Hi Folks,
QUE TAL?
It has been a few days since my last post, but there hasn't been a lot to talk about. But there are a couple of things I'd like to share.
Last Monday I went to a Pain Management doctor about the problem I have been having with pains shooting down my left leg and the numbness in my left foot. I had thought it was a sciatic nerve problem. The doc quickly determined it was probably not a sciatic nerve problem, but rather a form of neuropathy, perhaps caused by a vitamin deficiency. During the examination the doc had some questions about the medication I take for my arthritis pain, in part because I was taking fairly large doses of Tylenol, which is hard on the liver. She suggested I try a new medication called Rysolt E.R. I started taking it on Tuesday and almost immediately I noticed a dramatic relief of the arthritic pain in my feet that has been so debilitating for so many years. The difference was so dramatic that I was afraid it wouldn't last. All week long I kept expecting the pain to return, but it never did, even whe the barometer dropped yesterday. A drop in the barometric pressure almost alwaysmade my arthritis very painful.
Before I started the Rysolt, if I was on my feet for any period of time, like even an hour, my feet would throb so, that I would just have to get off them. And they would hurt like that until the next day. I wasn't able to walk any real distance, even walking a mile would be enough to have me hobbling around.
With the new medication I am trtying out various activities. I haven't gone for a long walk yet, but I will today. Today I will walk for a half hour and see how it goes. Then, assuming that goes well, on another day I will go for an hour and see how that goes. But by everything I have experienced so far I expect it to go just fine. What a blessing this will be when I go on the AZ Hywys Photo Workshop next month. I have been wondering how I would handle the walking that I know will be a part of the trip, but now I think it wil be OK.


A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS
Recently I was in a conversation about the current economic crisis. we talked about how GREED had been the major cause of this current situation. People shared their own stories of how they had personally seen banks and mortgage companies lose all sense of ethical responsibility in the drive to make as much as they could as fast as they could. We talked about how ethics is not even taught in the Business colleges of our finest universities. Greed at the corporate and business level was only part of the story. Personal greed had driven people to think they could buy what they could not afford in the purchase of their homes, coupled with running up massive amounts of credit card debt only to learn that the credit card companies manipulated their "rules" to "trick and trap" people by arbitrarily raising the int erst rate and imposing unfair penalties.
Then it occur ed to us that many , if not most of the people who caused this climate where the only guiding ethical principle was GREED, where people who also attend church.
Surely many of the executives of these banks and mortgage institutions and credit card companies consider themselves to be "Christians". I'll bet that many of them are even leaders in their churches, serving on vestries, boards of trustees. Many probably even teach Sunday School or lead groups that do outreach projects, etc. Yet somehow they walk out the church door and put on their professional hat and never even think about whether what they are doing is right or wrong, about whether there are any moral aspects of what they do in their businesses; they never consider the social responsibility of their business decisions. The just worship the god of "profit at all costs".
I don't know if this circumstance is an indictment of the churches, or the people or both. But it seems to me to be undeniable that far too many "believers" are really " hearers of the word and not doers". I think sometime our theology of "salvation by faith" gets interpreted to mean," what one does ion their professional lives doesn't matter, as long as they "believe"in God. Maybe as church leaders we set a bad example. We practice our own form of greed when we place a huge emphasis of "growing the church". The "successful church" is one that keeps getting bigger and bigger as more and more people to attend and more and more people increase their giving so that we can spend hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars building bigger, fancier church buildings, and buying more and fancier church stuff. Then after building the new beautiful building and after we fill it with new and even more beautiful church stuff, we have a bake sale, or similar event to raise a couple of hundred bucks to donate it and call it our "outreach program". The church is often as self-centered, and greedy and self-deceiving as the banks and the mortgage institutions and the credit card companies have been. We deceive ourselves by saying that we are "bringing people to Christ". Is that really what we are doing when those people we "brought to Christ" go out and live their processional lives guided only by unbridled, unrestrained, and unconscionable greed. Have we brought them to Christ or have we just brought them into the religious version of what the rest of the world is doing?
Something to ponder.

Adios for now
Glenn+