Possibilities for Health, Wellness and Wholeness

Expecting Different Results

2012-01-30T09:20:00.000-05:00

Today's post is a reflection on an old saying that goes, "One definition of mental illness is making the same choices over and over and expecting different results". Another way of looking at this decision making process is to suggest that it is "rut" thinking and we all need to be cognizant when we practice it. Dr. William Osler, father of the diagnostic thought process, cautioned young physicians against treating each disease presentation like the last one they'd seen. Yet, with all of our technological prowess and availability, we still tend to have "tunnel vision and thinking" and make decisions based on the way we've always done things. I've spent a good portion of the last 25 years working in and for hospitals. Though there are more than 6000 hospitals in the United States, it is a true statement that "when you've seen one hospital, you've seen one hospital". Even those that are part of larger organizations (religious affiliations, hospital systems, corporations) still operate with their own ethos and institutional memory and practice. Time and again I"ve come to a new hospital that is wanting to improve what they do, only to be beset by the thought process of "that will never work here" or "my patients are different than those large national guidelines" or "you just don't understand how things work around here". :-) They say that they want to change, but they want to keep doing things the same way they always have. Yes, our healthcare system - and really much of our institutional behavior is quite flawed in its thinking and operation. Even when presented with data from their own institution, data that their own people have generated, I've had leaders tell me that the data don't represent what's really happening! Errors occur and are perptuated in systems that don't learn - that don't evolve. We have reached (or maybe have passed) the point where we can continue with healthcare as usual. Medicines and technologies continue to evolve and create new possibilities, yet they operate within a healthcare system that is woefully behind in its ability to integrate and understand them. New practitioners come out each year having been exposed to wonderful new ways of thinking and treating, yet they go into practice in environments that are antiquated and dysfunctional. Is it really any wonder that we have less than optimal healthcare when we keep making the same decisions?! This week I'd ask you to spend some time learning about some aspect of new technology that could revolutionize your healthcare. Look at websites such as the Society for Participatory Medicine and other empowering sites that are promoting a new and healthier relationship between providers and patients. Learn and grow and advocate for a healthier system to care for you and for those that come after. Peace for the journey, Dan

Vision Changes

2012-01-26T10:47:00.001-05:00

My wife has promised herself that today she will finally attend to her worsening eyesight and get "real" glasses following a "real" eye examination. I rejoice for her as I know from almost 30 years of glasses wearing that the benefit is worth the inconvenience. In fact, about 5 years ago my eyes had aged to the point that I required "transitional" lenses. ;-) I was musing about all this and wondering what I would write today and I fell into the topic of vision changes. Certainly, I would be significantly impaired if I lost my glasses. I am both near sighted and astigmatic to the point that I would be severely limited in activities of daily life if I didn't wear corrective lenses. There's more to this topic of vision changes than just an exploration of my optometric needs - there's a spiritual issue as well. I was watching and listening to the President's State of the Union address the other night, and I was struck by how he chose to open (and close) his report. While I knew that this talk would be a "stump speech" to a degree, I was struck by how militaristic it was. With so many problems and so much discord in so many areas, to spend the amount of time on the Department of Defense seemed to me to be a lack of vision. I've thought more about this over the days and find that the President's vision has changed. Vision is made up of three components: visual integrity (of which acuity is one measure), efficiency and information processing. Integrity deals with the health of the eye, efficiency with how both eyes can accomodate to different visual stimuli and how they work together, and information processing with how what we see is interpreted by our brains. I suspect that the President has suffered changes to all three parts of his vision and I wonder how to help him correct the changes. Maybe it's a prescription for transitional lenses to allow for seeing much farther into the future than simply November 2012. It is also a need to have the time to process what is being seen in order to interpret it appropriately. We all know that eye witnesses of the same event can have widely different interpretations of exactly what happened. Scientists tell us that we tend to see what we expect to see. This is not the fact that we actually don't see what happened, but the manner in which the information is processed is different based on an individuals experiences. Religious faith can help us to interpret what we see and hear. A person who is grounded in a belief of how we should all be working together and leaving no one behind will interpret a new piece of information very differently than someone who believes that the world was created for them to have as much as they can acquire. A spiritual focus can improve all aspects of our vision and allow us to accomodate better to changing times - since the message of G-d does not change. Our eyes notice things that they didn't see before, and our vision tends to be sharper and more focused. I'd like you all to spend some time evaluating your vision this week. How has your vision changed and what do you need to do to get your integrity, efficiency and information processing back to "normal"? Let us know how we at Possibilities Journey Inc (www.possjrny.org) can help you with this part of your trip. Peace, Dan

Generosity and Forgiveness

2012-01-23T12:29:00.000-05:00

Hard to predict the future, so many possibilites and so many unknowns. Whether it is choosing the Super Bowl winner (and 50-50 proposition) or choosing the next U.S. President (a far lower percentage chance at this stage of the game) the future remains unknown and unknowable. One of the things that is concerning to me is the fate of healthcare legislation. Will it be declared unconsituttional on the whole or just in parts? Will a Republican President see the need to embrace the "least and the lost" and provide some sort of safety net? If the government does not step in to right the inequity in the provision of healthcare, will the private sector/social service non-profits be able to step in? Maybe it will be some new combination of the above? Where do faith communites and belief in something beyond ourselves enter into the equation? Some groups have begun programs to help those less fortunate. Many of these are faith communities. I read with interest an article in the January 25th issue of the Christian Century. The article is entitled, "Pay Pals" and describes an accountability group setting where money is pooled together and debts are paid off. By working together and pooling resources (and practicing honesty and accountability, generosity and forgiveness) people unlearn their destructive spending habits and get out from under high interest credit card debt. Other groups have formed micro-lending organizations to promote businesses, especially minority and women owned. Ethnic groups have long done this by funding and supporting same ethnicity businesses and political campaigns. This got me wondering about the future of this country. Will we continue in our individualistic and hyper-competitive mindset which leads us to continue to try and take over the world either through inequitable commerce policies and practicies or through the military-industrial complex? What if we could truly get back to the ideals of working together in small communities (possibly faith communities but it wouldn't have to be exclusive) for the betterment of all? What if we worked on knowing our neighbors well enough to know when they were in trouble and then banding together to help them out (think of a barn raising in an earlier time). This will take a major mindset and heart change. We have the resources to not only get each of us out of debt, but with some work and tough decisions, to get the U.S. out of much if not all of its debt position. It will take generosity and forgiveness, however. Two tenets of faith that are underpracticed and underappreciated in today's society. It will take the generosity of those most fortunate (many more than the 1% of the Occupy movements) who can work in accountability groups large and small to help those in debt. It will also take a large portion of forgiveness both personal and communal in order to see the process to its successful completion. These are G-d sized tasks, and it will take a G-d sized committment and faith to see them through. The question is...do we have the individual, commmunal and national dedication and devotion to making this happen? The future is so hard to predict...so many unknowns. Peace for the journey, Dan

