At the CMDS Conference there was a meeting arranged for psychiatrists to discuss the new euthanasia legislation. We had several practicing psychiatrists, retired psychiatrists, missionary doctors and a couple of new residents. Concern was expressed by all who noted that when people are suicidal they are most often not in their right mind to be making a life and death decision. Further if they are given the option of suicide then they can cling to that without consideration of alternative simply because it is a drastic permanent solution to what is most commonly a temporary problem. The residents stated that it was already being discussed with patients as a potential option.
The psychopharmacologists present, especially the older ones, listed countless cases of patients who presented suicidal because of untreated psychiatric illness whose suicidality stopped once their mental illness was addressed. It was such a common psychiatric practice and all had observed that a new medication could be literally life saving. Of those present several commented on observing this just recently with the latest of our medications for depression and anxiety, TRINTELLIX, PRISTIQ and ABILIFY. Patients who had previously had no relief experienced this with a change of medication and almost miraculously they stopped being suicidal. Their lease on life was restored.
Emotional pain was discussed as similar to physical pain. and Once the emotional pain was addressed hope was restored. There was further the idea that suicidal thoughts were common in the general practice and especially in the psychiatric practice but the obsession with suicide and suicidal behaviour could often represent psychotic thinking. Again once the psychosis was treated the obsession to suicide lifted. Everyone had seen such cases and expressed concern with the new almost beurocratic approach to death appearing to encouraging suicide.
There was also discussion of various psychotherapies which had worked to shift a patient from negative thinking to positive thinking. Cognitive behavioural therapy and paradoxical interventions and now dialectic therapies all have been shown again and again to cause a patient initially suicidal to simply rethink their options, choose life and move forward. The original psychoanalytic approaches still worked miracles. But every year there major advances in the potential psychotherapeutic approaches to the treatment of mental illness and especially suicidality.
Everyone present had known a suicidal patient and seen the devastation that suicides caused for the families and friends who felt helpless and seemed invariably to think that of it as the ‘wrong’ decision, ‘irrational’, or 'premature'. Yet the patient often presented 'as rational' and so often insisted they had really thought of or tried all options which we as psychiatrists most often saw was simply untrue.
There was a sense too that this paralleled the abortion issue which had similarly begun with extreme outlier examples and lots of mobilization of public support and moving quickly to the present state of the most lucrative abortion industry with its powerful financially invested lobby. How long would it take before psychiatrists might face being arrested for not encouraging euthanasia. Further given the financial realities of child rearing costs in Canada, increasingly abortion is forced on even the middle class. To call it ‘choice’ is a joke when in Toronto and Vancouver professionals with two incomes can’t afford a house and often barely manage to manage with prohibitive taxation. How long before the 'choice' of euthanasia is similarly forced on individuals. That certainly was the case in Holland where the older depressed patients were getting euthanasia rather than psychiatric care.
I especially liked the youngest person present who said , “I don’t like the euphemism, MAID. It’s euthanasia. I think my generation isn’t as stupid as the politicians think that they can candy coat a thing and eveyone won’t recognize it as euthanasia."
Personally I was thankful to be with other caring clinicians. I’ve been devastated by many suicides working in the highest risk populations. In this fentanyl crisis I’ve had several young patients overdose. Frankly I’m not sure if this wasn’t suicide given the increasingly callous disregard of the mentally ill and marginal by the privileged elite of our society. Increasingly I feel that my patients aren’t wanted. I am thankful for the Christian Medical and Dental Society because the clinicians, especially my colleagues in psychiatry, demonstrate such compassion.
We also discussed the pseudoscientific positions the increasingly aetheist authorities misuse and misrepresent science mostly to increase taxes and reduce services. There just aren't enough resources for the mentally ill, not enough acute or chronic beds and not enough psychiatrists or recovery options.
As clinicians working in the field of psychiatry in Canada most of us really feel we need spiritual solace in dark times. Being with these colleagues I remembered again that I must never forget that Jesus was a healer. I personally can solace in the Lord and comfort in the fellowship of faithful healers.
Praying with fellow psychiatrists was the highlight of my trip. Thank you Jesus.
Showing posts with label Christian Medical and Dental Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Medical and Dental Society. Show all posts
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Saturday, May 6, 2017
CMDS 2017 - Christian Aplogetics by Dr. Mark Chandra
(This presentation was literally standing room only. Mark is a very entertaining speaker who made a very strong case for the study of apologetics ‘giving an answer’, not apologizing but intellectually making the case. These notes are just a synopsis but give a jist of the topic and some indication of the nature of CMDS presentations. )
Christian Apologetics
Mark Chandra
What are we apologizing for?
It actually comes from the greek word ‘ apologia’ - ‘to give an answer’
I’m from New Brunswick but my parents came from Ghayana
My father was an East Indian Hindu who came to Christ later in life
My mother was Chinese and I was brought up Anglican. My brother is an Anglican priest
I liked most the ‘spiritual meaty topics of preachings’
I didn’t get a lot growing up but in medical school turned on christian radio and heard this
wonderful teaching like water to me…now I'm doing a phd in apologetics with the very people i listened to on the radio
i think we are in a unique position to meet young intellectuals in medical school
We would do them a disservice to not offer them something to meet where they are
I want to do a kind of apologetics for apologetics and why it’s
I did some paediatrics training at Queen’s ….we had a small ward and called it the “hospital for six children.”
To be ignorant and simple and not be able to meet the enemy on their ground….good philosophy is needed if only to face bad philosophy and tell the truth.’
The weapons of this world are weapons that can tear down false arguments and principalities.
Luke wrote Acts
The apostles went into foreign land and learned the culture of that land and then taught from that.
Jesus did miracles. Blind received their sight. Dead came back to life. Jesus healed the paralytic.
Jesus argued with reason as well as acts.
Secularism has taken over the universities. I don’t know how this happened.
I was in Harvard and looked at the motto - Veritas — the full motto is “Truth for Christ and his Church.’
The great universities started as theological
University - to find universal in the diversity
Theology was the Queen of Sciences
Theology would tell us God created a beautiful world with beautiful creatures.
Quoting John Patrick, used to say, “In all his years he’d never seen a cow appreciate the beauty of the dawn.”
In churches we build gymnasiums - we believe we worship in the church and God gave us bodies to enjoy and we do this in a game of basketball
My wife and child were watching “Chariots’ - line “God made me for a purpose for China and he also made me fast.”
If I had my way churches wouldn’t only build gyms but they’d build labs and libraries and astronomical centres
There is a power in CMDS as a
The work we do is to have professional groups as Christians
My pastor brought up the Da Vinci code and how that book shook a lot of peoples faith to the core - that’s the power of media and hollywood
The bible has many genre’s
-history
-poetry
-wisdom
-census
by far the most common genre in the bible is history and narrative
we are made to respond to stories and history
that’s the power of the arts and media
It has the power to bypass the intellect
Da Vinci code is written that way
You’re caught up in the story and the characters then later you have the ‘wonky theology’.
The enemy of your soul wants nothing more than
A lie that you pick up in 10 seconds of a tv show can take hours to get rid of
Right now Secularism controls the media and university.
As doctors we have power in society
As doctors we are seen as paragons of rationality
It’s easy to dismiss just a christian but it’s hard to dismiss a doctor.
The secularists are shook up by Christian doctors.
Hume - would describe the present of ‘sophistry and illusion’
If you were to make a panel of expects with politicians, doctors, and a pastor - the pastor’s opinion would could the least - they are seen as occupying a sphere of knowledge that is not real knowledge
At my school where my kids go, a Christian school, we do this thing called ‘tough questions’.
One question, “How can you believe in God with all the evil in the world?”
How do you believe in trinity when trinity isn’t in the bible
How can you believe in the bible when the bible is changing.
Having good judgement is not the same as being judgemental.
The more knowledgeable I am about something the less argumentative I am
That’s the way I am with medicine.
To our culture Christianity is offensive - we don’t have to add to it.
‘blind leap of faith comes after a long ramp of reason.”
Chapter meetings of CMDS - praise and worship then watch a video
I would like to see apologetics more at CMDS
Emotions only take me so far
Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, all they soul and all the mind and all thy strength
- it was first in Deuteronomy
- Jesus added ‘mind’
- I believe it was that we have the hellenistic - which divided knowledge in heart and mind but the jewish was that knowledge was heart and mind, not separate
- apologetics allows me to love God with my mind as well,
Model of Bible study
-apologetics should be part of this
1)It’s good for our faith
2) It’s an evangelical tool
The stakes are high here. Everyone argues back. Their whole world view is tied in this.
I have found that I have been able to put a pebble in their shoe
I have helped the person who was listening in, they were not involved in the emotionality of the thing but they’ve listened. I’m living proof that the holy spirit can work this way. I know Christianity can work on the heart but I came to Christ by my mind….my heart will quickly not believe what my mind thinks is not true
Maybe our special group is the group of people who is very culturally intellectual.
3) Apologetics is good at shifting culture
False ideas are always an impediment to the gospel
-if you think Christianity is just a delusion or irrational
-if you present Christianity to secular culture you shift it - I’ve seen John Patrick come to a campus and make Christianity for a while a ‘plausible thing’.
- I’ve seen it give Christian intellectuals in the class ‘permission’.
It must be done with respect and gentleness.
The gospel saves us from the guilt and power of sin
We do it with respect and gentleness and an upright life.
William Lane Craig - “ON GUARD”
Apologetics Top
Mr Chandra , somebody asked me ‘how do you believe in god with all the evil in the world.
You believe is a god all powerful
You believe in a god that is good
How come there is evil.
When someone asks you this
they are saying there is a thing of evil
But they’re telling you there is good
And also good and evil are objective things, not just subjective
When Hitler murdered 6 million jews he thought he was doing ‘good’.
That’s subjective
But we believe there is an objective good and evil
In every day life we believe good and evil are objective things.
We believe right and wrong are objective.
A kid gave John Patrick saying right and wrong were subjective so John gave him an F on the paper.
to believe in good and evil we need some sort of moral law.
where does the moral law come from
the force, god , or mother nature
That’s what they’re trying to disprove with the question….the person who asks these questions is assuming god to make any sense
always end with the heart stuff
Why did God questions are hard because I don’t know why god created the universe.
But think
God wanted to create a world where love was possible.
Real love requires freedom.
