Monthly Archives: January 2011

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Dr. Ultrasound

Dem bones

As mentioned in an earlier post, I am waiting on a broken bone in my left foot to mend. Every night, I strap an odd device to the injured area, squirt some ultrasound jelly on a small sensor, apply it to my foot and turn on the electronic machine that apparently sends some sort of low-intensity ultrasound wave (signal? beam? photon? midi-chlorians?) that is supposed to stimulate bone growth. During the twenty-minute treatment, I feel nothing, nor do I notice much difference ever since the pain slacked off a few weeks ago. All I know is, girls’ soccer season starts March 7 and I intend to be out there on the field, in my cleats, mixing it up. If I have to put some strange, hoodoo devil contraption on my foot to accomplish this, so be it.

Seriously, though, I’ve grown quite weary of this injury, which was sustained on November 19 of last year. I’m told that this particular bone (the fifth metatarsal) doesn’t heal very fast naturally if it heals at all. While I am not a fan of surgery, at this point I would have gladly gone under the knife if it meant I could be walking normally to and from my classes, exercising without some silly modifications, and playing indoor soccer with the other “geezers” on Sunday evening.

It’s a difficult thing, waiting to heal. I suppose it teaches us patience, but I feel like just about every other experience in this life teaches us patience one way or another. I guess it comes from our desensitization for instant gratification. Patience is a virtue, sure, but perhaps the hardest one to learn.

So I’ll keep applying this strange device in the hope that, after the last programmed cycle of treatment, that little bone on the outside of my left foot will be all better – will have magically/scientifically grown and merged securely with its neighbors – and things will get back to normal. I only hope I appreciate what I’ve got when I finally get it back. After all, I think that is more important than recognizing what we had once it’s gone.

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Sabbath Reflections: Week 4

I’m thirty days into this 365 project, posting every day this year. Honestly, I was doubtful I’d even make it this far. Nevertheless, today I couldn’t help but consider what I’ve learned after thirty days of solid wondering. If this project has taught me anything, it is that cultivating an awareness of the mystifying depths that exist under even the most seemingly mundane events (like crying five-years olds, writing classes, rush hour traffic, criticism and green beans to name a few) should not be viewed as a hobby. It is a discipline, and certainly not an easy one. Training our eyes to see beyond the workaday routine is not always pleasant, and encountering the mysteries underneath is not always as magically epiphanal as I assumed it would be.

I think most of us want at least some measure of this kind of seeing – we want to have that poet-like appreciation for a world infused with beauty and truth. However, we normally are satisfied only tapping into that sensibility on the occasional hike, day at the lake, or holiday closeness. The rest of the time, give us reality and we’ll be fine. Maintaining a constant awareness of mysterious beauty – of God at play in our here and now – sounds nice, but when you actually commit yourself to it, you find the practice of it sometimes feels like drudgery, like one more item on the daily to-do list.

This morning, the assigned Gospel passage was out of the second chapter of the Book of Luke, the story of old man Simeon and his (seemingly) chance encounter in the Jerusalem temple with Joseph, Mary and newborn Jesus. The old codger had spent many years in Jerusalem, waiting, watching, trying to maintain that deeper kind of seeing, still believing the Holy Spirit’s promise that he would not die until he had seen the messianic hope of Israel. I’m sure that when he told his family (if they were still around) about this promise, they respectfully praised his devotion to Israel’s deliverance but then rolled their eyes when his back was turned, believing their father/grandfather/great-grandfather had slipped out of awareness and into senility.

But, “moved by the Spirit,” he puttered into the temple on the exact day and at the exact time that Joseph and Mary, according to custom, were presenting their newborn baby. Suddenly, this happy young couple were standing face to face with a wrinkled geriatric with a beaming smile on his face; with dry, callused hands, he gently took drooly, drowsy Jesus from his parent’s arms and hoisted him into the air, praising God in a rasping voice choked with emotion. What was nothing more than a routine abidance of the Law for Mary and Joseph was something so much more, so much deeper, for old Simeon. In the end, all the daily drudgery of waiting and watching and hoping finally culminated in the sight of a little child, who blinked unseeing eyes back at him in the dusty half-light, unable yet to focus, but who would, as Simeon would prophesy himself, one day show the entire world how to see beyond the workaday reality into the mysterious depths of our own hearts.

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Green Beans for Babies

I wouldn’t eat it. I don’t even like the version before they’ve been steamed, mashed, blended, frozen into a cube, melted into a stringy pulp and served up on a tiny spoon. No wonder my daughter makes one of the most severe “Who farted?” faces I’ve ever seen when we try to sneak a smidgen of it into her unintentionally opened mouth. Seriously, is there anything at all appetizing about the preparation I just listed? I defy even the greatest of potty-mouthed TV chefs to make that appetizing.

Then again, I have always been an extremely picky eater. I gave my parents more than their deserved helping of grief when I was younger. Basically, if there was something green in a bowl or platter on the table, I didn’t want it. My mother tells the story of an evening at my grandmother’s house (who could cook more dishes in an hour than most people do all week) when I ran inside, hyper and sweaty from my shenanigans out in the yard, took one look at some of the pots on the stove, and turned to announce to my elders, “I’m not hungry,” as if everyone was on the edge of their seats, desperate to know the status of my appetite. All I can tell you is, I saw (and smelled) green things.

