JUDAISM AND ME

Dear friends,
When I was in Vienna in 1970, I didn't have any background or understanding of Judaism. I came from California, and my Catholicism was from my Mexican grandmother's side of the family. The Irish FitzGeralds were Orangemen, but my grandfather converted to marry her. I loved the Jesuits, and Santa Clara was a perfect place for me. So I didn't have any kind of handle on Judaism, or the Holocaust, more than what we were taught in school. In 1982-87 I lived in Brooklyn, and worked at Maimonides Hospital, and was surrounded by a very vibrant Orthodox Jewish society. I suddenly realized that the rest of Vienna-- what was left after the war, was my milieu in Brooklyn. I used to sit in the doctors' lounge, and hear Yiddish, and understand a lot because so much is from German. I also learned a few words of Hebrew. I had loved doing the Passover Seder when at Santa Clara, and we had been invited to several by a Jewish neighbor when I was growing up, but they were Hollywood people, not deeply devout like the people in my Hassidic neighborhood in Brooklyn. At Maimonides, we were taught by rabbis about the need for separating milk and meat dishes, and how to not scandalize the patients who were Jewish, and many things to help us be more culturally sensitive. We had extremely kosher Passover food in the hospital-- no bread or yeasty food the whole season. And the CocaCola cans had "kosher" written on them. But some people would only consider kosher what had been personally endorsed by their particular rabbi.