Afflict the Comfortable

2012-01-19T09:58:00.001-05:00

The title of this post comes from a quote attributed to an American journalist, Finley Peter Dunne, from the late 1800's. The full quote is "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". Another take on this that I saw just this morning is the statement, "you may not like your life, but someone is dying to have it". My point in all this and in this post is that we have a problem in the "developed" world with searching for comfort instead of equity. One of my least favorite "reality" shows on T.V. nowdays is "Auction Hunters" a show about two guys who go to auctions at public storage facilities. People have abandoned their stuff and these guys buy the storage unit contents for a relatively small amount of money and try to turn a profit. Now, I really don't have a problem with two guys finding a niche and exploiting it, but it points to a problem of being too comfortable and excessive. The self storage industry in America is worth tens of billions of dollars every year. Houses are 50% larger than they were on average in 1975, yet we've hoarded enough to need to spend tens of billions of dollars yearly to store the stuff we no longer have room for in our houses. Instead of Allen and Ton making money off other people's excess, what if the show was about how they distributed the abandoned goods to folks who could really use it? What if instead of people investing in a storage room, the excess stuff was given to a social service agency or other non-profit and used to improve the lot of a neighbor? All major religions teach their followers about caring for the poor, the widow and the orphan - the least and the lost. We've become a people that use divisive terminology to explain the world - "developed' vs. "undeveloped". We have the G8 and everyone else. Case-in-point, the Gross National Income per Capita in 2010 for the U.S. was $47,140 (rank 18th); 48 of the 215 countries listed had a GNI of $1200 or less. Is there really any rational or humanistic reason that the average GNI of the U.S. is 40 times more than Nigeria, Cameroon or Vietnam? We have lost our compassion, our ethical mandate, and our Kindergarten ethic of sharing equally. It is way past time to get a bit less comfortable. There is no reaason (beyond self indulgence) to continue to acquire while those near us starve. There is no reason for everyone not to have access to affordable healthcare of a decent quality. There is no reason that all people should not have access to nutritious and affordable food. There is no ethical or moral reason for us all to be so comfortable - or so smug. Remember the adage "there but for the grace of G-d go I". Has our comfort either as a nation or as individuals really come only from our hard work and intelligence? Who was it that gifted us with our talents and placed us in the U.S. instead of Cameroon? This week, let's work to recover our compassionate mandate to actually care for one another and to work for equity in all aspects of life. Peace for the journey, Dan

Where's the Harm?

2012-01-17T09:46:00.002-05:00

Today's post is somewhat a follow-up to the last post on wisdom deficit. In other ways, possibly importantly, it is a reflection on my struggle with the precept of healthcare professional codes of ethics which all in some form or other preclude the practitioners from harming their patients. It's not that I struggle with the Hippocratic truth that we as caring professionals should render care and not harm first and foremost. Rather, it is my struggle with how poorly we enact and live out this professional ideal in everyday life. Harm happens in so many ways and is in fact so pervasive, that practitioners (IMHO) become desensitized to the very fact that they are breaking a key ethical tenet multiple times every day. In my experience, this is the number one factor leading to practitioner burnout. Let's explore some of those harms (and I don't have near enough blog space to list them all - you will probably come up with many more). It doesn't take long for new recruits (so to speak) to learn that they will labor in systems that have been created to wring every possible dollar out of the interactions they have in order to feed the institutions that employ them. This harms both the practitioner who is a caring individual who seeks to have caring relationships and the person in need of care. When limited to 10 minutes (at best) with each person a couple of times each year, no meaningful relationship can develop. Thus the interactions become driven by direct-to-consumer marketing and limited scientific interchange. No wonder that so many antibiotics are prescribed for viral infections and 50% of all prescriptions written are never filled - and more harm ensues! Certainly we are all aware when major harm occurs through errors of omission or comission (e.g., surgically removing the wrong limb, giving the wrong dose of chemotherapy). Organizations then put into place a huge review process called a Root Cause Analysis of a Sentinel Event and try to figure out how the event happened and how to prevent it. They don't, however, look deeper into how the whole system allows for harm to occur and the cumulative effects of that continuous harm (mostly emotional and psychic). The Institute of Medicine (IoM), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO), the numerous State Boards of Professions and Health, the Institute on Healthcare Improvement (IHI), the Quality Improvement Organizations (QIO), and soon (if not found unconstitutional) the development of Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), are all focus on improving quality - and have been for the better part of three decades. Yet, harm occurs each and every day - even though quality is improving. Sarcastically I could thus state that the harm that occurs nowadays is of a much higher quality that heretofore! Seriously though, shouldn't we expect that our healthcare systems should operate like our healthcare professionals and be dedicated to "first doing no harm" in all of the myriad ways that harm presents?! Maybe it's time to broaden the discussion of improving the healthcare system through the lens of doing less harm everyday. Instead of focusing solely on the quality of episodic care, why not look at lessening the physical, emotional and psychic harm that occurs to our practitioners and their patients. Let's work to create a system that is fair and wholesome and that realizes and rewards the development of healthy and supportive relationships - which have been shown time and again to lead to improved health. Let's stop the harm and start the healing. Peace for the journey, Dan

Wisdom Deficit

2012-01-12T10:12:00.001-05:00

We are confronted almost continually by the word "deficit". It has seemingly become part of our everday lexicon. Most often it is used in conjunction with a lack of a balanced Federal budget, but there are other more fundamental deficits that contribute to our budget woes. The main one, to my way of seeing the world, is that we individually and communally lack wisdom. In an age where answers to questions come at 4G speeds, information is accessible to almost everyone (at least in the developed world). Never has there been so much access to information - information that is often of questionable veracity. Yet, once an answer is found (the first answer found always wins) it is rarely debated on merit and the discussion moves on to the next "unknown". In any cases (in my experience) these factoids are quickly forgotten and there is no learning nor knowledge integration. So, though we have answers to questions, there doesn't seem to be any increased knowledge nor facilitated journey towards wisdom. The average person can learn about anything on line these days. I can quite rapidly access quite detailed information on new pharmaceutical compounds that are manufactured using elegant biopharmaceutical techniques that act on ever more specific receptor sites on cells. My more than 25 year old biology and chemistry knowledge has been supplanted and I find myself exploring new vistas of cellular communication and replication that I never knew existed. Truly remarkable and wonderful! Yet, as I watch the development of these new compounds - which come into clinical trials at a dizzying rate nowadays - and see the tremendous price tags ($10,000/month in some cases)I'm at a loss to see how they will be wisely employed. The lack of ability to wisely employ these new and expensive compounds comes from a lack of a wise healthcare system which can adequately hold the tension of the new versus the proven. Most of my professional career I've been tasked with evaluating new drugs for use within hospitals. It was my job to review these new products and to render a professional opinion on whether to allow these compounds to be used within a given organization. You might guess that at times I was very unpopular with both physicians and pharmaceutical company representatives. Yet my job was to evaluate the wisdom of adding a compound to that which was already available. What were the direct and indirect costs associated with the addition, what was the risk to the patients during the "learning curve" of the prescribers, what was the perceived legal and P.R. exposure for not having said compound available? The wisdom that I gained through this process is that there are very few innovative products developed - most are tag-a-longs to things we already have available. I also became wise in evaluating my bosses and whether or not they would support a certain recommendation. Wisdom, at least in my life, has often come at a fairly large price. Maybe that's why we have such a wisdom deficit - we don't seem to want to live with the suffering that accompanies it. Something to consider as we enter a time for choosing a new President and new legislators. Peace for the journey, Dan

