health – Inspiring Change LLC

Prayer : What is it, exactly?

One of my therapist friends just received frightening medical news following her first colonoscopy. I know what that kind of call from the doctor feels like, how the mind resists such unwanted information, how it changes everything in your life.

She shared her lab results, told me about the developing treatment plan, got fast tracked to surgery. While I’m too far away be any practical help, I offered one thing: Ill pray for you every day, I told her.

I speak her name to God. I added her name to the concerns I pray about: victims of war, violence in the world, climate change, wise leaders, domestic politics, my children and husband, our community and myself.

Essentially, I think of prayer as an internal conversation we have with God. It’s a personal dialogue that shifts our emotional focus to God, a kind of discussion in which I think of God as a loving Mother, patiently attending, listening, feeling our concerns, joining that divine heart to ours.

Rarely does that infinite, loving power directly respond. Instead, that internal dialogue makes us participants in God’s sacred kingdom, a spiritual realm already at work in the world for our good.

Neuroscientists who study spiritual experiences have found within our brains observable energy patterns when we are in meditation, prayer, or spiritual reflection. Humans have evolved with an innate ability to imagine, focus, and link to an experience of power beyond ourselves, to moments of awe and wonder.

We seem to be able to connect with this spirituality through such diverse practices as dance, ritual, story, body postures, visual arts, the natural world, architecture, literature, chant, poetry, music and song, food, or silence. The way we understand this impulse is first modeled by our family of origin, then by our larger culture, as well what we choose individually to develop and practice.

Want God to heal your cancer? A certain televangelist will sell you magical healing water to motivate God’s power. Afraid of dangerous weather? Famous preachers will assure you that specific prayers will change the course of hurricanes. Still others shout their certainty that God is only close to certain political parties, countries, religions, or genders.

Nothing in my experience tells me God responds to prayer like that. Yet religious hucksters continue to draw crowds, always preying on the vulnerable.

If prayer is the innate impulse in the human brain to connect with a life power beyond our physical selves, a pull toward experiences of timelessness, presence, awe, and wonder, what if anything, can we say about how it moves God? How might it influence the physical world?

I see prayer not as some emotional campaign to spur God to specific action, but as an experience of drawing us toward God in relationship, and in strengthening the bond between God and us, seeking the in-breaking of more healing, hope and renewal into this fragile world. In other words, I think of prayer as participating with God in the most powerful experiences of life: of hope, connection, healing, relief, and love. What many call God’s realm or kingdom.

The life of Jesus shows me that God is already close to those who suffer. I believe in a God who weeps when we weep, rages at the evil we do to one another and joins us even in our death. When we pray, I don’t think we tell God anything new at all. Prayer draws us to God’s heart and that holy practice can shape us into people who can offer our best selves to this world.

I will continue to pray for my friend, that God stays close to her in every way, that she be less afraid, find peace and renewed health, and trust in her future. I know that this healing is possible, even if a cure becomes unlikely. I have practice enough with prayer to trust these are already the desires of God’s for all our world.

(Written for the Savage Pacer, published 2/3/24)

Is a Vaccine at Odds with the Christian Faith?

The Christian faith is all about loving God and neighbor. Get immune, save and love your neighbor and their children. Get the Covid vaccine.

Perhaps it’s never been possible to have agreement on the definition of a faith tradition; ideas about what it means to follow a religion have always been fluid and contentious. I read a news article this week that a settlement was reached in an employment religious discrimination lawsuit, granting a Minnesota man $65,000 in back pay and damages from his former employer over his refusal to be fingerprinted for a required background check. He said it was against his Christian faith to do so.

Henry Harrington claimed that his employer, Ascension Point Recovery Services (APRS), a debt collection company, had failed to make the required accommodation for his belief and fired him. A similar employment case was filed four years ago in Pennsylvania, when a local school bus driver refused fingerprinting as part of her background check, claiming that the process would leave the “mark of the devil” on her, preventing her future entrance to heaven. That’s news to me.

Many more of these religious objection cases have been filed across the country in recent years as social and legal changes have pressed up against long held personal beliefs about social responsibility, employment requirements, privacy rights and our own physical autonomy.

Can a life insurance company, considering you for a new policy, require you to release to them your full physical and mental health record, disclose your family medical history, take your blood pressure and a sample of your blood? Might they also review the public filing of your divorce decree from 10 years back? They have been doing such things legally for decades. Can a federal employer take your photo, driver’s license number, Passport information as well fingerprints to screen you for a job? Will it search for any records of arrest or legal charges brought against you in national data bases? Most certainly it will.

As more information about our individual lives is collected and shared, many of us are pushing back. Where does my right to security of person and property end and legal or social demands begin? And when we must make arguments for protecting those intuitive, personal boundaries, it’s no wonder that issues of faith, meaning and core values come front and center.

