Guest Post from Jesse
Update on Joanie from Her Father
As you may recall, Joanie’s mother passed on from complications of pneumonia about a year before she went to the doctor with ‘growing pains.’ Her six sisters and brother, as well as her father, were just beginning to get over the early loss of their mother and beloved wife.
Her father has largely given up his medical practice in Louisiana, and moved his family to be nearer to St. Jude’s Childrens Hospital in Memphis. St. Jude’s has been wonderful, but this has taken an obvious financial and emotional toll on them, although I have rarely seen a more faithful and joyous family, even under these circumstances.
Suffering and loss, especially among the innocent, is one of the great stumbling blocks of faith, and a folly to those who have no faith. So we must rally to the support of those when they are taking up their Cross, as will we all. We may ask, ‘why doesn’t God do something?’ He did. He calls you, heart to heart. He did this when He walked among us, but we do not see it, we do not think about it in our own time. And yet He is still here.
There are some remarkable advances being make in cancer research, and St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital is a beacon. However, overall the work goes slowly and the marketplace too often seeks to maximize its returns, rather than to act boldly and take the big risks.
We send many of our brightest and invest enormous amounts into finance and computerized systems to find better ways of cheating one another, and to spy and oppress and deceive one another. And the effects of this tragic misallocation of energy and resources, this sickness of the spirit, are more widespread and insidious than we might imagine.
There are many fine people in our medical system, but this nation lacks the will to really rise to the aid of the afflicted, in all to many cases. There is even a growing satisfaction with the unnecessary suffering of the weak. We become what we fear and hate, because it wrings the love out of our hearts, leaving only emptiness and despair. Indifference and greed kill bodies as well as souls.
And Jesus wept.
Please remember Joanie and her family in your prayers, as she remembers all of you here at Le Café.
“Five days ago the St Jude staff sat us down to say they’ve exhausted all therapies. With teary eyes and faltering words, Joan’s oncologist Dr. Navid told us it was time to go home…
The harrowing truth is that her prognosis is presently not even two months. Joan has a blessed grace period (Deo Gratias) of perhaps three weeks where she will continue with normal functioning. We’re told there is a reasonable chance that she will rapidly succumb to a sudden event, likely a seizure, due to the neurological spread of her bone cancer. Hospice is on hand.
I’m talking to Joan about this brief time being an extremely special opportunity where her little prayers have a most particular power. She is praying Hail Mary’s for the many folks, both near and far, who have been a part of our family.
We ask Heaven for a cure and for a holy resignation to the Divine Will. Providence has carried the Schneider pilgrims all through this journey and, despite my repeated offenses and unworthiness, I know in my bones His Mercy won’t let us down.”
Related: Update on Joanie, February 2014
“I’m talking to Joan about this brief time being an extremely special opportunity where her little prayers have a most particular power. She is praying Hail Mary’s for the many folks, both near and far, who have been a part of our family.” ————— from the article
The brief time is indeed “special” in that daughter and family have time to say “good-byes” ….. although there is a maudlin aspect to it. My own hopes for dying is to one day go to sleep, and simply not wake up. Not sure I could handle three weeks of highly emotional ‘good byes’.
Someone please tell me how her “little prayers” will have some kind of a “most particular power”. She can pray night and day, but in about three weeks the result will be the same. That’s power? I’m sure Nonanonymous and bb will set me straight.
But, the author know this. They are praying for BOTH a cure AND a “holy resignation to the Divine Will” …. which pretty much covers all the bases. God always gets a free pass, for His ways are mysterious, and if those ways include killing a child with a truly horrible cancer, well, so be it, God is so very loving, wonderful, and compassionate. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
How is praying to a dead woman going to help anything?? Did Jesus pray to Mary while hanging on the cross? Is Mary deaf … and that’s why praying to her must be repeated over and over and over?
I suspect I’ll get many thumbs down for my insensitivity. However, I would NEVER say these things to the family and loved ones in person. I do have some social graces left. I would simply say, “I’m thinking of you.”, and leave it at that.
Stuck –
Every time you post something regarding faith, God, the Supernatural, etc. every word resonates with me. It will probably never come to pass, but I’d love to sit down with you some time and discuss all the intricacies of What Is.
