As Christmas approaches, I tend to think about world affairs in terms of the Christian values I grew up believing. I look back over the year, and forward to the next year. I even make some predictions, not of the wheeooooeee type, but based on my analysis of events and conditions in society and in the world.
I read this morning that Ireland has mailed letters to about 6000 unemployed Irish, asking them to move to other EU nations. This strikes me as wrong on at least two fronts. The first is that as a Catholic nation, which prohibits birth control, the nation helped create the long term unemployed and owes them better than asking them to leave their home. The second is that the other EU nations have their own unemployment problems and might not welcome 6000 unemployed immigrants.
The day before I had read that Google (or amazon) was looking to replace clerks with robots. Prior to this, I have read pieces saying that we will now permanently have a higher rate of unemployment. I have also read that those who have been unemployed longer than six months are now considered unemployable. My Christian values tell me that if society cannot offer people jobs, it should, at a minimum, leave them their dignity, and provide them with life's necessities. This has made the Christian right's position of blaming the unemployed for their condition, and blaming it on laziness and unwillingness to work, simply unfathomable and immoral.
Love, and charity, Jesus himself, require us to treat the unemployables with respect, and dignity, not scorn and the cloak of invisibility that descends when we assume people "don't want to work." Honestly, how many of us can say that we would keep looking for a job after we are told by agencies and employers that we have been unemployed too long to be considered? With dwindling financial reserves, how much would any of us continue to expend on transportation, clothing expenses (even if just cleaning and pressing), printing up and sending out resumes? Who do you think an employer would hire -- a 32 year old with children, or someone in their late forties or early fifties with health issues?
Do we just toss people away, like disposable coffee cups and razors? Do we just say "I'll pray for you?' When we say it, how often do we actually pray for a solution to the suffering and the stress? Once? Daily until we hear the person's situation has improved?
Into this walks Pope Francis, who is the first Pope since I became conscious of the existence of a Pope, which was the installation of Pope John XXII, who walks and talks as I imagine Jesus did, or close to it. What does the Christian Right do? Attack him as "communist" like "Obama." I heard someone mention that Pope Francis was not even born in the United States! Hmm, I'm not Catholic, and I know that NONE of them throughout history were born in the United States. So how is that a relevant comment? Is it just a stupid one?
God gives us life, and He takes it away. What those who have never been in the position this woman is, or many others with debilitating diseases, do not realize is that sometimes our lives are taken from us bit by bit. It is that particular situation, not young people in good health with lives ahead of them going through a rough spot, that I address.
We disabled watch those who love us working to take care of us until they are exhausted. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. We watch their financial sacrifices, and watch their enjoyment of life drain from their tired eyes. The more and more dependent we get on them, the more we think "they could have a better life without me." We love them and want that for them, especially if they are also getting older, feeling arthritis, experiencing heart disease, depression or other health concerns of their own.
Ever thought God also gives us the will to continue or the courage to die? The choice to keep fighting beyond physical, mental, spiritual exhaustion, or the courage to free one's loved one's from debt, struggle and the same kind of exhaustion? It just might be cruel to deny this woman the peace she seeks for herself.
I speak as one whose life has eroded from beneath her feet for decades. My career. My dreams of motherhood. The respect of people who knew me but not my disease. Suffered the contempt of people who do not know me and do not know my disease; managing to find the love within myself that made it impossible to wish they suffer this one day.
I still fight to make the most of every day, , to find, create, as much joy and laughter to buoy my own heart and those of others, to do as much as I can for myself, for others, for the world, for love. I admit that I am growing increasingly less willing to fight as my abilities continue to erode, as it becomes increasingly difficult to make even the tiniest of dreams come true, and most of all, as I see the stress my beloved husband undergoes every day. I die by breaths, but the amount of time I can hang on, long after I can do nothing for myself or others, stupefies me.
I am not there yet. Yet I see my future, with all its pain, and I do not wish that on my husband. Some day I will be where Marie is, and anyone who stands in my way does not know the first thing about loving others as we love ourselves.
