Monday, January 28, 2008
One more intuition about medical care...
While visiting with my mother on Friday in her new l bedroom apartment...I answered a call from her Dr. (one of them) it was a taped recording reminding her of her appt. today and then adding "if there is balance due bring it with you so we can care for you." My father who had the same Dr. hated that message, the implication being we can't care for anyone who is not paid in full..." Oh, to call for the ambulance to take me to the Hospital from Trinity Towers West where I live (less than a mile) costs $500.00 Needless to say I will hitchhike. Health care in this country is nonexistent, unless we can show them the money... Walgreen's Pharmacy recently sent residents here that medications will no longer be delivered (takes two hours a week) because we are 'NOT COST EFFECTIVE" Nice mood I am today...and the Dr. tells me 'not to worry'...seems like the REAL DR. once said it as well...Shalom
The Healing power of ???
What makes you sick? the list seems endless! I am reminded of the man in the Bible who has friends bring him to the pool day by day...I've been thinking a lot lately about sickness - as I have struggled with this and continue to do so.The list as I said goes on and on: politics, the daily musings of murders in the community, the traffic, the gossiping neighbor, and the list of physical ailments... I read this week of the death of a woman on the Vineyard who lived up Spring Street from Phyllis, Heather, Jennifer and I. She appeared on the front porch one night with her youngest daughter, both had been crying...
Their son and brother was near death ...and they came, even though they didn't go to Church because they had "heard" about the caring I had shared with Joel Counsel who had died recently. They had heard that I was the only one who had visited him in the Hospital and that unbeknownst to me, I had driven him from the PO up to town and then dropped him off at his home...When the fire alarm sounded 1/2 hour later it didn't dawn on me...
Joel had gone into his home, poured gasoline all over himself, and burnt to death...He , like Tim, had Aids but by burning to death he didn't become "one of those..." I went with Judy and Stacy to visit Tim, and prayed with them, and when he died I , like I did with Joel, did his funeral at the graveside... Some of the well-meaning Baptists and other Christians asked of me "why do you do this? aren't you afraid you will catch it?" I asked of them a question that is heard too much these days, but understood so little...'WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?"
I am caught between a rock and a hard place...since having the stroke I have been on what has been called 'life saving medicine." Each of these medicines that I take 'to keep me living" have side effects which are perilous to my well being. One Dr told me "you are depressed." My psychiatrist disagrees...another's answer was to punch into his laptop computer prescriptions for more medicines which add to the problem...the oncologist suggests that I see a gastroenterologist, and then this Dr. and that Dr. (it goes without saying that each of these will find something wrong in their particular area)
I wonder...if any or all of the medicine is helpful at all? except to support a health industry which has run amok. I mean, what will all the cancer Drs. do if they find a cure for cancer???? Might be they would have to drive a Ford instead of a Lexus... Don't get me wrong...I think that some medicine IS beneficial, but not much, not all. I am facing a difficult decision...a biopsy of a growing mass is too risky...yet I am told that no surgeon will operate without the biopsy... I asked the Dr. what do you know that I don't? when the reply was 'nothing', I decided that I would step back and pause and listen to the Great Physician...either way I will find healing...
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Anticipation...
It hardly seems 35 years ago, but it IS. Heather had flown to Florida with my parents! It was cold and snowy in Bainbridge, NY. Though Phyllis had started dilating early in the week, I was convinced that we would go BEFORE Sunday. Sunday morning at 6:00AM as my alarm went off Phyllis said 'LET'S GO" I had arranged (just in case) for a Substitute Preacher - and off we went.
In the middle of the Worship hour, JENNIFER LYN arrived to join our family...and I called the Church to bring the Good News...how times have changed. Nowadays, fathers are allowed to stay with their wives at the Hospital...I was allowed into the delivery room, and then ushered out only with the support of Dr. Porcarelli, and much to the nurse's dismay...
