let's talk about thoughts and prayers. Personally, I think they're great. I want your thoughts and prayers. Just today someone told me they'd be thinking about me and praying for me. Cool! One of the ways we've made it through this past year is by the prayers, thoughts, and considerate deeds of others. Most people really aren't in a position to do much more than think of us and pray for us, and that already is more than I would ask of anyone. So there's nothing at all wrong with offering solidarity, thoughts, prayers, good vibes, or whatever other intangibles one wants to direct at another, whatever their situation. And I don't think anyone is making the argument that people shouldn't think of or pray for unfortunate circumstances, though it seems plenty of others believe this. The problem arises when thoughts and prayers are all people offer. But that's not quite right either. More specifically, the trouble comes when people who are in a position to offer more give only thoughts and prayers.
let me explain what I mean by this. This last spring, I didn't want you (unless you're reading this, Doctors Heaton and LaQuaglia) to do my surgeries. I did want you to remember that I was having surgery, and pray for it to go well. That's because you (probably) are not a surgeon. You aren't in a position to do more than think of and pray for me. But if my surgeons had said "we're thinking of you and praying for you," and then decided that was enough, and not to even try surgery, I would have been upset, and justifiably so. They at least should try something, right? There may not be a huge chance that the surgeries would be successful, and as I'm writing this we really don't know if there is any cancer left in me or not. Time will tell. We're thinking and praying for the best. But at least my surgeons tried in earnest to solve the problem, to use their talents, intellect, training, and station in life to keep cancer from killing me.
And that's the issue here in the U.S. regarding gun-related deaths. Too many people in places of political power who have the ability to do something, anything, to work towards decreasing the number of people killed every year are doing nothing, while offering thoughts and prayers as if that will solve it. It saddens me that nothing is being done in this area. I like to think everyone should be able to agree that we have too many gun-related deaths in this country, and we should do something about it. Between shootings and accidents, way too many lives are lost because of guns. It shouldn't be a radical sentiment to want to work towards solutions that prevent these unnecessary killings.
I really don't care what you think the right course of action is, and honestly I'm not here to argue one way or another about gun control, background checks, or any of that. The point I want to make is that we ought to hold a more honest, open-minded, and constructive discussion about what we can do. We need to acknowledge as a country that we have a serious problem, on a scale far greater than that in similar nations around the world. There must be something we can come up with, agree upon, or at least compromise on that can reduce the number of people killed by guns every year.
Too many people die of cancer too. If the powers that be only offered us their thoughts, prayers, and wishes for good health, there would be public outcry, and rightfully so. Instead, cancer research happens through a combination of funding from the government, individual donors, nonprofits, and pharmaceutical companies alike. Numerous hospitals, societies, organizations, companies, and associations are working on improving treatment options. Something is at least being done about cancer. It's high time we do something about gun-related deaths too.
Thoughts and prayers are fine, but not if that's all we get from people who should be doing more. After all, Jesus didn't say "I was naked and you thought about how cold that would be, and prayed that I would find clothes. I was hungry and you thought about how glad you were your own stomach was full, and prayed I'd find some food from that nearby dumpster. I was in jail and you thought about how hard it must be in prison, felt bad for me, and prayed I'd have visitors." It's pretty obvious to me that our politicians, at least those who profess to follow Jesus, need to do more than think and pray about gun violence. The truly uncomfortable part of this for me is that really, all of us can probably do more than think of and pray for someone in some situation somewhere. We need to be open to the ways we can and should help others. It might not be popular or easy to think like that, but it's what following Jesus requires. And it's something I'm sure I fail at every single day.
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
November 29th, 2015
Since it was Thanksgiving Day here in the United States this past week, I thought I'd make this post about a handful of the things for which I am most thankful. This definitely does not cover everything at all, but it's a good start at least. I am thankful for...
