Prayer and physical healing

A roundup of several cases and studies that examine the role of prayer in physical healing. (Via bakersfield.com)

About About Schmidt

About Schmidt is a film that has been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe this is why. Louis Begley, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, notes that

for all the radical changes in the plot and milieu, my most important themes were treated with great intelligence and sensitivity. These are Schmidt's frightful and, I believe, lifelong loneliness; the devastating realization that we can botch a relationship that matters to us above all others — in the event, that between Schmidt and his daughter — even though we have worked hard to make it succeed and believe with some reason that we have done a good job; the way in which our fears of the Other and prejudices against the Other imprison us.

NYTimes article: 'About Schmidt' Was Changed, but Not Its Core

Harvard and the Pyramid

** From a post on the lowcarbfriends.com site by Laura Richards:

There is a brand-new, must-read statement from Harvard's Willett and Stampfer dated December 15, 2002 published at ScientificAmerican.com The title is "Rebuilding the Food Pyramid." Whether or not you are well-versed in Harvard's opposition to the USDA's food pyramid, you will be happy to find that this statement is a comprehensive, yet condensed statement of their position. It is a great article to share with people in your life who are still extolling the low-fat, high-carb mantra.

The article begins with a very good summary of how the recommendations for low-fat, high-carb diets evolved -- including the flaws in the thinking of those who started the movement. They continue to strongly condemn the USDA and nutrition community for failing to recognize the negative health affects of carbohydrate, particularly high GI/GL carbohydrate and for failing to recognize that fats are health. Yes, they are still recommending that we avoid sat fats, but they are backing down a *bit*. They now say that trans fats raise heart disease risk substantially and sat fats only *slightly*. They also go into some detail about their proposed food pyramid.

Read it.

I'll give you $20 for that Blackwing

**Life after death for the legendary No. 2 pencil. [via Boston Globe]

Writers like to think that it is the man or woman sitting upstream from the pencil who may become immortal. But here is the story of a pencil that has achieved immortality all by itself.

We are talking about the legendary Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602, which went out of production in 1998. Up in Writers' Valhalla, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, and Archibald MacLeish are shedding a silent tear. Down here on Earth, Stephen Sondheim, Andre Gregory, and Roger Rosenblatt are scrounging to locate leftover 602s. The pencils once cost 50 cents; now they are selling for as much as $20 apiece on the Internet.

Full article: Fans of pencils pocket No. 2, opt for their No. 1: Blackwing 602

Obesity: solution to a marketing problem

**Yet another book detailing causes for the growing crisis of obesity in America. Michael Pollan in the NY Times Books section tells how the food industry induces people to eat more than they need.

There's only so much food one person can consume (unlike shoes or CD's), or so you would think. But Big Food has been nothing short of ingenious in devising ways to transform its overproduction into our overconsumption -- and body fat. The best parts of this book show how, in the space of two decades, Americans learned to eat, on average, an additional 200 calories a day. In the words of James O. Hill, a physiologist Critser interviewed, getting fat today is less an aberration than ''a normal response to the American environment.''

Some of the credit for creating this new environment belongs to an unheralded businessman by the name of David Wallerstein, the man Critser says introduced ''supersizing'' to America. Today Wallerstein is an executive with McDonald's, but back in the 1960's he worked for a chain of movie theaters, where he labored to expand sales of soda and popcorn -- the high-markup items that theaters depend on for their profitability. Wallerstein tried everything he could think of to goose sales -- two-for-one deals, matinee specials -- but found he couldn't induce customers to buy more than one soda and one bag of popcorn. Why? Because going for seconds makes people feel like pigs.

But Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda -- a lot more -- as long as it came in a single gigantic serving. Thus was born the Big Gulp and, in time, the Big Mac and jumbo fries. Though Ray Kroc himself took some convincing: the McDonald's founder had naively assumed that if people wanted more fries they'd buy another bag. He didn't appreciate how social taboos against gluttony (one of the seven deadly sins, after all) were holding us back. Wallerstein's dubious achievement was to devise the dietary equivalent of a papal dispensation: Supersize it!

Read full review: 'Fat Land': Supersizing America

Repentance

** I got this from an extract of a sermon on esermons.com

Perhaps in our life time the most public statement of repentance was that of President Bill Clinton's. The one he made before a Prayer Breakfast on September 10, 1998. He summed up the task perfectly when he said, "I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned." Then he quoted from a book given him by a Jewish friend in Florida. The book is called "Gates of Repentance."

Clinton read this passage from the book: "Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter. For leaves, birds and animals, turning comes instinctively. But for us, turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong, and this is never easy. It means losing face. It means starting all over again. And this is always painful. It means saying I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change. These things are terribly hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday's ways."

Clinton's quote ended with this prayer: "Lord help us to turn, from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from care-lessness to discipline, from fear to faith. Turn us around, O Lord, and bring us back toward you. Revive our lives as at the beginning and turn us toward each other, Lord, for in isolation there is no life."

