Caring for the carer

I'm not entirely sure why I found the short piece, The perfect husband I am not, by Tom Becker, resonating with me. Perhaps it's his sheer honesty about how difficult it is to be continually sympathetic to someone who has a chronic illness. His piece is a good reminder that carers need care too...

Here's how it starts.

My wife’s depression pours light on my own sins. I’m stoic, unsympathetic and critical of her in every way. I’m quick to declare fix-its for her occasional panic episodes. Ever since she was diagnosed with anxiety-induced depression 14 years into our marriage, I’ve waged my own war against the demon of selfishness and, in moments of failure, self-worthlessness.

It may seem obvious, but...

Mission is so easy if only....

Len Hjalmarson has written in his latest post about being neighbours....there's more to the post here.

In January of 2009 a group of pastors gathered to think and dream about what it would look like for the churches in their area to come together to serve the community. They asked the mayor to join them and talk about his dream for the city. They also asked him to talk about hindrances to that dream coming true.
He came with a list of pervasive issues and problems: at-risk kids; elderly shut-ins; decaying housing; hunger and homelessness. Before he started speaking he shared this: “it occurred to me that what our city really needs are good neighbours. The majority of the issues we face would be eliminated or drastically reduced if we could just become a community of people who are great neighbours.”
The pastors left convicted. Here they were asking the major what areas of the city were most in need, and he was telling them that the city could be transformed if Christians would simply live out the second half of the Great Commandment.
The plan they forged is simple — a teaching series on the art of neighbouring. They found that people don’t build relationships with their neighbours because,

1) they don’t see the value in it,
2) lack of time, and
3) lack of trust.

So they came up with this teaching series for this group of churches:
Week 1. taking Jesus seriously – what if Jesus really meant we should love our neighbors?
Week 2. Time: creating space to build relationships with neighbors
Week 3. Trust – embracing the messiness of relationships
They are then equipping their people to actually enter their neighbourhoods and live in them and build relationships.

Len also mentions an essay written by Todd Hiestand, which has apparently been unavailable for a while (it was written in 2007). It's called The Missional Church in Suburbia, and appears on Todd's site. It looks at mission in the urban society, and takes some similar approaches to those of the Australian, Simon Carey Holt.

Palliative Care

We don't have to remind our regular readers that one of our main topics in this blog is the increasing 'grayness' of New Zealand, that is, the proportion of our population that is elderly is increasing.   This is providing challenges for those in charge of infrastructures and social policy.

A recent report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, entitled 'The Quality of Death' ranks New Zealand third out of 40 countries for our quality end-of-life (palliative) care.   (Palliative care means relieving or soothing the symptoms of a disease or disorder without effecting a cure.)    It says: It is no surprise to find countries such as the UK, Australia and New Zealand high in the overall ranking, given their relative wealth, advanced infrastructure and long recognition of the importance of developing national end-of-life healthcare strategies.

As the Maxim Institute notes: The report points out that palliative care makes financial sense, but perhaps more importantly, it challenges us to ask important questions about life and death.

They go on to say:
A doctor's job is, appropriately, to preserve life. But death is also a reality for every person, and must be faced. The "Quality of Death" report ranks various countries' performances in end-of-life care, using a few key indicators: public awareness about death; quality of care available; and cost and availability of that care. New Zealand comes in third behind the UK and Australia. Countries that rank particularly poorly tend to face the challenge of negative taboos or cultural perceptions about death that make palliative care very difficult. Some countries also are challenged by restrictions around the use of painkillers, resulting from concerns about drug trafficking and illicit use.

The remainder of the Maxim Institute's report is on their website and the full report (39 pages of pdf) is available online here.

On being a new minister

There's an excellent post on the Per Crucem ad Lucem site today, entitled: Pastors aren't Prophets - some unsolicited advice for newly-minted ministers. It's by Rick Floyd.

In it he discusses (amongst other things) the need for ministers to gain the respect of their congregation by being a faithful pastor to the people day in and day out - only then can you speak prophetically to them, and have them listen.

You need to be aware that in spite of all our calls for self-care and avoiding burnout, a minister's job is never going to consist of a forty-hour week, with no evening/night calls or weekend work. It's truly a full-time job...though that doesn't mean you mustn't take any time off. As he writes:

One of the modern heresies (but by no means the only one) of the contemporary mainline church, is that you can have something akin to a normal 40 hour a week professional life and be a faithful pastor. It isn’t true. A pastor’s life, and the life of the pastor’s family is necessarily involved in the community of their congregation in season and out of season. Sometimes, even often, it is wonderful; other times it isn’t. That’s the way it goes. It isn’t the Canyon Ranch spa. I often say being a pastor is the best vocation there is, but perhaps the worst job. If you are not called to it, it is something you really don’t want to do.

And a little later:

One of the things I learned was that you have to love your congregants, even the unlovable, of which there are far too many, and who take up a good deal of your time. If and when you find yourself loving them, you know you are on your way to really being a pastor. Some of them you will just never learn to love, and you have to turn them over to God, who does.

Floyd probably packs more wisdom into this one article than you'll find in many a day. Essential reading.

The death of an old person...

"The death of an old person is like the burning of a library." So wrote Alex Haley, the author of Roots, and other stories of African origins. ( Or, if he didn't write it, he 'borrowed' it from his African past, as the words are often thought to be an African proverb. )

It's quoted in an article on caring for old people - I make no apology for this being nine years old (nothing on the Net ever grows old!) - called Aging and Ageism: Can You Have One Without the Other? by Karen Henderson.

The author looks at our attitudes to old people: Everyone gets old. None of us should be surprised or angry; it's a fact of life. But what's also a fact of life is this: we don't treat older people as people. We treat them as a commodity to be used, abused and disposed of as we see fit. We somehow learn to raise our children; we try to give our pets a good life. Why can't we extend the same efforts to our older people?

The article isn't long, but it has plenty of good things to say about older/elderly people (they're always people who are older than me, by the way!) and the way we think about them, and act towards them. It's probably addressed to the inbetween generation - those who have elderly parents and growing children - but it's applicable to anyone, anywhere.

Photo courtesy of Flickr.com