Halloween

I self-identify as a teenaged girl dressed as a seventy-year-old widower.

(Good job, isn't it?)

Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.  ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.

All they ever offer to my deeply wounded people are empty hopes for peace.

They act as if my people's wounds were only scratches.  "All is well," they say, when all is not well.

MAiD and Suicide

Job 3:20-22

Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave?

(Alberni Reach Podcast)

I am always (although it doesn't happen often) rather bitterly amused when the conversation (randomly) turns to suicide.  It usually starts off with someone saying that they don't understand how anyone could do such a thing.  Generally this is followed by some statement about how the people who do commit suicide must be very selfish, since they don't consider the feelings of those left behind.

I generally do not contribute to the discussion.  I rather fear that, if I did, my first contribution would be a rude and accusatory comment about the irony of those maundering on about the selfishness of suicide, when those making these comments are, themselves, incredibly self-centred, given that they have never asked about the level and type of pain that would drive someone to try and address it by ending their own existence.

I don't have to ask.  I know.

In objective terms, my life is not bad.  I do not pretend to know, and do not have particular expertise, in all of the myriad ways that chronic pain and distress can present.  However, I have fought depression, and suicidal ideation, since I was in my early teens.  Pain is difficult to quantify, and has a large subjective component.  Subjectively, depression removes your pleasure in any of the normal pleasures of life, and magnifies the negatives of any negatives.  Regardless of what your life is like, objectively, subjectively, your life sucks.  (Depression can be seen as an illusion, but please remember that illusion is defined as a real perception which is not borne out by subsequent facts.)

For several years I did not understand why I was unhappier than pretty much everyone around me, and than pretty much everyone around me thought I should be.  (Pro tip: telling someone with depression to cheer up is extremely unlikely to help anyone.)  It wasn't until I got into university and (more or less accidentally) took psychology that I realized what was going on.

I took additional psychology courses, primarily simply to research depression.  Given the cyclical nature of my depression, abnormal psychology (203) taught me that it was manic depression of depressive type.  (That was under the old rules: under DSM-V, and the new bipolar model, it doesn't fit anymore.  Even my mental disability is wrong.)  Before I got married you could set your watch by my cycles.  Four months depressed, four months not-quite-depressed.  I developed quite a set of metrics to measure the onset, depth, and severity of my depressive cycles.  Being married had an interesting effect, somewhat reducing the severity, as well as changing the frequency of the cycles frequency and predictability.

I did a lot of research on Martin Seligman's theory of learned helplessness, which, relevant to the cyclical nature of my depression, provided one of the mainstays of my own treatment of my own depression: just keep going.  I sought treatment from doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists.  I learned the various, and disparate, forms of cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.

And then Gloria died, and I became a grieving widower.  I was rather surprised, given the frequent outcome of grief resulting in depression, that I did not immediately go into a depression when Gloria died.  Indeed, I had a period of slightly more than a year, when I did not appear to have any depression whatsoever, although I was definitely within the parameters of both prolonged grief disorder, and prolonged complex bereavement disorder.

For roughly a year after Gloria died, I wasn't depressed.  I didn't particularly want to go on living, but I was trying to do grief work, by building a completely new life.  It wasn't going particularly well, but I wasn't particularly suicidal during that time.  Somewhat, yes, but it wasn't an obsession.

And then the depression returned.  With a vengeance.  And it hasn't been cyclic this time: I have had over a year and a half of completely unrelieved depression.  And, yes, pretty much every day I ask God to kill me.  Pretty please.

Up until this most recent depression, I had been tried on three different antidepressants.  (The first being lithium, so that's how long ago that was.)  During this most recent depressive episode they have tried three more.  None of them have done me any good, and one of them was particularly vile.  I have just been prescribed a seventh, of a type that is less in favour these days.  I am not holding my breath waiting for it to make me better.

So, yes, I know about pain.  Chronic, unrelieved, mental pain.  And distress.  I know about the inability to take pleasure in pretty much any aspect of life.  I know that many psychological counseling processes and literature suggest that you take pleasure in the little things in life: a pretty flower in the grass, a sunset, a child's laugh.  Well, this is what depression does to you.  Things that anybody else would enjoy, you, basically, can't.  Depression takes away the pleasure from what would normally be a pleasure.  Depression ensures that you are left with nothing but the endless drudgery of what anybody else considers the normal administration of life, but which is monstrously annoying when it is all that you have, and unrelieved by any positive reinforcement at all.

