2013.10.30 Book Review. God's Hotel.

For my beach reading last summer I’d Kindled God’s Hotel by Victoria Sweet, M.D., PhD—hoping to read about how God practiced (was intimately involved with) medicine, maybe in a hotel? I wasn’t disappointed. Let me explain.

The bishop who ordained me had recommended the book. He’s a Gutenberg man who is rarely wrong about his books. God’s Hotel, published by Riverhead Books in 2012,  is a page turner. I finished it before I even got on vacation and to the beach, which was okay because, although my Kindle is named Fire, its glow doesn’t provide enough light to compete with the glare of brighter beach sun.  

The title comes from the French, Hotel-Dieu (God’s hotel, literally God’s hostel) the name for any charity hospital that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages.  Right away we get the flavor of ancient history.  A reader will learn about premodern medical practices and something about the utterly unimagineable mercies of le bon Dieu for the sick and the poor, poverty being a social disease. The book, to me, portrays medicine as ministry.

Because Dr. Sweet worked in an almshouse, Laguna Honda (sounds like a car dealership) she was able to practice what she called slow medicine. She had the luxury of time: being able to work part-time, spend an hour for a patient intake, and read Xrays on site herself!  Paradoxically, the penniless received top notch medical care for nothing. So much for idle assumptions about inferior care in clinics for THE poor. Such stereotypes are conditioned mostly by social shame and shaming.

In most religions God’s care is free— just like Laguna Honda’s was.  

Slowed down medicine was good for the doctor as well as the patient. Sweet learned she wanted to be herself with her patients, not so distant and guarded about professional boundaries. There was more time for relationships, a bit of humble mutuality without compromising her role or risking her patients’ emotional health. 

It would be easy to dismiss this by saying she knew these patients couldn’t sue her so it was safer to drop her guard a bit,  but that would do a disservice to this physician’s integrity, much of which she learned from patients. She recalls us to the spirituality of medicine through the cases she chooses to share, as well as her own evolution as a physician.  

God’s Hotel opens with an autopsy, the author’s first. When the face of the dead person is exposed Sweet suddenly recognizes one of her first-ever patients. It was Mr. Baker but it wasn’t Mr. Baker—really.  Where was Mr. Baker?  Spiritual questions immediately confront author and reader. What does and did medicine have to say about such obvious concerns?

Reading, I remembered my first—and last— autopsy. Autopsy comes from a Greek work meaning “eyewitness.”  It’s easy to see why this word evolved: no organ is left unexamined, no gall bladder unturned.  It went along all right until a hand dropped from beneath the sheet that covered the body and I jumped.  This was a real person, or had been a real person, or might be a real person—a woman I could tell from the hand alone, a woman who had lived and breathed, and was warm, and said “Hi.” It was such a startling revelation that we chaplain trainees covered up our nervousness with giggles, of all the adolescent responses!  

You grow up fast when you see the totality of death, when you know there is absolutely no life there at all.  And you wonder just as Sweet did, just as the early Jesus followers did. I bet they also used some gallows humor to cope.

After her autopsy viewing Sweet wrote: “I did tuck away in the back of my mind the image of his dead body as a crumpled suit of clothes, abandoned in the corner of a sterile white room.” Later she discovered that  premodern medicine did have words for what was so shockingly absent: spiritus (rhythmic breathing) and anima (soul). Medicine is so physical—and so not, all at once. 

Take Mr. X , a man who sat around all day every day looking blank and thinking nothing—demented (de +mentis, without a mind.) Mindless!  Absent? Yet one day Mr. X heard the music of Glenn Miller, his era, and very slowly he arose from his chair and began to dance, and dance well. When the music ended he sat back down, blank as usual. What IS a mind anyway? A soul?

The medicine of Christian mystic and saint Hildegard of Bingen, one of Sweet’s specialities, is interwoven into modern practices. Hildegard’s remedies are common sensical, sophisticated, and grounded in her religious faith and prayer.  You’ll love reading about  Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet and Dr. Merryman.  

