Presence

Yesterday, while driving home I noticed that there was a strong police presence in I-26 after I crossed into NC. A state trooper watching for speeders, a car pulled over in the other traffic direction, a semi-truck pulled on an exit ramp, there were a lot of them.

And then, after about 5 minutes of driving carefully and watching my speed like a good citezen, I saw something daunting in my rear-view mirror. It was another trooper. He tailed me for a mile before making to pass me; but, after coming alongside me to take a look at me (a suspicious character I'm sure) he moved back behind me and soon turned on his lights.

Arg! I wasn't doing anything wrong! I hadn't been speeding. Then I remembered my sister who (I think) once got a ticket for going 1 mile over the speed limit from a cop trying to meet his quota for the month. This is not what I needed.

Very politely the officer greeted me through the passenger window and said why he'd pulled me over: "North Carolina law states you can't have anything blocking or covering your liscence plate." Oh. A fair rule I sure; however, I wasn't aware that my liscence plate frame which says Tar Heel Alumni on it was blocking my plate. He asked if I'd like to see what he meant, and I agreed. Behind the car he pointed out that, yes, the lower bar on the cheap plastic $6 frame was indeed covering the bottom half of the still-clearly-intelligable words North Carolina.

Apparantly, I was doing something very wrong. So now, you are indeed reading the blog of, yes, a criminal. I confess I was concealing my liscence plate in a devious attempt to carry out my master scheme of......concealing my plate. I understand if you quit reading from here on out and don't want to be associated with me anymore. I, personally, wouldn't want to be involved with such riff-raff myself, but apparantly I do reside in a den of theives.

The officer issued me a warning and indeed wrote on it that this violator's violation was to "cover/conceal registration plate."

My real guess is that the armada of state troopers was attempting to make known their presence on this stretch of highway. They did a good job. Presence noted.

But this got me thinking on the power of presence. Because I know more keenly of the troopers' presence on the highway, I will surely be driving more prudently during my last week to-and-fro from Spartanburg. Presence can make a big difference. For instance, there are times in the hospital when the security guards hang around the ER or the cafeteria (to keep people from stealing 24-packs of soda), and I'm convinced they make a difference. Because of the vast amount of shady characters who enter the ER I've no doubt the staff feels a bit more secure with a security presence.

Presence is also a big part of my role as a chaplain. When a baby dies, or there's a horrible car accident, or when someone's wife passes away after a long bout with cancer, when heart attacks take the life of a loved one or when someone is terrified about a risky surgery there's usually not much I can say that will do much good. No, words are more often less helpful than simply my presence.

My presence is the best and most life giving gift I have for sufferers in the hospital. My presence let's them know they're not alone, let's them know that I'll walk with them step-by-painful-step through these few hours. Often my stays with people in the ER begin with my asking, "Do you mind if I just sit you with?" and they end with someone hugging me tightly and saying "thank you" even if they can't articulate what the thanks is for.

Similarly, there's something about the divine presence with us during these moments that has a life-giving result. My role as a minister reminds people that God is also present, also hurting, also wounded. My being present with them is God being present with them. No, I'm am not God; but, by loving them with my caring presence I believe I am in fact incarnating a God who is most often described as just that, love.

Rob Bell, in his book Velvet Elvis writes:

Suffering is a place where cliches don't work and words often fail. I was at lunch last week with a friend who is in the middle of some difficult days, and I don't have any answers. I just don't. I can't fix it for him. I've tried. And we sat there and talked and ate, and I let him know that I'm in it with him. It isn't very pretty and it isn't very fun, but when we join each other in the pain and confusion, God is there...And it is in our suffering together that we find out we are not alone. We find out who really loves us. We find out that with these people around us, we can make it through anything. And that give us something to celebrate.

Phone calls

Cell phones. They're everywhere. I see 12 year olds walking around with Blackberrys and iPhones, eyes glued to the screens, thumbs blazing on the keypad, heads turned down on a fast track to early neck and spine problems.

This generation of children will be stunted in their development of social skills - relationship ignoramouses. Instead of talking during school lunch, high schoolers are now texting and sexting their way to countless inevitably unfulfilling cyber "non-relationships." When you look some of them in the eyes, it's like they don't compute.

Sometimes, I hate technology.

When someone dies in the hospital, usually the first thing people go for is a tissue. The second? You guessed it, the cell phone. We've got to tell everybody, get the word out, and in doing so avoid our body's nature grief reaction to the loss of a meaningful relationship. The cell phone is our portal of escape...we think. But most people can't get through the second sentence. Like Jerry McGuire, grief has them at "hello."