Doing the Simple Things

2012-01-09T08:36:00.000-05:00

My teenaged boys give me endless material to reflect on and to use as "opportunities for growth". ;-) My 15 year old has been laboring in a really tough stretch over the last year or so - characterized by the usual me-centric worldview and obstinence to change. Now, I know that he will eventually grow out of these things (or I certainly am hopeful that he will) and that they will morph into more socially acceptable behaviors - but they really make for a difficult environment in the short term! Thank goodness that my wife and I have surrounded ourselves with a loving and compassionate faith community and a large number of committed friends (and a growing number of therapists). Many of those persons have walked this parenting path and can give solace and a listening ear to us as we try to wend our way through the dark valley. My spiritual director also lends her sacred listening ear to the mix to continue to help point me to where G-d is in all of this - truly a wonderful addition to the mix. Just last week, a new therapist looked at my son and told him that in order to get where he said he wanted to be (out of trouble, return of privileges, a measure of independence) he needed to start doing the simple things. Success with simple things, she advised, will lead to good feelings and thus open the door to larger successes. Since last Tuesday, I've reminded him often of these words when simple things are left undone (cleaning up after himself, etc). While I found her words helpful in our world, they have also resonated with me on the larger issues that I contend with professionally (trying to mend the broken healthcare system). What are the simple things that I can promote that will lead to larger system change? These are well known and are do-able at the personal level. They all have to do with personal accountability and they lead to larger societal accountability and change. None of them are difficult, but they do require action to overcome the inertia that has become rampant in our culture. That's where programs like "Small Steps" (see: www.smallsteps.gov) come in. These programs empower people who wish to do something healthy but don't know how to start - to get started doing something. Take care of the simple things, build committment with success and larger successes will follow. In healthcare, simple things that pay dividends like listening to patients; double checking each other; having up-to-date, patient-specific information available when prescriber-patient interactions occur; active listening; developing relationships. With these behaviors practiced in each and every interaction, quality and safety improve and people become healthier. It's really not "rocket science" it really is simple common sense and compassionate caring. Once again we find the truth in the statement "all I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten." This week,implement at least one simple change in your health routine that you can commit to continue. Each week this year, add another or move up the complexity of the action. By December 31, 2012 (or the end of the world on December 21) you'll be amazed at the difference that simplicity can provide. Peace for the journey, Dan

We Have Met the Enemy

2012-01-05T09:53:00.002-05:00

I'm sure that avid cartoon strip reader's are smiling right now with the title of this post. It is a fragment of a sentence in the strip Pogo (probably printed almost a million years ago) that states, "We has met the enemy, and it is us!" So much truth contained in such a few words. In this time of New Year's Resolutions, one needs to pause and consider why it is that so many are made, and then never implemented fully. Another way to put that is, why don't we change the things we can change and be at peace with those we can't (aka Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer)? One of the problems that gets in the way of personal change is the ability to recognize that our basic mindset is dualistic (read comparative or competitive). This "We vs. They" or "Us vs. Them" or "Keeping up with the Joneses" worldview sets up any personal behavior change as a competition or comparative (we create an enemy). Thus we can only win or lose - we can never be at peace. I was amazed at a new weight loss commercial that finally realized this and changes the goal of the process to how you will feel about you - what your personal wish is for the process. Finally, a commercial that recognizes some of the issues that get in the way - and re-frames success in terms of win-win. Faith communities are no different...really no institution is. Well meaning and busy people come together to try and "do" things for an organization. For faith communities, this means that in the best of instances they try to discern the will of G-d for the organization. Unfortuantely, all too often the discernment becomes secular decision making and voting (i.e., it becomes win-lose) and enemies are created within the community. People will leave and other people will become passive-aggressive and sabotage any endeavor that didn't go their way. Sound familiar?! My own community struggles with the concept of consensus. Consensus is often seen as "everyone agrees or we don't make a decision". Instead, consensus is a process of seeking unity of purpose rather than 100% agreement on an issue. When we are unified in our understanding of our need to continue to be in right relationship with each other, then we understand that budgets need to be approved and personnel need to be hired/fired in order to move the mission forward. I will probably not agree with some of the decisions, but can I remove my personal enemy (ego or enmity) from the mix and allow space to see what happens? This is true consensus - but it is very difficult for dualistic minds to grasp and to accomplish. This week as you go about your tasks for whatever community(ies) you may support, look inside yourself and identify your personal enemy. What is getting in your way to be what G-d intends you to be? Ask for help with this ball of feelings and resolve to reduce the impact that this darkness has on the decisions you help make in 2012. Seek unity of purpose in all that you do. Peace for the journey, Dan

"Nothing Changes on New Year's Day"

2012-01-02T09:13:00.000-05:00

The title (as readers of a certain age will know) is a line from the song by U2 "New Year's Day". My senior pastor used it for his homily yesterday, and it got me thinking of how true this statement really is. Many resolutions are made and then go undone, the world keeps spinning in the same way that it always has, no real progress is made on global warming or many other social ills, the political and governmental processes remain broken and unwholesome. Yet, other more positive things remain the same as well such as the work done by Charity Water and other NGO's, the tireless work of volunteers that support so many needed projects, the role of faith communities in helping the least and the lost. It certainly is good that these things don't change on New Year's Day. It doesn't have to be this way (the lack of change) - we all know that. Change is difficult and demanding, we're likely to get ridiculed for stepping out of line with some of our non-worldy viewpoints. Case-in-point, Tim Tebow. Here is a young man who was very successful in college football, yet went undrafted due to concerns about his ability to play well in the NFL. He's worked very hard at his craft and has had a very successful rookie season. Even though he is making the usual rookie mistakes, it's a very positive experience. The world has noticed that he is a very prayerful person and has taken his prayer stance ("Tebowing") and made a pardoy and a mockery of it. I've seen it in my own teenagers and I've pointed out their judgemental behaviors of a person who believes enough to show others what is most important. It has been a good learning opportunity however, for me to show my sons how the world views religion and religious people. Those who stand up for their beliefs are ridiculed - it has always been this way. Does it have to always be this way? We have a new year to play with, 12 months to do something amazing! What is it that you will change this year to make your part of the world a bit better? We at Possibilities Journey Inc. will be working to improve the health and wellness of communities by linking faith communities and health care. We believe that this model of wholeness will return us to a state of shalom. We invite you to join us on this journey, or to let us help you with you personal change. Indeed, change can come on New Year's Day, we just have to have the fortitude and commitment to see it through together. Peace for the journey, Dan

In Search of Epiphany

2011-12-29T09:51:00.002-05:00

In these 12 days of Christmas, the Christians among us are tracking towards the Epiphany. Traditionally, Epiphany is the feast celebrating the occasion of the Three Kings who came to worship Jesus. More Orthodox traditions have Epiphany marking the baptism of Jesus, but is there a broader concept of epiphany that can help us as we try to find ways to be engaged spiritually in the world? Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary has one definition of epiphany as: "(1): a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2): an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3): an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure." I think that this is helpful as we search for meaning and understanding of our world and our role(s) in it. Aren't we all searching for the essence of something - of life? Wouldn't it be nice to have a better grasp of how we can make a difference in the world - through a simple and striking event? In this season of light, aren't we all in one way or another searching for illumination for our paths? The quest for epiphany is as real and as meaningful today as it ever has been. By this time next year we will have chosen another President; many disasters will have befallen the world; many millions will be born and will die; new scientific discoveries will be made - some of them revolutionary. Will you be any different in your understanding of who you are and what your purpose is in this world - will I? How is it that you will search for meaning in this new year versus years past? There are many ways to open the inner life to explore how G-d is moving in your life. I recommend a spiritual director (www.sdiworld.org) or good cleric. Make one of your resolutions to open your mind to the possibility of epiphany in 2012. This is a choice that will make all the difference in the world and in you. Peace for the journey and have a blessed 2012! Dan

What am I Worth?

