Philip Yancey's Blog, page 19

Going Down Under

On Saturday, August 27, the Yanceys leave for a book tour of Australia & New Zealand, the sixth tour accompanying actors from the U.K.  We'll be in nine cities, and for all you Aussies, here's the link to the Australia venues:

http://www.koorong.com/tickets/2011/yancey.html.

And for you Kiwis, here's a link to events in Auckland and Christchurch:

http://www.manna.co.nz/events/PhilipYancey/

Still Climbing

We moved from downtown Chicago to Colorado in 1992, and that next summer a friend from church talked us into doing something that seemed daunting to us city slickers: he led us up one of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks (4593 meters).  That mountain, Sunshine Peak, is actually the smallest of the 14ers, barely making the cut at 14,001 feet.

Fear

Despite our aching legs, we felt a huge sense of accomplishment, exactly the kind of feeling you expect after climbing a mountain. We did a few more that summer, then the next, and after a while climbing 14ers became a summer staple.  It gave us a chance to see our beautiful new state in all its glory.  About half of Colorado's 14ers seem more like hikes than climbs, as you rarely have to use your hands.  The other half, however, include lots of exposure (I have a latent fear of heights so I keep looking up, not down when I inch across precipices or cling to a ledge), huge boulder fields, tricky maneuvers around rock towers, and the challenge of fickle weather.  The scariest places have appropriate names: Highway in the Sky, the Knife-Edge, the Bowling Alley, the Keyhole.

Typically a climbing day starts at 3 or 4 a.m., when we pack food, drive to the trailhead, and begin in the dark, our path lit only by headlamps and perhaps the moon.  Sometimes we camp nearby the night before.  One beautiful spot, the Chicago Basin, is ringed with three 14ers and can only be reached by a tourist train and a long uphill hike.  We try to summit by 11 a.m. at the latest, then head quickly down to treeline in case afternoon thunderstorms roll in.

When I had a rollover accident in 2007, I lay strapped to a gurney for seven hours contemplating my life, since the doctor told me that if a bone fragment had nicked the carotid artery, I wouldn't survive.  I can't die yet, I thought.  I have three more 14ers to climb!  At the time I had done all but three.

A month later a fellow Coloradan named Eric Alexander heard about my accident and sent word through a friend, "If Philip needs any help climbing those last three, I'd be glad to lead him."  I soon learned that Eric participated in the expedition that led his blind climbing buddy up Mt. Everest.  You may have seen the National Geographic special on this extraordinary feat.  Hmm, I thought.  If he can get a blind guy up Mt. Everest, he surely can get me up anything in Colorado, even with a recently broken neck!  That same summer, after I got out of a neck brace, Eric led me up my final summit, Maroon Peak, a difficult climb near the town of Aspen.  We celebrated quickly as clouds rolled in and then dashed for treeline.

This summer my wife and I followed Eric up another tricky peak, Pyramid, which sits impressively just across the valley from Maroon Peak.  Janet has now climbed 51 and has three to go.  In the meantime Eric has become a good friend.  He has written about his climbing adventures in the book The Summit, available from Amazon.com or from Eric's website www.highersummits.com.  Eric also travels and speaks about his experiences climbing the highest peaks on six continents (he's still trying to get to Antarctica).  If you like adventure, his book will cause the hair on the back of your neck to rise: I won't spoil anything, but suffice it to say that leading a blind man up Mt. Everest is merely one of the challenges Eric has faced.  

No Fear

Eric recorded a few minutes of our Pyramid climb on his iPhone, and you can view them below or at this link:  http://highersummits.nlpgblogs.com/2011/08/12/philip-yancey-shares-some-wisdom-on-pyramid-peak/.

There were two humbling moments on this latest climb.  The first came when we had spent 45 minutes inching our way up a steep pitch, only to see a muscular mountain goat scramble up behind us in a matter of seconds.  The second came when I stood on top of this very tough mountain, gasping for breath and aching in too many places to mention when I suddenly realized that, yes, I was now approaching the halfway point of Mt. Everest, well below base camp.  Sorry, Eric, it's all yours.

 

 

Hidden Heroes

I've just returned from a conference in Toronto which gathered 900 representatives from 130 countries. They are among the most compassionate and dedicated people I have met, yet few people know about them because they operate out of the limelight, behind bars. They work or volunteer for Prison Fellowship International, an organization headed by an unassuming Canadian named Ron Nikkel.

My friendship with Ron goes back more than thirty years, when he headed an organization called Youth Guidance that worked with juvenile delinquents (euphemistically called "non-school-oriented youth"). As a journalist I accompanied Ron on what turned out to be one of my most fascinating assignments. Chuck Colson's new organization Prison Fellowship had handpicked two dozen federal prisoners and Ron had selected an equal number of non-school-oriented delinquents to undergo a rigorous Outward Bound-type program in northern Wisconsin.

