Conversation is a civilized term for verbal and non verbal communication between two beings. As such it is an exchange. Information is as valuable as time.
In process psychiatry the object is to observe the 'exchange' itself, recognizing quanta of information and observing how one person shares or hoards depending on their level of generosity or paranoia.
Military folk naturally trained to paranoia are the most noted for being 'short of words'. The police are specifically trained in dominance tactics, demanding information themselves, with high expectation of receiving it, without returning information. Indeed, in such power positions the verbal interaction is less appropriately called a conversation as it is an "extraction". With threat of punishment one extracts information from another. Much is carried in the tone and non verbal presentation.
In another situation, the "sale", the conversation is a guise for the selected prosyletising of a particular marketing idea aimed at achieving reward. This at its rudest is commonly seen in the street peasant who approaches asking for the time then goes on to ask for money. In a way this is a kind of verbal to material extraction linked to a conversation con tidbit.
The softening up process in these latter extractions are associated with encouraging the 'flow' of data. Once the person has said what time it is, and agreed to something to do with the weather or whatever, the flow has been established and it's easier to extract the aimed for money thereafter.
Interestingly these 'soul suckers' and "takers" sociopathically do not recognise or return the value of your time or your information. The key word to note is 'entitlement' as they are commonly 'working' the 'marks' to perpetuate their notion of themselves as the 'smart baby'. The transaction in these instances is called 'soul sucking' because once the money is given there is not the same 'feeling' of well being associated with truly grateful civilized people who ask for help when they truly need it and are genuinely grateful when they receive it. The soul sucker takes the money as a thief and the giver is left with the sense of 'having been taken".
Often sociopaths use elaborate cons which harm society as a whole because they lie and plead for help which would normally go to the ones they are imitating. An obvious example would be the beggar who can walk but sits in the wheelchair asking for help for their dying sister. This particular sociopathic gambit does damage to those in wheelchairs who might need help and now society hardened by the social criminals might well turn their back and not be particularly sensitive to a person who says they have a dying relative.
It is for the immediate above reason the paranoid and military don't give initially. They avoid the hustle by this means.
In an conversational exchange one can actually observe like and equal amounts of quanta of information being exchanged. This is commonly the opening gambit in a conversation. The standard language translation books put forward the prototype which goes as follows:
Hello
Hello
What is your name?
My name is.
What is your name?
My name is.
Where are you from?
Somewhere.
Where are you from?
Somewhere.
Here there is a précise and equal exchange. The only thing that would change the 'value' of the information would be the celebrity status of a name, ie a wanted criminal or a rich king in a ghetto setting. Otherwise, normally this introduction represents a true conversation. There is the classic 'tit for tat'.
What makes for a good feeling in a conversation is this exchange or the experience of getting more information for less, where the information given is of the quality desired. In the latter case if I am interested in how to make a dish I've had at a restaurant and am an amateur chef, I will be very appreciative and feel happy if the chef comes out into the restaurant and gives me the details of the sauce that I've so enjoyed. Note that the chef and I in this example are part of a mutual appreciation society and that I exchange praise for his work and then go away planning to cook myself a similar meal.
If however the chef is a paranoid businessman with the sense that his success is in the one recipe and I am another espionage businessman seeking to 'steal' the 'information' about his famous 'sauce' to use at my restaurant this whole exchange can be macabre in comparison. Indeed much of the introduction of money into human activity has resulted in the hoarding and paranoia about all information because 'we are told', identity theives are always after us. Maybe the way I say something, maybe my 'bon mot', maybe my smile, any of this might well be worth more than the standard exchange. I may be worth millions and others are trying to 'steal' this from me. Nothing crimps creativity more than this kind of thinking. In the village not so long ago by human reckoning, a generation or two, money was not a part of the vast majority of exchanges. Just as my father told me a lawyer was only a part of a will and a house sale so too money was not part of the majority of transactions. Barter of some kind however has always been normative in society. The professionalism in society has introduced sophistication and coupled it to money, a specifically controlled, scarce, manipulated commodity whose principal value is it's capacity to buy weaponry above all other products.
In the earlier example of exchange and feeling good, I'd simply 'share' information and leave feeling good if I didn't feel 'interrogated'. In this case if a person asked me about my school, I'd tell them and wait expecting quite reasonably they would then share about their school.
Given that soul suckers and other paranoid criminal and police types, those damaged in early child hood and chronically needy and defensive and not uncommonly thinking 'the best defense is an offense' to justify their own initiatory offensiveness, the original exchange pattern of 'polite conversation' became readily recognized and open to imitation by psychopaths and sociopaths. They took information and didn't give.
To this end, in today's more sophisticated world the conversationalist often has to 'test' the waters with 'free conversational tidbits'. In this ultrasound type of communication, used by whales, and submarines a person 'pings' another, giving them free bits of information and observing whether they have developed sufficiently spiritually to be able to engage in adult conversation.
To the sociopath and the needy "perpetual child type" if you give something for free then clearly 'you' don't appreciate it's value and "I" can 'take it". This was observed in cultural development where primitive cultures desperately living hand to mouth would readily take anything that came their way and lacked any sense of proprietorship or exchange. In early interaction with them there was always the issue of 'theft' and the issue of 'ownership' problems with no one initially appreciating that a primitive culture is highly limited in it's endeavors because it lacks the organizational structure to do large work or highly specialized work. The fact that it's members would 'take' shiny things and rapidly entered into 'barter' and 'exchange' for sophisticated materials indicated that they clearly wanted what to that date they'd been unable to manage or make themselves.