2011-12-26T09:46:00.000-05:00

I hope all had a wonderful Christmas celebration yesterday (or for those who don't celebrate Christmas, a wonderful and relaxing day off)! We are entering the last week of 2011 and I wanted this post to reflect some of the struggles that I'm having with the big issues in health and wellness both personal and societal. One aspect of this crystallized yesterday as I was washing dishes and having a wonderful discussion about the cost of healthcare. The bottom line comes in when making payment decisions on a macro level, what is the life of a person worth? What am I worth in dollars and cents support from the government and other payors? I've done a lot of work over the last six months with investigational cancer drugs. Some of them are pretty far into the future and some are relatively close to market. All of the compounds show promise in controlled clinical trials, but we clinicians know that practice life is far from the controlled trial environment of drug development. This is one of the reasons why drugs perform less well in actual practice than they do in research trials. Once a compound is approved in the U.S. a prescriber can use it in any way they deem appropriate given their level of understanding of the compound (think Avastin or NovoSeven for example). The other problem is the euphemisms used as markers for success in cancer trials (e.g., disease free interval, progression-free survival, objective response rate, clinical benefit rate, time to treatment failure, invasive disease free survival, overall survival). Saddled by a lack of curative compounds, cancer drugs are evaluated on their ability to keep the disease below our crude level of detection. Many of the new compounds I've reviewed are not replacing anything, they are additive to what is already being used - so they are adding significant cost to the equation. The compounds in question cost many thousands of dollars each month (up to $10,000). If, as one compound I reviewed last week, an agent on average prolongs overall survival by 4 months - is that a "good" investment? It begs the question, what am I worth? Not just to my family and friends, but to society as a whole and to those who will share the burden of my treatment. Most drug manufacturers have patient assistance programs to offset some of the cost burdens of these therapies, but as a society we are coming up against a most difficult dilemma. No one wants to use the "r" word (rationing) but the reality of the cost burdens of these new targeted therapies is too big to ignore. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is already dealing with programs that are impossible to maintain financially (due to poor management over the last decades), but those costs to maintain are increasing at an unsustainable rate. John Q. Public is asked to fund these programs from payroll taxes, but no one ever envisioned a cost scenario like what we are currently living. What is my life worth? Huge societal dilemmas like this one can not be answered easily or gently or quickly. It takes great courage to open the debate and dialogue on how to even begin to approach somehting of this magnitude. One has to be able to suffer under the slings and arrows of rhetoric (think "death panels") and come out the other side with self intact. We need to be able to approach these large issues from a place of openess and honesty - love for each other. On one hand, each human life is precious beyond measure and should be nurtured in ways to help it meet its intended reason for being created. However, we can not afford to spend $10 million on 7 billion...there has to be some rationality and social justice. At the end of the year, I offer this musing to begin the dialogue with you on how we come to grips with huge truths. I don't have answers, and I struggle daily with these questions. Together, however, we can find a way to deal with that which confronts all of us. Peace for the journey, Dan

What Paradox Teaches

2011-12-22T10:16:00.001-05:00

I've been reading more of Parker J. Palmer's "The Courage to Teach", and was moved by his thoughts on paradox and how it can help educate. Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary has one definition of paradox as: "a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true." There are many paradoxes in our everyday lives as well as oxymorons (Reality T.V. leaps to mind for the latter). To highlight the role of paradox in my life I offer the following examples: One of the things about being a trained scientist and a healthcare practitioner (and possibly soon an educator) is the need to read and evaluate new research. One of the aspects of this that has been a difficult truth is that there is much about the way that research is undertaken and reported that lead to falsehoods. One paradox in scientific research is that we study a small subset of the human population (800 to 1000 persons out of 300+ million in the U.S.) and extrapolate the findings to the rest. Another is that we scientifically examine complex human physiology and pathology using univariate (studying one aspect of something) modeling and then try to extrapolate the findings. It's not surprising therefore to see how we fail when drugs come into broader use (Xigris and Avastin only two more recent examples). Yet, once and awhile some truly remarkable discoveries are made that in the beginning seem incongruous - because they fly in the face of "what we know". The idea that the world is round, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, that the world is getting warmer, that a single child can and did change the world, that Christmas isn't our birthday. Religion is often seen as an inconvenient truth at best, and as a self-indulgent fantasy at worst. How can a G-d be everywhere and nowhere at the same time? How can G-d (in the Christian view) be three things in one? How can a good G-d allow evil to be in the world (theodicy); and the corollary, how can that same G-d give us free will - when G-d well knows we don't use it wisely? We can shrug these and other questions about faith off and ignore the questioner, but if we avoid these paradoxes then we miss the educational potential in each. In my own spiritual journey it has been uncomfortable to hold paradox lightly and to stay with it until it teaches me. Some of the "truths" I have discovered only after many years of discernment (use of koans and other spirital disciplines) others still evade me. Yet, the power of paradox to teach is that when one allows oneself to be in relationship with the tension of not knowing, then one finds an expansion of the mind and the soul. It becomes less important to find an answer than it is to live into the question. Certainly, my life as a healthcare practitioner demands that I come up with answers to health questions and to try to give the best and most evidence-based recommendations that I can. When I'm called to care for the spiritual aspects of the illness or dis-ease, however, I'm called to be in a place of paradox and to hold that up to the person who is searching. There are many paradoxes in this holiday season - the need/desire for Currier and Ives versus the reality of poor family systems, the brokenness of humanity versus the wholeness of spirituality, the need to become childlike to access heaven on Earth, loving neighbor as self. I ask you to hold your personal paradoxes lightly this season and spend time with them. They have much to teach you about you and the world in which you live. Peace for the journey, Dan

Asleep at the Wheel

2011-12-19T09:44:00.001-05:00

I opened the news this morning on my computer to see the obituaries of two diametrically opposed men. On one hand there was the death of Kim Il Jung of North Korea, on the other, the death of Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. It is unfortunate that so much press will be given to the former versus the latter. The rhetoric of "ding-dong the witch is dead" over the North Korean leader and opinion pieces of how wonderful it will be for the world that he is gone will totally supplant the quiet news of the passing of a truly great man. Many of you might not recognize the name, Vaclav Havel. He was a poet and playright who came to fame as a dissident voice against Communism. In the "Velvet Revolution" he was a key player and served as first President of both Czeckoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Havel was insightful, humble, spiritual and morally sound. His ability to name the ills of his land in the post-Communistic rebuild were keys to how that nation built itself into a stable force in middle Europe. He wrote seemingly constantly, and there is a collection of his essays entitled, "Summer Meditations" from 1991 that are truly wonderful and spiritually meaningful. One quote struck me as I was musing over his life and his accomplishments. Here it is: "Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It’s just that it’s incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed — as though it does not know what to rely on, where to begin, where or how to find meaningful outlets. In such a state of affairs, politicians have a duty to awaken this slumbering potential, to offer it direction and ease its passage, to encourage it and give it room, or simply hope. They say a nation gets the politicians it deserves. [...] At the same time – paradoxically – the opposite is also true; society is a mirror of its politicians. It is largely up to the politicians which social forces they choose to liberate and which they choose to suppress, whether they rely on the good in each citizen or the bad." "Slumbering goodwill"...it echoes Martin Luther King Jr's. sadness at the reticence of good people to become engaged by the wrongs that they see. In this time, though these words are 20 years old (at least) don't they still ring true? Hasn't our goodwill become "incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed"? One just needs to look at the current debates on any political topic or social ill and see that there's no guidance, no compass, no cogent thought processes. In a democratic society, we get the leaders that we deserve and they are truly a reflection of who we are at the time. Can the current crop of politicians really "awaken this slumbering potential" or are we all just going to continue in our self-induced stupor towards ruin? The writings of Havel give us a view towards a revitalized and fully aroused state: "There is no simple set of instructions on how to proceed. A moral and intellectual state cannot be established through a constitution, or through law, or through directives, but only through complex, long-term, and never-ending work involving education and self-education. [...] It is not, in short, something we can simply declare or introduce. It is a way of going about things, and it demands the courage to breathe moral and spiritual motivation into everything, to seek the human dimension in all things. Science, technology, expertise, and so-called professionalism are not enough. Something more is necessary. For the sake of simplicity, it might be called spirit. Or feeling. Or conscience." Hmmmm, the "courage to breathe moral and spiritual motivation into everything". He suggests that secular education and re-educaiton are not enough, he suggests that we also need to engage equally in reconnecting our spiritual and moral selves so that we can make decisions based on graeter ideals than our own petty selves. Can a dedication to spiritual disciplines arouse our sleeping goodwill and set us on a better path? Well, I'm not sure, but it seems prudent to say that what we're currently doing is not working and look for another option. Spiritual disciplines such as prayer, fasting, journaling, spiritual direction, worship and spending time with sacred texts have opened the eyes and minds of countless people over the millenia, maybe it's not too late for us. Peace for the journey, Dan