I wish I were dead.

Canada now has a law about "assisted suicide."  In Canada it is referred to as medical assistance in dying, or acronymically, MAiD.  (I understand that, in the UK, it is TFMR: Termination For Medical Reasons.)

Suicide is, of course, frowned upon.  It used to be illegal.  I often thought that it was ironic that suicide was only a legal problem if you failed at it.  There is a theological objection to suicide.  I suppose that it is felt that suicide is a lack of faith in the God who is supposed to be taking care of you.  At the very least, it expresses impatience when you ask God to kill you, and He doesn't say yes, and possibly He doesn't say no, He says wait.  And you don't wait it out.

I believe it is still impossible to have a suicide buried in consecrated ground in a Roman Catholic cemetery.  And that disapproval of suicide made it all the way into the law book.  Now it's been taken out, but, societally, we still frown upon it.  We see suicide as a weakness, "the cowards way out."  The objection to suicide has now transferred to MAiD.  Many people are vociferously, and obsessively, opposed to MAiD.  I am also treated to discussions of MAiD, sometimes by people who have some medical background, and should know better, that display a profound ignorance of the actual law and process in Canada.  No, you are not allowed to kill somebody just because they feel bad.  It is only recently that mental illnesses have made it into the list of permissible chronic and unrelieved illnesses for which you can apply for MAiD.  I have, in fact, been offered MAiD because of my treatment resistant, and intractable, depression.  Not that they offered me a pill or anything: again, it does not work that way.  It's a long process, and it involves multiple people, who all have to sign off on it, and you have to find medical people who are even willing to participate in the process, because nobody in the medical system is forced to participate in the MAiD process if they don't want to.

And the trigger to get me started on writing this particular piece, is yet another article (with slightly less ignorance of the topic than normal) yet again presenting only the problems with MAiD, and not the relief that only it offers to some people.

As I said, I have been offered MAiD.  (Or, to be more accurate, the option to be referred to the MAiD process and system.)  As I have also said, I do, myself, have religious objections to suicide, for myself.  So I didn't take it.

But I'm beginning to wonder if I made the wrong choice.  So far, it's the best and most comforting solution anybody, and I mean *any*body, is providing me with.

The article, as I mentioned, is not completely ignorant.  But it is rather one-sided.  It is looking at the possible problems with MAiD, rather than the benefits of MAiD.  And, predictably, it focuses on individual cases.  Individual cases can be used to highlight human interest much more readily than statistics.  And, of course, the opinions of those who are opposed to MAiD, or who have been left behind by the users of MAiD, are much more readily available than the opinions of those who have successfully accomplished dying with medical assistance.

Even then, the article is not entirely unbalanced, but focuses on some specific cases pointing out the possibility that patients lives could be improved even without recourse to MAiD.  In particular, it focuses on situations where there is either financial or residential insecurity, for the person seeking MAiD, or cases where social isolation contribute to the lack of quality of life that would make someone seek MAiD.

Far be it from me to say that the Canadian medical system is perfect.  I lived pretty much all of my life in a major metropolitan area, and even there the medical care available was not perfect.  I have now moved to a much smaller setting, and it is readily apparent that, overall, the medical system leaves much to be desired, and could definitely provide much greater support to those who need it.  Where I am now, it is difficult even to obtain a family doctor, let alone get specialized medical care.  Recently it took me over a year to get an MRI, and I am currently on the waiting list for additional specialist care, which is not available in the town where I reside, and, even so, the referral is obviously not going to occur quickly, and I cannot even get information about where I am on the waiting list.  So, no, the medical system is not perfect.  It badly needs funding, it badly needs personnel, and it is straining at the seams in pretty much every direction.  In a recent conversation with one of my care providers, the topic turned to my volunteer work.  The care provider pressed me for more and more details, until I realized that what she actually wanted was information on resources that she, as someone within the government supported medical system, could provide to her clients, because the medical system wasn't going to.

Therefore, I am quite willing to entertain the possibility that people involved in the MAiD process and system, overworked and stressed as the rest of the system is, may occasionally err on the side of allowing someone to die, who could possibly be helped in another way.

Except that those other ways are not available either.

