Author Archives: The Night Writer

Filings: There’s Still Time

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I spent a lot of time in hospitals last week, some of it in an emergency room and some of it in a waiting room with families of other men and women undergoing heart surgery. In the process I gained some new insights that I’m currently working into another post.


While doing this, however, I thought of something I had written for the original, pre-blog “Filings” a few years ago that seemed to gain additional resonance as we waited with others for word on matters of life and death. I offer these questions for now while I finish my more recent thoughts.

I was present at a couple of “good-byes” recently that really made me stop and say, “Hello.” One was a retirement party for a woman who was leaving a job after 27 years, and the other was a visitation for a man who left this earth after 38 years. I attended the two events one right after the other in the same evening. This unusual set of circumstances, and the overwhelming honor and esteem the two unrelated individuals were so obviously held in, helped me to rediscover the value of an old, old lesson.

Have you ever noticed how we judge others by their actions, yet expect others to judge us by our intentions?

The woman who’s retiring is a real sweetheart who always seems to have an encouraging word and a cheerful attitude, and a habit of doing quiet, thoughtful things for others. She’s always been wonderful to me, and of course I’ve thought that this is because I’m such a lovable guy myself. As I looked at the room overflowing with sincere well-wishers, the table piled with gifts, and the company choir that had come to sing for her, I was taken by the realization that she didn’t just treat me as special, she treated everyone as special. And of course it came back to her, in heaps.

By the time I made it to the visitation, there were lines of people extending out of two doors and well into the parking lot of the funeral home. The man who died had recently done a small favor for me, but I was there because he was the brother of a good friend. I had known he was active in the community, but I was unprepared for the large crowd of people of all ages who were there, so many of whom were obviously and profoundly grieved. As I beheld the ever-increasing crowd I, too, began to feel the loss – the loss of not having known this man myself.

The point here is that for these two people, touching others had obviously been a lifestyle and not a special event. Their good intentions were manifested in their lives, and I’ve got to believe that the blessings poured back into their lives over the years have been a result of this, and not the other way around.

This is not to say that the impact of our lives is ultimately measured by the number of people who show up at our retirement parties or funerals. At the same time, however, you don’t get large crowds of people who turn out to say, “You know, he really meant well.”

It’s true that God looks at the heart, but it’s also true that “out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks” (and you act). Has the impact of your life – in your home, your job, your church – lived up to your own intentions? How about God’s?

Back to Blogging

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My father’s heart surgery was a complete success, although we did have some difficult moments and some late hours over the past few days. I’m back in front of my home computer, and used the long drive to ponder some of the new insights I’ve gained this week on the dynamics of family, faith, aging, love and fear. I’ll be sorting these out and posting on these soon, but right now it’s just good to be home. I appreciate those of you who have prayed and emailed or posted support. Thank you, it made a difference.

A South Dakota Flashback on a Missouri Drive

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I had a long drive today, but since I calculate that I’ve made this drive at least 60 times in the last 25 years, it wasn’t remarkable. It did feel a little weird, however, to be driving solo without the family along. One big difference: today I have total control over both the music and the snacks.

This doesn’t mean the voices of my loved ones aren’t being heard, though. For example, I shuffle through the CDs for the next selection and I think I hear, “Geez, do you think we could listen to something recorded in this century?” Stopping for snacks: Mmmm, pork rinds. “Dad, that is so gross.” Sorry, can’t hear you over the crunching and the loud music.

I do start to think about family trips we’ve taken, such as the big trek through South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming a while back. I remember typing some impressions into the trusty laptop. Are they still there? Oh yes, and with just a couple of clicks…presto! Instant blog!

“Oh, that’s just too easy.” Sorry, not listening.

SOUTH DAKOTA FLASHBACK

Keystone
We are drawing near to Mount Rushmore, and our eyes scan the hills and horizon around us looking for the first glimpse. But first our eyes must sweep past the countless brightly colored and/or flashing signs promising us the Black Hills’ “best, cheapest, most beautiful, most convenient or most shameless” memorabilia.