For the kids, the program achieved its goals spectacularly. Street-wise hooligans learned to cooperate with teammates to master orienteering in the wilderness, for any mistake brought down the wrath of the whole group.  "I know some of you will want to run away," said the leader as the two-week course began.  "Just remember, the woods are full of bears and wolves, so you likely won't last long."  I'll never forget one bully, seething with anger, who kicked every tree he passed on the first day's hike.  When it came his turn to rappel off a cliff he got a bad case of sewing-machine leg and blubbered like a baby.  Yet at the end, when he completed a 26-mile run through the forest, you would have thought he'd won the Olympics. He had learned a new set of skills and the maturity to look inside himself for strength, rather than exploiting the weakness of others.

The federal prisoners, however, had a very different experience. Anticipating a retreat away from prison, with lazy days of lounging by a lake and fishing, they encountered instead a boot camp of pre-dawn marches and physical ordeals. The leaders of the adventure program knew every motivational trick in the book, but if a man who stands six-foot-eight and weighs three hundred pounds doesn't want to edge backwards off a cliff, even if he's fastened securely to ropes, nothing in a leader's manual can make him do it—especially if the balker is a convicted murderer.  The prescribed course ends with a three-day "solo" in which each participant finds a spot in the wilderness and spends the time alone with a Bible and notebook. Organizers had not factored in that solitary confinement represents the worst kind of punishment for a prisoner. For the juveniles, everything worked as planned; for the prisoners, nothing worked as planned.

Ron Nikkel moved from working with youth to working with adult prisoners in 1982, joining a loose association of six countries with prison ministries. Under his leadership Prison Fellowship International has spread to 124 countries, making it the largest such organization in the field of criminal justice. Several times over the years I have accompanied Ron on trips overseas.  We visited prisons in Chile at the height of General Pinochet's oppression. We visited a medieval dungeon still housing prisoners outside Moscow just as the Iron Curtain fell—the only prison under Soviet communism which had a dedicated chapel, built by the prisoners.  Even now, when I go to a new country in Africa or Asia, often I'll ask Ron for contacts and meet the Prison Fellowship staff.

Thanks to its founder Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship has a high profile in the United States. Overseas, programs may deliberately keep a low profile, for oppressive governments don't like outsiders messing with their prisoners. Working under the radar, PFI has devised a remarkable series of creative approaches.  Some African nations do not supply food for their prisoners, requiring the prisoners' families to care for them instead.  In a shame-based culture, though, families may shun their convict relative, and so PFI runs bakeries and soup kitchens to supply food. In women's prisons, young children often go behind bars with their mothers, and PFI volunteers provide schooling and day-care for these children. PFI runs educational programs for prisoners and brings in teams of doctors and dentists to provide medical care. In Brazil, PFI has taken complete control of six prisons at the government's request. Other PFI chapters focus on aftercare, even building factories to provide jobs for ex-offenders.

Ron Nikkel has probably visited more prisons in more countries than anyone in history, observing firsthand conditions that sometimes rival those of Nazi concentration camps. He has headed a United Nations task force on criminal justice.  He likes to quote Winston Churchill, who said you can judge a civilization by how it treats its prisoners. By that measure, he says with a sad shake of the head, we all fail. Scandinavian countries probably show the most humane treatment, but no one has an answer for crime and nearly every society faces a discouraging recidivism rate of 70 percent. For this reason PFI is allowed to operate even in tightly controlled Muslim countries: No one else can help, so why not give the Christians a chance.

Publications from PFI feature stories of reconciliation between victim and offender, including PFI's leading role in restorative justice after the Rwandan massacres.  Ron does what he does because—despite (or due to) his criminal justice background—he sees no solution to crime other than transformed lives. For this reason, all the good work done by prison volunteers comes in the name of Christ, the one who offers transformation. PFI works across all denominational lines, bringing together charismatics, mainline Protestants, evangelicals, Orthodox, and Catholics.

Why do they do it, these volunteers?  Most with whom I talked in Toronto insist they do it because Jesus commanded it.  Announcing his mission, he included the goal to "liberate the captives," and he said in Matthew 25 that God will judge the nations on how we cared for "the least of these," including prisoners.

The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky credited his conversion to a woman who thrust a New Testament in his hands as he traveled by train to Siberia.  She, a volunteer not unlike those I met in Toronto, showed compassion to one man whom society was sending into exile, and because of her kindness one of the greatest novelists met a life-transforming power.

Although the work of Prison Fellowship International may take place out of the limelight, its impact is incalculable. In many countries today's prisoners comprise tomorrow's leaders; for example, after South Africa's change from white rule a majority of the new cabinet had a prison record, as did their leader Nelson Mandela. Nearly every liberation movement starts with prisoners (think Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma).  And, looking through history, imagine the Christian faith without prisoners: John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, Paul, John Bunyan, martyrs in the Roman Empire, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Anna Skripnikova, Nelson Mandela, Benigno Aquino, Armando Valladares of Cuba.  In Toronto I saw that a movement begun in chains and behind bars has not forgotten its heritage.

Mister Noah's Neighborhood

When we moved from downtown Chicago to the foothills of the Colorado Rockies in 1992, we left behind many things: superb restaurants, Starbucks every few blocks, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, jogging along Lake Michigan, the electric buzz of living in a great city.  One definite improvement, though, was wildlife.  If you discount the times I jogged through the Lincoln Park Zoo, most days I saw only pigeons and ugly city squirrels (rats with tails, as a friend calls them).  Yes, coyotes, deer, and even a mountain lion have been sighted in downtown Chicago, but these occurrences are so rare as to merit news coverage.