Little did Phyllis and I know on that blustery Sunday morning, that we would be truly blessed in having two beautiful, talented, compassionate daughters, but we shouldn't have been so surprised through the years considering who their mother was...Jennifer, surely a Star is dancing in the Heavens as we celebrate this day you were born, and you and your sister Heather remind me so very much of the wonderful person that your mother was... Happy Birthday!!!
Friday, December 28, 2007
HIDE AND SEEK...
I realize that I'm an old geezer, when hide and seek was a fun game -nowadays, teenagers and 20 somethings would laugh.
I remember playing 'hide and seek' in the late afternoon, and it took me a long time to realize as darkness came, that the game was over and NO ONE had come looking for me. I remember that because I have struggled during my life with the same question that my father struggled - what difference do we make? or do we. One might think that God was playing a game of hide and seek with the troubled people of that day. the King for which they had been searching, the Liberator who would rescue them from their common ordinary pathetic lives, didn't come where or how they thought//but rather in an obscure village of Bethlehem, and then in a Stable.
Young parents might identify the need when a new child arrives, at wanting to shut the doors, keeping relatives, friends, well wishing people at bay and have some time alone. Mary and Joseph might have identified with such feelings, although there was no doors in that manger, and the animals, and riff raff stopped by, and there was no privacy. It was a different world back then, just as it was when I was young. As a minister, I was 'expected' to always be on call, to smile even when I didn't feel like it, to comfort the afflicted, and as some would say afflict the comfortable. The day after Labor Day on the Vineyard, I finally took a day off to go fishing on Chappy, and the police were sent down to seek me out ...there was no privacy.
My father and I used to play this adult game of hide and seek...and when Phyllis died, and I moved down to Melbourne two years later, everyone wanted and needed to know where I was ' are you okay?" Forget about the fact that I was in my 50's, and I didn't know where anyone else was. I realized that having lost everything else in life, including control, i only controlled if I answered the phone or not. Like the Prodigal father that he was, Dad kept calling, and I kept not answering. He would ride his bike 10 miles from where he lived "just passing through the neighborhood." I knew where he was, and that he was there, but I also knew I was protecting THEM from my emotions.and feelings. which ran deep. and the ONLY person who understood those feelings was my father...
Each New Year's Eve when we were young, we wrote a letter to ourselves, putting it on my father's Office Desk and he would lock them away until the next new year's day. We might talk about resolutions, or dreams, or what we thought might or might not happen...I still do that...the last day of 1992, having written my letter while doing my Chaplain's job at the Island' Hospital, I said 'NOTHING NEXT YEAR CAN BE WORSE THAN THIS YEAR." I even mentioned it to Phyllis when I got home, what I had written...we had lost so many Churchmembers and friends that year... Little did I realize that as 1993 dawned, that my life, and that of Heather and Jennifer, would change forever... I already have remembered that in last year's letter, which I shall open on Tuesday I had written that my father would die this year...
As I get older, striving to spare those around me whom I love and cherish, the deep emotions, tears, and feelings which are part of ME, I have isolated myself...and while I hope that they understand, if they don't, then I still have to do it...I wonder if that wasn't part of what God was doing, when they first heard the whimering of a Child????
I remember playing 'hide and seek' in the late afternoon, and it took me a long time to realize as darkness came, that the game was over and NO ONE had come looking for me. I remember that because I have struggled during my life with the same question that my father struggled - what difference do we make? or do we. One might think that God was playing a game of hide and seek with the troubled people of that day. the King for which they had been searching, the Liberator who would rescue them from their common ordinary pathetic lives, didn't come where or how they thought//but rather in an obscure village of Bethlehem, and then in a Stable.
Young parents might identify the need when a new child arrives, at wanting to shut the doors, keeping relatives, friends, well wishing people at bay and have some time alone. Mary and Joseph might have identified with such feelings, although there was no doors in that manger, and the animals, and riff raff stopped by, and there was no privacy. It was a different world back then, just as it was when I was young. As a minister, I was 'expected' to always be on call, to smile even when I didn't feel like it, to comfort the afflicted, and as some would say afflict the comfortable. The day after Labor Day on the Vineyard, I finally took a day off to go fishing on Chappy, and the police were sent down to seek me out ...there was no privacy.