Highway 14 is the major artery into the Mount Rushmore area, which I suppose makes us tourists the lifeblood of the businesses in Keystone. Many must pass this way, and there is the inevitable competition to see to our undeniable needs to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom and buy forgettable mementos. I’m struck by the fact that people will drive hundreds, even thousands, of miles to see spectacular scenery or a monumental example of human art and endeavor and then want to commemorate the awe-inspiring experience with some crappy piece of plastic.

The process has been going on in this area since the first Conestoga wagon had a Wall Drug sticker pasted on its back bumper, and Keystone – located at the base of Mount Rushmore – is its own monument to the economic freedom ensured by the rocky busts ensconced above. Gift stores and restaurants line both sides of the main route through town, each one apparently named after a cowboy, an Indian or a president. Just as prominent are the billboards promoting Gutson Borglum-related sites and attractions. Borglum was the sculptor, visionary – and marketing maven – who through his will and perseverance created the Rushmore monument and, for all intents and purposes, Keystone as well.

The town reminds me of Gatlinburg, Tenn., another village that clings to the side of a mountain and exists solely to collect whatever money can be shaken from the tourists’ pockets by gravity or impulse. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see many of the same lame postcards of “country” humor here in Keystone that I saw in Gatlinburg 30 years ago. Everything from jack-alopes to the bald man’s hairbrush and folksy plaques with universal truths using colloquial spelling. I’ll grant you there is one distinct difference between Keystone and Gatlinburg: you’re not likely to find a bust of Lincoln in Tennessee.

Spearfish to Rapid City
The sky is at war with the earth. Streaks of lightning marble the dusky sky over the Black Hills, striking hilltop after hilltop. Occasionally a sheet of yellow appears, completely filling the space between two hills.

There is a history of mostly peaceful detente between the earth and the sky, punctuated by what appears to be spectacularly violent episodes such as this one. The thunder booms from the sky to the hills as if to say, “This time, this time I’m taking you down and knocking you flat.” The perpetually shrugged shoulders of the hills seem to respond: “That may have worked for you in Iowa, but it ain’t happening here.”

Or perhaps the thunder is the voice of the hills, answering the challenge of the sky with a collective roar and rumble from deep in the throat. The fact is, this is an old marriage, and nothing will get settled tonight. This, too, will blow over, and in the morning it will be as if nothing has happened.

Kind of like this blog…

Letting Your Conscience Be Your Guide

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Excellent column from Craig Westover today, “Rx for Conscience Clauses.” These clauses in state laws allow individuals or institutions to opt out of providing (or paying for) medical services on the basis of religious or moral beliefs.

Craig’s take is a response to Ellen Goodman’s column on the same topic and is, as always, calm and well-reasoned. One of the highlights for me was his observation on the irony of the state “granting” these rights:

Bottom line, morality is always an individual choice. “Conscience clauses” are good things, but it is ironic that the state passing a conscience clause restores to individuals the right to exercise moral judgment that government never had the authority to take away in the first place.

Hospital Blogging This Week

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Blogging might be light and/or sporadic this week as my father is going into the hospital for a couple of heart procedures. The risk appears to be relatively low and we are confident in an excellent outcome.

I’ll be crossing a couple of states in order to be there with my family, however, and the travel and the opportunity to enjoy having the whole family together will push blogging down on the “to do” list.

I do have a few items queued up, however, that I might be able to get to if I find myself with time on my hands, and friends and family interested in following my father’s condition can check here for updates (as long as I’m not violating any HIPAA regulations, that is).

Application to Date My Daughter

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Some readers may have gathered that I have a teenage daughter. A few days ago I posted my theories on dating and requirements for friendship. The reactions I’ve had from this post – and ensuing discussions – have reminded me of something that Joe Soucheray read on his great Garage Logic radio program several years ago: his “Application to Date my Daughter.”

I’d love to link you this useful and intriguing document, but it doesn’t appear to be on the Garage Logic site any more. I did, however, have the foresight to download this years ago for future reference and I include it here as a follow up to my previous post and in appreciation for the great job Mr. Soucheray does. If dating were an option for my daughters, this application would be the one I’d use.

