Suffering

What role has religion played in these changing times? In the old days more people seemed to believe in God unquestionably; they believed in a hereafter, which was to relieve people of their suffering and their pain. There was a reward in heaven, and if we had suffered much here on earth we would be rewarded after death depending on the courage and grace, patience and dignity with which we had carried our burden. . .There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning.
But with this change, also, fewer people really believe in life after death, in itself perhaps a denial of our mortality. Well, if we cannot anticipate life after death, than we have to consider death. If we are no longer rewarded in heaven for our suffering, then if we take part in church activities in order to socialize or to go to a dance, then we are deprived of the church's former purpose, namely, to give hope, a purpose in tragedies here on earth, and an attempt to understand and bring meaning to otherwise inacceptable painful occurrences in our life.

On Death and Dying
by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D.

Psalm 37: 3 - 9

Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.
For evelidoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.

How some people view religion

Katrina Firlik
Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: a brain surgeon exposes life on the inside
pg 154ff

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I have the utmost respect for people’s religious beliefs. I am, in fact, fascinated by those beliefs (in circumstances when it’s not impolite to ask). I understand why religions were created and why they persist. The benefits of affiliating yourself with a religion are without question: a ready-made framework for morals, a welcoming social network, comfort in times of duress, and a repeating schedule of events (weekly worship, yearly holidays) that strengthen belief and bring order to one’s life. Those are very nice benefits. The not-so-hidden downsides, though, can sometimes put a damper on these benefits: dividing humans along religious lines, encouraging war, discouraging marriage between otherwise perfectly compatible individuals, inhibiting free thought, and invoking guilt in those who stray from the flock.

Writing

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
~C.S. Lewis

Tradition

Songs of the North_ by Sigurd Olson:
Unless we keep the stream of the past with living significance for the
present, we not only have no past but we have no present. Tradition is
not a barren pride in a dead glory; tradition is something that provides
refreshment for the spirit. It is something that gives us deep assurance
and a sense of destiny and a determination to hold fast to the great
things that have been done through valor and imagination by those who
have gone before us.
-(Felix Frankfurter)

Memory and Imagination

Our most ancient metaphor says life is a journey. Memoir is travel writing, then, notes taken along the way, telling how things looked and what thoughts occurred. But I cannot think of the memoirist as a tourist. This is the traveller who goes on foot, living the journey, taking on mountains, enduring deserts, marveling at the lush green places. Moving through it all faithfully, not so much a survivor with a harrowing tale to tell as a pilgrim, seeking, wondering.

PatriciaHampl (1946-)
from The Anatomy of Memory

Growing Up

Now at school, I was forced to sit in classes, to take notes and exams, to use textbooks that were flat, impersonal, deadly. What had been fun, delight, when I did it in my own way became an aversion, an ordeal, when I had to do it to order. What had been a holy subject for me, full of poetry, was being rendered prosaic, profane...Was it the inevitable course, the natural history of enthusiasm, that it burns hotly, brightly, like a star, for a while, and then, exhausting itself, gutters out, is gone? Was it that I had found, at least in the physical world and in physical science, the sense of stability and order I so desperately needed, so that I could now relax, feel less obsessed, move on? Or was it, perhaps, more simply, that I was growing up, and that "growing up" makes one forget the lyrical, mystical perceptions of childhood, the glory and the freshness of which Wordsworth wrote, so that they fade into the light of common day?

Uncle Tungsten:Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
Oliver Sacks

Missionary Pilot

Very suddenly, the wind rose– it had been tranquil a few minutes before–and the coconut palms and pandanus trees began lashing to and fro. As we made for the tiny concrete airstrip at one end, built by the occupying Japanese a half century before, a violent tailwind seized us near the ground, and almost blew us off the side of the runway. Our pilot struggled to control the skidding plane, for now, having just missed the edge of the landing strip, we were in danger of shooting off the end. By main force, and luck, he just managed to bring the plane around–another six inches and we would have been in the lagoon. "You folks OK?" he asked us, and then, to himself, "Worst landing I ever had!"
Knut and Bob were ashen, the pilot too–they had visions of being submerged in the plane, struggling, suffocating, unable to get out; I myself felt a curious indifference, even a sense that it would be fun, romantic, to die on the reef– and then a sudden, huge wave of nausea.