Forced love and autonomous
For real love to exist there must be possibility to freedom of choice
Always come back and bring some type of pastoral understanding
Q&A
Humble Apologetics
John Stackhouse
Hamilton apologists - Deconstructing narratives - we can’t plant the seed of the gospel - unless we stir up the ground - he’s
-secularists assume a meta- narrative - we all have narratives - it’s okay to be spiritual but not religious - secular society gets upset when we discus the big story - the meta narratives - secularists have a meta narrative that is never assumed but they believe their narrative is objective proof.
eg Religions are all the same but at their core are the same but its actually different….the metanaratives of their faith are really different
- 4 questions
- origins - where do I come from
- condition - why am I as I am
- salvation - what do I have to do
- destiny- what happens when I die
Secularist
- origin - chance plus time equals us
- condition - lack of reality determinists
- salvation - don’t need to do anything, just is
- destiny - nothing
Secularism comes from Seculum - there’s nothing beyond this world
Charles Taylor - CBC podcasts - myth of the secular
Jamie Smith - How not to be secular.
Canadian Apologetics Conference
-
RAVI - podcast apologetics - Can I live without God.
Mere Christianity - CS Lewis
Case for Creator
Darwin’s Black Box
- darwin didn’t know about biochemistry - small examples of natural selection
- mousetrap example -
- blood clotting cascade
CMI - evolution doesn’t make rational sense
Darwin - on descent of man - the implications
- if it could ever be shown that a complex organism could be built with each part not being for survival then my argument would be wrong - DARWIn
- Leahy as a microbiologist -
- new synthesis = darwin and genesis
CMDS 2017 - True Treasure, living gospel values in the medical community and culture at large, Pastor Dan MacDonald
Pastor Dan Macdonald: True Treasure , living gospel values in the medical community and culture at large
{I arrived late and missed the song that preceded this first plenary session of the day. I did however join near the end and heard the whole question and answer period, taking these brief notes to capture a sense of what the talk was on. I think this gives a taste of what goes on here. I’ve been coming to Christian Medical and Dental Society Meetings for a number of years and as well as leading clinicians it’s not uncommon for pastors to be speakers. Pastor Dan MacDonald was a lawyer before he went on to do a Masters of Divinity. He is now senior pastor at Grace Toronto Church. He is an astute observer and outstanding speaker and obviously very spiritually blessed and devoted to his service. (I had work to complete this morning then I walked from my hotel to this hotel , the long way, through Toronto of my childhood, a beautiful city, the financial and art districts. I lost track of time so enjoyed the walk and the beauty of this city.)}
How many of you are too busy?(All hands go up)How many of you are not busy?(5)
Your culture demands that doctor’s be busy.Our culture demands that a carpenter be busy.But demands a doctor be much more busy.
Referee for yourself.
When I looked at my own business and how I was building a practice,I saw that I was working more hours for more money and materialism was at the base of it.Ask about the spiritual principles
I know why I’m busy.I have an idol of respect and I want respect so do more work to get more respectI work in field of judges, lawyers, professionals all of who are busy
Ask yourself about your business? Is this what nurtures yourself spiritually as a Christian.
Persecution?Is it wrong to pray for persecution to go away.No But that was not all.In the New Testament they fled persecution.They had fear in Jerusalem and fled and spread the gospel.
Cultural ShiftShift away from Judea Christian beliefs.All the old traditional culture believes are being denounced.The new academics are being turned to instead of the judges, lawyers, bankers and now doctors.
Technology is changing the worldNew arguments of medicine will be whether someone’s 30% machine is true.
As Christians we need to get together in the medical world and decide how we may face this new culture in a godly way.
Pessimism - feeling nothing we do can make a difference?
You are going to have to navigate the doctor patient relationship.Your fiduciary relationship with patients is not our mission fieldYour colleagues may be
When you you obey God and practice civil disobedience?When the culture asks you to sin, you obey God.When your culture asks you to kill babies you obey GodWhen your culture asks you to murder, you obey God.
Civil Disobedience needs to be more than doctors, engage your pastors and Christiens.There is a community that is being discriminated against.In Alabama the whole community marched.The Gay community enlisted the larger community The Jews came together.
We as Christians have been very bad at this Because we’ve been living in the remnants of the Judea Christian cultureWe Have not realized we are in a post Christian environmentWe need to learn in a Post Christian community what the Jews learned, the Gays learned, the Blacks learned, that we need solidarity
Ask for the courage to bear up under persecution.
Get your church involved in advocacy.
WitnessHow do you prepare yourselfWell I ask , how did you prepare to be doctorsYou readStart with water cooler advocacy Read “Reason for God”You don’t need the high level Christian apologeticsYou need to have ‘water cooler answers’ really simple well thought out books
Moving from comfortable pew Christianity to activists.
We must learn the courage to speak boldly.
I say there is no room in Christianity for complacency.If you think so then REPENT.
We have false gods-sex, power, status,
God is sovereign. The more people who share their faith the more people come to God.It’s numerical.
You sow where you are. You will reap there.
The guys who want you to be a good Jewish doctor will talk to you. They won’t talk to meYou can influence them. You can talk to them. Introduce them to Jesus.
I was a lawyer, I influenced a court clerk I worked with as a young doctor.
Friday, May 5, 2017
CMDS National Conference 2017: "Singing the Lord's Song in a Foreign Land".
Dr. Anna Borowska encouraged me to attend my first CMDS, Christian Medical and Dental Society, meeting in Vancouver. Something about her genius, beauty and extraordinary operatic voice made me happy to be her church friend. Admittedly she also encouraged me to sing Handel’s Messiah which was utterly beyond my vocal chords. I did buy roller blades and give it a go for a while since she seemed to make it look far easier than it was.
I preferred much better cross country skiing with Dr. Lam. Dr. Lam was more involved with EMAS the missionary wing at the time of CMDS and was so kind to share his testimony with me. Truly inspiring, he had a painting of Jesus he’d made when he was young and felt moved to express his devotion in just this way. When times are tough I can still see that picture in my mind’s eye and remember Dr. Lam’s kindness and wisdom. I had attended fellowship meetings at Dr. Robin and Margaret Cottle’s home, singing praise with students long before I heard them the lead the whole of CMDS in hymns and worship.
Dr. Willie and Anita Gutowski invited me to join them at my first CMDS meeting in Gimli Manitoba. Growing up in Winnipeg I enjoyed the opportunity to visit Mom and Dad and then spend spiritual time with Willie and Anita. They were my closest connection to Dr. Albert Schweitzer’ whose moving story had contributed to my entering medicine. Anita, a nurse, and Willie a physician had done missionary work in Africa for years. He and his family are living Bibles to me personally. Later. Dr. Phillip Ney, the most extraordinary sailor, physician, psychiatrist, founder of Mount Joy College,pro life advocate and creator of Hope Alive Group Therapy would be another mentor who encouraged me to attend CMDS, this time in Edmonton. We call him a prophet as he rails against the growing lust for killing in Canadian society. If he were here today he'd be lamenting the motherless child and talking of the slippery slope. One step ahead of the crowd you're a leader. Two steps ahead, you're a martyr.
I am blessed to be in communion with such remarkable Christians. They live their faith and so many are evangelicals who do missionary work as well. I’ve also been amazed at the quality of CME. Dr. Allan Ronald, microbiologist and Order of Canada recipient presented one memorable year on his work fighting AIDS in Africa. It shouldn’t surprise me. The most read daily reflections of Christians is “My Utmost for His Highest”. We’re not known as slackers. Christians physicians have been and continue to be the foremost leaders of clinical and research medicine. They are the salt of the earth.
In Edmonton I enjoyed that the conference was in combination with Catholics. I am an ecumenical Christian an Anglican but only loosely denominational. The physician who sat next to me told me she’d attended Methodist and United Church but was now a member of a Mennonite congregation. I enjoyed most hearing and sharing with Dr. Abdul Majid Katme, a renowned British pro life Muslim physician when he joined with Dr. Ney in Azerbaijan to discuss Post Abortion Syndrome. Another time I was honoured to attend an Addiction Medicine conference with Dr. Twerki, the famed Rabbi Psychiatrist and author. In Malaysia I travelled on a train with another theist clinician and discussed how often patients come to us having had horrible experiences with atheist clinicians. I feel a kinship in general with spiritual people.
I am enjoying this year’s conference at the Double Tree by Hilton in Downtown Toronto. Next year’s will be in Halifax, again a combination of Catholic and Christian doctors. I really hope to attend if only because I truly love Halifax as one of Canada’s foremost little cities. It has been a while since I had Lobster too. The last time was the year I attended an Addiction Medicine Conference at Harvard and rented a Harley Davidson after to tour the New England coast. I’m due for more lobster. I can always benefit from the CME and Christian fellowship at CMDS.
This year the ethical issue of Conscience Protection is uppermost. More and more Canadians feel the government and it’s totalitarian smitten beurocracies are turning the majority of Canadians into aliens in their only home. Christians need not apply. Quit medicine and leave Canada if you don’t like it, we hear. Shut up and do as you’re told. It’s policy. It’s protocol. Don’t think for yourself. We’ll tell you what is right. All the while the fallacy of the ‘ends against the middle’ rules and ’straw man’ arguments proliferate. The verbal abuse I’ve heard before by officials is shocking. At CMDS I’ve sat with doctors crying as they shared they were leaving clinical practice or going away from Canada because they didn’t feel wanted. Last night I sat with a young compassionate Ontario phsycian who had moved to Alberta because she couldn’t in good faith practice in Ontario. She grew up there, studied there, her mother and father and family reside there but the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario doesn’t want her kind of physician. Their ‘diversity’ excludes Christians.
“I don’t want to kill. I didn’t become a physician to be a part of killing,” another young woman physician told me. Her eyes were glistening.. A grey haired clinician shared that a senior beurocrat had positively gloated when he told him to leave family medicine and go into pathology if he didn’t like killing. The irony is ever lost on the intellectuals. The death culture grows in the consumer society. I walk among them in the DTES where drugs kill hopes and hide the soul. The light goes out. Increasingly no one "really" cares. The patient now a customer is increasingly a commodity. It's not like any of these strangers are Jesus to those who themselves deny the soul. CMDS is always a good reminder for me. I remember one year Dr. Margaret Cottle said at a presentation, "It may seem like we're losing but I read a good book that says we win in the end." I loved the applause that day Today there was laughter too and we all applauded and stood for speakers and gathered together for prayer.
I preferred much better cross country skiing with Dr. Lam. Dr. Lam was more involved with EMAS the missionary wing at the time of CMDS and was so kind to share his testimony with me. Truly inspiring, he had a painting of Jesus he’d made when he was young and felt moved to express his devotion in just this way. When times are tough I can still see that picture in my mind’s eye and remember Dr. Lam’s kindness and wisdom. I had attended fellowship meetings at Dr. Robin and Margaret Cottle’s home, singing praise with students long before I heard them the lead the whole of CMDS in hymns and worship.