I repeat – I did not write the following; I only wish I had. (Format altered to fit this blog, but text is as it originally appeared.)


“This is the end – but for me, the beginning of life.”

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Those were not the words of Pope John Paul II, but of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed 60 years ago today by the Nazis in the closing days of World War II.

I thought of these words this week as the world honored the Pope and I listened to commentators in every media try to put their political spin on what a life of faith should look like. And when I thought of their words in the context of this anniversary, I could only shake my head at the subtleties of God and offer a bitter smile. Bitter at the foolishness and presumption, but a smile nonetheless in order to share in the laugh God must have been having.

Bonhoeffer is one of my heroes. Supremely talented and perceptive, he saw spiritual truth in a clear light and threw himself into writing it down and vigorously living it out in total commitment to the lives of those around him, yet he was also capable of the loneliest touch of inner doubt. He was one of the earliest and most unyielding voices in opposition to Hitler as far back as 1933 and struggled to shine a light on Hitler’s co-opting of the German church and to reconstruct Christian ethics.

Fearing for Bonhoeffer’s life, his friends arranged a position for him in America ahead of the coming war, only to have him turn around and return to Germany almost immediately, saying:

I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.

A pacifist, he ultimately saw the need to try and throw a spoke into the wheel of the Nazi war machine and was arrested in 1943 and accused of being part of a plot to kill Hitler. Over the next two years Bonhoeffer wrote prodigiously and powerfully, cramming each paragraph with stunning clarity and revelation almost as if he sensed his time was short (he was 39 – younger than I am now – when he died). As he watched the German church crumble around him and embrace the unbiblical tenets of Nazism, he exhorted his followers and his country that obedience and belief were bound together, saying “Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who obeys, believes.”

You can find out much more about his incredible and courageous story here on the pages hosted by the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, but let me return to the present and the spirit of our age so much in evidence the past few weeks, and what Bonhoeffer might wryly refer to as another example of

“the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price.”

What he meant was that we all too easily fall into iniquity by trying to determine for ourselves and by our own standards what pleases God. Today there is a lot of easy talk about spirituality as we boomers age and find that our first commandment – “Love thyself” – doesn’t sustain. Christian or otherwise we seek to set our own standards for what is “good enough,” forgetting what it cost those who came before us to raise God’s standard. Journalist David Brooks calls it “building a house of obligation on a foundation of choice,” or, “orthodoxy without obedience.”

You can be thought to be spiritual merely for acknowledging there is a need for spirituality without admitting that you have any responsibility to live up to it in any way. It is a spirituality that honors teachers but not a Messiah. It is what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” and described as being the greatest threat to the Church. The threat, however, wasn’t from the world but rather from within the Church.

The complacency of cheap grace allowed Nazism to subvert the gospel in the German church, and the spiritual complacency of America in the 50s and 60s germinated the seeds that bear so much bitter fruit in our culture today. (Btw, you might find it an interesting study to compare the origins, thinking and actions of the original Nazis with the origins, thinking and actions of those who are the first to label others as Nazis today.) It is this “cheap grace” with which we try to cover a multitude of sins while projecting a rich aura of tolerance and enlightenment. As Bonhoeffer wrote in his classic, “The Cost of Discipleship”:

This is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without contrition. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

In what I have read of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and – though I am not a Catholic – what I have seen in the life of Pope John Paul II, I sense they both understood that their own lives were not too dear a price to pay for the sake of future generations. As Bonhoeffer wrote in one of his letters from prison:

“The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live.”

Notes: For anyone interested in gaining a deeper sense of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and vision I highly recommend “The Cost of Discipleship” and “Letters and Papers from Prison” as a start (don’t expect to rush right through these, however). “Ethics” and “Life Together” go further into what a thriving life in the spirit and in fellowship with others is about for those who want more. There are also two excellent DVDs available. Especially moving is “Hanged on a Twisted Cross,” surprisingly and effectively narrated by Ed Asner and Mike Farrell, and the very polished “Bonhoeffer” from Martin Doblmeier.

