Saturday, December 04, 2004

Middle of the Night This and That

United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan is under increasing fire and this New York Times article suggests that he has lost the confidence of the US government. It appears that no matter how personally culpable Mr. Annan may be, an awfully lot of bad stuff has occurred on his watch. If Mr. Annan goes, I hope that the United Nations will give serious consideration to replacing him with Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

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Tod Bolsinger has a great series on the "incarnation" of Jesus and its meaning for our everyday lives. Tod is a fine writer and an encouraging person.

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Mark Roberts has the best series of articles about what he rightly describes as "the killing of the innocents" in the Netherlands.

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Chris Matthews had a great interview with Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, on Friday night's special edition of Hardball. She talked about a run-in that she had with a doctor when her father was in the relatively early stages of his Alzheimer's Disease-related dimentia. This doctor spoke to about her father's condition in the third person in his presence. When she objected to the insensitivity of this, the doctor dismissed her concerns by saying, "He doesn't understand us."

I think that this was not only insensitive to the humanity of his patient and his family, it was also extremely naive on this doctor's part. Years ago, I routinely visited with a woman who languished in a nursing home in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. I never knew her in any other state. She was tied to her bed. She was fed through a dropper. Her eyes, when open, were vacant and distant. My visits usually consisted of a silent prayer and a few brief words, never acknowledged.

Except for one day. I went into the woman's room and said a silent prayer. I then called her by name and said, "God loves you." "No, he couldn't," she objected. It was a chilling moment. When I tried to continue the dialogue, the woman sunk back into her dimentia.

I have often wondered just what happened at that moment. One possibility must be akin to what both Davis and Matthews (whose mother suffered from Alzheimer's) suggested tonight. Davis says that just before his death, Ronald Reagan opened his eyes for the first time in many weeks, that their deep blue seemed to return after a long absence of color, and that they seemed to clearly focus on her mother. Matthews related that after being under the incommunicative fog of Alzheimer's for a long time, she seemed to "come to" briefly one day and call her husband by his name.

Beneath the assault of Alzheimer's, its victim still exists. At some level, I believe they understand what's going on around them as the disease has its way with their minds and bodies. It's too easy to objectify other human beings when they become less than "fully functional." That, to me, is a terrible mistake and a grave injustice.

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I can't stop listening to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb by U2. It's fantastic!

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On Friday night, I traveled to the Dayton area for a funeral home visitation. Bill Gunter, the architect-construction manager who designed our church's first building facility (now almost two years old) and whose firm supervised its building, died this past week. He was a great man and a real blessing to me, to our congregation, and, given the huge numbers of people at the visitation tonight, countless others as well. Here's what I said about him in an email to our congregation yesterday:
I just received news that Bill Gunter, architect and construction manager, proprietor of the firm with which we worked on the design and construction of our building, passed away late on Tuesday evening.

Bill had survived a 1997 heart transplant surgery and a 2002 stroke. Recently, a malignant tumor was found on a bronchial tube. Aggressive treatment involving both chemotherapy and radiation five days a week seemed to be going well. But on Tuesday, while watching television, he began bad coughing jag. It's thought that the treatments had weakened the walls of a number of arteries in his chest cavity and that his violent coughing triggered hemmorhaging. He died shortly thereafter.

Bill was an extraordinary man! He designed and/or built more than 600 church buildings. His aim was never to become wealthy, but to make a living while helping churches reach out to their communities with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Bill's whole approach was one reason that we at Friendship were able to construct our facility so economically.

You only had to spend a little time with Bill to know how much he loved Jesus Christ. He was truly an inspiration to be around and, before ever talking "business," insisted on talking about what Christ meant to him and how Christ had blessed him in his life. He regarded the seven years he lived after receiving his heart transplant as a "bonus time," which he totally dedicated to God.

A member of our congregation and I were speaking about Bill just a few moments ago. We both agreed that God sent Bill to Friendship Church at precisely the right time. We needed to build our first building unit if we were going to keep growing as a congregation---which we have. But had we proceeded by conventional means, we wouldn't have our building. God sent Bill so that Friendship would have a church facility to share with our community! Our facility was the last one Bill designed.

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