Dr. Willie and Anita Gutowski invited me to join them at my first CMDS meeting in Gimli Manitoba. Growing up in Winnipeg I enjoyed the opportunity to visit Mom and Dad and then spend spiritual time with Willie and Anita. They were my closest connection to Dr. Albert Schweitzer’ whose moving story had contributed to my entering medicine. Anita, a nurse, and Willie a physician had done missionary work in Africa for years. He and his family are living Bibles to me personally. Later. Dr. Phillip Ney, the most extraordinary sailor, physician, psychiatrist, founder of Mount Joy College,pro life advocate and creator of Hope Alive Group Therapy would be another mentor who encouraged me to attend CMDS, this time in Edmonton. We call him a prophet as he rails against the growing lust for killing in Canadian society. If he were here today he'd be lamenting the motherless child and talking of the slippery slope. One step ahead of the crowd you're a leader. Two steps ahead, you're a martyr.
I am blessed to be in communion with such remarkable Christians. They live their faith and so many are evangelicals who do missionary work as well. I’ve also been amazed at the quality of CME. Dr. Allan Ronald, microbiologist and Order of Canada recipient presented one memorable year on his work fighting AIDS in Africa. It shouldn’t surprise me. The most read daily reflections of Christians is “My Utmost for His Highest”. We’re not known as slackers. Christians physicians have been and continue to be the foremost leaders of clinical and research medicine. They are the salt of the earth.
In Edmonton I enjoyed that the conference was in combination with Catholics. I am an ecumenical Christian an Anglican but only loosely denominational. The physician who sat next to me told me she’d attended Methodist and United Church but was now a member of a Mennonite congregation. I enjoyed most hearing and sharing with Dr. Abdul Majid Katme, a renowned British pro life Muslim physician when he joined with Dr. Ney in Azerbaijan to discuss Post Abortion Syndrome. Another time I was honoured to attend an Addiction Medicine conference with Dr. Twerki, the famed Rabbi Psychiatrist and author. In Malaysia I travelled on a train with another theist clinician and discussed how often patients come to us having had horrible experiences with atheist clinicians. I feel a kinship in general with spiritual people.
I am enjoying this year’s conference at the Double Tree by Hilton in Downtown Toronto. Next year’s will be in Halifax, again a combination of Catholic and Christian doctors. I really hope to attend if only because I truly love Halifax as one of Canada’s foremost little cities. It has been a while since I had Lobster too. The last time was the year I attended an Addiction Medicine Conference at Harvard and rented a Harley Davidson after to tour the New England coast. I’m due for more lobster. I can always benefit from the CME and Christian fellowship at CMDS.
This year the ethical issue of Conscience Protection is uppermost. More and more Canadians feel the government and it’s totalitarian smitten beurocracies are turning the majority of Canadians into aliens in their only home. Christians need not apply. Quit medicine and leave Canada if you don’t like it, we hear. Shut up and do as you’re told. It’s policy. It’s protocol. Don’t think for yourself. We’ll tell you what is right. All the while the fallacy of the ‘ends against the middle’ rules and ’straw man’ arguments proliferate. The verbal abuse I’ve heard before by officials is shocking. At CMDS I’ve sat with doctors crying as they shared they were leaving clinical practice or going away from Canada because they didn’t feel wanted. Last night I sat with a young compassionate Ontario phsycian who had moved to Alberta because she couldn’t in good faith practice in Ontario. She grew up there, studied there, her mother and father and family reside there but the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario doesn’t want her kind of physician. Their ‘diversity’ excludes Christians.
“I don’t want to kill. I didn’t become a physician to be a part of killing,” another young woman physician told me. Her eyes were glistening.. A grey haired clinician shared that a senior beurocrat had positively gloated when he told him to leave family medicine and go into pathology if he didn’t like killing. The irony is ever lost on the intellectuals. The death culture grows in the consumer society. I walk among them in the DTES where drugs kill hopes and hide the soul. The light goes out. Increasingly no one "really" cares. The patient now a customer is increasingly a commodity. It's not like any of these strangers are Jesus to those who themselves deny the soul. CMDS is always a good reminder for me. I remember one year Dr. Margaret Cottle said at a presentation, "It may seem like we're losing but I read a good book that says we win in the end." I loved the applause that day Today there was laughter too and we all applauded and stood for speakers and gathered together for prayer.
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Jesus and Christmas
My mother taught me to pray beside my bed. We’d kneel together. I’d clasp my hands resting my elbows on the bed. I remember this. Talking to Jesus, with my mother. She taught me gratitude. She reminded me who to pray for, and told me about Jesus sacrificing his life for mine and for the whole world.
Mom was Baptist. I like to remember her and her sister, my Aunt Sally, belting out hymns in the church, the loudest women there by far. Their Christianity was exuberant together. My mom and her sisters had grown up in the church. The church was their social life, their home and their place of worship.
By the time I was in school my life revolved around hockey and my friends. And my friends weren’t Baptist. There wasn’t a Baptist church in Fort Gary. If they were religious at all they were Anglican, Catholic or United. I remember one was Jewish. I don’t know if there were Buddhists or Moslems. All that mattered was whether you played hockey or not. Then later it was volleyball and gymnastics. Then it was just sports and girls.
I dated Christian girls but they weren’t ’easy’. I liked ‘easy’ girls most. Easy girls were sexy and I liked sexy. I didn’t really think they were ‘easy’. I thought they were saints and I was a charity project. I was so thankful. We didn’t talk much about Jesus.
I attended church through high school and became the President of the Amalgamated Baptist Church Groups in Winnipeg. My best church friend, Doug, became a minister. My first room, Jon, mate was a Unitarian. We talked a lot about God. We talked about meaning, politics, purpose, afterlife and aliens and Vietnam. We also talked about girls. Breasts and legs and heavenly places.
I was raised Christian. There were Christians all around me. Three Christian churches within a block of my home though mom made Dad drive us to a Baptist church all of 20 minutes away in Fort Rouge. Trinity Baptist Church. I attended Sunday School and later sat in the church. I remember best a missionary from India and her slides one of which was an old Hindu man with banners from all the religions. I liked Sunday school when I was little and liked teaching it later as an adult. I can’t say I remember any of the sermons of my youth. Lots of hell and brimstone. I liked the choir though. Trinity had it’s own pool for dunking and that provided drama.. Baptists are long on sermons and heavy on prayer.
Christmas Services were the best time of year for hope and faith and love. Hell and brimstone gets toned down for Christmas. Even the fundamentalist fundamentalists have some propriety. The cookies and cakes in churches at Christmas are truly sacramental. So much love goes into them.
I attended Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in the basement of the church. We had great suppers there too. Mom and the other ladies would man the kitchen. We’d enjoy veritable potluck feasts. Everyone pitched in. There were picnics in the summer too. I remember the three legged races best.
But the whole world of school and sports and friends I hung out with, Garth and Kirk, and later Jamie and Wes and Keith and Colin and later many others made up the centre of my world. Church was something on the side. Not like it had been for my mom and her sisters . Their world revolved around Jesus. My minister friend was like that. I wasn’t. I was more into the smorgasbord of life.
I began writing poetry well early, and playing guitar badly early, too. I loved to dance and Baptists didn’t like dancing.
We joined the YMCA. That’s Young Men’s Christian Association. When I began organizing and running coffeehouse in high school years I’d left gymnastics and sports for the Manitoba Theatre School. That was the secular world I’d live in with dance and drama and music. I’d found the music and lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel, Gordon Lightfoot, the Beatles. I was reading Al Purdy, Catcher on the Rye, Leonard Cohen The Wise Eye Coffeehouse we organized with the YWCA girls was a secular time. But the ideas of the music of the day, those of Pete Seegers and Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary and locally the Guess Who and the Donahues were exploring the intellectual and spiritual.
When I was in school there’d been daily prayer and then time for prayer and eventually no prayer. I learned to meditate young and martial arts was tied to a universal spirituality. But despite the Christianity of the Knights the winning warriors of WWII we never thought of Christians as martial artists as kids. Not then. Now yes, but not then. Then I was learning Ju Jit Su and much later Tai Chi. My father taught me boxing and shooting we wrestled in the Y. All those were Christian but Hollywood had already begun to rewrite history,dumping it down and taking the God out of Creation. Telling the Lies and Bigger Lies.
At University though I was fortunate to study Bible under Dr. Carl Ridd. He was a former basketball champion, English Literature Professor and United Church minister. I loved my undergraduate days at University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ridd had taken it upon himself to teach a course called “Literature of the Bible.” It’s was one of the most moving experiences of my whole university career right up there with looking in a electron microscope and later assisting in neurosurgery and doing psychotherapy that cured neurodermatitis and stopped people wanting to suicide so bad.
I became a yogi back then too, studying Paramahansa Yoganandya who taught that Jesus was fully enlightened. The Hindu Christian belief was that of Christ Consciousness.
But really I believed ‘all we need is love’ and with love I meant passion. The women in my life, the dancer, was the most passionate and adventurous and beautiful goddess any man could hope to know. She was holy. Our love making was transcendent. I wanted to live in perpetual orgasm and that would be heaven enough for me. My wives would teach me that the Song of Songs didn’t begin as a description of love of God. The song when I was 21 fit me too. I loved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford in the Way We Were.
Christmas was a special time though. I ‘d find myself each Christmas reflecting on Jesus. That was before the great intellectual wine and fabulous food fest dinner parties of married life became their own Last Suppers. We’d get together with family. We’d have this wonderful time. Turkey dinners with my Aunt in town. Hockey on tv. My father and brother and the dog. Opening presents under the tree. Tobogganing in the afternoon as kids.
As adults the politics would begin, dinner at her place, Christmas eve dinners, dinner at my place, Shrimp and Lobster dinners. Christmas day, always a tree, and tangerines, and presents and friends, and cross country skiing. The women were always so beautiful. Holidays were glamorous. We danced back then. Viennese waltz. The movie to end all movies was Dr. Zhivago.
Church wasn’t as competitive with the university, hospital, the ballet, the dinner party, the theatre, the night clubs and the bar. Even the coffeehouse was more interesting. I married sexy women and Christianity wasn’t sexy back then. It sure is today though. The women I married weren’t Christian, though one was nominally, so I would often find myself alone meditating and praying. I’d occasionally go to church with my Mom and my Aunt. Church and Bible were not a part of my marriages. I’d learned to pray by my bed with my mother but now my bed was a holy temple of it’s own. I’d pray elsewhere, Often under stars. I’ll forever have a fond memory of the chapel at University of Winnipeg. Later Hospital chapels were places to go and be alone with God. Normally I’d be up earlier in the morning meditating in my homes.
