Starring in Dialogue...

So, having been served my first official malpractice complaint, I am surprised at how zen-like I've taken it. I suppose one only has to be threatened enough times such that, when the real deal happens, it's almost anti-climactic. I suppose part of it is also is that I was half-expecting some other shoe to drop this week (though I certainly didn't expect a shoe this big), and I know that it is not flesh-and-blood that is responsible for this happening. I suppose part of it is also that I know that there is Greater, and that I am unshakeable in that belief.
At any rate, I know there is much going on 'behind the scenes' of the state of wakefulness that you and I live in. I know that everything will work out the way that it was intended to, so there is great comfort in that, and really, at this point, there's nothing I can really do about it this week, anyways...

The god of mammon

I am really really hating money right now. I hate how it tries to control you, I hate how it makes you fret and worry unnecessarily, I hate how it makes you believe it is indispensible and you can't live without it, I hate how it makes you believe that your worth is tied up in its existence.... actually, looking at that list, money is like a really awful boyfriend... Usually I have a fairly healthy relationship with money (I hope and pray), but I think when you realize you need gobs of it all at once, it's enough to give you a big headache...

FFT

We have sung our songs of vict'ry,
We have prayer to You for rain;
We have cried for Your compassion
To renew the land again.
Now we're standing in Your presence,
More hungry than before;
Now we're on Your steps of mercy,
And we're knocking at Your door.

How long before You drench the barren land?
How long before we see Your righteous hand?
How long before Your name is lifted high?
How long before the weeping turns to songs of joy?

Lord, we know Your heart is broken
By the evil that You see,
And You've stayed Your hand of judgement
For Your plan to set them free.
But the land is still in darkness,
And we've fled from what is right;
We have failed the silent children
Who will never see the light.

How long before You drench the barren land?
How long before we see Your righteous hand?
How long before Your name is lifted high?
How long before the weeping turns to songs of joy?

But I know a day is coming
When the deaf will hear His voice,
When the blind will see their Saviour,
And the lame will leap for joy.
When the widow finds a Husband
Who will always love His bride,
And the orphan finds a Father
Who will never leave her side.

How long before Your glory lights the skies?
How long before Your radiance lifts our eyes?
How long before Your fragrance fills the air?
How long before the earth resounds with songs of joy?

-Stuart Townsend

So, who's the minority, exactly?

One of the things I've been noticing, since I've been trying to ride The Better Way more often, are the advertisements. The last few times I've been riding, I've been walking up and down the subway car, counting the models in the advertisements. On my non-scientific survey, I have noted that >85% of all the human models depicted in TTC ads are white. Which, of course, means for the rest of us, we only make up <15% of the representation. This, I find particularly odd in a city that is >50% visible "minorities"...

HIS-tory lesson

I know I haven't written much lately, just quoting some super thoughts by others who think much better than I, but today was interesting. It was nice having my story, HIS-story, being narrated to me again. The reason why I can have hope. The reason why I can say with confidence that our God is a good God, as stunning as that statement has been to others lately. The reason that I think that a better world is possible, is necessary, is tangible and real. The reason why we can smell on the air, nay, (fore)taste on our tongues that there is kingdom lurking on the edges of our imaginations...

FFT

When greed and consumerism are exposed, when arrogance and irreverance are unplugged, when hurry and selfishness are named and repented of, when the sacred-secular rift in our thinking is healed, the world and all it contains (widows, orphans, trees, soil) are revalued and made sacred again.
- Brian McLaren

FFT

The whole point of Christianity is that it offers a story which is the story of the whole world. It is public truth.
- NT Wright

FFT

How often have we craved light on our life in the world, only to be summoned to ponder our destiny in eternity. How often have we been preoccupied with the church local, and instead found out vision turned to the Church triumphant and universal. And how often have we asked that worship bless our souls with peace, only to hear the lesson for the day calling us to a holy warfare. How often have we desired strength to overcome the world, only to learn that we are to be stoned and sawn asunder in the world. How often have we sought comfort to our sorrows, and instead found the sorrows of the world added to our own. Such reversals may be strange to men. But only such contradiction answers to realities both relevant and irrelevant that are at the heart of the Church's worship.
- Paul Waitman Hoon

FFT

Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.

-George Bernard Shaw

IKEA World

So, I was thinking about No Lifeguards on Duty's song "IKEA World" (which, incidentally, is on my iPod, if anyone's interested), and reading in the Toronto Star about how IKEA is sooooo passé for the queer community (which, of course, has nothing to do with me), and thinking about functional, fun, affordable furnishings for the home (which, of course, has much to do with me).... so I wandered in there after work today... I know, I know: some have said why I would even bother with any IKEA furniture in the first place - I should just go for the big bucks and buy furnishings that are more "appropriate" to my "lifestyle" (whatever that means).... that being said, I did spend a day trip when I was living in Sweden to go visit the original IKEA with another fellow Canadian...
However, there is something appealing in the 'fun factor' of the IKEA store; it's laid out like a Hansel and Gretel maze, and you amble along these meandering pathways amongst Hopsens, and Poangs, and Stufels, and are astounded by all the little details of items that are needed for the home... Ann... you know this means you!

FFT

OK: This was SOOOO cheese, it made me groan, but I figured, I definitely needed the groan, so I pass it onto you.... and, this is far better than spamming everybody....

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre.
After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van.
However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.
When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied...

'Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.'

. . .(and you thought I didn't have De Gaulle to send this on to someone else!)
Well, I figure I have nothing Toulouse.

The God of small graces...

