As I share some pictures from recent happenings throughout, I'd like to take time to pay tribute to some reflections from my final semester of undergraduate studies, which I stumbled upon during this winter break. I think the little pearls are relevant to themes of Nativity as well as my journey as an evolving health professional while I continually strive to follow in the steps of Jesus.
For a capstone senior seminar course on the theme of "Dealing with Suffering and Loss," I chose bagpipes to describe the way that I learned to experience God's grace that semester (I invite you to listen to the Scottish bagpipes while considering the analogy):
As I explain this analogy, I will use the sound of bagpipes and God's grace somewhat interchangeably.
To the untrained ear, this sound is irritating and annoying at first. Many people don't want to consider God's grace in their lives--We habitually receive grace in ignorance of it source, as if we are entitled to the giving. We are completely disoriented when we are given something that is not "good" in our sight and can't fit this into our assumptions of grace and God.
It takes practice to recognize the comfort and beauty of the sound of bagpipes. Listening to God's grace also takes some effort and discernment. If you are attentive at the start of a bagpipe melody, you will hear that the song begins with a stable drone that does not stop or change. It is grounded in one key and is not necessarily pleasant, compared to the transcending melody. However, so long as the drone is sustained, air can be used to play a melody, which conforms to the key of the drone to create an integrated sound.
I see the drone of a bagpipe as our humanity. So long as we are alive, we experience the stable drone of mortality--the suffering and endless human limitations that make up the most personal and universal realities of human existence. This limitation or absence meets the presence or sufficiency of God through his amazing grace. Although circumstances don't change, we are able to play a song of gratitude, joy, and hope, knowing that the drone is what sustains this song.
Grace is a beautiful connection between humanity and God. Through my analogy, I suggest that we find comfort through accepting our humanity (our innate tendency towards loss, change, and suffering) only in the presence and acknowledgement of God's arms extended to embrace humanity--that is, his grace.
A clear autumn day in late November
The Inter Health Professionals Alliance hosted a social at a local art gallery in Cary Town
A gingko tree alley in my neighborhood
Bookstore outing with my oldest niece over Thanksgiving Break
A tree-lit room (along with the aroma of an evergreen)
My upstairs room was decorated with candle lights
I enjoyed visiting the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden light festival in town with some friends and their toddlers
We first thought the mushrooms were jelly-fish : )
The "birds and the bees" tree at the GardenFest
Clay nativity figures on the church window sills
This year's Advent Wreath symbolizes the wilderness and chaos into which we expect the light of our Savior's birth to come, offering reconciliation and healing into a transformed life
Several excerpts from reflections on the course readings and guest lectures that are still powerful for me today:
Fear, as described by Nouwen [in Turn My Mourning into Dancing], is power. It is caused by sensing the loss of control and moves us to cling to doing something to alleviate the disruption caused by loss. This "fulcrum of anxiety" allows us to choose the direction of action. Nouwen suggests that Christ calls us from fear to love, a love of communion with him and others, for "such love overcomes the fear that separates us. Such love allows us to let go of our little fears." Nouwen proposes that when we move from fear to love, "we will live in a world without zealously defended borders." This love will "soothe our compulsions to hoard and pretend we can organize the future." Fear, in Nouwen's discourse, may keep one isolated during loss. To move towards love, he develops, is discipline: "the concentrated effort to create some space in our lives where the Spirit of God can touch us, guide us, speak to us, and lead us to places that are unpredictable, where we are no longer in control." This definition is counter-intuitive in our society as a disciplined person is often thought of one who exerts a lot of control and will-power over his/her life. Nouwen promises that through this vulnerability, "we find in those risky acts something wonderfully beyond what we could have done on our own, by ourselves, without God."[....] What I have begun to uncover is that adequacy is not how well I am able to contain and hold on to my life with my bare hands, but rather how well I am able to extend this life (full of flaws and struggles though it may be) to interact with others in my joys, hardships, and sorrows.
[....]