Now I see exotic wildlife almost every day. A three-compartment birdfeeder full of sunflower seeds hangs just outside my office window, attracting finches, chickadees, nuthatches, grosbeaks, crossbills, pine siskins, woodpeckers, and the like. If I turn a sprinkler on they line up on branches to get a shower from the spray.  Often I see hawks circling in the sky overhead, and twice I've watched as they dived down and plucked one of these unsuspecting guests from the feeder.  They swooped over to a nearby branch where they perched, eyes set in a fierce I-dare-you glare, as their talons squeezed the life out of the little bird.

The bird feeder hangs suspended between two trees on an elaborate wire-cable pulley system, my triumphant solution after years of trying to deter squirrels, raccoons, and bears.  It used to hang off a long iron bar attached to our deck, but a bear bent that one like a toothpick.  Last week a huge black bear climbed an adjacent tree, mentally calculated the geometry, and decided my Rube Goldberg contraption had indeed made the feeder inaccessible.  He settled for a civilized drink from the birdbath.

The bird feeder supports an entire ecosystem.  Almost every evening two different red foxes, one of which has a pronounced limp, stop by to sort through the shells for uncracked sunflower seeds. A bit later a gray fox, smaller and shyer, warily cleans up the leftovers.  Sometimes a skunk shambles by.  When the bear pays a visit, he doesn't bother to sort and greedily scoops shells, seeds, and dirt into his large mouth.

One year a marmot took up residence in the culvert at the end of our dirt driveway, apparently unaware he's supposed to be living at an altitude of 10,000 feet, not 7500.  Several times we've found fresh deer kill in our back yard, evidence of a resident mountain lion, but only twice have we actually seen the magnificent creature.  About the time we moved to Colorado a mountain lion attacked and killed a local high school athlete who was jogging near the school, and a bicycle bridge was later erected in his honor.  I used to jog nervously, my head swiveling back and forth like an owl's, until I learned a foolproof method for preventing lion attacks.  Farmers and forestry workers in India discovered long ago that wearing a mask on the back of the head will confuse lions and tigers, who normally attack from the rear, grabbing a person's neck in their jaws and breaking it with a powerful paw-blow to the head. For anyone who wants to jog on mountain trails at dusk, I recommend strapping on a Richard Nixon mask—no credible reports have ever surfaced of a lion attack on someone wearing a Richard Nixon mask on the back of his or her head.

We've also seen ferrets and badgers.  Deer and elk treat our yard as a salad bar, destroying anything we plant, and in the fall bull elk bugle and spar nearby.  Once a bobcat stopped by, a lovely creature the size of a large, lanky dog with a small, cat-like face.  Nothing can prepare you for the sight of a creature wearing a coat of such exquisite design wandering through your front yard.

Foxes are my favorite visitors, though.  Sometimes a bold red fox will climb the steps to our deck and sit quietly as we eat outdoors, no doubt hoping for a handout.  One year after a spring snow I followed a fox's prints to its den and a few weeks later moved my workplace to a tree nearby.  I leaned cushions against the tree and typed on my laptop. Sure enough, three frisky young foxes soon emerged from the den and started playing with their pile of treasures collected from the neighborhood: a pine cone, a discarded work glove, a tennis ball.  After watching a while, I introduced myself by saying, "Hi." You cannot imagine how high a fox kit can jump.  All three dove headfirst into the den and wouldn't come out for days. Eventually, though, they got used to my presence and would follow me on walks through the woods.  I felt like the Pied Piper, but when I stopped to catch my breath they quickly hid behind the nearest bush.

Observing all these animals, I've learned a few lessons about nature:

• Animals have no concept of grace. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and a fox-eat-squirrel and coyote-eat-fox and cougar-eat-coyote world as well.  With two exceptions, small animals live in a constant state of anxiety, twitching their ears at the slightest sound and whirling around to look for enemies.  (The two exceptions: porcupines and skunks, who have a built-in deterrence system.) Once I tossed an apple core to the ground and my three fox friends surrounded it, tails in the air, legs tensed for a final assault.  It occurred to me that they had never eaten a meal that did not involve hunting and killing.  They worked hard to survive, and knew nothing of gratuitous gifts.

• It's a tough world out there. In March of 2003 it snowed for three days straight, accumulating to a depth of seven feet.  I strapped on snowshoes and set off to climb a hill behind my home; even with snowshoes I sank thigh-deep in the soft powder and had to lunge forward to make progress.  We had no electricity and roads were impassible so there was no ambient noise, yet every few minutes I heard a loud crack like the report of a rifle: branches laden with snow were breaking free and falling to the ground.  I saw a family of deer trapped in snow.  Panting heavily, they would make a sudden leap and plunge a few feet forward, falling back into snow that covered their backs.  It took enormous energy for them to proceed a few feet.  Any food was buried well beyond reach.  I thought of the animals killed by sudden blizzards, cold snaps, lightning storms, droughts—not to mention by hungry predators.

