Merry Christmas 2021 - from our house to yours

 

 

Dear friends and family:

This time last year most of us thought that by now we'd be reminiscing about Covid-19 ("Wow, wasn't that an incredible time?"), not talking about it as a real and present threat. But here we are. It's affected and dictated so much of our lives these past two years. We can take comfort, I suppose, in the fact that (despite experiencing it differently depending on our circumstances) we really are all in it together.

I wanted to share a little bit about what's been going on in our lives this past year. 

Jonathan turned 19 in September. He has coped amazingly well with the changes and disruptions Covid has caused. He's actually been fortunate because when schools closed in January and April, he was able to keep attending because the province made provision for special needs students to go in-person. His School-to-Community class was the only class in the brand-new Kingston Secondary School for a lot of the time this past winter. Jonathan loved going to school and being with his crew of friends. He was also able to attend Extend-a-Family day camp for six weeks this summer, giving some normalcy to his summer break. Jonathan is a tall, busy guy who loves watching garbage truck videos on his iPad, sorting the recycling, and adjusting neighbours' shovels and brooms on their porches.

The last six months have been a time of concern for us with Jonathan's seizures. They've been fairly well contained with meds for the past few years; normally he'd have maybe 2 or 3 seizures a year. But since June he has had about 17. One involved a trip to the Emergency Department after he fell during a seizure at school and hit his head hard on the floor. He was fine, but it's meant a lot of time working with his doctor to adjust his medications and try to get the right combination. He's now been seizure-free for four weeks, so we're hopeful. In January he will transition from pediatric neurology to adult neurology; this means meeting a new doctor who will take over his care. The pediatric neurologist has been very helpful, but he really needs adult services now and we've been waiting quite a while for this transfer to take place.

Allison is 23 now and well into her Queen's degree work in Linguistics. She has really found her niche with this area of study. Last winter she took three online linguistics courses; this fall she took two online language courses and an on-campus course. Queen's is going online for at least the first half of the Winter 2022 term because of Covid, so she'll be back to all-online again. Allison has adjusted well to all the disruptions and has worked diligently on her courses. In her free time she's enjoyed outings with her social club, reading, playing games, and going for walks.

 

Richard continues to work as a nurse at Kingston General Hospital, although for two months this spring he was redeployed to Hotel Dieu Hospital while KGH was making changes to accommodate Covid patients from out-of-area. He enjoyed this temporary change but is now back to his regular position in Orthopedics. Most of Rich's sports and volunteer opportunities have been put on hold due to Covid, but this fall he enjoyed running and volunteering on Saturday mornings with Parkrun, an organization that holds non-competitive 5k runs on Saturdays all over the world. He's also made a point of getting together regularly with a fellow from church for a little informal baseball. (Jonathan enjoys these outings as well, especially picking up all the balls that have been hit into the outfield.)

 

I (Jeannie) have continued working as an online instructor at Queen's, although I'll be phasing that out next spring; I'm feeling it's time to dial back my university work and do something different. I recently started working as a copyeditor for a local news organization and while that's been sporadic so far, I really enjoy it.

I was glad to be able to go to PEI this summer and see Dad. I had not seen him since August 2019 (at which time he was in the hospital and hadn't even moved yet to the nursing home where he lives now). Though we didn't go to the Island as a family, my brother Errol and I went down in July for a week; I was grateful for this opportunity to see Dad and my brother Lincoln and other relatives. Dad is not well, but he is holding his own, always calm and stoic and accepting of what life brings.

Other big news for me was that I had a second eye surgery earlier this month to improve my double vision. I'd had one surgery (on my inner eye muscles) in Sept. 2019, and there was some improvement but it didn't last. This time the surgeon tightened my outer eye muscles (I know: ewww, right?). It's only been a couple of weeks but it seems to have made a really significant improvement so far. So I'm grateful to have been able to get that done.

I had three publications this year:  

• My short story "End of October" was published at Reckon Review
• My poem "Mary" was published at Voidspace (it's based on Mary's Magnificat and was a response to the journal's challenge to write a poem using only the letters in "Merry Christmas")
• My poem "Gazing upward at night, with Chesterton" was posted on the local library's Poetry Blackboard as part of our Poet Laureate's "Joy Journal" series. 

It has not been the most creatively productive time for me during Covid, but I have done some good reading (see my end-of-year book post HERE) and have watched some excellent TV series including Poldark, Victoria, Sanditon, Cranford, Wives & Daughters, Schitts' Creek, and Belgravia. I've found it so relaxing just to just sit down in the evening, enter into the lives of fictional characters, and forget about Covid for an hour. 