Then a Jewish atheist psychiatrist I so admired in my psychiatric residency told me meditation was harmful for the brain. I began my training under him in psychoanalysis. Only later I’d realize how shallow he was but I never lost my love for Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. I especially loved a play done recently at Pacific Theatre with Ron Reid , one in which C S Lewis meets Sigmund Freud. I loved C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy and Mere Christianity, not to mention Narnia. I returned to prayer and mediation but first smoked dope for a while and drank some wine. Jeremiah was a Bullfrog.
I sailed too and it’s true. There are no atheists in fox holes or at sea. I’d not been in fox holes but I certainly regained humility and awe at sea.
Dr. Willi Gutowski and Father Fred came along like teachers do when the student is ready. . They were living Bibles. I read the Bible again began praying as a good habit, not just because I needed to get out of a bad fix.. Meditation would return. I’d spend long times silent around Christmas. I studied prayer at Regent College with Dr. James Houston, attended Vancouver Theological College and later St. Mark’s with my dear friend Dr. John Christensen.
Christmas carols stirred me again and I cried.
I wrote more about Jesus. I often said that I’d found Christ as a child but only met Jesus after a third divorce and the disillusionment with the corruption in politics, hospitals and academia. All the characters of the story of Jesus seemed so much apart of the present day.
Dr. Phillip Ney introduced me to pro life. Herod had killed babies fearful of the return of Christ and here the abortionist s were making a killing hand over fist sucking the life out of wombs. Meanwhile our government’s evil when it gave the Order of Canada to that murderer Morgentaler. I’d trained with a genius, Dr. Jack HIldes who introduced me to northern medicine and taught me community medicine, a true mensch of a man. He’d been given the Order of Canada and I was proud to be Canadian when I learned that. But the older I became the more I found the lies stifling in the secular world. More and more I saw that men and women in my church were at least trying trying to be Good. There was hypocrisy. We are all human. But the Godlessness and cruelty and lies grew with the increasing persecution of Christians by the Supreme Court and Government.
I saw that Christians at the Salvation Army were walking the walk. My sponsors Bernie and later Hank were both Christians who would talk for hours with me about morality and virtue and God. My other sponsor Scotty was a celtic pagan sun god worshipper. His actions were admirable. We all just seemed to get along. My psychiatry mentor was a Moslem man of great integrity. My psychiatrist friend was a Buddhist doctor. We all just served. Medicine brought use all together, even the atheists who much preferred to talk, rolled up their sleeves when the time called for it. Jesus was a healer and a teacher. He was only a warrior against Satan. With people he was a friend and fellow. I learned most of my loving of service from colleagues.
So Christmas was the birth of a healer. He was also an educator. Luke the apostle was a doctor.
I became a member of the Christian Medical and Dental Society thanks to Dr. Gutowski and Anna Borowska. There I met another living Gospel, Dr. Lam, a humble Chinese doctor who served as a missionary with the Evangelical Medical Association. His example in life and his love of his wife and family were incredibly moving . He loved music too. I loved the drawing he showed me he’d made of Jesus.
Christmas dinners brought all these thoughts together. My sailing buddy Tom and I would talk and argue about liberal and conservative Christianity. I loved Bishop Michael Ingham’s ecumenicalism and Peter Elliott and his coming out, the Rainbow Church. We would talk for hours about sexuality and spirituality. I’d lunch every month with my Christian sponsor, I’d join Promise Keepers and a Christian Men’s Breakfast.
I’d felt my first divorce had cut me off from my church. You couldn’t be a deacon if you were divorced then. I was tainted and impure. Meanwhile single and divorced women were popping up as ministers. I’d remember the standards that had ruled for us men. Then there were gay ministers. Once you let the single women preach there was no restrictions. I liked those married ministers of old best, the disciplined ones, those who had somehow faced the temptations that were many and still maintained their marriages and family. I grew fond of celibate priests too though frankly sex was as sacred as chocolate for me and something I’d forsaken for a year or more but didn’t think was something I’d want to forsake for life. When divorce no longer kept me from the church then my homosexual experience and my drunken stoned escapades certainly excluded me from the church. I felt more comfortable talking with men in a 12 step meeting than I did in church till I was older.
God never left me though. I left him. Indeed in the depth of the abyss fearing death at sea I’d prayed the Lord’s Prayer knowing I was backed into a wall where only the song Jesus Loves Me, this I know, was kept in reserve to keep me from despair. Up all night delivering babies and saving lives on call in emergency I’d had no difficulty praying for help. I’d thanked all my teachers and all the books for helping me be of service to my patients all those years. But here I personally was uncertain that I’d not got beyond God’s grace. It sounds so silly to me today. I love the book, “Your God is too small”. I especially love the saying, “Get down off the cross, we can use the wood.” God had sunk the more I focussed on myself. “I might not be much but I’m all I think about.”
Now thanks to so many I found my way in rooms, church basements and churches propers. We began again to talk of God and a what it was to be a good human. What was a good life. What was our role. What was the meaning of life. Surely it was more than illusion or reaction or pleasure and war. Once again I came back to the contemplation of Jesus in a manger.
I travelled to Jerusalem hearing Leonard Cohen on a taxi radio in Israel. Hallelujah. I sang “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem with a dozen others in as many languages in the church in Bethlehem built on the site where Jesus was born. Millions have prayed there as we did. Like my mother taught me. On my knees.
Now another Christmas is coming round. I’ve got a Master of Divinity on the wall now. Not a particularly good one. I penned a national article on my being a better doctor than I am a Christian. I muddle along. I’m still reading the Bible. Reading the Bible every day at meals with Willi and Anita Gutowski leaves a mark on you. I’ve read the Bible through several times thanks to the encouragement of Prof. Ridd and Prof. Houston. Now al this helps me in my work in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver encouraging addicts and alcoholics that there is a better life in Recovery. I am mostly giving hope and offering a Way Out. All the medicine that I do is secondary to this. It’s healing. And I’m healing with those in my other clinic where my patients are dealing with depression and anxiety, grief and trauma. Many are struggling with serious physical disease and I encourage them and help them with all the education and training and experience and resources I have to give.
The story remains the same. I was in the church plays of nativity and remember interrupting the whole show to call out hello to my brother Ron. He was also in those early Sunday School plays. He had speaking parts. Mine wasn’t supposed to be. But when I saw my brother I just had to call out to him.. I would have been 5 or 6 at the time. My brother was more mature, 4 years older and always looking out for his little brother who could be quite the handful.
The tears are the same. Each time I read the story of Jesus I cry. I cry because of Jesus, because of the man and because of the God. I cry. I’m not supposed to cry. They beat me and gained me and locked me up. They even took away my Bible and told me not to read it but I did. I was even offered riches and high position if I’d just forget about Jesus and never mention him again. I know parts of the Bible by heart. I still like to read it. It’s the stories I love and remember. Mostly the stories of Jesus.
Of course I know that Christ consciousness filled the world with his life and death and resurrection. it’s a String Theory thing. Nothing is impossible in the miraculous. There’s dimensions and there are dimensions.
Christ is born. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again. Hallelujah. Welcome Baby Jesus.
Mom was Baptist. I like to remember her and her sister, my Aunt Sally, belting out hymns in the church, the loudest women there by far. Their Christianity was exuberant together. My mom and her sisters had grown up in the church. The church was their social life, their home and their place of worship.
By the time I was in school my life revolved around hockey and my friends. And my friends weren’t Baptist. There wasn’t a Baptist church in Fort Gary. If they were religious at all they were Anglican, Catholic or United. I remember one was Jewish. I don’t know if there were Buddhists or Moslems. All that mattered was whether you played hockey or not. Then later it was volleyball and gymnastics. Then it was just sports and girls.
I dated Christian girls but they weren’t ’easy’. I liked ‘easy’ girls most. Easy girls were sexy and I liked sexy. I didn’t really think they were ‘easy’. I thought they were saints and I was a charity project. I was so thankful. We didn’t talk much about Jesus.
I attended church through high school and became the President of the Amalgamated Baptist Church Groups in Winnipeg. My best church friend, Doug, became a minister. My first room, Jon, mate was a Unitarian. We talked a lot about God. We talked about meaning, politics, purpose, afterlife and aliens and Vietnam. We also talked about girls. Breasts and legs and heavenly places.
I was raised Christian. There were Christians all around me. Three Christian churches within a block of my home though mom made Dad drive us to a Baptist church all of 20 minutes away in Fort Rouge. Trinity Baptist Church. I attended Sunday School and later sat in the church. I remember best a missionary from India and her slides one of which was an old Hindu man with banners from all the religions. I liked Sunday school when I was little and liked teaching it later as an adult. I can’t say I remember any of the sermons of my youth. Lots of hell and brimstone. I liked the choir though. Trinity had it’s own pool for dunking and that provided drama.. Baptists are long on sermons and heavy on prayer.
Christmas Services were the best time of year for hope and faith and love. Hell and brimstone gets toned down for Christmas. Even the fundamentalist fundamentalists have some propriety. The cookies and cakes in churches at Christmas are truly sacramental. So much love goes into them.
I attended Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in the basement of the church. We had great suppers there too. Mom and the other ladies would man the kitchen. We’d enjoy veritable potluck feasts. Everyone pitched in. There were picnics in the summer too. I remember the three legged races best.
But the whole world of school and sports and friends I hung out with, Garth and Kirk, and later Jamie and Wes and Keith and Colin and later many others made up the centre of my world. Church was something on the side. Not like it had been for my mom and her sisters . Their world revolved around Jesus. My minister friend was like that. I wasn’t. I was more into the smorgasbord of life.
I began writing poetry well early, and playing guitar badly early, too. I loved to dance and Baptists didn’t like dancing.
We joined the YMCA. That’s Young Men’s Christian Association. When I began organizing and running coffeehouse in high school years I’d left gymnastics and sports for the Manitoba Theatre School. That was the secular world I’d live in with dance and drama and music. I’d found the music and lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel, Gordon Lightfoot, the Beatles. I was reading Al Purdy, Catcher on the Rye, Leonard Cohen The Wise Eye Coffeehouse we organized with the YWCA girls was a secular time. But the ideas of the music of the day, those of Pete Seegers and Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary and locally the Guess Who and the Donahues were exploring the intellectual and spiritual.