Full text of sermon (Requires signup)

Instinctual democracy

**All those in favor of moving to the next veldt, raise your right hoof.

Democracy beats despotism in the animal world.
via NewScientist.com news service 19:00 08 January 03

Democracy wins hands down over despotism when it comes to making choices in an animal group, according to a new theoretical model of collective decisions.

Will naked mail go through?

**Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor lack of package can keep the US Postal Service from getting the mail through. HOT AIR conducted an interesting experiment, which they document in the following article.

Postal Experiments
by Jeff Van Bueren San Francisco, California

Having long been genuine admirers of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which gives amazingly reliable service especially compared with many other countries, our team of investigators decided to test the delivery limits of this immense system. We knew that an item, say, a saucepan, normally would be in a package because of USPS concerns of entanglement in their automated machinery. But what if the item were not wrapped? How patient are postal employees? How honest? How sentimental? In short, how eccentric a behavior on the part of the sender would still result in successful mail delivery?

Testing the Limits
We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting. We discovered that although some items were never delivered, most of the objects of even highly unusual form did get delivered, as long as the items had a definitely ample value of stamps attached. The Postal Service appears to be amazingly tolerant of the foibles of its public and seems occasionally willing to relax specific postal regulations.

Rest of article

Personal consequence and leadership

**Is it unrealistic to expect that members of Congress would make decisions based, at least in part, on consequences to themselves or their families? Rep. Charles Rangel of New York thinks not. On CNN, Rangel said he wants to introduce legislation that would require all young people in the US, men and women with no exceptions, to serve in the military.

When you talk about a war, you're talking about ground troops, you're talking about enlisted people, and they don't come from the kids and members of Congress. . . . I believe that if those calling for war knew their children were more likely to be required to serve and to be placed in harm's way there would be more caution and a greater willingness to work with the international community in dealing with Iraq.

It’s an intriguing prospect, especially the part about including women in the draft. Makes one wonder how President Bush would feel, and what he might do differently, if his daughters would be required to be part of the armed forces that would storm Baghdad.

But this is simplistic. One would hope that enlightened leadership wouldn’t need personal consequence as a basis for decisions. Major policy decisions, especially with regard to foreign affairs, need to be made in a wider context including historical, legal, cultural, military and economic factors.

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to a universal military draft, as it would be one way to insure that everyone would serve their country. But I would be worried if my government were acting on the basis of personal consequences to the individuals in charge. There’s already too much evidence of self-interest in that sphere.

I agree with Tom Black in his article in the Christian Science Sentinel (Jan. 6, 2003) that those who believe in the power of spirituality need to direct their prayers toward supporting the innate ability of policymakers to know and do the right thing.

. . . there are many people who instinctively believe that prayer can unfold God’s wisdom to the vox populi, reveal a wise and intelligent foreign policy for any country, and give policy-makers the wisdom, meekness, and courage to follow God’s direction rather than their own inclinations.

Doing the right thing doesn’t have to be the absolutely best and final right thing -- that smacks of arrogance and self-righteousness. Mary Baker Eddy believed that

Wisdom in human action begins with what is nearest right under the circumstances, and thence achieves the absolute.(Mis 288:13)

All I ask is that decisions involving the general welfare of the country and the world be made from a higher perspective than personal consequence. And that’s what I’m praying for.

Hard-wired for faith, not fear

** I like this meditation from a site that provides ideas for pastoral sermons, part of the christianglobe network.

I am inwardly fashioned for faith, not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear, doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry, my being is gasping for breath--these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence, I breathe freely--these are my native air. A John Hopkins University doctor says, "We do not know why it is that worriers die sooner than the non-worriers, but that is a fact." But I, who am simple of mind, think I know; We are inwardly constructed in nerve and tissue, brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. To live by worry is to live against reality.
--Dr. E. Stanley Jones, Transformed by Thorns, p. 95.

ChristianGlobe.com :: Illustrations

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The most underrated force in global affairs is ...?

**The NY Times for Saturday, Dec 28, 2002 has a major piece on what subjects were "In" and "Out" in 2002 (On Target and Off in 2002.) First in the list of "underrated" is Christianity

It is by far the world's largest religion, and it will continue to hold this position into the foreseeable future; but few of us notice how the character of that faith is being transformed. Over the past century, Christian numbers have been booming in the global south, in Africa, Asia and Latin America. For example, since 1900, the number of African Christians has grown spectacularly from around 10 million to over 360 million. Just within my baby-boomer lifetime, "Western Christianity" has become ever less significant as the faith's center of gravity has shifted.

And as Christianity has been, so to speak, going south, the religion has been adapting very rapidly to the cultures in which it operates. We see an upsurge of charismatic and supernatural-oriented forms of belief and practice. The emergence of southern Christianity constitutes a religious and cultural revolution quite comparable to the Reformation of the 16th century, though on a far vaster scale.

Philip Jenkins is professor of history and religious studies, Pennsylvania State University

NOTE: For more on Jenkins' thesis, see our entry here for December 11, 2002, What is Christianity coming to?

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