 As it stands now, Kingston is not doing great with Covid. After having an amazingly low case count for a year and a half, our city's seen a big rise in numbers in the last few weeks as a result of the Omicron variant. Richard and I have already had our booster shots; the kids will get theirs on Boxing Day. We just continue trying to live as wisely and safely as possible, staying home when we can, and following the protocols. But I can't deny that there's kind of an ominous pall over everything right now that makes it hard to get into "the Christmas spirit."

Still, I was thinking about these lines from How The Grinch Stole Christmas:

He couldn't stop Christmas from coming: it came!
Somehow or other, it came just the same.

Despite the uncertainty and tragedy in our world right now -- and really, when has there ever been a time in history that there was no uncertainty and tragedy? --  Christmas comes. Christmas comes because Jesus comes. As the carol says, "He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found." 

No matter what your religious celebrations and observances may be -- or if you have none at all -- may we experience peace, friendship, and hope this season and in 2022, and may we do all in our power to ensure that others experience them too. 

Thank you for being a part of our lives.

Jeannie, Richard, Allison, and Jonathan

My year of reading - 2021 edition

 

  

It's time for my end-of-year list of all the books I've read in the past year, with mini-reviews. I'm not going to star them this time; sometimes I have a hard time deciding between a 4 and a 5, and I'm pretty sure you'll be able to tell from my descriptions what I thought of the book. 

Note that I've broken up the nonfiction section thematically since so many of the books I read were clustered by theme.

NONFICTION 

RACE AND JUSTICE:

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.
I think this was the first book I read in 2021, and I honestly have not stopped thinking about it. Wilkerson talks about how the concept of caste puts people in a hierarchy so that every aspect of their lives is judged to legitimize where they've been placed. She describes caste with this memorable image: "As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance." Wilkerson applies the concept of caste to three major groups -- Black people in America, the Untouchables in India, and Jews in Nazi Germany -- to explain how it functions. An incredible, thought-provoking, beautifully written book.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi.
This has been one of the "everyone's talking about it" books for the past two years, and it is so interesting. It's part memoir, part theory: Kendi describes experiences and stages in his own life to illustrate his changing views of racism and the development of his antiracist model. For Kendi, racism is a system composed of racist inequities, racist policies (which create and entrench the inequities), and racist ideas (which justify the inequities). I learned a lot from this book and am eager to read his previous one, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice by Jemar Tisby.
Tisby is a history professor and author of The Color of Compromise (which I read last year and which details the tendency of the American Christian church to compromise with racism at so many points in its history). In this second book he gives practical suggestions for readers to combat racism in their own spheres, using a model called ARC: Awareness, Relationships, and Commitment.

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism by Amber Ruffin. 
In this book, Ruffin (who writes and presents on Seth Meyers' late-night show) talks about the experiences her sister Lacey Lamar has had living as a Black woman in Nebraska: weird comments, microaggressions, bizarre assumptions about Black people, etc. It's not exactly a well-written book -- it's really more like a standup routine and might have benefited from a few more rounds with an editor's pencil -- but it's funny and shocking. It definitely lives up to its title: many of the things that happen to Lacey are likely unbelievable to a white person but all too familiar to Black Americans.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stephenson.
This memoir (which was also made into a movie, though I haven't seen it) is about Stephenson's work as a lawyer in the South seeking justice for (primarily Black) clients who have been wrongly accused or convicted, who are sentenced to life imprisonment as children, or who are languishing in the system without proper representation. The book lays bare the injustice and inequity in the American legal system, but Stephenson's compassionate efforts and the supportive communities that rallied behind many of his clients are inspiring. Excellent book.

Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States by Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead. 
This book by two sociologists focuses on Christian nationalism: the belief that the US is a Christian nation and that the entire social order must be structured around that reality. It goes into a lot of detail about how Americans' opinions on issues like immigration and refugees, gun control, etc. are shaped by a Christian nationalist mindset.

GENDER AND FAITH:

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Wow. This one was a lot to take in. Du Mez is a historian, and she presents in convincing detail a history of the role "militant masculinity" has played in white American evangelical Christianity. Adopting masculine heroes that are more cultural than Biblical, evangelicals have fashioned a view of masculinity based on violence, authoritarianism, conservative values, and resistance to women's and LGBTQIA rights. A very eye-opening book.

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr.
Another really good historical analysis. Here Barr discusses how in every stage of Christian history (early church, middle ages, Reformation, Bible translation, etc.), women's voices have been edged out or the focus shifted to marriage, motherhood, and homemaking as women's proper (only) sphere.  Yet parallel to that she also reveals an amazing, influential history of Christian women leading, teaching, and preaching in the face of constant efforts (by church, broader culture, or both) to thwart them. Really a worthwhile read.

Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke.
This is a very interesting, accessible and much-needed book. Hartke, a trans man, addresses many Scripture passages and real-life stories in order to help readers understand transgender issues in relation to faith and inclusive Christian community.

  CHRISTIAN LIFE:

Love Matters More: How Fighting To Be Right Keeps Us From Loving Like Jesus by Jared Byas.
This is a book about love and truth. Byas talks about how our well-intended efforts to "speak the truth in love" often fail because we forget that we don't have the absolute truth, or we mix shame and judgment in with the truth and end up failing to love. He reminds us that wisdom is a higher form of truth than certainty and that humility is essential to all of our efforts to convey truth. I really enjoyed this one.

Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans (with Jeff Chu).
When Evans died in 2019 at the age of 38, she was in the middle of writing this book. Her husband asked close friend Jeff Chu to finish it; the result is this warm, encouraging book of essays. Evans reflects on women in Scripture and in her own life who said yes to God; she shares her own doubts and encourages readers to embrace questioning rather than certainty; she talks about letting ourselves be vulnerable; she (very poignantly, now) meditates on death and resurrection; and she constantly reminds us of the compelling beauty of the story of Jesus. There's such a sense of settled peace in this book; it's a real gift. But it's also so sad to think that this is the last book of hers we'll read.

 AUTISM AND DISABILITY:

On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith & the Gifts of Neurodiversity by Daniel Bowman, Jr.
In this memoir-in-essays, Bowman first talks about receiving an autism diagnosis in 2015 after experiencing serious depressive episodes and meltdowns that drove him and his wife to separate. This diagnosis explained his lifelong sense of not fitting in and gave him a new narrative for his life. Then in short, evocative essays, he discusses many different issues and themes, all through the lens of being an autistic person: reading and writing poetry, teaching, volunteering at an arts community, choosing NOT to volunteer for church service, riding his motorcycle, being a husband and parent, crying, autistic representation, and more. Of great interest, as well, are three interviews Bowman has done with people who reached out to know more about his life and about autism. There is so much packed into this book: it's one man's life, but it's also a meditation on art, community, faith, and neurodiversity. Beautiful and moving.

We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation by Eric Garcia.
In this book, autistic journalist Garcia gives an overview of the current landscape of autism in America. There's a chapter on education and academic accommodations, one on housing, one on love and relationships, one on work and employment, etc. In each chapter he explains some details of his own life as an autistic person navigating this particular area, introduces us to the experiences and insights of other autistics, and explores some of the historical background and policies that affect how autistic people function in and contribute to society. The structure is really interesting, and Garcia conveys a lot of information while also debunking myths and stereotypes about autism.

Blind Man's Bluff by James Tate Hill.
Very engrossing memoir about Hill's loss of vision (due to a hereditary eye disease) at age 16 and how he essentially tried to hide his blindness from the world for 15 years, with results that are both funny and sad. Really liked this.

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty.
This unique, delightful book covers a year in the life of 15-year-old McAnulty, an autistic Irish teenager. In his diary entries he describes his passion for and knowledge about the natural world, his conservationist efforts, and his everyday life with his family and at school. He is an incredible writer whose joy in nature is infectious. "The night crackles as the storm of flitting [moths] moves off. We jump up and down and hug each other, tension leaking out. We chat and look at the sky, sparkling with Orion, Seven Sisters and the Plough. This is us, standing here. All the best part of us, and another moment etched in our memories, to be invited back and relived in conversations for years to come. Remember that night, when fluttering stars calmed a storm in all of us."

 MEMOIR, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ESSAYS:

We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing by Jillian Horton.
This is an excellent memoir that centers on a retreat Horton attended for burned-out doctors. She was skeptical at first about what a weekend retreat could do to alleviate her sense of exhaustion and despair. But as she and the other doctors opened up to one another they were able to help each other let go of guilt, practice compassion for themselves and others, and acknowledge that the medical profession itself is set up in a way that fosters stress and burnout. Very moving book; I loved it.

Big Reader: Essays by Susan Olding.
In this beautiful book of essays, Olding shows how beloved books can help us make sense of life experiences and memories. She writes of her mother's vision loss (and accompanying inability to read), the breakup of her marriage, her attempts to connect with the daughter of her new husband, and more -- revealing how the books and stories we read can also, in a sense, end up reading our lives. Olding is such a wonderful writer.

The Answer Is...: Reflections on My Life by Alex Trebek.
This book by the late Jeopardy host is not really a sustained autobiography so much as a series of snapshots of different stages of his life, from childhood right through to his work on Jeopardy. It answers many questions fans might have about his life and work and is quite entertaining and upbeat.