The making of a pair of glasses is far beyond the capacity of any hunter gatherer group or even agricultural societies in their early development. The advance to industrial society out of the agricultural excess leads to the ability of individuals to specialize to a degree where a watchmaker or maker of eye glasses develops. Of course the 'products' of these specialized works can be 'taken'. However they can not be reproduced without the specialized individuals.
The whole world of 'patent' and 'copywrite' today is the furthest extension of this development.
Clearly the primitive social economies of fascist communist countries were good at war and theft surviving as long as they did through the rape of the communities their ideologies invaded. New governments always look good at first as evidenced repeatedly in modern times in Africa where one tribe takes the wealth of another making themselves richer by reducing the whole to half. Politically societies commonly go through these 'war lord' beaurocratic developments before they reach some measure of democracy. Democracies then commonly face the threat of devolution within to the previous elite war lord 'strong man' societies or oligarchies which are meanwhile trying to take them over from without. However they fail to perpetuate simply because there is no real reward or protection for the watchmaker and maker of eye glasses. These individuals were threatened to perform in these communities but immediately given the opportunity would move to where their specialization would gain them assets. Today 12 year olds manage guns and whole armies of children can master war with little leadership. Sometimes these 'warriors' appear like men and women but by the brainwashing techniques of their societies have only achieved 12 year old developmental status. Nothing more is really needed for the task at hand.
However children can only apprentice in the real crafts. Beurocracies exists to contain and suck the life of engineers and doctors and scientists while in the arts the bullies steal the works of creative individuals likewise forcing even highly skilled and talented athletes to have to unionize.
All this comes back to the exchange. Information and ideas are units of exchange. On the internet there's a very exciting 'freeware" movement that competes with the existing 'copywrite' and 'patent' movement. It may well be the ping of the whale.
One individual to another it's critical to note the same 'sales' maneuvers that go with 'bartering' being played out in such arenas as 'dating'. I might well watch benignly as you offer more and more information to me over a coffee recognising your 'low self esteem' and 'pedestalling' of me by the amount of 'baksheesh' in information you might give to me. I can make something of little value appear more valuable by holding out on giving it as one might hold a piece of smoked salmon before a dog. The longer he is denied this 'food' (albeit of great dog food worth) the greater it's value acrues to him. Further I can 'starve' him and 'deny' him any food and make any old dog food appear exceptional through the starvation process.
The terrible consequence of drug and alcohol abuse and addiction is that it acts like a solvent and people share all manner of information without consideration of the purpose of the audience.
Without divergence into the drug and alcohol world where men and women play the 'poker face' game trying to 'control' themselves compared to those around them in that sociopathic drunken arrogant superiority inferiority gambit interaction usually with a marketing tidbit of money, power or sex thrown in, the mainstream conversations can be assessed purely as they play in the "process" by comparing them against the normative 'tit for tat' exchange. This latter has been called by other names in game theory where conversations are measured such or in the transactional analysis models where similarly the assessment of individual character and intent could be derived from observation of the 'exchange' or even a 'slice of conversation'.
Much of friendship is associated with the feeling of being able to 'talk' without their being 'ulterior motives' or 'hidden agendas'. Conversation is assumed by so many but in fact very few indeed have this skill today. Reading Jane Austen for instance is a lesson in the history of conversations. People assume they are conversationalists when in fact they are simply takers or salesmen. Conversation today is rare because much of our activity is parallel play, together we watch entertainment rather than participate in the exchange.
Good conversations are in fact like good tennis matches without the scoring. Today it's even common for a couple of tennis players to forget the game and play fisticuffs in the middle of a tournament. Worse I heard of a golfer punching another. In hockey one might anticipate competing teams being allowed to carry knives to increase the ratings on television. No doubt these 'new games' , variations on much more primitive, games would be entertaining for some but they'd not be tennis, golf or hockey. The same is true for many conversations today. Partly this has to do with the social police and bullies but mostly it's just ignorance.
Not surprisingly technology in the form of messaging and Twitter and even Facebook, though not so much, are being developped not so much on the basis of today's human interactions but rather using the historical conversational forms increasingly lost in the non virtual world today. As such they are filling the void that is obviously important to the communicating relational human. Possibly conversations are possible in these once removed media because people have become so out of control of their emotions and so defensive and oversensitive that they simply can't have a conversation person to person.
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Showing posts with label spirituallity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirituallity. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Church and AA
Alcoholics Anonymous began in a meeting of the Christian Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement was begun by Frank Buchman. It was an Christian movement of size and similarity to the later Billy Graham movement. In contrast to that though, it was deemed as more First Century Christianity. Dr. Buchman was a Lutheran Minister who had been involved with early YMCA. The Oxford Movement went on to be called Moral Rearmament.
Bill Wilson became sober when he prayed to the "Great Physician" for help and had his famous conversion experience at Towns Hospital.