Before I moved here, I was involved, as one of the designers, of a pilot project looking at social isolation, and the risks of social isolation, and the steps that could be taken to reduce social isolation and therefore the risks, with particularly regard to the elderly.  At the same time as I was involved in this project, I was also in a position to observe similar programs in a different medical region.  So, yes, I know that social isolation, particularly for those with additional medical problems, mobility issues, or age-related issues, may contribute to demands on the medical system itself.  I know that the resources available to those facing such social isolation are minimal to nonexistent.  I do not have the same level of experience and research with regard to financial and residential insecurity, but residential insecurity, under the rubric of the "housing crisis," is hard to avoid in our news media.  Once again, I am quite willing to accept that these are real problems, and that addressing these problems could help with the demand on the medical system, and possibly even reduce the calls upon the MAiD system. 

But, is anyone doing anything about it?  Well, other than the fact that politicians constantly mention it in their campaign speeches, or in their speeches attacking the party currently in power, the answer seems to be, not much.

Our society is growing increasingly complex, but also increasingly fragmented, and many of the supports that used to be available no longer are.  I have mentioned religion.  The church used to be a mainstay of social support in Western society.  (Sometimes too much so.)  However, the church is no longer a major factor in that regard.  The church is now a fraction of its previous size.  Whereas a hundred years ago church attendance or adherence would be on the order of a half or a third of the population, nowadays it is likely to be three percent or less.  That three percent definitely cannot be expected to address the shortcomings of society overall.

The church is, itself, under stress.  The church must be aware of its very much dwindling population, and that the bulk of any revenues achieved by the church must be devoted to maintaining the church itself, rather than being addressed to the larger needs of the community.  In this situation it is no wonder that, during a two year stint of church shopping, I have failed to find any support in any of the churches here in town.  I am well aware of the fact that my existence is not only unwelcome at the churches, but is, for most, a positive threat.  The church seems to have wandered from the central themes of its theology, and most people now believe in a variant of the prosperity gospel.  The prosperity gospel basically says that if you do what God wants, then God will take care of you.  So, pursuant to the prosperity gospel, if you are in pain, or distress, or grief, or any other trouble, the problem is actually a lack of faith, or an unacknowledged sin, or something of that nature.  In other words, the problem is your fault, and nobody within the church needs to take any steps to address it.

So, it is no wonder that the members of the churches in this area avoid me like plague.  (Except for the fact that, primarily being on the right end of the political spectrum, most of them don't take too many steps to avoid the plague.)

To return to religious objections in regard to religious objections to suicide, there are those who would say that life is a gift from God, and should not be casually discarded.  However, an awful lot of things, including the natural environment in which we live, are, in fact, gifts from God, and we seem to casually discard many of them without much thought.  So, why should this one, particular, gift be the exception?

In regard to this particular religious objection to suicide, I have, several times in the past few days, being bombarded by online ads for a t-shirt that reads "God is not finished writing your story.  Please stop trying to grab the pen."  This is an interesting perspective, and, yes, does speak to the idea that God is in control of our lives, and all the situations around us, and we are not.  However, in situations of great distress, most people feel that they have lost all control.  The one possible thing that they can control is continuing to live, or not.  It is, actually, all too easy to think of ways to kill yourself, if you are willing to put up with a little pain in the process.

(In regard to that t-shirt, I note that the ad is from Temu, an online fast fashion hypermarketer, somewhat in the style of Amazon.  It is interesting that Temu would be advertising a particularly Christian themed t-shirt, since Temu is a Chinese company.  However, when you think about it, it is not all that strange.  China has been very active in promoting discord attacks against the West.  Discord attacks are frequently targeted at the conservative or right of the political spectrum, since that end of the spectrum seems to be much more willing to participate in discord attacks by repeating falsified information that is sent to them, without too much analysis as to whether or not the claims or stories are true.  Therefore, given the close connection between China's government, military, intelligence, business, and information warfare, a predilection for themes aimed at the religious right in the United States seems much more reasonable.)

"Life is a gift," as an argument, also only works if there is some reward for continuing to live, not if life is only punishment.

Liz Carr is an English actor who has produced a documentary on medical assistance in dying.  She asserts that it is not MAiD that is the real problem here, but that, given the lack of other support or alternatives, "[t]he biggest catastrophe is that we’d choose it ourselves because there was no more choice for us."

She is quite correct.

_________

Addendum:

Health Canada’s report reveals that 47.1 per cent of non-terminally ill Canadians who applied for MAID reported “isolation or loneliness” as one of the causes of their suffering.