In January, my wife was in a car accident, and I was on the cell quite a bit, telling people and updating, jibber-jabbering and yammering on. I was surprised when I called the first person and tried to say, "Heather was in a car accident." Halfway through the sentence I choked up, got misty eyed and got jerked back to the present. My body was trying to tell me that I was scared, that my world had just been shaken up a bit, and it was going to let me know this whether I wanted to know or not. I'd rather stay busy, do all the calling and conveying, taking care of details and the tow truck. But no, at some point I had to check back in with how Nathan was doing. The answer: not good.

That's how so many people after the death of a loved one respond: what do I need to do, who do I need to call? Details details details. Let's get it done. But when they pick up that phone to call and tell their sister or neighbor or pastor that Johnny is gone, they can't. Like me, most people get choked up good, tears show up and the conversation is over as quick as it began. The person on the other end usually figures it out.

However, there was this one time... A woman's 56 year old husband collapsed on the church softball field and went into cardiac arrest. He was gone before he got to the hospital. When I arrived in the consult room doc was talking with the wife who broke all the grief rules. Shock and disbelief were her chosen grief manefestations, which can be surprisingly helpful at certain times. She was chipper and as even-tempered as someone coming to the doctor for a check-up.

She casually said things like, "I know he's gone, but I just can't believe it," and "I guess I should be crying, but it just ain't happn'n." Then she went for the cell phone. "Uh oh," I thought, "this will get her. No one makes it through the phone calls." Because you see, this is the hardest phone call people ever make. But this woman called her daughter with a level head, and didn't even try to let her down easy. "You're dad's gone," she said in a temperate voice clearly showing concern for her daughter's grief but none of her own. We could all hear the daughter crying on the other end, but mom never budged. Slightly frantically, she answered questions but not in a painstaking kind of way.

Some people, you can tell, do their absolute best to restain their tears and sadness. (I don't know where we got this cultural mindset crap that thinks tears are a sign of weakness.) But this lady was not straining to hold back anything. She was in shock. This is how her body was dealing with it. For the entire hour I spent with her, she never broke. You could tell the grief was there, that she was frazzled, that when she got home and her husband of 34 years wasn't there she would finally cry. But, I've never seen anyone last that long before.

She will go through the greif process, and I pray she does it in a healthy way. It's terrifying to think that a completely healthy man, like her husband, could just drop on a Tuesday evening and take his last breaths for no apparant reason. He is the same age as my parents. Now that's a reality check. From now on, my parents are prohibited from strenuous physical activity. Otherwise, me or my brother, or my sister might be making one of those dreaded phone calls, and I don't know if we're ready for that.

Sorry there's no happy ending to this post. I realize it's kind of a downer, but sometimes that's just the way it has to be. "And now, we are ended." -A. Niska

Dog Theology, part 7: Dirty Love

The next installment in the series titled Dog Theology.

Recently, my wife and I went camping. 5 days of outside, showering only once, bugs and dirt. Our dogs' favorite part...the dirt. Everytime we take them camping they come home dirty, filthy, nasty, dust in their fur, mongrels. Upon coming home, our entire family got bathed. The result, clean puppies, clean people and a drain clogged with coarse black dog hair.

If you can't tell, I really love my dogs. Whether dirty or clean, I love'em. When their dirty, I rub on'em and get dirty myself and enjoy every minute of it. They're my filthy four-legged angels. When they're clean, I enjoy their clean-ness, their soft fur, and rub on'em and enjoy every minute of it.

When this is happening the puppies get the 'Nathan voice:' I voice a use only to address my dogs. You know, it's that baby, infantilizing, high pitched, excited to see them voice. It's their very own voice.

I wonder if God looks at us the same way. We quickly condemn the 'dirty' ones in society and relegate them to a category unworthy of divine love and favor. But really, I see such a person as just-as-loved by God as anyone else. God rubs on us and gets dirt on God's hands. When we do something wrong or shameful we also tend to condemn ourselves as unworthy of divine love or love from anyone else for that matter.

I think that if we could only see through our own self-condemnation and self-judgment and abasement, we'd see a God who is smiling at us, excited to see us, and speaking to us in our very own (puppy) voice from God.

Just like I'm not afraid to give my dirty dog a belly rub, even though I'll get dirty, I have this image of a God who's not afraid to show love and grace toward people considered 'dirty.'

Humans draw lines in the sand between one another claiming, "this group is not in God's favor," or "these people are different, wrong, bad," or "these people are holy and clean while those people are defiled and dirty and condemned." How sad would it be if we had a God who did the same thing. What if God, no matter how screwed up we get, actually loved us all: you, me, your middle school bully, illegal immigrants, homosexual people, prisoners, members of the Taliban. I sure hope that, no matter how much we may hate, despise or loath certain people, God is able to love them.