Dr. Bob Smith and his wife, Anne, attended the local chapter of the Oxford Movement in Akron Ohio while Bill Wilson attended the one in New York which was associated with the Episcopalean minister Sam Shoemaker. When Bill Wilson was in Akron he feared that he himself would drink again if he didn't find another drunk he could help. He had discovered, with the help of Dr. William Silkworth, that he himself had stayed sober by helping other alcoholics. The later AA saying would be, "you can't keep it, unless you give it away."
Bill Wilson was put in touch with Dr. Bob Smith by Henrietta Seiberling through Dr. Walter Tunks of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Bill Wilson had told her he was a member of the Oxford group and a drunk who needed to talk to another drunk. Henrietta remembered Dr. Bob because she'd convened a meeting at the home of the inventor T. Henry Williams. At the close of the meeting Dr. Bob was invited to pray and the group got down on their knees and together prayed for Dr. Bob's recovery. Henrietta considered Bill Wilson's arrival 'manna from heaven'.
She arranged the meeting between reluctant Dr. Bob and eager Bill Wilson at her Gate Lodge home in the Seiberling estate.
AA dated it's founding from Dr. Bob's alleged last drink, June 10, 1935. The founding of the first group in Akron Ohio followed. Almost all it's basic ideas came from the Bible
1) Abstinence, 2) Reliance on the Creator and Christian conversion 3) Obedience to God's will by walking in love and eliminating sinful conduct 4) Growing in fellowship with God through Bible Study, prayer, seeking guidance and study of literature 5) Helping other alcoholics to get straightened out.
Within 2 years about 50% of the first serious 40 had achieved continuous sobriety.
Meanwhile in time Bill Wilson returned to New York where he continued to meet with Rev. Sam Shoemaker. Later Catholic priest, Father Dowling became another of Bill's close confidants.
By the writing of the Big Book of Alcoholic's Anonymous the organizational described itself as 'non denominational'.
The Big Book still recommended that "Though the family has no religious connections, they may wish to make contact with or take membership in a religious body."
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous goes on to say, "Alcoholics who have derided religious people will be helped by such contacts."
"Being exposed top a spiritual experience, the alcoholic will find he has much in common with these people, though he may differ from them on many matters. If he does not argue about religion, he will make new friends and is sure to find new avenues of usefulness and pleasure. He and his family can be a bright spot in such congregations. He may bring new hope and new courage to many a priest, minister or rabbi, who gives his all to minister to our troubled world. We intend the foregoing as a helpful suggestion."
It's is one of the many points of humor that Alcoholics say that the Suggestions that are listed in the Big Book are like the suggestions on a parachute which say 'Pull string".
As AA has spread through out the world it is now common for recovered alcoholics to join churches, temples, synagogues and sweat lodges. William James, Variety of Religious Experience is now commonly read though not as often read as the Book of James was read by early AA's. Much of the early character of AA and the seed of its immense success was changed with the incorporation of AA.
Those who were raised in a Christian tradition as Dr. Bob was, are more likely to return to the church or cathedral they were raised in. Having done a Step 4 looking at their resentments to the institution of the church and addressing their own fears and self centeredness in their falling away from this, they will most likely approach the Christian church of today "without the contempt without investigation" that so characterized their alcoholism.
If they have no church or temple experience then often sponsors will encourage new comers to explore various churches and religious facilities starting first by attending a service where the AA meeting may itself be meeting. While AA meetings occur everywhere it's common for them to be welcomed into church basements. Giving some time to listen and participate in the meeting of the host who gives space to an organization whose members may not come in as the most appealing of humanity is an act of graciousness that is part of the maturity found with recovery.
AA began in association with the Christian church, Today AA, though non denominational, continues to be associated with churches. It's associated with the community center. The alcoholic was marginalized and alienated. As churches, synagoges, temples, sweat lodges stand at the centre of community that is where the road of recovery leads. Recovery is about coming in from out of the cold.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Bill Wilson became sober when he prayed to the "Great Physician" for help and had his famous conversion experience at Towns Hospital.
Dr. Bob Smith and his wife, Anne, attended the local chapter of the Oxford Movement in Akron Ohio while Bill Wilson attended the one in New York which was associated with the Episcopalean minister Sam Shoemaker. When Bill Wilson was in Akron he feared that he himself would drink again if he didn't find another drunk he could help. He had discovered, with the help of Dr. William Silkworth, that he himself had stayed sober by helping other alcoholics. The later AA saying would be, "you can't keep it, unless you give it away."
Bill Wilson was put in touch with Dr. Bob Smith by Henrietta Seiberling through Dr. Walter Tunks of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Bill Wilson had told her he was a member of the Oxford group and a drunk who needed to talk to another drunk. Henrietta remembered Dr. Bob because she'd convened a meeting at the home of the inventor T. Henry Williams. At the close of the meeting Dr. Bob was invited to pray and the group got down on their knees and together prayed for Dr. Bob's recovery. Henrietta considered Bill Wilson's arrival 'manna from heaven'.
She arranged the meeting between reluctant Dr. Bob and eager Bill Wilson at her Gate Lodge home in the Seiberling estate.
AA dated it's founding from Dr. Bob's alleged last drink, June 10, 1935. The founding of the first group in Akron Ohio followed. Almost all it's basic ideas came from the Bible
1) Abstinence, 2) Reliance on the Creator and Christian conversion 3) Obedience to God's will by walking in love and eliminating sinful conduct 4) Growing in fellowship with God through Bible Study, prayer, seeking guidance and study of literature 5) Helping other alcoholics to get straightened out.