Review of "Grief Cure" by Cody Delistraty

Delistraty, in dealing with his own grief, has attempted and experienced a wide variety of therapies.  He has recounted some of the theories, and some of the opinions, behind a number of the therapies, as well as his own experience with that particular form of therapy.  His experiences, while generally positive with each type of therapy, demonstrated no particular breakthroughs, or immediate cures for grief.

As an information technology specialist, and one who has been, moreover, researching griefbots and "restoration" services for some time now, I was particularly interested in chapter three, where Delistraty recounts his, and some others, experiences with some of these thanabots.  Even so, his discussion fails to touch on a number of the significant risks of these types of programs or services.

Given the range of therapies that Delistraty touches on, I was rather surprised at how unhelpful this book was at recommending any kind of grief therapy.  Indeed, it seems possible that the therapy Delistraty might most strongly recommend is grief journalling, and that this might be a kind of odd result of that, rather than a tool.

Job 3:20-22

Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul,

to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure,

who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave?

Complete, free CISSP review seminar

OK, it's all done.  As of 20241016, all of the CISSP review seminar materials are recorded and posted.  It's kind of bizarre to think that it has taken more than a year and a half, and roughly 450 individual video clips (probably comprising approximately sixty total hours of video).  As the CISSP is a very decent overview of the entire field, it is also a good introduction to information security, whether you intend to get certified or not.

The complete set is available on any or all of:

https://youtube.com/@TheRslade

https://youtube.com/user/TheRslade

(playlist at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUuvftvRsRv7D5PiHIULhhd9M032ej4_i )

https://www.tiktok.com/@robertmslade/

https://www.facebook.com/rslade/

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/rslade and

https://www.instagram.com/robertmslade/

Details, references, and pointers to sample questions are posted at

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/02/cissp-seminar-free.html

This completion notice is at

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/10/complete-free-cissp-review-seminar.html

I have to say that, as a social media experiment, so far it has indicated that social media is the absolutely *worst* platform for education, at least from the instructor's viewpoint.  I have, in more than a year and a half, had precisely *one* question about any of the material.  Either I have delivered everything perfectly (a consummation devoutly to be wished, but unlikely in the *extreme*), or social media users are massively passive, and can't be bothered thinking about what they are consuming (given what I've seen in my forty-plus years on the net, much *MUCH* more probable).

I hope it is of use to you or your colleagues.  It is now available, for free, as instruction or reference, so long as any of the five platforms above continue to exist and provide content.  It is my sincerest wish that it is helpful to those genuinely wishing to join our information security profession, and support the productive use of technology as a whole.

Strong

What is the point of being strong, if all you get from being strong is more pain?

I recently saw a post which stated that, in terms of grief, the words like strong, resilient, brave, and so forth, were being weaponized against sufferers.  Rather than meaning that the mourner is doing exceptionally well, the terms ore now being used to turn the responsibility for support and comfort back on the sufferer ...

Job 23:16

God has made me lose heart.  The Almighty has terrified me.  Because of all my troubles, I seem to be in a very dark place.  The darkness seems to cover me.  But I will not be afraid to speak.

MGG - 5.44 - HWYD - Houston, we have a zero

My baby sister married a guy whose job is fairly specialized, and there are only a few companies in the world who can employ him.  Fortunately for them, these companies are located in exotic areas of the world, and so they have lived in all kinds of places around the world.

Twice I have been able to visit them while I was out teaching.  The first time was in Houston Texas.  I had a lot of fun with my nephews, including reading "Where the Wild Things Are" to them.  The thing was, that the copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" that they had was in German.  While I know some words of German, there is absolutely no way that I could get through an entire book, even a children's book.  However, since "Where the Wild Things Are" is a favorite of children around the world, our grandchildren had been very interested in it.  Therefore, I had the English text pretty much memorized.  So I would just flip the pages, be reminded of the point in the story that we were dealing with because of the illustrations on the page, and recite, from memory, the English text of the story.

As I say, in this instance I was teaching in Houston, Texas.  Houston is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.  Therefore, most of the time, it has a fairly sub-tropical climate.  But this was in January, and Houston had a cold snap.  The temperature did, in fact, fall to the freezing point: 0° C (celsius), or, as the Americans would say, 32° F (fahrenheit).

