By B.J. Funk
Whenever my mother went into the cedar chest in her bedroom, she always allowed me to gently remove the yellowed envelope with my name typed on the front. I could feel it, smell it, hold it; but I could not open it until I turned thirteen. I remember the anticipation I felt each time I saw that envelope. Opening it would be one of the highlights of my life. Would thirteen ever come?Finally, the day came. Inside was a letter from the pastor who baptized me along with the crumbled rose that had sat on the altar on my baptism day, thirteen years earlier. Was I disappointed? Not a chance. My mother had done a grand job of telling me the significance of baptism, the importance of that day. The contents of that letter were like a fragrance that had been carefully guarded until the day I could better understand the meaning of that special day. The pastor’s letter explained the significance of my baptism. The rose meant that my church took time to notice the day a baby was touched by the imprint of God. I cry now when I think of it. Nothing about my thirteenth birthday party was as important to me as that letter.
I can’t explain this in understandable language, because it is a holy mystery. But on that day, when I didn’t realize who God was, God knew who I was. Through the symbol of water, He said to me, “You are mine. You belong to me.” Isaiah 44:5 says, “One will say, “I belong to the Lord…..still another will write on his hand, ‘The Lord’s.’” On that day, God wrote on my hand, “The Lord’s.” No matter what happens in my life, I only have to look at my hand to remember whose I am. Thank you, Father, for the faded rose and yellowed letter. They are a symbol of a deep, life-changing truth.
Rev. B.J. Funk is associate pastor of Central UMC in Fitzgerald.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Aging Well: Choosing a Nursing Home for Mother
By Robert Beckum
I did something this week that hundreds of people do every day. Still, it was difficult. I placed my mother in a nursing home. She is eighty-nine years old. Her health deteriorated in the last year, she fell two or three times a week, and my father was no longer able to lift her without threat of injury to her or himself. It was the right decision. It was a loving decision. It was a heart-rending decision. As my sister said, “If this decision is so right, it seems we would feel better about it.” Her comment reminded me of a fundamental principle involved in making the tough choices of elder care for our parents: When our heart and our head are in conflict, we often have to go with our head and trust that our heart will “catch up.” Still, making decisions about a parent's care is an affair of the heart.
One factor making my decision so emotionally difficult is the same factor which affects many families with an elderly parent from the greatest generation. In my mother's memory bank of fears there is no fear greater than “going into the nursing home.” No amount of calling this place a “skilled nursing facility” fooled her. In her mind the ultimate “N-Word” was “nursing” home---a term vulgar, insulting and demeaning to her. Her anger and fear had little to do with the quality of care given and much to do with the quality of life lost---loss of privacy, loss of independence, and loss of control. While our heads can help insure quality of care, our hearts are helpless in the face of a parent's losses due to age.
In helping others make this same decision practically every day at Magnolia Manor, I have prepared a forty-eight point checklist of things to look for in choosing a nursing home. My checklist is well intended and filled with good suggestions, even if I say so myself. Things are different, however, when it involves your mother. As I began the admissions process, I was amazed at how my “checklist” narrowed to one supremely important question. As I met the admissions director, the director of nursing and the administrator, I listened carefully and asked myself silently: “Is this a person I can trust with my mother's care?” A second question I satisfied before leaving was, “Does each staff member know they can depend on me to be a vital partner in my mother's care?”
From this experience, I have learned it is most important to establish respectful relationships with the staff of caregivers within a nursing center, as it is to check out a nursing center's reputation and record. Things are different when the patient is your loved one, and after all, every elder patient is somebody's loved one. As a result of this week, I think I will be reworking that checklist I have been giving to others, making sure that establishing a familial relationship with the care giving team is right at the top...
Rev. Robert Beckum isVice President of Church Relations and Development Magnolia Manor.
I did something this week that hundreds of people do every day. Still, it was difficult. I placed my mother in a nursing home. She is eighty-nine years old. Her health deteriorated in the last year, she fell two or three times a week, and my father was no longer able to lift her without threat of injury to her or himself. It was the right decision. It was a loving decision. It was a heart-rending decision. As my sister said, “If this decision is so right, it seems we would feel better about it.” Her comment reminded me of a fundamental principle involved in making the tough choices of elder care for our parents: When our heart and our head are in conflict, we often have to go with our head and trust that our heart will “catch up.” Still, making decisions about a parent's care is an affair of the heart.