'\ One of the funniest things was for women in labor-- the Orthodox women shaved their heads when they married-- similar to nuns, it was an act of humility and renunciation of the world-- but then they bought the most gorgeous and expensive wigs they could buy, for wearing in the outside world. The practice made them come in bald, in labor, and they would be frantic to get a little blue puffy head-covering before we took them into the delivery room. "Give me a hat!" they would yell, as we ran down the hall with the stretchers, pushing them and careening to try to get them to the delivery room before they started pushing! Many of the Orthodox women had 8-10 children, and were pretty physically worn-out, and their pregnancies were a response to the Holocaust, trying to replenish their people. One time I felt that a woman was going to be psychotic if she had another child, and her husband, a deeply devout rabbi, wouldn't hear of allowing her to contracept, or stop having children. In such cases, it was possible to suggest that the rabbi speak to a more senior rabbi, and often, one in Jerusalem. Several staff physicians were rabbinically educated, and knew who to recommend that the rabbi discuss the issues with, and who would support a more wholistic approach to the care of the wife. This was a deeply satisfying thing to me: that the religious authorities were able to struggle with such an issue, and try to decide where the wisdom lay, and what God's will would indicate for a particular person or couple. The other thing which fascinated me, the Jewish rules, were sometimes extremely exasperating, and sometimes marvelous. One thing was the Sabbath elevators. Because you weren't supposed to work on the Sabbath, you were not supposed to push the buttons on the elevators. So you could get in, and hope that someone would push the button for you, or you could walk up the stairs. At Maimonides, the elevator was fixed to stop on every floor going up and down, on the Sabbath. So that they could get in and get there, eventually. But for physicians, it was a terrible waste of time, to stop on every floor on the way to the 7th floor, which was where the Gyn patients were kept. There were many other such rules, and all of them were originally formed to help people think about what the will of God would be, and try to fit their lives into that pattern.
I found this very interesting, and a goad to my own faith. I really started to appreciate Jesus saying we could take the donkey out of the ditch on the Sabbath. But each Jewish person was struggling with these issues out loud and at length, just like Reb Tevia in Fiddler on the Roof. Things were not cut and dried. Things could be bent slightly, but the intentionality needed to be right. I started caring more about what had gone on in WWII and the Holocaust, and listening to people's stories. I could hardly believe that the center of academic anti-Semitism was Austria. Having not really experienced racism myself, I knew that a lot of people in California did look down on Mexicans, and especially farm labor Mexicans; but "we" weren't systematically excluding "them" from community life. And although I am a quarter Mexican, I was not accepted in "La Raza" at Santa Clara, because I was too "white".
One of the most meaningful books I have ever read was Martin Buber's "I/Thou". It is amazing that it was written in the early 30's, I think, before the war. It is a profoundly moving and poetic book, and written by a saintly person, who feels life as a conversation with God. What is not I is Thou. Every breath comes from Thou, and goes out into Thou. I know that many Catholic theologians love and respect this man and his theology. My own main source of theology was Teilhard de Chardin. I love the Divine Milieu. It resonates with Buber's I/Thou. Teilhard was a Jesuit, and a paleontologist. In WWI he worked in the trenches in France, on the French side. Then they sent him to China for a long time. They wouldn't let him teach, because the authorities were afraid that what he was saying was possibly heretical. He was thinking of the whole universe as an explosion of space and time coming from God and going to God. His time-span was in geological ages, and in scientific language. But he has the same core faith as does Martin Buber. And, because he is a Jesuit, he has St. Ignatius' spiritual exercises to ground him in the life of Christ. If you haven't read the Phenomenon of Man, it is still, to me, one of the most important books of the 20th century, and can help get past the problem of how to talk about creation, in a scientifically truthful but utterly faithful way.
There are two Jewish books that I have read and deeply respect and recommend, for anyone interested in modern Judaism. One is the book "God is a Verb" by Rabbi David Cooper. The other is "The Thirteen Petalled Rose" by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. Rabbi Steinsaltz is a mystically wonderful rabbi such as I met in Brooklyn. Rabbi Cooper is a more modern sort of rabbi, and it is interesting that he studied Zen Buddhism first, in the 60's, and the Buddhist master told him to go home and learn his own tradition, and go deeper. It fits what Matthew Fox said, that there is one river, and many wells. The deep river is what we all drink from but the wells are the different spiritual traditions.
I feel very lucky to have had that time at Maimonides, and to have gotten to understand a little about Judaism. I have really loved some of my Jewish colleagues, whose ethics are grounded in that deep conversation with God, a God who is totally present and willing to argue and struggle and groan with us. I feel at home with that kind of faith, which has a lot of muscle in it.
About a year ago, there was an article in the New Yorker, by Joan Acocella, who is one of the people whose writing I love to read. She is pretty exasperated with a new book about the Moslem invasion of Spain, and the way it seems to give cultural preference to the Moslems, rather than the Franks. At the end, she talks about revisions of history, as new points of view make the previous way of looking at it seem lopsided. I recently re-read "Sophie's Choice", which is about a Holocaust survivor, who was a Catholic Polish woman, in a relationship with a mentally unstable but brilliant Jewish man in Brooklyn after WWII. And I also recently re-read Viktor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning". My mentor in medicine, Rachel Remen, MD, really loved Viktor Frankl. Rachel also started out life as a philosophy major, but in her childhood she was very influenced by her grandfather, a mystical Russian Jewish Orthodox rabbi. Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist, who was Viennese. He got sent to Auschwitz, and lived through it. Because he was a doctor already before he was put in the concentration camp, his insight is amazing, into the way people behaved there. After the war it took a long time for him to come to terms with what he lived through. And he also taught at Stanford, and started seeing patients in California who were complaining of "loss of meaning". "Loss of meaning" is a philosophical disease. Rachel's answer (which is very rabbinical) is to tell stories. A great source of stories, besides Rachel's two books, is the book "The Spirituality of Imperfection". If we were in Brooklyn, I would say, after all this, "Baruch Hashem!" Praise the Lord! Gruss Gott!
I appreciate that you all are willing to let me ramble on like this. Most of my daily life is not so indulgent or forgiving. Most of the time, we are just supposed to be doing, not just being.

Advent Credo, by Daniel Berrigan

Advent Credo

by Daniel Berrigan

It is not true that creation and the human family
are doomed for destruction and loss--
This is true: For God so loved the world
that He gave his only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish,
but have everlasting life.

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity
and discrimination,
hunger and poverty, death and destruction--
This is true: I have come that they may have life,
and that, abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred shall have
the last word,
and that war and destruction rule forever--
This is true: For unto us a child is born,
And unto us a son is given,
And the government shall be upon his shoulder,
And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of Peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims
of the powers of evil,
who seek to rule the world--
This is true: To Me is given authority in heaven
and on earth,
and lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the world.

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are
specially gifted,
who are the prophets of the Church, before we can be peacemakers,
This is true: I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
Your young shall see visions,
and your old shall dream dreams.

It is not true that our hopes for the liberation of humanity,
for justice, human dignity, and peace
are not meant for this earth and this history--
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that true worshipers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

So let us enter Advent in hope; even hope against hope.
Let us see visions of love and peace and justice.
Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage,
Jesus Christ-- the Life of the world.