Institutional Fear

2011-12-15T08:56:00.001-05:00

I picked up a book that my wife had been given some years ago by Parker Palmer called, The Courage to Teach". In it he devotes a whole chapter to the fears that both teachers and students need to confront when they come together (A Culture of Fear). It got me thinking about fear within institutions, and then I continued along that path and thought about other human created institutions and idols and how fearsome they can be. Think for a minute about some that are at the forefront of the news right now...government, the economy, and health care. These are enormous institutions that are quite broken (at least in practice) and also quite fearsome. The fear comes because they have been made into idols that are worshipped instead of the broken human creations that they are. I've blogged before on the power of idol worship and the demonizing that happens when a good thing is elevated to an ultimate thing (i.e., becomes and idol). The creation of institutions which exist only to foster their own continuation, creates these idols that then become inviolate. Think about the vitriolic rhetoric that accompanies anyone who tries to say that there's something wrong with one of our idols...does the name Dr. Donald Berwick come to mind?! Here is a brilliant man who had the courage to stand up and say that CMS is terribly broken and needs to be radically altered to become something both functional and affordable (two things it currently is not by any stretch of the imagination). It cost him his job - though his reputation is still intact. Idols and institutions that become idols (and are thus seemingly above reproach) are fearsome. We choose not to challenge the status quo for fear of what will happen to us. We fear being sacrificed in public for our contention that something is wrong with 50 million people having inadequate health insurance, and 16% of the population being unemployed or underemployed. We fear the recriminations of being the ones who say that indeed the king is parading around buck naked. Our fear of things continuing in the same broken manner is balanced by the idol worshippers who fear the loss of their idol and wonder what will replace it. They continue their idolatry because their fear of change and the unknown paralyzes them. We have a way to overcome this paralyzing fear. It is called faith, and it is at its core the means and the grace that allows us all to move forward in the face of fear. It is a common quote that courage is not the absence of fear, rather it is the ability to do what needs to be done in spite of our fears. That kind of courage comes from a place outside of us. Our faith in a power that is greater than us, in a wisdom that dwarfs our own, in a way of living in right relationship with each other where all are of equal value, is what has toppled all the idols of history. During this holiday season then, where are you finding the faith to move forward to conquer your fear(s)? What institution(s) in your life have become idols that need to be named and changed? We at Possibilities Journey Inc (www.possjrny.org) believe that it is time for the idol of health care to meet the power of faith in order to be transformed into the life giving service that it was created to be. Thanks for being with us on this journey. If you are looking for end of the year donation opportunities, we would welcome your support. You can donate at our website and we thank you in advance. Peace for the journey, Dan

A House Divided

2011-12-12T11:28:00.002-05:00

Interesting how ideas come for both sermons and for this blog. Inputs from disparate places such as e-mails from my mother, sermons from dear friends, readings and my own prayer life all come together (at least often enough) to give life to a concept. My spiritual journey (which greatly informs my worldy journey) is all about becoming unified in my beliefs, and allowing that unity to permeate my interactions with the world. This is more and more a unique way of being in the world. Our current world is very dissociated, individualized and polarized. Idols are created and they require blood sacrifice (e.g., working 80+ hour weeks and neglectiing the rest of our lives) and they are never satisfied. That's where we are in the world right now - serving self-created idols and never being satisfied. We live in houses that are divided - and as Abraham Lincoln noted, a house divided can not stand. How different it is when we view the world from a place of integrity. Integrity has synonyms of completeness, soundness and incorruptibility (Webster's on-line Dictionary). When we are complete or whole, then we are able to live into the chaos and vagaries of everyday life without being judgemental and reactionary. If I have integrity, then I am comfortable with who I am and how I see the world, and I am comfortable enough to meet others where they are. I may not agree with them, I may find them uninformed or misguided, but I can still love them enough to continue to be in relationship and community and try to help them find themselves. The integrity that comes from a right relationship with G-d allows me to be in right relationship with everyone else. That right relationship allows me to be less corruptible than I otherwise might be - the old saw is applicable, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything". Integrity allows us to discover how to have a unified life and house. When we are working towards completeness and wholeness, then we are first looking inward to see how an interaction is making us feel. We respond to an interaction inwardly before we react outwordly. We ask ourselves, "what teaching does this interaction offer me?" If it is unfounded and judgemental, then it offers us very little and we can shrug it off and go on. However, if it is offered in truth and in love as a constructive teaching, then we can take it on and learn from it. The learning becomes transformational and enhances our ability to be relational. This week, explore your own integrity. Where are the holes, the incompleteness, the judgemental areas in your life? How is it that you can get in touch with those areas and find ways to make them more integral? One way is with a spiritual director. There is a wonderful website listing spiritual directors across the world (www.sdiworld.org) and I encourage you to engage one as a gift to yourself and the world this holiday season. Peace for the journey, Dan

The Missing Link...

2011-12-08T14:35:00.001-05:00

A new physician survey has just been completed that shows quite starkly the missing link in our current healthcare system. (see: http://www.rwjf.org/vulnerablepopulations/product.jsp?id=73646&cid=XEM_2809280). It seems that 80% of physicians surveyed understand that the social needs of patients is just as important as any medical therapy. After all, if the patient can't afford the medicine, has no place to store it (because they're homeless), does not have a stable life, then it will be next to impossible to be compliant and adherent with any prescribed therapy. This is the missing link in healthcare. It's one of the glaring holes in the ACA legislation. That is, it's one thing to cover everyone with health insurance, but if many of those 50 million are homeless or semi-homeless then they can not eat properly, get sufficient rest, etc. There will be no overall improvement in health, or if there is, it will be incremental not transformational. A long time ago, a researcher named Maslow developed a heirarchy for human behavior that noted unless foundational needs are addressed and taken care of, no development happens. Analogously, if basic needs for health (good quality food in sufficient quantity, adequate rest, safe place to live) are not addressed, then people will not be optimally healthy. The really good news is that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has invested money into a program called Health Leads that trains colege students to work in physician offices to provide basic social service needs. In this model, a physician can write a "prescription" for any social service that a patient needs, and the Health Leads person in the office will help to "fill" it. It works really well and has grown over the last few years from its humble beginnings in Boston to now up and down the East Coast. What a fabulous leveraging of a renewable resource (college students) to meet a real need in the system. More of this transformational thinking is necessary if we are to overcome a healthcare system that is often not about health, and more often doesn't seem to care. This week, look for those things that could be changed in your life. What change, large or small could you develop that would transform what happens in your world? Really beneficial to spend some time discerning about things like this. I'd love to know what you find. Peace for the journey, Dan

