a new complication

My weight has gone up by seven pounds in the last ten days, all due to excess water in the legs and chest. Water retension has been a problem since my heart attack eleven years ago, but now we're investigating to see whether chemotherapy has exacerbated it. I plan to have an echocardiogram on Wednesday and to go over the results with my cardiologist on Friday. If I have more information after that, I'll post it.

the stranger and the fool revisited

“Treat others the same way you want them to treat you….If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”—Luke 6:33-36

My recent post on the story of Nabal stimulated enough discussion in our Sunday school class this week that it thought it might be worthwhile to follow up on it. At the heart of our discussion lay the perceived tension between a biblical obligation to welcome strangers and treat them with honor and the reality that, at some point, an influx of aliens will tax limited resources to a point of breaking. As Mom wrote in her response to my journal entry, “On the one hand, I so want to share the good that America has to offer with anyone courageous enough to seek it, or fortunate enough to have been born to it. On the other hand, it is possible that critical mass will be surpassed, and we will sink, and won't be able to offer any good to anyone. Where is the balance? Where/when is it right to say, ‘no more.’?”

I’d like to suggest, however, that the question itself overlooks the most important point of Nabal’s encounter with David. The central issue at stake is not Nabal’s lack of hospitality, but his misperception of David and the situation his presence created. Nabal did not see David as a potential partner but as a drain. His question was not that different from the one that plagues many of us as we think about incoming immigrants: how (and why) are we supposed to stretch our resources to cover the cost? Even our desire to see ourselves as charitable or altruistic often exacerbates the tendency to perceive the people who enter our space as a burden rather than a gift. And as long as that is our perception, no matter how much good will we may try put forward, we will eventually be forced into courses of action that are inhumane, driven by fear, and ultimately contrary to our own best interests. In other words, we can’t simply treat hospitality as a moral mandate; we need to recognize that in attending to the needs of strangers we contribute to our own good as well.

This, of courses, raises the legitimate question as to whether we can truthfully look at millions of immigrants as a boon more than a drain, or whether this is simply wishful thinking. There are a few ways to answer this. One is to point to the many ways that our lives are visibly enriched by their presence: the cultural and linguistic experiences that they offer to those who are open to them, the services they already provide in the work sector. America is, after all, a society made up largely of immigrants and their descendants. To suggest that we who now live here constitute a native national identity that can be threatened by new immigrants is to discard our own cultural history.

One could also approach it from the opposite direction and look at the cost of inhospitality. To offer just one example, by the most recent estimates, the proposed wall to protect and maintain 700 miles of the US-Mexico border will cost 49 billion dollars to construct (http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/107179.html). That’s almost half of the combined total of the amounts budgeted for education, health and social services in the four Border States. I recognize that statistics are easy to manipulate and that this single comparison does not definitively prove anything, but it should at least prompt us to ask whether keeping people out isn’t more expensive than letting them in.

To me, however, the most compelling reason for recognizing the intruder as a gift and not a burden is that his or her presence has the power to make us one kind of people or another, and the kind of people we become largely determines whether we flourish as human beings or perish. In Dependent Rational Animals (pages 119-128), Alasdair MacIntyre develops this idea by considering the relation of mercy to what he calls “just generosity.” He argues that, because we come into the world in need of nurturing and training from people whom we can never repay, and because over the course of our lives we find ourselves sometimes called upon to give to those who cannot repay us (young children, elderly parents, strangers whom we come upon in times of emergency, etc.), and sometimes in need of similar help from others, the cohesion of a social group requires that we learn to acknowledge our mutual dependence.

Those communities that learn to accept and value this dimension to their lives also generally learn that to sustain it they need to develop the virtue of just generosity, “a generosity I owe to all those others who also owe it to me.” Just generosity describes the habit of acting out of uncalculated friendship toward another, “from attentive and affectionate regard toward that other,” and trusting that other to act in the same way. But if we are to expect this kind of virtue from one another, we have to promote it actively in our communities, to teach one another to embrace and develop it, and to discourage actions that violate it.

Outsiders play an important role in teaching us how to exercise this virtue. They present us with the possibility of extending just generosity beyond the borders of our immediate circles purely on the basis of our shared humanity. Specifically, they created the opportunity to exercise what Thomas Aquinas called misericordia, or as we might call it, mercy, the capacity to “understand the other’s distress as one’s own” and to respond accordingly. Says MacIntyre, “Misericordia has regard to urgent and extreme need without respect of persons. It is the kind and scale of the need that dictates what has to be done, not whose need it is. And what each of us needs to know in our communal relationships is that the attention given to our urgent and extreme needs, the needs characteristic of disablement, will be proportional to the need and not to the relationship. But we can rely on this only from those for whom misericordia is one of the virtues. So communal life itself needs this virtue that goes beyond the boundaries of communal life” (Dependent Rational Animals, 124).

