Health in a World of Possibility...

I'm reading my way through a new book. This one is entitled, "Welcome to the Wisdom of the World" by Joan Chittister. It is a wonderful read from a nun who has thought deeply about her spirituality and how it fits into this world of ours. The book is a reflection on different faith traditions and the wisdom that they offer to us as we all seek to understand our world and our place in it. She begins the book with a walk through Hindu wisdom and I was struck by the thought (not for the first time) of how unhealthy possibilities can be.

A dear friend of mine is an ICU physician and we were e-mailing the other day. She was supposed to attend a meeting that I was facilitating, but got caught in the hospital by a very difficult case. She was frustrated by the case because it was a major surgery in a very frail person. The surgery was difficult and it was somewhat of a miracle that the person arrived in the ICU from the operating room. Subsequently, during a long night of high intensity care, the person died. My friend remarked that "there is always something we can do, we don't often consider long enough whether we should do." How right she is - and how much a part of our communal dis-ease this thinking has become.

Possibilities, free will, choices, opportunities, breakthroughs, miracles, rampant individualism...it is all a part of our world. However, possibilities without the ability to make wise choices, often leads us down a path to ever worsening outcomes. I have seen the following scenario hundreds of times over 25 years...Well Meaning Doctor (WMD): "Of course we can do that, it's really quite easy." Well Meaning Person (WMP): "OK, let's go ahead then, since it's so easy." The problem being, that it is technically "easy" for a highly trained WMD to do most anything, the difficulty comes in the time after the "easy" procedure is done. Very little discussion goes into the after care portion, and WMD's aren't a part of that daily process. That daily grind falls to WMP's who are caring for the person affected. This is the world of spiraling health care costs.

Welcome to our broken healthcare system. A system with seemingly limitless possibility ungoverned by the wisdom to set reasonable limits. Much more time needs to be spent discussing whether something "should" be done rather than whether it is possible to do something or not. This is where the missing piece of communal wisdom needs to come into the discussion. This is where re-integrating faith communities and their wisdom can lead us out of the morass we are in. This is what Possibilities Journey, Inc (www.possjrny.org) is all about. Bringing the wisdom of the community back into a healthcare system that is in great need of that input.

This week, consider the possibility that some wisdom is lacking in your life and enter into a faith community near you. It could be a transformational event - and I pray that it is. Consider also the choices you have in front of you or your loved ones and evaluate what is possible versus what is wise.

Peace,
Dan