- My health. I could be in a whole lot worse shape and, all things considered, I really am doing great. Being healthy enough just to eat, drink, breathe, and use the bathroom normally is no longer something I take for granted, and the fact that I can still run, ride an exercise bike an hour a day (that's my goal at least), and in general stay active is a nice bonus too.
- My family. My parents are the reason I have health insurance and went to Sloan Kettering instead of somewhere else, so for that alone I owe them my life, not that I didn't a hundred times over before. They've also done an incredible job simultaneously caring for their sick child and letting me be an adult living his own life. My siblings have helped make life as normal as possible this past year by visiting as often as they could and playing games with me of the board or video persuasion, depending on what I was up for. My In-laws deserve mention here too, for all their support, prayers, and kindness this past year. Extended family members deserve my thanks too, for the cards, care packages, encouraging emails, hundreds of snapchats, and dozens of other ways they have encouraged, loved, and supported me.
- My wife gets her own paragraph here. She's been with me nearly 24/7 this past year, and that's quite an accomplishment. I don't even like spending 24/7 with myself. So the fact that she has just about always been there, ensuring that I eat, stay hydrated, and take my pills at the right times this past year deserves an award. She's also done hundreds of other tasks, many of which I really should have done myself, so that I can have less to do, be more comfortable, and spend more time lazing around, goofing off, and enjoying life when there's paperwork to be done.
- My friends (and my friends' friends, and beyond). I certainly don't personally know all the people who have sent cards and packages, followed my journey on Facebook or Caring Bridge, prayed, emailed, and encouraged and supported me and my family throughout this past year. That so many people have stepped in to help me and my entire family out this past year has been a huge blessing to me and my wife, and I know to my parents and siblings as well.
- God. Beyond my own carefree attitude and the love and support of so many people, there is one other source of help that has carried me through this past year. I would be remiss if I did not mention my faith or how it helped me, kept me calm, and gave me peace and the freedom not to worry. It is chiefly because of God's love, shown in so many ways, and often through so many people, that I endured the last year as happily as I did.
I know there are many more things not listed here for which I am thankful, and even more that I am not thankful for, but really should be. Through the craziness of the past year though, I have, thankfully, come to realize at least a little bit just how blessed my life really is, and how thankful I ought to be.
- My health. I could be in a whole lot worse shape and, all things considered, I really am doing great. Being healthy enough just to eat, drink, breathe, and use the bathroom normally is no longer something I take for granted, and the fact that I can still run, ride an exercise bike an hour a day (that's my goal at least), and in general stay active is a nice bonus too.
- My family. My parents are the reason I have health insurance and went to Sloan Kettering instead of somewhere else, so for that alone I owe them my life, not that I didn't a hundred times over before. They've also done an incredible job simultaneously caring for their sick child and letting me be an adult living his own life. My siblings have helped make life as normal as possible this past year by visiting as often as they could and playing games with me of the board or video persuasion, depending on what I was up for. My In-laws deserve mention here too, for all their support, prayers, and kindness this past year. Extended family members deserve my thanks too, for the cards, care packages, encouraging emails, hundreds of snapchats, and dozens of other ways they have encouraged, loved, and supported me.
- My wife gets her own paragraph here. She's been with me nearly 24/7 this past year, and that's quite an accomplishment. I don't even like spending 24/7 with myself. So the fact that she has just about always been there, ensuring that I eat, stay hydrated, and take my pills at the right times this past year deserves an award. She's also done hundreds of other tasks, many of which I really should have done myself, so that I can have less to do, be more comfortable, and spend more time lazing around, goofing off, and enjoying life when there's paperwork to be done.
- My friends (and my friends' friends, and beyond). I certainly don't personally know all the people who have sent cards and packages, followed my journey on Facebook or Caring Bridge, prayed, emailed, and encouraged and supported me and my family throughout this past year. That so many people have stepped in to help me and my entire family out this past year has been a huge blessing to me and my wife, and I know to my parents and siblings as well.