My father and I used to play this adult game of hide and seek...and when Phyllis died, and I moved down to Melbourne two years later, everyone wanted and needed to know where I was ' are you okay?" Forget about the fact that I was in my 50's, and I didn't know where anyone else was. I realized that having lost everything else in life, including control, i only controlled if I answered the phone or not. Like the Prodigal father that he was, Dad kept calling, and I kept not answering. He would ride his bike 10 miles from where he lived "just passing through the neighborhood." I knew where he was, and that he was there, but I also knew I was protecting THEM from my emotions.and feelings. which ran deep. and the ONLY person who understood those feelings was my father...
Each New Year's Eve when we were young, we wrote a letter to ourselves, putting it on my father's Office Desk and he would lock them away until the next new year's day. We might talk about resolutions, or dreams, or what we thought might or might not happen...I still do that...the last day of 1992, having written my letter while doing my Chaplain's job at the Island' Hospital, I said 'NOTHING NEXT YEAR CAN BE WORSE THAN THIS YEAR." I even mentioned it to Phyllis when I got home, what I had written...we had lost so many Churchmembers and friends that year... Little did I realize that as 1993 dawned, that my life, and that of Heather and Jennifer, would change forever... I already have remembered that in last year's letter, which I shall open on Tuesday I had written that my father would die this year...
As I get older, striving to spare those around me whom I love and cherish, the deep emotions, tears, and feelings which are part of ME, I have isolated myself...and while I hope that they understand, if they don't, then I still have to do it...I wonder if that wasn't part of what God was doing, when they first heard the whimering of a Child????
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
MY CHRISTMAS LETTER TO FLORIDA TODAY
I AM FAMOUS/INFAMOUS FOR MY LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...They have been written less of lately, but this Christmas I have felt compelled to say what was on my heart...the local paper censored part of what i had written - when I suggested that the politicians shut off the microphones and cameras, and go to New Orleans and help build a house, or visit a nursing home and its people and spend time with them, or go to a salvation army with cameras shut off and spend time reading a story to the children, and listening to them...
Only one person's opinion, but I share it with you, with a prayer on my lips that your Christmas was filled with peace and love...Blessed Christmas to you and yours...
Politicians not following star of Bethlehem
I am finding it more difficult in my journey to Bethlehem this year because unlike that journey thousands of years ago, there are political candidates of all parties and persuasions asking me whom I'm inclined to vote for.
They even have their press officers handing out flyers to remind me their candidate is more Christ-like than the other candidates.
As they journey, they are not following a star in the heavens that God placed before them, they are not compassionate to people of varied faiths and beliefs, and they are using the journey for their own agendas.
It certainly doesn't involve a child for them -- just look at the president's veto of the SCHIP health insurance bill for needy children.
Those who understand the meaning of the journey and the star wish the politicians would just shut up.
I walk towards Bethlehem following the star, having just lost my father, a daughter who has cancer and myself in uncertainty, because I still believe in God.
And in the belief that a little child shall lead us toward that time and place of new beginnings.
Rev. Peter Sanborn
Melbourne
Only one person's opinion, but I share it with you, with a prayer on my lips that your Christmas was filled with peace and love...Blessed Christmas to you and yours...
Politicians not following star of Bethlehem
I am finding it more difficult in my journey to Bethlehem this year because unlike that journey thousands of years ago, there are political candidates of all parties and persuasions asking me whom I'm inclined to vote for.
They even have their press officers handing out flyers to remind me their candidate is more Christ-like than the other candidates.
As they journey, they are not following a star in the heavens that God placed before them, they are not compassionate to people of varied faiths and beliefs, and they are using the journey for their own agendas.
It certainly doesn't involve a child for them -- just look at the president's veto of the SCHIP health insurance bill for needy children.
