Tuesday, January 30, 2018

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Learning To Be A Care-Giver For Aging Parents



If you have raised children, you might think that taking care of children and taking care of parents are vastly different.  The first involves gradually introducing someone to the larger world.  The second, helping someone disengage from the world.  With children, we expect it will take time to care for them.  With parents, we are surprised by how much time it may take.

Also, the challenges seem almost reversed.   Parents of children are badgered not to be "helicopter parents," hovering over their kids and not allowing them to make mistakes.  But the children of aging parents are told to hover more ---- step up, provide support, offer distraction.  Hounded not to be "helicopter parents" to our kids, we're now challenged to be "tugboat children" to our parents, steering them through narrowing waters.

Perhaps the most basic thing we do for both our kids and our parents, is to keep them safe.  For example, it is important to consider interviewing at the end of their shifts other care-givers who help the family.  Many day-to-day responsibilities involve simply the repetitive tasks of getting the "patient" dressed, fed, medicated and bathed.  But a daily brief review with care-givers may catch a physical health problem while it can be easily managed.

However, sometimes protecting parents means not telling them everything.  The single hardest thing for Alzheimer's care-givers to learn may be that they cannot always be honest with the patient.  When they tell you something you know to be false, your instinct is to correct them.  "Sorry, Mom, Dad has been dead for 20 years."  But care-givers learn that the only way to handle these moments probably is to conform to the patient's understanding of the world.  "Yes, Mom, Dad must have enjoyed that visit with the grand kids."

Another issue is that both children and older parents need help managing money.  Careful review of a parent's bills may reveal savings they overlooked because they perpetuated spending habits of earlier days, which are no longer necessary.  Of course, this can also lead to some awkward conversations, while we gently make the case that they no longer need to be purchasing certain items.  Someone suggested a "financial driver's license" for older Americans to prove their financial competence.  In effect, one is saying, "You are allowed to drive your own decisions, Mom and Dad, but only if one of your kids is with you in the car."

Help in managing money often starts in the area of regularly paying the bills, making timely bank deposits of interest and dividend checks, and generally keeping complete and accurate checkbook records.  It is normal for aging parents to become forgetful.  Care-givers need to find a way to monitor these important, but routine, tasks without offending the senior citizen involved ---- a person who probably had successfully managed such things for decades.  Find ways to monitor bank balances without second-guessing every transaction, and do it regularly.  The penalties for financial "drift" can be painful.

"I'm bored."  When I was young, I was expected to have hobbies and sports, and thus to be able to entertain myself.  Now, parents ask us to entertain them.  As people age, generally their social circles shrink, and while this allows older people to focus more on those they really care about, it also increases the burden on their children.  Anyone who cares for parents is constantly sending along recommendations for entertainment, just as we do with kids.  "I think you would like this book."  "Should we play a game of cards?"  Happily, these activity suggestions may help.  Studies show that learning new skills, being creative, or even reminiscing, makes "patients" happier ---- and often makes their care-giver happier, too.

For some aging parents, various forms of art activities might become a passion that is discovered only later in life.  For seniors whose worlds are often shrinking, the arts may cause new worlds to open.  Just attempting something creative with an oil, acrylic or watercolor paint brush, or simply drawing, can bring increased self-esteem and feelings of accomplishment.

Some seniors have dedicated many decades of their earlier life to earning a living, and never felt they could afford to explore non-remunerative creative outlets.  Now, they can be encouraged to embrace new and positive aspects of their personal identity, for fun ---- not worrying about profit.

One of the most important safety tasks is to fully understand the instructions of the aging parent's doctor, and then ensure that those instructions are carried out timely, accurately and fully.  Forgetful, aging parents will forget to take their evening pills, or will eat foods that disagree with them.  However, there are low-key ways to monitor this.  For example, a pill box with compartments for each day (or morning, noon and night) show immediately if prescribed pills have indeed been taken while the care-giver may have been otherwise occupied.