Within 2 years about 50% of the first serious 40 had achieved continuous sobriety.
Meanwhile in time Bill Wilson returned to New York where he continued to meet with Rev. Sam Shoemaker. Later Catholic priest, Father Dowling became another of Bill's close confidants.
By the writing of the Big Book of Alcoholic's Anonymous the organizational described itself as 'non denominational'.
The Big Book still recommended that "Though the family has no religious connections, they may wish to make contact with or take membership in a religious body."
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous goes on to say, "Alcoholics who have derided religious people will be helped by such contacts."
"Being exposed top a spiritual experience, the alcoholic will find he has much in common with these people, though he may differ from them on many matters. If he does not argue about religion, he will make new friends and is sure to find new avenues of usefulness and pleasure. He and his family can be a bright spot in such congregations. He may bring new hope and new courage to many a priest, minister or rabbi, who gives his all to minister to our troubled world. We intend the foregoing as a helpful suggestion."
It's is one of the many points of humor that Alcoholics say that the Suggestions that are listed in the Big Book are like the suggestions on a parachute which say 'Pull string".
As AA has spread through out the world it is now common for recovered alcoholics to join churches, temples, synagogues and sweat lodges. William James, Variety of Religious Experience is now commonly read though not as often read as the Book of James was read by early AA's. Much of the early character of AA and the seed of its immense success was changed with the incorporation of AA.
Those who were raised in a Christian tradition as Dr. Bob was, are more likely to return to the church or cathedral they were raised in. Having done a Step 4 looking at their resentments to the institution of the church and addressing their own fears and self centeredness in their falling away from this, they will most likely approach the Christian church of today "without the contempt without investigation" that so characterized their alcoholism.
If they have no church or temple experience then often sponsors will encourage new comers to explore various churches and religious facilities starting first by attending a service where the AA meeting may itself be meeting. While AA meetings occur everywhere it's common for them to be welcomed into church basements. Giving some time to listen and participate in the meeting of the host who gives space to an organization whose members may not come in as the most appealing of humanity is an act of graciousness that is part of the maturity found with recovery.
AA began in association with the Christian church, Today AA, though non denominational, continues to be associated with churches. It's associated with the community center. The alcoholic was marginalized and alienated. As churches, synagoges, temples, sweat lodges stand at the centre of community that is where the road of recovery leads. Recovery is about coming in from out of the cold.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:W 13th Ave,Vancouver,Canada
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Gifts of Recovery
The guys were in good form tonight at the meeting. Everyone seemed to be sharing on the gifts of recovery. It was a variation on the traditional gratitude meeting in which people express appreciation for all that they have gained from abstaining from alcohol and drugs. One fellow spoke of his improvement in health, another of the benefits to his business. One fellow described how on his own he had been unable to stop drinking for even a day before coming for help. People spoke about their anger and negativity while drinking and in their early days of recovery. At that there was a lot of laugher, everyone in the room remembering well how they took themselves so seriously in the early days. As usual there was a lot of laughter. Laughter and comraderie. At break, people got up and mingled, getting more coffee, some going out for a smoke. One fellow talked of his plan to tour Africa. Another had returned from Mexico. One fellow was excited that he'd paid his taxes. It was good to be back in the mainstream. So much money had been lost to the 'party' . The theme was truthfulness for some and relationship for others. It was heartfelt and meaningful as guys talked of dreams coming true. Where everything had once been sabotaged in the throes of the disease of alcoholism, in recovery everything was coming through. There were promises that were given to those who gave up alcohol and drugs and joined in the fellowship and program. Those promises led to the gifts of recovery. And tonight everyone was sharing on the material, emotional and spiritual homecoming that had begun with the simple yet oh so hard beginning of 'not picking up the first drink or drug, just for today."
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Friday, April 9, 2010
Theology of Crisis
Karl Barth's early theology of crisis
“[Barth’s] deepest intention was to point to the crisis for the sake of pointing to the grace of God, to speak the No for the sake of making the divine Yes heard. In this crisis all human ways are exposed as dead-end roads in order that the one Way might be revealed. The divine Yes is the background of the radical crisis which is suspended over the whole of life.”—G. C. Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (London: Paternoster, 1956), p. 33.
Posted by Ben Myers at 7:40 AM
Not only do I like the term "theology of crisis", I like the idea that Barth speaks to. So often in my life I feel like I'm stumbling from crisis to crisis, out of the frying pan into the fire, out of the fire into the soup, out of the soup into the grease. If it isn't one thing it's another. I just don't feel like I'm getting ahead but mostly holding myself against the current, identifying with salmon swimming upstream. Even when i get to float in the pools though I figure it's not going to be for long because some new demand or crisis will arise.
I've treated tens of thousands of patients and when a hundred were doing well there was always one that gave me nightmares. I'd be in the textbooks and journals reading papers, looking for an answer to keep them from dying or get them over their next hurdle. Soon there were just no textbooks that said much about the kinds of problems I was facing. The easy stuff was behind me and everything was a quantum leap more complex.
Meanwhile just when I had some help from staff they had a personal crisis and brought all their chaos and attitude into the office or to the hospital ward. In the midst of this a wife or two would be demanding more attention than work allowed while the government was trying to kill me and my patients when they weren't trying to put me in jail. I was never helping matters because I had this strange notion of justice, and truth and no one played by the rules especially not the politicians and judges who made them.