These same issues, it seems to me, are at the center of the debate around Covid vaccine mandates. For most of 2020, we prayed and hoped for the miracle of a safe and effective vaccine to be created by our nation’s research scientists, folks who have been steadily working on similar virus strains of influenza, bird flu, and SARS for decades. Because of the previous research, the vaccines came quickly, tentatively released after multiple trials with eager volunteers, giving us hope that it would snuff out the pandemic and its possible mutations with our majority immunity.

The vaccine is free for all. Now anyone over 12 can get immunized! And even after weeks and months of pleading and even cash incentives, 20% of eligible Americans have refused this life-saving medicine.

I have come to understand this refusal by so many as the result of all the loss of privacy many of us feel over the last two generations mentioned earlier. Some people, claiming conflicts with the vaccine and their faith practices, have received exemptions from vaccination in the past few months, risking their own health and the life and wellbeing of those around them. Even when such exemptions don’t seem to be wise or practical, current law does allow such freedom when it comes to boundaries set by a person’s sincere religious practice.

But people are still dying, children are still not protected, and our medical personnel are traumatized by the continuing demands on their health and stamina. As new mandates are announced, reluctant employees are claiming a religious exemption, requesting letters of support from their Christian clergy. I want to go on the record with this admonition: Don’t ask your pastor for such a letter. Your pastor can’t make a coherent faith argument against receiving an approved vaccination that will save your life and the life of those around you.

Why? Because, quite simply, the Christian faith is centered on the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. And if there is a central theme to his life and teaching, it is love of God and love of neighbor. In this, Jesus taught, is all the Law and the Prophets. It’s not about creating a cover for your distrust of government, or resentment that you are expected to take medicine because someone else says so. It is not so you can live your life exactly on your own terms, shouting “freedom” until you are hoarse. Every day of his life, Jesus spoke and demonstrated his gospel, that as God loves us, so we are called to that same love of one another. To take proven medicine when you can, to save your own life as well as the life of the weak, young or vulnerable, is discipleship work. There is no religious excuse that makes any sense to me. Love Jesus? Love your neighbor. And get your shots.

(Written for The Savage Pacer, Spiritual Reflection column; Published Saturday, 9/18/21)

Why You Should Learn to Cook

A recent survey conducted by a food industry consultant Eddie Yoon (printed here and reported on elsewhere) finds that 90% of American adults hate to cook. This 90% is comprised of folks who don’t know how to cook, don’t like to cook, or do it reluctantly some of the time. They are purchasing pre-packaged food (fresh, frozen and dried) in grocery store isles as well as in take-and-go options such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, as well as the familiar fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Subway.

That leaves just 10% of Americans who continue to prepare food from fresh ingredients and who have mastered at least the basic skills once taught to most middle schoolers in Home Economics. In his article, Yoon advises the major suppliers of groceries to get with the trend and embrace more technology in food preparation as well as diversifying their ownership in alternative on-the-go food restaurants or brands that show an upward trend. The writing is on the wall on this, he advises. There seems to be no turning back.

If this is the case, and most of the industry is turning to preparing food for us and seeing the kitchen as a place to store food and eat it, but not prepare it, why should you buck the trend and get firmly in the minority food lane and learn to cook? I can think of several reasons, all of which are quite important to me. Maybe one or more might be important to you, too.

Your long-term health and the health of your children. Why are we an obese nation and just keep getting fatter no matter how hard we try to slim down? Because we let other people prepare our food for us, filling us with unseen but powerful fats, salt, artificial fillers and preservatives and chemical flavors. Even with the recent trend to label the calorie content of your Big Mac or Chipotle burrito bowl, most of us will eat more than our bodies need if a meal is presented to us on our plate and we are in a social (loud, busy and people-centered) environment.
Cooking is a human art, and it’s crazy to lose what we have spend tens of thousands of years figuring out as a species. I am particularly thinking about the women who have throughout the generations toiled in field, barnyard and kitchen to feed their families. Using tools and ingredients common to their culture, it has been the traditional work of women to manage the preparation of food for families in their homes. I’m not willing to give this part of my gender identity over to some multinational corporation. I want to know something of what my grandmothers and earlier generations passed down to one another, in prosperous times and in depressed.
Food is a gift of God to and in creation, and when I am gardening, or shopping, or cooking at home, I am participating in the work and renewal of creation. Am I thinking such high theological thoughts when I am boiling my brown rice and marinading my chicken breasts? Uh, no. But give me a minute and I will tell you that I pray with my family over our dinners and I pause to think about the gift that good food is in a world in which so many are starving. I marvel at how many wonderful foods are available to me in America. And how many will keep me healthy.
Real food is more than fuel. Real food is medicine and learning about and committing to preparing it creatively is community building. It is a creative necessity, and a way for families to take time out daily to look at one another and talk face to face in their home. Children who eat dinner with their families grow to have a sense of belonging in their families, know their parents better, learn to talk with adults, and have so many less food addiction and eating disorder issues than their peers who don’t have families who eat together. And in these families, children can slowly and with confidence learn to cook so they can eventually cook for themselves as adults.