One factor making my decision so emotionally difficult is the same factor which affects many families with an elderly parent from the greatest generation. In my mother's memory bank of fears there is no fear greater than “going into the nursing home.” No amount of calling this place a “skilled nursing facility” fooled her. In her mind the ultimate “N-Word” was “nursing” home---a term vulgar, insulting and demeaning to her. Her anger and fear had little to do with the quality of care given and much to do with the quality of life lost---loss of privacy, loss of independence, and loss of control. While our heads can help insure quality of care, our hearts are helpless in the face of a parent's losses due to age.
In helping others make this same decision practically every day at Magnolia Manor, I have prepared a forty-eight point checklist of things to look for in choosing a nursing home. My checklist is well intended and filled with good suggestions, even if I say so myself. Things are different, however, when it involves your mother. As I began the admissions process, I was amazed at how my “checklist” narrowed to one supremely important question. As I met the admissions director, the director of nursing and the administrator, I listened carefully and asked myself silently: “Is this a person I can trust with my mother's care?” A second question I satisfied before leaving was, “Does each staff member know they can depend on me to be a vital partner in my mother's care?”
From this experience, I have learned it is most important to establish respectful relationships with the staff of caregivers within a nursing center, as it is to check out a nursing center's reputation and record. Things are different when the patient is your loved one, and after all, every elder patient is somebody's loved one. As a result of this week, I think I will be reworking that checklist I have been giving to others, making sure that establishing a familial relationship with the care giving team is right at the top...
Rev. Robert Beckum isVice President of Church Relations and Development Magnolia Manor.
From the Counselor's Notebook: What the world needs now
By Martha Tate
“The world needs a counterforce to disturbing thought and emotion.” - His Holiness the Dalai Lama
I was one of the fortunate four thousand in attendance at the Mind-Life Institute XV at Emory. We witnessed a respectful, compassionate dialogue when East met West as His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, conferred with western neurobiologists, psychiatrists and researchers about “Mindfulness, Compassion and the Treatment of Depression”. The intent of the dialogue was to understand depression in physiological and cognitive terms and to explore the possibility that mindfulness based therapies, such as compassionate meditation, might be useful in the treatment and prevention of depression.Depression is the # one cause of disability worldwide and can lead to suicide, physical disease, behavioral and relational problems. Rates of depression are similar worldwide. Research indicates that the complex interplay between genetics and early life experience renders some people susceptible to depression.Depression is a condition with physiological, cognitive and emotional features. People with certain personality traits are prone to depression as their habits of mind are conducive to its development.
Researchers assess causality as 1/3 genetic and 2/3 environmental. Experiences such as early childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, poverty, exploitation and insufficient bonding predispose vulnerable people to depression. The age-old nature/nurture debate is best understood as a “both/and” proposition. It is in the interplay between “mind” and “body” that both health and disease are created and sustained.A cursory understanding of the mechanisms by which experience impacts physiology is necessary to grasp how compassionate meditation could impact depression and its devastating consequences. This is found in the early research on the physiology of stress reactions.
Stress, defined as perceived threat, stimulates the increased production of certain chemicals which trigger heightened activity in the autonomic nervous system. Heart rate and respiration increase, while blood is shunted from digestive organs to the major muscle groups fueling the “fight or flight” response. Prolonged, unremitting stress floods the body with these chemicals, which in turn damage the body and prohibit the relaxation phase with its cascade of complementary chemicals normally following the excitation phase. This is a recipe for all sorts of illness, including depression, to incubate.Conversely, positive, nurturing experiences, like healthy maternal/infant bonding, produce other chemicals, such as oxytocin, which actually mitigate against the adverse effects of stress and create a sense of well being.
Via these same mechanisms, healthful activities like meditation and psychotherapy also affect the expression of brain/body chemistry and are helpful in ameliorating depression. These practices are now proven to restructure the brain.In the research on compassionate meditation, participants first relaxed the body through mindful breathing. They then focused attention on the connection between their thought and feeling states. Finally, they focused on thoughts and images of love and equanimity, the desire of all beings for happiness and well being.Interestingly, regions of the brain associated with emotional and physical self -knowledge showed increased activity. Such heightened awareness allows meditators the ability to master, or at least influence, their mental and emotional states. The connection between the thinking and feeling brain was strengthened. Empathy, as measured by emotional reactions to pictures of distressed children, was increased, as was altruism, measured by the increased desire to contribute money to charity. Researchers concluded that compassionate meditation is a prophylactic for stress and emotional disorders, including depression.