I felt like a boy scout up the proverbial creek without a paddle and would phone colleagues and they'd tell me they'd never dealt with such a case or the ones who could help wouldn't want to get involved or die before their years because of the caring and stress it brings. Mostly people just went through the motions and were beaten down by the system that served only the wealthy.
Everywhere I looked I found that the beaurocrats had secret agendas, kickbacks and corrupt motives. The deceit and fear in government buildings vied with apathy and arrogance and no shame. They collectively were like judas with their peices of silver. I wasn't Jesus. My patients were. At best I was often just washing feet. I weep these days as I hear of people on life saving medications that are being cut off to pay for the Olympics. They'll die in months or years but they'll die sooner and the reprieve from their illnesses was kind of like a mother offering a tit and then pulling it out of the child's mouth and watching the child starve to death while slowly shaking her head with a mona lisa smile.
Daily now I know there's a cure or answer but there's no resources. There's no medications in the cupboards. There's no specialists. It's a year wait to see one and people wait months to see me. A hundred referrals waiting for me to priorize right now and no time in my schedule because the business is failing because the people who do business decided to think only of themselves and make a huge profit on my patients and my loss.
The worst offenders are the beaurocrats who are paid big bucks to 'self police'. As insiders we know whose "immune" and 'above the law" but there's a few 'favourites' and the rest of us live in fear and the public is kept completely in the dark because it's all back rooms and closed doors and smoke and mirrors.
So it just seems like this is at best purgatory or maybe even hell because the bits of heaven on earth are interrupted by criminals and psychopaths getting away with bloody murder and a veritable million dollar industry of 'false accusation' and a court that thrives on lies. Perjury was once a crime but now the liars are rewarded. When do you know they are lying? Watch for their lips moving.
Their eyes are like reptiles.
They inflict pain. They know no God. They have sold their souls.
So along comes the Theology of Crisis. Barth says to pray. It's only when one prays and accepts that this world is 'wrong', it's 'sinful', it's in error and the people in it are in error, and I am in error, and those who most think they are right are most likely most wrong, that Grace comes. After all the No, yes appears like the light of morning after darkness. Down is up and up is down like everyone whose ever been in court or dealt with beaurocrats or tax departments will know. Double speak and 1984. But that's just jungle and bush. That's just storms at sea.
Step back. Sit quietly. Turn inward and pray. In the moment of crisis which literally is daily and mostly hourly for me or moment to moment as I juggle the impossible demands of the Washingtons and Ottawas and Victorias lightyears from reality in their dachaus and sterile offices and I'm one of the billion peasants now caught in the trenches of the high speed suffering world. Step back. Breathe. Close eyes. Pray.
Every moment Jesus was on the cross God's grace was his resurrection. I look to my own dying as God's grace. There's an end to the newspapers full of corruption and misery. There's an end to the cries of pain. There's an end to this earth where Buddha was right, desire is the root of all suffering and life is desire. I desire the next breath and fear it will be my last but facing death and welcoming it, knowing that God will take me from this life, I feel God's Grace. I am tired of the arrogance and pompousness of beaurocrats, the depth of their lack of empathy, the money men safe in their private schemes, their private health care plans their time for vacations and their servants and hit men and their personal armies and their deceit.
I am tired of my longings for love and peace. I'm tired of my inability to reach perfection. Daily I'm told I'm no good because I can't stop my patients from doing drugs, getting beat up, staying in bed, having unprotected sex, overeating, forgetting their medications, going to jail.
I'm told by my patients and government that I'm accountable for everything and I'm condemned all around but either the patient or the beaurocrat stands at the light switch and refuses to turn it on while demanding I do surgery with a lawyer waiting to sue me for a slip of the blade. And I'm always afraid. I'm always anxious. I'm always worrying I'll make a mistake. I'm surrounded by chaos and disorder and more and more no one cares and the hardware and software are corrupted.
A man is dead 24 hours in a Canadian teaching hospital waiting room and the story is hushed. There is no CEO who is arrested for fired for his death. No one mourns him. He's just another 'friendly fire' death and there will be an 'inquiry' but if I have a slip of the tongue or miss a beat I'm bankrupted and punished and run out of Dodge. There are no safety nets for doctors or nurses or peasants or taxpayers.
I'm persecuted as a "whistleblower'. I'm crying and trying harder and harder and doing more and more in less and less time with the government demanding more and more and police everywhere and homeland security and big limosines patrolling the streets and I'm told of deadlines after the deadlines and the tax men change the rules and only their friends know and the courts subpoenae me and I catch the flu and there's never a vacation because no matter what, the work just piles up and waits till you get back at ten times the amount because there are less and less resources for more and more. And the patients watch tv which is all lies and the politicians promises are supposed to be fulfilled by everyone but them. And we are all growing tired and working more and more and more for less and less and less.
