Lazy Sunday: Part 23

The final "Lazy Sunday" of 2006 and all I can say is there's a lot of weirdness in Portland just waiting for a chance to get out. Politics, battles, misunderstandings, events, movies, entertainment, sports, space adventures, holiday get-togethers. This year was as grand as many of the last.

Enjoy the New Year's festivities and be safe tonight.

-------------------------
Later:

Okay, so we get three Lazy Sunday pictures for one on the end of 2006. I thought I'd check out the listing for ABC's Rockin' New Year's with Dick Clark and nearly spewed my mocha all over my computer monitor.

We all know about Dick Clark's age and survival post-stroke, and even more about the growing popularity Ryan Seacrest is getting as heir-apparent to the end-of-year festivities; but Clark's resemblance to Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker in Batman is uncanny!

"Put on a happy face, 2007!"

Two Left.

There are two matters that I am highly considering writing about today. Neither of which are very festive, but I cannot be considered the sole cause of that.

First of all, the remains of former U.S. President Gerry Ford were moved for display at the Rotunda in Washington, D.C., today were the family and nations public are traditionally given the chance for viewing and grieving. President Ford's body will remain in the Rotunda until early Tuesday when President Bush and others will perform the eulogies. Today, Vice President Dick Cheney and outgoing Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert (R-IL), were the top speakers to offer their thoughts on the importance of President Ford's passing. Others may think this is a mistake, to offer a second-tier line-up of speakers for the viewing of President Ford; but I suspect the boys were chosen to speak due to simpler reasons.

You see President Bush and the family are on vacation (again) in Crawford, Texas. Interestingly a storm watch was in placed into effect for central Texas as severe winds and weather hit and subsequently forced the First Family be driven to a tornado shelter on the ranch. Obviously, with all the relaxing and twister action, the President couldn't be torn away to speak at the viewing. Besides, he'll be there in D.C. on Tuesday (giving his speech writers time to see family and write a helluva eulogy).

This couldn't have anything to do with the release by Washington Post editor, Bob Woodward, of a 28 April 2006 interview he had with President Ford on his thoughts on the Iraq Invasion, could it? After all, Gerry Ford had great and close ties with a few of the current President's cabinet so Ford had some clout with his opinion. His full statement has not been released but some parts of it are fairly damning:

"I don't think I would have gone to war,"..."Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,"... "I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

-Former U.S. President Gerry Ford in earlier 2006 interview with Bob Woodward

Did the release of this former President's comments create a bit of a sore spot for W.? Keep in mind, Tuesday is the second day with a new Congress and groups of congressional leaders. Pressure will be on and this short memoriam for President Ford may hold greater weight than even the State of the Union Speech at the end of January - early February. Time will tell.

Secondly in a BBC News article yesterday, the global warming debate was given renewed cannon-fodder for slinging at the doubters that the world is warming thanks to the unchecked burning of fossil fuels by humans. Scientists have discovered on satellite images that a shelf of Canadian Artic ice, larger than Manhattan Island, broke away from the mass of ice in the North artic sea.

As this year closes I'd like to think that the current leaders of these United States are aware of the consistency of those forces that surround them: inevitable death and the legacy a leader leaves once they succumb, nature's ever-present forces that remind humanity of its comparative frailty, and the current wave of left-leaning political viewpoints calling for resolution in the Middle East and a restoration of this nation's international reputation as a principled force for human rights.

If these forces are ignored long enough, will they go away? Time will tell.

All Fall Down.

Even before the touting by grateful Iraqi-Americans on CNN, I sat on my couch as the News Hour with Jim Leher was interrupted with the news of Saddam Hussein's execution. That it took less than one week after his appeal was dismissed suggests to me one of two things. Either the majority Iraqi Shia party sought swift justice on behalf of themselves or the families of those Kurdish victims in 1983 (and wished to prevent a possible litany of Sunni demands for alternate recourse in Saddam's punishment) or this hastened act was meant to stave the growing Ba'athist sympathies by exerting that the current Iraqi Government is THE ONLY Iraqi Government now and always. So there, Bush, Rice & Cheney.

Western media will spin this all day Saturday. Whether it's sports commentators during NBA or College Bowl games (waxing patriotic about the hangman's justice,) or liberal, humanitarian groups' outcrying over the inhumanity of allowing hanging as a form of State-sponsored execution, I fear that his death will spark something more profound before the year's end.

Stay tuned, sportscenter is next.

Read Into It.

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" —George W. Bush

As the year comes to a close I am reminded of the bet that was placed betweeen White House Advisor, and Chief Scoundrel, Carl Rove, and President Bush. The bet was to see who, between the two of them, could read the most books before the end of this year.

Back in August, this was the talk of the White House:

"Bush has entered a book-reading competition with Karl Rove, his political adviser. White House aides say the president has read 60 books so far this year (while the brainy Rove, to Bush's competitive delight, has racked up only 50)."

