"The Debate"

Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to convert to Catholicism or leave Italy. There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a deal: he'd have a religious debate with the leader of the Jewish community. If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy; if the Pope won, they'd have to convert or leave.The Jewish people met and picked an aged and wise rabbi to represent them in the debate. However, as the rabbi spoke no Italian, and the Pope spoke no Yiddish, they agreed that it would be a 'silent' debate.

On the chosen day the Pope and rabbi sat opposite each other.The Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers.The rabbi looked back and raised one finger.Next, the Pope waved his finger around his head.The rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat.The Pope brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine.The rabbi pulled out an apple.With that, the Pope stood up and declared himself beaten and said that the rabbi was too clever. The Jews could stay in Italy.

Later the cardinals met with the Pope and asked him what had happened.The Pope said, 'First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up a single finger to remind me there is still only one God common to both our beliefs. Then, I waved my finger around my head to show him that God was all around us. The rabbi responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us of all our sins, and the rabbi pulled out an apple to remind me of the original sin. He bested me at every move and I could not continue.'

Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered to ask the rabbi how he'd won.
'I haven't a clue,' said the rabbi. 'First, he told me that we had three days to get out of Italy, so I gave him the finger. Then he tells me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews and I told him that we were staying right here. 'And then what?' asked a woman.'Who knows?' said the rabbi. 'He took out his lunch so I took out mine.'

Irony is...

Irony is stress caused by misplacing a book called " Stress, Loss and Grief".

I did find it, but after an exhaustive search in the "piles" on my desk...

"Spoon Theory"

I have been cleaning off my desk and have found some interesting items that I meant-to-do-something-with-that-later but obviously didn't get to it.

My friend sent me a website link to the Spoon theory story. This talks about people who are ill, in particular, have Lupus, and helping someone "healthy" to understand the experience of chronic illness.

Good news item

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/News/2008/06/17/5899661-sun.html

This is a feel good story. Some would say a miracle. Gives you faith in humanity again.

Giving binners a good name By LUCY GOTELL, 24 HOURS
As an out-of-work actress, Vanessa Burns doesn't have a lot of extra cash. But she's willing to spare some for the man who did her a good deed when she was at her lowest - if she can find him.
After going out with some friends last weekend, Vanessa - who left her home in Toronto three months ago to find work here in Vancouver - woke up Sunday to find her wallet missing.
"I was devastated. I was really upset because I really missed my husband at home and my family," said Burns. "When that happened, it just really made me homesick."
Distraught, Vanessa called her credit-card company and was told someone had charged a cab fare to her Visa.
A few hours later, though, Vanessa heard from an old roommate who said she'd received a phone call from a woman who had Vanessa's wallet.
"What happened was, when [the woman] was taking out her garbage yesterday morning, there was a homeless man who had found my wallet by the garbage and just said, 'Here, I found this, can you take it?'" Vanessa said.
Vanessa picked up her wallet later that day, and was shocked to find that, apart from her credit cards, all of her belongings were still inside.
"My health card, my SIN card, my bus pass ... this guy could have sold these things I'm sure, but he didn't," said Vanessa. "It's amazing to me that the person who initially used my credit card is probably the guy who has a decent apartment, a decent job and just wanted to have somebody else pay for his cab fare. But the guy who has nothing ... is the one who returned it."
Before Vanessa returns to Toronto she would like to meet the man who acted so selflessly.
"I feel like I'm very lucky and I just want to say thank you. Even if it's just buying him a decent meal I would love to do that."