Whoops! I Told You That Was Slippery!

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Shot in the Dark and Bogus Gold have posts today about another feeding tube that’s been pulled. If that sounds familiar – please note that the woman in this case, 81-year-old Mae Magouirk, is not considered terminal, is not in a persistent vegetative state or comatose, AND has a living will that says she does not want to be starved and dehydrated if she is not in such a condition.

85 year-old Mae Magourik (note: I’ve confirmed through other sources that the correct spelling of the last name is Magouirk. NW) of LaGrange, Georgia, is currently being deprived of nutrition and hydration at the request of her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy. Mrs. Margourik suffered an aortic dissection 2 weeks ago and was hospitalized. Though her doctors have said that she is not terminally ill, Ms. Gaddy declared that she held medical power of attorney for Mae, and had her transferred to the LaGrange Hospice. Later investigation revealed that Ms. Gaddy did not in fact have such power of attorney. Furthermore, Mae’s Living Will provides that nutrition and hydration are to be withheld only if she is comatose or vegetative. Mae is in neither condition. Neither is her condition terminal.


Furthermore, under Georgia law, if there is no power of attorney specifying a health care decisionmaker, such authority is given to the closest living relatives. Mae’s brother, A. B. McLeod, and sister, Lonnie Ruth Mullinax, are both still alive and capable of making such decisions. They opposed Mae’s transfer to hospice, and are fighting to save her life. But in spite of the lack of a power of attorney, and the fact that there are closer living relatives who should be given precedence by Georgia law, Ms. Gaddy sought an emergency appointment as guardian from the local probate court. The probate judge, Donald Boyd (who, I am told, is not an attorney and does not have a law degree), granted Gaddy’s request, thereby giving her the power to starve and dehydrate Margourik to death, though such an action is contrary to the provisions of the living will.

By the way, the thought crossed my mind that this might be a kind of urban legend “leaked” to get the blogosphere stoked in an effort to discredit blogging. I checked back through the many threads in different blogs on this story and found most of it was one blog repeating what another blog said (like what I did with Shot in the Dark and Bogus Gold). Since the case takes place in Georgia, I looked up the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and didn’t find any mention of the story. The April 8 issue of the LaGrange News – the local newspaper in the city where Mae Magouirk’s hospice is located – does feature the following (read the entire story):



Woman, 81, at center of feeding tube feud
Kenneth Mullinax, the patient’s nephew in Birmingham, Ala., said a hospice nurse told him that Magouirk had not received substantial nourishment since March 28. He wants a temporary feeding tube inserted until she can be evaluated for treatment at the University of Alabama Medical Center. A living will states that nourishment should be withheld only if she were in a coma or vegetative state with no hope of recovery.


Mullinax and the patient’s brother and sister – Lonnie Ruth Mullinax of Birmingham and A.B. McLeod of Anniston, Ala. – came here last Friday to arrange for a feeding tube and take her to the Birmingham hospital. That same day Gaddy received emergency guardianship in Troup County Probate Court.


At a follow-up hearing Monday, the parties reached a settlement that awarded guardianship to Gaddy provided three cardiologists – James Brennan and Thomas Gore, both of LaGrange, and Raed Aquel of Birmingham – evaluate the patient, who would receive whatever treatment two of the three recommended. A final decision had not yet been reached.


“They were all hugging necks when they left court,” said Probate Judge Donald Boyd. “I don’t know what happened.”


Boyd said Gaddy testified at the hearing that she feeds her grandmother Jello, chips of ice and “anything else she’d be willing to eat”


“I think all of Mrs. Magouirk’s family has her genuine best interests at heart, but unfortunately they disagree on what they believe would be best for her,” said Jack Kirby of LaGrange, attorney for the patient’s brother and sister.


“She (Gaddy) said, ‘I think it’s time she (her grandmother) goes home to Jesus, that’s she’s too sick and would not have a good quality of life,” Kenneth Mullinax said.