No matter how dirty we may think we get, I sure do believe that God is in the business of dirty love.

{The picture above is the dirtiest Lola has ever gotten. It's also the happiest.}

Don't even try it

For our honeymoon, my wife and I took a week long cruise in the Carribean. It was wonderful, and we had a blast. I learned that one of the appeals to cruises is you get to go to other countries and take advantage of duty free liquor and cheap cigars made in countries with whom America doesn't do business.

Many people prefer to buy certain items, such as cigars and liquor and take them back home. Heather and I did not do this. In fact, one man, I called him the "fun manager," on the boat convinced us not even to try smuggling certain items back into America when he said something like this, "If you think you can beat customs, think again. It's these people's jobs to catch you, and they're good at it." And he was right. What hawaiian-t-shirt-wearing jerk thinks he can sneak something past people who catch you for a living. (Except for the time I smuggled 3 miniature Cuban cigars through customs on a high school cruise when I was 16. But, I wasn't wearing a hawaiian t-shirt!)

My advice, if you think you can fool these people, don't even try it.

Similarly, I was in the trauma bay recently when a man was wheeled it smelling of strong alcohol. Not unusual. As he was conscious, the doctors began asking him what happened.

"I fell," was his first attempt.

"Mr. K, you have a knife wound here," said the doctor skeptically, "who else was involved?"

"Uh, nobody," said the man eyeing the police officer waiting in the corner, "I was by myself." Getting frustrated the no-nonsense doctor said, "Sir, you want to tell us what really happened so we can help you?"

Lie after obvious-no-time-to-concoct-a-worthy-story lie, this man tried to hide what really happened to him from the medical staff and police. In his drunken stupor, and because they'll only ask what happened so many time, he seemed to believe that the docs and nurses believed him. But, if you've ever considered lying to ER staff, let me be very clear about something: you're not the first inebriated bonehead who thinks he can slip one past these people!

They see injuries everyday and know what certain injuries should look like. Like the customs agents, it's their job. It's actually not that uncommon for people to try and lie their way through the trauma bay, but it never works. People have tried to say it was a bar fight when clearly they'd been driving, or some have simply claimed that they don't know what happened even though they were awake the entire time. "I don't know how the car accident happened," is a common explanation even when EMS finds a cell phone with part of a text message typed. Honestly, how can you not know how it happened when your father-in-law shoots you in your own living room?

Actually, the best patients in the ER are the ones that tell the truth. The med staff often starts chuckling when a man begins a sentence with, "I'm not going lie to you..." because we know it's usually going to end with something good: "...I had way to much to drink, and she was smok'n hott." Or, "I wanted to show my buddies that you can jump a moped off a ramp just like a dirt bike. Guess I wa' wrong."

The best what the guy with the finger nail scratches on his face from the girl he was cheating with claiming it was his cat to his girlfriend wouldn't find out.

My advice, if you're going to try and fib your way through the ER, don't even try it.

Colleagues, what other wacky tales or truths have you heard pass through the ETB?

{Note: picture not from SRHS trauma bay.}

God says "yes" to me

Here's a little poem I heard today which will make you're theological mind smile. A warning, if you think on this one too much, it's quite likely it will mess with your theology, so be careful.

Enjoy.

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure it
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exacly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph my letters
Sweet cakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Are you smiling? I am.

Thanks Vicki for this one.

--Kaylin Haught, “God Says Yes to Me,”
From The Palm of Your Hand (1995)

4 Years

Five days ago, Heather and I celebrated our four year anniversary! It's still hard to believe that girl has stayed married to this ol' bum for that long and is eager for more.

We said our traditional vows and "I dos" at Isaqueena Point, a private little grassy penninsula, on Lake Keowee, SC. The ceremony lasted no longer than 20 minutes and was attended by no more than 100 people. We didn't want a tiny wedding, but we also didn't want to meet anyone new on our day of nuptual agreement.

Here's a fun picture of Heather and the groomsmen. At the end we left on my dad's testosterone filled 21-foot ski and fish combo Triton boat with a 225 horse power engine (que Tim Taylor's man grunt). It was fun, plus no one degraded our car with used toilet paper and muffler covering condoms (something I wouldn't put past my friends).

To celebrate, this year we went camping at the Davidson River Camp Ground in the Pisgah National Forest near Brevard, NC. 5 days and 4 nights later my back was ready for some rest on a real mattress. Here's a few observations and lessons I've gleaned from my time spent in the "semi-wilderness" of the campground.