Those who understand the meaning of the journey and the star wish the politicians would just shut up.
I walk towards Bethlehem following the star, having just lost my father, a daughter who has cancer and myself in uncertainty, because I still believe in God.
And in the belief that a little child shall lead us toward that time and place of new beginnings.
Rev. Peter Sanborn
Melbourne
Monday, December 24, 2007
A special Gift on Christmas Eve...
I was up early on this Christmas Eve, and drove through the fog out to my sister's home in West Melbourne.
She and her husband had to be out - and I was to spend the time with my Mother. We chatted as she ate her breakfast, and I explained to her how this journey to Bethlehem was a bit difficult for me this year. She went in to get dressed for the day, and came out and I received this special gift..quality time with my mother, who had just lost her husband of over 68 years. She talked about this knot inside her chest, and she couldn't make it go away. She talked and I listened...and she told me about some feelings she had as a little girl, and talked of how other people thought she should be 'more sad by your Dad's death..." I explained to her that these feelings were normal and okay, that I didn't feel sadness with the fact that Dad had died, but selfishly I missed him dearly, and my sense of loss was only meager compared to hers!
We talked of the meaning of 'selfishness' that she felt badly when she felt such, and I explained from my own heart, that sometimes we HAD to be selfish about our emotions and feelings. Such feelings are new to her - and I listened to this woman who had given me birth 64 plus years ago, and felt as though God brought us, Madonna and child on this Christmas Eve to have this conversation... It was one of those conversations that happen rarely, if at all... I explained to her that what others felt about what was an 'appropriate' sadness was important, but that her emotions, as mine, overwhelm us particularly this Christmas season...
As I got up to leave after five hours, I told her that I love her, and I thanked her for this special gift which we shared with one another - it's not a gift that can be wrapped up, and placed under the tree...it is a gift which she and dad have shared so often with so many in their life together...and which I shall treasure for as long as I live... it's like the gift that the girls, Matt, Kyra and Lucas gave me - front row center seat for an Amy Grant/Vince Gill Christmas concert...two or three years ago this was their gift to me, and I think about that evening so often, and on this Christmas Eve as I gaze out my window when a gift touched my life with a bit of Heaven that I shall cherish always, as I will the gift today...
She and her husband had to be out - and I was to spend the time with my Mother. We chatted as she ate her breakfast, and I explained to her how this journey to Bethlehem was a bit difficult for me this year. She went in to get dressed for the day, and came out and I received this special gift..quality time with my mother, who had just lost her husband of over 68 years. She talked about this knot inside her chest, and she couldn't make it go away. She talked and I listened...and she told me about some feelings she had as a little girl, and talked of how other people thought she should be 'more sad by your Dad's death..." I explained to her that these feelings were normal and okay, that I didn't feel sadness with the fact that Dad had died, but selfishly I missed him dearly, and my sense of loss was only meager compared to hers!
We talked of the meaning of 'selfishness' that she felt badly when she felt such, and I explained from my own heart, that sometimes we HAD to be selfish about our emotions and feelings. Such feelings are new to her - and I listened to this woman who had given me birth 64 plus years ago, and felt as though God brought us, Madonna and child on this Christmas Eve to have this conversation... It was one of those conversations that happen rarely, if at all... I explained to her that what others felt about what was an 'appropriate' sadness was important, but that her emotions, as mine, overwhelm us particularly this Christmas season...
As I got up to leave after five hours, I told her that I love her, and I thanked her for this special gift which we shared with one another - it's not a gift that can be wrapped up, and placed under the tree...it is a gift which she and dad have shared so often with so many in their life together...and which I shall treasure for as long as I live... it's like the gift that the girls, Matt, Kyra and Lucas gave me - front row center seat for an Amy Grant/Vince Gill Christmas concert...two or three years ago this was their gift to me, and I think about that evening so often, and on this Christmas Eve as I gaze out my window when a gift touched my life with a bit of Heaven that I shall cherish always, as I will the gift today...
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