My prayer is that Marie and the Irish courts find the wisdom to break free of medieval views on death and suicide. I'm amazed that any Christian who looks to heaven can willingly insist that someone with no will to live any longer MUST suffer and make suffering for the ones they love until some "critical" body part wears out.
I could not say I love anyone that I made endure suffering: physical, emotional, mental. If you think you can confront God and say "I kept her from killing herself so you could decide when," don't be surprised if He says "I loved her enough to let her decide when she could stand no more, and you didn't love her enough to let her go." Cause the God I believe in would say just that. I hope the Irish courts know that God.
If you have been reading my blog, or any of my pages, or my Facebook page, you know that I have SLE (Systemic Lupus Erythmatosis). What you may not realize is that this is primarily "a woman's disease," as 90% of the patients are women. Most of them are 15 -45, the childbearing years. For some enlightening information about pregnancy and lupus, please read this study in Japan about pregnancy outcomes and lupus .Women of color, across the board have higher rates than white women. I once had a former Texas benefits evaluator tell me that "lupus is a made up disease by people who are too lazy to work." To me, it was clear he was referring to Black women. Black women have higher death rates from breast and cervical cancer, higher rates of STD's and teen pregnancies, higher infant mortanlity. SOURCE: Debunking the myth. Black women, Hispanic women, Native American women all have higher rates of lupus. Black women have more severe outcomes more often. Poor women without health insurance have a harder time getting the help they need to treat lupus. SOURCE: Lupus Fact sheetFor some information about lupus symptoms in general, please read this article about two lupus patients. My diagnosis was originally made by a gynecologist to whom I had gone for a simple pap smear. At the time, I had health insurance. I no longer have health insurance, and my best option for pap smears is Planned Parenthood. Read one woman's story about not affording to go anywhere but Planned Parenthood. Please make yourself aware of two FACTS:1. NOT ONE TAXPAYER DOLLAR GOES TO ABORTION. That has been prohibited since the 1970s. 2. Abortions are only 3% of their services FACT SHEET HERE Finally, let's talk about SOCIAL SECURITY and Disability and Social Security Supplemental Income. I worked from age 15 until about 40. I've been fighting to get SSDI so I can get Medicare to cover my lupus medications. First they told me I ought to be able to work (in 1995) because I am educated. Know many employers who want employees who fall asleep on the job, or who miss work frequently because they cannot drag themselves out of bed and stay awake long enough to bathe, dress, and get to work? Or who catch the flu and the miss weeks because the immunosuppressant drugs they take for lupus don't fight the flu well and leave them with bronchitism pneumonia and a lupus flare in which their joints swell and cause agonizing pain? If so, please send those employers my way! I'd love to work, use my brain again for pay. Of course, it has to be low stress and pretty free of deadlines, because stress makes my lupus worse, and I never know which day I'm going to wake up and be unable to stay awake -- which makes it difficult to meet those deadlines. See this blog for another person's perspective. The next time I applied for SSI/SSDI they told me my $3000+ savings account made me ineligible for SSI and I no longer had enough qualifying quarters for SSDI. I appealled and they told me I wasn't disabled! NOIT DISABLED? I cannot shop without either my husband pushing me in the wheelchair or an electric cart. Some days my knees hurt so badly the 8' from my bed to the toilet has me in tears. I cannot stand in lines for more than 30 seconds without the knees and hips begging me to sit down. That's not disabled? Now their story is that we cannot prove I was disabled WHILE I STILL HAD ENOUGH QUALIFYING QUARTERS. THEY have the 1995 records with the doctors names, but OOPS I can no longer get those records because the doctors who made the disagnosis, and who treated me, destroyed the records 10 years after my last visit. I'm SURE those records are in the SS records; they just demand that I produce them, knowing I can't. So now I'm still 5 years too young for SS and Medicare. What if they raise the retirement age? First how will we tap into our retirement accounts without penalty to pay for medical expenses? I will NEVER see my SS money that I paid into the system all those years I worked (sometimes at 2-3 jobs at a time!). I WILL NOT LIVE LONG ENOUGH! Let me repeat that I WILL NOT LIVE LONG ENOUGH! I can no longer take Methotrexate because my platelet levels drop too low and I am in danger of bleeding to death internally. The prednisone I have been on for over a