Dr. Sweet’s patients tell astonishing stories of deep truth, just like the gospels. Readers also get to walk with Sweet on the famous pilgrim’s walk to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and follow the politics of medicine as it has evolved from the practice of medicine to the delivery of healthcare. The book is mystically empirical. 

Laguna Honda finally is moved and modernized, however its soul will linger on because of this lovely/loving book, and because Sweet leaves us to wonder more than answer. She is currently an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Her students are lucky.

I have only one reservation about God's Hotel: you might have to re-read it to digest it well. I’ve bought myself a good old reliable paperback so I can dog-ear and mark up as I do with books too chuck full of wisdom to read once. 

2012.11.21 Thanks Given for a Book

BOOK REVIEW

Religion Gone Astray. What We Found at the Heart of Interfaith
by Pastor Don Mackenzie, Rabbi Ted Falcon, and Imam Jamal Rahman 
2011, Skylight Paths, Woodstock, Vermont, 170 pages.



“We have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep......” 

When as a college student I first found and fell in love with the Episcopal Church in 1958 the congregation said this line every Sunday from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s General Confession. I called it the sheep clause and loved it because it rang true.  I had run amok in so many ways, some of them by own foolishness and some by ambush.  And so had everyone else!

Religion Gone Astray  is a seminal book for the future of the religious enterprise, because it takes erring and straying beyond the individual and into the institutional.  Religions are like sheep:each one prefers and guards most zealously its own pasture, its own group, its own images of divinity, and its own practices. Because these things are precious they are worthy of defense and feel crucial to survival—at significant cost. 

The interfaith vision of this book touches on the costs of too much safety-in-the-fold devotion,  precisely in the paradox that the more we defend the more we offend. While all religions and their scriptures, at God’s command, issue calls to provide for strays and aliens, most of them are so bent on caring for their own well-being they don’t find out what other religions are about.  There are blinders on each sheepfold.

 As I joined the Christian sheepfold I knew there was a place for me,  and somewhere there was a God who cared about the whole, including the strays, the lost, the foolish, and the headstrong.  As a Christian I could be lost and found. Nice!

Over time, however, I began to wonder if Jesus in the parable of the Lost Sheep returned the strays to their own comfy group,  or did he simply challenge them to find God wherever they’d landed?

This book has affirmed my suspicions about the challenge underlying this cozy parable. Exploring the core belief of each major religion the authors make confession to God and each other on behalf of their religions’ sins (my word) and the challenges each faces to save the souls of each religion. 

All religions put faith in a God who cares about each AND all at the same time.  These authors try to be a bit more like God. They stick to their ongoing interfaith conversation, develop deep affection for each other, and deepen their own faith —without fighting for it.

The authors expose four ways in which each religion has gone astray and lost touch with God, self and neighbor:

    Exclusivity: staking claim to a One and Only Truth
    Violence: justifying brutality in the name of Faith
    Inequality of men and women:  domination politics to preserve patriarchal power
    Homophobia: denying the legitimacy of homosexuality in practice and in being

Chapters explore these four religious errors. Each includes a personal reflection, a look at how institutions and scriptures have strayed into practices that keep the people of the one God apart,  scholarly commentary, core teachings and healing, and particular spiritual practices from each tradition. It is readable, accessible to all, and there's no bloviation in it!

One of my favorite practices, comes from the advice of a Thai Buddhist who taught Imam Rahman to say Neti! Neti!— which means, Not this! Not this!—to keep violent thoughts at bay. (I use it to keep judgmental thoughts at bay.) Violence in religions arises when extremes are taken as the whole, dualities advanced as the one correct picture, and violence-advocating verses in scripture are preached as the whole truth about God.   

Judaism’s core gift is Oneness AND Jews also hold onto choseness; Islam’s is Compassion above all, AND Muslims hold the Qur’an to be superior; and Christianity offers Unconditional Love AND claims that only One Name saves. 