When I was in school there’d been daily prayer and then time for prayer and eventually no prayer. I learned to meditate young and martial arts was tied to a universal spirituality. But despite the Christianity of the Knights the winning warriors of WWII we never thought of Christians as martial artists as kids. Not then. Now yes, but not then. Then I was learning Ju Jit Su and much later Tai Chi. My father taught me boxing and shooting we wrestled in the Y. All those were Christian but Hollywood had already begun to rewrite history,dumping it down and taking the God out of Creation. Telling the Lies and Bigger Lies.
At University though I was fortunate to study Bible under Dr. Carl Ridd. He was a former basketball champion, English Literature Professor and United Church minister. I loved my undergraduate days at University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ridd had taken it upon himself to teach a course called “Literature of the Bible.” It’s was one of the most moving experiences of my whole university career right up there with looking in a electron microscope and later assisting in neurosurgery and doing psychotherapy that cured neurodermatitis and stopped people wanting to suicide so bad.
I became a yogi back then too, studying Paramahansa Yoganandya who taught that Jesus was fully enlightened. The Hindu Christian belief was that of Christ Consciousness.
But really I believed ‘all we need is love’ and with love I meant passion. The women in my life, the dancer, was the most passionate and adventurous and beautiful goddess any man could hope to know. She was holy. Our love making was transcendent. I wanted to live in perpetual orgasm and that would be heaven enough for me. My wives would teach me that the Song of Songs didn’t begin as a description of love of God. The song when I was 21 fit me too. I loved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford in the Way We Were.
Christmas was a special time though. I ‘d find myself each Christmas reflecting on Jesus. That was before the great intellectual wine and fabulous food fest dinner parties of married life became their own Last Suppers. We’d get together with family. We’d have this wonderful time. Turkey dinners with my Aunt in town. Hockey on tv. My father and brother and the dog. Opening presents under the tree. Tobogganing in the afternoon as kids.
As adults the politics would begin, dinner at her place, Christmas eve dinners, dinner at my place, Shrimp and Lobster dinners. Christmas day, always a tree, and tangerines, and presents and friends, and cross country skiing. The women were always so beautiful. Holidays were glamorous. We danced back then. Viennese waltz. The movie to end all movies was Dr. Zhivago.
Church wasn’t as competitive with the university, hospital, the ballet, the dinner party, the theatre, the night clubs and the bar. Even the coffeehouse was more interesting. I married sexy women and Christianity wasn’t sexy back then. It sure is today though. The women I married weren’t Christian, though one was nominally, so I would often find myself alone meditating and praying. I’d occasionally go to church with my Mom and my Aunt. Church and Bible were not a part of my marriages. I’d learned to pray by my bed with my mother but now my bed was a holy temple of it’s own. I’d pray elsewhere, Often under stars. I’ll forever have a fond memory of the chapel at University of Winnipeg. Later Hospital chapels were places to go and be alone with God. Normally I’d be up earlier in the morning meditating in my homes.
Then a Jewish atheist psychiatrist I so admired in my psychiatric residency told me meditation was harmful for the brain. I began my training under him in psychoanalysis. Only later I’d realize how shallow he was but I never lost my love for Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. I especially loved a play done recently at Pacific Theatre with Ron Reid , one in which C S Lewis meets Sigmund Freud. I loved C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy and Mere Christianity, not to mention Narnia. I returned to prayer and mediation but first smoked dope for a while and drank some wine. Jeremiah was a Bullfrog.
I sailed too and it’s true. There are no atheists in fox holes or at sea. I’d not been in fox holes but I certainly regained humility and awe at sea.
Dr. Willi Gutowski and Father Fred came along like teachers do when the student is ready. . They were living Bibles. I read the Bible again began praying as a good habit, not just because I needed to get out of a bad fix.. Meditation would return. I’d spend long times silent around Christmas. I studied prayer at Regent College with Dr. James Houston, attended Vancouver Theological College and later St. Mark’s with my dear friend Dr. John Christensen.
Christmas carols stirred me again and I cried.
I wrote more about Jesus. I often said that I’d found Christ as a child but only met Jesus after a third divorce and the disillusionment with the corruption in politics, hospitals and academia. All the characters of the story of Jesus seemed so much apart of the present day.
Dr. Phillip Ney introduced me to pro life. Herod had killed babies fearful of the return of Christ and here the abortionist s were making a killing hand over fist sucking the life out of wombs. Meanwhile our government’s evil when it gave the Order of Canada to that murderer Morgentaler. I’d trained with a genius, Dr. Jack HIldes who introduced me to northern medicine and taught me community medicine, a true mensch of a man. He’d been given the Order of Canada and I was proud to be Canadian when I learned that. But the older I became the more I found the lies stifling in the secular world. More and more I saw that men and women in my church were at least trying trying to be Good. There was hypocrisy. We are all human. But the Godlessness and cruelty and lies grew with the increasing persecution of Christians by the Supreme Court and Government.
I saw that Christians at the Salvation Army were walking the walk. My sponsors Bernie and later Hank were both Christians who would talk for hours with me about morality and virtue and God. My other sponsor Scotty was a celtic pagan sun god worshipper. His actions were admirable. We all just seemed to get along. My psychiatry mentor was a Moslem man of great integrity. My psychiatrist friend was a Buddhist doctor. We all just served. Medicine brought use all together, even the atheists who much preferred to talk, rolled up their sleeves when the time called for it. Jesus was a healer and a teacher. He was only a warrior against Satan. With people he was a friend and fellow. I learned most of my loving of service from colleagues.
So Christmas was the birth of a healer. He was also an educator. Luke the apostle was a doctor.
I became a member of the Christian Medical and Dental Society thanks to Dr. Gutowski and Anna Borowska. There I met another living Gospel, Dr. Lam, a humble Chinese doctor who served as a missionary with the Evangelical Medical Association. His example in life and his love of his wife and family were incredibly moving . He loved music too. I loved the drawing he showed me he’d made of Jesus.
Christmas dinners brought all these thoughts together. My sailing buddy Tom and I would talk and argue about liberal and conservative Christianity. I loved Bishop Michael Ingham’s ecumenicalism and Peter Elliott and his coming out, the Rainbow Church. We would talk for hours about sexuality and spirituality. I’d lunch every month with my Christian sponsor, I’d join Promise Keepers and a Christian Men’s Breakfast.
I’d felt my first divorce had cut me off from my church. You couldn’t be a deacon if you were divorced then. I was tainted and impure. Meanwhile single and divorced women were popping up as ministers. I’d remember the standards that had ruled for us men. Then there were gay ministers. Once you let the single women preach there was no restrictions. I liked those married ministers of old best, the disciplined ones, those who had somehow faced the temptations that were many and still maintained their marriages and family. I grew fond of celibate priests too though frankly sex was as sacred as chocolate for me and something I’d forsaken for a year or more but didn’t think was something I’d want to forsake for life. When divorce no longer kept me from the church then my homosexual experience and my drunken stoned escapades certainly excluded me from the church. I felt more comfortable talking with men in a 12 step meeting than I did in church till I was older.
God never left me though. I left him. Indeed in the depth of the abyss fearing death at sea I’d prayed the Lord’s Prayer knowing I was backed into a wall where only the song Jesus Loves Me, this I know, was kept in reserve to keep me from despair. Up all night delivering babies and saving lives on call in emergency I’d had no difficulty praying for help. I’d thanked all my teachers and all the books for helping me be of service to my patients all those years. But here I personally was uncertain that I’d not got beyond God’s grace. It sounds so silly to me today. I love the book, “Your God is too small”. I especially love the saying, “Get down off the cross, we can use the wood.” God had sunk the more I focussed on myself. “I might not be much but I’m all I think about.”
Now thanks to so many I found my way in rooms, church basements and churches propers. We began again to talk of God and a what it was to be a good human. What was a good life. What was our role. What was the meaning of life. Surely it was more than illusion or reaction or pleasure and war. Once again I came back to the contemplation of Jesus in a manger.
I travelled to Jerusalem hearing Leonard Cohen on a taxi radio in Israel. Hallelujah. I sang “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem with a dozen others in as many languages in the church in Bethlehem built on the site where Jesus was born. Millions have prayed there as we did. Like my mother taught me. On my knees.
Now another Christmas is coming round. I’ve got a Master of Divinity on the wall now. Not a particularly good one. I penned a national article on my being a better doctor than I am a Christian. I muddle along. I’m still reading the Bible. Reading the Bible every day at meals with Willi and Anita Gutowski leaves a mark on you. I’ve read the Bible through several times thanks to the encouragement of Prof. Ridd and Prof. Houston. Now al this helps me in my work in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver encouraging addicts and alcoholics that there is a better life in Recovery. I am mostly giving hope and offering a Way Out. All the medicine that I do is secondary to this. It’s healing. And I’m healing with those in my other clinic where my patients are dealing with depression and anxiety, grief and trauma. Many are struggling with serious physical disease and I encourage them and help them with all the education and training and experience and resources I have to give.
The story remains the same. I was in the church plays of nativity and remember interrupting the whole show to call out hello to my brother Ron. He was also in those early Sunday School plays. He had speaking parts. Mine wasn’t supposed to be. But when I saw my brother I just had to call out to him.. I would have been 5 or 6 at the time. My brother was more mature, 4 years older and always looking out for his little brother who could be quite the handful.
The tears are the same. Each time I read the story of Jesus I cry. I cry because of Jesus, because of the man and because of the God. I cry. I’m not supposed to cry. They beat me and gained me and locked me up. They even took away my Bible and told me not to read it but I did. I was even offered riches and high position if I’d just forget about Jesus and never mention him again. I know parts of the Bible by heart. I still like to read it. It’s the stories I love and remember. Mostly the stories of Jesus.
Of course I know that Christ consciousness filled the world with his life and death and resurrection. it’s a String Theory thing. Nothing is impossible in the miraculous. There’s dimensions and there are dimensions.
Christ is born. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again. Hallelujah. Welcome Baby Jesus.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Christian Medical and Dental Society Annual Christmas Banquet
I love CMDS (www.cmdscanada.org). It comforts me just to know it is there. The doctors I’ve met and shared with in this organization have so impressed me not only for their excellence as physicians and dentists but for their compassion as humans. They’re mostly family people as is the Christian way. They celebrate their partners and their children. They are close to their churches and their Bibles. They are hopeful people.
This year we met at Kaya’s the fabulous Malaysian restaurant on Broadway at Oak. Dr. Tam greeted us at the door immediately making my friend, Laura and I feel welcome. I had the pleasure then to speak with Dr. Jeffrey Greenman, President of Regent College. His wife is a paediatrician. I shared how I’d fallen in love with Regent attending the courses of Dr. James Houston.