Those families and friends who are caring for aging parents understand the upside-down emotions of taking care of someone who once took care of them.  We may mistakenly think that lives move in only one direction at a time ---- from dependence to independence and then the reverse.  We might also expect that our parent will move in a single direction, too ---- eventually from adulthood to childhood.  But, separating these two progressions is wrong.  The teaching and learning in life always move in two directions at once, because all along a great amount of what parents learn has been taught by their children, whether the children be youth or adults, and at best the children will be continuously learning from and engaged with their parents.
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this winter at CPC.
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Wednesday, January 24, 2018

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Will Prayer Really Help Me?



Since no one has seen God's face, people who pray inevitably draw on their own imaginations and experiences in trying to understand how to reach out to Him.  However, it would seem that their internal representation of God may change throughout their life's cycle, in response to being touched by significant people and events.  For example, finding a loving spouse, or holding a newborn baby, my alter an earlier, more distant representation of God.

Most people pray to God at moments of crisis ---- when a child is ill, or when death approaches.  But those desperate folks who pray only at such moments usually experience great difficulty figuring out what they are supposed to say, or whom they are addressing.  Sometimes dying men  and women try to bargain with God.  They say, "I'll live my life in a righteous way God, if you will have mercy on me."  They struggle with their preconceived notions of God.  Sometimes they are afraid to lay themselves out to God.  While prayer is no insurance policy against adversity, some of us do pray for forgiveness, for strength, for contact with the Father, for assurance that we are not alone.

Many of us live such active lives that we never seem to have uninterrupted moments to deeply ponder questions about our relationships with others, or important aspects of our own particular lives.  Some would call such contemplative opportunities "meditation" or "reflection."

Often such times are focused only on ourselves.  When we ask ourselves questions,  sometimes an answer just pops into our head.  But, for many of us, moments of reflection or meditation can grow into something different.  All it takes is re-directing the conversation to God, and not just to ourselves.  We call such conversations "prayer."

The inclination to do this successfully is rarely spontaneous.  It needs to be developed and given thoughtful attention over time, perhaps many years, and likely begins with simple words, inward sighs and unvoiced yearnings.  Talking about God, which is what theologians do, is not the same as learning to talk to God.   There are many ways of talking to God.  Prayers learned in childhood or read from a book, are often used to break the conversational "ice" with God.  However, perhaps this is the best advice:  that the most important aspect of personal prayer is to "shut up and listen."

Therefore, it seems that a prayer-filled life can be made available to each one of us, provided we personally nurture it.  It seems to me that we are the stumbling block, not God.  God desires our prayers and has placed no restrictions, pre-requisites or "quality control" measures on how we are to engage him in prayer.  Every prayer that we lift up to God matters.  Not because they were answered, but because they were uttered.

But, we cannot just pray, and do nothing else.  We must also act.  Our actions may be better ordered and in line with God's wishes, if we pray before, during and after we act.  Prayer puts us in our place, after all.  Prayer reminds us of our created-ness and our limitations.  Praying reveals relationship with God and with each other.  A posture of prayer engenders humility, connection and hope.

The challenge seems to be to move from trying to control God, to letting God direct us.
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage your pursuit of personal spiritual growth this winter at CPC.
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Tuesday, January 16, 2018

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: At Times of Tragedy or Hardship . . . Where Was God?



It seems that no one has seen the face of God directly.  Most of us believe there is some kind of God, who established the many forms of life on Earth, and organized physical forces of great complexity, which generally give predictable results in their actions ---- there seems to be some order in our universe.

However, despite this, sometimes a person does contract a fatal disease, dies in a natural disaster, or dies in an automobile accident or other no-fault cause of premature death.  We call these incidents "tragedies."

Losing one's job, living in poverty or being unable to find timely medical assistance, are examples of "hardships."

If God is the supreme power who created us, the earth and the skies, why are our lives sometimes interrupted by tragedy and hardship?  

Human understanding of how God works appears to be largely beyond our mortal abilities, but over the centuries much thought has attempted to explain this mystery.  The result has been the development of various theories which take us into the realm of faith.

Which of the following theories about God do you find the most compelling?

THEORY #1:  Assume that God is the cause of our suffering.  But, our God is a God of justice and righteousness.  Our God is all powerful and causes everything that happens in the world.  Nothing happens without His will.  Our God is just and fair, and stands up for people getting what they deserve, so that the good prosper and the wicked are punished.  He gives people exactly what they deserve.