Rugged Individualism

I read a very interesting review of the work of the novelist Wallace Stegner, who taught at Stanford, and was raised in the western states. I have been meaning to read the book "The Big Rock Candy Mountain", but haven't gotten to it yet. However, the main idea in the review was that Stegner was confronting the myth of the American western expansion, and the core values of the "goin' to strike it rich" stories so many people came with or grew up with. The book has constant failures and frictions between the thinly disguised parents, and the need to "move on" as the family never makes it to "the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings".
And that started me thinking about the problems inherent in the whole project of moving west, where we leave behind all that would encumber us-- especially the aged, infirm, children, and sometimes even wives or sweethearts. The single male going out to seek his fortune, from 15-35 years old, fits every cultural archetype since Odysseus-- but in the American west of a century ago, there was the extra mobility of having that frontier move ever further away from home, and ever-so-magically draw the restless youth forward, so that they didn't even really notice that they were leaving the rest of the family behind. Perhaps in some cases, it was explicitly recognized, and chosen partly because of frictions and dysfunctionalities which in our time have continued to "rub" the people who have to stay home and take care of the children and the old people. Alcoholism, cruelty, arbitrary use of power within a family, and subconscious dependence on the women to do the work at home figure prominently in the picture. The few women who actually got to live out the paradigm of the hero(ine) were lucky to have sisters or maiden aunts to do some of that boring maintenance work and caretaking needed at home.
Now, especially in the post-election slow melting of the euphoria after Obama's successful rise to the presidency, we will start fractionating and fissuring over what ideas will most help different parts of the electorate, all of whom feel that they did the main work of helping to get him elected. For many women, especially those of us steeped in the social justice movement of the 60s-80s, the main emphasis we want to see from government is to help with infrastructure to serve children and the elderly; so we can stay in the workplace, where our own health care benefits and retirement are tied down.
Every day I get emails from the green energy movement, the peace movement, the social justice movement, and various other groups within each of the main three. They are all trying to focus their subscribers, and ask Obama, or the new cabinet, for specific legislative and administrative answers to problems.
So far, the thing that seems best to me is from the Quakers-- (The Friends Committee on National Legislation) to ask the government to actually COUNT the military budget as part of the overall federal budget, and to lower it by 25%, so that the other needs of the country can be attended to, with that money.
Housing, Education and Welfare are going to need immense support, as the reverberations of the financial meltdown happen. People are not only going to be losing their homes, they won't be able to heat them, or afford enough food. The minimum wage hasn't gone up in years, and many poor people are barely making it from pay check to pay check. Single mothers and children are going to be very hard-hit in the downturn-- and moms will not be able to afford babysitters so they can go to work. The elderly who have depended more and more on Medicare are going to be finding it hard to get medical providers, because Medicare payments to physicians are so low that many docs are on the edge of closing their offices. It is possible that physician assistants and nurse associates will do a lion's share of the work, but as the baby boomers age, we will need more and more sophisticated help to be able to stay at home as frail healthy elders. Most of the state budgets are trying to decrease the in-home ancillary services for the elderly, in order to fix the budget shortfalls at the state level. And we also are going to have to find ways to get cheaper prices on medications, as the prediction is that most people over 65 will need an average of 8 pills per day for various chronic conditions.
Even if daughters and nieces and granddaughters stop going to school and to work, it will be hard to care for the elders at home. And most families cannot function without two incomes, to maintain a home and stability, which will get harder as the downturn deepens.
So it seems quite important to me to look at the myth of rugged individualism, and how it gave so many people the belief that the only person they needed to take care of is themselves.
And in order to become more realistic, we need to address this myth, and the truth, which is that all the people in society are interconnected in many ways, and we need to be respectful and helpful in small and large ways for our society to be not only resilient but healthy. When it becomes easy to bring it to consciousness, I believe many of the social ills which need to be addressed by the whole society will finally get attention. Until we have seen the way this myth has conditioned American individualism and "free enterprise" we won't be able to do the fundamental problem-solving we need to do.

