why freedom matters in Belarus…Georgia…Romania and Beyond

There was an article about Belarus in The Wall Street Journal this weekend!!! I am pleased to hear that people care. Because it really does matter and its not just the principal of thing.  The article talks about how what happens with Russia’s future is an inside and outside political game.  The outside is the former soviet republics and satellite nations like Romania.  These countries are what separate Russia from Europe and really from the rest of the western world.  These countries are small and most Americans probably couldn’t pick them out on a map but their freedom is essential to peace and stability in the region and really the world.    Russia has cut down on religious freedom and freedom of the press in recent years, all NGO (charities, churches, human rights groups) have to register with the government, prominent journalists have been killed in the dead of the night. This may not make the evening news 7000 miles away in Washington but it matters.

Why you ask? The usual reasons things matter in foreign policy: oil, power and blood.  Russia controls a big part of Europe’s oil supply and the oil passes through many of the former soviet republics.  Russia has friends like Iran and China.  Russia is becoming better armed all time and already has increasingly bad human rights record.  I am not suggesting that we as the west should go in and try to mess around with the region and play police or micromanger for these  corrupt, struggling infant democracies but we shouldn’t take them for granted.

Let’s all remember that it was our indifference after helping the Afghans win against the soviets that brought us the Taliban…

not the same situation, but the same principal. The battle for a free whole Europe is not over, its really only just begun.

….I want to get off the boat.

I am exhausted by labels. I am exhausted by categories, by worldviews and clashing worldviews.  I am exhausted by the need for debate for endless arguments for intolerance of tolerance of intolerance.   I want so much for my beliefs for my walk with Christ to be nothing more than my walk with Christ.  I try to  peel off the layers of dirt, mire of pride of ambition, scabs and dressings of culture and politics in search of truth but I so often find myself lost amidst the gauze, plaster and mud.  Where is a faith that is simple? Where is a love that is unhindered by politics, rules of decorum and a constant fear for our own personal safety and liberty? Where is a truth that is not seen through the lens of culture, not blurred by lines of indifference and by the institutions that we hold dear? Where is the church that is living in faith, loving in and out of their faith and seeking unobstructed truth?

There’s tarnish on the golden rule
And I wanna jump from this ship of fools
Show me a place where hope is young
And a people who aren’t afraid to love
This world has nothing for me and this world has everything
All that I could want and nothing that I need
This world is making me drunk on the spirits of fear.
So when he says who will go, I am nowhere near.
And the least of these look like criminals to me
So I leave Christ on the street
This world has held my hand and has led me into intolerance
But now I’m waking up, but now I’m breaking up But now I’m making up for lost time

Caedmon’s Call

I LOVE TRAFFIC

When my sister and I were in Romania two years ago we had a running joke about how much I (we) LOVE TRAFFIC!!!  Bucharest is filled with traffic. In the communist era there were quotas on cars and folks would sign up years in advance before being allowed a car. Now in the new Romania everyone who is anyone is buying a car because anyone can now.  The result is constant traffic everywhere  even on public it takes hours at times to get any where.  The buses/trams are incredibly crowed and hot. It frustrated and worried us terribly (of getting mugged, being late and dying of heat stroke) at first  but then we stepped away from it and realized that this is what we had right now. We started to look at all the things we could do with it.  Our daily commutes became our chance to pray, catch up with each other, dream, people watch, minster to the beggars who rode beside us at times  and journal.  It became one of our favorite times of the day. And we made the best of it and not entirely cynically  we would say on particularly long trips or crazy crossings of a big street on foot I LOVE TRAFFIC.

Contentment is something I struggle with.  Being content with waiting on God or wait on public transport or simply being happy with I have at that given moment. Its so easy to give into complaining or whining about what I wish could happen faster or what I wish I had or what I wish could be different.  There are so many things I want and so few things that I don’t have that I actually I need.  You go to any book store and you will find oodles of books about finding peace and contentment.  And there are a great variety of such books in the religion section alone from prosperity gospel to physics to magic formulas, but no ONE HAS AN ANSWER….