Because you’re right, of course. Here is a family, about to lose their little girl, and they’re praying, hoping against hope, that their little girl will be cured, or that God’s will be done. So, if the little girl gets “healed” then it’s a Divine Miracle. On the other hand, if (& when) the little girl dies, then God’s ways are not man’s ways and is mysterious. Sounds capricious to me.
I think what people need to do is not to pray but to actually “DO” something. Here’s a chance for me to plug my own thing:
On May 4th, I’m going to shave my head to raise money for a childrens’ cancer organization. I’m about ten bucks short of reaching my goal of $1,000. If anyone would like to donate, you can go to
http://www.buzzforkids.org
On the left hand side, click the button “Sponsor a Buzzee” and look for “Tim Flood”
I’ll take some “before” and “after” pictures because I’m a long-haired, shaggy-looking guy.
R.I.P. Joanie…
“We send many of our brightest and invest enormous amounts into finance and computerized systems to find better ways of cheating one another, and to spy and oppress and deceive one another. And the effects of this tragic misallocation of energy and resources, this sickness of the spirit, are more widespread and insidious than we might imagine.”
If that comment doesn’t sting you and cause you to pause, nothing will. So true, so pitiful.
Physical death is merely a passing from this plane back home to the spiritual world. I do not fear it at all, but will miss those I leave behind, and hope I have impacted them positively while I was here.
Stucky says:
“How is praying to a dead woman going to help anything?? Did Jesus pray to Mary while hanging on the cross? Is Mary deaf … and that’s why praying to her must be repeated over and over and over?
I suspect I’ll get many thumbs down for my insensitivity. However, I would NEVER say these things to the family and loved ones in person. I do have some social graces left. I would simply say, “I’m thinking of you.”, and leave it at that.”
I think some folks have left the realm of reality indeed, when people ask for prayers, the merely respond “prayers” as if the word prayers is what is asked for. So if they do not know what to pray, they only invoke the magic word. I am with you on that there are many stupid people. Of course, I am not exempt.
Tim says:
Stuck –
Every time you post something regarding faith, God, the Supernatural, etc. every word resonates with me. It will probably never come to pass, but I’d love to sit down with you some time and discuss all the intricacies of What Is.
Part of what makes this site valuable, Timbo.
“It will probably never come to pass, but I’d love to sit down with you some time and discuss all the intricacies of What Is.” ———– Tim
I would like that too!!!
There are MANY folks here I would love to meet in person. I have this hope (really) that many of us will one day meet at some kind of anti-government rally. Or, maybe, a FEMA camp. lol
Peace, brother!
@Stucky: Dude you are way off here.
What is the harm in offering some prayer here? Whether or not there is anybody listening is not the point, really. We can debate the existence or not of a Higher Power until the heat death of the Universe. Personally, I think there is an afterlife and what happens to you there depends on what you did here. I know that my parents are in heaven – my Dad is watching the Cubs win the World Series and my Mom is paying championship bridge, so there.
The POINT is that the act of praying or offering prayer is to support the afflicted person and their family, to help bind us humans together in times of tragedy and to start the long road to healing.
That this little child is dying while the Sanduskys and Corzines of the world live on is proof positive of HZK’s Theorem #1:
God doesn’t want assholes in Heaven. So this is why the Good die young and the Bad do not because they have to: 1) stick around until they get it right, and, 2) serve as an example to the rest of us of how not to do it.
I can’t ever recall praying to God to change anything, not sure if that’s really the deal or not, I’ll sometimes pray, or have very strong thoughts, just to get though a tough time and maybe that’s what it’s all about, seeking strength in tough times.
Either way, there is no harm in asking or believing, or not believing.
But for you non believers:
” I know that my parents are in heaven – my Dad is watching the Cubs win the World Series…” —HZK
Nice thought. But I don’t think the Cubs will win jack-shit, even in …….. eternity.
“What is the harm in offering some prayer here? Whether or not there is anybody listening is not the point, really.” ——– HZK
Well, if it doesn’t matter whether anyone is listening, then what IS the point, really?
I kind of know the answer. The answer is in your very own TBP-name ….. HOPE! it makes a person feel good to pray. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I had a rather long conversation with my younger son on Easter. He is very religious … in a Gayle sort of way, not Nonanonymous or bb. Meaning, he’s not “preachy” or condemning and keeps his religion mostly to himself.
