Wintley Phipps powerfully tells the story of black spirituals and the hymn “Amazing Grace”.
READERS CAN FIND MY VIEWS ON ABUSE AND ABUSE-RELATED ISSUES AT ANNA WALDHERR A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse
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“Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there? Why then is there no recovery for the health of the daughter of my people?” (Jeremiah 8: 22).
By the time I left New York, every street corner was occupied by homeless individuals in rags, offering to wipe the windshields of passing motorists for small change. Men and women of all ages, in all weather, sat along the sidewalks, their few tattered belongings piled around them, as well-heeled shoppers hurried by.
Deinstitutionalization
New York was among the cities that undertook a mass psychiatric discharge in the ‘70s, in an effort to rescue patients from large facilities where neglect and abuse were not unknown.
Unfortunately, the attempt to transition psychiatric patients from in-patient to out-patient care was unsuccessful. The community mental health centers and halfway houses which would have made this a viable alternative were never established. NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”) was one factor.
Shortage of Psychiatric Beds
The problem only deepened after that. Nationally, the number of publically funded psychiatric beds was reduced from approximately 400,000 – 420,000 in 1970 to an appalling 50,000 – 57,000 by 2006 [2][2A]. Since the Great Recession, states have cut mental health funding by an additional $5 billion or so [1].
As a result, the system has been overwhelmed. Patients in dire need of psychiatric hospitalization have been left to the mercies of homelessness, prisons, and hospital emergency rooms.
The retention of highly disturbed patients in emergency room settings – sometimes wandering the halls, while they wait for a bed – is so common today that a term has been coined for it: boarding [3]. Nationally, there are some 2.5 million emergency room visits by psychiatric patients each year [2A]. In Maryland, as an illustration, emergency rooms may see as many as a dozen psychiatric patients per day, and board as many as a dozen psychiatric patients for up to a week [3] [4]. Read more…
Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in flight, UK, Photo by Tony Hisgett, Source Flckr Golden Eagle 2A (CC Attribution 2.0 Generic)
Hawks and golden eagles have re-established a foothold in Pennsylvania. These magnificent birds of prey can be seen circling high overhead on the updrafts generated by heat from our asphalt highways.
The sight seems living proof that there is a God. Who else could have designed such wonders? Who else could be holding them up?
Job must have felt much the same way. He reported God as having asked rhetorically, “‘Does the hawk fly by your wisdom, and spread its wings toward the south? Does the eagle mount up at your command, and make its nest on high?’” (Job 39: 26-27).
Watch the next time how confidently these birds throw themselves against the air. Keen as their vision is, they cannot actually see the wind. Yet they know with certainty it is there. Trust their very lives to it.
Is our faith a match?
Father, we are both awed and humbled by Your creation. We are so small and insignificant by comparison. Yet You loved us enough to send Your Son to die for our sakes. How can we respond, but fall to our knees?
We have nothing of worth to give You, nothing at all except these wounded hearts. Take and purify them, Father.
Strengthen our faith. Guide us as you guide the hawk through tractless climes. Give us confidence to follow Your direction, when we falter. And know that we love You, even then.
Amen
READERS CAN FIND MY VIEWS ON ABUSE AND ABUSE-RELATED ISSUES AT ANNA WALDHERR A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse
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George “Duke” Robinson (hospital birth of son), Photo by Sickofbs2009 (CC A-SA 3.0 Unported)
The client was in his late 20s, his face impassive, revealing nothing. He came to the legal clinic prepared, bringing along rent receipts carefully retained.
He told a story we had heard many times before: a layoff, promises to a landlord and partial payment of rent, then eviction. In this case, the poignant detail was added of his returning home from the job search to find his sons on the porch with their mother, the door to their apartment padlocked.
We discussed his limited options. It was only at the end of our session with him that the topic of fatherhood came up. We were deeply impressed by his faithfulness, his efforts to protect his family against the hardships of poverty. When we told him so, the dam burst.
He spoke with passion of having been abandoned as a young boy by his own father, of leaving home by his early teens, and fathering his first son within two years. He spoke of feeling a failure, of the temptation to leave, walk away as his father had.
We did what little we could. He needed a job and a roof over his head more than he did a lawyer.
But he stands to this day as an example for me of what fatherhood should be. It is the reason I am reminded of him on Father’s Day. His sons – the evidence of his existence, the personification of his desire to do better than his father – I am certain were blessed by his presence and his character.
I know I was.
“So Isaac breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him” (Gen. 35: 29).
READERS CAN FIND MY VIEWS ON ABUSE AND ABUSE-RELATED ISSUES AT ANNA WALDHERR A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse
https://avoicereclaimed.com
People are searching desperately for a system of belief that will make sense of the world around them.
Over the past few weeks alone, we have had news of a New Jersey father tossing his toddler off a bridge to her death [1]; two children, 6 y.o. and 7 y.o., stabbed in an elevator, at the New York housing project where they lived [2]; two 12 y.o. Wisconsin girls knifing a friend 19 times [3]; sex by a 30 y.o. Pennsylvania teacher with her 14 y.o. special education student [4]; and the murderous rampage of a California narcissist dissatisfied with his social life [5].
