Thursday is our community day: we have our community meeting followed by a shared Hour of Adoration. This week the meeting was shorter than usual, and after our prayer time I went downstairs where Sr. Helena has been taping the nonstop coverage on Fox. For the longest time (during lunch), Mr. Schiavo's lawyer held court, but by the time our Adoration was completed, the Schindlers were holding a press conference. The family's statement and demeanor was profoundly Christian; among the most remarkable moments of genuine Christian witness television has probably ever seen. Even though the various parts of the statement had certainly been prepared with great care, they were not "crafted." There was nothing in them but reverence and commitment. Even though the family members are deeply and personally affected by all that has happened, their statements were measured and almost objective in the sense that they were not using the press conference as a platform for their grief, but as a pulpit for preaching the Gospel of Life; not about Terri, but about every vulnerable person.
We may be witnessing the birth of a new and powerful movement in the Church.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
The Karen Hall Effect
I have maintained a website since 1998, but since my superiors at the time were uneasy about the idea, I didn't do anything to promote it. I just put it out there and gave the address to my fellow sisters and to friends. What I am getting at is that for six years I have been posting things online and barely got a ripple of feedback. Hours after Karen Hall makes a mention of my blog, I not only get a wave of hits, I am for the first time dealing with feedback so reflective and deep that I when I went to chapel for morning prayer, I was in awe before the Lord over the conversation that has begun here.
In another blog I was doing (limited to my sisters in community), my purpose was to raise up a conversation. It didn't really happen. (My sisters are WAY too busy!)But here it just did.
Call it the Karen Hall effect.
Re: my website from 1998, lately the friend who was hosting me had a big life change and, well, the bottom line is my site is back on geocities, somewhat out of date. When it is more updated and some of the html problems have been addressed, I will post a link to it.
In another blog I was doing (limited to my sisters in community), my purpose was to raise up a conversation. It didn't really happen. (My sisters are WAY too busy!)But here it just did.
Call it the Karen Hall effect.
Re: my website from 1998, lately the friend who was hosting me had a big life change and, well, the bottom line is my site is back on geocities, somewhat out of date. When it is more updated and some of the html problems have been addressed, I will post a link to it.
Out of My Depth...
Some profound reflections in the comments section; be sure to give them some time. In a way, I am embarrassed by their profundity, since my own postings have been somewhat off the cuff, just remarking on my own reactions or saying the things that I haven't seen in print. (Like, until U.S. News put it in the current issue, I was going to post that the whole language of "culture of death/culture of life" was John Paul II's contribution--and what a contribution, to offer a whole language with which to approach the issue!) But U.S. News gave credit where credit is due, so...
Re: Terri, please see my first post, "Weighing in on Terri" where I develop, very briefly, the observation that "mind" and "brain" are very different things. Even where the physical organ of higher cognition is not apparently functioning, that doesn't mean that the mind is not: it just can't work in its usual way. The occasional breakthrough moments (such as described of that woman in Chicago) could be where the mind succeeds in using what brain function is available, even though it would not necessarily be the "usual" areas, say, of higher cognition.
I write this because it seems that none of the "usual" sources of media have yet made the distinction between brain and mind, and yet it is not a new thing even for science.
Re: Terri, please see my first post, "Weighing in on Terri" where I develop, very briefly, the observation that "mind" and "brain" are very different things. Even where the physical organ of higher cognition is not apparently functioning, that doesn't mean that the mind is not: it just can't work in its usual way. The occasional breakthrough moments (such as described of that woman in Chicago) could be where the mind succeeds in using what brain function is available, even though it would not necessarily be the "usual" areas, say, of higher cognition.
I write this because it seems that none of the "usual" sources of media have yet made the distinction between brain and mind, and yet it is not a new thing even for science.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Update
Well, it's past 9:00 and a tornado watch may still be in effect over here... I'm in the basement so I should be safe! I had a chance to see the NYTimes.com report on the Pope and learned that it was not a surgical feeding tube that was being spoken about, but a nasal one (which I'm sure is hideously uncomfortable). So I still have all the questions and concerns; they are just not immediately related to the news any more.
Chicago has had two warm days in a row. I'm lovin' it.
Chicago has had two warm days in a row. I'm lovin' it.
Assisted Living
The "on the hour" news I woke to this morning included the information that Pope John Paul has a feeding tube. This unusually intimate kind of comunique from the Vatican has shaken me to some extent. I keep asking myself what it means; wondering how long it has been there.... Did the symposium at the Vatican a few years back (the one that declared feeding tubes part of ordinary care and not a treatment or "extraordinary means") offer the Pope himself guidance in a discernment about whether or not to accept this procedure? Is the Pope making himself again a kind of trailblazer or witness to the value of "assisted" living? Is he going ahead of us, showing us how it is done and making himself in some way a "test case" for the practicability of the Vatican directive?
