A Riff Later Today

I'm scheduled to show a film about attitudes towards Religion and Spirituality and to generate a discussion of some of its implications, today, with a group of people whose interest lies in the healing Sciences and Arts. I tried to have such a meeting when I, myself, ran a training facility while I was still an energetic Third Quarter Player. My faculty thought I was loony! ... So, I didn't do it. Anyhow ...  Life in the Third Quarter for me was loaded with energy ... Being on today from 2-5 PM -- now in the Last Quarter of Life -- intrudes on my nap time, especially since with travel it's in actuality 1-6 PM, ending after dark when my very limited vision in my left eye doesn't discern well the road from a telephone poll. (I did accidentally find my auto's fog light switch, last night.)

My goal in choosing this topic to discuss is not to convert the religious to the secular or vice versa ... rather, it's to see if the Healers have something to learn from both the down-side of Religions in their many lengthy wars and, on the plus side, the way Spiritual Folk take in certain principles for living, as they, for instance, try to live by the opposite values of the Seven Deadly Sins:

• Kindness in place of Wrath ...
• Sharing/Giving in place of Greed ...
• Shared Pride/Humility instead of Pride ...
• The Tempering of Desire by interposing reason and safety on Acting on Lust ...
• Gratitude where Envy might have been ....
• A wish to Contribute instead of Slothfully watching the Big Egg-Timer empty ... and
• A Joy in Pleasure rather than Gluttony's "We want it All; we want it now" (Freddie Mercury).

In my faith tradition, we have an abbreviated list of three things that typically bring a person to sin: 

• Anger, 
• Pride and 
• Envy/Jealousy.

Healers, especially, these days when health insurance companies look to get people in and out of inpatient and outpatient treatments leaning on walkers and with Foley Catheters in place, these healers tend to try to place everything about healing in a Scientific Framework and I find them to be full of anger, pride and envy, as they undergo harder times in their professions. They talk of Evidence Based Therapies as the insurance companies have instructed them to do. It's OK for your doc to talk to you as a person-in-your-own-right but only if its demonstrably connected to improving your healing. Wasn't it bad enough that men were busy measuring their penises and forearms and women the shapeliness and size of their breasts, waists and ankles that we had to add these Statistical measures to every act the healer did ... even just being kind and/or human.

Maybe it was earlier but certainly by Freud (1933) we have him arguing against the introduction of any World View ... any Weltanschauung ... any notion of values in the Good Life ... none of these were to officially enter Freud's clinical theory of treatment, though as a healer he was (quietly) a warm man ... ready to welcome musicians, composers, religious leaders (though he was an atheist, himself), poets, and everyday folk into his practice and advocated a pro bono hour each day. ... I dunno how many healers, today, indulge in such pro bono work ... I'm certain some ... but I wonder how many.

Any case, the Religious tend to fight among themselves and so do the Healers.  So, I'm gonna spend my afternoon instead of napping dialoguing with those who are not home watching American Football or -- with the smart ones -- napping with the Dog!

I'll need some good fortune, as these healers tend to get feisty.

Better not get feisty with me!