So it is, literally, freezing.  In fact, it was snowing.  Very lightly, but snowing.  I was not particularly concerned about either the fact that it was freezing; because of course it was only just freezing; or the fact that it was snowing.  I was in shirt-sleeves, running back and forth from my rental car to the venue and bringing in all the necessary materials.  All the Texans, of course, were showing up wearing every single scarf and sweater that they owned, with whatever kind of warm hat they might own.  Shivering and complaining all the while.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/10/mgg-543-hwyd-brazil-and-astronauts.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/11/mgg-545-hwyd-street-vendors.html

Pathetic

There is nothing in this world quite so pathetic as a widower with a cold.

Psalm 69:20

Insults and reproach have broken my heart; I despair and am distressingly sick.  I looked for sympathy, or even pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but found no one.

Danger

My mind is a bad neighbourhood.  I try not to go into it alone.

 - Anne Lamott

Sermon 40 - Disasters Prove God Exists

Sermon 40 - Disasters Prove God Exists

Psalms 31:7

I will be glad and rejoice because of your constant love.  You see my suffering; you know my trouble.

Luke 13:2

Do you think that these people were worse sinners than all the other people because they suffered this way?

James 2:15,16

Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?

Disasters are not usually used to prove that God exists.  Most of the time, it is the other way around.  Most people would ask, how could there possibly be a loving God if He allows hundreds of people, hundreds of miles from any seacoast, to be drowned because of the rainfall from a hurricane that is already dying because it has travelled hundreds of miles over land?  Or, to put the problem of pain in a more classic formulation, if God exists, and is all-powerful, and is good, why does He allow pain?

Since we are talking about proofs for the existence of God, let us turn to one of the broadest.  That is Pascal's wager.  Pascal's wager sees two sets of two possibilities each.  Either God exists, or God does not exist.  And, independently of whether or not God exists, either you believe in God, or you don't believe in God.  This sets up four possible alternatives.  One possibility is that God does not exist, and that you don't believe in God.  Another is that God does not exist, but you believe in God.  A third is that God does exist, but you don't believe in God.  And the fourth is that God exists, and you believe in Him.

If God does not exist, well, it doesn't really matter whether you believe in Him or not.  If God does not exist, and you believe that God does not exist, then you were right.  But what prize do you get for being right?  You were right, but there is really no reward for *being* right.  When you die you die.  There is no afterlife, there is no salvation, there is no particular advantage in being right, so if God does not exist the wager is kind of a no-win situation.  Whether you believe in God, or you don't, there isn't any prize for being right, and there probably isn't any punishment for being wrong.  So, if God does not exist, then whether you believe in Him or not you don't win, and you don't lose, anything.

If God does exist, then the situation is a bit different.  If God does exist, and you don't believe in Him, well, you lose out.  I'm not necessarily saying that you go to hell, but if you don't believe in God, and God does exist, then you have no chance of having a relationship with him.  You lose whatever benefits there are and having a relationship with God, if you don't believe in Him.

But if God exists, and you *do* believe in Him, you win.  And you win *big*.  And I'm not just talking about going to heaven.  In this life you get to have a relationship with God.  But you can only have a relationship with God if you believe in Him.  So, if God exists, and you believe in Him, in this life you have a relationship with Him, and, in addition, you get heaven thrown in and salvation when this life ends.

So, kind of regardless of whether or not God exists, in Pascal's wager the only winning move is to believe in God.  This, of course, does not prove that God exists, but, as the old joke has it, that is the way to bet.  If you're wrong, you're not going to lose anything.  And if you're right, you win big.

Now Pascal's wager does posit only one of the many varieties of religious philosophies that have been created.  This posits one God, and a good God, who is going to reward us for relieving in Him, and who it is worthwhile having a relationship with.  So let's look at a couple of other options.

The next possibility is that there is more than one God.  This possibility comprises paganism, animism, and, for example, the Greek, Roman, and Norse mythologies.  You have a whole bunch of different gods, and they spend most of their time fighting with each other.  And, for the most part, we mortals just get caught in the backlash.

In order to deal with that kind of situation, I would turn to another philosophical classic, that of Occam's razor.  Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation is the best.  Logically, I would suggest that monotheism has it all over paganism.  In the first place, when dealing with any kind of polytheism, it really just moves the question of how did this all start when layer back.  You've got a whole bunch of gods, and goddesses, and often demons, and various other types of supernatural entities, and where on Earth did all of them come from?

I have another objection to polytheism, and I think that anybody will agree with me on this.  Anybody who has ever been on *any* committee, *any*where, for *any* purpose, is going to agree that polytheism just simply can't work.