• Sometimes animals put human beings to shame.  We label deviant behavior animalistic or bestial, even though creatures governed by instinct live within boundaries often scorned by the "higher" animals. "Man alone has the power and freedom to center life inordinately in one impulse," said Reinhold Niebuhr.  I think of my friends who struggle with addictions.  "You and me, baby, ain't nothin' but mammals, so let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel," belts out the rock group Bloodhound Gang. Funnily enough, I see mammals "do it" all the time in my backyard, and sex for them has little in common with sex for humans.  Take elk as an example: in late September the bull elk suddenly starts fighting pretenders with smaller antlers, then greedily mates 50-70 cows in an exhausting orgy, and doesn't give sex another thought until another September rolls around.  Yes, sex has power, but most of life centers in eating grass—except for those two weeks each September.  Similarly, with few exceptions animals kill for food, and know nothing of mass murder or genocide.

• Beauty takes place whether anyone notices it or not.  Rick Bass writes of … "one of those secrets of nature that you glimpse only every so often—a north-flowing river, an anomaly of gravity, an albino elk—little things She shows you only so often, just to keep you in awe, or maybe just to reward you."  Living in the midst of nature, I've been blessed to glimpse those secrets.  Mountain biking, I stirred a herd of elk and came across a baby elk still glistening from birth, eyes large with fear, motionless as a rock.  I sat for thirty minutes and watched a father woodpecker teaching its young how to drill a hole in a branch. I've seen a jet-black Abert squirrel doing somersaults in grass I had just wet down with a sprinkler.  I've watched adolescent elk splash and play in a mountain stream, then gallop across a golf course green to grab the flag on the ninth hole.  Hiking in the splendidly named Oh Be Joyful Valley I have lain down in a field of wildflowers with hummingbirds whistling around in a scene fresh and beautiful as the Garden of Eden.

• Nature goes on, beauty goes on, whether or not anyone is there to observe it. I thank God that during two decades in Colorado, I've had that chance.  I echo the sentiments of George MacDonald, who wrote, "One of my greatest difficulties in consenting to think of religion was that I thought I should have to give up my beautiful thoughts and my love for the things God has made. But I find that the happiness springing from all things not in themselves sinful is much increased by religion.  God is the God of the Beautiful—Religion is the love of the Beautiful, and Heaven is the Home of the Beautiful—Nature is tenfold brighter in the Sun of Righteousness, and my love of Nature is more intense since I became a Christian—if indeed I am one. God has not given me such thoughts and forbidden me to enjoy them."

Not Exactly Refreshed, But Renewed

As I write, we're returning at last from a two-week tour of England and Scotland. Just getting home has been an ordeal! Somehow United Airlines bumped us from our original return flight from Edinburgh on May 23, changing it without asking to May 24. After much hassle we finally got it changed back, a good thing as it turned out since an ash cloud from the erupting volcano in Iceland closed down all Scottish airports the following day. Then our flight back to Denver through Chicago got canceled due to maintenance issues and we were routed instead through Dulles airport in Washington, D.C., albeit too late to catch a flight to Denver.

We spent the night at Dulles, and our scheduled flight to Denver the next day also got canceled due to maintenance issues. Sheesh! We spent most of the day dashing from gate to gate registering for standby seats and finally our persistence paid off. In the end we landed in Denver some 35 hours after leaving Great Britain, sufficient time to have circled the globe. Those who think international travel is glamorous, listen up.

In contrast, the tour of the U.K. went off without a hitch, well, almost. En route to the very first event we found ourselves waiting in a very long line of cars on a motorway. A truck, or lorry, had crossed the median and crashed into a car a mile or so ahead of us, and authorities closed all six lanes of the highway–for six hours!  After sitting without moving for three-and-a-half hours while emergency personnel dealt with the tragedy, we were allowed to make a U-turn and go back up the entrance ramp to find an alternate route.  We barely made it to the venue in time.  Later we learned the sobering news that two women had died in the accident, and that if we had left the hotel on time that morning intsead of a few minutes late we may well have been  involved.

I was speaking on the book What Good Is God? accompanied by a Christian theatre company called SaltMine. The first half of the program, I sat onstage with an interviewer, and in between our chats three actors did a series of five- to seven-minute sketches, some of which they wrote themselves and some adapted from such works as The Hiding Place, The Screwtape Letters, and Shadowlands. After a tea break (this is Britain, after all) the actors did one more sketch and I spoke for about 40 minutes.

We've done three similar tours in the U.K., as well as a tour in South Africa and Australia and a scaled-down presentation in the Middle East, and we plan to return to Australia (and New Zealand too this time) in September of this year. It feels far less lonely to stand on a platform supported by such consummate professionals. With moments of hilarity and poignancy in their dramas, they grab an audience and deliver them into the palm of my hand. Could a speaker ask for more? Dave Pope, a singer of note in the U.K., organized each of the programs, and the logistics were quite complicated. Several stagehands and technicians drove a couple of vans full of props, electronic equipment, and books for sale, and a caravan of five vehicles traveled between cities each day to stage the productions. In all we covered 2000 miles to put on ten performances.