Go figure:)

I find these authors most honest and credible when they write about inequality between women and men in their religions.  They laugh at themselves: three straight  patriarchally stereotypical men offering insights about equal inclusion of women and homosexuals in their “club.” They admit that each religion has been spiritually truncated by the exclusion of women’s voices. And they sight ways in which change is happening. This book is one effort. 

My only regret is that I wish these authors had done more with language about God, particularly those troublesome masculinizing pronouns that keep deity clothed in masculine language. We can no longer afford to have an exclusively male deity, even in languages like Hebrew that have gendered nouns. Our God  is so much more than the biggest and best one of us. Does not Divinity deserve our strenuous effort—an interfaith jihad for gender inclusive language, yes, even pronouns?

My personal image of Godde is a Being of beings fully feminine and fully masculine. Abstract images like light or even wisdom, leave me..... not cold but lukewarm.

According to the authors of this book, “Religions go astray when they contribute more to human suffering than they do to human healing.”  There will be evil, and we will do evil, but we can not BE evil.

I recommend this visionary book for individual and group study in and among any and all religions. 



  

2010.12.22 Peace by Faithful Talk

I dedicate this review to the one Christians call the Prince of Peace born on Christmas day

I offer this review with prayers for peace worldwide in all religions and all cultures.

I remember a time when I had trouble understanding what felt to me like quite a severe rigidity in a good Jewish woman friend about Jesus. I didn’t expect her to believe in him but thought maybe he was prophet. “We don’t even consider him a prophet,” she firmly said. To my own astonishment I burst into tears.

We talked about it, even cried together. We shared our feelings. We are still friends—as women of faith. Our friendship transcended our religious differences. Why? We talked. That’s what women do.

The Faith Club, authored by three women, Ranya Idliby a Muslim, Suaznne Oliver a Christian, and Priscilla Warner a Jew, in the wake of 9/11, is a peace document as well as an engaging and accessible memoir, an effective blend of personal spiritual experience and objective information about each religion.

Imagine three women writing one memoir. That is feat enough.

But these three are all: accomplished women, academically and professionally, writers, and mothers, two centered in New York City and one in a nearby suburb.

Seeking to enlighten their children about connections among their three religions, they collided with their own differences. Before they could talk about points of connection they had to get honest about their own disagreements, assumptions, and fears.

Their process illustrates, it seems to me, one way women learn, a way they come to resolution and peace through conflict and without abandonment around an issue that has a high personal and spiritual value for each participant and is also an issue that takes nations to war.

Jean Baker Miller in her 1976 book Toward A New Psychology of Women opened a wide door to the understanding of how women grow emotionally and spiritually toward wholeness. Miller’s research revealed that women derived their selfhood not from developing an autonomous self but from developing a relational self. Women derive their selfhood and well being from relationships, from being in connections that were mutually growth-fostering.

Of course we all need autonomy but we survive and thrive best in mutual relationships, including intimacy with self, other and God. In relationships we do our most effective work to cooperate with divine grace to a world full of love, justice and peace come about.

It seems to me that this model of development toward emotional health is not exclusive to women, but may also be God’s preferred mode of operations.

Good relationships for peace are very hard work. Sacrifices of opinions, precious values, and even your pet idol must be made. Prayer undergirds the process. Abundant forgiveness, not in the moral sense of debt but in the spiritual sense of acceptance for the sake of love, flows. Mutuality is about respect and needs, not equality. You are mutual with a small child when you listen.

The Faith Club authors make no direct claim that their works provides a model for peace through understanding. They just act it out.

This book reveals the process of building relationships that grow into friendships. It also serves as the vehicle for a professional project with political potential beyond the personal. Readers learn a way of dialogue that cuts through tension for those willing to invest the time. The model could be useful in any group where conflict threatens.

I would suggest it as a book for religious groups to read, especially religious politicians. Who are they? Start with Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, all lovers of people but not naive about how hard politics for peace are.

