Dog Theology, part 3: Delight

A former room mate of mine and I once ruminated on the likeness between the dog/man relatinoship and the man/God relationship. This branch of thinking was quickly named "Dog Theology" in honor of those bumber stickers which read Dog is Love. From time to time I like to comment on another point of contact or similarity between the two relationships.


My dogs are the greatest! I love them both very much, and while my wife and I are childless the dogs will serve as our little ones to care for. One of the things that I love most about my dogs is that I simply delight in them.


Dakota is wily. She's sneaky, kniving and loving. And I must admit, though she often uses her brains to get herself in trouble, I really love that part of her.


Lola is not burdened with an over abundance of brains. She loves to show off and carry around her favorite toys while snorting at you. She has high energy and is not graceful.


It's not uncommon for my dogs to do something which agrivates me or that I don't like. However, I always seem to love them. I delight in them. They don't have to do anything in order for me to simply delight in them.


When I look at Lola just laying in the floor on her back I take delight. When I watch Dakota sniffing the ground looking for a good location on which to make a deposit I am delighted just because she is.


When I think about this relationship dynamic and translate it to the man/God relationship I see similarities. Part of my theology includes the claims in Genesis that God created man and saw that man was "good." When I read this I hear that God delights in man. This means, just like my dogs, it's not my job to make God like me, God simply enjoys my being.

I can only take joy in the thought that I am loved as recklessly and even more intensely than I love those two cute little four-legged-tale-waggers.

Happy Holidays

Realizing that some people are less comfortable wishing everyone 'Merry Christmas,' as addressed in my last post, here's a list of ways to say 'Happy Holidays' in a few other languages.

Enjoy!

French: Joyeuses Fetel.
Swedish: Trevlig Helg.
Portuguese: Boas Festas.
Romanian: Sarbotori Fericite
Mandarin: Jie Ri Yu Kuai
Carlan: Bones Festes
Italian: Buone Feste
South African (Xhose): li holide eximnandi
German: Forhe Feiertage
Dutch: Prettige feestdagen
Hawaiian: Hou'oli Lanui (pronounced how-oh-law la-new-ee)
In Gaelic: Beannachtai na feile
Slovenian: Vesele Praznike
Indonesian: Selamat Hari Raya
Croatian: Sretni praznici
Souther English: Happy Holidays Ya'll!

I hope everyone's season is filled with a full amount of love and light and happiness.

Merry Christmas

There's just over a week until Christmas and people are wishing others 'Merry Christmas,' 'Happy Holidays' and other yule blessings.

So in the spirit of such blessings here's a list of how to say Merry Christmas in several different languages.

Enjoy!

Chinese: (Mandarin) Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan
Chinese: (Cantonese) Gun Tso Sun tan'Gung Haw Sun
Croation: Sretan Bozic
Danish Glaedelig Jul
Filipino: Maligayang Pasko
Finnish: Hyvaa joulua
French: Joyeux Noel
German: Frohliche Weihnachten
Greek: Kala Christouyenna!
Indonesian: Salemat Hari Natal
Irish: Nollaig Shona Dhuit
Italian: Buon Natale!
Jajpanese: Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto
Portuguese: Felize Natal!
Russian: Pozdravlyenie s Rozjdyestvom i s Novym Godom!
Swedish: God Jul

Next will be a list of how to say 'Happy Holidays.'

A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry

I recently finished the arduous process of reading the extensive novel A Fine Balnce by Rohinton Mistry. A 603 pager with small font and tiny margins, this book that more resembles a brick took me just over a month to get through. And only now that I'm done with it can I say it was well worth it!

Mistry writes a tale woe (and when I say woe I mean, "wow") taking place in an unnamed city in India during 1975. The book follows the happensatance meeting of four people who develop an invaluable relatinoships, and end up living together for one year. Tracking the background of each person's family of origin, the reader understands well the struggles and idiosyncrecies of each character as they learn to deal with each other and cope with life.

Much like the 2008 film of the year Slumdog Millionaire, this book seems to tell these stories as a means to depict the situation in India. However, unlike Slumdog there is no sugar coating of a million bucks or a happy ending love story. A Fine Balance tells it like it was: horrible, heart-breaking, infuriating, shocking, and just plain sad.

Mistry has no need to strain his creative mind nor make florid his prose to produce his story. Rather, simply telling the stories of the characters will draw you in as your inner you, the part that connects you to all other people, is touched and the rope of your heart's compassion is tugged on.

Though officially the genre of the book is fiction, a note in the beginning makes very clear that though the city is unnamed, and the places visited are non-specific, the stories are all true. This book will expand your compassion for people different from you. One cannot read these tales and walk away unchanged.