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

paraskevidekatriaphobia Quite the word eh?
From a 2007 article in the Vancouver Sun,

No, it's not a fear of long words -- it means being afraid of Friday the 13th

Nicholas Read
Vancouver Sun
Friday, April 13, 2007

It's a word we in the media like to trot out today: paraskevidekatriaphobia [pronounced pair-uh-skee-vee-dek-uh-tree-uh-FOH-bee-uh] -- the excessive, and sometimes morbid fear of Friday the 13th.
We like it, first, because it's such an impressive-sounding word -- it takes some doing to make all those syllables trip elegantly off the tongue -- and second, because irrational though the fear of a calendar date might sound, it is a bona fide phobia nonetheless, just like ablutophobia, the fear of washing or bathing, lachanophobia, the fear of vegetables, and soceraphobia, the fear of one's parents-in-law.
However, because "irrational" is a word that implies judgment, it's not a word used by professionals who treat phobias. (Especially, they add, given that some phobias can make sense. Think, for example, how valuable a fear of snakes and scorpions was in hunter/gatherer times when one misplaced step could mean death.) What matters to them is whether the phobia, rational or not, impedes the sufferer's ability to live normally.
"If someone is afraid of snakes, and he lives in Ireland where there are no snakes, it's not very serious," says Dr. Mark Watling, a psychiatrist and author, with psychologist Martin Antony, of the book, Overcoming Medical Phobias: How to Conquer Fear of Blood, Needles, Doctors and Dentists. But if you're a diabetic with a debilitating fear of needles, you're in trouble. You're not alone.
Watling, who practises out of the Anxiety Treatment and Research Centre in Hamilton, estimates as many as 13 per cent of people have, to some extent, a fear of things medical.
Sometimes that fear will be so pronounced it will result in panic attacks, and for people with a serious medical condition, that, literally, could be a matter of life and death.
"Certainly there are people who are so afraid of needles that they will put off getting blood work that needs to be done," Watling said in an interview. "But it's when they reach a point like that in their lives that they come to our clinic."
Why such phobias develop is a matter of debate. Genetics is sometimes thought to be partly responsible -- think of those atavistic fears of snakes and spiders -- though it's not clear how much of a fear is inherited and how much is learned. More likely most phobias are born of accidentally associating something otherwise benign with something unpleasant.
Maybe, says Watling, a person's first immunization was terribly painful. Or maybe a person's parents are afraid of needles, so the fear will be exaggerated in the child. It's really hard to say, he adds. No one can draw a definitive conclusion.
Certainly Julianne Lee, a kindergarten teacher in south Surrey, has no explanation for her fear of rats and mice; she just knows she's terrified of them.
"It started when I was 12," she says. "I went blackberry picking in Steveston in Richmond and I stepped on a piece of wood and out came this rodent. I think it was a rat or a mouse. And as soon as I saw it, I remember not being able to breathe, and screaming and screaming like the world was closing in."
And she still feels that way to this day.
If one of her three children ever were to bring home a rat or mouse, she doesn't know what she'd do.
"If they ever touched a mouse or a rat, I think I would be hysterical," she says.
If she were invited to dinner at the home of someone who kept a mouse as a pet, she wouldn't go. She'd never stay in a youth hostel because in her mind they're breeding grounds for mice, and she won't ever set foot in Stanley Park's petting zoo. Never.
"I'd rather be in a room with 10 snakes than one mouse," is how she puts it.
Curiously, when Jerilyn Ross, now a clinical social worker in Washington, D.C. and the CEO of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, developed her fear of heights, it was on one of the most magical nights of her life.
She was in her 20s, in Salzburg during the Mozart Festival, and she was dancing "with a Prince Charming" on a verandah overlooking the city, which that night was bathed in a kind of fairytale glow.