Heat vs. Light

2011-12-05T10:51:00.001-05:00

You all know the saying "more heat than light" when referring to a debate that allows anger and venom to win out over informed dialogue. I find myself musing today (not for the first time) about the prevalence of angry diatribe versus informed and socially appropriate debate. At one point in the not too distant past, Debate Teams were seen as an important part of High School education. Nowadays, if a High School even has a Debate Team, it is relegated to the deepest, darkest part of the High School experience and there it languishes. The learning that comes from building and debating a topic is lost to the whims of personal opinion and technological savvy. If I can get my viewpoint out faster and broader than my "opponent" then I will win in the court of public opinion. Case-in-point, the current news "reporting" about child abuse in Penn State and Syracuse atheletic programs. Child abuse and pornography are hot button issues to be sure, and are serious issues that we as humns need to deal with appropriately to ensure healthy and safe enviroments for our children to grow. However, when we allow our "need for news and gossip" to outweigh our need to know facts, then we run the real danger (and current reality) of trying people before they've ever had their right to a trial of their peers. I don't know what has happened in either of the situations mentioned, even though there's been an outrageous (IMHO) amount of news coverage devoted to these issues. When news becomes focused on headline making rather than balanced investigative reporting (lots of work and longer time frame results) we all become victims of abuse - abuse of our intellect and humanity. Time and again in scripture we are cautioned against judgments. We are encouraged to forgive - not to forget nor to act like hurtful things never happened, but to forgive and to release the power that the perpetrator has over our view of the world and our ability to live our lives freely and fully. Forgiveness is an individual act that requires nothing of the other party. This is why forgiveness is so challenging...we want the perpetrator to be "brought to justice" and to "suffer as we have". Vengence appears to be sweet and healing on the surface, but the reality is something altogether different. Justice never takes away waht happened, nor does it allow for the transformative love of God to intervene and heal the situation. Certainly, people who hurt other people must be stopped, and that often requires judicial intervention, but healing is not part of our criminal justice system. News people and editors have forgotten that everyone deserves a fair shake - and our current delivery system for news is not focused on balance and fairness. Life is not like CSI nor NCIS, issues do not resolve themselves in 60 minutes into nice tidy packages of right overcoming wrong. We need to remember that life is messy and difficult and requires a lot of work to relate to each other in healthy and wholesome ways. The internet is not helping that process. Do yourself a favor and find your way to decent reporting that doesn't seek to vilify or promote guilty until proven innocent. The longer I live, the less judgemental I become, the more latitude I allow for the fact that I don't know everything - and I never will. I do know, however, that God is God and I am not - and I find myself thankful for that reality as it provides much light for my path. Peace for the journey, Dan

Surrendering Ourselves

2011-12-01T08:11:00.001-05:00

Today we complete the muses on Mahatma Gandhi's Seven Deadly Social Sins with thoughts on "Worship Without Sacrifice". The Mahatma was not referring to ancient forms of animal or human sacrificial killing as a form of worship - rather he was suggesting that if we're just going through the motions, then we're not truly worshipping. I'm a leader within my United Methodist congregation and time and again am confronted with the 20-80 rule (20 percent of the people doing 80 percent of the work). The rest either show up or not, and the average pledge to keep the church open is less than $500/year (in a town where the average income tops $80K)! People do not come to church regularly either, in fact, the largest church in the Methodist denomination sees congregants attending worship an average of 1.7 times each month. Hmmm, do we have a problem with comittment?! Why is worship without sacrifice a deadly social sin? How does our lack of sacrifical worship lead us to sin in a social context against each other? Now remember, I'm defining sin in a broad theological sense as any action which disrupts our connection to God. Sin is not one of the 7 deadly (not contained anywhere in the Christian Bible by the way), it is that action or set of free will decisions that keep us from loving God above all else and neighbor as self. Sacrifice is defined in many ways, but the one that I think is closest to where we want to go is "destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else". So if we are attending a faith community and/or worship service and not surrendering ourselves (our worldviews, our judgemental natures, our need to control, our brokenness, etc) for something else (i.e., God) then we can not be transformed. If we are not transformed, then we can not see the needs of the "other" and feel a call to do something about it. If we can not see the needs of others then we allow the world to perpetuate the social injustices (yes, Glenn Beck they exist) and status quo that leads to upwards of 50 million people living at or below the poverty line in the U.S. I have found that the more I commit myself to the exploration of my spirituality, the less judgemental I become - the more tolerant I am of difference, the kinder I am. This is true no matter what doctrine you practice. Immersing yourself in a spiritual discipline and practicing the same diligently and intentionally, will lead to a new vision and a new way of being. In the Christian tradition God says, "see I am making all things new." This new vision is what lead me to create Possibilities Journey, Inc (www.possjrny.org) which seeks to re-integrate all faith communities into the healthcare system. The reason we are convinced that we need to do this is because of the lack of attention to spiritual aspects of illness and recovery. Also to the lack of meaningful after-care and elder care in our current system. Surrendering my worldview has allowed me to see something much greater to work for than a paycheck. What is it that you need to surrender to combat some of the myriad social sins of our world? Peace for the journey, Dan

Scientific Idol Worship

2011-11-28T08:43:00.001-05:00

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday break - I know that I did! I was blessed by a friend who reminded me that we are called to give thanks in all things (not for all things). That means that no matter how "good" or "bad" things are at the moment, giving thanks during the journey is critically important to how we move our way through the situations we face. Really good reminder and an interesting seque into our topic for today. Mahatma Gandhi came up with Seven Deadly Social Sins - we are on the sixth "Science Without Humanity". What does it mean to have, or to practice, science without humanity? Isn't scientific exploration all about bettering the human condition and solving the insolvable problems that confront us? Look at the tremendous beenfit that Science has brought to this planet. Human lives are saved everyday through the result of scientific experiments and discoveries. Humans are living longer and better, crops grow better and are more fruitful, buildings are safer, water is cleaner, new labor saving devices are continually developed and brought to market, diseases common just a few generations ago are all but eliminated from the Earth. It's hard to argue that the contribution of Science to the world has been anything but transformational. Gandhi died before most of the scientific discoveries of the last 60 years. He did live to see the horror of atomic weapons realized and utilized. He knew of poison gas and other human atrocities - of concentration camps and genocide. He witnessed two world wars and the associated growth to dominance of the military-industrial complex. I think that this is what he meant when he saw science without humanity - the exploration of science that lead to discoveries which were then used against other humans for political gain. I wonder how he would view the discovery of DNA, the human genome project, test tube babies, cloned sheep, artificial intelligence, designer crops....? We set ourselves up for idol worship when we take a good thing (e.g., earning money) and make it an ultimate thing (making earning money the only thing we work for). I am a highly trained scientist who worshipped at the idol of the scientific method for many years. I was convinced that science could and would answer all the unanswered questions - it was just a matter of time. Then I began to work in intesive care units where technology and "life saving" devices were employed and deployed to "save" people who were critically ill and/or injured. I saw and participated in the application of science, often without regard to the humanity of the situation. I now realize that it is inhuman (or inhumane) to apply technology where there is no reasonable hope for a return to functioning humanity. I have helped to create hundreds if not thousands of "living dead", those who are fed and watered artificially and require turning every 2 hours to prevent the development of bed sores. One man's journey through the application of science without humanity - science without dignity for human life and the reality of human death. It is a burden that I struggle to balance and to justify. Pursuing scientific answers to human questions is still a large part of my life. However, I inform my science with a broader view of how I'm called to love my neighbor as myself. In this way, I'm continually in dialogue with myself and others regarding how new chemicals and technologies will actually benefit people. The mantra in Medicine of "first do no harm" is one we would do well to apply across the spectrum of Science - "designer" tomatoes may not seem a bad idea on the surface, but when viewed with a more loving eye, the risks come further into view. This is what drove me to create "Possibilities Journey, Inc", a 501c3 public charity dedicated to re-engaging faith communities in health care and public health. Without the doctrine of selfless love and the development of healthy communities, we are quite possibly doomed to live with science without humanity. Something to consider as we come to another Holiday season. Peace for the journey, Dan