Nouwen suggests that orientation from fatalism to hope requires focusing on a "precious center." He begins by saying, "For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, much in our fleeting lives is...eternal." He explains that the presence of the Holy Spirit is revolutionary to our temporary lives as it allows for "spiritual life--the nurturing of the eternal amid the temporal." Nouwen urges us to "remember that at the heart of reality rests the love of God itself." Focusing on the precious center by faith "creates in us a new willingness to let God's will be done." This action allows us to have hope, whose basis, "has to do with the One who is stronger than life and suffering," and "faith opens up to God's sustaining, healing presence." Resisting this direction, one can opt for fatalism, which "reinforces our tenacious grip on the old" and prevents us from entrusting God with our loss, rejecting the hopeful journey towards healing. Hope, the avenue towards healing, begins with trust, which "born of faith becomes matured and purified through difficulty." Thus, focusing on the eternal seems crucial to beginning the journey towards orientation and healing.
[...]
Sittser [in A Grace Disguised] suggests that regret is "an unavoidable result of any loss" and that the "darker side of grief...forces us to recognize the incompleteness of life and admit our failures." This initial bout of regrets allows us to choose to continue this cycle of regret and "allow one loss to lead to another," which "causes gradual destruction of the soul," that Sittser terms "the second death." Alternatively, one can transcend the loss and seek "personal transformation" by redemption through grace. Sittser offers that struggle with regretful and destructive emotions allows us to realize that "the feeling self is not the center of reality. God is the center of reality." The next step, surrendering to God, frees us from the cycle of destructive feelings and begins the journey towards healing. As "an opportunity to take inventory of our lives," loss allows us to focus on what really matters, the "precious center" of eternity, as described by Nouwen. Similar to Nouwen's description of hope, Sittser admits, "grace will not erase the loss or alter its consequences. Grace cannot change the moral order...but grace will bring good out of a bad situation." Responding to regret in the right way by receiving grace allows us to accept "divine forgiveness," which "leads to self-forgiveness" and aids in the healing and new-orientation process.
[...]
Few individuals have the privileged opportunity to seek out their vocational calling. [...] Whereas most college students are initially alienated when leaving their home to pursue an education, the alienation I that I have experienced has been gradual. The peculiarity lies in that I am alienated without ever moving out of my home; that is, I am farther from home each day that I come home from school. After nearly two and a half years at EMU, I am finally experiencing "at home" episodes in my classes, while I feel nearly completely foreign in the pre-college community in which I still engage. My summer cross-cultural experience in Lithuania made me challenge indirect vocational goals that I'd initially known (that work was to provide financial resources on which to live). Discovering that life was too short to simply work and spend, I demanded that my endeavors have meaning and purpose for me as well as those around me. Seeing the utility of an inquiring mind in my biological training as useful for any aspect of life, I am reluctant to leave the scientific community and hope that I can find a niche that utilizes my scientific self while I develop a care-taking and craftsman self. The greatest way in which my undergraduate career has influenced the way I incarnate my vocational calling is that I focus less on the action or the way it satisfies me and more on how my actions fit into "the larger picture" of the lives around me and the "larger picture of life" overall, as Nouwen describes incorporating loss. Dental school, I hope, will be a great place to continue asking the questions, "What is the point of what I'm doing here?" and "How am I affecting those around me and across the globe, as well as outside of this time-frame?"
Landing onto the Eastern Iowan flatlands after completing an arduous two weeks of eleven final exams to visit friends as well as a public health dental residency program as well as a geriatric and special needs dental fellowship.
On my way into Iowa City, I couldn't pass by this enchanting village
I think the bakery door says "for good health," a common Slavic saying in lieu of "you're welcome"
Still up for an adventure on the crisp Iowan afternoon after ten hours of travel
The National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library closed just fifteen minutes after I discovered it, but I still enjoyed seeing some familiar cultural/historical items
The gift shop sold festive Christmas ornaments that remind me of our Kazakh "tree of the New Year"
Enamel-covered metal dish-ware was a Soviet staple. I recall our token metal mug being used as a bath pitcher, tea kettle, porridge pot, etc
Another gift shop in the village
I believe this bench says "I welcome you"...it's more similar to Ukranian than Russian, though
Several excerpts from a pre-professional health internship course that still challenges my understanding of being a health professional:
Egan [in Living Professionalism: Reflections on the Practice of Medicine] suggests that intense competition in medical schools and residencies results in delayed moral development (or even degradation of morals) as well as a decline in commitment and responsibility. She argues that "this fierce competition may restrict students' ability to attain life-enriching experiences, thus reducing or eliminating risk-taking endeavors that have the potential to negatively impact their transcripts."