POETRY

I read a few very good collections of poetry this year: 

Ways We Vanish by Todd Dillard 

The Last Bridge is Home by Rodd Whelpley 

And Drought Will Follow by Lee Potts

Late Summer Flowers by Julian Day

The Tradition by Jericho Brown 

Good Bones and Goldenrod by Maggie Smith

I tend to discover a lot of individual poems on Twitter, but I really need to read more collections.

FICTION

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.
In this fantasy novel, a young woman named Nora, brought to despair by personal failures and regrets, is considering ending her own life. Then she finds herself in the Midnight Library, which is full of books telling the stories of other lives she might have lived if she had made different choices. Nora is given the opportunity to try some of these lives and see if she can find one that would make her happier than her real life has. This novel is kind of a cross between It's a Wonderful Life and Choose Your Own Adventure. I loved it.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.
This book (also an excellent movie) is about Starr, a Black teenager feeling pulled between the relatively poor neighbourhood where her family lives and the mostly-white prep school she attends. When her childhood friend is killed by police in a traffic stop as she looks on, Starr's life becomes even more complicated; she has to testify before a grand jury and decide how to use her voice to contribute to change. I think this book (and movie) should be required reading/viewing for anyone wanting to understand the complexities of the Black experience in America.

Ross Poldark by Winston Graham.
This is the first in Graham's 12-novel Poldark series about a man who returns to Cornwall, England after fighting in the Revolutionary War, only to find his father dead, his estate in shambles, and his childhood sweetheart engaged to his cousin. I read it because I watched the entire Poldark TV series this year and absolutely loved it. The book was good, and I enjoyed it, but I haven't yet made a point of reading any of the other novels in the series. If you haven't watched Poldark, you should -- it's so good.

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.
This is a beautiful novel, similar in tone and style to Berry's Hannah Coulter, which I read a couple of years ago. Like that book, Jayber Crow reads more like a memoir than a novel. After losing his parents and then the surrogate parents who raised him, Jayber leaves home for the big city but then returns to become the barber in his small hometown of Port William (a fictional Kentucky town). He reflects on his work there, his interactions with the townspeople, and especially his love for a young woman who marries an undeserving man. This novel is poignant and lovely.

Jack by Marilynne Robinson.
This is the fourth novel in Robinson's Gilead sequence, after Gilead (Rev. John Ames' letter to his young son), Home (about Ames' friend Rev. Robert Boughton, his daughter Glory, and his ne'er-do-well son Jack), and Lila (about Ames' wife). Jack is essentially about Jack Boughton's relationship with his Black lover, Della. Frankly, I found this book really, really tiresome. It begins with 75 pages of dialogue between Jack and Della. I pushed through because Robinson is a gifted writer and I hoped for an ultimate payoff -- but Jack's arch, pathetic tone, his self-recriminations and self-justifications, were just too much. There were moments where I sympathized with his pitiful attempts to become a respectable man, and I'm certain there's some deep spiritual message in this prodigal son narrative -- but overall the reading experience for me was tedious. 

 

Well! Sorry to end on a bit of a downer note with that last one. But overall this was another good year of reading for me. I hope my list gives you some good ideas for your own reading in 2022. I'd love to hear your thoughts below in the comments: whether you've read any of these books, agreed or disagreed with my assessment of them, have other books to recommend, or whatever.

 

Five Minute Friday: EXPECTATION

 Today I'm linking up with the Five Minute Friday community, writing for five minutes on a given prompt.

This week's word is EXPECTATION.

One thing the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us is to hold our expectations lightly. 

Something hopeful in us urges us to make plans, so we do -- but there's always some kind of caveat, spoken or unspoken, in the background, like 

"Assuming we don't have new pandemic guidelines." 

"If things don't change in the meantime." 

"As long as we're still allowed to do that kind of thing." 

"We might feel differently when it gets closer to the time." 

The certainty we used to have about how things will work out is a lot more tenuous now.

We're approaching a second Covid Christmas. (Who would have expected that, a year ago?) Christmas comes with its own special set of expectations around socializing, gift-giving, travel, church ... it can feel overwhelming at the best of times.

This year I think one of the best gifts we can give each other, and ourselves, is the gift of lightly-held expectations. After all, any sense of control we had was an illusion -- surely Covid's taught us that too.

It's hard to accept changed traditions and scaled-back or abandoned plans. But in a way, I think we honour those who have suffered from or lost loved ones to this awful virus, and those working tirelessly to protect us from it, if we stop assuming our plans have to be perfectly executed and just acknowledge that we can't do it all, have it all, be all things to all people. It's OK to release our grip on expectations. And the truth is, other people may not be at all disappointed in us when we do -- they're often relieved and grateful. Sometimes the expectations are really all in our own minds.