As you may know, the church in Britain is a sad shell of its former days. The most impressive building in every town is the stone church with its pointed steeple, but most of those churches are virtually empty on Sunday. Much like the church congregations, the audience attending our events tilted heavily toward the gray-haired. And yet I find in places like Australia and Britain, the church is far more likely to show unity, with little denominational competition at stake, and also to express faith creatively. Much of the best worship music comes from Britain, and the kind of theatre talent produced by SaltMine would be hard to match in the United States.

The highlight for me each evening was sitting at a table to sign books and in the process hearing stories of people I have somehow connected with through my books. A woman whose 23-year-old son committed suicide. A young girl who rolled up her sleeve to show her self-mutilation as a "cutter" before her conversion. An elderly man who said, "Pray for my daughter please—she's a prostitute and drug addict." An Iranian believer who had just received his residency permit in Scotland after an eight-year wait and who asked me to sign his Farsi-language version of What's So Amazing About Grace? A chaplain who leads a study on that book in a Glasgow prison. A surgeon who trained with Dr. Paul Brand in India. I never tire of hearing that something I work on alone in my basement office reaches out, in this case across an ocean, and connects with another person in very different circumstances.

We had no time for tourist excursions on this trip. After getting to the hotel after midnight, we'd sleep, get up and exercise, then load the car for the next day's drive, arriving in time to arrange the set, do sound checks, hold a reception, and face a new crowd. Yet simply driving through the British countryside in Spring is a feast for the eyes: lambs frolicking in the fields, bright yellow rapeseed blooming, English gardens fronting the road in towns and villages. And one night we traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw a magnificent production of Merchant of Venice by the Royal Shakespeare Company. We return not exactly refreshed, but renewed and ready to tackle the next adventure.

The Foot Savior

This weekend I am speaking at the dedication of a research center on the campus of Barry University named in honor of Drs. Paul and Margaret Brand.  I wrote three books with Paul Brand in the 1980s (Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, In His Image, and The Gift of Pain) and no one has influenced me more.  Paul Brand died in 2003 but Margaret, now in her nineties, spryly carries on an active life of violin-playing, lecturing, and great-grandmothering.

For a time Dr. Paul Brand was the only orthopedic surgeon working with 12 million leprosy patients in the world.  Christian history includes episodes that rightly cause shame and embarrassment, but the treatment of leprosy makes a very proud balancing chapter.  In the Middle Ages, as leprosy ravaged Europe, an odd rumor spread that Jesus must have had the disease, due to the prophetic description in Isaiah 52-53 of a Servant "disfigured beyond that of any man."  Leprosy became known as the Holy Disease, and Christians in Europe sought out sufferers as representatives of Jesus, who had said in Matthew 25, "whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you do for me."

The devout, defying society's stigma as well as their own fears, looked past the unsightly symptoms of leprosy and began treating its victims as they would treat Jesus.  Orders of nuns devoted to Lazarus (the beggar in Jesus' parable who became the patron saint of leprosy) established homes for patients—2000 such homes in France alone.  These courageous women could do little but bind wounds and change dressings, but the homes themselves, called lazarettos, may have helped break the hold of the disease in Europe, by isolating leprosy patients and improving their living conditions.  In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Christian missionaries who spread across the globe established many colonies for leprosy patients, and as a result many of the major advances in understanding and treating leprosy came from missionaries.

As I have recounted in my books with Dr. Brand, his research in India led to the discovery that leprosy was not a flesh-eating disease, as long thought, but rather a disease of the nerves.  Virtually all the damage that occurred came about because of painlessness.  Leprosy patients literally destroyed themselves because they lacked the warning system of pain.  Such ordinary acts as wearing tight shoes or using splintered tools can cause permanent damage to someone unaware of damage to tissue.  Dr. Margaret Brand learned of a common way in which painlessness can lead to blindness: once the tiny pain sensor that causes a healthy eye to blink is silenced, the eye dries out.

Later, in the U.S., quite by accident Dr. Paul Brand stumbled across a new practical application for what he had learned about pain.  Although only a few thousand leprosy patients live in the United States, more than ten million diabetics live here, and his team found that his discoveries about pain had direct relevance to diabetics as well.  Dr. Brand tells the story as condensed from The Gift of Pain:

Late one evening as I was scanning a medical journal I noticed the phrase "diabetic osteopathy."  It struck me as odd: since when did diabetes, a disease of glucose metabolism, affect bones?  Turning the page, I saw X-ray reproductions which looked exactly like X-rays of the bone changes in the feet of my insensitive leprosy patients.  I wrote the authors, two doctors in Texas, who graciously invited me to visit them and discuss the topic.

A few months later I found myself in their Houston offices involved in a good-natured contest of "dueling X-rays." They would place an X-ray of deteriorating bone on a light table, and I would rummage around in my briefcase until I found a matching X-ray of bone absorption in a leprosy patient.  We compared X-rays of all the bones of the foot, and almost without exception I could duplicate each osteopathic problem they presented.  The demonstration made a great impression on the doctors and interns assembled, for most of them had no experience with leprosy patients and thought they had described a syndrome peculiar to diabetes.