A Workaholic:

It means you can't feel the living God dancing on your back; you just keep your nose to the grindstone. In my case, I am not working just to work, or for the money, although I don't want to have the business fall into bankruptcy, and I do need the money. I feel like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, trying to keep the whole North Sea from flooding the Lowlands.
Women weeping, women suffering, women needing to make sense of their lives, their bodies: the way we ovulate, and bleed and have hot flashes and cramps, and breasts which get swollen, and how all these feelings and events and symptoms wax and wane by the moon. We become sure that if a doctor is smart, or even just wise, or sympathetic, we could do the right test and get the right answer, to make sense of it all; and to find our place, or at least be at peace with the yin-yang way things are going.
So, at the end of the day, having tried to deal with all the physical and metaphysical questions, and trying to reassure the anxious, and give pain medicine to the women in pain, and treatments where they are helpful, I am simply numb and exhausted with the flotsam and jetsam tumbling in my brain, along with some lines of prayer, and an occasional paradoxical koan (one hand clapping, one day without clocks, trees falling in the theoretical forest); and every once in awhile, an awareness of my own difficult balance on this tightrope which might look mundane or boring from some angles, but is endlessly fascinating to me; how it pulls together all the parts of the ways I know how to think, and instinct and feelings, and even what I have read and surmised; and tomorrow I will do it again… and also try to notice that the living God is dancing on my back…

The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees
(a review)

The movie was as good as the book. The tension between the terrible bursts of violence, and the long peace at the Boatwrights’ home is balanced, and the edge never is lost. The wailing wall, and May, are beautifully portrayed. I carried the pain and raw knees from kneeling on grits on the hard floor for a long time, and the scars on Rosalie.
I loved August Boatwright. Her “dark honey” strength, her persona, her ability to stand against the violence in a way that made it ebb instead of increase. Her ability to talk to the angry T Ray, and make him see that leaving his daughter there was a better thing to do. I loved the scene where she is lifting the panniers of honey covered with bees from the frame, and not losing her serenity and rhythm; the easy flow of the work, and the peaceful day in a magical place. I want to be like her when I grow up! And I want her strength to multiply, ‘til all the T Rays stop torturing the people they are hurting. ‘Til we get ALL the thorns from the paws of all the bullies.
The name “Boatwright” made me see the dark Madonna in a new light—from someone who probably carved her, maybe their dad or grandfather. She wasn’t as victorious as I had imagined her—maybe the carver had not seen a fully heroic black warrior woman, the equivalent of the “winged victory” statues in Europe. Something from Rodin, or Henry Moore. She was smaller, and older, and her chest was bony. But she was very powerful, as the story evolved, and as their hands drew near to her heart for that touch of empowering strength. She wasn’t as sexy, and maybe that was an added strength.
I loved the portrayal of the romance between June and her boyfriend, and how she becomes finally capable of the courage to have the relationship evolve into a marriage. I loved the sentence August says to Lily, trying to make her understand about the flaws in her mother-- about her wanting love that is "pure", and these sorts of situations don’t allow that unmixed emotional feeling. That there are a lot of complications sometimes, which color the emotional tone. However she put it, it was believable; that the mother had loved the child, but that her mistakes had made the whole thing tragic. And even that the love her mother had had for T Ray had started out right.
I loved Rosalie, and how she was believable too; when she stood up to the men who were bullying her, as she was planning to vote. Acting like she was ignorant and illiterate. How hard it must be to be in a town where people think they know you, and they actually don't know anything right about you. And they won't even try to understand or give you the benefit of the doubt.
Today I got an email from a friend in New Mexico that said:

"Rosa sat
So that Martin could march
Martin marched
So that Barack could run
Barack is running
So that our children can fly."

It is a truly historic day. I pray that God will bless America, and help us sit up straight, and fly right, and be the beacon on the hill we should be. I was reading a story by Flannery O'Connor, called "The Enduring Chill". It is about a young man who feels he is dying. There is a mysterious relationship with the Holy Ghost, which fills the interstices at the end of the story. May that be true for our country. Even if we don't deserve it, may we live up to the promise and hope our constitution and history have inspired in the whole world. May we be capable of inspiring hope and faith and even love, as we defend the right of people to pursue happiness.

