"Swimming with Piranha"

"I am going to Peru again. I am taking a group of people from the cornfields of Iowa into the jungles of the Amazon. This will be the fifth group I have taken into one of the most remote and exotic places on earth. We are buying tickets and ..."

Killer on the Loose

I walked into the barn today and nothing seemed unusual. But as I worked, I became aware of an uncomfortable feeling, nothing definite, nothing even hardly consciously perceptible, at least at first. It was just a background uncomfortable sense that something was not quite right. Like something was there that should not be there. Or no, something was missing, something that should be there was gone. Then it dawned on me. Something was missing.

The chickens were gone, all of them. I do not know why I did not notice it right away. I mean, after realizing it, it seemed so utterly obvious. The chickens are always there, poking around, "bock, bocking" all over the place. There are so many of them, the barn is always a noisy, busy, crowded place. But now, today it is dead, silent and empty.

And the cats, where are all of the cats too? There are not any cats here either. This place has been totally cleared out. Last week the barn was teeming with life, today it is filled with nothing but hollow echoes. This is freaking me out.

You know what I think? Something must be eating them. Yes, I know, it sounds gruesome, but they are tasty. The chickens, that is, not the cats. I think we have a hungry killer on the loose, a competitive carnivore. And this just will not do. There is only room for one carnivore on this farm, and it is I. Whoever is munching on my chickens has to go.

But that is easier said than done. My rival is likely nocturnal and I am not. Our paths will never cross. Maybe I should not worry about it. There do not seem to be any more chickens left for me to be defensive about. It seems like they all have been eaten already.

Maybe if I wait awhile before getting replacement chickens, whatever it is eating my chickens might forget all about our barn and never come back for seconds. But that is not very likely though. Would it forget about a place with easy pickings?

Well, this is just disturbing. The chickens are gone and there is a killer on the loose. No, this just will not do.

Living Exuberantly

The air is cool and chilling, drawing out a shiver. Dry leaves swirl and crackle, trapped in the fits and starts of anxious wind gusts that pick at everything. The trees that were once green, now yellow, orange, red, are being whipped about, as if the unseen violence will not wait, but would have all of their leaves now, tearing them from the bows to leave the naked branches for winters work to come.

I brace myself against it and set out across the frosted brown grass that not long ago was a vibrant lush green oasis of beautiful lawn. My boots make a crunching sound, scraping across dead blades of grass encased in the frozen ice crystals of the morning frost of autumn. The air bites in my chest as I breathe it in. And as I breath it out, it is a fog, that seems to quickly hurry away and disappear on the wind, as if there is some important place it must go.

I take in everything. I smell it. I hear it. I feel it. This is my favorite time of the year. I want to be outside, to be where it is wild, where things are real. Time slows down. Things clarify. Everything is beautiful.

The dogs are with me. We are walking. They teach me sometimes. I watch them and today I would like to be like them. Live in the moment, fully present, fully committed. Give the moment my full attention. Live exuberantly. Dogs do not hold out. They give it their all. That is my lesson for today.

On this beautiful, yellow, brown, crisp, cold, crackly autumn day.

Needle in a Haystack

Our two dogs were outside playing around yesterday. When I went out, I noticed that the puppy, which is now a precocious adolescent in the accelerated lifetime of dog years, was happily running around without her collar. Aside from being a nice colorful collar that is a good accent for the rest of her outfit, it had attached to it her dog tag things. You know, the jingly things that have the names, numbers, vet stuff, vaccines, licenses, I'm not sure all what, but I know it is important enough that if it gets lost we have to get replacements.

Can you tell I am not the one who handles the technical stuff about the animals around here? There is a good reason for that. There are plenty of people around here that like that stuff, and are good at it, so they take care of it. Then I can do other things, like catch cats and peacocks and bend basketball hoops to heck.

I have noticed lately that our two dogs have gotten into this game of grabbing each other's collars and playing tug of war. A pleasant and harmless doggy pastime I used to say. But not now. Could it be that there has been a conspiracy all along? "Hey pal! You pull mine off, I'll pull yours off!" "Deal!"

We live on nearly ten acres of land. When I lose something, I retrace my steps and the lost items usually turn up. I did a walk around the place with the dogs tagging along, trying to retrace their steps, trying to think like a dog, trying to be like a dog whisperer. I think the dogs were laughing at me. Dogs laugh, don't they? At least they sure seem like they are happy all of the time.

What are the odds that I will ever see that collar again? How long will I be hunting around for it before I finally give up? These are questions to ponder.