Today I was reading this Bible passage:

"When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son,
born of woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who were under the law,
so that we might receive adoption as his children."
Galatians 4:4-5

Isn't "the fullness of time" a beautiful phrase? God's plan unfolding just as it should, when it should. Expectations fulfilled at just the right juncture in history.

In this Advent season, let's hold our expectations lightly ... and our hope tightly.

Five Minute Friday: HIDE

Today I'm linking up with the Five Minute Friday community, writing for five minutes on a given prompt. 

This week's word is HIDE.

 

image CBC.ca

 

The other day I went for a walk, and on my way home I met a woman walking a dog. I didn't realize until we got closer that it was a woman I knew from church: not a close friend, but someone I'd always found very easy to talk to and have had good conversations with. 

She said with a big smile, "How are you?" and I said, "Well, to be honest..." 

We stood there for about ten minutes, talking. I told her how tough it's been these past few months with Jonathan's seizures -- how he has gone from having 2 or 3 a year to having 15 in the past five months, and how he fell during a seizure at school this week and was taken to the emergency department by ambulance. He is fine, with no serious aftereffects of his fall, and his doctor is working with us trying to get the right combination of medication to control the seizures. But it's been very stressful.

So I told her all this. Then we segued into talking about what our kids were up to in general, church stuff, how we were handling Covid, etc.

When we parted ways, she said, "It's good to actually TALK to people, to tell them our s**t when they ask us how we're doing."

She's right. It's a real temptation to just hide our stress and anxiety behind a casual "I'm fine." To be honest, sometimes that's what the other person expects anyway; they meant "How are you" as a pleasantry and weren't expecting a full report. But in this case I took the chance because I knew this woman would be interested, and we had a really life-giving conversation.

Covid-19 has been isolating; following distancing protocols is appropriate, of course, but on a deeper level we can easily get in the habit of hiding in our homes and behind our masks. Taking the time to ask someone how they're really doing, and answering honestly when we're asked, takes some of that isolation away.

The opposite of love

 

The other day I tweeted the following:

"Finish the sentence: ONE word only. 'The opposite of love is _________.'" 

Before posting it, I debated whether it was even correct to use the word opposite in relation to love -- should I have said "incompatible with love" or something else instead? But I decided just to keep it simple.

The tweet got close to 100 replies, and BY FAR the most common response was indifference, followed closely by its near-synonym, apathy. This makes a lot of sense. It's impossible to truly love something or someone if you really don't care about them. Love implies a warmth and a sense of personal investment that are lacking in cool, distant indifference. And on a broader scale, apathy and indifference have contributed to many atrocities: assuming someone else will deal with it, not seeing how it affects me, not bothering to learn more ... as one tweeter, Gabe Posey, put it, "Apathy, on judgment day, will probably carry the highest tally for total deaths." That's sobering.

Another very common answer was fear. Some responders who used this word mentioned the well-known Bible passage: "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." (1 John 4:18) It's true that the Bible tells us to fear God -- but I think that kind of fear is more a sense of reverence and awe, not the terror of punishment that John is talking about. If we know we are truly loved no matter what, then we can live freely without fear of that love being suddenly yanked away. 

Another response that appeared several times was control. That one really struck me: is it ever possible to control another person in a loving way? Parents of young children do have to exert a fair amount of control over their children's coming and going, activities, etc. But that kind of control is meant to be temporary and have a specific purpose -- the child's growth and independence. It's not a wielding of power for its own sake or for self-protection.

There were many other words that appeared less frequently but were very striking:

- malice: It's impossible to take pleasure in hurting someone you love.

- pride: I think there can be a good side to pride (there's nothing wrong with taking satisfaction in your achievements), but having an excessively high view of yourself inevitably puts others below you, which isn't consistent with love.

- selfishness: Always putting yourself first makes it awfully difficult to love. (Though I'd distinguish selfishness from self-care, which Parker Palmer calls stewardship of the gift we were put on earth to give: our unique selves.)

- jealousy: Resenting others for what they have and you don't can hinder love.

- neglect: This is in the apathy/indifference camp, I think, and suggests that there's something specific you need to do or pay attention to -- and you just don't do it.

- tolerance: This is an interesting one. It sounds good, but it's actually kind of passive-aggressive: I'm a good person because I let you (or your ideas) exist! That doesn't sound like love.

- dishonesty: Love and truth are so closely linked; how can one exist without the other?

And there were some fun responses, too:

- evol and vole: Thanks for coming out, guys.

- kale. Sigh. There's always one, isn't there.

I'm sorry I haven't listed every single reply; there were a lot! You can read them all here.

Thinking about all these opposites of love gave me a renewed appreciation for what love is. Love is invested. It cares. It is courageous, and it makes others courageous. It frees. It wants only the best. It sees dignity in the other and acts for the good of the other. It enjoys others' joy. It takes responsibility. It accepts. It is truthful.