"I remember dancing and thinking 'what an extraordinary night'," she recalls 30 years later. "And then all of a sudden out of the blue I had this sensation that something would happen to me -- that I was going to be pulled over the edge or pushed over or something."
Perhaps, she now says with the cool clarity of someone who's studied phobias, it was the extreme emotional intensity of the experience -- the twinkling lights, the glorious music, the handsome partner -- that triggered what would become an affliction lasting years. She can't honestly say.
What she can say is that for almost four years, before she finally sought help for it, it affected every aspect of her life. It prevented her from seeking a better job -- she was afraid the interviews might take place in a skyscraper (a good bet since she lived in New York) -- and accepting all kinds of invitations for the same reason.
"My fear was that I was going to lose control -- to run to a window and do something crazy. Since then I've learned it was a misfiring of my body's fight-or-flight response."
What saved her -- indeed what saves most people affected by a phobia, regardless of its genesis -- is something called exposure therapy, a kind of psychological immunization that, like using allergens to treat allergies, uses the very thing the person is afraid of to help him or her get over it. In other words, to face one's fear head-on, but in a gradual, controlled and above all, safe environment.
For Ross, that meant going with her therapist to the sixth floor of a building one week, to the seventh the next, and to the eighth the week after that. Each time she would be afraid, she recalls, but each time -- with time -- she would learn to manage and control that fear and move on it from it.
It took months of practice, but she finally beat the phobia altogether. Recently, she and her husband bought a condo in Florida with floor-to-ceiling windows on the 16th floor.
What's important, says Steve Taylor, a psychologist practising out of the University of B.C.'s psychiatry department, is that the therapy be done slowly, methodically and preferably under the care of someone who really knows what he's doing.
"You can try it to do it on your own," he says, "but it's best to do it gradually. Too often people with phobias will try and push themselves too hard."
No matter the source of the phobia -- rats, cats, dinner conversation (deipnophobia), music (melophobia), or the colour purple (porphyrophobia) -- the idea is to expose the sufferer to it steadily and gradually to the point that eventually the phobia is all but wiped out or at least endurable.
For example, while he was still practising in Australia, Taylor once had a patient so afraid of spiders that simply seeing a picture of a dot with eight radiating strokes around it caused her panic. But at the end of a course of exposure therapy, she was a different woman -- "going out and catching them in a jar and then having them run across the floor in front of her," Taylor recalls.
For cases of certain kinds of social phobias -- that is, the fear of being in situations where one is under the scrutiny of others -- dating, job interviews and suchlike -- sometimes the same kinds of drugs used to treat depression will be used to treat the phobia, he says.
"Nobody knows for sure why they work," he adds, "but serotonin is thought to play a role in regulating emotions, and it's thought that somehow this neurotransmitter is de-regulated in people who develop a social phobia."
Sometimes, says Watling, something called "flooding" is tried as well. "This is exposing you to your worst-case scenario right off the bat," he explains.
In other words, this would involve, say, placing someone with a fear of cats in a crowded cat shelter. Needless to say, it's a drastic measure that is never prescribed lightly.
"It can be effective sometimes," Watling says, "but it's not effective if you scare the person out of ever having treatment again."
That's why for most people, he, Taylor and Ross concur, a gradual introduction to whatever it is that's prompting the fear is the best way.
In fact, for about 95 per cent of people who seek relief from their phobias, that kind of easy-as-you-go approach will do the trick."The exposures are designed to induce a manageable amount of anxiety -- nothing is supposed to be a surprise," Watling said.