With the fantastic television shows about cooking that are on right now, you’d think we would all be inspired. Apparently not. Even the Great British Bake Off can make food preparation look like the work only of experts. We all have to eat. I just want to eat well, eat to care for my family, eat to keep this amazing human art form alive. It’s not impossible. If you can reluctantly learn a thing or two about sifting flour in 7th grade, I know that you can learn as an adult by reading a good simple recipe, getting the right ingredients, getting a few essential tools, and having patience as you become better skilled. Your body will be healthier, your mind clearer, your budget better balanced, and your family life calmer. It’s worth your time.

ProBiotics Could Help Your Brain

I know that eating helpful gut bacteria (acidophilus, for example, found in active yogurt cultures) helps our digestion work at its best, and can improve our immune function, but little did I know that scientists are studying the effect of healthy gut bacteria on emotional resilience and mood. It turns out that good gut bacteria seem to work with the function of the Vagas Nerve, the nerve that links the brain to the digestive tract, to stimulate positive emotional function. (Check out a brief intro to this amazing nervous system giant here: Vagas Nerve.)

In mice, this connection made mice more resilient in the face of stress and able to persist in difficult circumstances far beyond their “normal” peers. There is more than some suggestion that human emotions and mental health could be lifted by additions of pro-biotics into the daily diet. Jamie Lee Curtis (Activia!) may be absolutely right: adding yogurt or other pro-biotic supplements can make you a happier, healthier person overall.

If you struggle with mood, energy, and lethargy, it may be worth your while to give daily yogurt or a pro-biotic supplement a try.

If you’d like to hear more about this research, listen to this episode of the science radio program, RadioLab, entitled, “Guts.” (The research about the mice is around the halfway mark if you’d like to cut to the chase.) The whole program is amazing.

http://www.radiolab.org/widgets/ondemand_player/#file=%2Faudio%2Fxspf%2F197112%2F;containerClass=radiolab

Taking Charge of our own Health

As a nation, we spend a LOT of money on health care. It’s expensive for a couple of reasons: the amazing discoveries, technologies and research which allow for astonishing cures and healing of human suffering is expensive to create. And secondly, because we Americans have treated health care not as a right, like public education, but as a service that we purchase, like energy or food.

Because of the early national decision to treat health care as a service, the pace and cost of advances in medicine has out-stripped most Americans’ ability to pay for it themselves. Hence, the explosion in the last century of our dependence on health insurance. We have become so dependent upon it as an addition to our pay, most of us have come to think of health care as something that our insurance pays for, as if it were an additional source of revenue to our family instead of a support to the health care we purchase.

This model leaves the poor, homeless and unemployed dependent upon our hospitals’ emergency system to receive the health care they need. And because treating normal health issues in the ER is like sending a battle ship to take you fishing, this solution is not much of one. But we are so wedded to the health care as a service model, the only solution that the best minds of our day can come up with is to provide universal health care coverage.

What makes me a bit crazy about this solution is the increased dependence we all have on insurance companies. And with this increase in dependence, comes a pressure to keep costs down as they add members who may use more insurance on average than others. So while more of us are covered, the coverage shrinks in response.

While this may be good for most Americans, it has not been good at all for mental health providers. We are the lowest paid health care providers as a group in the country, and reimbursements for our work are getting smaller and smaller each year. More of us are leaving our contracts with the large insurers, and some of us begin our private practices without signing contracts at all, focusing on serving the most people we can as Out-of-Network, or non-preferred professionals.

Mental health, one of the most important of the healing arts to learn and master, is slowly being pushed out of the health care arena. If you have tried to get an appointment with a local psychiatrist lately, you will know exactly this first hand. The recession has made this shortage worse, as the larger health systems cut back on mental health clinics and out-patient therapists.

While we continue to try to solve this growing crisis, we each need to consider how important our health is to us and act proactively. We need to stop expecting doctors to fix things after we have done willing damage to ourselves either by inactivity, abuse of alcohol, food, drugs or other things we ingest. We need to limit the excesses we have come to demand of medicine, whether that be for antibiotics, plastic surgery or that third or fourth expensive test. And we need to put our money where our personal priorities are, and be willing to pay a larger portion of our own care in our daily budget.

We have grown fat, literally and figuratively, at the table of insurers. We are bloated by the expectations that medicine, physical and mental health care are paid by someone else. If it is essential to our lives, we need to add it into our budgets, just like we do when we put gas in our cars and and food on our tables. Like it or not, we buy the things we need in our economy, and we must grow to understand that all this health care is not someone else’s bill, but our own.

“In insurance we trust” could be the motto of many Americans. As more of us receive coverage, more of our income will need to be set aside for health coverage. And that is as is should be, if only so long as we commonly consider health care a service we pay for, and for which we should have choices as consumers.