That sounds like a tall order. It's truly a life's work to love well and to recognize that we ourselves are worthy of love and are loved.

You are loved. You are a person of dignity and worth and you embody, in a unique way, the love that created the world and holds it together. I'm grateful for you.

 

Image: Unsplash

 

 

Five Minute Friday: BROKEN

Today I'm linking up with the Five Minute Friday community, writing for five minutes on a given prompt. This week's word is BROKEN.

 

I got my first Covid-19 vaccine (Covishield by AstraZeneca) on Tuesday afternoon. The vaccine rollout in Ontario has been quite confusing, so I felt fortunate to receive it. 

I went to bed that night feeling fine, but for the rest of the night my sleep was broken. I woke at midnight feeling cold: not exactly shivering, but as if I were lying in an envelope of cold. I slept fitfully, then woke feeling warm -- not burning up, just too warm.

About 4 a.m. I went to the bathroom and could feel my heart racing. I went back to bed and tried to relax and breathe deeply to slow it down, but it kept hammering.

At 6 a.m. I got up; Richard and Jonathan were already upstairs. I did a couple of readings on my home blood pressure monitor, and my heart rate was 119 beats per minute. When I told Richard that, his eyes widened and he said, "What? You need to call the doctor." I said, "I think I need to go to Emerg."

I took a taxi to the Emergency Department; we were having a freak April snowfall and the lights along the waterfront looked beautiful in the falling snow. 

The man at Emerg reception asked me the usual Covid-19-related questions and I kept saying "I am feverish, but I think it's the vaccine. I do have a headache, but I think it's the vaccine." The triage nurse took my blood pressure again; my heart rate was 137.

Soon I was called in and directed to a bed. A technician came in and hooked me up for an ECG. A nurse introduced herself and a doctor came in, checked me out, and ordered blood work. He said he suspected the fast heartbeat might be a reaction to the vaccine, especially since I had also experienced chills and fever.

The ward was crowded but quiet. Because no visitors are allowed in Emerg due to Covid-19, the only voices were of staff talking to patients and each other. At 7 a.m. it was time for shift change, and I listened as a departing nurse updated an incoming one on the patients in the various cubicles, including me: "Tachycardia, patient says no chest pain or shortness of breath." I kept looking up at the monitor showing my heartbeat; at last it was starting to slow to around 100.

Hours passed. I just lay there messaging back and forth with Rich and my sister-in-law about what was happening. Suddenly I was overcome with nausea and rang the call bell. The nurse rushed to get me a bag to throw up in, and the doctor looked in sympathetically and said they'd start IV fluids with something to ease the nausea. The nurse said, "When you were vomiting, your heart rate shot up to about 140, but it's back down under 100 now." Yikes.

 Another team -- med student, cardiology tech, and nurse -- came in and did a second ECG. They were all very friendly and commended me for getting the vaccine.

After a while the doctor came back and said there was nothing abnormal in my ECGs or blood work -- nothing to indicate a clot or heart attack. He said since my blood pressure was good and my heart rate was stabilizing, I should go home and relax for 24 hours, and if it worsened  I should come back in. Fortunately I didn't have to -- but I was wiped-out from lack of sleep, the stress of being in hospital, and the toll of having my heart racing at 2x normal speed for several hours. I was in bed before 8:00 Wednesday night. 

I guess it's not 100% certain that the shot caused the accelerated heartbeat, but it does seem like the most likely explanation. There's a saying that "The cure is worse than the disease," but not in this case. In spite of what I went through I'm still grateful I got vaccinated. As I lay there for what ended up being about five hours, I thought about the more than 40 patients in the hospital's Covid-19 unit -- all but one or two of them having been transferred from other parts of the province where case numbers are much more overwhelming than they are here in Kingston. I wondered what it would be like to be fighting for your life, on a ventilator, being taken to a hospital three or four hours from home, wondering when you might get home or if you ever would, helplessly worrying about other family members who were also sick in hospital somewhere else. 

The heart thing was worrying, and I'll be apprehensive when August rolls around and I'm due for my second dose -- but I don't want to get Covid-19, and I don't want to give it to someone else. If the vaccination can cause the chain of spread to be broken, it's worth it.

 

 

What I need to hear from Christian leaders

 

Recently an investigative report was released detailing Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias’s years-long history of sexually abusing massage therapists, soliciting and collecting photos of women, grooming women and exchanging sexually explicit messages with them, and deceiving ministry colleagues about his actions. These revelations have rocked the evangelical Christian world.

One of our church’s leaders shared on Facebook a post by Greg Koukl, head of Stand to Reason, a Christian apologetics organization, in which he addresses the Zacharias scandal: the post is called “When Spiritual Heroes Fall.” His purpose seems to be to comfort and encourage those who admired Zacharias and who are now shaken by the news of his double life and abusive behaviour.