If I had my life to live over

Found this in my collection of various "inspirational" items.....

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER
- by Erma Bombeck
(Written after she found out she was dying from cancer).

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.


I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.


I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.


I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.


I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.


I would have sat on the lawn with my grass stains.


I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life.


I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil, or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.


Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.


When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, 'Later. Now go get washed up for dinner.' There would have been more 'I love you's'; more 'I'm sorry's.'


But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it ... live it and never give it back. STOP SWEATING THE SMALL STUFF!!!


Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what!


Instead, let's cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us.

God needs an image makeover... article

This is an interesting article I found in a newspaper.

The many names (and images) of god

Douglas Todd

Vancouver Sun

Saturday, May 31, 2008

God needs an image makeover -- and there's no better place to start than with God's name.

Whenever someone mentions "God" in Canada, conversations crash to a halt. Everyone gets nervous. And it's not just from Canadian politeness.

It's because most people mistakenly think they know what the other is talking about when they say "God." Typically, they assume the "God" in question is a stern, patriarchal monarch in the sky.

Most Canadians, whether they consider themselves religious or not, seem stuck with the limited picture of God they had when they were early teenagers dropping out of church, synagogue, mosque or temple.

However, the concept of "God" is endlessly complex and nuanced and divinity deserves a more thoughtful name, or names.

"God" is an exaggerrated version of words such as "love," "truth," "spirituality" and "post-modern;" that is, "God" is a rich and contentious word, laden with multiple meanings.

We need to use fresher names for God. Just as people change their names to highlight different aspects of themselves -- such as when hard-driving "Priscilla" becomes more masculine "Kerry" or aboriginal "Jim George" becomes "Thundercloud" -- different names for "God" highlight different divine identities.

Through history there have been hundreds of names for "God."

Some half-decent contemporary names are "the divine," "spirit," "the holy," "the one," "the transcendent" and "the sacred" (all of which can be capitalized, depending on preference.)

The process of rebranding "God" brings to mind how Muslims long ago developed 99 "beautiful" names for "God" (or "Allah" (in Arabic) to capture the full glory and wonder of the transcendent.

I'd guess many Canadians stereotype Muslims as thinking about God mainly as a tough, vengeful dictator. But some of the 99 names for God include "The Compassionate," "The Pardoner," "The Majestic," "The Bountiful," "The Watchful," "The Wise," "The Giver of Life," "The Hidden," "The Unifier" and "The Light."

Jews have found a good way to deal with the unfortunate misunderstandings that can come from the name, "God:" Many choose simply not to use the word. Instead, they'll write "G-d."

This is a useful and humble approach, which reminds me of how U.S. geochemist Rustom Roy called for the complete eradication of the word God. He suggested integrating science and religion and replacing the word God with ****, which to him denotes the "cloud of essence."

At the same time, Jews also developed dozens of names for God in the Hebrew Bible (which Christians know as the Old Testament), including "Adonai," "Elohim," "El Shaddai" and, intriguingly, "I am what I am becoming."

In medieval times some Jews cleverly called God "The Seven," combining seven titles for the deity in one.

Although the Catholic and Protestant churches have for centuries tended to stress "Lord," "Almighty" and "Father" as names for God, Jesus and his followers adopted many others.

Influenced by Jewish and Greek tradition, their names for God included "Creator," "the Mountain," "Abba (daddy)," "the Word," "Logos," "Yahweh," "Sophia" and "the Light." Many Christians have recently been referring to God as "Redeemer" and "Sustainer."

As for Hindus, many name the supreme cosmic spirit as "Brahman." Others highlight personal manifestations of God in "Vishnu" or "Krishna."

Sikhs may speak of God as "Akal Purakh," meaning timeless primal being. In Chinese folk religion, God is often referred to as "Zhu" (Lord in Heaven) or "Shen" (spirit). Taoists talk about the ultimate as "the Tao" or "The Way."

Even Buddhists have something to say about divinity. Although most Theravadan Buddhists do not believe in a Creator, many Pure Land Buddhists give "Amithaba" eternal powers similar to those ascribed to God.

In the book, Philosophers Speak of God, edited by Charles Hartshorne and William Reese, philosophers reveal some of their many names for divinity -- including "elan vital (life force)," "the call forward," "divine intelligence," "the lure" and the "ordering principle."

All of which goes to show the name "God" is never to be taken for granted.

Next time someone drops the name into a conversation, pro or con, ask them which "God" they're talking about.

And don't let them off the hook by allowing them to argue "no one should try to define God because the transcendent is beyond full comprehension."

While it's true defining "God" will always be elusive and unprovable, it's a cop-out to not take a stab at it -- perhaps especially when someone is trying to reject belief in "God."

Asking people what they mean when they say "God" will put them on the spot and make them think, which is usually a good thing.

What's in a name? When it comes to "God," quite a lot.

To reach Douglas Todd, go to this blog at www.vancouversun.com/blogs