God provides in his own time, his own season and his own way or so we are taught in church.   But how do we learn to wait, to trust. Oswald Chambers says the most important word Christ ever spoke to his disciples was abandon.

What does abandon truly look like?  Can we truly be joyful and grateful for what we have and live in the moment? Can we drop everything and truly live with abandon? Reckless abandon??

So different from what our culture tells us…and in the end I think thats the key. Its recklass abandon of what wer are told to worry about, told we should want and need for instead embracing what we have and what God has for us.

I am not sure what that looks like exactly but I am praying God coninutes to show me.

for such a time as this

My roommate Jessica calls me a REBEL. She says I am not disrepsectful but I have issues with authority and I tend to see people (with some exceptions particularly as a young third year) as people rather they are in a place of power or the jaintor…. I think this is partly my personality…I hate beuaracracy for the sake of beuaracracy and I hate big egos and frankly my own life experience has taught me that people rarely turn out the way the world thinks they should.

Today I was minding my own business in the NICU workroom helping the new residents get used to the crazy NICU computers and mucho important facutly member walks in the room. He talks to the fellow and introduces himself as our incoming attending starting Thursday to the residents. Then he notices me with my feet hung over a chair, list in my hand, hair falling down, scrubs stained with strawberry juice from lunch.

“You’re our AI, wonderful, I read your paper I have been meaning to talk to you. So have you decided on peds?”

I sit there with my mouth hanging open confused. I had had one interaction with this man, he complimented me on my surgery essay (read here) which was published in the school’s journal. I remember only because our student body president took me aside and asked me if I knew who I had just spoken to…I shook my head. He mumbled a important title that was lost on me beyond that he was mucho important. That was 6 months ago.

YES! I have commited to Peds! I said. What paper are you referring to?? My surgery essay?

No, no it was an abstract. About physicians with limitations.

I nearly fell out of my chair. The abstract is not a secret but it sort of is.  The only faculty member who knew about my submission to the AAMC (American Assoc of Medical Colleges (a large group of mucho important people who are the gatekeepers to med school nation wide) Annual Conference) was the guy who teaches our professionalism class.

“Oh yeah…I wrote that.” I stuttered. “I don’t know whether it will be accepted or  not  till July.”   He responds, “It has come to my attention we have turned down at least one highly qualified candidate who is now going to Hopkins because of  their disability.  I am interviewing candidates for a new Dean of Admissions (the old one is retiring), the one we select will be announced next week. I am only interested in choosing someone who is absolutely committed to rewriting our Technical standards.” (Technical standards are the PHYSICAL (non-academic) requirements for medical school, they are one of the BIGGEST BARRIERS to disabled doctors.  My school’s TS are atrocious…so bad that I shouldn’t have been admitted under them however I had a faculty member write me a letter of recommendation and I was one of the top five in my pre-med class at the same institution…its hard to turn down one of your own)

audible gasp from Amy.

“I want you as a consultant for the project, along with J (alum who had a spinal cord injury his 3rd year at my school),  T (current upper level int med resident). You’re the experts.”

“I would love to…”

“Excellent, we will chat more, what are your thoughts about Dr. X  (mucho important person directly involved with med school stuff)’s feelings on this, I am not sure he is on board…?”

“Um…(dude he just asked me my opinion on the freaking Dr. X who in part  controls my future….but who I have secretly believed he is not a believer forever now)  Dr. X has always supproted me…beyond that I don’t know.”

“yeah I am not so sure about Dr. X either.”

(holy crap what have I gotten myself into)

“I am very excited to have you on the NICU team and for your future in peds and I am glad to have you on broad for this project, See you on Thurs.”

So I got home and looked the guy’s title up…he is only the Sr. Dean of the freaking school. (4thish from the top of the little medical center prymaid).

I am thrilled but also a little freaked out….this guy knew nearly secret information about me and had insight into my thoughts on a VERY controversial subject The rebel in me is a little annoyed, the activist in me is singing.

also have to become the best darn AI by Thursday in NICU history….no pressure….