They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Them who has gets
and them what don't, won't
and what he don't take
the undertaker takes as you exit
--Them That Has, Gets,
The Andrew Sisters

The dice was loaded from the start
-Romeo and Juliet, Dire Straits

Maybe it's just the whole world
is like central casting.
They got it all rigged before you ever show up
--They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

We’ll never be sick a day in our lives my love
simply because we can’t afford to be
--Mink River, Brian Doyle
__________________

Sunday Homily: The Fallacy of Christian Emotionalism.

Mr. Doyle's characters live on the edge, as do the one of six Americans at or below the poverty line. Their willing health is romantic, but life doesn't deal out romance. Hard facts dictate limited resources, and everyone doesn't get everything.

Thing is, we know it. That is why everyone is afraid to make a move regarding actual health care reformation. We are all very grateful for the drugs we get and the five minutes of the doctor's time. None of us wants to be thrown on the ash heap too soon, and somewhere along the way someone instilled the idea that we have a purpose for roaming this earth (even though for many, that seems to be little beyond patronizing Costcos to lay up 128 oz. bags of artificially-colored chips.)

If we would look at our existence rationally, there are only so many resources, and they are not apportioned equally. You and I both know that we do not get Cadillac health care. We accept something middling if we are fortunate to have some sort of coverage. If we choose to show compassion, we feel for those unfortunate enough to never have been at the receiving end of the bennie chute and so must trudge along with bad teeth and pulling ramps from the side of the road in the hopes of building concoctions to keep them going.

Instead of fearing "death panels", Ranger would welcome them, both at the state and federal levels -- death panels based upon medical realities, based in logical thinking, shucked of the emotionalism and false Christian ideas which swirl about any current efforts to address the thing.

We will not spend much time deconstructing the religious hypocrisy, but if one were to live by The Word, one would not lay up material things and would be buried in a pine box or incinerated (ashes to ashes, dust to dust). How is it the deceased enters the natural flow when hermetically sealed in a locked vault? Jesus does not speak of prolonging life in perpetuity on this physical plane. The Lazaruses and Methuselahs are few and far between. So, perpetuation of life beyond reasonable means is not a part of scripture.

Mercy, compassion and love are, however. The question is, how best to show those qualities? Is it always shown through keeping the organism alive through superhuman means, even when the sentience (soul?) has left the building (=body)? That may be interpreted as a selfish cruelty on the behalf of those who cannot let go.

The system bears a heavy burden during the final days, weeks, months and even years prior to the expiration of a critically ill person. Most Medicare costs are seen then. We prolong life that will benefit naught, except to line some health executive's pockets, and we do it unquestioningly, meeting any opposition with fierce and unthinking opposition.

"All life is sacred", is it not? If so, then we needs define "life", and perhaps differentiate that from existence in extremis. If mercy is the prime objective, that would seem mandatory.

As it stands, emotion and prejudice rule what should be the most rational of decisions. This is not a question of choosing who lives and dies; this IS a question of applying a medical protocol to determine what intervention are not merely heroic, but in fact, futile, and which may bring benefit.

It seems most of us would prefer to reach a reasonable end, knowing that death and taxes are the only sure thing, without extreme measures to extend our lives when there will be no further quality to be wrung from extending the quantity. Death panels could help revitalize our medical system by prioritizing and categorizing states of being and allocating resources in an equable manner. This would be a step in reining in the health care behemoth.

The NYT's Paul Krugman calls us out this week:

"A serious fiscal plan for America would address the long-run drivers of spending, above all health care costs, and it would almost certainly include some kind of tax increase. But we’re not serious: any talk of using Medicare funds effectively is met with shrieks of “death panels,” and the official G.O.P. position — barely challenged by Democrats — appears to be that nobody should ever pay higher taxes" (The Austerity Delusion).

Krugman concludes, "The confidence fairy (= hope) won’t save us from the consequences of our folly." So we languish in a head lock we won't get out of because who will let granny die, or the hydroencephalocele baby who is doomed to die anyway, but who will undergo extravagant outlays of medical resources and funds during its brief existence? Because somewhere in the arcana, Christianity demands that hydroencephalocele's keep breathing until superhuman efforts fail to continue to enable that possibility.

Meanwhile, Ranger has an associate who is caught up in the folly of a poorly administrated health care system of limited resources. She is medically disabled but fairly young and in fairly good health. A recently FDA-approved drug might provide the help she has been seeking to become a more productive member of society.

However, that drug is caught up in a precious Big Pharma + drug manufacturer monopoly: It is not covered by her plan's formulary, and must be ordered by the doctor from the manufacturer (even though FDA-approved.) Someone stands to benefit from this Rube Goldberg distribution scheme, and it is not her. It will cost hundreds of dollars per month, and she will probably not be able to afford this. Yet we choose to afford to allow people like her -- prospective contributing members of society -- to limp along with the minimal resources currently provided.

We live in a country where medical caravans visit the most under-served parts of our country a few times a year and must turn away hundreds each time for the most basic of health care. Ranger contends that precious medical resources like health care professionals should not be providing frivolous services like nose and boob jobs and penis implants. What a revolution THAT would be, if we trained our attention on things that actually mattered.