But, not this Easter!! For over an hour he told me about Jeebus’ love, his blood sacrifice for me, he even gave me the “Jesus is either a Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” argument … as if I’ve never heard that before. I kept mostly silent — what’s the point of arguing on Easter Sunday? — although I have started an email to refute the “liar” argument. Maybe he thinks I’m going to die soon because he closed with this; “Don’t you want to be in heaven with me and your grandchildren forever??”. What am I supposed to say to THAT??!! No??
So, yeah, it’s all about hope and feeling good that this life isn’t All There Is. That there’s a heaven where we are all forever young and watching, in our case, World Cup soccer forever …. and Germany NEVER loses. Ha! I get it. I have no problem with it. But, it doesn’t mean I have to believe it.
Guess I never thought of praying to “ask” for anything… I’ve always believed that God’s will is God’s will, and will be done, no matter what we want. To ask God to change His will to what we want seems the pinnacle of hubris and greed, to me. Instead, prayers should be for thanks and gratefulness, for understanding, for achieving peace and acceptance of God’s will.
I do believe that there is a reason why little girls like Joanie are taken far too soon, but that, too, is God’s will.
Prayers can also be affirmations, even commands (put an exclamation point at the end of each line of the Lord’s Prayer, for example).
Personally, I was raised in a non-religious home–not atheists, just no church-going. I began to seek the meaning of life around age 30, and continually do so nearly as many years later. I’d classify myself as a spiritualist, unbound to any religion. The Nag Hammadi gnostic gospels somehow resonate with me because the Gnostics preached that you find God from within and that formal, orthodox church is not necessary. For that thinking, the Gnostics were wiped out by the orthodoxy.
Rise up , the Gnostic gospels are all lies. Gnosticism is just an old version of the new age gospel that you have in places like Hollywood.They have no apostolic authority.Read PETER 2.AND JUDE.You cannot find GOD from within.The human.heart is to subjective and deceitful .One needs to get out of self and look to the objective truths in bible.
If you read the Red Letters, Jesus was pretty clear:
King James Bible
“Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
Luke 17:21
@bb, you and I have done this discussion once before. No more need be said by either of us. I will subscribe to what I believe suits me, as you will.
Christian: “The Gnostic gospels are all lies!!!”
Seeker: “Why?”
Christian: “Because WE say so!!”
Seeker: “Who decided which ‘gospels’ are authentic?”
Christian: “WE did!! We are the Deciders!!”
Seeker: “Based on what?”
Christian: “The Bible!!”
Seeker: “You mean the books YOU chose?”
Christian: “Yup!!”
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Tim ,that’s on after you believe Christ is who he said he was .
@ rise-up:
Good call. Thanks for the exit sign. I almost missed it.
Rise up ,Tim ,….you both need to read more about the gnostic gospels .Then read more about the new age religion.*You will see they are really the same old lie..
I really don’t care what any of you worship.If you don’t believe what I tell and your too lazy to look up the new age religion…….
Tim ,how’s Dallas working out for you?You live in an all white neighborhood?
Rise up ,why are you being such a pussy boy ?Now tell me the difference between the gnostic gospel and the new age gospel.
“There is even a growing satisfaction with the unnecessary suffering of the weak”
The weak being people that work for a living, who remain honest and forthright, who contribute to society. They’ve been mastered, taken over by living parasites, the #1 being Obama. The weak will succumb to parasitism, like all living beings, and then the parasites will parish, or go back down from whence they came.
There is a God, and you ain’t it. Prayer helps people recover from medical problems. And meditation prevents some medical problems, reduces pain and suffering. Many studies to prove it. There are at least 12 dimensions, and we can comprehend only 3. We are all but spiritually blind, yet we are given free will, in opposition to God’s will, and some people reach enlightenment by fusing their will with God’s will. Then great things and miracles can happen. Prayer works, as does meditation. Anyone who practices (and they require practice) them KNOWS they work. There is a power, it’s everywhere, it’s everything, there are no coincidences in life. Who made all this? Was it an accident? The complex systems known as humans, the human brain, all 3 trillion neurons, an accident? How can anyone be so stupid, vain, or prideful not to acknowledge what is right before your very eyes?
And don’t blame GOD for religion….
Religion is men trying to control other men….
bb
Tim isn’t responding to you because he is SMART.
He does not respond probably for the same reason I generally don’t address you. Because it’s like this …
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Oh dear, another “God” thread… I’m very sorry about the young ladies bad luck and the loss of a life barely lived..