Step back. Breathe. Meditate. Pray. Go for a walk. Get a dog and remember your body is like St. Francis called it, your donkey. Those fat cat beaurocrats, the doctor police and the politicians and the rich aren't caring about you or your patients. They want you to die. They'd love you to die. They only like the silent. Shut up and dance like new nigger. Man is the nigger of the world. You are just a number in their classy work camps. The world has become Auschwitz but just as the jails now have televisions, the gas just takes longer because it's really polluted air and unsafe water and food's aren't inspected for safety anymore and cars have gas pedals that stick. They want your patients to have euthanasia. They prefered abortion and now deny westerners adoption claiming everyone is a sex offender and all should be in jail so children from third world countries woud do better to starve than be raised by Burnaby couples who married late becasue they couldn't afford to have children and then it was too late.
The government's promises are idle. Only their threats are real. The jails are full and they're making more and more 'for profit' jails, sardine cans for your brothers and sisters, without programs, without rehabilitation but lots of money for construction and catering and lots of money for 'consulting' and lots for lawyering ands lots of ways for money to go missing and lots of pay for men in brown shirts with beady eyes.
And where are the hospital beds. Where are the asylums. When do my patients get the medications they need. When do I get any assistance and when will I feel like it's anything but moving in molasses. And when will I be able to do what I was taught to do in university, that very silly place which is an ivory tower and knows nothing about reality because it's like Ottawa and Washington and Victoria so so far from reality that they wouldn't know it if they saw it. And their solution to everything: Kill the messenger. Shut them up. Give them cakes. Make more flag debates.
Step back. Breathe. Slow down. Inside. Calm the screaming thoughts. Repeat the name of the Lord. This is Theology of Crisis. Invite Jesus right into the centre of your pain. Ask God to heal this suffering. Ask him in at the moment when the tax man calls, the same one who called your patient and your patient picked up a gun and blew his brains out. Ask him in when the beaurocrat calls, the same one who called your patient who took an overdose when he got off the phone. Ask God into your life when you read the paper and more money is spent on killing than education or medicine.
Breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. The Theology of Crisis is that God is here always. In the poem of the 'footprints', God is carrying you. Brother Ass, St. Francis said. Soon you'll have a dog. He'll make you walk. He'll make you bend and scoop up shit. All the beaugeosie have their 'personal trainers' cute boys with tight buns or girls in pretty skirts and hard bellies. You'll have another mutt. Life gets better. Maybe this one won't be killed by drug addicts and corrupt government officials.
Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray unceasingly as St. Paul said. Remember Martin Luther King. "It's going to be a tough day so I have to spend more time on my knees." Give up breathing before giving up prayer. And live just to spite the government beaurocrats. Those crazed office dwellers, the administrators with a few years of education and faces brown from loyalty to their superiors who insist they can tell everyone else what to do and how to do it like the feudal lords and ladies they are because they've bought a government with a contribution or a lie.
Breathe. Pray. Forgive. Pray for your enemies. The girl who stole from you and never returned what she took or made amends to you or the patients she hurt or the one who ran away, another liar, the chronic victims who live in the narcissism of victimship so they don't have to care for anyone else but themselves, the navel gazers.
Pray. The theology of crisis that every second you must choose between right or wrong. Every breath is in or out and the world's lung is 'right or wrong'. It's the No of crisis and suffering then the Grace of Yes and relief. Stop chosing fear over love. Stop kowtowing to the bullies in government. Stop being afraid of the prisons and their conspiracies they say aren't conspiracies. Love and Pray.
Live in the centre. Pray. In the theology of crisis know God is always with you and he is bringing death as a reprieve eventually. The pain will end. The persecution will stop. There will be a time without constant criticicm and taxes. There will be a place where you can stand someday in a grave and not be charged with loitering. There will be a parking lot which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. The kings of parking lots won't be there. There will be death and like sleep it will be good. God will bring you there in time.
Now pray. Now in the Theology of Crisis know that this too will pass. It's always getting better and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Call on God. Talk to Jesus. Pray. Love. It's okay. Silence the terror. Go back to sleep after the nightmares. Open the mail and breathe slowly. They are always threatening, they are always bullying. Everyone is guilty today. You are not alone. They can pick up everyone anytime. You have no rights. You probably never had. You were lied to. It's the jungle and they have all the money and guns and they have scales.
Breathe. Quiet. Calm. God is here. This is not real. God is real. This is not real. God is real. This is God but God is greater. In the Theology of Crisis you are saved and chosen and there will be peace.
Go through another day. See yet another stranger. Walk down the unsafe streets. Pray. You are old. Pray. You are more frail and they want you dead. You know she does. She lives to see you dead. That's the evil. Passive aggression. The time theives are the worst. The wasters. The chair fillers. The zombies. The smiling cages. Pray for her. She's really just silly. Pray for her. Pray for your enemies. They know not what they do. Forgive them and forgive yourself.
Forgive. Pray. The theology of crisis. It's the beginning.
“[Barth’s] deepest intention was to point to the crisis for the sake of pointing to the grace of God, to speak the No for the sake of making the divine Yes heard. In this crisis all human ways are exposed as dead-end roads in order that the one Way might be revealed. The divine Yes is the background of the radical crisis which is suspended over the whole of life.”—G. C. Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (London: Paternoster, 1956), p. 33.
Posted by Ben Myers at 7:40 AM
Not only do I like the term "theology of crisis", I like the idea that Barth speaks to. So often in my life I feel like I'm stumbling from crisis to crisis, out of the frying pan into the fire, out of the fire into the soup, out of the soup into the grease. If it isn't one thing it's another. I just don't feel like I'm getting ahead but mostly holding myself against the current, identifying with salmon swimming upstream. Even when i get to float in the pools though I figure it's not going to be for long because some new demand or crisis will arise.