Like "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson, The Faith Club offers a way toward peaceful relations— one through action involving all kinds of politics, the other through the active practice of intimacy, deep listening and sharing. One begins with the kindness of strangers who save one life; the other with an act or terrorism that threatens a beloved city and a whole country.

The structure is what keeps "The Faith Club" together and coherent. It is organized with short chapters each dealing with a topic about which each and all have concern and passions. Each topic has universal emotional implications.

Shared rituals, food, and prayers help connect. Each woman grows in her own faith. Each one realizes that she may dislike or not care about the ways of another’s religion, but that she now has a friend who does care, a flesh and blood fact that blunts opposition, indifference—and fear.

Catchy chapter titles like “In the Beginning,” “Stop Stereotyping Me!” “Could You Convert?” “Awakenings,” and “Faltering Faith,” highlight the process by which the women deepen their relationships and also write a book that may help others to understand rather than fight, flee, or freeze.

Chapters are not long. Most have a snippet of actual dialogue that highlights the tension in the subject. Then each author writes her own thoughts on the matter. Along the way each woman does some research and consults her Imam, Priest, and Rabbi.

Peace is accomplished through knowledge combined with understanding. Knowledge is helpful but does not require the compassion that understanding does. It takes both to make true peace. This book has both.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND PEACE IN 2011—AND FOR EVER.

The Woman Who Named God by Charlotte Gordon

I recommend HIGHLY a book by Charlotte Gordon. The Woman Who Named God. It is biblical scholarship at its best and also story at its best—a rare combination.

Gordon blends exegesis ( biblical text analysis and interpretation,) narrative (just plain story and literary analysis,) and midrash ( a Jewish method of using creative imagination to plum a biblical story for its hidden meanings, its emotional nuances and its spiritual and theological significance, often buried in the words themselves.) The author weaves these three approaches together seamlessly with beauty and skill.

I love this book and plan to read it again. Of course the Bible is my thing. I love it for its wisdom and its story. The Old Testament is a particular favorite, not just because of my partial Jewish heritage, but because you’ll never find better more complex lusty stories than these. Probably every human experience ever visited on humanity is there and all of it is sacred.

The invitation to and definition of my professional pastoral counseling and spiritual direction practice is: “All Human Experience is Sacred.” The Bible tells me so. I give my heart to that truth and try as much as I’m able to live it as if I believed it.

Gordon’s vision and what she attempts to do, and I think does, is to make this book an instrument of peace. The book shows that there is no scriptural justification in the Hebrew texts for Jewish/Christian/Muslim animosity or warring. Quite a remarkable achievement I think.

Charlotte Gordon lives in Gloucester, MA. She grew up as an Episcopalian. Her dad was Jewish and converted. As an adult Charlotte became fascinated by the Jewish faith and converted. (See how we all are one!) Gordon learned Hebrew and Aramaic just to do this book. I'm impressed with her commitment, patience and zeal, to say nothing of her intelligence. She is also a lovely speaker, talking with wisdom and piercing clarity about her passion for the Bible and for religious peace.

The chapters and not long or ponderous and they are titled. Notes expand on certain texts for the nosey or diligent among us. The prose has an easy but not unsophisticated flow. There's even a chapter on Jesus coming for dinner in the desert! The book follows the ancient call and vocation of Abraham, no easy faith his. The woman who names God is Hagar. The Abrahamic family dynamic is the psychological lens through which scripture works out the nuances of overt animosity and comes to peace. God is a character in the story, an active player on the stage.

Gordon’s style is light, humorous, her prose not polemical or with "attitude." This book is clothed in compassion and has the potential to convert even the most stubbornly partisan to a more wholistic inclusive but spiritually grounded point of view.

Which reminds me of a quote I heard and know not from whence it comes. Something like, I know the voice of God in my head because it is the voice which is abundantly compassionate to everyone concerned. That is one way to describe this book.