Oliver Sacks
Island of the Colorblind

Power

Now, my own soul's conviction is, that prayer is the greatest power in the entire universe; that it has a more omnipotent force than electricity, gravity, or any other of those secret forces which men have called by names, but which they do not understand. Prayer has as obvious, as true, as sure, as invariable an influence over the entire universe as any of the laws of matter.

Charles Spurgeon
True Prayer -- True Power
August 12, 1860

Asher Yatzar Benediction

"Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d, King of the universe, Who fashioned man with wisdom and created within him nany openings and many cavities. It is obvious and known before Your Throne of Glory that if but one of them were to be ruptured or but one of them were to be blocked it would be impossible to survive and to stand before You. Blessed are You, Hashem, Who heals all flesh and acts wondrously." (Artscroll Siddur - Nusach Ashkenaz, p. 15)

http://www.torah.org/features/firstperson/everythingablessing.html

Frost

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grow duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for colour.

next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

~Robert Frost

Certainty

Prayer had been a part of life. First the Sh'mah, "Hear, O Israel. . . ," then the bedtime prayer I would say every night. My mother would wait until I had cleaned my teeth and put on my pajamas, and then she would come upstairs and sit on my bed while I recited in Hebrew, "Baruch atoh adonai. . . Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the Universe, who makest the bands of sleep to fall upon mine eyes, and slumber upon mine eyelids. . .." It was beautiful in English, more beautiful still in Hebrew. (Hebrew, I was told, was God's actual language, though, of course, He understood every language, and even one's feelings, when one could not put them into words.) "May it be thy will, O Lord our God and God of my fathers, to suffer me to lie down in peace, and to let me rise up again. . . " But by this point the bands of sleep (whatever they were) would be pressing heavily upon my eyes, and I rarely got any further. My mother would bend over and kiss me, and I would instantly fall asleep.
Back at Braefield there was no kiss, and I gave up my bedtime prayer, for it was inseparably associated with my mother's kiss, and now it was an intolerable reminder of her absence. The very phrases that had so warmed and comforted me, conveying God's concern and power, were now so much verbiage, if not gross deceit.
. . . For me, the refuge at first was in numbers. My father was a whiz at mental arithmetic, and I, too, even at the age of six, was quick with figures-and, more, in love with them. I liked numbers because they were solid, invariant; they stood unmoved in a chaotic world. There was in numbers and their relation something absolute, certain, not to be questioned, beyond doubt.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

by Oliver Sacks

Oaxaca

Here in Mexico, Boone is saying, you have to use your brains to know what's going on. In the States everything is published, organized, known. Here it is under the surface, the mind is challenged all the while.
~ Oaxaca Journal
by Oliver Sacks

Eco

"these are now people lost in a maze: some choose one path, some another;
some shout for help, and there's no telling if the replies they hear are other voices
or the echo of their own. . .They are all groping."
Belbo
chapter 72, Foucault's Pendulum
Umberto Eco

She never lost her love of, her feeling for, the physical sciences, nor the desire to go beneath the surfaces of things, to explain. Thus the thousand and one questions I asked as a child were seldom met by impatient or peremptory answers, but careful ones which enthralled me (though they were often above my head). I was encouraged from the start to interrogate, to investigate.
~ from Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks

My Heart's In the Highlands

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer -
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North
The birth place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forrests and wild-hanging woods;
Farwell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, whereever I go.

"In fact it has been remarked by some that Hobbits' only real passion is for food - a rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales and the smoking of pipe-weed. But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good tilled earth; for all hobbits share a love for things that grow."
~ Bilbo Baggins, "Concerning Hobbits"

A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man- he must view the man in his world.
~ Harvey Cushing (1869-1939)