Next, the Texas doctors invited me to speak to the Southern Sugar Club [I love this name!], a genteel group of diabetes specialists from Southern states.  I addressed the subject of feet, challenging their assumption that the common problem with diabetic feet (ulceration so severe that it frequently leads to amputation) was caused primarily by diabetes itself.  My own observations had convinced me that the wounds were, like those of leprosy, caused by the loss of pain sensation.

In a vicious cycle, nerves die off because of diabetes, the patients injure themselves because of the lack of pain, and the resulting wounds do not easily heal because the patient continues to walk on them.  I recounted for the Sugar Club our long history of tracking similar injuries among leprosy patients in India.  "I have examined the X-rays of diabetics," I told them, "and frankly I think most of the foot injuries you see are preventable.  They're caused by mechanical stress that goes unnoticed because the patient has lost pain sensation.  Walking on wounded feet drives the infection deeper so that it involves the bones and joints, and with continued walking the bones get absorbed and the joints dislocate."

I was astonished to learn that diabetics were undergoing 100,000 amputations each year, accounting for half of all amputations in the U.S.  A patient over sixty-five had nearly a one in ten chance of foot amputation.  If our theories were correct, tens of thousands of people were losing their limbs needlessly.  But how could I, with a background in the rather obscure field of leprosy, get the attention of experts in another specialty?

A physician in Atlanta, Georgia, provided the solution.  Dr. John Davidson, a renowned expert on diabetes, had attended the Southern Sugar Club, and I remember well our conversation after my speech.  "Dr. Brand, I run the diabetic clinic at Grady Hospital, a charity hospital that treats over 10,000 diabetics a year," he said.  "I must tell you, I'm skeptical about what you say.  I haven't seen nearly the number of foot injuries you say I should.  And I doubt seriously whether the damage that I do see results from the loss of pain.  But I want to be open-minded and so I'll check out your theories."

Back at his clinic in Atlanta, Davidson hired a podiatrist and instituted a simple rule: all patients had to take off their shoes and socks each time they came for a diabetic checkup.  The podiatrist examined every foot, even if the patient had no complaints about feet.  A few months later, Davidson called me, and this time I heard enthusiasm, not skepticism, in his voice.  "You won't believe what I found out," he began.  "I discovered that 150 of our patients had amputations last year, most of which we didn't even know about!"

"It works like this," he explained.  "They come into my office for a routine checkup, walking on an ulcer, and don't bother to mention it.  Patients see me for regulation of insulin, urine tests, weight monitoring and the like.  When they get a foot injury, they visit a surgeon instead.  The problem is, most of these patients don't report ulcers or ingrown toenails in the early stages because they don't feel any pain.  By the time they visit the surgeon, the foot sore is in bad shape.  And that accounts for all the amputations.  The surgeon checks their charts, finds out they're diabetic, and says, 'Oh, we'd better amputate right away, or that leg will grow gangrenous.'  All this time, I don't even know my patient has a foot problem!  The next time I see them for a checkup, they're walking on an artificial leg, and don't bother to mention that either."

With a podiatrist now on staff, Davidson's clinic was able to interrupt the sequence.  Detecting foot problems at an earlier stage, he could treat the sores and prevent serious infection from setting in.  By the simple measure of requiring patients to take off their shoes and socks for a visual inspection, the clinic soon managed to cut its patients' amputation rate in half.

We also found that sores on diabetic feet, like those on leprosy feet, are preventable.  Soaking the feet daily in a basin of water and using moisturizing cream does much to inhibit deep keratin cracks in the skin.  And when we outfit diabetics in specialty footwear and teach them proper foot care, the ulcers tend not to recur.  For a time the government considered issuing free shoes to needy diabetics, but, like other proposals that focus on prevention and not cure, that project never got approved.  As a rule, I have found it is easier in the United States to obtain good artificial limbs than good shoes.

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop told me that as a result of Dr. Brand's research into pain, some 50,000 amputations per year may be prevented in the United States alone.  That statistic takes on personal significance to me, for I have an uncle who lost a foot to diabetes and another who lost a leg below the knee.  And now a podiatric school in Miami is dedicating a multi-million dollar facility to further the research program begun by the Brands in a leprosarium in India.  Early on April 29, 2011, more than a billion people will tune in to watch a lavish royal wedding in London.  Later that same day a much smaller crowd will gather to honor two humble missionary doctors who worked with some of the most neglected people on the planet, yet whose work led to treatments that have improved the lives of millions.  The legacy of two great missionary doctors lives on.

My Friend Brennan

Brennan Manning has written a memoir titled All Is Grace that will be published this year by David C. Cook Publishing.  I wrote the Foreword, and include excerpts here about my friend.

I first met Brennan Manning at an event called Greenbelt Festival in England, a sort of Christian Woodstock of artists, musicians and speakers that had attracted twenty thousand fans to tents and impromptu venues set up in the muddy infield of a horse-racing track.  Brennan seemed dazzled by the spectacle, and like a color commentator kept trying to explain the subtleties of evangelicalism to his wife Roslyn, a cradle Catholic who lacked Brennan's experience with the subculture.

