Wet Wisconsin Wednesday morning

Thanks to all those who were thinking about Tom and his surgery this morning. We drove up in a light rain in the dark and got to the hospital before they even opened the doors. (Tom must be related to Daddy.) Things went well by all reports. The follow-up tomorrow morning -- at the more reasonable hour of 9:00 AM -- will no doubt confirm that all is still well.

On the drive home I (Tom was sitting back with his eyes closed) saw two pairs of male pheasants along the road. Beautiful birds!

Tom is in bed resting as is Peter. Peter seems to be coming down with something, but at least there was no fever last night. We will see.

I may take a late morning nap -- such a decadent delight! -- before heading to my library meeting and to Baraboo to pay a bill.

And that's about it for now.

Within sight

Tom's cataract surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning in Mauston at 7:30, and they want him there at 6:15. So we will be heading up there around 5:00 AM or so. Maybe they want him to travel in the dark to help dilate the eye. Who knows?

At any rate, the good news is that -- assuming that all goes well, and there is no reason to doubt that it will -- we should be out of the hospital and on the way back home mid-morning. With luck, I will even be able to attend an afternoon Friends of the Library meeting for the first time since last spring. I do my volunteering on a day off, but the Friends meet on a day I worked all summer.

Anyway, here's hoping for clear vision and a speedy recovery for Tom. He won't be able to do much of anything for a while, which will drive him crazy, I know.

The only requirement

Thinking of Father Damien reminded me of a blog I used to have that was dedicated in its own way to him. I deleted it from the blogosphere eventually, but I kept a couple of posts that I liked. Here is one of them:

Among the many blessings in my life has been the presence of people in recovery programs. My father was never in one himself, but he taught my brother and me the Serenity Prayer when we were quite young. He said it came from Alcoholics Anonymous, but ours was not a drinking family, so that didn't register much. But other important people have been in The Program. Starting back when I was a seminarian with a spiritual director and a confessor who were recovering alcoholics to today when I have friends who are in recovery from addictions to drugs, spending, pornography, overeating, gambling and sex. Some of my students were in recovery, and I learned far more from them about life than I think I ever taught them.

Not all of them participated in one of the gazillion Twelve-Step Programs based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the things I learned is that AA doesn't claim to be the only solution to alcoholism. It just says it has worked for its members, and it makes available what they have learned to anyone who is interested in hearing about it. They have an absolute aversion to taking money for it, too. [That alone makes me wonder when I read that Twelve-Step Spirituality is a truly American spiritual tradition.]

Most of us have heard of the Twelve Steps, even if we don't know what they are. There are also organizational rules (if you can call anything about AA a rule, or even call it an organization itself) that are called the Twelve Traditions. The word tradition is intentional. Not Twelve Commandments or Twelve Ordinances or Twelve Laws or Twelve Decrees. Twelve traditions -- that is, the way things have been done and handed down. Not from God, just from previous generations. A big part of the study of the Traditions is an explanation of why each one exists. Often this consists of a story about a really good idea that proved to be not so great. So the Tradition arose to keep that lesson alive. One friend told me that the Steps -- how the person in recovery lives life -- keep alcoholics from killing themselves. The Traditions -- how the group operates -- keep alcoholics from killing one another.

If you don't already know, take a moment and look at this list. What do you think the one requirement is?

1) To stop drinking one day at a time
2) To attend meetings regularly
3) To practice the Twelve Steps under the guidance of a sponsor
4) To admit you are an alcoholic
5) To accept the basic principles of recovery as set out in the official literature

Well, which one? If you know much about recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, you know that they make a big deal of doing it one day at a time, of the need to attend meetings, of the role of an experienced person in helping you make the Steps, of the fundamental need to admit you have a problem, that the basic literature is very important.

So what is the sole requirement?

Tradition Three: "The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking."

That's it. A desire to stop drinking. [Or stop using drugs, or stop overeating or stop whatever the addictive behavior may be.]

Amazing! No promise to believe the Book, much less buy it. No promise to show up at least once a week. No promise to do what the Book says to do. The only requirement is the desire to stop whatever is killing you. And the only other thing you hear that might sound like a demand, but is really just an invitation, is "Keep coming back."

Oh, there's a lot more to recovery than that. But that's the only requirement. The way you do the rest is up to you and God (or in recovery-speak, your Higher Power.)

I guess that sounds a lot like my vision of God right now. A God who reaches out to me and says the only requirement is a desire to stop killing myself. And the invitation to keep coming back.

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

I'd be happier if I could just do that.

St.. Damien

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI canonized Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai. He was a Roman Catholic priest (1840 – 1889), from Belgium and member of a missionary religious order. He won recognition for his ministry to people with leprosy (Hansen's disease), who had been placed under a government-sanctioned medical quarantine on the island of Molokai in the Kingdom of Hawaii. He eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is widely considered a "martyr of charity".

In the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches, Damien is considered a saint, and in the Anglican communion, as well as other denominations of Christianity, Damien is considered the spiritual patron for Hansen's disease, HIV and AIDS patients, and outcasts.

Several memorials have been made to Damien worldwide, from Belgium and the United States to Ireland and Ecuador. The Father Damien Statue honors the priest in bronze in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol, while a full size replica stands in front of the Hawaii State Capitol. In 2005, Damien was honored with the title of De Grootste Belg, chosen as "The Greatest Belgian" throughout that country's history in polling conducted by the Flemish public broadcasting service.

When I took a saint’s name for confirmation in the Catholic Church, I chose Damien in honor of Father Damien. He represents to me the call to reach out to those who are feared, despised and outcast by society. The fact that he himself contracted leprosy and died from it is not ironic so much as poetic, for he showed that he who went to help those who seemed in need came to know what it is to be one with everyone, no better, no worse, all in need of love and care.

As noted above, a lot of ministries to people with AIDS are dedicated to St. Damien. It is perhaps appropriate that he was recognized as a saint in Rome on the same day that 200,000 people marched in Washington in favor of full equality for all Americans, including gays and lesbians who are still considered social lepers by so many of their fellow citizens.

I assume Father Damien was not homosexual, by the way, because he was accused by enemies of improper relations with women. These charges were shown to be the result of religious jealousy and bias by no less a person than the great Protestant poet Robert Louis Stevenson. Perhaps another reason to ask Damien's prayers is that he suffered from unjust accusations by religious people Stevenson described as

"hav[ing] stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honor while striving to help those in need... [There are] those who have an eye for faults and failures; that [they] take a pleasure to find and publish them; and that, having found them, [they] make haste to forget the overvailing virtues and the real success which had alone introduced them to [their] knowledge. It is a dangerous frame of mind."

St. Damien, pray for us, lepers all!