Other than that, I’ll just leave it alone.
MA
Stuck
I have come to believe that God appreciates a genuine struggle for faith more than an assent based on family tradition, needs for feelings of safety or of a black and white world where all is explained by legalistic rule-following.
I know my faith is more genuine after my own crisis which I now recall as The Black Period where I threw off all restraint and entered a time of complete rebellion towards God and his impossible (to me) expectations. I would go to church and have the sensation of crawling through the door on my hands and knees begging for mercy. This was at a most inopportune time of my life (50’s). And everyone who loved me was forced to suffer along with this strange person who came to inhabit me.
But getting to the other side was worth it. Once I was able to grasp that what I was called to be was simply as much an imitator of Christ as I could grow to be, I was able to shed the self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and anxiety that had plagued me until then. Those blessed enough to endure a prodigal experience are rich in grace.
So I inderstand your misgivings. Sometimes I get offended by your mocking of Christianity and Christians, but I sense it comes from some bad experiences in the past.
As for Joanie, she’s a good example of things in this life that keep us merciful and thankful. If only the bad suffered, think how hard-hearted and prideful we would all be, no matter what our spiritual beliefs. Anyway, poor little Joanie is soon to be in a far better place than any of us.
Gayle says:
Stuck
“… Once I was able to grasp that what I was called to be was simply as much an imitator of Christ as I could grow to be, I was able to shed the self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and anxiety that had plagued me until then…So I inderstand your misgivings. Sometimes I get offended by your mocking of Christianity and Christians, but I sense it comes from some bad experiences in the past.”
Muck holds hard to his beliefs, I do to mine. I got to where Gayle is, not by being offended at Stuck’s comments, but because of them. Stuck is actually the brick wall above and bb is the one talking. I do a lot of talking still but it is mostly to myself now. I have to remember to be nice and shut up and do no evil as frustration can lead one to anger and anger to foolish acts. In other words, I am dealing with the mote in my eye.
Thanks to all who commented here, it shows you care about more than material things.
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child’s death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
Dylan Thomas
RIP Joanie
http://www.melanconfunerals.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=2522064&fh_id=11948
…brought a tear to my eye.
Stucky -Someone please tell me how her “little prayers” will have some kind of a “most particular power”
Why Stucky ?…disappointment and pain is the price of hope.Peace is the profit.
Greater minds than those possessed of the mundane have determined that the mind of God cannot be known, therefore the essence must be made do.
” A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.” Isaac Newton
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/the-god-of-the-mathematicians
The often noted problem is that the intuitively intelligible world Einstein created with the deterministic equations of general relativity jars with the probabilistic world of modern quantum mechanics. Einstein and Gödel were close friends, but they disagreed profoundly on religious and philosophical matters. As Gödel told Hao Wang, “Einstein’s religion [was] more abstract, like Spinoza and Indian philosophy. Spinoza’s god is less than a person; mine is more than a person; because God can play the role of a person.”
Gödel’s personal God is under no obligation to behave in a predictable orderly fashion, and Gödel produced what may be the most damaging critique of general relativity. In a Festschrift for Einstein’s seventieth birthday in 1949, Gödel demonstrated the possibility of a special case in which, as Palle Yourgrau described the result, “the large-scale geometry of the world is so warped that there exist space-time curves that bend back on themselves so far that they close; that is, they return to their starting point.” This means that “a highly accelerated spaceship journey along such a closed path, or world line, could only be described as time travel.” In fact, “Gödel worked out the length and time for the journey, as well as the exact speed and fuel requirements.”
Gödel, of course, did not actually believe in time travel, but he understood his paper to undermine the Einsteinian worldview from within. Yourgrau observes, “The very fact that this inconceivably fast spaceship would return its passengers to the past demonstrated, by Gödel’s lights, that time itself”hence speed and motion”is but an illusion.” Stephen Hawking so abhorred the implications of Gödel’s demonstration that he proposed an ad hoc bylaw for general relativity, the “chronology protection conjecture,” simply to exclude it. Like Einstein, Hawking then believed that a grand theory of the universe would allow humankind to see into the “mind of God.” In recent years, though, Hawking has come closer to Gödel’s point of view, going so far as to conjecture that a sort of Gödelian “incompleteness principle” might exist in physics as well as in mathematics.