Little wonder that people are struggling to make sense of things. It seems as if the entire world has gone mad. The confusion is heightened by predictions from various sources – including that renowned spiritual mecca, Hollywood – of Armageddon and the end of days. Read more…
A Sudanese court, two weeks ago, sentenced Mariam Yehya Ibrahim to death by hanging for her failure to renounce Christianity and return to Islam. Officially, the crime of which the court found Mariam guilty was apostacy, i.e. abandoning or criticizing Islam.
The 27 year old woman was, also, sentenced to 100 lashes on the related charge of adultery for marrying her Christian husband, Daniel Wani, an American. Such marriages are forbidden under Islamic religious law which is incorporated into Sudan’s constitution.
Mariam gave birth last week to the couple’s second child. There is hope her release may yet be obtained through diplomatic means.
We gripe about religious persecution here in America, but have little or no concept of how severe persecution can actually be. All across the globe there are Christians bearing witness to their faith in the face of violent opposition. Read more…
Arlington Cemetary, Author Karakorhummel (CC BY-SA 4.0 International)
Monday we celebrate Memorial Day. The holiday was conceived to honor Civil War dead, but expanded over the decades to include all deaths during military service.
The solemn purpose of Memorial Day has not changed. It is to preserve the memory of brave men and women who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. Each generation is charged anew with the protection of that freedom. One generation passes the priceless baton on to the next.
Our soldiers, our sailors, our marines, our airmen we know have been faithful – from deserts to jungles, in air, on land and sea. The question is are we? Do we even give the men and women of our armed forces a second thought when the holiday rolls around again? Or are we too busy picking up hamburger buns and charcoal briquettes, staking out sales?
The apparent scheme by certain Department of Veterans Affairs facilities to misrepresent patient wait times rather than do anything to reduce them suggests we have a long way to go.
Valley Forge, Iwo Jima, Khe Sanh, Kandahar. The names echo down the corridors of history. Too few Americans, however, recall their significance.
This is a precious legacy we have been given. But we will not hold it long, if we do not recognize its value.
“And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Tim 2: 2-3).
READERS CAN FIND MY VIEWS ON ABUSE AND ABUSE-RELATED ISSUES AT ANNA WALDHERR A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse
https://avoicereclaimed.com
Often, when lawyers attempt to assist impoverished clients, we discover that legal problems are only the tip of an iceberg. There are, almost always, layers upon layers of difficulty with which these clients struggle on a daily basis. Such difficulties may include child abuse, teen pregnancy, urban violence, hunger, drug addiction, mental health issues, and homelessness.
When the law is insufficient to provide the clients seated before us an adequate solution, we can easily feel inadequate ourselves. At such times, the promises of the Lord may sound hollow.
Justice is not always achieved in this life. That does not make it any less worth fighting for.
But we cannot know the ways of the Lord. He is capable when we are not. He may be accomplishing some greater purpose we do not see or comprehend, a purpose extending across nations and generations. Read more…
“He has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3: 11).
My mother and I stood on line at the pharmacy counter, in the back of an aging drugstore. An attempt had been made to modernize the cramped space by adding plastic privacy screens. These were positioned so close to one another any hope of privacy was immediately eliminated.
The heat was palpable. An overhead fluorescent fixture buzzed like an irritated insect. I glanced up and noticed a forlorn effort to embellish the area, by way of a basket of faded plastic flowers. The arrangement had clearly been intended as a table topper, but was instead suspended precariously from an exposed pipe. The entire display was coated with a heavy layer of dust, and tilted awkwardly askew.
I touched my mother’s sleeve, and pointed to the arrangement. She looked up and exclaimed, without irony, “Beautiful!” Read more…
Roman slave shackle found at Hampshire, England, Photo by portableantiquities, Source http://www.flickr.com/photos/finds/7549071576/in/set-72157630526828120 (CC Attribution 2.0 Gen)
A rally was held in Nigeria earlier this week to protest that government’s inaction against the Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram (translated “Western Education Is Sinful”). The group recently kidnapped some 230 school girls, and is selling them into slavery for as little as $12 or “marrying” them to their captors [1].
Though estimates vary, there are as many as 30 million men, women, and children entrapped in slavery, as I write this.
Included among these are forced laborers recruited under threat of violence, by governments and political parties; chattel slaves abducted from their homes – bought, sold, inherited, and given as gifts; bonded laborers whose loans – impossible of repayment – can be passed from generation to generation; child soldiers; child brides in forced marriages; children engaged in toil destructive of their health and well-being; and sexually exploited women and children, now a basis for sex tourism.
If any of this sounds familiar to Americans, it should. The impact of slavery on our country has been immense. It is a lasting scar the extent of which cannot be summed up in a few neat words.
But slavery has not been confined to a single race or nation. Slavery is referenced as far back as the Code of Hammurabi and the Bible [2]. Slavery existed in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; in Ireland, Poland, and elsewhere across the globe. It existed among Christians and Muslims. Slave labor camps in the form of gulags were utilized as a political tool by Russia until 1960. They persist in China (under the name “laogai”) and North Korea today.
By focusing exclusively on grievances of the past – albeit, legitimate grievances – we may overlook the chance we have as Americans of every stripe to make a difference in the present.
The evils (and insidious after-effects) of slavery should, if anything, make America the nation foremost in seeking an end worldwide to that institution, once and for all. Instead, we remain a house divided, consumed by our own pain. Read more…
A Lawyer's Prayers 