- God. Beyond my own carefree attitude and the love and support of so many people, there is one other source of help that has carried me through this past year. I would be remiss if I did not mention my faith or how it helped me, kept me calm, and gave me peace and the freedom not to worry. It is chiefly because of God's love, shown in so many ways, and often through so many people, that I endured the last year as happily as I did.
I know there are many more things not listed here for which I am thankful, and even more that I am not thankful for, but really should be. Through the craziness of the past year though, I have, thankfully, come to realize at least a little bit just how blessed my life really is, and how thankful I ought to be.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
November 22nd, 2015
As I start to run low on reflections and insights from the past year, I will expand my focus to include current events and my thoughts thereon. Yes, this blog will still be about cancer, and the changed perspective on life it has given me. For one, anything I say or write or think will forever be marked by cancer's influence. But more specifically, I will still incorporate my memories and experiences with cancer here, and I will strive to find ways to use examples from this past year to support whatever I might be writing about here. The lessons I have learned and the experiences I have been through do not, I sincerely hope, pertain only to cancer. With that in mind, let's talk about refugees, and a bit about cancer.
I cannot continue to hold my tongue about Syria and the people fleeing that country. I have seen too many hateful, xenophobic, self-centered comments and opinions on the news and in my facebook feed to ignore. My desire for this blog is, ultimately, to voice my opinion about life and to share whatever wisdom I have to offer, or at least my attempts at being wise. Further, I hope to do all this in the name of furthering God's Kingdom here on earth, which in my mind primarily involves spreading God's love. So, to ignore a troubling amount of ignorance and hatred around me about any issue would be, I think irresponsible, and would keep this blog from living up to its potential. I don't delude myself into thinking I'll change anyone's mind here. I don't know if anything online can do that, after all. From what I can tell, just about anything online tends to breed polarization, rather than help uncover common ground. But I'll give this a try anyways.
At the Ronald McDonald House, and at the pediatric day hospital, I encountered numerous families from across the globe, who came to New York City with one goal in mind: to get the best possible care for their child. As I see it, the situation regarding people fleeing Syria is no different. These are people who are doing whatever they can to just survive, much less to give their families, their children, a better life. The United States is a land of relative safety and stability, a nation founded in part on the idea that this should be a country of freedom and opportunity for all. Just like our hospitals, some of which are the very best in the world, are open and available for the rest of the world to come to for treatment, so too should this country be open to those who would seek refuge here.
I'm going to take a moment here to respond to one argument I've seen all too often. Many try to reason that we have too many problems here already without adding a bunch more people who need help. There are to many people here without homes, too many veterans receiving too little care, to take on the burden of helping more people, especially people from some other country. And yes, we spend too much on war, and not enough on caring for the people who fought those wars. There are too many people struggling with their housing situation in this land. But that doesn't mean we can't welcome those who need somewhere to go.
To say we cannot help others until we have solved all our problems is an extraordinarily troubling suggestion. By the same logic, we should turn away every desperate family from outside the country hoping against hope for effective treatment for their child's cancer, until every American is healed of whatever ails them. Following that argument, we might conclude that we can't research AIDS treatments until we have cured cancer. Or vice versa. Either one is ludicrous. I hope everyone can agree that such decisions would be unethical by any reasonable moral standards. If you happen to have the best hospital in the world, you let the world go there for treatment. End of story. Likewise, if you have a stable, relatively safe country, you don't turn away people who want desperately to escape violence. You let them come. End of story. Maybe.
Now, I truly am not here to argue for any course of action on behalf of our government officials here in the United States. They have intelligence (to be clear, I mean information) that I do not, and as such they hopefully understand the situation far better than I do. They must weigh pros and cons from a perspective of national security and what is best for the country, while balancing that with their understanding of the proper role of the U.S. in the world. I understand that perhaps the proper response for the U.S. government may not be *gasp* synonymous with the most Christ-like response, whatever that may be. Perhaps the U.S. should not allow any refugees from Syria to come into the country, in an effort to avoid a terrorist attack here.
