A couch potato, a working author...and a spiritual book

Martin Luther King Day, and I’m a bit ashamed that I didn’t do community service today. But I did do family service. Since there was no school, Jacob was here all day. Last night, he and his dad came for supper—yummm! Pork chops in a cream/Dijon/bourbon sauce with sautéed apples (which Christian didn’t like) and onions. Jacob hugged me goodnight, and his dad asked if he didn’t want to spend the night. I pointed out he could sleep late (if he went home, he’d have to get up early to come here) and have waffles for breakfast. Instant reply: “Bye, Dad.” He did sleep until slightly after nine, got up demanding, “Can I have my breakfast?” and spent the morning watching TV (another cause of guilt on my part—but I got so much done while he was content).

We went out for lunch to meet a former student of mine, Jacob grousing all the way. He didn’t want to eat with an old lady (I explained she was his mom’s age), he wanted to eat at the Grill. But my friend Heather entranced him telling about the homeless man whose story she is writing and talking football with him. When we got in the car, he said, “That was pretty much fun.”

So we had a distant but good day—I got a lot of work done, and he watched TV. Maybe every once in a while it’s okay to just let him chill and be a couch potato. It was a beautiful day, and he should have been out playing—but with no playmates, what fun is that?

Tonight I went to the church women’s book club discussion of God’s Hotel, a book I am more and more impressed with for what it teaches about holistic medicine, what the author calls “Slow medicine” as opposed to “efficient modern health care.” You watch the author grow spiritually and as a healer during the book—she learns to sit by a patient’s bedside, quietly, for long periods of time, trying to determine what comes between that patient and health; she sees a patient hover, with one foot crossing over and the other still in this world—and then choose to live. It’s a remarkable look at spiritual healing. We agreed working in those conditions, with the indigent, homeless, often mentally ill patient population isn’t for everyone in the healing professions, but for this woman physician, it became her passion. And what she learned along the way is remarkable.

The book is also a good look at what bureaucracy does to medicine—and we drew the parallel to what bureaucracy does to education. People who have never stood before a classroom make dramatic decisions, just as people who’ve never treated a patient build new hospitals (without storage for wheelchairs) and make decisions about patient care. If you have any interest in medicine or spiritual journeys or the concepts of community and charity, I urge you to read this book.

Mindfulness on an ordinary day--or not

Today was an ordinary day, the kind when nothing big happens except a trip to Central Market. The kind of day I enjoy, but also the kind that makes me think I have time to be self-aware, to meditate, to, as some would say it, get in touch with myself. There are lots of huge questions lurking in my mind, from what do I really want out of life to how will I plot that next novel but I, like most of us, get so involved in the daily-ness of life that I push those questions to the back of my mind.

My brother recently told me that he read that mindfulness, that state of living in the present moment, observing your thoughts and actions as though from a distance without judging them good or bad, inhibits creativity. Oops! There goes that. I need my creativity, the right side of my brain. I’d have thought just the opposite—that mindfulness would enhance creativity.

A certain sense of distance is also one of the signs of anxiety—or at least it is to me. If I'm anxious I can feel as though I’m watching myself drive to the store, walk through the vegetable section, choose my dinner from the fish counter, joke with the guy at the checkout register.

So who are we to believe? Is it better to be in the present moment or experiencing it as an outsider? I guess to my mind it’s better to be actively engaged in the present moment—as a writer, I can store actions, events, feelings away for use later on.

On another but perhaps related note, I’m reading a wonderful book titled God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet. Dr. Sweet worked for years at Laguna Honda, the San Francisco hospital for indigent, incurable patients—the last almshouse in the nation. To help her understand her patients, she studied the works of Hildegard, the 16^th Century nun who ministered to the poor. Hildegard’s medicine was based on observation and the four humors—if an ill person was too dry, he or she needed moisture; too wet, dryness was needed. That’s a simplification of what was really a complicated set of medical beliefs. But wrapped up in that—and in Sweet’s medical philosophy—is the concept of holistic medicine: treat the soul as well as the body. Much of the Laguna Honda philosophy and practice speaks clearly against modern medicine which divides the patient into physical parts. Sweet saw few cures but some were remarkable; more, she saw—and treated—the spirit of her patients. She saw them as people, not simply as patients.

I’m trying in my mind to link the Laguna Honda philosophy to the concept of mindfulness, and I guess what I keep coming back to is the concept of distance. Why should we distance ourselves from our lives—be it sickness, health, joy, sadness. I think we need to live in the moment, experiencing it as fully as we can. And that in itself is an art.

Rambling thoughts on a Saturday night when I’ve had an exceptionally good dinner and a nice glass of wine….