work, your family or community.  Regardless, that reality will be your Creator and put its stamp upon your body, mind and heart.  Love wisely therefore, and be careful what you wish for.  You may eventually come to look like your dog, or mirror the thing that you most desire.  

In Praise of Praise

People like to hear that they are great.  We love praise.  Probably it’s because so many of us are secretly insecure.  We need affirmation because inwardly we focus on our frailties and failures. For instance, I can give a twenty minute talk and fret over the one word I mispronounced, or play a song on the guitar and agonize over one wrong note. I remember goofs from years ago.  This is not just a personal idiosyncrasy, but a general rule.  In sports, for example, Novak Djokovic recently came close to winning four major tennis tournaments in a row--the Australian, French, and U.S. Open along with Wimbledon--which would have established his reputation as one of the greatest athletes of all time.  But he suffered a loss in his final, championship match.  The agony of that single defeat was enough to make him sob out loud, overshadowing the satisfaction of all his previous victories.  Psychologists and economists have the same finding.  The pleasure of winning one hundred dollars is substantially less than the pain incurred by losing the same amount.  By the same token, almost any slight or criticism cuts deep. We take scolding or reproval--or even friendly suggestions for how we might improve--to heart.  It takes an extra measure of encouragement for us to feel that we’re actually good enough.  

I suppose the greatest gifts we can give to other people are acceptance and appreciation. This is one of the traditional functions of faith: a sense of being all right with God or okay with the universe.  It’s close to what the New Testament means by agape or unconditional regard, making people feel they are worthy and special just by being human.  But you don’t have to be religious to confer this gift.  It’s in everyone’s power.

Maybe I should try just for one day to give a big, juicy compliment to everyone I encounter.  For example, say something nice on the phone to the appointment lady at the dermatologist’s office.  Withhold my snarky comment from that Facebook post and say something positive instead.  Tell my wife she’s looking fabulous and is way smarter than me (which is really only the truth).  If I followed through with that plan, handing out approval like it was free and didn’t cost me anything, how do you think my day would go?  

Thanks for listening.  You bring out my best!

Fire & Ice (with apologies to Robert Frost)

 Some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice.

But the end of the world isn’t coming, not tomorrow, or next year, or on any fixed date.

Rather, the world is continually ending as we separate ourselves from the source of life and love, as we de-humanize the stranger, as we close our hearts against caring for the neighbor, as we distance ourselves from the earth and her creatures.  The sounds of silence, the words of kindness unspoken, these are the sounds of the world shutting down.

Yet the future is continually beginning as we expand the circle of compassion, widen the definitions of family, expand the household of mutuality, honor the soil and plant the seeds of hope.  The hum of conversation and the noise of dialogue and, yes, the clash of voices in honest debate, these are the sounds of the future asking how to unfold.

Whether the world ends, or how, or when, then, is really up to us.

From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire

But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice

Be A Leaf

 What’s it all about?  Is there a reason for being here?  A purpose or destiny we are meant to fulfill?  The answer depends on who you are.

If you are a cloud, for instance, it’s all about gathering moisture from the air and raining it down to nourish the plants which breathe during photosynthesis, releasing water vapor back into the sky.  One minute it looks like a camel and the next like a turtle but the cloud’s not sorry, it’s serene. The cloud is transitory, almost formless.  It lets go in order to let be.  

If you’re a leaf, it’s all about absorbing sunlight and turning it into sugars for energy to produce seeds to make more trees to sustain a forest.  An apple tree can have a hundred thousand leaves.  An elm may produce a million.  Each one is a verdant solar panel.  Every leaf is a marvel of engineering. But it’s just a small part of the whole.

So who are you, and what’s your purpose?

The answer is that you are awesome: older and grander than you realized. Your particular life began 13.7 billion years ago when, inexplicably, things started.  Some call this event the Great Radiance when the universe popped into existence.

So happy birthday! From the beginning, your life (and that of countless of others, from stars to starfish) was written into the world-lines of a universe predisposed toward the unlikely possibility that something should exist (and not nothing), that life should evolve (out of seemingly inanimate atoms and molecules), that consciousness and self-awareness would originate (out of apparently dumb minerals and vegetables), and that moral freedom and choice would arise, transcending the leap from what is to what should be.