To put this another way, if we suppress the fact of our own dependence upon people whom we cannot repay, if as a society we learn to encourage pretensions to independence and self-ownership and to despise neediness, we condemn ourselves to fighting desperately against our own inevitable moments of need. Illness, old age, disability, weakness, poverty and calamity become marks of shame. Moreover, where strength and independence are deemed more virtuous than weakness and dependence, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain why those who have developed the means to dominate owe any deference to those who have not—to articulate why people in power shouldn’t, say, enslave Africans, persecute Jews, massacre Native Americans, or shut the elderly and disabled out from our social interactions. By contrast, if we learn to consider our dependence upon one another a good thing, to act with mutual just generosity, and to value opportunities to extend that generosity to those who come into our midst from the outside, we create a social environment in which we can enter into our own times of need confidently, without shame or fear. In a word, we recapture our humanity.

Of course, we cannot expect the state to adopt such an attitude toward outsiders if its citizens don’t first. That’s why it is so important that churches and other groups in which social and moral formation takes place to take the lead. Before we can begin to address the logistical questions, we first have to establish in our minds and hearts the kinds of people we hope to become and the kinds of actions that will shape us into such people. The primary question cannot be what we can afford to give, what the other person has legal right to demand of us, or whether this person has come into our midst legitimately in the first place. The first question has to be: will we affirm our own humanity by doing good to this person or despise it by doing harm?

some good news

This week's CT-scan revealed that the tumors in my abdomen have shrunk since the end of November. The nasty side effects of the Gemzar-Xeloda combination I've been taking have not been in vain.

Speaking of which, we will be reducing my Xeloda intake to 3/4 of what I've been on for the first two cycles. Dr. Iqbal is fairly certain that the Xeloda has been responsible for the pain and swelling in my hands and feet, so we'll see how I do on this new regimen.

It's been beautiful in the mornings here at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, so yesterday I rode my bike to the Saturday market at Pasadena High School. It's only a two-mile ride each way, but I don't want to downplay what a wonderful experience it was. Because of the swelling in my legs, I had, with tremendous regret, written off biking as one of those activities that I would no longer be able to enjoy. When I returned and realized what I had done and what I still may be able to do, I almost began to cry.

So much to be thankful for.

The Stranger and the Fool

My devotional reading the other day led me to the story of David’s encounter with Nabal and Abigail in 1 Samuel 25. The story revolves around a wealthy landowner whose name, literally, means “fool.” (To the modern reader this raises serious questions about Nabal’s parents, but these are irrelevant to the story, so I’ll let them go.) David, on the lam from King Saul, has gathered about himself a band of several hundred bankrupt and marginalized desperados, with whom he travels the countryside in an effort to survive. Without Nabal’s knowledge, they find room in his fields to set up a temporary encampment, repaying the unintentional favor by protecting his property and workers from bandits and other threats. David eventually sends word to Nabal, informing him of their presence and services and asking for enough food to celebrate a feast day together. Nabal, incensed to learn of the company’s presence, denies the request, insults David, and ignores the testimonies of his own servants to the help that David’s men have been to them. David explodes with fury, commands his followers to take up their swords, and sets out on a raid.

Nabal’s wife Abigail emerges as the story’s hero. She learns of David’s plan and rushes out to meet him with a peace offering of food and wine. She acknowledges not only the rightness of David’s complaint against her husband, but also her own complicity in the wrong that David has suffered. Most important, she affirms that God is on David’s side, in spite of his criminal appearance, and urges him not to resort to violence to accomplish what he considers God’s purposes. David receives her blessing and warning, and relents of the vengeance he had intended to bring about. In her role as peacemaker, Abigail both guarantees justice for David and keeps him from perpetuating the injustice that he himself had experienced. (In the epilogue to the story, Nabal suffers a heart attack upon learning what his wife has done, and the widowed Abigail marries David.)

In Karl Barth’s discussion of the Atonement, Nabal stands as the personification of human stupidity before God. The deepest roots of his sin lie not in his rudeness, his wealth, or his mistreatment of David, but in his willful inability to recognize God’s gift when it stands in front of him. God had sent David to bless Nabal, but Nabal could recognize him only as a threat and a nuisance. In Nabal we see that our blindness—our sheer stupidity—before God not only robs us of our exalted status as God’s covenant partners, but causes us in turn to treat one another inhumanely, to become divided against ourselves, and to resent our human limitations. By refusing hospitality to David, Nabal doesn’t simply incur guilt; he turns away the one sent to bring him God’s Shalom.

