Wednesday, May 31, 2006
The moral labor of pregnancy
Having watched DenverDocWife deliver two daughters by natural childbirth and one by crash Csection, I have a profound respect for what Nature asks of her daughters. Agnes Howard wrote a thoughtful article on the moral aspects of pregnancy in First Things that I commend to you.
Who are you to impose your morality on me???
Father Neuhaus has an answer, that he gave to the Dominicans at their graduation. John Paul II apparently answered, "The Church imposes nothing, she only proposes." What an answer! Neuhaus adds, what she proposes is the truth and the truth imposes itself because...human beings are hardwired for the truth. What an answer!
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
A little break
DenverDoc and DenverDocWife have been busy, with DenverDocDaughter2 graduating from Tulane a couple of weeks ago, DenverDocDaughter3 graduating high school in a few days, and DenverDocBrother2 having his fiftieth birthday party in Houston. Whew. But I'm back!
Alternatives Pregnancy Center is having a fundraising walk this coming weekend, June 3rd. go to their website for details. They would love to have docs, dentists, friends, spouses, and others.
We have a dentist looking for a Christian dental assistant up in Broomfield. Write back to me if you have any leads.
We had a nice dinner honoring our Graduates from CU Medical and Dental schools last week. Look for it next year and we'll make it bigger and better.
Also we had a terrific meeting to discuss end of life care. Kaiser has an end of life program that gets consults every day. They have something to teach us.
More coming...
Alternatives Pregnancy Center is having a fundraising walk this coming weekend, June 3rd. go to their website for details. They would love to have docs, dentists, friends, spouses, and others.
We have a dentist looking for a Christian dental assistant up in Broomfield. Write back to me if you have any leads.
We had a nice dinner honoring our Graduates from CU Medical and Dental schools last week. Look for it next year and we'll make it bigger and better.
Also we had a terrific meeting to discuss end of life care. Kaiser has an end of life program that gets consults every day. They have something to teach us.
More coming...
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
John Patrick came to town last night.
My buddy John Patrick, MD came to town last night and we had a terrific get-together, with around fifty docs, spouses, students, residents, etc. in attendance.
He started out with a statement by a friend of his who is on the road to conversion from atheist, to theist, and perhaps someday to Christian. "It's very difficult for you Christians to fight an enemy that has an outpost in your head."
He spent some time discussing the conversion experience and how personal it is. It differs for each of us. John suggests taking the time to write your personal story down, and to note that yours will be different from anyone else's. The four steps of confessing God, confessing Jesus, confessing sin, and accepting grace are a nice formula and are useful, but don't explain the experience for anyone really. It is a form of "real knowledge" that defies clear verbal expression. It is like describing your spouse so someone else can recognize them, vs the instant recognition that we experience across the room. It is like the expert cook (DenverDocWife comes to mind) who just knows the right feel for dough, the surgeon who just does an operation better, the violin maker who knows exactly how much wood to take off. Acknowldege the mystery, the metaphor, the poetry.
There was an aside about science and faith. It is an article of, well, faith these days that science and faith are enemies. But John mentioned the story of Michael Faraday, the great electrical physicist, who had strong Christian faith and never missed his prayer meetings. He also mentioned that scientists work with metaphors all the time: an atom is not a tiny billiard ball, or a miniature solar system, but that metaphor works for us. Despite 80 years of trying, however, we don't have good metaphors for Quantum physics. An electron is not a "wavicle!"
(Oh, cool, a whole page of CS Lewis quotes!)
He then moved on to talk about what church and repentance are for. He began with the famous Lewis quote from Mere Christianity, which I can't find exactly right now, but which basically says that repentance is NOT something that God demands and could do without if He chose, but is really a description of what coming to God is actually like. There is the quote from John 14:15, "If you love me, you will obey what I command." So, it begins to look like we should worship NOT to FEEL better, but to THINK better. (And when you think better, sometimes you feel worse!)
The talk transitioned to recognizing moral relativism. Orwell (1984) thought the government would be able to control all input to people, but that could not be achieved. Huxley (Brave New World) thought people would come not to care about the truth. Huxley had Soma, the drug; we have Television. John read from Peter Kreeft's book, A Refutation of Moral Relativism. Note: I love Kreeft's work. He is a philosophy prof from Boston College. His webcast on evil, using Lord of the Rings as a backdrop, is terrific. He can write clearly and simply, and is a great model of strategic question-asking. Other books of his I have read include Making Sense of Suffering (something all physicians should read) and The Best Things in Life, dialogs with some college students and professors.
John suggests that we read the Kreeft book at a desk, and outline the arguments after each page, so that we too can deal with this problem in the doctor's lounge or with our teenage kids. He thinks writing a Precis is a great skill to cultivate in this regard.
He went on to suggest books by Annie Dillard. She gives a nice 4-part answer to the question, "why do you believe?" (Unfortunately I did not get the exact book for this one.)
1. The rare subjective experience of God, perhaps 2-3 times in a lifetime. (I have one such and it is amazing.)
2. Knowing other people who know and love God
3. Beauty, appears to be a gratuitous gift to humans.
4. The absolute lack of mercy in Nature, and our abhorrence against that fact.
From a medical point of view, he discussed his talk on abortion that he has given dozens of times now at medical schools across the land. He says whenever you are tempted to make a statement, bite your tongue and consider a question instead. His talk on abortion is available on line.