I've treated tens of thousands of patients and when a hundred were doing well there was always one that gave me nightmares. I'd be in the textbooks and journals reading papers, looking for an answer to keep them from dying or get them over their next hurdle. Soon there were just no textbooks that said much about the kinds of problems I was facing. The easy stuff was behind me and everything was a quantum leap more complex.
Meanwhile just when I had some help from staff they had a personal crisis and brought all their chaos and attitude into the office or to the hospital ward. In the midst of this a wife or two would be demanding more attention than work allowed while the government was trying to kill me and my patients when they weren't trying to put me in jail. I was never helping matters because I had this strange notion of justice, and truth and no one played by the rules especially not the politicians and judges who made them.
I felt like a boy scout up the proverbial creek without a paddle and would phone colleagues and they'd tell me they'd never dealt with such a case or the ones who could help wouldn't want to get involved or die before their years because of the caring and stress it brings. Mostly people just went through the motions and were beaten down by the system that served only the wealthy.
Everywhere I looked I found that the beaurocrats had secret agendas, kickbacks and corrupt motives. The deceit and fear in government buildings vied with apathy and arrogance and no shame. They collectively were like judas with their peices of silver. I wasn't Jesus. My patients were. At best I was often just washing feet. I weep these days as I hear of people on life saving medications that are being cut off to pay for the Olympics. They'll die in months or years but they'll die sooner and the reprieve from their illnesses was kind of like a mother offering a tit and then pulling it out of the child's mouth and watching the child starve to death while slowly shaking her head with a mona lisa smile.
Daily now I know there's a cure or answer but there's no resources. There's no medications in the cupboards. There's no specialists. It's a year wait to see one and people wait months to see me. A hundred referrals waiting for me to priorize right now and no time in my schedule because the business is failing because the people who do business decided to think only of themselves and make a huge profit on my patients and my loss.
The worst offenders are the beaurocrats who are paid big bucks to 'self police'. As insiders we know whose "immune" and 'above the law" but there's a few 'favourites' and the rest of us live in fear and the public is kept completely in the dark because it's all back rooms and closed doors and smoke and mirrors.
So it just seems like this is at best purgatory or maybe even hell because the bits of heaven on earth are interrupted by criminals and psychopaths getting away with bloody murder and a veritable million dollar industry of 'false accusation' and a court that thrives on lies. Perjury was once a crime but now the liars are rewarded. When do you know they are lying? Watch for their lips moving.
Their eyes are like reptiles.
They inflict pain. They know no God. They have sold their souls.
So along comes the Theology of Crisis. Barth says to pray. It's only when one prays and accepts that this world is 'wrong', it's 'sinful', it's in error and the people in it are in error, and I am in error, and those who most think they are right are most likely most wrong, that Grace comes. After all the No, yes appears like the light of morning after darkness. Down is up and up is down like everyone whose ever been in court or dealt with beaurocrats or tax departments will know. Double speak and 1984. But that's just jungle and bush. That's just storms at sea.
Step back. Sit quietly. Turn inward and pray. In the moment of crisis which literally is daily and mostly hourly for me or moment to moment as I juggle the impossible demands of the Washingtons and Ottawas and Victorias lightyears from reality in their dachaus and sterile offices and I'm one of the billion peasants now caught in the trenches of the high speed suffering world. Step back. Breathe. Close eyes. Pray.
Every moment Jesus was on the cross God's grace was his resurrection. I look to my own dying as God's grace. There's an end to the newspapers full of corruption and misery. There's an end to the cries of pain. There's an end to this earth where Buddha was right, desire is the root of all suffering and life is desire. I desire the next breath and fear it will be my last but facing death and welcoming it, knowing that God will take me from this life, I feel God's Grace. I am tired of the arrogance and pompousness of beaurocrats, the depth of their lack of empathy, the money men safe in their private schemes, their private health care plans their time for vacations and their servants and hit men and their personal armies and their deceit.
I am tired of my longings for love and peace. I'm tired of my inability to reach perfection. Daily I'm told I'm no good because I can't stop my patients from doing drugs, getting beat up, staying in bed, having unprotected sex, overeating, forgetting their medications, going to jail.
I'm told by my patients and government that I'm accountable for everything and I'm condemned all around but either the patient or the beaurocrat stands at the light switch and refuses to turn it on while demanding I do surgery with a lawyer waiting to sue me for a slip of the blade. And I'm always afraid. I'm always anxious. I'm always worrying I'll make a mistake. I'm surrounded by chaos and disorder and more and more no one cares and the hardware and software are corrupted.
A man is dead 24 hours in a Canadian teaching hospital waiting room and the story is hushed. There is no CEO who is arrested for fired for his death. No one mourns him. He's just another 'friendly fire' death and there will be an 'inquiry' but if I have a slip of the tongue or miss a beat I'm bankrupted and punished and run out of Dodge. There are no safety nets for doctors or nurses or peasants or taxpayers.