“He’s teaching another course next year,” Dr. Greenman told me. “He’s 94 this year and has more energy and enthusiasm than some of us half his age.” Later at our table I’d share how much Dr. James Houston’s simple book on Prayer had influenced me.
Meanwhile, my friend Laura, had met Kirsti, the Art Historian wife of the Ken, the esteemed violinist North Vancouver family physician. They were talking about their children and travels.
A collection of medical students and seasoned CMDS musicians and singers had come together for the occasion leading us all in singing Christmas carols through the evening. Singing Silent Night, Holy Night, and Joy to the World did wonders for my soul.
Delicious food began to arrive miraculously. Plate after plate of marvellous morsels graced the table. As a typical doctor I’d missed lunch and was soon contentedly full with the delights of Kaya’s famed kitchen.
Dr Jeffrey Greenman spoke on the subject “Fear Not”. I loved that he drew his message from the verses of Luke, the physician gospel writer. I couldn’t help but think how often Dr. Willi Gutowski, missionary doctor and long time member of CMDS had told me that Jesus had commanded Christians, “Do Not Be Afraid.” He loved to say this wasn’t a suggestion. I’d joked thereafter while sailing bluewater with a Christian buddy that “worrying is wicked’. When our cockpit awash and the ship was floundering in a terrific blow and I was struggling on deck to reef the main, this grinning Christian card had called to me, “Are we wicked yet, Billy?"
Now here was Dr. Jeffrey Greenman,, Oxford and Regent College theologian expanding on God’s message. “The opposite of fear is faith,” he said. Then drawing on story after story of Luke’s testimony of the birth of Christ he shared how first with Zechariah and lastly with the Shepherds God’s appearance was overwhelming startling, even paralyzing, but then God said Fear Not. For the message of the Christmas season is that Yahweh, God almighty has been born as a child in a manger. This is the Messiah. This is the promise. All shall be well with God among us.
Dr. Greenman didn’t exactly say ‘god among us’ or ‘god incarnate’ or "the transcendent God” of the ancients had become the " immanent god of Jesus”. He didn’t speak theologese at us. Instead, he chose simple all embracing words. He referenced Roosevelts famous words, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” And went on to expand on the fuller passage that one line derived from. He mostly read passages from Luke. His voice was soothing and melodious. He let the truth of Luke work its calm and healing I felt tears welling in my eyes to hear once again the blessed assurance.
After we sang more Christmas carols, the dining area though spacious, felt cozy. I was again happy with life and felt as if Jesus had once more lifted a burden of worry from my ailing back. I was here among loving and kind folk who daily faced my frustrations with the struggle to comfort and cure patients in the horrible politics of todays medical system. We all had suffered at the hands of the Herods of Government Health Care and the Pontius Pilates of Wrong Judgements. We’d cried at night when despite all our technical knowledge and decades of intensive learning and experience, despite our deepest faith, we’d still fail to Lazarus that one person we really believed should live. We’d all learned acceptance and humility in those dark nights of our medical souls. Thy will be done not my will.
Here we were again, eating together, singing together, and praying together, thankful for that reminder this Advent season, that Jesus, the Messiah was born that blessed day. Fear Not.
My phone rang and I stepped outside to answer an emergency call. It wasn’t an emergency. But I hopefully reassured this frightened and angry person that my assistant would try to book them in on Monday, but I was fully booked till sometime next year. I was sorry waitlists were so long. Yes I was sorry I’d not be able to see them this Friday night. It was already past 9 pm. I was sorry their lawyer had upset them. I was sorry their lawyer was costing so much money and charged them to talk to them and that I was free. I was also sorry the government bureaucrats they’d spoken to that day had been so rude and refused to return their calls. I appreciated their fear but there was nothing I could do tonight. And no I couldn’t talk more because I was on call for medical emergencies that this was more a legal and beaurocratic problem which the lawyers and bureaucrats must deal with. I did remind them that they didn’t keep their office appointment with me too and didn’t mention I’d not been paid when they just didn’t show and didn’t cancel. I said that mostly this was about money and their fears about their financial settlements. No I couldn’t make a special appointment to meet with them on Saturday or Sunday either. They were meeting with the lawyers next week and it was a family matter too which meant i couldn’t just speak with them alone but the only thing that could be decided had to be decided with all parties involved and I couldn’t choose ’sides’ in this matter either. But really , this isn’t a medical or psychiatric emergency and when I give patients my number it’s for medical and psychiatric emergencies, matters of life and health and death and matters related to medication or treatment. There was nothing more I could offer over the phone and that this would have to be taken care of at the office. No I didn’t want them to suicide but what they were calling me about was really not a medical or psychiatric emergency but rather a legal and beaurocratic matter and I could not make a house call to discuss how no one cared. And yes I cared but I couldn’t tell the judge and government to go to hell for them even if I wanted to. Would they call me at the office on Monday. Would they be alright till then? Alright. Good night.
Fear Not.
This year we met at Kaya’s the fabulous Malaysian restaurant on Broadway at Oak. Dr. Tam greeted us at the door immediately making my friend, Laura and I feel welcome. I had the pleasure then to speak with Dr. Jeffrey Greenman, President of Regent College. His wife is a paediatrician. I shared how I’d fallen in love with Regent attending the courses of Dr. James Houston.
“He’s teaching another course next year,” Dr. Greenman told me. “He’s 94 this year and has more energy and enthusiasm than some of us half his age.” Later at our table I’d share how much Dr. James Houston’s simple book on Prayer had influenced me.
Meanwhile, my friend Laura, had met Kirsti, the Art Historian wife of the Ken, the esteemed violinist North Vancouver family physician. They were talking about their children and travels.
A collection of medical students and seasoned CMDS musicians and singers had come together for the occasion leading us all in singing Christmas carols through the evening. Singing Silent Night, Holy Night, and Joy to the World did wonders for my soul.
Delicious food began to arrive miraculously. Plate after plate of marvellous morsels graced the table. As a typical doctor I’d missed lunch and was soon contentedly full with the delights of Kaya’s famed kitchen.
Dr Jeffrey Greenman spoke on the subject “Fear Not”. I loved that he drew his message from the verses of Luke, the physician gospel writer. I couldn’t help but think how often Dr. Willi Gutowski, missionary doctor and long time member of CMDS had told me that Jesus had commanded Christians, “Do Not Be Afraid.” He loved to say this wasn’t a suggestion. I’d joked thereafter while sailing bluewater with a Christian buddy that “worrying is wicked’. When our cockpit awash and the ship was floundering in a terrific blow and I was struggling on deck to reef the main, this grinning Christian card had called to me, “Are we wicked yet, Billy?"
Now here was Dr. Jeffrey Greenman,, Oxford and Regent College theologian expanding on God’s message. “The opposite of fear is faith,” he said. Then drawing on story after story of Luke’s testimony of the birth of Christ he shared how first with Zechariah and lastly with the Shepherds God’s appearance was overwhelming startling, even paralyzing, but then God said Fear Not. For the message of the Christmas season is that Yahweh, God almighty has been born as a child in a manger. This is the Messiah. This is the promise. All shall be well with God among us.
Dr. Greenman didn’t exactly say ‘god among us’ or ‘god incarnate’ or "the transcendent God” of the ancients had become the " immanent god of Jesus”. He didn’t speak theologese at us. Instead, he chose simple all embracing words. He referenced Roosevelts famous words, ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” And went on to expand on the fuller passage that one line derived from. He mostly read passages from Luke. His voice was soothing and melodious. He let the truth of Luke work its calm and healing I felt tears welling in my eyes to hear once again the blessed assurance.
After we sang more Christmas carols, the dining area though spacious, felt cozy. I was again happy with life and felt as if Jesus had once more lifted a burden of worry from my ailing back. I was here among loving and kind folk who daily faced my frustrations with the struggle to comfort and cure patients in the horrible politics of todays medical system. We all had suffered at the hands of the Herods of Government Health Care and the Pontius Pilates of Wrong Judgements. We’d cried at night when despite all our technical knowledge and decades of intensive learning and experience, despite our deepest faith, we’d still fail to Lazarus that one person we really believed should live. We’d all learned acceptance and humility in those dark nights of our medical souls. Thy will be done not my will.
Here we were again, eating together, singing together, and praying together, thankful for that reminder this Advent season, that Jesus, the Messiah was born that blessed day. Fear Not.
My phone rang and I stepped outside to answer an emergency call. It wasn’t an emergency. But I hopefully reassured this frightened and angry person that my assistant would try to book them in on Monday, but I was fully booked till sometime next year. I was sorry waitlists were so long. Yes I was sorry I’d not be able to see them this Friday night. It was already past 9 pm. I was sorry their lawyer had upset them. I was sorry their lawyer was costing so much money and charged them to talk to them and that I was free. I was also sorry the government bureaucrats they’d spoken to that day had been so rude and refused to return their calls. I appreciated their fear but there was nothing I could do tonight. And no I couldn’t talk more because I was on call for medical emergencies that this was more a legal and beaurocratic problem which the lawyers and bureaucrats must deal with. I did remind them that they didn’t keep their office appointment with me too and didn’t mention I’d not been paid when they just didn’t show and didn’t cancel. I said that mostly this was about money and their fears about their financial settlements. No I couldn’t make a special appointment to meet with them on Saturday or Sunday either. They were meeting with the lawyers next week and it was a family matter too which meant i couldn’t just speak with them alone but the only thing that could be decided had to be decided with all parties involved and I couldn’t choose ’sides’ in this matter either. But really , this isn’t a medical or psychiatric emergency and when I give patients my number it’s for medical and psychiatric emergencies, matters of life and health and death and matters related to medication or treatment. There was nothing more I could offer over the phone and that this would have to be taken care of at the office. No I didn’t want them to suicide but what they were calling me about was really not a medical or psychiatric emergency but rather a legal and beaurocratic matter and I could not make a house call to discuss how no one cared. And yes I cared but I couldn’t tell the judge and government to go to hell for them even if I wanted to. Would they call me at the office on Monday. Would they be alright till then? Alright. Good night.
Fear Not.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Willi and Anita Gutowski's 50th Wedding Anniversary
I was priviledged to be invited to Dr. Willi Gutowski and Nurse Anita Gutowski’s 50th Wedding Anniversary in their home on Little Mountain, Chilliwack today. Of all their myriad of accomplishments and the honours they’ve known, the honorifics they most appreciate are husband and wife, father and mother, grandfather and grandmother. Their love is family and family is the lens through which they view the world.