Camping involves lots, I mean lots, of bending down and getting up and down from the ground. Many muscles in my back which I don't use that much were sore for

many days.

We took the dogs, our babies. They remained tied up while outside the tent, and I'm always puzzled at why, when they lie down, they insist on being at the very end of their leash to the point that the leash is taught and their throats are squeezed a bit. But they'll nap like that.

For some reason, even though we're sleeping in the woods, we always find ourselves offended at the spiders and other creapy crawlers that invade our camp space. I mean, really, where do they get off climbing on our tent and across our gravel?!

I'll always be amazed at just how much gear we are able to pack into our little two-door Saturn coupe which already carries the two of us and two 60lb dogs. Packing the trunk has become an art form at which I am a Rembrandt.

Lastly, one reason I love camping so much is the chance to do nothing but stare at and be in nature. And the cell phones are neglected, save a lovely call from my sister wishing us happy anniversary. (Okay, that's actually two reasons...meh.)

I look forward to many more anniversary camping trips with Heather, who will always be my bride, my sweetheart, the holder of my heart, and the one girl in this world whom I adore endlessly.

I love you Heather. Happy anniversary!

Food Inc.,

I just watched Food Inc., directed by Emmy Award-winner Robert Kenner. This documentary film examines corporate farming in the US particularly focusing on the meat and vegetable producers.

And let me start the review by saying that this film both blew my hair back and did not. Before watching it, I knew that a critical and honest look at where our super-market items come from would be unsettling, and it was--this was no surprise. But for some reason, I also wasn't ready for it.

Many of the images and statistics are very shocking. Cows standing in knee-high liquidy maneuer just before they're taken away for slaughtering. Chickens stimulated to grow meat so quickly that their bones can't keep up, and so they can only walk a few steps at a time. Chicken farmers are forced to keep up with their contracting company's regulations, which has led the average chicken farmer, who makes $18,000/year, to be upwards of $500,000 in debt. The piggies were cute.

I'm all for treating animals nicely, but their humane (or lack thereof) treatment was the least of the concerns in the film. In Smithfield, NC sits the largest meat packing plant in the world, and most of the employees are foreign workers. The company recruits these workers from Mexico, gets them here, treats them horribly, and makes deals with immigration officers to arrest about 15 workers per day in order to maintain a state of fear and lack of voice/rights from the workers. In the 1950's, being a meat packer was a respectable job with a livable wage and benefits. Now, because of conditions in the plants, it is one of the most dangerous jobs available--right up their with coal miner.

On the farm, corn is mass produced beyond your imagination. The pictures of mountains--literally mountains--of corn were probably the most astonishing. And because we have so much corn, first we sell it in other countries driving local farmers out of business, and second we break it down into High Fructose Corn Syrup and inject it into about %90 of what you buy in the super-market.

Less than twenty years ago the Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to patent life. Why does this matter? Because one company began patenting the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that you could then plant to produce the highest yielding crops. Seeds! We modified seeds to make more food. That's good. We then patented them so that one major company, Monsanto, owns virtually all the seed planted by American farmers.

Why does this matter? Imagine your a farmer who is finishing up the season's harvest. Part of your task is to gather and store seed from the harvest in order to plant for the next year. But now you can't, because if you do, then Monsanto will sue you for stealing their property because they own the patent on that seed. Some farmers resisted buying Monsanto seed, even though their neighbors didn't. The wind carrys pollen from the neighboring farm to their farm and Monsanto seed with it. Monsanto's greesy investigators find out, and then they slap an already struggling farmer with an expensive lawsuit. One farmer, just because he didn't use Monsanto seed, was sued for "inciting other farmers against using Monsanto seed leading to profit loss." That's furiously ridiculous. That farmer settled and payed Monsanto the settlement fee just because it's more expensive to fight the legal battle.

There are laws in certain states that make it illegal for anyone (yes, anyone) to speak against the meet production industry, because the industry would then sue you for slander and profit loss. The injustices pointed out by the film piled for an hour and a half and made me want to punch some corporate executives in the head.

The film offers some glimmers of hope: examples of how the tobacco industry was forced to change and so might the food industry, Walmart offering many more organic options, and small local meat farmers surviving in the market against big corporations by providing better quality and selling at farmers' markets.

I recomment that everyone watch this film. I award it the ever-coveted "Nathan-two-thumbs-up." The movie offers a peak into the kitchen to see who is preparing our food and how it is being done. You don't have to go rent it or put it on your Netflix que. Just, do like I did and search for it on YouTube. I watched the whole thing there in 10-minute segments. So, you have no excuse not to, and if you watch Food Inc., I predict you'll begin to watch food a bit more closely.