Now, as a side note to all of this, I might note, before I get to the final possibility, that there are those who claim that the monotheistic, father, God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is one that they don't like.  Sometimes they would prefer a goddess, and sometimes they prefer to say that Satan has got a bad rap, and is actually the good guy in the story.  I would submit that this is, actually, a distinction without a difference.  It doesn't particularly matter what name you call God.  What I am saying is that there is one, single God, and that God is good.  And fighting about what name you use to refer to this God is pretty pointless.  As the title of J. B. Phillips' book points out, whatever your idea of God is, it is too small.  We are human, and mortal, and limited, and God is eternal, and created all of time, and space, and eternity, and so is simply beyond our comprehension.  So if you want to call God by another name, I'm not going to fight you on this: I just don't care.  It doesn't make any difference.

So, as far as I can see, the final possibility that we have to explore is that there *is* a God, but that he (or she or it) is actually a bad god.  He doesn't care about us, and, in fact, may harbour ill feelings towards us.  That is a possibility that has to be explored.  But I think that the evidence is against it.  We started out with what is often proposed as the problem of pain.  If there is a God, and God is good, and God is omnipotent, how come He allows bad things to happen?  Well, if there is a god, and he's a bad god, why does he allow *good* things to happen?  It seems that it is a waste of energy to have created a universe in which there are so many wonderful and beautiful things, to be enjoyed by entities that you think badly of.  Why would a bad god have created a universe that has so much good in it?  If God is bad, why would he have done that?  Wouldn't it just have been easier to never have created the universe in the first place?  Or, if you wanted to create a universe just to punish your creatures, then why make it so complicatedly wonderful and beautiful?  You could have just filled it with concrete apartments.  Wouldn't that have been easier?

Why, aside from the fact that I am always spreading my little ray of darkness everywhere I go, am I so concerned about disasters?  Well, for the past quarter century, it has pretty pretty much been my life.  For most of that time I have been teaching business continuity planning, all over the world.  Business continuity planning is about teaching people how to prepare themselves, and their business, to survive any kind of a disaster.  At the same time, my major volunteer work has been with emergency support services.  This is the area of emergency management that prepares to help people, who have been faced by, or caught in, a disaster, to survive for a few days until they can get over their shock, and start getting back on their feet.

I also tend to tell my colleagues in the field of security, that they should also volunteer for emergency support services, or disaster relief, or something like it.  It provides you with an additional perspective, somewhat broader than the single focus on restoring business functions, about what is necessary in the aftermath of a disaster.  Also, the training you get in disaster relief, and emergency management, gives you credits that you can use for the continuing professional education that you require when you are qualified and certified in security.  And usually someone else pays for it.

So, I know about disasters.  I know what a disaster is.  And what is a disaster?  Well, as the joke has it, the difference between a problem and a disaster is that it's a problem when you fall into an open manhole cover and die.  It's a disaster if I find that my cell phone has run out of battery.  No, you cannot precisely define what a disaster is.  Even the literature on disaster response doesn't try.  All it says is that a disaster is a bad thing, and it's a very *large* bad thing, that affects an awful lot of people.

In emergency support services, we tend to say that we deal with people at the worst time of their lives.  They have just suffered a significant loss.  They have lost property.  They have lost resources.  They have probably lost the idea that life continues, and that they can go on and recover.  In the aftermath of a disaster, it is often the case that the loss, and the shock of the sudden loss, makes people feel like giving up.  They can't even think of how they might start to go on.

My other major area of volunteer work is with hospice societies.  We also say that we deal with people at the worst time of their lives.  (Are we beginning to see a pattern here in my choice of volunteer work?)  The death of a friend or close family member is also a loss, and very often that loss also makes it seem that it is impossible to continue with life.  Certainly life changes in very significant ways.

So, as we saw right at the beginning, it is completely unsurprising that people feel that such losses can make it hard to go on with life.  Life is not the same.  Your world is not the same.  You're ideas about how the world, and the entire universe, works, take a hit.  It's a big shock to your system, and the loss can prevent you from thinking clearly, and certainly thinking creatively.  And, rather ironically, you have to think more creatively at this point in your life, since the ideas and beliefs upon which your normal life has been based have been completely shaken.  It can, and probably does, feel that life is not worth living.  It can feel impossible to *continue* living.  And it can also be that you feel that what you believed about the world, that life is basically good, was wrong, and so what is the point in even trying to continue to live?  Therefore, the question of the problem of pain pops up.  If there is a God, and he is good, how is it possible that he allows disasters to happen.  How is it that he allows people to hurt so much, and to lose so much?  Why doesn't he do anything to help?