year now will, according to my rheumatologist "take five years off your life." It also induced Type II diabetes, which is implicated in heart disease, even if I didn't have the extra clotting factor from lupus. The Hydorxychloroquine (Plaquanil) no longer controls the disease by itself. I also cannot take aspirin, NSAIDs like ibuprofen. So I take ginger and turmeric for the constant pain. Some days it works, some days it doesn't work so well. I need Ben Lysta, according to my rheumatologist, but she's not going to administer it. It's about $2000-$3000 a pop. I think it's once a month. I tried to get onto a drug trial, but the diagnoses (both of which I think are wrong) the county hospital gave me of non-alcoholic cirrhosis and heart failure keep me out of the trial. I need a liver biopsy to rule out the cirrhosis, and an echocarcdogram for the heart failure. My only hope is Obama's health care plan, because I could not be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. If I cannot afford the private health insurance or the high risk pool insurance, I could, as I understand it, get Medicare without having to be on SS, SSI, or SSDI. So think twice before you pull the lever for someone who wants to repeal Obamacare; that lever pull will be a death sentence for me and many others with my illness or others like it. Of course, it you want to be a good, compassionate Christian, you can send me money at PayPal to help with my medical expenses. Leave a comment on this website and I'll send you my email. They are. or would, if I were seeing the doctors I need to see and taking the meds I need to take run from $3000 in a good year for routine meds and visits and tests to upwards of $24,000 if I had to be hospitalized. My brother is currently supporting us and paying our medical expenses. He's nearing retirement age. He spent years paying for our mother's needs because her SS didn't cover the utilities, food, out of pocket medical expenses. Now he has us, and his own family.
SO please look into your heart and see if you want to pull my plug by voting to kill "Obamacare
One of my Facebook friends posted one of those inspirational motto thingies this morning, and one of the lines was about making changes not excuses. The odd little idea popped into my head that what we need today is more people willing to excuse others. I also thought maybe we need to learn to distinguish between excuses, reasons, and explanations better. As I often do, I went to the dictionary to make sure I wasn't imbuing the word "excuse" with some connotative subtlety it doesn't really mean. The definitions I found online were "attempt to lessen the blame attached to a fault or offense" and "a reason or explanation put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense," "to make apology for," "to forgive entirely or disregard as of trivial import," "to grant exemption from or release to," "to allow leave," and "to serve as an excuse for." Among the synonyms were "pardon," " forgive," " justify," "absolve," " remit", and "condone." Merriam-Webster - The Free Dictionary Ah, there it is! "Forgive." We excuse wounded veterans for not being able to get work. Or we give employers incentives to hire them, give them retraining. I am not in disagreement with this. Pretty much everyone else we tell "no excuses, get a job." Yet many of them have legitimate reasons they are unable to obtain work: chronic debilitating diseases, mental handicaps, mental illnesses which interfere with the ability to perform up to corporate standards. Some of these could indeed work, if certain modifications in expectations were made. These things need no excuses from the persons with these reasons. We are blaming people for things over which they have no control. Yet we often ask them to defend themselves for these conditions that result from chance, not choice. The changes required are changes in our social expectations. We cannot expect a brain damaged person to work as fast, or learn as fast as persons with normal abilities. We cannot expect someone with a debilitating chronic illness to put in as many hours, or show up every day. Some employers do make exceptions. They are to be commended. There just are not enough employers willing to take the time to fit these people into their structure. Another category of people are those who cannot obtain a job through decisions or judgments made by employers. We can pretend that discrimination does not exist, yet the statistical evidence is that it does occur in hiring, promotions, and raises. Is it any wonder that "liberal arts" have been disparaged? The disparagement makes it easier for some of us to live in denial. It strikes me as odd that this is the case in what is also often referred to by those calling for "no excuses" as a "Christian nation." Christ spoke often of forgiveness, charity, care for the poor. How can someone with Christian values not possess the wilingness to excuse others for that which they cannot control?
|
RSS Feed