He also discussed a child he met who had cystic fibrosis and was a willing subject in some of his nutritional experiments. (John did work on malnutrition in Africa, and extended the work in Canada to kids with CF.) This child asked him why, if he prayed for recovery, he didn't get it? Instead of just blowing the kid off, which several other people had done, John told him that if he believed, and believed that God truly had his best interests at heart, that maybe he had coughed enough and it was time. Brings tears to my eyes today. But he said the child and his mother relaxed, and in turn, John began once again to live his faith with his patients.
He started out with a statement by a friend of his who is on the road to conversion from atheist, to theist, and perhaps someday to Christian. "It's very difficult for you Christians to fight an enemy that has an outpost in your head."
He spent some time discussing the conversion experience and how personal it is. It differs for each of us. John suggests taking the time to write your personal story down, and to note that yours will be different from anyone else's. The four steps of confessing God, confessing Jesus, confessing sin, and accepting grace are a nice formula and are useful, but don't explain the experience for anyone really. It is a form of "real knowledge" that defies clear verbal expression. It is like describing your spouse so someone else can recognize them, vs the instant recognition that we experience across the room. It is like the expert cook (DenverDocWife comes to mind) who just knows the right feel for dough, the surgeon who just does an operation better, the violin maker who knows exactly how much wood to take off. Acknowldege the mystery, the metaphor, the poetry.
There was an aside about science and faith. It is an article of, well, faith these days that science and faith are enemies. But John mentioned the story of Michael Faraday, the great electrical physicist, who had strong Christian faith and never missed his prayer meetings. He also mentioned that scientists work with metaphors all the time: an atom is not a tiny billiard ball, or a miniature solar system, but that metaphor works for us. Despite 80 years of trying, however, we don't have good metaphors for Quantum physics. An electron is not a "wavicle!"
(Oh, cool, a whole page of CS Lewis quotes!)
He then moved on to talk about what church and repentance are for. He began with the famous Lewis quote from Mere Christianity, which I can't find exactly right now, but which basically says that repentance is NOT something that God demands and could do without if He chose, but is really a description of what coming to God is actually like. There is the quote from John 14:15, "If you love me, you will obey what I command." So, it begins to look like we should worship NOT to FEEL better, but to THINK better. (And when you think better, sometimes you feel worse!)
The talk transitioned to recognizing moral relativism. Orwell (1984) thought the government would be able to control all input to people, but that could not be achieved. Huxley (Brave New World) thought people would come not to care about the truth. Huxley had Soma, the drug; we have Television. John read from Peter Kreeft's book, A Refutation of Moral Relativism. Note: I love Kreeft's work. He is a philosophy prof from Boston College. His webcast on evil, using Lord of the Rings as a backdrop, is terrific. He can write clearly and simply, and is a great model of strategic question-asking. Other books of his I have read include Making Sense of Suffering (something all physicians should read) and The Best Things in Life, dialogs with some college students and professors.
John suggests that we read the Kreeft book at a desk, and outline the arguments after each page, so that we too can deal with this problem in the doctor's lounge or with our teenage kids. He thinks writing a Precis is a great skill to cultivate in this regard.
He went on to suggest books by Annie Dillard. She gives a nice 4-part answer to the question, "why do you believe?" (Unfortunately I did not get the exact book for this one.)
1. The rare subjective experience of God, perhaps 2-3 times in a lifetime. (I have one such and it is amazing.)
2. Knowing other people who know and love God
3. Beauty, appears to be a gratuitous gift to humans.
4. The absolute lack of mercy in Nature, and our abhorrence against that fact.
From a medical point of view, he discussed his talk on abortion that he has given dozens of times now at medical schools across the land. He says whenever you are tempted to make a statement, bite your tongue and consider a question instead. His talk on abortion is available on line.
He also discussed a child he met who had cystic fibrosis and was a willing subject in some of his nutritional experiments. (John did work on malnutrition in Africa, and extended the work in Canada to kids with CF.) This child asked him why, if he prayed for recovery, he didn't get it? Instead of just blowing the kid off, which several other people had done, John told him that if he believed, and believed that God truly had his best interests at heart, that maybe he had coughed enough and it was time. Brings tears to my eyes today. But he said the child and his mother relaxed, and in turn, John began once again to live his faith with his patients.
Monday, May 01, 2006
National CMDA Student Site
Check this one out, too. National CMDA student site.
New CMDA student and resident resource
CMDA announces "Life Support", an audio service for our learners. Check it out.
Women in Medicine & Dentistry CMDA Conference
September 21-24, Minneapolis, sounds like a good conference.
da Vinci lecture tonight at John Paul II Center
There will be a lecture tonight on the da Vinci code book and movie. It's at 7:30 at the JP II center, 1300 S. Steele. I'm going with another doctor. Should be interesting. Dr. Edward Sri is the speaker.
Last weekend I was in Chicago at a College of American Pathologists' committee meeting, which by coincidence was where DenverDocDaughter1 is going to Harrington Design School. We went to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the museum of Science and Industry. There was discussion about the book and movie. The exhibit was of course appropriately "politically correct", but they certainly do NOT support many of the more fanciful ideas put forth by Dan Brown.
Last weekend I was in Chicago at a College of American Pathologists' committee meeting, which by coincidence was where DenverDocDaughter1 is going to Harrington Design School. We went to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the museum of Science and Industry. There was discussion about the book and movie. The exhibit was of course appropriately "politically correct", but they certainly do NOT support many of the more fanciful ideas put forth by Dan Brown.
Romancing your wife
This is from Family Life. They are on every morning from 8-8:30 on KRKS, 94.7 FM. This is a nice summary of ways for us guys to treat our wives. I saw an interesting comment recently that Paul exhorts us to "love our wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her...". He does NOT tell wives to love their husbands. Perhaps he knew back then that it was harder for men to show love?