Just the Facts, Please

2011-11-21T09:48:00.001-05:00

Today I'm continuing my muse on the Seven Deadly Social Sins of Mahatma Gandhi. We find ourselves confronted with "Education Without Character" - hmmm, I wonder what the Mahatma was going on about?! Certainly in the U.S. we have a very good educational system overall (with well known issues of lack of pay for teachers, poor quality schools and inequality in education) but not a perfect system. Children today receive their mandatory education and make their way into the world. By standard test scores (SAT, ACT, SOL's, etc) they are well prepared to go out into the world and continue to pursue their roles as adults. However, standardized tests do not measure character. I wonder...are we educating people without attending to character development? In this connected world, there is never an unanswered question. Someone wonders about an issue, and smart phones launch browsers to find the answer. The only question is who has the fastest internet service on their phone/I-Pad. Answer(s) are found and the issue is laid to rest. What I find, however, is that seldom is there a critique of the quality of the answer(s). As is true of so much of the information out there on the internet, some of it is incorrect or misleading - answers without any depth of knowledge. There is a difference between information and knowledge (and certainly wisdom) that seems to escape people nowadays. So we can easily find facts, but can we find out about our character both individually and communally? Take a look at an on-line Dictionary and see what it says about the definition of character - it might surprise you. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, in his "I Have a Dream" speech noted that part of his vision was: "...I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character...." Are we educating our children in a way to accomplish this dream? Beyond not bullying and teaching children to not be rude or malicious either in person, or more frequently through technology, are we educating our populace about character development? With talk show personalities and T.V. violence, "real world" looks at people behaving badly and without regard to others, can we really say honestly that we are educating anyone how to build character? What is the content of your character? Educating for character is not something that belongs soley in the purview of the school system. It lies with the families and the faith communities and the larger community as a whole. When we all sit by and allow our children to watch shows that denegrate others, shows that promote worldly vices, violence, rudeness and disrespect, should we be surprised that we are living in a world where these behaviors are rampant? Educating with character is a responsibility of all of us. Building healthier communities begins with holding each other in higher regard - by loving another more than we love ourselves. Healthier communities are built when we hold each other accountable to a higher standard of behavior. Wholeness comes when we conduct ourselves morally and ethically in a manner that is beyond reproach - when we judge each other on the content of our character. Peace for the journey, Dan

Self Satisfied

2011-11-17T08:52:00.001-05:00

In the continuing saga of exploring Gandhi's Seven Deadly Social Sins, we find ourselves confronted with "Pleasure Without Conscience". Staggering to me that Gandhi saw the world around him in the 1930's and 40's and saw quite clearly that the world was headed towards a time where it lost its conscience. That's the world we live in right now, isn't it?! Corporate executives rape the businesses they run and then get multi-million dollar buy-outs. Global enterprises find the cheapest labor to produce the worst quality products that they can sell, and they don't care if it means tearing the top off of a mountain to get the raw materials. Humans in the U.S. are pursuing their own interests and satisfactions without regard to the impact of their decisions on others. It's all about the libido, all about pleasure, all about the self. It's a well known psychological fact that if we feed the Ego long enough without balancing it with empathy (i.e., narcissism), the Ego takes control and becomes a wicked task master - demanding ever larger sacrifices of time, money and self-worth. The world is constantly telling us to "just do it", to get all that we can because we only go around once, that there's no reason to deny ourselves anything - whether we can afford it or not. Movies and television reinforce this creedo showing us celebrities behaving badly and "Friends With Benefits" (a recent movie where two friends use each other for sex). "Hooking up" or "booty calls" are common, and not just among the young. I'm finding that recently divorced persons are also engaging in this kind of behavior - rather than opting for the effort it takes to form lasting relationships. People exist as objects for another to use up and throw away - we've become disposable! Relationships, especially healthy ones, require a great deal of effort and commitment, and the world tells us that we'll only get hurt again if we do that. What the world doesn't say is that if we really pursue pleasure without conscience, we will never, ever be satisfied - there's never an end to the uninhibited desire. Self satisfied...that's really the goal that we should be pursuing? All of the spiritual teachers over the course of millenia have warned against this self indulgence. They saw the decay of Rome and so many other "powers and principalities". They saw the ruin of uninhibited actions - actions that had no thought for the worth of others. They tell us of a differnet way, one that is disciplined and empathic. One that humbles the needs of the self for the good of the other. One that loves others more than it loves itself. One that searches for a message that brings peace and grace and wholeness. This week, examine what is driving your decision making. What are you spending your time, energy and money on? Are you finding yourself seeking ever bigger pleasures that bring you an ever smaller level of satisfaction? If you are, then you have become addicted to the thrill and have lost the ability to be satisfied. There is a different path and a different world view. You can find it if you try - it's as close as your nearest faith community. Peace for the journey, Dan

There's a Sucker Born Every Minute

2011-11-14T12:41:00.001-05:00

The third in my series on the Seven Deadly Social Sins of Mahatma Gandhi is "Commerce Without Morality". It is alleged that the great showman, P.T. Barnum, uttered the words in this post - and given his history, it's quite possible. He was always trying to push the envelope and bring in more money. Treatment of the people and animals in his circus was secondary to their ability to fill the tent (so to speak). With all the recent goings on in the world of business and finance, one has to wonder if we've really learned anything at all from our past. Wendell Berry has a lot to say on the issue of the growth of enterprise and the loss of a moral compass. Whether in his books or poems, he skewers the large conglomerate that is the agricultural industry; the govenrmental subsidies that promote the improper growing of crops; and the effect on the global economy and on small farmers worldwide who can't compete with unfairly priced commodities. In fact, when crops became commodities and began to be future traded, we started on a long road to social injustice and immorality. Business without a sense of right vs. wrong will always lead to injustice. When a business becomes so large that it loses its place in the fabric of the locale in which it's located (and the concomitant accountability) then it becomes all about profit margin and share holder return-on-investment. One just needs to review the policies of many large employers nowadays that do not provide benefits (health, retirement) to part-time workers. The greater Memphis metropolitan area has 50,000 people who are working but do not have adequate (or any) health insurance due to this policy. Right or wrong - where's the moral compass? The lack of morality in our current world view has been written about a lot. A study of 18 to 23 year olds in the U.S. showed that most felt that anything was right as long as an individual thought it was right. Thus, individual views trump societal values and morals. The idolization of the self leads to the demonization of everything else. For when I take a good thing, like business, and make it the ultimate thing (make it an idol that I worship), then everything that does not help my idol become mroe powerful is demonic. This happens all the time in our world - just listen to the political rhetoric in this country right now. When we lost the absolute truth that all people are created in the image of a loving G-d, then the resulting world can be nothing but satanic. The views of right and wrong from a spiritual sense are absolute. In order to recover our sense of morality in business, we first have to recover it in every other part of our world. Businesses that operate without morals are not demonic as much as they are lost. It is our duty as shepherds to go and find these lost sheep and return them to the flock. This week, take a hard look at the places you do business and evaluate their moral compass. Engage with your own compass to make sure that it is functioning well, and then take action on what you find. Whether it's Quran, Torah, Bible or other sacred teaching, recommit to it today so that we can repair the damage to our world tomorrow. Peace for the journey, Dan