Many people do feel shaken and upset by the news, so Koukl’s post will likely be of some help to them. But I can’t help feeling that his post falls short of what a Christian leader should offer. Maybe he’ll have more to say later; I don’t know. And I want to stress that I have absolutely no axe to grind with Koukl himself: I haven’t read or listened to his material before now, nor have I ever interacted with him in any way. I am really responding more to his arguments than to him as a person – because those arguments are so generically similar to others I’ve seen expressed online, mostly by men in Christian leadership, and to me they seem inadequate to the situation.

So I’m going to address all five of the pieces of advice he gives in his post and then respond to each of them with my own. Please, read Koukl’s article first.

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“First, guard your own soul.” Koukl advises that we not look into the salacious details of cases like Zacharias’s: he says, “Steer clear of the details unless you have a genuine need to know … stay out of the skirmish … Let the proper people right the wrongs.” Besides the fact that this was criminal predatory behaviour, not a “skirmish,” I don’t think most people who want to know what actually happened are hoping to charge in and fix it; they simply want to know the facts and find out how this could have been allowed to go on for so long. But as for “the proper people right[ing] the wrongs,” in fact Zacharias’s own board members and friends in ministry appear to have done a very poor job of righting or preventing his wrongs. His board heard reports of misdeeds years ago – but Zacharias denied it, they didn’t believe it, and they didn’t investigate it. 

I’m concerned that for anyone in Christian leadership, Koukl’s advice may come as a relief (“Whew, I didn’t want to know anyway, so I won’t bother to delve any further”), whereas what leaders should be doing is becoming aware of the patterns of deception that Zacharias engaged in so they can spot them if they occur. The suggestion that we shouldn’t worry because someone out there is taking care of this “skirmish” isn’t adequate for either the person in the pew or the Christian leader – and it doesn’t even fit well with the apologist mindset, which is to dig deeply and think clearly and knowledgeably on issues.

So my advice here is “For the average person, if hearing the details seems like it might harm you or trigger your own memories of abuse, take care; perhaps seek a counselor or therapist to help you process. But if you are in a position of spiritual leadership, don’t look away. You need to be informed. Don’t avoid the details out of a squeamish hope that someone else will take action if similar wrongdoing happens on your watch.”

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“Second, do not be surprised that sinners sin.” This kind of admonition has appeared frequently since the report was released. Koukl says it is easy for a “major figure” to suffer a “major fall” if he is not vigilant and that “we’re all deeply, radically fallen, even our heroes.” I find terms like “fall” and (elsewhere in his post) “defeat” to describe what Zacharias did strange and inappropriate – but more than that, this point seems to imply that really, all sins are the same and we and Zacharias are all on the same level in the end. And that is simply not true. 

I have lied. I have said mean things to my kids and thought mean things about acquaintances and strangers. I have nursed grudges, gossiped, and portrayed myself as a more faithful Bible-reader and pray-er than I am. I have avoided people God probably wanted me to give attention to. I am definitely a sinner. But I have not used power, money and global influence to purchase spas in which I could assault those hired to give me massages. I have not rented apartments overseas so that I could spend more time with the women I was grooming. I have not solicited photos from women, hired women to travel alone with me so that they could give me massages, or made threats when told I’d be exposed. I have not railed against my accusers, saying I was innocent when in fact I was guilty. I have not allowed the entire world to see me as a morally upright person when in fact I am a liar and abuser. 

We should be surprised when we hear that a Christian leader has done these things, because they are not just evidence of the sin we all share in as human beings; they are heinous criminal acts. Mind you, it would also be a mistake to swing too far in the other direction and say “Zacharias’s deeds are so beyond the pale that we need not worry about anything so unimaginable ever occurring among the people we know.” But it's wrong to imply that the things he did are just the kinds of things all sinners (even saved ones) do on a regular basis.

My advice here is “Don’t engage in sin-leveling. There is the sin and weakness that all of us are prone to, and then there is predatory abuse. Don’t equalize them, and don’t let anyone guilt you into thinking you shouldn’t be angry and outraged because after all, you’re really just as bad.”

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“Third, remember truth is still true.” This comment has appeared a lot too since the scandal broke, and it bothers me. It seems to suggest “Don’t worry, the fact that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the dead on the third day remains factually true despite the terrible actions of Ravi Zacharias who preached about those things.” And fair enough! But who was disputing that in the first place? Who was suggesting that since Ravi Zacharias was an abuser, Jesus might not have risen from the dead and therefore I might not really be saved? It’s a straw man which, in my view, evades the real question of what we mean by “truth.” Truth is not just statements of fact or doctrine that we assent to. Truth is also personal integrity, a coherence between our words and our actions. Not perfection, of course – but wholeness. Ravi Zacharias was not living a life of wholeness, and he was manifestly not a truthful person. In fact, he used the gospel message (“the truth”) to manipulate some of his victims, telling them that if they exposed him, people would go to hell because they would not be able to hear the gospel from him. 

