You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘suffering’ tag.
I realize this is a day late, but this was a high point of the meeting we Mormons have biannually to hear from the worldwide Church leadership, whom we honor as prophets and apostles.
When I heard this, I determined that Elder Holland had either been reading my blog post on the Tortured Soul and getting his ideas from it, (I can dream, can’t I) , or perhaps we get our ideas from our common faith and scriptures, or God, himself. Regardless, it is a powerful oratory full of truth which I offer to anyone who cares to listen.
My last edifying voyage into the world of podcasts while working away in my monastic resident existence at the hospital this past month was a rebroadcast of the fantastic Speaking of Faith episode on Depression and the Soul. It really hammered home my own experience in a jarring and powerful way. Read the rest of this entry »
Di at Doctor and Covenants pointed me to this story, where a brain surgeon was operating to remove a mass from a patient and and ended up finding a foot. The story states that this is either a rare type of tumor called a teratoma or is it a rare case of a twin that remained attached to the patients and was totally enveloped into the skull, a condition called fetus in fetu.
The image is striking, and gives a certain visceral reaction, which is largely why pictures like this make their rounds on the internet. Read the rest of this entry »
Isabella Mori, at Change Therapy tagged me earlier this week to participate in Blog Action Day, October 15th, in a crusade to tackle one of the great plagues of mankind, Poverty. I have been very extraordinarily busy this month and my blogging has suffered but I figure better late than never.
It turns out that one simple thing we all can do is click. Yes, you can fight poverty by surfing the internet. I am told that Doctors without Borders, a charity that is currently leading the fight against poverty in the neglected regions as Darfur in the Sudan and in Haiti, can use your help in an internet bid to award the most voted charity 1 million dollars. Please Click here to vote, or you can click here to head on over to Scott Schachters blog and learn more.
My problem remains, I don’t know that I have anything earth shattering or enlightening to share on the subject. I was feeling powerless and paralyzed until I read these words from author Gretchen Rubin at the Happiness project.
One of the most important principles I’ve learned from my happiness research is that although we assume that we act because of the way we feel, often we feel because of the way we act.
This is a case where actions are more powerful than words. My pessimistic side tells me that if there was an easy solution to this, I think we would likely have rid ourselves of it long ago. That doesn’t change the fact that I CAN do something, earth changing or not. So in the spirit of doing what I can, when I have no idea what I can do, other than give to worthy charities such as Oxfam, the Salvation Army, or the Humanitarian Aid fund of my church, I share this video.
This song was written by fellow Mormon Kurt Bestor and captures the poignancy of the problem from God’s perspective in a manner that will rip at your heartstrings. Can you hear the prayer of the children?
Medicine for the brain is incredibly complex. Yet, the joke goes around medical circles that Neurologists are admirers of disease, not treater’s of it. This is far less true now than forty years ago, and is rapidly becoming less and less true everyday, but that small kernel of truth does say something about we who are drawn to the field. I really do find the disease processes that affect brain function seriously fascinating.
We learn almost everything we know about the brain from what happens when things go wrong. Genetic diseases become our laboratory, nature the experimenter, allowing us to learn things we would be monsters for trying to recreate in the lab with people. In fact, Nazi physicians are generally hailed as monsters for doing precisely this, reducing the person to lab rat.
Mind, Soul, and Body 
Recent Comments