Money for Nothing

2011-11-10T09:56:00.001-05:00

The second deadly social sin according to Mahatma Gandhi was "wealth without work". This was highlighted in an old song by Dire Straits "Money for Nothin'" where the idea was that guitar heroes "get their money for nuthin' and their chicks for free". The concept of wealth without work is a common theme in our day and age. Think about the ageless "Publisher's Clearinghouse Giveaway" or any of the myriad lottery offers. If you just spend a dollar, you could win millions. The studies of the winners however, yields a portrait of despair and destruction, instead of the beautiful and carefree life that ticket buyers envision. Funny how money doesn't change the person that you are and the decisions that you make. Money for nothing shows again the truth in the adage "there is no free lunch"; or as Christian scripture says, "where your treasure lies, there your heart will be also". Wealth without work - it really is a problem, isn't it?! When one doesn't earn a living, doesn't have "sweat equity" or is truly invested in the job, then there is often a lack of committment. It is a common finding among Habitat for Humanity home owners. They are given a house that they often have spent only a modest amount of time building, and they go about treating it poorly afterwards. Their newfound "wealth" is meaningless and hasn't changed their life or their lack of training on how to keep a house - many often have had little or nothing of their own for their whole lives. Handouts often keep people down rather than raising them up. There is a mantra in social services agencies that says "never do anything for someone that they can and should do for themselves". In other words, teach them to fish rather than just giving them fish. This philosophy is why microcredit organizations like Oikocredit are so popular and so effective. They give micro-loans to persons across the globe (mostly women) to spur businesses that otherwise wouldn't be albe to get off the ground. The Heifer Project is another initiative that comes to mind that gives wealth in the form of livestock - but then teaches the receipients how to care for and make profitable the raising of animals. This week I'd like you to take a good long look at the charity(ies) that you support. Which one or ones are lifting people up - helping them find wealth through work? Many of us look at year's end to give some of our money away. This philanthropy is the life blood for so many non-profits. However, make sure that your largess is not creating more problems than it is solving. Support programs and groups that seek to lift people up and improve the lives for all. Peace for the journey, Dan

Deadly Social Sins

2011-11-07T09:15:00.000-05:00

I received a mailing last week that highlighted Mahatma Gandhi's "Seven Deadly Social Sins". I was fascinated to look at the list and note again that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I think you might agree - here's the list: "Politics without principle; Wealth without work; Commerce without morality; Pleasure without conscience; education wihtout character; Science without humanity; Worship without sacrifice." How many of those resonate with you? I've struggled with all of them over the last bit of my life, and some of the social action we are seeing both here and around the world are dedicated to addressing these truths that Gandhi noted more than 60 years ago. It is striking that the concept of politics without principle is topmost on his list - and on my mind on the eve of an election day here in Virginia. More broadly, we are just one year before the next Presidential election, and the rhetoric and propaganda machines are already kicking into high gear. There does appear to be an acute lack of principled people who are elected to lead us. The operating philosophy appears to be "what's in it for me?". That's certainly an understandable worldview, but it is not a principle that leads. That worldview results in 50 million persons without adequate health insurance, a 27.4% reduction in Medicare payments to physicians (of note, Virginia is currently ranked 49th in Medicare payments to doctors) - patients are being let go from physicians who can no longer afford to treat them, increased spending without increased revenue, lack of a socially responsible vision. Lack of a set of guiding principles that are focused on socially acceptable outcomes is providing us leadership without vision. What are we to do about this lack of principle? There certainly is no quick fix to the problem - we're not suddenly going to see a slate of politicians (especially at the national level) who are focused on principle over self. The change has to come from the electorate. We have to change our worldviews into a more principled demeanor and approach. For we just elect those who reflect what it is that the majority believe (at least the majority [of the minority] that decide to vote). We need to re-discover the priniciples that have lead to healthier and more socially conscious communities. We don't have to look very far - the principles that work are contained in the Bible, Quran and Torah (to only name the three major tomes). I'm not beating a conservative and literal translation of the texts, rather, I'm advocating for a return to loving something more than we love ourselves. Reaching out to the least and the lost - the widows and orphans, and doing something meaningful to make their lot in life better. Providing healthy and wholesome communities for all people, not just the one's who resemble us and our views. This week, as you go to the polls (which I hope you do), look for opportunities to support candidates who act out of principles instead of out of self-interest. Break out of the habit of voting for a Party and research the person. Vote for principles and we will all be better off. By-the-way, take a good long look at your own guiding principles and see where they might need some improvement. Peace for the journey, Dan

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics...

2011-11-03T15:18:00.001-04:00

Familiar piece of a Mark Twain quote - but oh so true! I doubt that there's any need to say much more about this to anyone who's ever looked at a published research trial or tried to make sense of budgetary numbers or political propaganda. There's basically nothing that one can't do with numbers to prove that the sky is really purple, or that geese really fly north for the winter. Same is true with health information and research reports. It's not enough that alcohol use is hard to control, but now there's two new studies that look at the effect of ethanol on our bodies (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/good-news-and-bad-news-on-alcohol/2011/11/01/gIQAaz6odM_story.html). How do we make sense of conflicting issues when it comes to our health choices? Clearly, too much ethyl alcohol is a poison that kills heart cells, liver cells, brain cells; causes changes to most organs in the body; makes us do stupid things; causes death and destruction of families, homes, cars and lives. No one is quite sure, however, how much is too much. I was appalled by the "science" that showed a "moderate" amount of ethanol can actually be beneficial for one's heart. A glass of wine (or maybe two if you're male) each day seems to be cardioprotective. The problem is that daily alcohol use tends to start with one and continue to grow until it's out of control. Binge drinking is rampant, and not just among the younger crowd. How many people do you know who routinely drink 3 or more alcohol containing drinks at one occasion? It's such an issue in the Washington, DC, area that we stopped asking people if they drink alcohol, and how much. I've watched countless people in the ICU have withdrawal reactions even though the family swears that they don't drink. ("It's only one glass a night - but it never gets empty!") The acoholic beverage industry is a powerful lobby. The promotion of the health benefits receives a lot of T.V. time, while the damage done by alcohol (and the exorbitant costs generated) receive little or no play time. It is quite likely that you know someone right now who struggles with appropriate alcohol use. I encourage you to click on the CDC Widget to the right of this column to get more information so that you can begin to address the place that alcohol has assumed in that person's life. This week, take a measured approach to statistics and medical research reports. Make sure that your looking at both sides of the issue - not just the one that is receiving all the press. The truth is often sandwiched somewhere in between the "good" and the "bad". The old adage, "if it sounds to good to be true - it is!" rings true again. Peace for the journey, Dan