----- Some say that by believing this, the world is kept orderly and understandable.  This belief would maintain an image of God as all-loving and all powerful. and totally in control.  This theory seems to spare God's reputation.

----- Friends and family of victims sometimes think the victim should be blamed so that evil doesn't seem quite so irrational and threatening to themselves.  They believe that because God punishes people for their sins, it is one's misdeeds that have caused their misfortunes.  But, what if one does not know what the causal misdeed was.  Some ask if pointless suffering for some unspecified sin is a contribution to humankind?  Blaming the victim helps fortunate people believe that their good fortune is deserved, rather than being a matter of chance.

----- Why is there seemingly an unfair distribution of suffering in the world?  Does God really give everyone what they deserve and need?  Why do totally unselfish people suffer, people who never do anything wrong?

THEORY #2:   Sometimes victims of misfortune try to console themselves with the idea that God has His reasons for making this happen to them, reasoning that they are in no position to judge God.  They believe there is some purpose in this suffering, but that it is beyond our ability to understand.  Furthermore, if God has initiated the tragedy or hardship on us, who are we to now ask God to help us in our prayers?

----- Perhaps God has other considerations to worry about, besides the welfare of one individual human being, when He makes decisions that affect our lives?

THEORY #3:   Could it be that things happen to people for no reason ---- that God has lost touch with the world and nobody is in the driver's seat?  If God is not in charge of all things, then who is?  Worse yet, could it be that God does not care what happens to us?

----- Bad things happen to good people in this world, but it may not be God who wills it.  For example, could it be that God doesn't decide which families will give birth to a handicapped child.  Perhaps God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but he cannot always arrange it.  Are we forced to choose between a good God who is NOT totally powerful, or a powerful God who is NOT totally good.  Perhaps we should choose to believe in God's goodness.

----- When we were children we came to realize that our parents were not all-powerful, and that a broken toy had to be thrown out when they could not fix it, not because they did not want to fix it.  Likewise, there are some things God would like to fix, but he does not control them.  The Bible repeatedly speaks of God as the special protector of the poor, the widow and the orphan, without raising the question of how it happened that they became poor, widowed, or orphaned in the first place.

THEORY #4:  I do God's will out of love for God, not out of  self-interest.  I can be an obedient, moral person, but I act out of love for God, my creator, without my calculating that moral and  obedient people will be rewarded with good fortune.  I can love and be loyal to Him, even if God perhaps does not show much love to me in return.

THEORY #5:  Tragedy in our lives is for our own good.  It teaches us to be strong.  Perhaps God does painful things to us as His way of helping us ---- like a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps.  Can suffering be educational?  Can it cure us of our faults and make us better people?  Just as a parent sometimes must punish a child?  To explain suffering by saying it is a "cure" for faults, implies that tragedy is a testing.  Is God really testing us?  He must know by now that many of us will fail that test.  If He is only giving us burdens we can bear, we have seen His miscalculation far too often.

THEORY #6:  In troubled times we are not compelled to feel that God has judged and condemned us.  We can be angry at what has happened to us, without feeling that we are angry at God.   More than that, we can recognize our anger at life's unfairness, our instinctive compassion, when seeing how other people suffer, as coming from God who teaches us to be angry at injustice and to feel compassion for the afflicted.  We can feel that our indignation is God's anger at unfairness, working through us.

THEORY #7:  God is not doing this to us.  God is a God of justice and not of power.  Thus, He can still be on our side when bad things happen to us.  He can know that we are good and honest people who deserve better.  Our misfortunes are none of His doing, and so we can turn to Him for help.  Regardless of how our tragedies are caused, God stands ready to help us cope with the tragedies, if we can only get beyond the feelings of guilt and anger that separate us from Him.  Could it be that, "How could God do this to me?" is the wrong question for us to ask?  We should ask, "God, see what is happening to me?  Can you help me?"  We will turn to God, not to be judged or forgiven, not to be rewarded or punished, but to be strengthened and comforted. 

THEORY #8:  When all else fails, some people try to explain suffering by believing that it comes to liberate us from a world of pain and in the case of death, leads to a better place.  Death takes us out of this world of sin and pain.  The victim is now in a happier land where there is no pain, no grief.