I arrived with Gilbert, my cockapoo who was immediately befriended by one of the many Gutowski grandchildren. Thanks to Anita and Willi’s love there are lovely daughters and handsome son in laws. The beautiful house on the hill overlooking (of course) the golf course, was overflowing with friends and family. Gilbert fit right into the groups of children running this way and that on the large lawn. Hugged first by Willi then by Anita I had food offered to me by both. Lots of those dainty girl things that looked ornate and hardly warranted a bite except to taste beside much more manly sandwich fair. A very good ‘spread’ in the jargon.
I took a seat on the balcony in the glorious sun and was soon hearing story after story from those who’d known Willi and Anita since early days in Minnetonas, Manitoba. There were stories of University of Manitoba, Africa and tales of British Columbia and California.
In a rough time in my life, following a divorce, following a crisis of direction as a doctor, after too much drinking in Mexico I came to Willi to ask him what I should do next. Willi thought it was good that I’d stopped drinking and stopped smoking marijuana despite what other psychiatrists had said. He knew too the corruption in the system but didn’t think that I should focus on that but rather look to spiritual ideals. I remembered when I’d had Dr. John White as my mentor in psychiatric residency he’d said the same. So with Willi’s direction I stayed at church, stayed sober, made no decision further about quitting medicine or giving up being a physician and psychiatrist but rather focussed “recuperation”. He mostly told me that Jesus had said “Do not be afraid.’ I was very anxious at the time and couldn’t help but dwell on Freud’s statement ‘maybe the paranoids are right’. But Willi, always calm, encouraged me to “not be afraid’. I’ll be forever grateful.
With Anita he introduced me to the Christian Medical and Dental Society. I'd met Dr. Lam at the Evangelical Medical Association and soon was among the finest caregivers. I’d been drawn to medicine after praying in the chapel of the United Church at the University of Winnipeg. I’d most admired Dr. Albert Schwietzer. I’d sought out Dr. John White in Psychiatry. When I wanted to go off as a missionary doctor in Africa, romantic that I am, Dr. Jack Hildes convinced me the greatest need was with the Northern Medical Unit. I was happy serving. Indeed I saw medicine as service.
Thanks to Wili’s sage advice and Anita’s meals I stayed in medicine and returned to psychiatric practice a year later. That year off was an amazing time of learning. I spent a lot of time in church and in prayer and met doctors thereafter who I could admire. I remember Dr. Graeme Cunningham telling me, “some people run with the cheetah’s, some people run with the turkeys, sound’s to me you’ve been running with the turkeys’. It was an amazing life lesson. I had come to believe the little circle of the world I had inhabited at the time represented the greater whole. I came again to be amongst the finest and best of physicians and psychiatrists and would once again love my career.
Later I worked with Willi and Anita in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands. There I met the greatest of nurses and the best of colleagues on this island where Willi and I were the sole psychiatrists. Often I’d know the delight of Anita’s cooking and share the generosity of their home. At the hospital we’d share patients and I was so impressed with his consummate skill as a clinician and psychiatrist. We’d both trained at University of Manitoba and we both shared with the nurses an appreciation of the wholeness of people. There weren't any ‘part objects’ in our care. Patients were always biological, psychological, sociological and spiritual.
I remember Willi and Anita telling me stories of their early days as missionaries in Africa. One day helping Willi, the consummate handyman, fix something in Saipan, he told me “I learned to fix things as a missionary. Everything breaks down in Africa.” He and Anita sail and I sail. They didn’t get tattoos, though.
Willi and Anita were very much apart of the the Saipan Pentecostal church. I had a wonderful time getting to know the pastor there and joining in the uplifting exciting Pentecostal worship. Willi and I studied the Holy Spirit together and meditated together. I remain more ecumenical, a Baptist, who’d become United and finally Anglican who attended the Methodist and Pentecostal church and enjoyed Catholic services as well. It was Willi though who enlightened me to the Holy Spirit. My friend, Dr. Bernie Klassen had prayed as well to the Holy Spirit while I’m more likely to called out to Jesus, “ the god within” in a kind of 911 way of prayer. There’s wisdom in the distinctions which I’d later learn more about studying with Dr. James Houston thanks to the foundation that Willi and his minister encouraged in addressing the details and not just the generalities.
Then we would golf. Willi and Anita both loved to golf, as happy to haul clubs around the course as to whip about on the little electric moon buggies called golf carts. I’ve golfed more with those two than I have in my life and expect they were practicing Christian patients. I learned a whole lot about Mulligans.
Late Friday after noon we’d either go golfing or go scuba diving as our ‘staff meeting’. I loved to scuba dive and Willi was a great buddy. He ‘d carry the hospital ‘beeper’ in a water proof pouch and only occasionally would either of us get called and have to slowly ascend to the surface to call our covering family physician colleague. I’d actually write up minutes about the work we’d discuss leaving out all the theology, philosophy, history and politics that got addressed as well. I was sorry to leave Saipan. My mother was sick. I was homesick for Canada.
What was amazing though was learning one day sometime after we’d met that Willie’s family farmed in Minnetonas. That’s where my grandfather’s ranch and logging operation was. Not only that my cowboy uncle, a true character out of Louis L’amour novel, had worked for the Gutowski farm at one time. Small world.
Now here I was listening to Willi’s daughter read from a love letter Willi had sent to Anita in medical school. It was so touching. Then the daughters, one from Winnipeg, one from Oregon, and one from Chilliwack with hardly a rehearsal here, sang the most beautiful collection of Christian songs, the favourites of the parents.
It was truly a privilege and an honour to be invited. Their 50th Anniversary was such a testimony to the breadth and depth of their love. They don’t just talk Christianity and Christian Love. They live Corinthians. Thank you, Willi and Anita.
I arrived with Gilbert, my cockapoo who was immediately befriended by one of the many Gutowski grandchildren. Thanks to Anita and Willi’s love there are lovely daughters and handsome son in laws. The beautiful house on the hill overlooking (of course) the golf course, was overflowing with friends and family. Gilbert fit right into the groups of children running this way and that on the large lawn. Hugged first by Willi then by Anita I had food offered to me by both. Lots of those dainty girl things that looked ornate and hardly warranted a bite except to taste beside much more manly sandwich fair. A very good ‘spread’ in the jargon.
I took a seat on the balcony in the glorious sun and was soon hearing story after story from those who’d known Willi and Anita since early days in Minnetonas, Manitoba. There were stories of University of Manitoba, Africa and tales of British Columbia and California.
In a rough time in my life, following a divorce, following a crisis of direction as a doctor, after too much drinking in Mexico I came to Willi to ask him what I should do next. Willi thought it was good that I’d stopped drinking and stopped smoking marijuana despite what other psychiatrists had said. He knew too the corruption in the system but didn’t think that I should focus on that but rather look to spiritual ideals. I remembered when I’d had Dr. John White as my mentor in psychiatric residency he’d said the same. So with Willi’s direction I stayed at church, stayed sober, made no decision further about quitting medicine or giving up being a physician and psychiatrist but rather focussed “recuperation”. He mostly told me that Jesus had said “Do not be afraid.’ I was very anxious at the time and couldn’t help but dwell on Freud’s statement ‘maybe the paranoids are right’. But Willi, always calm, encouraged me to “not be afraid’. I’ll be forever grateful.
With Anita he introduced me to the Christian Medical and Dental Society. I'd met Dr. Lam at the Evangelical Medical Association and soon was among the finest caregivers. I’d been drawn to medicine after praying in the chapel of the United Church at the University of Winnipeg. I’d most admired Dr. Albert Schwietzer. I’d sought out Dr. John White in Psychiatry. When I wanted to go off as a missionary doctor in Africa, romantic that I am, Dr. Jack Hildes convinced me the greatest need was with the Northern Medical Unit. I was happy serving. Indeed I saw medicine as service.
Thanks to Wili’s sage advice and Anita’s meals I stayed in medicine and returned to psychiatric practice a year later. That year off was an amazing time of learning. I spent a lot of time in church and in prayer and met doctors thereafter who I could admire. I remember Dr. Graeme Cunningham telling me, “some people run with the cheetah’s, some people run with the turkeys, sound’s to me you’ve been running with the turkeys’. It was an amazing life lesson. I had come to believe the little circle of the world I had inhabited at the time represented the greater whole. I came again to be amongst the finest and best of physicians and psychiatrists and would once again love my career.
Later I worked with Willi and Anita in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands. There I met the greatest of nurses and the best of colleagues on this island where Willi and I were the sole psychiatrists. Often I’d know the delight of Anita’s cooking and share the generosity of their home. At the hospital we’d share patients and I was so impressed with his consummate skill as a clinician and psychiatrist. We’d both trained at University of Manitoba and we both shared with the nurses an appreciation of the wholeness of people. There weren't any ‘part objects’ in our care. Patients were always biological, psychological, sociological and spiritual.
I remember Willi and Anita telling me stories of their early days as missionaries in Africa. One day helping Willi, the consummate handyman, fix something in Saipan, he told me “I learned to fix things as a missionary. Everything breaks down in Africa.” He and Anita sail and I sail. They didn’t get tattoos, though.
Willi and Anita were very much apart of the the Saipan Pentecostal church. I had a wonderful time getting to know the pastor there and joining in the uplifting exciting Pentecostal worship. Willi and I studied the Holy Spirit together and meditated together. I remain more ecumenical, a Baptist, who’d become United and finally Anglican who attended the Methodist and Pentecostal church and enjoyed Catholic services as well. It was Willi though who enlightened me to the Holy Spirit. My friend, Dr. Bernie Klassen had prayed as well to the Holy Spirit while I’m more likely to called out to Jesus, “ the god within” in a kind of 911 way of prayer. There’s wisdom in the distinctions which I’d later learn more about studying with Dr. James Houston thanks to the foundation that Willi and his minister encouraged in addressing the details and not just the generalities.
Then we would golf. Willi and Anita both loved to golf, as happy to haul clubs around the course as to whip about on the little electric moon buggies called golf carts. I’ve golfed more with those two than I have in my life and expect they were practicing Christian patients. I learned a whole lot about Mulligans.
Late Friday after noon we’d either go golfing or go scuba diving as our ‘staff meeting’. I loved to scuba dive and Willi was a great buddy. He ‘d carry the hospital ‘beeper’ in a water proof pouch and only occasionally would either of us get called and have to slowly ascend to the surface to call our covering family physician colleague. I’d actually write up minutes about the work we’d discuss leaving out all the theology, philosophy, history and politics that got addressed as well. I was sorry to leave Saipan. My mother was sick. I was homesick for Canada.
