We are all lepers.

The late Bishop Fulton J Sheen tells the story about his visit to a leper colony during which one man who had been especially wasted by the disease approached him with a rosary hanging from a stump at his shoulder where an arm was once attached.

At first Sheen was repelled and didn't want to touch him, but realized at that moment he had become more consumed by leprosy than anyone around him, and he embraced the man, and every other leper that came to him to be blessed that day.

I was reminded of this while waiting to check out at a local grocery store when a man wheeled in line not too far behind me in a motorized wheelchair. His left foot was swollen ten times normal size and was entirely uncovered (even though it's the middle of winter), revealing cracked, dry skin and toes the size of baseballs.

He was in good spirits, or seemed to be. A woman was helping him. They didn't appear to be together. I overheard him say that he worked at a local mission. The woman made polite small talk and helped him load his groceries from his motorized cart to the belt.

I initially pitied him, like Fulton Sheen had pitied the leper, then I pitied myself.

There are some Christian sects that believe it is in the needs of people like this that you find Jesus. These sects often build hospitals and orphanages first and care for souls later.


[2013-01-30]

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Say something else in that ear.

"Getting old(er) doesn't mean you don't understand the current generation; it means you have something to compare it to."
--Clarence 0ddbody

[2013-02-11]

 

 

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Give the Guy a Break

Forty-five minutes after the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI would retire (resign, abdicate, choose your spin), NPR was referencing scandals associated with the church during his papacy.

Give the guy a break.

I understand the Pope will return to his home in Bavaria to study and eventually move to a monastery being built at the Vatican. He's considered to be among the most theologically enlightened modern popes, if not as accessible and well-liked as John Paul II, a tough act to follow.

[2013-02-11]

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When you're more often right than wrong, folks will more often remember when you are wrong.

[2013-02-10]

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Panhandling works on guilt by numbers. We believe that one out of a thousand really needs our help.

[2013-01-03]

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Ring of Tolerance

Richard Dawkins (renowned atheist apologist) gives an example in The Ancestor's Tale of a particular kind of lizard that has migrated in a circle around the rim of a volcano. This migration has taken so long, the lizard has speciated along the way: Although each lizard community can mate with the adjacent one, the first and last communities (the one at the beginning of the circle and the one at the end completing the circle) cannot.

I listened to The Ancestor's Tale audio book and don't know if the print edition included an illustration. I illustrated it myself with the circular arrow accompanying this post. If you can imagine lizard communities occupying the length the arrow, the lizards at the blunt end of the arrow cannot mate with the lizards at the pointy end, even though they are adjacent and all other adjacent lizard communities can mate.[1]

Dawkins added a comment about racism after discussing this phenomena, which makes sense to me: If we know how closely we're related to each other, it might make a difference how we treat each other.

(He also included a comment about abortion, without clarification, which made no sense to me at all. It's interesting that two things so utterly unrelated (abortion and racism) would be lumped together for reconsideration based on this example. Maybe I just was to dense to make the connection.)

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It occurred to me that ideas are this way too. They evolve over time or areas so that there is an unbroken connection at each stage, but the further you get from the beginning, the less likely the stages will be able to communicate. (Language works this way.)

If Christian theology is a spectrum, Baptists and Catholics are at opposite ends. You can trace the development of ideas that led from one to the other, but the two often think of themselves as unrelated, even dangerously wrong. Catholics are a bit more charitable in their opinions of Baptists than the reverse, akin to a sad resignation, like that experienced by the father in the parable of the prodigal's son.

Sentiments like this are sadly all too common. Good things like ecumenism and reconciliation are couched in paranoia and fear.

Fear is a strong motivator. It fuels extremism of all sorts, from the gun rights lobby to religious fundamentalism.

Power brokers know this and exploit it, and the paranoid never know they are being manipulated.

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[1]
I may not agree with Mr Dawkins on much, but I've given him a fair hearing, and I like him. He's easy on the ears and the intellect, but ultimately unsatisfying, like a rich pastry. I think I could enjoy his company very much. I don't know that he'd feel the same about me.

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Started: 2013-01-21

Say hello to my little friend.

I suffer from painfully dry hands in winter, so dry they crack and bleed. It's not only painful, but in this day of blood-transmitted diseases, I hate to be reaching for a Styrofoam cup or pulling down on a coffee urn lever with my hands bleeding.

I went to a local big box store looking for "cow udder balm," which a colleague of mine said was a very effective (thank you, Brian M), but the one I visited didn't have anything close. Instead, I picked something that looked simple and sounded effective: "Corn Husker's Lotion."


I'm sold. It's simple, all right - plastic bottle with a screw top, like a half pint of Popov's vodka (an analogy from my drinking days). Cheap, too, $3-$4.

It's about the consistency of real maple syrup, but dries fast and leaves a pleasant, light herbal smell. It doesn't sting on open skin and soothes immediately.

We'll see how it goes. This is Day 2, but so far I like it.

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Update: It's been about a week, house is still extremely dry (room-size humidifier needs refilling daily), and hands are better; it's not a miracle salve, but it seems to be working better than anything else I've tried. I still use a traditional bargain brand lotion at the office, so might even be a combination of the two.

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Started: 2013-02-03

Religion is a crutch, but not the way you think.

Yes, religion is used to justify a host of human ills and excuse others, but it also plays a modern role that's more dangerous and insidious: It's too easily blamed for human ills.

Why more dangerous? If we all believe one manifestation of human neuroses is responsible for our problems (or even a good chunk of them), we deceive ourselves into believing that by fixing or removing religion we can solve those problems.

That's like thinking you can cure influenza with an antihistamine. And a lot of very intelligent people fall into that trap.

All human behavioral problems are equally represented across religious and non-religious mentalities (to the extent that any human can be non-religious). If religion sometimes participates in antisocial behavior, it's a symptom, not the cause.[1]

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Religion is an easy target, and its adherents often invite criticism, but it we didn't have religion, we'd invent something very much like it.

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[1]
And of course the same symptom can indicate widely different conditions, some benign. If you're sweating, you may be hot, or you may have the flu, or you may even be nervous. A diagnosis takes into account a variety of factors. Unfortunately, if someone has their mind made up about something, they often stop at the symptom: "I know many ignorant people that believe in God, therefore the next person I meet that believes in God is ignorant too."

If there's enough people that will nod and agree, there's no reason to examine our opinion more closely.

The believer, agnostic and atheist all suffer from this, none more so than the zealots.

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