A Fine Balance is a recommended read. If you have the time to put into it, this book will put in to you.

Hill-Rom

I'm fascinated! I just finished hearing from an employee of Hill-Rom about the complexities and intricacies of one of its main products. Hill-Rom makes hospital beds and medical equipment. A friend of mine has the job of training nurses on how to use these beds. The beds are much more than just beds, "they are medical devices," designed for comprehensive patient care.

An intensive care unit bed can not only move up, down, tilt and contort in all different directions, but it can massage patients, gently wave them to sleep as if sleeping on water, remove heat from specific detected hot spots on a patient's body, rigorously shake patients to keep clogged lungs healthy, and that's not all.

A standard hospital bed that can do the basics often costs around 5K. The super ICU models with all the bells and whistles can easily compare in price with a new SUV.

Because of all they can do, the beds really are not just beds. They can take care of patients, being gentle to wounded areas, in ways that otherwise would tie up nursing staff for an entire day. The newest models will even talk to you in English or Spanish!

Some beds have silver in the mattress which reduces infection. They can also detect ares on your body that are too hot and actively remove that heat to keep you cool, dry, and clean. Patients with pneumonia have a gunky build up in the lungs. This needs to be loosened up by shaking or pounding on the back. The beds can do this so the nurse can go about doing the other 2 million things s/he has to get done.

As said above, these are medical devices, and I am amazed each time I hear or read something else of which they are capeable. The next time I casually lean on one I'll imagine leaning against a Toyota 4Runner.

Maybe we can get one placed in the on call room so it can lull me to sleep by gently rolling massagy waves along my back. That sounds nice!

X-mas Music

If you want some variety from the seasons usual Christmas tunes you can check out these two delightful songs, which I revisit every year for a good laugh.


My absolute favorite! Visit this site for the best (or at least most moving) version of "Oh Holy Night" you'll ever hear. I alsmost cried laughing so hard the first time I heard it. And I'm fairly sure it's real.


You may have heard it before, but Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song" is quite entertaining. Here's a link to a YouTube showing of it, but I think Sandler was partially drunk during this preformance so the words are hard to understand at times. Take a moment to listen to Sandler's list of Jewish (or partly Jewish) celebrities and have a laugh.


Enjoy!


Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, have a great Solstice, happy Kwanza, have a good Dwali and also Bodhi Day, and of course, enjoy Festivus!

Images

Recently, we (the 4 residents) have been exploring different images that serve as good metaphores for pastoral care in the hospital. The wounded healer, the wise fool, the intimate stranger, and even the circus clown have all been inspiring images from which we can take parts to inform our care.

After finishing Dykstra's book, Images of Pastoral Care, our teacher inspired us to come up with our own images that represent some part, though not all, of our own pastoral style. The following is mine.

_____________________

I am a good listener. Holding my tongue and reserving my opinion come naturally to me during conversation. I am also a musician. I love listening to, playing and creating music.

In patient rooms I do lots of listening. I hear stories, complaints, tales of woe, theological copings and difficult questions. I hear people’s lives poured out. Their struggles, fears, life narratives, greatest achievements and deepest passions are mine, even if only for a few moments.

Much of my response is to keep them talking. And within the wealth of information and emotion that they share I always begin to see the beautiful people which they are. I become able to see not the drug addict but the innocent boy beaten down too many times by life who turned to narcotics as a means of survival. It's amazing how compassion userps the space previously occupied by judgment and prejudice. I see the beauty underneath all the pain, the clean sheet underneath its stains.

I make effort to sift through the superfluous details of people’s stories and find my way to their pain, to their beauty. I find myself filtering through the white noise of their stories trying to pull out the purity of their being and empower them to recognize it for themselves.

Reflecting on my pastoral care described this way an image began to form in my mind. A musical image, it is befitting that I thought of a Recording Studio Technician. The studio technician must also be a good listener. He or she is listening to musicians pour out their lives through music.

Song lyrics express life’s struggles, fears, stories and passions. Much like a patients spills it to the chaplain, the musician sings (spills?) it for the technician. However, after the recording session is complete the technician has work to do. Raw sound tracks are accompanied with white noises and unnecessary sounds that must be filtered out before the beauty of the song can be brought to bear. A good technician can quickly see or hear the purity and beauty of a song that simply needs to be uncovered.

So, much like a recording technician sifts through a newly recorded song/track to clean it up, I find myself sifting through people’s stories in order to help them find their clean self, to help people see themselves as God does: pure, and good and loved.