Daily Bread and Medical Care

I have been thinking about how to fix health care, and the injustice in it, which now seems outrageous to a majority of people. The underlying question is whether health care is a right or a privilege, and whether there should be a uniform standard, or gradations of care which respond to money. Because we can't get the minimum wage up, and because we tend to believe that everyone deserves to have the best care available, we have rising costs which will make it untenable to give "basic care" to huge numbers of people. In other countries there is an acceptance of the problem that there are not infinite resources, and that some unfairness is going to occur. I am afraid of an increasingly complex bureaucratic system; over-legislated, and very cumbersome. While the government threatens to lower the Medicare payments to docs by more than 30 percent over the next 6 years, the costs have been rising at 12-20% per year. Also 36 governors met to try to decide what to do with what the feds won't cover. In California, the elderly now account for 12% of Medi-Cal, and it will go to 20% in the next several years. We have the lowest payments for Medi-Cal (Medicaid) in the entire USA. The California budget is the seventh largest in the world, and we are running with about a third of the budget costs in shortfall from inadequate taxes. So the pressures are extreme, and no single answer is going to solve them all. We are the "canary in the coal mine" for the whole US system because of the extremes of overhead costs and low payments here. I hope we get national structural malpractice reform, and insurance regulatory relief and support. The highway robbery of the insurance companies, giving money to Wall street and investors, is unconscionable. Health care should be regulated as a sort of "Public Utility". One idea is a "Federal Reserve Board of Health" which would help to distribute the health-care "pie" more fairly. But we are still left with the aging population, more sophisticated medications and diagnostic and surgical options, and the question about when resources need to be evaluated against some scale of cost-effectiveness; and norms for how much we should pay for things which will give minimal gains in treating patients at end-of-life.
Also, we have a lot of people frightened to death that they will have no job-security and health-care benefits as they age. Last year the new workers at top companies wanted lots of guarantees of job security, retirement benefits, and health-care fail-safe contracts. Currently Boeing employees are striking for union job security-- as the company wants to outsource jobs to non-union workers.
Meanwhile I listen to Rachel Remen, MD, my mentor for patient-centered care and wisdom, and I watch and try to learn from my own patients. We all will die, and for some of us, it is coming soon. We all want to be loved, respected, handled with dignity, and given a voice in our care. We need to be "witnessed to," and to share our common humanity. We want someone to hold our hands and kiss us good night. We need pain medicine when things hurt. It is amazing that we sometimes have "redemptive" insight, when our own suffering is seen in a context with others' suffering. There are so many people who feel their victimization, yet very few who seem strong enough to look beyond their personal sufferings, to care and help by being the nurturers. The women are working, and can't come home, and lose their benefits and seniority to nurse the aged, infirm and sick in their families.
In my opinion, one of the most important functions of Jesus as a human person is to make us all have a larger-than-self paradigm of life, in which our uniting ourselves to Christ's redemptive purpose allows us to look beyond our own well-being and selfish interests. Uniting ourselves to Christ gives us a way to make sense of our experience, both sufferings and joys.
Recently at Mass, I was touched by how many of us see ourselves "in community" there. It is the only place not work-related, where large numbers of people meet-- which is not shopping. To many of us, it appears that the real religion in our country is shopping! Father Ron mentioned a couple going through the excruciating suffering of a stillbirth. She still had to go through labor, when he left the hospital that morning. He asked us to keep this couple and their family in our prayers. Aggie, who has diabetes, was overcome with grief for this family. She was brought out of her focus on her own pain, and her family's problems, in thinking about this couple's pain. Father said we all come with our struggles, with imperfect choices, with our problems, acute and chronic. We come to be fed, and to be healed by the only source of real peace; peace the world cannot give. We come to ask for daily bread and daily help in our struggles, and we ask for this help for each other, also.
One of the baptismal questions, which strikes me as more and more apt, is "DO you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by it?" I would like to say that I have always recognized and refused to be mastered by the glamour of evil, but since it usually is ego-enhancing glamour, it is hard to renounce it, even to recognize it. In my experience, glamour always masquerades as a great good, and is very tempting. I frequently have been taken in by the glamour of evil. Giving up glamour is hard. And then there are the other things I need to be forgiven for, and to actually ASK forgiveness for. Snapping turtle behavior. Entitlement. And darker feelings. The easy road to cynicism and resentment. The fast road to selfish concerns. I just could not make it a day without faith. Not triumphalism, but the kind that is begging for daily bread, daily help. And it somehow seems more true, when we are not asking each for ourselves alone, but we are standing there holding hands, praying and asking for these needed goods for all of us together. To believe we are children of the same God is to realize that none of us has more right to having our needs met than any other of our siblings. And perhaps that is the beginning of an understanding of justice and charity.