On the other hand, Abigail here represents the path of wisdom. If I can add to Barth’s description, I might suggest that Abigail’s moral vision can be seen on three levels. Most fundamentally, unlike her husband, she recognizes David for who he is, God’s anointed one, sent to her and her people for their good. Second, she recognizes that, in spite of David’s status as an outlaw and a trespasser, he still has a claim to her hospitality. She remembers the ancient divine command to treat aliens with special honor, since her own ancestors were once aliens in the same land, and since she herself inhabits the land only as God’s guest. Finally, she acknowledges her own complicity in an economic arrangement by which David has been victimized. Although she herself has apparently never wished ill to David or to any other stranger, she has enjoyed the comforts of wealth secured through the mean-spirited policies of her husband. Therefore, she takes the first step toward reconciliation with the trespasser, coming to him in a spirit of humility, sharing with him basic provisions for living in her midst, and urging him to join her in the creation of a more just and peaceable living arrangement.

Here in Southern California, where the presence of millions of undocumented aliens has become such an unavoidable and explosive fact of our social life, this story seems remarkably relevant.

a brief reprieve

I went in Friday to meet with Dr. Iqbal and begin my third round. She decided to hold off for another week in order to reevaluate my treatment plan. Turns out the severe side effects I've experienced over the last month--the itching, the swelling, the pain in the hands and feet, the balding--go well beyond the expected reactions to these particular medications. I'll have a blood test on Tuesday and a CT-scan on Wednesday and return next Friday to figure out where to go from here. The likeliest scenario is that she will continue to treat me with Gemzar and Xeloda, but reduce the doses.

This, of course, is mixed news. On the one hand, it would be comforting to have a single plan from the start and stick with it. But for me, that consideration pales beside the discovery that my experiences during the recent round of treatments are not considered the normal price for extending my life. If we can adjust the dosages so that, in the course of a 21-day cycle, I'm incapacitated for one or two days instead of seven or eight, this is very good news to me.

It also means that as of today I've gone more than two weeks without ingesting any cancer medications. And any day I'm not on chemotherapy is a good day.

admit it--it's sexy

Megan Neill, you know what this means.

illness, friendship, and moral agency

"For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith."--Philippians 1:21-25

I’ve just returned from the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics in Dallas, where, among other things, I heard a very edifying paper by Sarah Moses titled “Why Survive?: Discipleship, Friendship and the Elderly.” She puts forward “an understanding of Christian friendship as the mutual relationship in which Christians enable one another to live out discipleship” as a better model for engaging with the elderly than prevailing models of caregiving, in which the elderly are viewed primarily as passive recipients in need of services.

At one point, she references Barth’s discussion of friendship and aging in Church Dogmatics III. Barth’s point there is that when we stop calling upon people to participate socially as responsible moral agents we dehumanize them. It belongs to the human vocation to have something to give to one’s community and to live in a manner that serves the larger common good. Whatever acts of assistance we give to those in need of help, if they are truly acts of friendship, are given not as unilateral gifts of charity, but as steps toward enabling the other person to live out his or her calling for the sake of us all. When we stop expecting and calling forth the best in each other, we cease to be true friends.

Of course, this applies not only to our relationships with the elderly, but also with the seriously ill. As grateful as I am for many words and acts of indulgent kindness and encouragements to go out and do whatever will make me happy, the times I feel most fully human—fully alive—are when I remember that I still have work to. This is why I’m glad I dragged myself out to Dallas in the first place, even though I’d been virtually bed-ridden for several days leading up to it. I had something to present to the group of Baptists ethicists who met on Thursday, feedback to receive, people to interact with. I come home reminded that the long hours of research and writing are pointed in a direction, and that my work is of real benefit to others.

On the other hand, the utter disregard for my responsibility as a moral agent is part of what makes the weekly experience of receiving chemotherapy so horrible. For two hours I sit comfortably in a chair as a patient among patients, none of us with any other duty than to relax, think happy thoughts, and receive medicine from the professionals who take care of us. More than the pain in my hands and feet, more than the itching or trouble swallowing my food, I dread those two hours. And I think it is because, for that time, I am not a responsible member of a community that benefits from my life and work, but a patient in need of unilateral care. Perhaps if I can think of my treatment in more mutual terms, as an act of friendship maximizing my ability to give back, I will be able to do something better with the time than squirm and wish it would end.