Last night, as per our usual routine, I politely requested that our little Miss puppy place her little toosh into her kennel for bedtime. She stood there for a moment considering my request, and then decided that she did not want to comply. This is not an acceptable response; she was not offered that option. I, as her pack leader, reached over for her...aaah, no collar. She pranced away, head held high, without any jingles around her neck, so proud of herself. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see our other dog look over and I could just hear him thinking, "Tomorrow, we get rid of mine!"

"Succulent Sushi"

"The other night Cindie and I went out for a nice Sushi dinner. It was a dinner meeting with a drug company speaker. He led a discussion on hypertension treatment, so we learned something about blood pressure and ate some good fresh fish.

I love Sushi. But unfortunately, I do not ..."

"Losing Consciousness"

"A patient passed out in my lab in the office the other day. This happens frequently. A reflex can be triggered in most people in the right circumstances called the vaso-vagal reflex. Pain and fear are common triggers, as are emotional stimuli, and getting blood tests taken in the ..."

Woman's Liberation

The impact of the birth control pill on our society after its release and widespread adoption in the middle of the last century was phenomenal. It played no small part in the overdue so-called "liberation" of women. The focus of women's talent and energy exclusively on child-bearing and home-making shifted and expanded until the broad spectrum of her full creative and intellectual potential now impacts nearly every area of human endeavor.

However, it isn't the birth control pill, as powerful a tool as it is, that is responsible for giving the world the gift of woman's full potential. It was something else. Something else had to come first. Something else that had to come before the birth control pill came. Something that has to exist for the birth control pill to have the dramatic social influence that it does. I learned about this when I visited the isolated indigenous people of the jungles of the Orinoco River Delta in Venezuela.

These people are cut off from the outside world. They live and survive off the land, subsistence style, as humans have for as long as there have been humans. There is no health care, as we know it. No doctors, medicines, hospitals, surgery, vaccines, antibiotics, dentists, no nothing. Imagine every time in your life you needed medical or dental treatment for anything and then imagine what it would be like if you had not received the care you did. Would you have suffered? Would you have survived?

The average age of this population is very young. It is rare for an adult to live to be forty. More than half of the population is what we would consider children, teenagers and younger. Infant mortality is very high. Some estimate as high as 40%, but no one knows for sure really. These people are not visited from the outside much and no one knows their language. But they do not give their babies names until they reach 6 months of age. They do not think that they have "souls" until then. No doubt, this belief might be related to the frequent number of infants that die before reaching this age. And those that do would be the more robust and therefore are the one's more likely to survive.

The women begin having babies at the earliest age that they can, and continue having them one right after the other until they cannot have them anymore, or they die. I saw very few that had reached menopause. And every family had many, many children, if they were fortunate.

These poor women spent their entire lives being pregnant, nursing, caring for children, then dying. There was no choice, no option, no alternative. The men were free to take care of the affairs of their world. The politics, the business, all enterprises and affairs beyond the children and the family the men took care of. It seems, practically speaking, simply because they could. The imperative was a division of labor dictated by nature for the sake of survival.

What if we gave these people birth control pills? Gave these women the same power and control over their bodies and reproductive lives as our women were given back in the 1960's? What would happen? Within one generation, these people would become extinct. Why? Because they have to have babies faster than the babies are dying. And they have no control over the forces that would wipe them out. Their only means of survival is to out-produce the destructive forces aligned against them.

So back to what it is that makes the birth control pill the influential tool that it is. What is it in our culture that lets the birth control pill unlock our women's potential for the benefit of our society and not for its destruction? We have a reasonable expectation that when we birth a child, we will see that child reach adulthood. It is that simple. It is that profound. I had to go to the remote jungles of the Orinoco River Delta to see how good I have it.

When it is all said and done, and the big "playback" button in the sky shows us the big picture, all of human history and God's plan and how everything fits together and makes sense, when that happens, I think when it all shifts out, we will find that one of the greatest gifts God gave to human beings during our time on earth, he gave to us, in this time, in this place. And that is that we have a reasonable expectation that when we birth a child, we will see that child reach adulthood. This is huge.

And so, in my opinion, woman's liberation owes its existence to the fact that when we birth a child, we have a reasonable expectation that that child will reach adulthood. This is truly a great gift. And as parents, we are truly grateful.

The Dying Baby

The limp infant child lay across her lap. His vacant stare and sunken dry eyes revealed that she was losing him. His panting breaths were agonizing as he gave every ounce of life he had left to survive a minute longer. His strength and vigor was nearly gone as weakness visibly weighed on him, pulling him down into a death of stillness and sorrow.