Debt and Desire

By Martina Nicholson on Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Regarding debt and desire;

When my accident happened in October 2004, I couldn't drive for 90 days. I had a mid-thoracic fracture. it hurt to put my arms out in front of me, even to carry a teacup to the kitchen. Since I live out of town, it was a very isolating experience. I was weak and in pain, and dependent on my husband and children to get things from upstairs for me, and to bring me cups of tea; and to help me get out of the bath. I spent a lot of time looking out the window. I did not want to nag, which would have made them want to get away from me, and isolate me more. 6 months later, when I could drive again, it was the rainy season of spring, and I was afraid of the slick roads, since my accident was due to hydroplaning. I did not go to the store. My husband did the shopping. I re-read the books in my own house.
Also, since I couldn't work, we decided at the office I would not get a paycheck so that the overhead would stay covered; and there would be a lag in pay when I came back to work, to finish paying off the ongoing overhead. The disability insurance only started after 90 days, and they delayed another month sending it. It was not enough to cover 6 months' loss of income, but it helped. I needed to buy a reliable car, as mine was totalled. So we bought a good used car; but that added more debt, as I didn't have much to put in, as a down-payment. When I got back to work, I could only do a very little of my previous workload. No surgery, labor and deliveries only with back-up, and cautiously.
8 months after the accident I got to go to the store to "shop". I bought a pillow, and I felt like I just hit the jackpot! I felt like I did when I first came home from the Peace Corps, and saw the bewildering array of options of things to buy, huge quantities of things. Such an experience tunes one again to the difference between needs and wants, and illuminates the basic costs of the infrastructure of one's life.
Doctors are prone to the temptations of "champagne tastes." Desire rises in us; little flames of desire rising in our egos, nudging us to buy. But to look at where the money goes, and to try to direct it, instead of following it, is an enormous task. Especially if the spouse and children are not tuned to the same goals. Especially if one lives in a consumer culture. All around me, I see the middle class cracking and disappearing. People are sinking deeper into debt. Housing in our area is extremely expensive. A friend of mine whose job is to give housing loans, looks at the applications and shakes her head; she says there are too many people buying homes with no down-payment, living from paycheck to paycheck, with huge loads of debt. Young mothers will never be able to stay home to breastfeed their children. The numbers of families with hunger and homelessness is rising. Patients are budgeting whether or not to come see us, as they decide whether they can afford the co-pay. And I live in a "vacation area" where there are lots of people with no health insurance, who drive Mercedes cars, and go to Hawaii to surf, and to Idaho to ski. No matter what your income is, there are tons of televised models of how to spend more than you have.
I think the Buddhists are right, that the place to start is recognizing the "ephemeral" quality of desire. To let go of desire, to let it pass through without grasping, is the antidote to consumerism. Envy and covetousness are the underpinning of our society. I am not immune. After a night on call, I want to go buy something to reward myself. Usually I am careful about the cost, but the instinct to do it is very strong. There is a deep feeling of entitlement. There are very few voices telling me it is NOT ok, and they are easily drowned by the advertising all around me. Because of my experience in the Peace Corps, I am more immune than some doctors; but still, the little flames of desire rise up inside me, as I see things to want. And then there are the things that need to be maintained. I bought a refrigerator this summer. I always ridiculed my paternal grandmother, who loved appliances, and got them as presents. To me, a present should be a luxury item or a work of art. But I am so happy to have the new refrigerator, I see how I am also like my grandmother. Having a home, safety and security, and some beautiful things matter to all of us. Learning to live with less, becoming more ascetic, is a necessity; as they pay us less, as our overhead rises, and we have to remember what matters most. We have to learn to budget more carefully, and to resist more effectively the desires that flame up.
An interesting side-effect of the near-death experience is the recognition that time is more precious than money. If you are like me, you have squandered time as well as money. Learning to hoard it, to use it wisely, to direct how this precious resource will be spent in better ways is another learning experience which we might otherwise put off or never get around to doing. Rachel Remen, in the stories and parables in "Kitchen Table Wisdom" and "My Grandfather's Blessings" constantly points to these kinds of lessons.. I find them endlessly jewel-like and helpful. I just re-read the story about the boy who died of the congenital abnormal coronary artery in the first year of medical school, and how the young doctors felt as they passed his heart around the anatomy lab. Ostensibly it was about the ability to mask our feelings. But it was also about how we use our time, our true wealth.
It also occurs to me that we can't know how to do something more cheaply or more efficiently, until we have done it the long way or the hard way. We can only become better at something by practicing. Some of what we need to learn about managing our desire, and disciplining our use of financial resources can only be learned by doing it the "hard" way. So I am also trying to be s bit gentle with myself, in learning these lessons.