So when Koukl says, “If you benefited from a hero who later fell, take heart. God uses even the worst of men to help the rest of us,” he fails to account for the way Zacharias weaponized the gospel for self-serving, abusive ends. The Lord Jesus, in sharp contrast, said it would be better for a man to have a millstone tied around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea than to draw others into sin (Matt.18:6). He didn’t tell us to be glad that at least His Father could use the  millstone-wearer's message for good.

My advice here is “Remember that truth can’t be boiled down to factual statements and points of doctrine – however much our faith rests on such proclamations. If love is not present, truth is not present. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s inappropriate to question the teachings of a deceitful teacher, or that the message -- however vital we consider it -- is more important than persons made in the image of God.”

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“Fourth, do not become cynical.” Hmmm … I don’t know. While it’s not healthy to become so hard-hearted that we can’t see any good anywhere, perhaps a little cynicism might not go amiss right now. Koukl says, “Trust everyone you have no reason to mistrust, which is most people you know.” But for many years Zacharias’s fans and colleagues thought they had no reason to mistrust him. His board members didn’t investigate the accusations against him because those accusations did not fit with the man they thought they knew – which we now know simply means Zacharias was extremely successful in deceiving people. He was allowed to continue his abuses because people in leadership trusted him too much and didn’t ask the questions they should have. 

Also, under point two above (don’t be surprised when sinners sin) Koukl quotes from Scripture, “Jesus did not entrust himself to those who believed in him since he knew what was in man”; it seems a little strange for him now to tell us that our default should be to trust everyone unless we have specific reasons not to.

My advice here is “It’s OK to be wary, especially if you’ve been hurt before. Don’t let anyone in leadership – anyone at all, really – make you feel that you owe them your trust. And don’t let anyone guilt you into thinking that anger and lament over injustice are signs of cynicism.”

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“Fifth, firmly resolve to finish well.” Koukl says it should be our goal to hear God’s “Well done” of approval at our death. He says it is the Holy Spirit’s job to make us holy, but our part “is to be vigilant and to fight sin to [our] last breath.” And he mentions letting trusted friends know about our struggles so they can support and correct us. That’s all good advice on the individual level. But I think it’s dangerous to imply that a scandal like this could be prevented with personal vigilance and an accountability partner. It sounds as if Ravi Zacharias not only did not reveal his secret life to those closest to him, but also used those people as cover for his actions. As Tanya Marlow says in her excellent article “But his books are still good, right? – 5 things Christians must stop saying about sexual abusers”, Zacharias groomed both his victims and his environment, creating a system in which sexual abuse could thrive undetected and uninvestigated. 

So I think we need to focus more on the kind of culture we are creating and not just on personal piety and accountability. Our task is not only to be vigilant so that we as individuals don’t do something as bad as Ravi Zacharias did, but also to participate in making our world (and that includes our Christian environment) safe for women and other vulnerable people.

My advice here is “Remember that the Christian life is not just about me getting God’s seal of approval at the end; it’s also about what I will do now to cooperate with God in seeking justice for the oppressed and victimized.”

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I am not a spiritual leader. I’m an ordinary person who heard about the Zacharias revelations like everyone else. And frankly, as an ordinary person, I need more from people who are Christian leaders, especially men. I need more than just platitudes that put my mind at ease. I need to hear things like

• “This is what our church/organization is doing, or commits to do, to ensure that such a scandal will not happen in our midst.”
• “This is what we are doing, or commit to do, to ensure that women are valued, respected, and listened to.”
• “This is what we are doing, or commit to do, to ensure that accusations of wrongdoing, even against people we hold in high esteem, are not hushed up or swept under the carpet, but are investigated and dealt with.”
• “This is what we are doing, or commit to do, to show every person we work with, interact with, and preach to that they are a valued person in the eyes of God and that there are no special, entitled people who are beyond correction or questioning.”

This is what Christian leaders need to be saying.

And they need to say what I as an ordinary person also feel confident saying: 

Jesus is a friend to the hurt and abused. His heart is broken when their hearts are broken. As the words of a well-known carol put it, “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found” – not to establish a movement in which the strong are given free rein to prey on the weak. He cares for the oppressed, and He is always, always on their side. So if we want to follow Him, we must also be on their side.

“A bruised reed he will not break, 

and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice.”

Isaiah 42:3