I had my techniques, though, when refusing to eat did not work. Green peas, an especially loathsome side dish, could be handled with minimal affect to my taste buds if I took only three or four at a time and, with the help of a massive gulp of milk, swallowed them whole. Needless to say, eating green peas required about two hours and four to five glasses of milk. Sometimes, out of frustration, my parents would limit me to three glasses, a form of discipline I still find quite stiff-necked.

Why do we so often shun the things that are good for us – the things that make us healthy and strong? Even when we grow older, the picky behavior we learned as children seeps into other aspects of our character. We may eat our veggies at mealtime, but we avoid them in other areas in which we know, deep down, we need them, even if they’re hard to swallow. Sometimes we fight them off. We screw up our face, shudder violently, shake our fists, and angrily turn our heads away in nonacceptance.

I wonder how Katy Jo is going to do. So far, she is her father’s daughter. The mashed fruit goes down pretty easily, but serve her some carrots, yams, or those lovely, viridescent beans, and her face contorts so violently that I would fear for her health if I didn’t know that, just like her blue eyes, she got the talent for those spasms from her dear ol’ dad.

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Friday Films: The Village

Today’s film:

Say what you want about M. Night Shyamalan (and almost every well-rounded moviegoer has his or her opinion), but I reject any critical reviews that pan this film. I truly believe that some of Shyamalan’s best work is found in The Village, as well as in the subsequent Lady in the Water. The reason for Shyamalan’s shrinking audience (which began around the time of his third major film, Signs) is that after Best Picture-nominee The Sixth Sense, he tried to take his storytelling in one direction despite having unwittingly defined himself on the basis of suspense and twist endings. That’s what the majority of moviegoers wanted, and to hell with substance. Sadly, it seems he has bowed to such outcry in recent years, sending up terrible specimens such as The Happening (which marked the death of his attempt at merging substance and brainless thrill), The Last Airbender and Devil. But I hold on to the beauty and depth of The Village; it is not for the crowd-pleasing twist or creep-out that I cherish this film, but for its creative examination of themes such as conformity, isolation, blind faith, fear and sacrificial love. What I appreciate most about this film is Shyamalan’s exploration of living in fear vs. embracing the world’s brokenness. The village patriarchs and matriarchs in the film have fled “the towns” because of the violence and evil that caused them pain. However, they find themselves unable to maintain a place free of this darkness, despite even the most drastic efforts. In the end, it takes a blind girl – who, at times, very literally walks by faith rather than by sight – to show them that hiding from the world’s darkness is impossible. The capacity for evil exists within all of us… but so does the capacity for love.

This is one of three films I believe everyone who participates in a community of faith – that is, the Church – should watch and study closely. There are too many churches today that are pulling back from society, building picket fences around their property and their image, frightened about what might happen if they openly associate with the secular world in all its infidelity and unpredictability. The world is a beautiful place, in need of a love that knows no boundaries. As the leader of the community, Edward Walker, tries to explain to the rest of the elders, “The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.”

Here are five more reasons to take a look (or a second look) at The Village:

#1

#2 – The entire cast. Shyamalan assembled a wonderful ensemble (including William Hurt, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson, Judy Greer, Sigourney Weaver) and each actor does his or her part to add authenticity to the setting, the overall morose atmosphere, and the story itself.

#3 – The atmosphere. The twist might have left some feeling betrayed, but separatism never looked so beautiful.

#4 – The music. James Newton Howard was nominated for his score which featured the most memorable arrangement of stringed instruments since Psycho (but with a completely different feel, of course).

#5 – The suspense. Shyamalan knows how to build tension, and he also knows that the less you see the monster, the scarier it becomes. I’ve watched this film almost a dozen times now, and the creatures still give me the creeps.

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The Faces We See

In flesh and on billboards, out of the corners of our eyes or right in front of us, we see them each and every day. We may give them some fleeting observance, or disregard them altogether. Or we may identify them, know them from somewhere and stop our own forward motion to communicate with them. We don’t usually give thought regarding whether or not they have equally identified us and desire as well to pause from their own affairs to dip into our life.

We see them not only with our physical eyes. Reading books, we construct them in our mind’s eye. While writing – as my class does each day – we create new ones, forming them from the spare parts of real ones that once resonated with us, fashioning them from the miscellaneous features strewn upon the work table of our imagination. When I read a book, I see them differently than when I go out in public and use my own rods and cones. Our reason observes them differently than our empiricism, but there is nevertheless a commonality that runs through them all, real or make-believe.

The ancient Hebrew account of creation, the story we find at the beginning of the Book of Genesis in the Bible, claims that God said (…to someone, the Scriptures are not clear on who God was hanging out with when the idea struck him), “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” The Scriptures remain ambiguous when it comes to what exactly “our image” is, whether it means a similarity in physical appearance, intellectual free will, anatomical organization or some mystical merging of the “spiritual” with the corporeal. To make it easier and avoid the headache, we assume it means that the people we see, as well as those we call to mind, are a reflection of the Creator. We like to think it is a loving inscription, a link between the Divine and the earthly.

If that’s the case, then I hope we will train our eyes (both the ones with retinas and the one that exists in our mind) to perceive that reverential image in the faces we see.