I'm persecuted as a "whistleblower'. I'm crying and trying harder and harder and doing more and more in less and less time with the government demanding more and more and police everywhere and homeland security and big limosines patrolling the streets and I'm told of deadlines after the deadlines and the tax men change the rules and only their friends know and the courts subpoenae me and I catch the flu and there's never a vacation because no matter what, the work just piles up and waits till you get back at ten times the amount because there are less and less resources for more and more. And the patients watch tv which is all lies and the politicians promises are supposed to be fulfilled by everyone but them. And we are all growing tired and working more and more and more for less and less and less.
Step back. Breathe. Meditate. Pray. Go for a walk. Get a dog and remember your body is like St. Francis called it, your donkey. Those fat cat beaurocrats, the doctor police and the politicians and the rich aren't caring about you or your patients. They want you to die. They'd love you to die. They only like the silent. Shut up and dance like new nigger. Man is the nigger of the world. You are just a number in their classy work camps. The world has become Auschwitz but just as the jails now have televisions, the gas just takes longer because it's really polluted air and unsafe water and food's aren't inspected for safety anymore and cars have gas pedals that stick. They want your patients to have euthanasia. They prefered abortion and now deny westerners adoption claiming everyone is a sex offender and all should be in jail so children from third world countries woud do better to starve than be raised by Burnaby couples who married late becasue they couldn't afford to have children and then it was too late.
The government's promises are idle. Only their threats are real. The jails are full and they're making more and more 'for profit' jails, sardine cans for your brothers and sisters, without programs, without rehabilitation but lots of money for construction and catering and lots of money for 'consulting' and lots for lawyering ands lots of ways for money to go missing and lots of pay for men in brown shirts with beady eyes.
And where are the hospital beds. Where are the asylums. When do my patients get the medications they need. When do I get any assistance and when will I feel like it's anything but moving in molasses. And when will I be able to do what I was taught to do in university, that very silly place which is an ivory tower and knows nothing about reality because it's like Ottawa and Washington and Victoria so so far from reality that they wouldn't know it if they saw it. And their solution to everything: Kill the messenger. Shut them up. Give them cakes. Make more flag debates.
Step back. Breathe. Slow down. Inside. Calm the screaming thoughts. Repeat the name of the Lord. This is Theology of Crisis. Invite Jesus right into the centre of your pain. Ask God to heal this suffering. Ask him in at the moment when the tax man calls, the same one who called your patient and your patient picked up a gun and blew his brains out. Ask him in when the beaurocrat calls, the same one who called your patient who took an overdose when he got off the phone. Ask God into your life when you read the paper and more money is spent on killing than education or medicine.
Breathe. Feel your feet on the ground. The Theology of Crisis is that God is here always. In the poem of the 'footprints', God is carrying you. Brother Ass, St. Francis said. Soon you'll have a dog. He'll make you walk. He'll make you bend and scoop up shit. All the beaugeosie have their 'personal trainers' cute boys with tight buns or girls in pretty skirts and hard bellies. You'll have another mutt. Life gets better. Maybe this one won't be killed by drug addicts and corrupt government officials.
Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray unceasingly as St. Paul said. Remember Martin Luther King. "It's going to be a tough day so I have to spend more time on my knees." Give up breathing before giving up prayer. And live just to spite the government beaurocrats. Those crazed office dwellers, the administrators with a few years of education and faces brown from loyalty to their superiors who insist they can tell everyone else what to do and how to do it like the feudal lords and ladies they are because they've bought a government with a contribution or a lie.
Breathe. Pray. Forgive. Pray for your enemies. The girl who stole from you and never returned what she took or made amends to you or the patients she hurt or the one who ran away, another liar, the chronic victims who live in the narcissism of victimship so they don't have to care for anyone else but themselves, the navel gazers.
Pray. The theology of crisis that every second you must choose between right or wrong. Every breath is in or out and the world's lung is 'right or wrong'. It's the No of crisis and suffering then the Grace of Yes and relief. Stop chosing fear over love. Stop kowtowing to the bullies in government. Stop being afraid of the prisons and their conspiracies they say aren't conspiracies. Love and Pray.
Live in the centre. Pray. In the theology of crisis know God is always with you and he is bringing death as a reprieve eventually. The pain will end. The persecution will stop. There will be a time without constant criticicm and taxes. There will be a place where you can stand someday in a grave and not be charged with loitering. There will be a parking lot which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. The kings of parking lots won't be there. There will be death and like sleep it will be good. God will bring you there in time.
Now pray. Now in the Theology of Crisis know that this too will pass. It's always getting better and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Call on God. Talk to Jesus. Pray. Love. It's okay. Silence the terror. Go back to sleep after the nightmares. Open the mail and breathe slowly. They are always threatening, they are always bullying. Everyone is guilty today. You are not alone. They can pick up everyone anytime. You have no rights. You probably never had. You were lied to. It's the jungle and they have all the money and guns and they have scales.
Breathe. Quiet. Calm. God is here. This is not real. God is real. This is not real. God is real. This is God but God is greater. In the Theology of Crisis you are saved and chosen and there will be peace.
Go through another day. See yet another stranger. Walk down the unsafe streets. Pray. You are old. Pray. You are more frail and they want you dead. You know she does. She lives to see you dead. That's the evil. Passive aggression. The time theives are the worst. The wasters. The chair fillers. The zombies. The smiling cages. Pray for her. She's really just silly. Pray for her. Pray for your enemies. They know not what they do. Forgive them and forgive yourself.
Forgive. Pray. The theology of crisis. It's the beginning.
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