When bad things happen, a lot of people tend to say that these things are sent to try us.  This is a common response to disasters: the idea is that God has sent bad things, or has allowed bad things to happen to us, to test our faith.  This is to prove, to God, how good we are.  We are tried by fire.

There is *some* validity in this idea.  We wouldn't need much faith, if, as long as we did good things, nothing bad ever happened to us.  It wouldn't be faith, as much as a kind of an exercise in behaviour modification.  Believe in God, and do what He wants, and you just keep on getting positive reinforcement, with nothing bad ever happening.  So, yes, there is some truth in the idea that these things are sent to try us.

If you know pyschology, there are also some problems with it.  For one thing, if nothing bad ever happens; if you just keep always getting rewarded; the behaviour of doing good actually isn't very strong.  The first time you *don't* get a reward, you tend to stop doing good.  So *not* getting a reward every time actually doesn't just *test* our faith, it strengthens it.  Gloria (you didn't actually expect me to get through a sermon with mentioning Gloria, did you?) often said that God had three answers to our prayers: yes, no, and wait.  When God says "wait," He is actually *building* our faith.

OK, you can probably accept that, as long as the bad things that happen aren't *really* bad.  What if they are?

I remember a short story that posited the idea that it is not test after test after trial after trial that God sends us.  It is, in fact, chance after chance to do the right thing.  These things are not simply meant to try us, but are opportunities that God sends us to demonstrate our belief, and our commitment, even when things go wrong.

This is kind of the theme of the book of Job.  And remember that there is a lot of evidence that Job is actually the oldest, earliest written, book of the Bible.

Doing the right thing in the midst of a disaster could be patiently enduring.  You have suffered a loss.  Your life is possibly more difficult than it was before.  But, you still have life.  You probably still have health, even though you may be poorer than you were before.  The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.

But it may be more than that.  There is another opportunity, that is presented in the midst of a disaster.

When a disaster strikes, there are always the stories of destruction and loss.  But there are also the stories of those who run to help.  When hurricanes unleash flood water, the people who have fishing boats, which they trailer to rivers and lakes for recreation in the good times, often bring them, and possibly even bring them hundreds of miles, to launch them into flooded streets, and to go, door to door, to find people who are stranded and may need rescuing, or may need food and water.  Almost all of us in emergency support services are volunteers.  When earthquakes and landslides happen, neighbours rush to dig out buildings that have crushed or fallen, and to rescue those who may be trapped, and to take in those whose houses are no longer safe.

Disasters present us not only with an opportunity to patiently endure, but to actively help.

It doesn't, of course, have to be a major disaster to give you an opportunity to help.  It can be *any* kind of a loss.  The loss of a job.  The loss of a friend.  It can be as small as someone having a bad day.  All of these present us with the opportunity to help.

God can always provide help, of course.  God can undoubtedly help better than we can.  But God gives us these opportunities to help.  There is probably a reason that God allows us to help.  And that reason is probably something for *our* benefit, rather than for God's benefit.  If we fail to help, God probably will provide for the person who needs the help.  But we will have lost an opportunity, and possibly more than one type of opportunity.  So, the next time you have an opportunity to help, why don't you take it?

In the book "Tales of the Hasidim," Martin Buber recounts a story.  A rabbi was asked why did God create atheists?  The rabbi replies that God created atheists to teach us the most important lesson of them all–-the lesson of true compassion.  When someone reaches out to you for help, you should never say "I’ll pray that God will help you."  Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist-–imagine there is no God who could help, and say "I will help you."

Of course, there *is* a God.  The disaster is Him giving you another chance.

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Psalm 44:17

We have not turned away from you, but all this has happened to us.  We have not turned against the covenant that you made with us.

Review of "Finding Meaning" by David Kessler

David Kessler was a protege of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's, and therefore, since Kubler-Ross's work was primarily about the dying, it is unsurprising that Kessler's work flips back and forth between grief, the bereaved, and dying.  This is not to say that the book is, precisely, disorganized, but the book, and it's contents, do flop, somewhat, from one topic to another, without much warning.