----- Sometimes, when our souls yearn for justice, because we so desperately want to believe that God will be fair to us, we fasten our hopes on the idea that life in this world is not the only reality.  Somewhere beyond this life is another world where "the last will be first" and those whose lives were cut short here on earth will be reunited with those they loved, and will spend eternity with them.  No living person can know anything about the reality of that hope.  The non-physical body that left us when we die, we call our "soul".  Belief in a world to come where innocent souls are compensated for their suffering can help us endure the unfairness of life in this world, without losing faith.  But it can also be an excuse for not being troubled or outraged by injustices around us, and not using our God-given intelligence to do something about it.
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These thoughts are brought to you by the CPC Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage your spiritual growth this winter.
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Tuesday, January 9, 2018

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: When Do New Facts NOT Change a Contrary, Strongly-Held Belief?



Moral attitudes are especially difficult to change because the attached emotions largely define who we are.  Certain beliefs are so important to us that they become part of how we define our identity.

Take, for example, a story told about Dr. Ignaz Semmelwies.  A bulletin board exhibit entitled, "The History of Hand Washing," once on display at Overlook Hospital, illustrates how difficult it can be to change strongly-held beliefs.

Dr, Semmelwies was the Chief Resident in surgery at the Vienna General Hospital in 1847.  At the time, the theory of diseases was highly influenced by ideas of an imbalance of the basic "four humors" in the body, for which the main treatment was blood lettings.

At the Vienna General Hospital there were two OBGYN clinics.  Clinic #1 was a broad-ranging teaching service for medical students.  Clinic #2 was exclusively for the instruction of midwives.  At the time, the staff were quite puzzled about a consistent difference in the mortality rates of the two clinics.

A good friend of Dr. Semmelwies died after accidentally being poked with a student's scalpel while performing a post mortem exam.  The autopsy of the deceased friend showed a pathology similar to that of women in Clinic #1 who were dying of puerperal fever.  The latter is an infection of a women's placenta following delivery or abortion, sometimes causing death by the infection passing into the bloodstream.

Dr. Semmelwies proposed that there could be a connection between contamination from cadavers and the deadly puerperal fever.  He concluded that he and the medical students carried "cadaverous particles" on their hands from the autopsy room to the patients in OBGYN Clinic #1, causing puerperal fever and the higher incidence of patient deaths than in Clinic #2.  He believed this explained why the student midwives in Clinic #2 (who were not engaged in autopsies and had no contact with the corpses) saw no mortality.

Dr. Semmelwies instituted a policy of using a solution of calcium hypochlorite for washing hands between autopsy work and the examination of patients in Clinic #1.  Mortality rates then dropped dramatically in Clinic #1.

Regardless of these facts, many doctors in Vienna were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands.  They felt that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.  As a result, Dr. Semmelwies' ideas were rejected by the medical community.  Perfectly reasonable hand-washing proposals were ridiculed and rejected by Dr. Semmelwies' contemporaries in the 1840's. The ideas of Dr. Semmelwies were in conflict with established opinions, regardless of being consistent with scientific facts.

It was years after his death that Dr. Semmelwies' hand-washing requirement earned widespread acceptance, when Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease.  Pasteur's experiments demonstrated that organisms such as bacteria were responsible for souring wine, beer and even milk.  Today the process he invented for removing bacteria by boiling and then cooling a liquid (pasteurization) is not in dispute, but it took decades for acceptance.  Today, Dr. Semmelwies is recognized in medical circles as a pioneer in antiseptic policy.

According to the Overlook Hospital exhibit, "Semmelwies Reflex" is a term applied today to a certain type of human behavior characterized by reflex-like rejection of new knowledge when it contradicts entrenched norms, beliefs or paradigms.

For example, when the subject of climate change comes up in conversation today, some people deny the scientific findings which other people have accepted as true.   Likewise, if we think humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time, can we accept as fact the theory of Evolution?  To believe in Evolution requires some rejection of Biblical teaching, which in turn could cause some believers to fear that they are compromising their deeply-held belief system ---- perhaps weakening their long-held belief in God and His power over us. Furthermore, some might fear that such rejection of Bible teaching would alienate them from their particular social or political group and its values.Many times it is just that doubters feel that it is actually their identity and sense of self that are being challenged by the new information.