I looked from him to her, the mother of this dying baby. Oh my heart is pierced! I feel nothing but the sharp pang of fear and pain at the direness of the situation and the helplessness and hopelessness. I am a parent in that brief moment and I feel nothing but what it is like to have my dear child torn away from my arms forever and I feel like I can't bear it.

But I look into her eyes and I could never have been prepared for what I saw. Where I expected a look of expectation and pleading, imploring me to try my best to help however I can, to do what ever I can to save her very ill baby, I saw instead a look of despair more devastating, more penetrating, more consuming than any I could have imagined. And I was beset.

This mother never possessed anything close to an expectation that I could or would make any difference. To her it was of no consequence anything that I said or did that day. As a doctor, of coarse, I did everything that I knew how to do with the equipment and supplies that I had with me to save the life of her baby. We were in the most remote jungles of the Orinoco River Delta in Venezuela. The indigenous people we were seeing had never before been treated by medical doctors, and probably have not been since.

My treatment most likely did not help this little child. And though I am sad to this day about the likely prospect that he died after I left, my greatest grief derives from not being able to impart any comfort to his mother through the act of my kindness. The offering of help motivated by sincere compassion, even if it proves ineffective in the end, usually engenders hope when people face despair, even overwhelming despair.

But not on that day. Not with that mother. Not in that village. And I don't know why. And it bothers me.

I came back home. I continued with my regular routine and busy medical practice. Not a single day has gone by since my encounter with the sick baby and his mother in the jungles of the Orinoco River Delta, when every patient I treat does not come to me with an expectation that I will do what I can to help them.

But I will never forget the day when I looked into the eyes of a young woman who possessed a kind of despair that we know nothing of around here. A rare kind of despair that I don't think any human being should have to bear.

And it haunts me.

Creative Problem Solving

I'm working on a project. I read a book that gave me great ideas and I have been trying to relate them to how I think about my past and how it effects my habits and the choices I make. Sounds vague?

Anyway, as I'm struggling with these new concepts I'm finding them difficult, complex, deep and a bit beyond my grasp. The things I am reaching for, the conclusions I want to make, the insights and understandings are just out of focus, floating out there in the fog, and I am groping, waiting for clarity, waiting for them to come into view. There is an incubation going on in my unconscious that is part of the process and I am waiting for access, for maturation of the thought.

I want to write, but I am not ready for end product productive writing around this. And I've never been one to free-associate write either. For me the creative free-associating tends to go on in the energetic and interactive subconscious/conscious interface environment as time passes.

The writing then is more like a higher brain function; a conscious, logical, expressive, puzzle thing that ends up being a different kind of creative problem to solve. It's like my brain has divided problems into insight problems and expressive problems and has found different ways that it prefers to solve each kind.

So I'm still working on the insight type of problem. Then when that gets worked out, I can work on the expressive type of problem.

Changing the World

I have done a little looking around at other blogs. There are some really smart people out there writing some really deep stuff. It's pretty amazing. I'm glad I dived in before looking around; I might have been too intimidated to even start. My last post linked a blog with a nifty post and string of comments that I thought was cool. And thinking along these lines, along with some of what I have been writing lately, brought me to a realization.

I have always desired my life mission to be aligned with the mission of the church, which I have always seen to be derived from God's ultimate mission which is to change the world. The great commission is that we go and make disciples of all nations. It is a great mission, a noble mission, to change the world.

But as I'm reading about the politics of fundamentalism and evangelicals and fundamental evangelicals and right-wing fundamental evangelicals and theocrats and anti-theocrats and secular fundamentalists and moderates and conservatives and centrists and liberals and so on and so on... I realize that all these years when I have been thinking and talking about changing the world, it has not been in the grand global, political, "public sphere" arena of human experience and activity. I want to change the world one person at a time by personally introducing each individual to the person of Jesus Christ, allowing them to be reconciled to their creator, thereby becoming transformed into a new creation.

I don't want to change the world by changing governments. That will never work anyway. I want to see the world changed by God as he reconciles individuals to himself through Jesus Christ and builds a new kingdom from scratch. And I can be part of that by helping to introduce people to Jesus Christ, the person of Christ. Not the idea of Christ, not the teaching of Christ, not the dogma of Christ, not the values of Christ, the living breathing real live Jesus Christ.

You know, maybe our blogs should write more about who he is and less about "the precepts of Christianity." It is pretty hard to sell a precept, but when you meet him, it can be life changing.