So, what's your total?

Cleethead's Dead.

My father used to call President Gerald Ford "Cleethead" after all the time he spent in playing ball and being a male model. Never did he think Ford was an idiot, by definition of the position as President he figured you have be fairly smart in some regard. What a president did during their administration is where he'd loosen any expectations for intelligent decision making. After all, he figured after fighting in the Pacific most every politician had the makings of a complete stupe.

Still, I think there was some fondness between Ford and my dad. I think he'd have liked to have seen the day "Cleethead" ran for the end zone one last time. Here's to you, Gerry.

Brand New Bag.

Yesterday, The Hardest-Working Man in Entertainment, The Godfather of Soul, The incomperable James Brown died at the age of 73. Not to be outdone by other festivities, nor to be forgotten as anything less than the ultimate showman, his death on Christmas day was fitting of a man how had dedicated his life to being bigger than life.

Rest in peace.

One Week Left.

To all, a good night. At times I wonder if Pope Benedict XVI, a man notably regarded as amenable to most ideas while remaining staunchly provincial on specifics, is actually playing out some great scheme toward a revitalization of the Catholic & Christian doctrine. A “Holy Make-Over” if you will. What with the many scandals, abundant wealth and priceless relics the church has amassed over the centuries, add to this the strife & religious turmoil reaching fever pitch in the world, could The Pope have picked a better time to deliver the Urbi et Orbi (To the City and the World)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We have just heard in the Gospel the message given by the angels to the shepherds during that Holy Night, a message which the Church now proclaims to us: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:11-12). Nothing miraculous, nothing extraordinary, nothing magnificent is given to the shepherds as a sign. All they will see is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, one who, like all children, needs a mother’s care; a child born in a stable, who therefore lies not in a cradle but in a manger. God’s sign is the baby in need of help and in poverty. Only in their hearts will the shepherds be able to see that this baby fulfills the promise of the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder” (Is 9:5). Exactly the same sign has been given to us. We too are invited by the angel of God, through the message of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the child lying in the manger.

God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendor. He comes as a baby defenseless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will we learn to live with him and to practice with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him. The Fathers of the Church, in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that Paul also quotes in order to show how God’s new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: “God made his Word short, he abbreviated it” (Is 10:23; Rom 9:28). The Fathers interpreted this in two ways. The Son himself is the Word, the Logos; the eternal Word became small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak. In this way he teaches us respect for children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze toward all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn. Toward children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; toward children who have to beg; toward children who suffer deprivation and hunger; toward children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem who is crying out to us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us. Let us pray this night that the brightness of God’s love may enfold all these children. Let us ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children may be respected. May they all experience the light of love, which mankind needs so much more than the material necessities of life.

And so we come to the second meaning that the Fathers saw in the phrase: “God made his Word short”. The Word which God speaks to us in Sacred Scripture had become long in the course of the centuries. It became long and complex, not just for the simple and unlettered, but even more so for those versed in Sacred Scripture, for the experts who evidently became entangled in details and in particular problems, almost to the extent of losing an overall perspective. Jesus “abbreviated” the Word he showed us once more its deeper simplicity and unity. Everything taught by the Law and the Prophets is summed up, he says, in the command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:37-40). This is everything the whole faith is contained in this one act of love which embraces God and humanity. Yet now further questions arise: how are we to love God with all our mind, when our intellect can barely reach him? How are we to love him with all our heart and soul, when our heart can only catch a glimpse of him from afar, when there are so many contradictions in the world that would hide his face from us? This is where the two ways in which God has “abbreviated” his Word come together. He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbor, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created. During the festive meals of these days let us remember the Lord’s words: “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite those who will invite you in return, but invite those whom no one invites and who are not able to invite you” (cf. Lk 14:12-14). This also means: when you give gifts for Christmas, do not give only to those who will give to you in return, but give to those who receive from no one and who cannot give you anything back. This is what God has done: he invites us to his wedding feast, something which we cannot reciprocate, but can only receive with joy. Let us imitate him! Let us love God and, starting from him, let us also love man, so that, starting from man, we can then rediscover God in a new way!

And so, finally, we find yet a third meaning in the saying that the Word became “brief” and “small”. The shepherds were told that they would find the child in a manger for animals, who were the rightful occupants of the stable. Reading Isaiah (1:3), the Fathers concluded that beside the manger of Bethlehem there stood an ox and an ass. At the same time they interpreted the text as symbolizing the Jews and the pagans and thus all humanity who, each in their own way, have need of a Savior: the God who became a child. Man, in order to live, needs bread, the fruit of the earth and of his labor. But he does not live by bread alone. He needs nourishment for his soul: he needs meaning that can fill his life. Thus, for the Fathers, the manger of the animals became the symbol of the altar, on which lies the Bread which is Christ himself: the true food for our hearts. Once again we see how he became small: in the humble appearance of the host, in a small piece of bread, he gives us himself.