[...]
Downing [in his preface to Death and Life in America: Biblical Healing and Biomedicine] captures the reader with a narrative of his mother's medical treatments and eventual death. At the end of the story (in which his mother's narrative is unresolved), he indirectly invites the reader to draw a conclusion, looking for metaphor, not reductionist mechanism. He writes: "It's as if she renounced the means of connecting with the world when she no longer understood that world or had anything to offer it." This statement doesn't altogether make sense in the context of modern/western medicine as the patient is usually viewed as a victim of disease and has no choice. Downing suggests that his mother was distanced from her (natural) world by means of the medical biotechnology on which she depended: Each time that she encountered natural weakness, she was able to rush to medical technology for the solution...until the solutions ran out as technological progression reached its dead end. In representing medical technology as a shadow, it could be said that Downing's mother became continually more independent from being human until she couldn't any longer commune with that human world.
[...]
We would like to be comfortable without having to make hard choices, so we allow our lifestyle, food, and eventual health choices to be made for us, keeping us dependent on the decision-maker: biomedicine. Downing asserts that "as long as statistics work, we use them; we are an evidence-based discipline. As long as fatal wounds are healed, we follow the healer." To suggest that this may not be right, he explains that "evidence for us confers authority; our biomedical method does not need a proximal or spiritual authority. We follow what works. We apparently no longer believe we can be deceived."
[...]
Downing notes, "We have found ways of eliminating the disease without eliminating the source, which really means that we can eliminate only the symptoms of the disease in the person since we haven't gotten to the source." He argues, though, that "the roots of disease are never in the mechanisms" and that the reality is that not all ailments have cures and that the autonomy of ailments should perhaps be respected instead of controlled. Developing this thought, Downing explains that "biomedicine does to healing what the Pharisees did to the Sabbath-keeping, shrinking it from a rich gift to a technique they could control." He notes that "biomedical 'miracles' work best when we biomedical practitioners control everything or, for chronic disease care, when our patients internalize that control." In this framework, "biomedicine, like the Pharisees, has no real Sabbath connecting it with the source of Life, only Sabbath regulations." The result is that instead of holistic healing, the product is mechanistic control over the effects of the neglected root cause. Downing observes with awe as a Navajo Indian behaves "not [as] a passive patient, but [as] an active participant in his own healing ceremony." This sort of doctoring creates a meaning in technique and meaning for the individual, whether the disease is alleviated or not--healing is so much more than just "fixing the problem!" [below is a TedTalk titled "the Doctor's Touch" that is relevant]
The Old Capital building with its gold dome, now part of the University of Iowa. The scarf-covered trees are a neat idea, but I wonder about how much similar care and attention the downtown corner-stationed homeless receive.
Before visiting two dental residency programs in Iowa City, I was able to attend an informational meeting regarding a co-housing community developing in the city
The co-housing community plans to build on this hill, just a mile from the downtown medical campus!
The Big White House on a Luminaria Aisle of Lights tour with my host and her mentees. The historic house is said to have quarantined TB patients and had once served as a boot-leggers' hide-out during the prohibition era. Now a house church owns the building and opens it up for the town as a space for meditation and community events.
Over 30,000 white paper sacks are filled with sand and candles and light the community for an annual event in Coralville, Iowa since 1980...the tradition stems from a Spaniard merchant and Chinese intersection and has been adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as an expression of the hope of "guiding the Spirit of the Christ child to one's home"
A mini peace pole at my hosts' home including a Russian and English message
Enjoying an evening stroll with my nieces and their cousins on the EMU campus, a few blocks from their home
My mom, nephew and niece in search for elves under the mushrooms on the Christmas log cake
Baby Lisa, sweetly sleeping and growing. Her mom coos her in Spanish and her grandmother in Russian. I'm not sure if I'll choose one or the other...or defer to English like her dad. In any case, this young lady has an enormous capacity to be trilingual!
And so I begin 2014 and a new spring semester at the dental school. It is hard to believe that in a few short months (Lord willing!) I will have completed half of my dental training. In the coming semester and year, I hope to continue seeking out that which has been prepared for me to do (Eph 2:10).