Or perhaps we should welcome everyone with open arms, and place a higher priority on our moral duty to our fellow humans, and on our self-proclaimed role as a leader of the free world than on maintaining artificial boundaries. Perhaps we should stop viewing the lives of U.S. citizens as more important than the lives of those fleeing warfare in their home country, wherever that may be. Ultimately, I cannot pretend I have a perfect answer for how the U.S. government should respond. I know what I'd like, and what I think is best, but I don't know that I'm qualified or informed enough to act like I have a perfect solution to the problem. Well, actually I know I'm not. So while I'm not going to say "our government must follow this course of action," I do have some strong beliefs about how I personally must respond, and how I'd like to see the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, respond.
To me, as someone who tries to follow Christ's example, there is only one clear response to this situation that I can, in good conscience, support. Let them come. We must help them out as best as we are able. Jesus, who is, as far as I'm aware, the model for the Christian life, spoke a few times that I can recall off the top of my head about helping other people. He also backed his words up with actions. I don't recall any parable of "the righteous man who turned away someone in need" though. I can't remember any Sunday School stories where a man who was paralyzed had his friends lower him through a roof so he could see Jesus, only to have Jesus berate him for ruining the roof and yelling at his friends to pull him back up and send him on his way, back to wherever he came from.
I can think of a handful of relevant parables though, most obviously that of the Good Samaritan, that, to me, allow no room for any response but that of love and compassion for all other human beings. The Good Samaritan is an impressive story for several reasons. It is not the people we think it should be, who help the robbed and beaten man. It is, in fact, someone from a marginalized people group, someone who has been looked down on his entire life by the mainstream Jews of the day. This "Good Samaritan" helped someone from a people group that likely would never have helped him. He even paid with his own money to ensure that the robbed and beaten man received the care he needed. It made very little sense, in other words, from a practical perspective.
Yet Jesus told this story, with these carefully chosen details, and said it was an example of how to act, of how to love others. To me, then, it matters little if Daesh (ISIS) extremists may be sneaking in occasionally with the actual refugees from the horrific violence in Syria. It doesn't matter if there is a chance that by letting any and all Syrian refugees seek shelter here, we may also let in a few extremists with violent intent. Whether they would help or hurt us, love or hate us, we are to love them. And we definitely, definitely cannot risk being unloving to the victims of violence, for the sake of hating our enemies. So however you think the U.S. government should respond to this ongoing situation, consider what it means to follow Christ's teachings and examples, and ponder on what it means to love your neighbor. Friends and enemies alike.
I cannot continue to hold my tongue about Syria and the people fleeing that country. I have seen too many hateful, xenophobic, self-centered comments and opinions on the news and in my facebook feed to ignore. My desire for this blog is, ultimately, to voice my opinion about life and to share whatever wisdom I have to offer, or at least my attempts at being wise. Further, I hope to do all this in the name of furthering God's Kingdom here on earth, which in my mind primarily involves spreading God's love. So, to ignore a troubling amount of ignorance and hatred around me about any issue would be, I think irresponsible, and would keep this blog from living up to its potential. I don't delude myself into thinking I'll change anyone's mind here. I don't know if anything online can do that, after all. From what I can tell, just about anything online tends to breed polarization, rather than help uncover common ground. But I'll give this a try anyways.
At the Ronald McDonald House, and at the pediatric day hospital, I encountered numerous families from across the globe, who came to New York City with one goal in mind: to get the best possible care for their child. As I see it, the situation regarding people fleeing Syria is no different. These are people who are doing whatever they can to just survive, much less to give their families, their children, a better life. The United States is a land of relative safety and stability, a nation founded in part on the idea that this should be a country of freedom and opportunity for all. Just like our hospitals, some of which are the very best in the world, are open and available for the rest of the world to come to for treatment, so too should this country be open to those who would seek refuge here.