What was amazing though was learning one day sometime after we’d met that Willie’s family farmed in Minnetonas. That’s where my grandfather’s ranch and logging operation was. Not only that my cowboy uncle, a true character out of Louis L’amour novel, had worked for the Gutowski farm at one time. Small world.
Now here I was listening to Willi’s daughter read from a love letter Willi had sent to Anita in medical school. It was so touching. Then the daughters, one from Winnipeg, one from Oregon, and one from Chilliwack with hardly a rehearsal here, sang the most beautiful collection of Christian songs, the favourites of the parents.
It was truly a privilege and an honour to be invited. Their 50th Anniversary was such a testimony to the breadth and depth of their love. They don’t just talk Christianity and Christian Love. They live Corinthians. Thank you, Willi and Anita.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Christian Medical and Dental Society - 2013 National Conference - The Wonder of Sabbath
This year's CMDS conference, May 2-5, 2013, was held in the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald, Edmonton, AB. The theme was the Wonder of Sabbath with workshops on avoiding physician burn out, professionalism, Christian ministry and balancing work with prayer and meditation. It was everything I personally needed. The hundreds of participants were as fortunate as I to be there
"Then Jesus said,"Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Mathew 11:28
Reverend Mark Buchanan, senior pastor of New Life Community Baptist Church in Duncan, BC was the KeyNote Speaker. So enjoying his spirituality and Christian faith, the heartfelt message and the profound oft time simple not simplistic thought, I bought two of his books: "Spiritual Rhythm, Being with Jesus Every Season of Your Soul" and "The Holy Wild, Trusting in the Character of God". I especially enjoyed his Golden Rules presentation on how to keep the Sabbath Wholly and Holy. He just made the point that self care doesn't need to be selfish and that we needed to be still to appreciate what God does. He likened the harried physician to Martha in the story of Jesus and compared that with Lazarus. Normally we'd hear about Martha and Mary but I truly appreciated the discussion of sabbath in the context of Lazarus. His talk about the 'rhythms of rest, work and play" was so inspired.
The break out sessions were typically all very good and only one could be chosen from the trinity of choices each morning and afternoon. I was so impressed by "Taking Medicine Downtown to Where the Need Is" the CME on inner city medicine by Dr. Nancy Craig and Dr. Linda Der. Working as I do in an inner city clinic I was really appreciative of the discussion, stories and research presented. It all rang true. Hope Clinic Edmonton is a loving remarkable world of healing.
"Be It Resolved that Christian Physicians must develop common ground with unbelievers and build on this neutral base to be a credible witness in a secular world" was a provocative, informative and at times very amusing debate between Dr. Dan Reilly and Reverend Joe Boot.
Dr. Ted Fenske's presentation, Lack of Professionalism in Medicine: Why It's In Short Supply and What's Needed to Replenish It was to my mind worth the flight and weekend to hear this. I'd just reviewed hundreds of pages of academic writing on medical professionalism in the last year only to have Dr. Fenske sum everything up, cut through it all with his inspired genius and make suggestions that really were rooted in clinical reality.
The Christian Foundation of Science: A Medical History You Won't Learn in Medical School by Reverend Boot was so reassuring. I know how Western Medicine grew directly out of the work and charity of Christian physicians and yet in the revisionist history of errant academia I hear the opposite. I loved his listing quotes of Pasteur and Lister and Osler and comparison of the basis of 'evidence based' medicine with the "magic' and 'superstition' increasingly riding on the coat tails of these successes.
Over and over again in the conference the relationship of doctor and patient was compared to a covenanted relationship as opposed to that of a 'consumer' or 'customer' the common designations clinicians are increasingly being forced to use. I almost cried to hear other clinicians men and women whose reputations and work make them leaders in the country describe themselves as following a calling rather than just doing a 'job'.
It was exhilarating to be among the missionaries who like Albert Schweitzer had so lead me in my journeys to the arctic and pacific islands and inner city. I felt restored to be around people who understood me when I said I have gone where I believed the greatest need was. I was humbled to meet elder clinicians who'd spent years in the Congo, or India or South America.
Some of us laughed together when we considered how much more money we could be making doing abortions or euthanasia or selling bad medicine for high price, yet because we were Christian we loved what we did, even if at times we were persecuted for our faith. The benefits so outweighed the cons.
Over and over again we had opportunities to discuss our inner lives with each other and share our prayers.
I so enjoyed sitting with Dr. Phillip Ney and hearing his Pro life journey in defence of the unborn.
I would have loved to have heard Margaret Cottle's talk on "Countering Euthanasia in a Secular Workplace. I've shared her deep writing on Palliative Care and the care of the dying. There is no greater advocate for the person than Dr. Cottle and she presents her scientific wisdom with such admirable clarity. The Cottle's together provide wonderful music for the CMDS year after year. Dr. Robin Cottle can always be counted on to bring together a band and singers for the most extraordinary praise worship each day. This year there was even more jazz in his popular guitar.
Dr. John Patrick presented on Choosing Better Things. It's hard not to choose to listen to John but I've heard him repeatedly and have bought so many of his tapes I play so often driving on long trips. I pulled myself away from his workshop to attend a conflicting one that I knew I needed to attend this year, if it was at all possible, even more than I need to listen to Dr. Patrick.
There were others I'd have loved to have heard too but didn't. Good reason to return next year.
Dr. Cathie Olson's Banquet presentation, "Why We Need Missions as Much as Missions Need Us" was a wonderful story of this woman and her family's missions abroad. Accomplished in delivering babies deciding that the children overseas needed her to 'deliver' their teeth, she decided to learn dentistry for missions. Then she went on to train nurses in a mission on treating cavities in children. What a wonderful story with moving slides full of smiles where once there was such pain. Medical Students who'd been on a Nepal Mission study shared their journey.
All talked of coming closer to God in their service. At times I felt my eyes well up with tears to be among these healers talking as they did of their love of God and love of their neighbour. What a privilege it is to be a physician. What a Joy it is to be a Christian.
"Then Jesus said,"Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." Mathew 11:28
Reverend Mark Buchanan, senior pastor of New Life Community Baptist Church in Duncan, BC was the KeyNote Speaker. So enjoying his spirituality and Christian faith, the heartfelt message and the profound oft time simple not simplistic thought, I bought two of his books: "Spiritual Rhythm, Being with Jesus Every Season of Your Soul" and "The Holy Wild, Trusting in the Character of God". I especially enjoyed his Golden Rules presentation on how to keep the Sabbath Wholly and Holy. He just made the point that self care doesn't need to be selfish and that we needed to be still to appreciate what God does. He likened the harried physician to Martha in the story of Jesus and compared that with Lazarus. Normally we'd hear about Martha and Mary but I truly appreciated the discussion of sabbath in the context of Lazarus. His talk about the 'rhythms of rest, work and play" was so inspired.
The break out sessions were typically all very good and only one could be chosen from the trinity of choices each morning and afternoon. I was so impressed by "Taking Medicine Downtown to Where the Need Is" the CME on inner city medicine by Dr. Nancy Craig and Dr. Linda Der. Working as I do in an inner city clinic I was really appreciative of the discussion, stories and research presented. It all rang true. Hope Clinic Edmonton is a loving remarkable world of healing.
"Be It Resolved that Christian Physicians must develop common ground with unbelievers and build on this neutral base to be a credible witness in a secular world" was a provocative, informative and at times very amusing debate between Dr. Dan Reilly and Reverend Joe Boot.
Dr. Ted Fenske's presentation, Lack of Professionalism in Medicine: Why It's In Short Supply and What's Needed to Replenish It was to my mind worth the flight and weekend to hear this. I'd just reviewed hundreds of pages of academic writing on medical professionalism in the last year only to have Dr. Fenske sum everything up, cut through it all with his inspired genius and make suggestions that really were rooted in clinical reality.
The Christian Foundation of Science: A Medical History You Won't Learn in Medical School by Reverend Boot was so reassuring. I know how Western Medicine grew directly out of the work and charity of Christian physicians and yet in the revisionist history of errant academia I hear the opposite. I loved his listing quotes of Pasteur and Lister and Osler and comparison of the basis of 'evidence based' medicine with the "magic' and 'superstition' increasingly riding on the coat tails of these successes.
Over and over again in the conference the relationship of doctor and patient was compared to a covenanted relationship as opposed to that of a 'consumer' or 'customer' the common designations clinicians are increasingly being forced to use. I almost cried to hear other clinicians men and women whose reputations and work make them leaders in the country describe themselves as following a calling rather than just doing a 'job'.
It was exhilarating to be among the missionaries who like Albert Schweitzer had so lead me in my journeys to the arctic and pacific islands and inner city. I felt restored to be around people who understood me when I said I have gone where I believed the greatest need was. I was humbled to meet elder clinicians who'd spent years in the Congo, or India or South America.
Some of us laughed together when we considered how much more money we could be making doing abortions or euthanasia or selling bad medicine for high price, yet because we were Christian we loved what we did, even if at times we were persecuted for our faith. The benefits so outweighed the cons.
Over and over again we had opportunities to discuss our inner lives with each other and share our prayers.
I so enjoyed sitting with Dr. Phillip Ney and hearing his Pro life journey in defence of the unborn.
I would have loved to have heard Margaret Cottle's talk on "Countering Euthanasia in a Secular Workplace. I've shared her deep writing on Palliative Care and the care of the dying. There is no greater advocate for the person than Dr. Cottle and she presents her scientific wisdom with such admirable clarity. The Cottle's together provide wonderful music for the CMDS year after year. Dr. Robin Cottle can always be counted on to bring together a band and singers for the most extraordinary praise worship each day. This year there was even more jazz in his popular guitar.
Dr. John Patrick presented on Choosing Better Things. It's hard not to choose to listen to John but I've heard him repeatedly and have bought so many of his tapes I play so often driving on long trips. I pulled myself away from his workshop to attend a conflicting one that I knew I needed to attend this year, if it was at all possible, even more than I need to listen to Dr. Patrick.
There were others I'd have loved to have heard too but didn't. Good reason to return next year.
Dr. Cathie Olson's Banquet presentation, "Why We Need Missions as Much as Missions Need Us" was a wonderful story of this woman and her family's missions abroad. Accomplished in delivering babies deciding that the children overseas needed her to 'deliver' their teeth, she decided to learn dentistry for missions. Then she went on to train nurses in a mission on treating cavities in children. What a wonderful story with moving slides full of smiles where once there was such pain. Medical Students who'd been on a Nepal Mission study shared their journey.
All talked of coming closer to God in their service. At times I felt my eyes well up with tears to be among these healers talking as they did of their love of God and love of their neighbour. What a privilege it is to be a physician. What a Joy it is to be a Christian.
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