It is the most human of all questions: What constitutes a life? It is our contention that being brain dead and on life support is not living.

--Lisa and Jim

Today

--Do What You Have to Do,
David Thorpe (1998)

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: "It might have been!'"
--John Greenleaf Whittier

Dum vivimus, vivamus!
[While we live, let us live!]

Neither do men light a candle,
and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick;
and it giveth light unto all that are in the house
--Matthew 5:15

'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever
but slenderly known himself
--King Lear, Shakespeare [I, i]
_______________

Sunday homily: Today.

I recently went to the Mayo Clinic with a friend, who remarked what a dismal experience the clinic was. I did not see it that way.

Sobering, perhaps. Realizing that most people are there because they are unwell but trying to get better, and recognizing that we are all hurtling toward the same end, I was actually uplifted. Of the elderly he said, "But, they're all dying!" "We're all dying," said I.

Tender mercies abound. Frail, frail, the elderly couple at the check in station, he much taller than she, his hand on her neck and shoulder. Well-attired, they are still a handsome couple, but one can imagine him when he was not so tentative. So gently they walk away, he holding under her elbow for her support.

Almost everyone at Mayo except the most blighted manages a smile or a kind word. At the outdoor cafe was overheard numerous phone conversations, all ending with a sincere -- an almost desperate -- "I love you."

Words of encouragement were plentiful. "You're walking better today," even when one could not imagine the walk to be much worse. A towel wrapped around a waist falls, and a worker picks it up and wraps it back around the woman's waist, saying, "We women understand what it is to take care of each other." Such simple grace.

A Mayo visit is sobering in the way that reading the obituaries is. One realizes that a life -- every life -- can be squeezed into two paragraphs: He was a loving (blank), a member of (blank) church or organization; worked (blank); left behind (blank). That's all. There are few grandiose moments, though each one has the potential for small exultations and gratitude.

In college, I declined a job request to be a companion to a resident at the local senior center, but the job fascinated me, nonetheless. The man sought a companion to walk and talk with him for one hour, three days a week. That man may be dead now, and I missed an opportunity to learn another life, and see things through eyes wiser than my own.

What amends have you made today? What pettishness have you avoided? Did you really listen to someone with an open heart? Are you making something beautiful -- discovering your light?

Macbeth's tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow are among the saddest words in English literature. What would happen if, just for today, you lay your burden down?

[Cross-posted at Big Brass Blog]

Guns or Guitars

--Upwards, Kandinsky

I started out clean but I'm jaded
Just phoning it in
Just breaking the skin
--Bent, Matchbox 20

Between who you are
and who you could be
Between how it is
and how it should be
--Dare You to Move, Switchfoot

There's something wrong with me chemically
Something wrong with me inherently
The wrong mix in the wrong genes
I reached the wrong ends by the wrong means
--Wrong, Depeche Mode

Strangled by the wishes of pater,
Hoping for the arm of mater,
Get to me sooner or later
--Holding Back the Years,
Simply Red

Why, you do not even know what
will happen tomorrow.
What is your life? You are a mist that appears
for a little while and then vanishes
--James 4:14
______________

Ranger waxes philosophic. (Next we know, it'll be a review on "The Secret" or "What the BLEEP Do We Know!?", and he'll be franchising energized waters):

Life does not have one beginning or end. Our beginnings and our ends are multiple, some beautiful, sad or just plain insignificant. Significance does not always attach to one's life.
What is the beginning? Is it birth? Is it anything at all?

Is the continuum the process and the life meaningless? Or does meaning accrue to the life, with the process being merely incidental? What assigns value to our lives? How does value accrue to a life which is simply an awareness briefly passing through the time continuum?

Is time even real? Is it circular or linear, does it compress or expand, speed or slow down? Does time even matter, or is it only our consciousness which gives it any relevance. Vacheron and Blancpain would like you to think they are demonstrating a phenomenon of importance, but maybe not. Without man, time seems meaningless. Like so many things, it simply is.

Our lives can be viewed similarly. Individually we are the center of a Twitter- and Facebook-centric universe, which is irrelevant, save to communication companies. Psychologists say narcissism among youth is on the rise -- little wonder. The Twitter egocentric universes exist exist inside a cosmos of expanding and contracting realities, in which any one reality matters little.

If there is a God, life shrinks to insignificance, and if there is none, we are still small, but without any imputed meaning. Did God exist for eternity, and if he did, why is this significant? Our own lives are insignificant regardless of religious, philosophical or political utterances to the contrary. Life gains particularity only at junctures of time, space and awareness.

At 16, a young man wanted a guitar with lessons, to which his mother replied, "Only hillbillies play guitar." Strange reply coming as it did from a Pennsylvania ridgerunner. Regardless, this teen received no guitar, but he did get a brand-new Sears & Roebuck Remington 30-06 rifle -- a hefty piece for a young shooter.

Both rifles and guitars strike chords in men's minds, some major, some minor, some suspended. Both lead to refrains and endings. Was this a beginning or an end? A rifle or a guitar was the choice. Chords and notes, or slings and shot groups?

A rifle can become a way of life, just as can a guitar.