Our task here is to fully realize who we are: more than carbon-based egos struggling for survival and top-billing on this astronomically insignificant bit of real estate.  We are here for a purpose.  We are meant for each other.  

This is not a statement of faith.  It’s the plainest fact.  Years ago, I visited a confirmation class where students were learning about the world religions:  Christianity, Buddhism, and the rest.  It was spring and as I looked through the windows of the classroom at the budding profusion outside, it dawned on me.  I am not a Jew or a Hindu, not a theist or an atheist. I am a leaf.  

I’m a leaf, just here for a very short time upon this Earth, arrived yesterday, gone tomorrow, enjoying my moment in the sun, but here with a job to do.  The health of the whole tree, root to crown, depends on me.  The flourishing of the entire forest, and all the living creatures who inhabit it, depends on me and on every other little leaf contributing its part.  I have an important role to play.  But you know what?  It would be silly and self-centered for me to suppose that the miracle of spring which sweeps across the northern hemisphere every year when the planet’s axis tilts occurs because of me, or that the twig and limb and branch and trunk are here for my benefit, or that all that sunshine pours down just so that I can absorb its rays.  As a leaf, I’m just a small part of a much bigger performance and finding my own niche in this world depends on aligning myself with that larger, more lasting life of which I’m just a fragmentary and momentary expression.  

That’s the way I see it, anyway.  A leaf doesn’t complain that one of its neighbors may be a little higher in the canopy.  It doesn’t spend its time worrying “after the autumn comes, then what?”  It’s not boastful or resentful or cynical.  Rather, it cooperates, it gathers and it gives away, it unfolds and passes its energy on to another generation of leaves that will come after, and it’s beautiful, always reaching toward the light.  

At some point in your spiritual development, you come to a realization that in response to the question “What’s it all about?”, the correct answer is, “It is not all about me!”  So what I am, or want to be, is a leaf.  The universe was certainly not designed to perpetuate me, but I may be here to protect and celebrate Nature in all its glory.

So love your neighbor, because your neighbor is your larger self. Love the beauty and intelligence Creation manifests.  The great religions and modern science agree. We are sisters and brothers.  Whatever your sect or tribe, whether four-legged or two, we Earthlings share a common origin and are sprung from a single womb.  We’re all in it together.  Separateness is an illusion.   Interdependence is the reality  

So go green. Care for the environment because you are the environment. There is no point where you end and the universe begins. Don’t forget to breathe, to shine, and follow your  own growing edge.  Be a leaf.

For the Birds

 Lounging on the flight deck at the Bosque de Apache bird refuge, it is easy to believe that the world is alive.  Hundreds of snow geese bark in the distance.  Wood ducks scurry for safety as a northern Harrier glides over the shallows.  Sandhill cranes resembling ancient pterodactyls soar in from the pre-Pleistocene to alight on the marshy mud flats just beneath the mirrored water that reflects an infinity of sky.  Two cranes neck ostentatiously: there is no other word for the affection of these pair-bonded, lifetime mated birds.  They are making out.  Here in the late afternoon sun of southern New Mexico, how can you doubt that love is the secret sauce that lubricates the world? 

“When despair for the world grows in me,” wrote the poet Wendell Berry, “I go and lie down  where the great heron feeds, and where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water.”  The peace of wild things assures us that despite the appalling stupidity, hubris and short-sightedness of our species, something older and wiser than we are has a hand in events.  Narcissism is not nature’s way.  A more generous, joyful and amorous spirit presides.  Darwin called it evolution: an amazingly simple, almost self-evident idea in retrospect, but one that somehow eluded the most intelligent minds for centuries.  One wonders.  Are there other equally obvious truths that we overlook today--rules of conduct that are integral to the world’s maintenance and survival, but that are still to be discovered? 

We are awaiting word. But as revelation came to Darwin from observing finches, there would be worse places to look than to the gossiping, quarrelling, socially successful cranes who--without political parties, congressional inquiries, solemn resolutions or treatises on government--have nonetheless managed to thrive these past ten million years.  We should live so long.