As our Western scientific method investigates spiritual practices, we are privileged to understand from a new perspective what Christian seekers have always known. Deep prayer and meditation on the scriptures change us. As changed people, we impact our world differently. Perhaps Christ’s healing miracles operated in accordance with these principles; the power of His healing touch rewiring brains, bodies and beings. Christ is our example of perfect integration of mind/body and Spirit. Living in uninterrupted communion with God, He modeled for us the potential that God ordains. We fall so short, but gain so much in the trying. In Christ there is no East nor West, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”
Martha M. Tate is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice.
“The world needs a counterforce to disturbing thought and emotion.” - His Holiness the Dalai Lama
I was one of the fortunate four thousand in attendance at the Mind-Life Institute XV at Emory. We witnessed a respectful, compassionate dialogue when East met West as His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, conferred with western neurobiologists, psychiatrists and researchers about “Mindfulness, Compassion and the Treatment of Depression”. The intent of the dialogue was to understand depression in physiological and cognitive terms and to explore the possibility that mindfulness based therapies, such as compassionate meditation, might be useful in the treatment and prevention of depression.Depression is the # one cause of disability worldwide and can lead to suicide, physical disease, behavioral and relational problems. Rates of depression are similar worldwide. Research indicates that the complex interplay between genetics and early life experience renders some people susceptible to depression.Depression is a condition with physiological, cognitive and emotional features. People with certain personality traits are prone to depression as their habits of mind are conducive to its development.
Researchers assess causality as 1/3 genetic and 2/3 environmental. Experiences such as early childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, poverty, exploitation and insufficient bonding predispose vulnerable people to depression. The age-old nature/nurture debate is best understood as a “both/and” proposition. It is in the interplay between “mind” and “body” that both health and disease are created and sustained.A cursory understanding of the mechanisms by which experience impacts physiology is necessary to grasp how compassionate meditation could impact depression and its devastating consequences. This is found in the early research on the physiology of stress reactions.
Stress, defined as perceived threat, stimulates the increased production of certain chemicals which trigger heightened activity in the autonomic nervous system. Heart rate and respiration increase, while blood is shunted from digestive organs to the major muscle groups fueling the “fight or flight” response. Prolonged, unremitting stress floods the body with these chemicals, which in turn damage the body and prohibit the relaxation phase with its cascade of complementary chemicals normally following the excitation phase. This is a recipe for all sorts of illness, including depression, to incubate.Conversely, positive, nurturing experiences, like healthy maternal/infant bonding, produce other chemicals, such as oxytocin, which actually mitigate against the adverse effects of stress and create a sense of well being.
Via these same mechanisms, healthful activities like meditation and psychotherapy also affect the expression of brain/body chemistry and are helpful in ameliorating depression. These practices are now proven to restructure the brain.In the research on compassionate meditation, participants first relaxed the body through mindful breathing. They then focused attention on the connection between their thought and feeling states. Finally, they focused on thoughts and images of love and equanimity, the desire of all beings for happiness and well being.Interestingly, regions of the brain associated with emotional and physical self -knowledge showed increased activity. Such heightened awareness allows meditators the ability to master, or at least influence, their mental and emotional states. The connection between the thinking and feeling brain was strengthened. Empathy, as measured by emotional reactions to pictures of distressed children, was increased, as was altruism, measured by the increased desire to contribute money to charity. Researchers concluded that compassionate meditation is a prophylactic for stress and emotional disorders, including depression.
As our Western scientific method investigates spiritual practices, we are privileged to understand from a new perspective what Christian seekers have always known. Deep prayer and meditation on the scriptures change us. As changed people, we impact our world differently. Perhaps Christ’s healing miracles operated in accordance with these principles; the power of His healing touch rewiring brains, bodies and beings. Christ is our example of perfect integration of mind/body and Spirit. Living in uninterrupted communion with God, He modeled for us the potential that God ordains. We fall so short, but gain so much in the trying. In Christ there is no East nor West, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”
Martha M. Tate is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice.
From the Editor: I’m still speaking out
By Jim Nelson
United Methodist Student day is the Sunday following Thanksgiving when most students are home from college and able to attend the worship service at their home church.Forty years ago as a Methodist scholarship recipient attending Ohio Wesleyan University, I was one of five students asked to speak at my home church on what was then Methodist Student Day.My family joined that church in 1952 when we moved into the neighborhood. For 15 years I attended Sunday school classes, was a member and officer of MYF, assisted in worship services, and worked around the church. The people in that congregation had become like family to me.