We did not see each other often over the years, but each time our paths crossed we went deeper, rather than tilling the same ground of friendship.  When he visited a monastery in Colorado for spiritual retreats, he would sometimes get a temporary dispensation from the rule of silence and meet my wife and me at an ice cream parlor (one addiction he doesn't disclose in these pages).  Our backgrounds could hardly have been more different— Southern fundamentalism vs. Northeastern Catholic—and yet by different routes we had both stumbled upon an Artesian well of grace and have been gulping it ever since.  One glorious fall afternoon we hiked on a carpet of golden Aspen leaves along a mountain stream and I heard the details of Brennan's life: his loveless childhood, his marathon search for God, his marriage and divorce, his lies and coverups, his continuing struggles with alcohol addiction.

As you read this memoir you may be tempted, as I am, to think "Oh, what might have been…if Brennan hadn't given into drink."  I urge you to reframe the thought to, "Oh, what might have been…if Brennan hadn't discovered grace."  More than once I have watched this leprechaun of an Irish Catholic hold spellbound an audience of thousands by telling in a new and personal way the story that all of us want to hear: that the Maker of all things loves and forgives us.  Brennan knows well that love and especially the forgiveness.  Like "Christian," the everyman character in The Pilgrim's Progress, he progressed not by always making right decisions but by responding appropriately to wrong ones.  (John Bunyan, after all, titled his own spiritual biography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners).

At one point Brennan likens himself to Samson, that flawed superman whom God somehow found a way to use right up to the day of his death.  Reading such stories in the Old Testament, I've come up with a simple principle to explain how God can use the likes of such imperfect men and women: "God uses the talent pool available."  Again and again, Brennan made himself available.  In the last few years, nearly blind, subject to illness and falls, at an age when he should have been enjoying retirement on a beach in Florida, he kept getting on airplanes and flying places to proclaim a Gospel he believed with all his heart but could not always live.

"All is grace," Brennan concludes, looking back on a rich but stained life.  He has placed his trust in that foundational truth of the universe, which he has proclaimed faithfully and eloquently.

As a writer, I live in daily awareness of how much easier it is to edit a book than edit a life.  When I write about what I believe and how I should live, it sounds neat and orderly.  When I try to live it out, all hell breaks loose.  Reading Brennan's memoir, I see something of the reverse pattern.  By focusing on the flaws, he leaves out many of the triumphs.  I keep wanting him to tell the stories that put him in a good light, and there are many.  Choosing full disclosure over a narrative that might burnish his reputation, Brennan presents himself as the Apostle Paul once did, as a "clay jar," a disposable container made of baked dirt.  We must look to his other books for a full picture of the treasure that lay inside.

A poem by Leonard Cohen says it well:

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in.

Folsom Prison Blues

I went to prison last Monday: the maximum security unit of Folsom Prison, the California institution made famous by a visit from Johnny Cash, who gave a concert there in 1968.  "We arranged a limo for you," said my host Jim Carlson who met me at the gate, then laughingly escorted my wife and me to the most beat-up, bedraggled van I have ever seen.  "You've heard of California's budget cutbacks, right?" Jim explained.

Three times we had to exit the van to show i.d., sign registers, and go through a metal detector.  Lush green hills surround the prison, a bucolic scene of blooming fruit trees, California oaks, and herds of deer grazing.  Inside the gate, though, razor wire and a lethal 50,000-volt fence mark a transition to the maximum security unit, an ugly, manmade world of stone and concrete.

As it happened, Rosanne Cash made an appearance that same morning, and sixty inmates and a couple of dozen staff crowded into the prison library for an impromptu concert.  Hers was the first visit by a member of the Cash family since Johnny's milestone concert, and Rosanne was clearly moved by the memories.  She visited the auditorium where her father had recorded perhaps his most famous album before a raucous audience, though for security reasons her own appearance at the maximum unit was much smaller and more low-key.

Rosanne graciously invited several of the inmates to perform, and blues seemed to be the most popular (and appropriate) style.  One elderly African-American with a gray beard, wearing a stocking cap, rendered his heartfelt song with the accompaniment of a harmonica and guitar: "There is a blue sky outside my window, there's never a trace of rain," he crooned, "I no longer think of the lovin' you give another man."

Then the song took a somber turn:

It's true there are times when my heart stops…

Maybe some day I'll be rid of the pain

I think I'm over you all over again…

Rosanne did a number from an album she says is her favorite, "The Wheel," written just after a divorce.  As a finale she chose a song from her father's repertoire.  "I can't believe I'm doing this here, with you guys," she said, and then let loose.

On a Monday I was arrested

On a Tuesday they locked me in the jail

On a Wednesday my trial was attested

On a Thursday they said Guilty and the judge's gavel fell

I got stripes — stripes around my shoulders

I got chains — chains around my feet

I got stripes — stripes around my shoulders

And them chains — them chains they're about to drag me down

I stood against the wall peering over the shoulders of burly guards and wardens, looking at the backs of seated prisoners who were dressed alike in uniform blue, most of them swaying to the music.  The setting made a stark contrast to Rosanne's normal concert venues.  The rectangular concrete-block room, humid from all the bodies, had fluorescent lights instead of spotlights, no stage or accommodation to acoustics, and the barest electronic equipment.  The only decorations were copies of prison regulations and announcements regarding medical and dental care posted on the walls.  And yet I doubt she and her guitarist husband John Leventhal had ever played to a more appreciative audience.