The reason I attended Sarah’s reading in the first place is that the title question was one that I had been pondering over the last week. This recent round of treatments gave my body a pretty serious beating. The question arises: what exactly am I fighting for, and at what point do I stop? How many trips to Yosemite or the San Juans, how many visits with old friends, how many movies or card games, how many evenings alone with Karla, before I can finally say “enough” and go peacefully? But this is the wrong question. The better question is, what has God given me to do? What am I to contribute in the time I have? How does my life relate to God’s intention to bless the nations?

But this way of relating to one another is difficult for many of us to grasp. Culturally, we’ve more or less agreed to place no expectations upon each other, to give each other absolute freedom to do whatever one pleases. But such freedom has a dehumanizing, alienating effect. It sends the message that we are not connected to each other, that one person’s actions have little or no meaning to another, that we do not belong to something larger than our own selves. Absent some kind of moral and communal connection, especially as people grow old, sick or needy, we become at best objects of charity with nothing to give in return, and at worst a nuisance. If instead we can talk more seriously about common good and the responsibilities we have to one another as members of communities, perhaps we can move into disease, old age and death with the confidence that, as long as we draw breath, we have something worth giving.

a family christmas

I’ve taken a longer hiatus from my blog than I had intended. Karla & I were gone several days for Christmas. Then, shortly after we returned, the neuropathy in my hands flared up so badly that I was unable to type. (Heck, I couldn’t even brush my own teeth for a day or two.) My hands still hurt, but the burning and swelling have begun to subside, and frankly, I’m sick of being able to do nothing but lie on the couch in front of the TV, so let me give it a shot.

For Christmas, we all converged at my mom’s place in San Jose: my mom and step-dad, my dad and step-mom from Tennessee, my sister and her two college-aged kids from Alabama, my brother with his wife and son, my two step-brothers and their families, my youngest brother, my aunt and cousin from Florida, and Karla and me. It was a large gathering in more ways than one, and one that tells a pretty rich story.

Lynne was ten, Todd five, and I seven when Mom and Dad divorced. As children, we found it easy enough to cast Carol as the woman who split up our home, but in reality all she did was show up at the right time. Either way, she and Dad were married a year later, and within the following two years Mom met and married Don. By that time I was in the fifth grade, and living apart from my father had becoming increasingly difficult. All four parents agreed to the new arrangement: I would live with Dad, Carol and her two boys, Brad and Steve; and Lynne and Todd would stay with Mom and Don. Several months later, Carol gave birth to Eric, and the six of us left San Jose for the small lumber town of Janesville, high in the northern Sierras.

Years later, as a youth pastor, I worked with enough broken homes and witnessed enough hostility between divorced parents to gain a profound appreciation for my own. I had never heard them disparage each other, never felt called upon to choose between them, never felt as if my stepparents thought of me as someone else’s child. It’s not enough to say that my parents remained civil to each other, for at some point the civility became genuine friendship. My dad’s sister has remained my mom’s confidant and traveling companion for over thirty years. My stepmother’s three sons always know that they have a place to hang out at my mom’s house. And if one set of parents is ever in the vicinity of the other, they invariably get together.

And there we were, every one of us piled into Mom’s living room on Christmas Eve to exchange gifts.

I can’t idealize my family. No need to groan about past wounds at this point, but we had our share of dysfunction, and several of us have required some form of therapy or another. But when I see Mom and Carol reminiscing on the front porch, or Dad taking a grandfather-grandson walk with Brad’s son Mitch, I’m reminded that God has been very good to our family. Our failings simply bring that goodness into sharper relief.

William Willimon once suggested that the most ontologically instructive part of the human anatomy is the belly button. A dot in the center of our bodies, whose function ceases moments after we’re born, it remains there to the day we die as a reminder that we did not create ourselves, that we came from other people, flawed people to whom we owe an unpayable debt of gratitude and whose biological and psychological fingerprints form a huge part of our own identity. I would suggest that this extends not only to our forebears by blood, but also to the communities and traditions that shaped us before we ever knew enough to consent to their influence. We have been largely formed by others, and to despise our roots is to despise our very selves. So God commands, “Honor your father and mother.” Love the streams that contributed to your becoming who you are. This is not a command to idolize your roots, to accept their every influence uncritically, to imitate them in every way, to refuse outside voices that might challenge the values and loyalties instilled in you when you were younger. It’s certainly not a command to pretend that the people who shaped you never hurt you. But honor them, forgive their failings and acknowledge their gifts, thank God for them. In so doing you learn to honor yourself.