Words

Words on health care

Anne DoyleLeave a comment

As part of my quest for information about health care issues for the poor, homeless, and underserved, I read T. R. Reid’s new book, The Healing of America. In it Mr. Reid profiles the health systems of France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada with additional information about Switzerland and Taiwan. Mr. Reid describes each in terms of the broken system that we have in the United States and how we have addressed (or failed to address) the first key question as posed to him by Professor William Hsiao, a Harvard economist who has helped design health systems for more than a dozen nations: “ ‘Do people in your country have a right to health care?’” (p. 212)

Over the next several days, I will be posting quotations from the book that I hope offer insight into the issues. Please feel free to comment with your reactions.

About the history of the German health system (pp. 72-73)…

“…it seems that Otto von Bismarck was driven as well by a charitable impulse, perhaps a product of his Lutheran upbringing. When the chancellor first proposed his welfare state to the Reichstag, in 1881, he described it as a means for more fortunate Germans to care for the least of their brethren; public welfare, he said, should be viewed as ‘a program of applied Christianity.’ Defending his medical and unemployment insurance schemes in 1884, Bismarck argued that ‘the greatest burden for the working class is the uncertainty of life. They can never be certain that they will have a job, or that they will have health and the ability to work. We cannot protect a man from all sickness and misfortune. But it is our obligation, as a society, to provide assistance when he encounters these difficulties…A rich society must care for the poor.’ “

Words

Words

Anne Doyle2 Comments

Read this…it sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

“What makes a saint?

Extravagance. Excessive love, flagrant mercy, radical affection, exorbitant charity, immoderate faith, intemperate hope, inordinate love.”

–from Barbara Brown Taylor’s article “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” in Weavings III/5, September/October 1988, pages 32-33, 34-35.

Listening · Words

Listening to the power of listening

Anne DoyleLeave a comment

As I continue to read Jim Wallis’ Faith Works, I draw your attention to the second section which includes these three chapters:
Do the Work and You’ll Find the Spirit
Recognize the Three Faces of Poverty
Listen to Those Closest to the Problem

The third chapter of this section really affected me. It ended with this:
“It’s difficult to get many different groups working together, but the principle of partnership is this–everybody does their share, and everyone does what they do best. Nobody gets to sit on the sidelines, and everyone brings some answers and some resources. It can work…Always the key is listening to those closest to the problem.” (emphasis mine)

Listening–deeply and purposefully–can be transformative to the speaker, the listener and the situation. Why don’t we engage in this powerful experience more often?

Listening · Words

Listening to what I read

Anne DoyleLeave a comment

On my reading agenda now is Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change by Jim Wallis.

The first three chapters, which he has organized as lessons, have me hooked:
Trust Your Questions
Get out of the House More Often
Use Your Gift

If we started with these three lessons, what might happen?

I am trying to live these…how about you?

(I hope to post more as I progress through the book!)

Reflecting · Words

Health Day

Anne DoyleLeave a comment

“Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health – and create profitable diseases and dependencies – by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. And such a solution, unlike the typical industrial solution, does not cause problems.”

–Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, 2003

I had a “health day” yesterday…I planted spinach, pak choy, mesclun, lettuce, and radishes. Cool day to plant cool plants!

Listening · Other sites

raising awareness

Anne DoyleLeave a comment

gravatar-3cmx3cm-v5I recently launched a new resource called 2dollardifference to raise awareness about hunger and poverty.

http://2dollardifference.wordpress.com encourages people to experience in a meaningful, albeit partial, way the situation of half of the population of the world: eating for $2 a day.

“Simple but not easy,” participants eat for $2 a day for one week, then give the difference between their reduced food costs and what they usually spend on food (i.e., groceries, coffees, snacks, meals at restaurants) to an organization dedicated to the eradication of hunger.

A host of materials at http://2dollardifference.wordpress.com support the experience-reflect-act process, including a list of relevant books, a special prayer, a sheet of intentions, costs of single servings of various foods, food diary, etc. The site also offers the “chat post” where folks who eat for $2 a day can share online their experiences and reflections. A few organizations that focus on the alleviation of hunger and poverty are listed as possible targets for donations, but participants can donate to any organization they choose.

2dollardifference is designed for individuals or groups and can be done anytime. To learn more, please visit the web site at http://2dollardifference.wordpress.com.

Feel free to let others know!

(There is also a facebook page here, if you would like to join.)

Words

Words

Anne Doyle3 Comments

There are many types of revolutions.  History talks mostly of political revolutions, dramatic events that all too often represent little real change over the long term:  The cast of players in power shifts and new political philosophies come into vogue, but when it comes to the daily realities of most people, little changes.  But occasionally something differing happens, a collective awakening to new possibilities that changes everything over time–how people see the world, what they value, how society defines progress and organizes itself, and how institutions operate.  The Renaissance was such a shift, as was the Industrial Revolution.  So, too, is what is starting to happen around the world today.

—The Necessary Revolution:  How Individuals and Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World, Peter Senge, Brian Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, Sara Schley, 2008

Words

Words

Anne Doyle1 Comment

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But, conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.