As I'm working on the texts for Sunday, with Jarius and his many resources, as well as, the bleeding woman and her few resources, I keep hearing this hymn. Where ever you are on the social ladder, what ever your situation in live, our hope is in the living Christ. Give me Jesus
Ever since I found out I could be the hostess for the third Friday Five of each month, I have not been able to get the thought of friends out of my mind. Being an only child (all growed up) who moved around a lot in my lifetime, friends have always been very important to me. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "The way to have a friend is to be a friend."
So today let's write about the different kinds of friends we have, like childhood friends, lost friends, tennis friends, work friends, and the list goes on. List 5 different types of friends you have had in your life and what they were/are like.
As a bonus, put a link to a new (to you) blogging friend and introduce us!
1. Friends from "back home" I've lost touch with most of them except that a certain well know social networking site has brought some of them back into my life. It happens that I attended K-12 in a school system with only one each of elementary, jr high, & high school. There are 12 of us who went through all those grades together. And, yet, upon graduation, I lost touch with them. So that time suck social network site has brought back some folks.
2. Camp friends Starting in 4th grade I went to church camp every summer and even went as an adult while in college. I really appreciated some of those intense one week friendships. A few lasted a little longer through letters or occasional phone calls. I am amazed at the impact those folks had.
3. nearby clergy friends I have intentionally worked to have friends but in the circles I travel that means mostly clergy. I am grateful for my Lectionary Lunch group and other F2F clergy who are friends.
4. friends who were there For many different reasons during different seasons of my life, there have been the friends who were there. These days I don't talk to any of them very often but they still count as my closest friends because they already know the story from living it with me.
5. technologically connected friends Not surprisingly, there are RevGalBlogPals whom I consider friends. I also have folks that are on other technologically enabled means of connection that I consider, if not friends, close aquaintances. I've been on some preacher-type email lists since 98 or 99 and recognize the personalities even if I could not pick them out of a crowd of 3. Even without the visual, or in real life, connection, I consider them a part of my life, too. I have cried at the deaths of folks I only knew through the internet so I think they count.
Bonus, minus: I added a couple of folks that I follow because of BE 2.0 but I can't get the link to post correctly.
I saw this in a longer story about the church at The UM Portal and thought it was worth passing along.
A story tells of St. Francis of Assisi being escorted through the opulence of the Vatican vaults in Rome. The curate said: “See Francis! No longer must the church say with Peter and John, ‘Silver and gold have we none!’”
To which the saint responded, “But can you say with Peter and John, ‘Rise up and walk’?”
The good news is that I am actually typing this myself so there's physical improvement! I switched from Orencia which seems not to work very effectively for me (it seemed to have some benefit but not enough to decrease the "supportive bridge" medicines or to reach the prior level of functioning that had been reached on Humira or Remicade) to Enbrel. Yesterday was the 2nd dose of Enbrel so I don't know about the total amount of effectiveness yet. I have high hopes because it functions like Humira and Remicade both of which worked well for as long as they were effective.
The bad news is I am typing in a modified way because I have 3 stitches in the end of my ring finger. Other bad news is that the power supply on the desktop (faster with better keyboard) died. The new one arrived and the plug for the hard drive was the wrong kind. So no further training or use of DNS for now and limited typing before I have to quit.
And there have been more hospitalizations and serious illness since Christmas than in the last 6 months. So the dissertation is pathetically lagging. It almost seems like a conspiracy to keep me from working on it in any significant way.
Meanwhile, both girls are significantly involved in sports and music so life is incredibily busy. And, the small raise in salary helped me move forward in hiring, rather than merely wishing to hire, domestic goddesses!
"It is necessary to recover some basic dimensions of finances, that is, the primacy of labor over capital, of human relationships over mere financial transactions, of ethics over the sole criterion of efficacy."
-- Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, on the global financial crisis (quoted by zenit.org)
To make a long story long, I really need for Dragon naturally speaking to work correctly. So I have to train it. Therefore, you will get posts that are too long and have too much detail with the sole purpose being to help me train DNS.