All this is conveyed by the sign that was given to the shepherds and is given also to us: the child born for us, the child in whom God became small for us. Let us ask the Lord to grant us the grace of looking upon the crib this night with the simplicity of the shepherds, so as to receive the joy with which they returned home (cf. Lk 2:20). Let us ask him to give us the humility and the faith with which Saint Joseph looked upon the child that Mary had conceived by the Holy Spirit. Let us ask the Lord to let us look upon him with that same love with which Mary saw him. And let us pray that in this way the light that the shepherds saw will shine upon us too, and that what the angels sang that night will be accomplished throughout the world: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.” Amen!

Lazy Sunday: Part 22

Despite the pull to put up a Christmas-style photo like I did a few Sundays ago, try this:

Castro's nearing death and with his death a new order may be coming to the little island just southeast of Florida. It was a good run, Señor.

Photo by Reuters, 2006

Lazy Sunday: Part 21

I've finished school and begun a new job. What better than this for Sunday? My surgical technology class of 2002, Southwestern Oregon Community College.

Lazy Sunday: Part 20

Discovery returns to space. Yesterday's launch was its first at night in over four years and it couldn't have gone smoother.


Photo by NASA

Teacher's Eleventh Day.

My last lecture.

Giving Season.

As a young boy, I was a big fan of the television show M*A*S*H. Hawkeye, Trapper, Burns, Hot Lips, all of them just made my day with antics and moral issues thinly wrapped into 23 minute shows. Later on in the show’s run, the jokes turned more serious. The commentary, more solemn. In one episode a ticking clock arises in the lower left corner of the screen (anatomical left.) The idea was that a soldier’s aorta, the large artery stemming off the heart, was mostly removed and the boy was bleeding to death. The team had twenty minutes to transplant the aorta of a soldier near death into the one they were attempting to save. Usual concerns of rejection, type and tissue matching were set aside for the drama of how the dying soldier’s buddy was against the idea that the doctors wanted to use his body as a donor bank, ignoring the idea that he’s a living man with family, friends and a life of his own. In the end, it was Father Mulcahy that convinces the skeptic with a simple argument:

Father: “Do you think he was the kind of man that would throw himself on a grenade to save the life of someone else?

”Soldier: “Yeah. He would.”

Father: “Even if that person he was saving was someone he didn’t know?”

Soldier: “Of course.”

Father: “Well, that’s what he’s doing right now.”

Why bring this up? Two reasons.

First it’s the holidays and giving is always focused on as the seasonal act. What I contend is that giving is a natural act, something we all do every day. Be mindful of this, and the holiday season isn’t just at the end of November and December.

Second, I was reading in the 24 November issue of the Portland Tribune to read that OHSU had performed a stem cell implant into the brain of a child with Batten Disease. Did the donor know the recipient? In the case from the television show, the soldier had a life, made friends and otherwise. Even if we presume that the stem cells were derived from a dying fetus, or frozen embryo marked for discarding, isn't is conceivable that all humans want to try to do for others, even at the cost of the greatest sacrifice a human being can make?

I'm not asking for a specific morality to be the key, or even considering one thought being greater than another. Asking, thinking, trying, doing these are the acts of a person mired by guilt by cognizant of consequence.

Lazy Sunday: Part 19

This weekend, well... you know it's the holidays when:

People dressed as Santa Clauses enjoy a ride on a rollercoaster at the Europa Park in Rust, southwestern Germany
Photo by Reuters on 2 December 2006.

Rummy's Last Word.

We're all shocked that Donald Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum stating some reservations toward the declining situation in Iraq, right?

To think that the man who was so absolutely convincing that the Bush Administration's stance of "Stay the Course" would lead to "victory in Iraq", the man who was purported to walk into the Pentagon and quash all ideas save for his own, D.R. would leave a message lying around for the New York Times to find detailing alternate paths the U.S. military could take for Iraq and Afghanistan? Sure he would.

People, sure he thought of many different ways to build a mouse trap, but they all catch mice. This little excerpt of inner-thinking from the former Sec. Def. and CIA spook is most likely a "hindsight" message in case an investigation into the makings of the Iraq War starts to come against him.

Do not be fooled to think he's a benevolent soul. After all: you leave with the army you have, not with the one you want.

Nearly There.

If most can work in the same place for just 50 months and come away happier, wiser, well-rounded in experience and humble, who could ask for more? Monday morning, I am no longer an employee of OHSU's Labor & Delivery Unit, but of the main operating room, South O.R.

I will miss my cohorts and look forward to starting anew with professionals downstairs. Everything old is new again.