So what was terribly encouraging today (actually, there were lots of small graces all day, which is kind of really nice when you notice most of them happening... D, S, A, S, R, and A, to name but a few of them) was seeing people of many tongues and nations giving thanks to God. We had some Mandarin, some Hakka, some Korean, some ASL, even some Swahili! It was gorgeous hearing all these tongues praying and praising! What I particularly found incredibly comforting was listening to the Korean adult choirs... the power in that singing.... it brings back comforting memories of childhood in church, listening to the adults singing with passion and power... makes me feel like I'm wrapped up in a warm, woolen, non-itchy sweater, even when they're singing Haydn cantatas like crazy...

Aretha Franklin needed!

One dilemma that I don't think I've had to work through before is: What do you do if, for various reasons, you've lost all respect for someone you once held in very high esteem? Not insofar as they've fallen off a pedestal; rather, very large paintcans full of flaws have covered the otherwise Pollock-style painting of their life... Of course, it's not an issue where there's hate or disgust, just an utter lack of respect... How does one deal with that in integrity? I realize, for the most part, I tend to think the best of most people, until they demonstrate otherwise, which, I suppose, sets me up for disappointment when they can't fulfill such imagined roles. I don't think that that is really the case this time: instead, I think it becomes very hard to look someone in the eye when you just can't bear to look... It makes me wonder how the congregants of Haggard managed to redeem and restore...

Men and Women

You know what I love? I love big, burly men who can still sit with you and sip tea while holding your hand and dispensing sage advice. Who aren't afraid to love you through pain, who aren't afraid to hold you and tell you convincingly that things will get better, and who are still very much their own men. They are a rare breed, but I have been overshowered with three in very short order: kudos to A, C and D for being such blessings...
You know what else I love? I love strong, empowered women who pray with such power and conviction that you can feel the Spirit working in your soul. I love the wisdom that they bring from experience, from sharing how the 'stones in your belly' can strengthen, not sink you. I love the nuturing vision that they bring.... the voices of the women speaking into my life today resonate with potential...
You know what else I love? I love our God, who is so good, all the time, all the time, even when it doesn't seem so, but I am convinced that this is so, as He cannot be anything other than what He is...

Fight for injustice! (but only if it helps me)

So, I figure, since I'm up again (despite going to bed after midnight last night), I might as well write something, even if it becomes a bit incoherent. I think there are many injustices and unfair situations in the world, but I find it interesting how the most pressing and the most important seem to occur when they happen to you, yourself. Certainly, I am finding myself at the short end of the stick, and disliking it very very much. However, what is even more maddening is how, for most injust and unfair situations, there is little recourse for rectifying situations. Sure, if it's technically a 'legal' matter, one does have the judiciary system in place to help with litigation and the like, but most other unfair situations do not have such avenues of restitution. Most, instead, often require the wisdom of Solomon, which also tends to be a bit scarce....

Insert maniacal laughter here, Part III....

I suppose I can take solace in the fact that I have a good reason this time 'round... it doesn't make it any easier... I suppose, since I'm going to end up being CCLOHP, it doesn't matter much...

Insert maniacal laughter here, Part II....

OK... three hours later.... I'm not sure how long I can take this...

Insert maniacal laughter here....

So, finally, after months and months and months of not sleeping, having nightmares and dreams which were completely uninterpretable, and going generally crazy from the lack of rest, I managed to get a good two weeks in there where I could actually sleep an almost-full night. Well, that's gone to hell in a handbasket... look at this! A random midnight posting, cackling like a banshee about how I can't sleep again...

FFT

I hear it in the hospitals, I hear it in ORs. I hear it in emergency departments, doctors' lounges, wards. Elevators make great enclosures for the phrase. I catch a faint echo when I approach any hospital, feel stronger vibrations beneath my feet when I walk through the main doors. I fear that my hospital, constructed in the late 1970s, has absorbed into its structure a new resonance beyond the wind-whipped lashings of its frame and the perpetual PA squawks of pages and alarm tests.
Stupid family doctor.
Dumb GP.
I never would have done that.
What was he thinking?
The drone amounts to a constant hum, a buzz that has become a consensus in our institution. Mistakes are viewed, from the omniscient vantage of elapsed time, as inevitable by beings who have practised their mantra well: stupid family doctor. Missed upswings in electrocardiograms, the lost dots on x-rays: in review, these are less errors and more the product of systemic "poor management" by stupid family doctors.
The catchphrase in ubiquitous, perhaps a greater addition to this hospital than any of the other renovations: more important than the cardiac catheterization laboratory, the palliative care wing, the air-transport/helipad system, medical informatics, geriatric restorative care and ascendant diagnostic imaging. A hundred beds could be added to our numbers, a thousand! The single greatest change in the firmament of modern Canadian medicine will remain the death of the generalist.
I hear the ritual sacrifices to the many specialist blood gods and it saddens me to understand that the policy of making-stupid has become assimilated by patients themselves. I acquiesce to requests for second opinions, listen to complaints about prior care, and hear dumdum undertones in consult letters when my own patients return and criticize my care according to what they've been told by people I've asked for help.
During residency I heard it in the OR. I heard it in elevators, in the emergency room, and on the wards. The difference now is that the sound penetrates my own walls, that I heard it in my own office. Before it applied to others. Now it applies to me. The growth of knowledge has led to the growth of privilege, the ease of retrospective criticism. Though I never knew the era, I believe that physicians were better served by the rotating internship, when the undifferentiated masses arrived on the newly-minted doctor's doorstep fresh and unmanaged, ready for a general working-through. That way, one understood the difficulties of primary care and not just the deficiencies.
Broadcast from the hospital barricades, the harmonic of GP illegitimacy makes me hate this myth, the myth of Doctor Stupid.

- Dr. Ursus