I'm going to take a moment here to respond to one argument I've seen all too often. Many try to reason that we have too many problems here already without adding a bunch more people who need help. There are to many people here without homes, too many veterans receiving too little care, to take on the burden of helping more people, especially people from some other country. And yes, we spend too much on war, and not enough on caring for the people who fought those wars. There are too many people struggling with their housing situation in this land. But that doesn't mean we can't welcome those who need somewhere to go.
To say we cannot help others until we have solved all our problems is an extraordinarily troubling suggestion. By the same logic, we should turn away every desperate family from outside the country hoping against hope for effective treatment for their child's cancer, until every American is healed of whatever ails them. Following that argument, we might conclude that we can't research AIDS treatments until we have cured cancer. Or vice versa. Either one is ludicrous. I hope everyone can agree that such decisions would be unethical by any reasonable moral standards. If you happen to have the best hospital in the world, you let the world go there for treatment. End of story. Likewise, if you have a stable, relatively safe country, you don't turn away people who want desperately to escape violence. You let them come. End of story. Maybe.
Now, I truly am not here to argue for any course of action on behalf of our government officials here in the United States. They have intelligence (to be clear, I mean information) that I do not, and as such they hopefully understand the situation far better than I do. They must weigh pros and cons from a perspective of national security and what is best for the country, while balancing that with their understanding of the proper role of the U.S. in the world. I understand that perhaps the proper response for the U.S. government may not be *gasp* synonymous with the most Christ-like response, whatever that may be. Perhaps the U.S. should not allow any refugees from Syria to come into the country, in an effort to avoid a terrorist attack here.
Or perhaps we should welcome everyone with open arms, and place a higher priority on our moral duty to our fellow humans, and on our self-proclaimed role as a leader of the free world than on maintaining artificial boundaries. Perhaps we should stop viewing the lives of U.S. citizens as more important than the lives of those fleeing warfare in their home country, wherever that may be. Ultimately, I cannot pretend I have a perfect answer for how the U.S. government should respond. I know what I'd like, and what I think is best, but I don't know that I'm qualified or informed enough to act like I have a perfect solution to the problem. Well, actually I know I'm not. So while I'm not going to say "our government must follow this course of action," I do have some strong beliefs about how I personally must respond, and how I'd like to see the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, respond.
To me, as someone who tries to follow Christ's example, there is only one clear response to this situation that I can, in good conscience, support. Let them come. We must help them out as best as we are able. Jesus, who is, as far as I'm aware, the model for the Christian life, spoke a few times that I can recall off the top of my head about helping other people. He also backed his words up with actions. I don't recall any parable of "the righteous man who turned away someone in need" though. I can't remember any Sunday School stories where a man who was paralyzed had his friends lower him through a roof so he could see Jesus, only to have Jesus berate him for ruining the roof and yelling at his friends to pull him back up and send him on his way, back to wherever he came from.
I can think of a handful of relevant parables though, most obviously that of the Good Samaritan, that, to me, allow no room for any response but that of love and compassion for all other human beings. The Good Samaritan is an impressive story for several reasons. It is not the people we think it should be, who help the robbed and beaten man. It is, in fact, someone from a marginalized people group, someone who has been looked down on his entire life by the mainstream Jews of the day. This "Good Samaritan" helped someone from a people group that likely would never have helped him. He even paid with his own money to ensure that the robbed and beaten man received the care he needed. It made very little sense, in other words, from a practical perspective.
Yet Jesus told this story, with these carefully chosen details, and said it was an example of how to act, of how to love others. To me, then, it matters little if Daesh (ISIS) extremists may be sneaking in occasionally with the actual refugees from the horrific violence in Syria. It doesn't matter if there is a chance that by letting any and all Syrian refugees seek shelter here, we may also let in a few extremists with violent intent. Whether they would help or hurt us, love or hate us, we are to love them. And we definitely, definitely cannot risk being unloving to the victims of violence, for the sake of hating our enemies. So however you think the U.S. government should respond to this ongoing situation, consider what it means to follow Christ's teachings and examples, and ponder on what it means to love your neighbor. Friends and enemies alike.
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