I sincerely apologize for the drudgery, the whining, and the extraordinary amount of detail that is completely unnecessary. If you are looking for an upside: it does put something to read on my blog.
I passed comprehensive exams! I was convinced that I would receive conditions (conditions must be completed before beginning anything to do with the dissertation). I received a question that was dramatically different from what I was told to expect. When I finished answering the question asked, I knew that I would have a condition related to that. But I didn't.
There's a five person committee (professors from the department) that prepares the essay questions for each student. Most of the professors will communicate with the student and give some indication of the nature of the questions to be asked, the areas to be covered, or specific items that are “helpful” to know -- which usually means “memorize” this. In many ways, through professors and students, the repeated advice was “know” the theories and their theorists.
It was a huge compliment when, following the oral interview with all five professors, my chair said to me, “of all those sitting for comps this time, it was very clear you had the best grasp of theory." When I met with her a week later she asked, “has it sunk in yet?” I said, I keep wondering if they really meant it. And if maybe I got a “preacher pass.” She said, “let me assure you there is no such thing. You earned it.”
So now I am officially admitted to candidacy, and in dissertation phase. I'm working on clergy and grief. I'm still working on defining the parameters but if you would be willing to be considered for an interview say-so in the comments.
TMI Chapter 2: rheumatoid arthritis and “Big Dog” medicine
The Remicade begin failing in the spring . Anticipating the need to change to a different biologic, my RA doctor gave me brochures for Orencia and Rituxan in June. And the head nurse was given instructions to begin the paperwork to get insurance approval. During the July appointment, approval in not yet been received and the doctor’s clinic had been bought out/merged with a larger group which required a completely different computer system, different billing department, different insurance department, different lab protocols, and different lab personnel.
By August the office changes were not as stressful. And, they had received insurance approval three days before my appointment day. good enough. So I started Orencia August 4 and had appointments at two week intervals for the first three doses. I found out that Orencia is a “slow load" During the first infusion (it is delivered via I. V.), and that results are not usually noticeable until three months. That was well past the date for comprehensive exams and I was quite concerned about my ability to function. I was having pain that my doctor identified as nerve pain rather than the usual muscle and joint pain. I don't remember my RA being inflamed enough to add nerve pain during any previous flares. But once identified, Lyrica was added. It made a dramatic difference in three days time. It gave me, “Swiss cheese” brain but managed the pain.
So my thought processes were not what I wanted. I had significant difficulty walking, and my shoulders were very painful. But my hands were fine for typing and writing.
I'm now far enough into the dosing that I can tell it is working, but it's not fully effective yet. At least that's my hope; that I will continue to feel better. I still battle fatigue that is very thick. As a side note,. There was an interesting event that developed in October when the insurance declined to pay for the Orencia . Yes, The pre-approved medicine was denied. It is billed at $3000 per dose. I think it's straightened out now, but it made for some frustrating phone calls that involved too much Muzak and too many transfers with not enough clear answers.
When the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC was designed, there was a controversy over which design should be selected. A wonderful young Asian-American artist submitted an unusual design -- a partially buried, long wall of polished black granite. Most who saw the proposal did not like it at first. It did not look like a typical memorial. There were no heroic figures of warriors. There were no representative generals. All that was there were a long list of all those who had fallen in the American forces in Vietnam.
Thousands of names were listed, not in alphabetical order, for that would be like listing them in the phone book, but rather in the order of the date in which they fell.
If you have ever visited the Vietnam Memorial, you know that it has a stunning effect. The most memorable effects are those rows and rows of names. So many names. And there is an additional effect. As we stand at the wall, looking at the names, suddenly we realize that we see our won face reflected in the polished black granite. We stand there, looking at ourselves, our own reflection, our own face, with all the names of the dead.
In a way, this is what All Saints' is like. We remember the saints, all of them, not just the more notable martyrs, but your Sunday school teachers when you were a child, your parents, the preacher, all those who have preceded you in this church and in the faith. And yet, as we remember their names, we see ourselves reflected in them. We join the procession down through the ages. We take our places along with them. We focus on the saints and we see our own contemporary faces reflected in their names.
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