Not that I don't have other questions, too. The matter also troubles me. Nutrition is a normal problem for the very elderly. It can be hard for the aged to consume the calories they need to maintain strength, precipitating a more rapid decline leading eventually, but directly, to death. Maybe not death by starvation, but by a progressive weakening of the whole system. Nutrition is also a delicate area for Parkinson's patients, since loss of muscle control can cause them to aspirate their food, leading to complications like pneumonia. In either of these cases, does a feeding tube just stave off to a degree or prolong the natural process of diminishment already initiated by old age or disease? Is putting off death the same as protecting or respecting life? When is a life fully lived? What constitutes natural death when the natural processes are bypassed by technology? Do you wait for other parts to wear out, or for a raging disease to finally take over?
Now, I admit I still find the whole gamut of tubes and shunts invasive and creepy, but if my life truly depended on one or many of them, I'd probably see it as a new form of the cross. Maybe that's how JP2 sees it, too.
Not that I don't have other questions, too. The matter also troubles me. Nutrition is a normal problem for the very elderly. It can be hard for the aged to consume the calories they need to maintain strength, precipitating a more rapid decline leading eventually, but directly, to death. Maybe not death by starvation, but by a progressive weakening of the whole system. Nutrition is also a delicate area for Parkinson's patients, since loss of muscle control can cause them to aspirate their food, leading to complications like pneumonia. In either of these cases, does a feeding tube just stave off to a degree or prolong the natural process of diminishment already initiated by old age or disease? Is putting off death the same as protecting or respecting life? When is a life fully lived? What constitutes natural death when the natural processes are bypassed by technology? Do you wait for other parts to wear out, or for a raging disease to finally take over?
Now, I admit I still find the whole gamut of tubes and shunts invasive and creepy, but if my life truly depended on one or many of them, I'd probably see it as a new form of the cross. Maybe that's how JP2 sees it, too.
Monday, March 28, 2005
More on Life
The 2004 movie "Noel" included an interesting relationship of sorts (communion and communication) between two non-responsive, dying persons who were in the same hospital, their rooms directly across the hall from each other. When I saw the movie, I was intrigued by this, because in a way it was the producer's witness to the profound communion of all human life. Now I am remembering it in a different context: that of a single, apparently non-responsive patient in hospice care. Sunday's Chicago Tribune included a story about a woman who barely survived a car accident when she was 18. She suffered severe brain damage and has been as unresponsive and utterly dependent on others as Terri for 14 years. Then, out of the blue, she answered a question that her caregiver had murmured to her. And then another, and another. And then again silence. We have no idea of how the mind-brain connection works. I am praying for Terri, that if her spirit in some way perceives what is being done to her, she not despair. Today's Responsorial Psalm is very apt: "You will not abandon me to death" (Ps. 16).
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Weighing in on Terri
When I named my health care proxy, I gave her a typed up version of guidelines for my care should I become severely disabled--things like letting her know that prayers are appreciated (but NOT rosaries recited in a dull, dead monotone), and that Mozart is always a good choice for ambient sound... I thought that a feeding tube was a really invasive thing, and didn't really want that. (That was before the Vatican determined that feeding tubes are not extraordinary; it had seemed so to me before, but even the papers now are demonstrating that it is not as complicated as I had thought.) What I am saying is that I have had to do a lot of thinking about this matter lately. The report that Terri made sounds like "AAAH WAAAH" when the lawyer said she needed to say "I want to live" has really gotten me thinking more and more about the mystery of our mind/brain connection.
The doctors in general are saying that the brain tests show no activity in the areas of the cerebral cortex associated with what we call "mental" activity; that the action is all in the brain stem.... But what if the "AAAH WAAAH" is the result of the mind (which is, after all, a dimension of the soul)amazingly and magnificently using the brain stem, which is all it now has access to? I mean, thinking does not happen IN the brain, but WITH the brain. The studies Dr. Penfied did in the 50's demonstrated the distinction between the person, who in some ways was "remote" from the brain, and the action that was provoked by an electrode to the brain of a conscious patient. So could we be experiencing the way the mind, the soul, the person, is "breaking through" as best as can be with an instrument that is not apt for the task at hand, a task (communicating) that requires higher brain function, but that in this case is being attempted with whatever function is available?
The question of the mind/body connection may be critical here. It is certainly requiring me to rewrite some of the directives I set down for my own care.
The doctors in general are saying that the brain tests show no activity in the areas of the cerebral cortex associated with what we call "mental" activity; that the action is all in the brain stem.... But what if the "AAAH WAAAH" is the result of the mind (which is, after all, a dimension of the soul)amazingly and magnificently using the brain stem, which is all it now has access to? I mean, thinking does not happen IN the brain, but WITH the brain. The studies Dr. Penfied did in the 50's demonstrated the distinction between the person, who in some ways was "remote" from the brain, and the action that was provoked by an electrode to the brain of a conscious patient. So could we be experiencing the way the mind, the soul, the person, is "breaking through" as best as can be with an instrument that is not apt for the task at hand, a task (communicating) that requires higher brain function, but that in this case is being attempted with whatever function is available?
The question of the mind/body connection may be critical here. It is certainly requiring me to rewrite some of the directives I set down for my own care.
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