Most of the content is anecdotal.  There are some minor pieces of explanation, pointing out theories and potential mechanisms for getting locked in grief or distress, but the plural of anecdote is not data.  None of the material is new, or necessarily even particularly insightful.  The fact that anecdotes flip from one topic to another may, in fact, be of benefit for those in the initial stages of grief, where they have not managed to identify or analyze their own feelings or patterns of thought.  In this regard, and in the initial stages of mourning, reading through the flitting anecdotes may, randomly, happened upon something that is helpful or comforting for the bereaved.

Psalm 26:6, Matthew 27:24

Psalm 26:6

I wash my hands to show my innocence.

Matthew 27:24

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

Isaiah 44:19

No one comes to his senses, or thinks carefully, or has knowledge or discernment about what they are doing.  They do not say to themselves, 'I burned half of the wood in the fire.  I even baked bread and I cooked meat on it.  Then I used the rest of the wood to make a useless idol!  I took a piece of wood and I worshipped it!  Why did I do that?'

MGG - 5.43 - HWYD - Brazil and astronauts

Actually, NASA wasn't the only place I encountered astronauts.  I was speaking at a conference in Brazil.  I wasn't teaching the CISSP, in this case.  It was rather interesting.  The first thing that I learned was that Brazilians have a very different idea of time than we do.  They don't necessarily sleep particularly late, but they don't exactly rise at dawn either.  And they usually go for a walk on the beach early in the morning.  Business and office hours generally don't start until at least 10 am, and frequently later.  Dinner is not at 5 or 6, but at 9 p.m. at the earliest, and frequently later.

Vendors at conferences and trade shows in North America kind of rule the roost.  They may give away pens, but they don't feel obliged to draw the crowds.  The attendees at the conference is in trade shows come to the vendors.

The vendors in Brazil know their place.  They know that they have to bribe people to attend, both for a meet and greet, and to pay attention to anything they say.  Therefore, the vendors at this particular conference put on nightly hospitality suites, where you could pretty much get a full meal, as if you hadn't had enough to eat during the day.  (The conference had loaded buffet breakfasts, lunches, dinners, coffee breaks, and just basically food available anytime you wanted it.)

(I discovered guarana down there.  I had heard of it.  I knew that it was used to produce an extract that gave energy drinks an extra caffeine boost, without having to mention coffee or caffeine.  You could put a ton of guarana extract into a putative fruit drink, and nobody turned a hair.  At the first opportunity, I tried out Diet Antarctica Guarana.  I loved it.  If it was available, I didn't drink anything else for the entire conference.  I would desperately love to get a couple of cases of it here in Canada.  If they ever start selling the stuff in North America, Coke is in for a real struggle.)

The language in Brazil is a form of Portuguese.  The countries all around Brazil speak a form of Spanish.  And the conference organizers had invited a bunch of speakers from North America.  (By which read, the United States.)  So, the conference organizers also laid on interpreters.  I realized that this was the case, and, during one session where the interpreters were not required, I met with them, and ran through my entire presentation with them, explaining anything they didn't immediately understand.  So, the next day, when I gave my presentation, I would get to a joke, and be interested by about half of the audience laughing at the joke.  Then, ten seconds later, the rest of the audience would laugh at the translation.

Anyway, the last day, the keynote speaker was Brazil's astronaut.  At lunch time that afternoon, as I was wondering through the tables, looking for a place to sit down, the CEO of the company that had organized the conference, and brought me there, popped up out of his seat, and introduced me to Brazil's astronaut.  He obviously expected me to be overwhelmed by the honour.  I said hello to the astronaut, and asked if he knew Mark Garneau.  He had trained with Mark Garneau.  I asked if he knew Julie Payette.  His desk was right across from Julie Payette's.  I asked if he knew Dave Meadows.  He was, right at that time, doing a session of training with Dave Meadows.

The CEO was rather nonplussed by all this.  He was not particularly impressed by me, and had invited me, only on the recommendation of one of his employees, who had taught with me.  He couldn't understand how I knew about all these astronauts that Brazil's astronaut worked with.  He didn't realize that Canada is a very small town.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/09/mgg-542-hwyd-nasa.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/10/mgg-533-hwyd-houston-we-have-zero.html

Stop crying

Stop crying.  You're upsetting everyone.

 - unidentified woman to Alison Smith, daughter of Mike Smith (in command of STS flight 51-L), moments after Challenger exploded, killing all aboard

Technical "support"