We tend to side with people who share our identity.---- even when their "facts" disagree with ours.  Calling someone a "flip-flopper" is a way of calling them morally suspect for making any major change in their identity beliefs, or that of the group.  Its as though those who change their minds are in some way being unfaithful to their group.

However, people change their minds all the time,  But, when the stakes are high, achieving that change of mind may be hard to do.  That's why just marshaling objective data and making rational arguments often will not bring the adoption of new beliefs.

Whether you are changing your own mind or someone else's, the key often is to use emotional, persuasive story-telling.  Stories are more powerful than data because they allow individuals to identify emotionally with a new idea and people, which they might otherwise see as "alien".
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage in you some spiritual growth this winter.
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Tuesday, January 2, 2018

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: In the New Year, Do We Need Reconciliation With Anyone?



Is there someone with whom you need to rebuild a broken relationship?  Is there someone who caused you pain in the year that is now behind us?

So, how do we forgive?  What does it mean to reconcile with your "enemy"?  Can we learn to forgive those who have hurt us so deeply that the pain does not seem to go away?

Forgiveness is not a weak substitute for revenge, just because forgiveness is soft and gentle.  Actually, it is the best alternative because it is the only creative route to less unfairness.  Hard as forgiveness seems at the time, forgiveness has creative power to move us away from a past moment of pain, block us from an endless chain of pain-giving responses, and to create a new situation in which both the wrongdoer and the wronged can begin in a new way.   There is no guarantee, but forgiving is the only door open to the possibilities of renewal.

Forgiveness, of course, is not an easy practice to master.  Sometimes hurts seem too great, betrayals too treacherous, to be forgiven.  Sometimes forgiveness can be mistaken for weakness and vulnerability, even by those who seek to forgive.  While forgiveness loves the sinner, it also needs to say clearly that the sinful behavior is unacceptable.

Forgiveness is about being able to accept our human situation with all the ambiguity and messiness it entails.  It's about accepting the fact that inevitably people do disappoint one another.  Because we are limited in time, in talent and in the ability to understand everything about one another, we often miss the mark.  Forgiveness means accepting others ---- and ourselves ---- as human, and not being divine.  Forgiveness means resisting a defensive response when we are hurt ---- a response that effectively cuts off the other person.  But, as much as we might like forgiveness to be a "forgive and forget" moment, our lives do not work that way.  Often, forgiving is an extended process, with moments of retreat for us to overcome.

In the summer of 2004, my wife and I spent a week living on a Blackfoot Indian reservation in western Montana.  We were members of a volunteer project sponsored by a national organization that gives a helping hand to needy communities.  It was a little like CPC's high school mission trips, except ours was not church-sponsored.

We spent time with some very friendly Blackfoot Indian families, and were invited to their community meetings.  One night, a tribal elder shared a lesson I still remember.  That lesson was as relevant to my wife an me as it was to the Blackfoot Indian audience.

               "An old Indian grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him
                with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice,  .  .  .  'Let me
                tell you a story.' "

               "I, too, at times, have felt a great hate for those who have taken too
                much, with no sorrow for what they do.  But hate wears you down,
                and does not hurt your enemy.  It is like you taking poison and wishing
                your enemy would die.  I have struggled with these feelings many times."

                He continued .  .  .   "It is as if there were two wolves inside me.  One is
                good and does no harm.  He lives in harmony with all around him, and 
                he does not take offense when no offense was intended.  He will fight 
                only when it is right to do so, and in the right way.  He saves all his 
                energy for the right fight."

               "But the other wolf, ahhh.  He is full of anger.  The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper.  He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason.  He 
                cannot think because his anger and hate are so great.  It is hopeless
                anger for his anger will change nothing."

               "Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of 
                them try to dominate my spirit." 

                The boy looked intently into his grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one
                wins, Grandfather?"

                The grandfather smiled and quietly said .  .  .  . "The one I feed."
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping you will pursue some personal spiritual growth this winter.
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