David Hilfiker
My Alzheimer’s **
In June of 2013 I spoke at the Second Annual Bioethics, Spirituality and Humanism in Medicine Conference in Kansas City MO. The participants were a select group of health care specialists (social workers, nurses, chaplaijs and doctors) who were particularly interested in the ethical and spiritual issue is medicine. One section of the conference invited health professionals to talk about their own chronic diseases and what it was like to be on the other side of the stethescope. I was asked to give the keynote for that section.
I have Alzheimer’s disease. It’s been quite a journey; and this morning I’d like to share part of that with you.
The onset was insidious, but I mark the beginning as June 5th of 2010, the day I lost a day. I drive several times a year from Washington down to southern Virginia to visit a friend in prison, Jens Soering. Jens had recently been transferred from one prison to another, and this would be my first drive to the new prison.
During my visit, the prison chaplain stopped by to say hello. I introduced myself. “Yes,” he said, “I remember you from last time.”
“No,” I said, “this is the first time I’ve been here. But he insisted we’d met, and I let it pass.
After he’d moved on, I asked Jens about the chaplain’s comment. “Yeah,” he replied with concern, “you were here last December.”
Of Weakness and Vulnerability
This is a lecture I gave to medical students at Michigan State. It was a yearly lecture series on the relationship between spirituality and medicine.
April 16, 2014
I’m going to speak with you this afternoon about spirituality and medicine. So I should probably start with my simplistic definition of spirituality: It’s anything that brings you closer to your true self, to the deepest parts of you, to your values. Specifically, I want speak about the spirituality of vulnerability and weakness. We don’t like to think about our frailty and our failings, of course. We live in an officially optimistic culture in which we’re supposed to see the bright side of things, find the silver lining, and have faith that everything will work out in the end. Hopelessness is unpardonable; giving up, the ultimate sin. But that spirituality of optimism is false, for it denies and excludes a fundamental part of us: our brokenness.
Stories are the best way to teach, I think, so I’m going to offer you stories of vulnerability, pain and, I hope, transcendence. I hope that one or two of them speak to you in some way.
This is a teaching that I offered to my own Eighth Day Faith Community in June of 2014. At the initiative of some of the African-Americans in our community, we have finally begun to look honestly at the issue of racism within our own community. As might be expected, this discussion has caused no little pain and some bitterness. This is my reflection on our current status.
Racism in Our Small Faith Community?
Texts:
Acts 10:28-35
Col 3:11-16
The inclusion of all people within the worshiping community is a recurring theme in the New Testament. “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Col 3:11) Jesus goes to Samaria;Peter baptizes the gentile Cornelius; slaves and nobles attend the same churches; and so on. Today, we say, “Well, of course, everyone is welcome.” We may forget that inclusion was a huge issue in the early church, and they faced it, actively and purposively. All divisions disappear in the New Creation of being one body in Jesus.
A Theology of the Cross - Part 2
The environmental crisis--especially global climate change--has reached such a point that it is no longer reversible and that considerable further damage to the Earth and us its people is inevitable. Yet very few people--even within the environmental movement--seem to be willing to acknowledge (at least in public) that fact. Along with Part I this sermon along with the lecture Finding Hope in an Environmental Wasteland explore some of the depth of the environmental crises and the forces that make them virtually invulnerable to the usual modes of attack,explores some possible reasons why the American "positive outlook" may be obstructing our view of reality. The two sermons also look at the Christian "theology of glory" and how Christianity may have played a historical role as well as an continuing role in our illusions. Finally all three begin to look at what hope might look like in our situation.
Hope in an Environmental Wasteland
If we can’t fix something, does it make sense to try?
It's too late to prevent climate change; it already happening, and much worse is coming. The powerful forces of consumerism, a capitalist economic system, government, the power of the corporations, and the influence of the media create a web that we will not untangle without profound changes in our society. If we can't actually solve the problems of global warming and climate change, if the results are going to be tragic, where do we find hope? How do we respond? Paradoxically, responses are is popping up everywhere. Something new is afoot.
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