It was 1967. I spoke against the war, and in support of civil rights. I quoted scriptures and used what they had taught me in Sunday school over the last 15 years. After the service, we stood up front so the congregation could speak to us. Only one person spoke to me. Even the pastor, who had just been appointed, did not speak to me. After several weeks of being shunned, I stop attending that church or any other church for 20 years.Although I lost my faith in people, I never lost my faith in God. I still read the scriptures, spent time in prayer every day, and knew that God loved me. I still spoke out for what I believed. Yet, I wondered why they were so angry when I spoke about what they had taught me? They taught me Jesus was about love, compassion, forgiveness, and even sacrifice; that all people are equal in the sight of God.
After graduation, I enlisted in the Army and became an Airborne Infantry Officer. I served nearly three years on active duty, followed by another 10 in the National Guard and Reserves. I may be anti-war, but I believe in the idea and ideals of America.I have always tried, although not always successfully, to be faithful to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I try to use Jesus’s teachings when I preach and/or write, and as you might suspect, I still make some people angry.Recently I saw the movie “Rendition.” Admittedly, the producers had a political agenda. They, like Sen. John McCain, believe torture is immoral and ineffective. McCain, one of the few people with first-hand knowledge, said, “It’s not about them; it’s about us.” It IS about us, particularly those of us who are Christians.
In light of Judge Michael Mukasey’s confirmation hearings to be Attorney General, I asked several people, “Which teaching of Jesus justifies torture?” I understand the political rationale and our national security interests. I understand how secular humanists and those or other faiths can support it. But I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus. Which commandment of His justifies “water-boarding” to get information? As yet, no one has answered my question.Jesus said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” And in terms of preserving our way of life he said, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” As a Christian I would rather be arrested, persecuted and killed by an unjust government while remaining faithful to the teachings of Jesus, than to live by unjustly treating others to save my life in this world.Some would say I haven’t learned much from that Methodist Student Day in 1967.
United Methodist Student day is the Sunday following Thanksgiving when most students are home from college and able to attend the worship service at their home church.Forty years ago as a Methodist scholarship recipient attending Ohio Wesleyan University, I was one of five students asked to speak at my home church on what was then Methodist Student Day.My family joined that church in 1952 when we moved into the neighborhood. For 15 years I attended Sunday school classes, was a member and officer of MYF, assisted in worship services, and worked around the church. The people in that congregation had become like family to me.
It was 1967. I spoke against the war, and in support of civil rights. I quoted scriptures and used what they had taught me in Sunday school over the last 15 years. After the service, we stood up front so the congregation could speak to us. Only one person spoke to me. Even the pastor, who had just been appointed, did not speak to me. After several weeks of being shunned, I stop attending that church or any other church for 20 years.Although I lost my faith in people, I never lost my faith in God. I still read the scriptures, spent time in prayer every day, and knew that God loved me. I still spoke out for what I believed. Yet, I wondered why they were so angry when I spoke about what they had taught me? They taught me Jesus was about love, compassion, forgiveness, and even sacrifice; that all people are equal in the sight of God.
After graduation, I enlisted in the Army and became an Airborne Infantry Officer. I served nearly three years on active duty, followed by another 10 in the National Guard and Reserves. I may be anti-war, but I believe in the idea and ideals of America.I have always tried, although not always successfully, to be faithful to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I try to use Jesus’s teachings when I preach and/or write, and as you might suspect, I still make some people angry.Recently I saw the movie “Rendition.” Admittedly, the producers had a political agenda. They, like Sen. John McCain, believe torture is immoral and ineffective. McCain, one of the few people with first-hand knowledge, said, “It’s not about them; it’s about us.” It IS about us, particularly those of us who are Christians.
In light of Judge Michael Mukasey’s confirmation hearings to be Attorney General, I asked several people, “Which teaching of Jesus justifies torture?” I understand the political rationale and our national security interests. I understand how secular humanists and those or other faiths can support it. But I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus. Which commandment of His justifies “water-boarding” to get information? As yet, no one has answered my question.Jesus said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” And in terms of preserving our way of life he said, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” As a Christian I would rather be arrested, persecuted and killed by an unjust government while remaining faithful to the teachings of Jesus, than to live by unjustly treating others to save my life in this world.Some would say I haven’t learned much from that Methodist Student Day in 1967.
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