From there we went through a series of steel gates and fenced walkways to a smaller room where select inmates practice "Arts in Correction."  Around the perimeter, steel-mesh lockers housed musical instruments and art supplies ("nylon strings only for the guitars, of course, and you have to earn the right to use them").  We sat on chairs cast off from someone's 1950s-era dinette set; they rocked on uneven legs and stuffing stuck up through the cracked plastic.  Here, a book club of a dozen inmates gathered to discuss my book What's So Amazing About Grace? which they had just finished reading.  I asked what other books they had read, and found myself in good company: The Life of Pi, The Kite Runner, Three Cups of Tea, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

It is not appropriate to ask an inmate about his crime, but I knew that most of these guys were serving sentences of life without possibility of parole.  Over the next ninety minutes, some of their stories came out.  Several had committed murder.  One man, an award-winning poet, had already spent thirty-four years behind bars.

I began by telling them why I wrote the book, and what I've learned about grace over the years.  Mainly, though, I came to listen.  What could my book, written by a middle-class author of Christian popular theology, communicate to men who lived in an institution seemingly designed to enforce Ungrace?  We all know the stories of violence, gangs, and bullying in maximum-security prisons.  We know of racial conflicts that lead to lockdowns every few months in a place like Folsom.  What could I teach them about grace?  More important, what could they teach me?

"How would you like to be remembered for the worst thing you ever did?" one articulate prisoner began.  "Even the downtrodden like us have to look down on somebody.  I've learned that grace is not about being nice, it's about being free.  Outside of grace I'm full of harsh judgments about other people.  With grace, I'm set free.  Grace is the house I live in—I need it every day.  I'm learning to invite others into that house now and then."

Another man spoke up, "This place pushes you to become more of what you already are.  It's easy to spend your whole life in here blaming other people—the judge, society, your parents, whatever.  I've had to face myself, and learn not to keep blaming.  Life itself is a grace.  The meals I get, even these meals, are a grace.  I need to keep reminding myself."

And another: "In here, grace is perceived as a weakness.  You give somebody some grace, and immediately they ask, 'What's he want in return?'  Or show some grace, and others start counting on it as a kind of entitlement."

One man kept interrupting with hostile comments.  "You think only Christians have grace?  Yeah, well what about Hell?  What kind of God sends people to Hell?  You call that grace?"

Most, though, showed thoughtfulness and surprising humility.  "I marked one phrase in your book, that forgiveness is an unnatural act.  You got that right.  I'm in here for killing two people.  I pray for them to forgive me, for their sakes, not for mine.  Until they forgive me, they let me and what I did control them.  Only forgiveness will set them free.  So far, they haven't done that.  It's unnatural all right."  He thought a minute and added, "Without grace I'm a slave to my ancestors, to my anger, to whatever pissed me off this morning."

The man next to him, a young African-American who will likely grow old in this place, choked up as he spoke.  "I experienced some of that forgiveness just last weekend.  According to California law, a co-defendant who accompanied you during a crime is just as guilty as you are.  I pulled the trigger, but the guys with me got long sentences too.  This weekend, the mother of one of my co-defendants visited me, and she forgave me.  It's unnatural."

As our time drew to a close, one prisoner seemed to sum it up.  "You have to look hard for grace in a place like this.  Sometimes you have to dream it.  I'm in for life without possibility of parole.  Yet I can't help dreaming of rolling hills, of a picnic with my family, of driving down a street.  Maybe laws will change or a new governor will somehow grant me a pardon.  It's crazy, I know.  Grace is like hope.  You can't live without it."

Afterwards the men asked me to sign their books, along with some scraps of paper they could give their kids.  Working full-time, they earn $25 per month, and a father behind bars has few gifts he can pass on.  I shook hands with each inmate, wished them the best, and thanked them for their insights.  Guards accompanied them back to their cells while we visitors reversed the routine of showing i.d., signing registers, and submitting to searches.  Even the rattletrap van got a thorough going-over.

The sun had come out while we were in the prison, glistening off puddles left by a morning rain.  We drove back through the lush green hills into freedom and headed for a nearby coffee shop before catching a flight home.  I remembered a passage from Solzhenitsyn.  Spending his first night outside after serving time in the Gulag, he lay in a comfortable bed and listened to sounds he had not heard for eight years: the click-click of a woman in heels walking on a sidewalk, the shrieks and laughter of children at play.

And off I walk!  I wonder whether everybody knows the meaning of this great free word.  I am walking along by myself!  With no automatic rifles threatening me, from either flank or from the rear.  I look behind me: no one there!  If I like, I can take the right-hand side, past the school fence, where a big pig is rooting in a puddle.  And if I like, I can walk on the left, where hens are strutting and scratching immediately in front of the District Education Department….

I cannot sleep!  I walk and walk in the moonlight.  The donkeys sing their song.  The camels sing.  Every fiber in me sings: I am free!  I am free!

Folsom Prison presents an advanced test on grace, a free gift that only comes to those who pursue it, or at least recognize it.  Clearly, some had passed that test.

Praying for the Enemy

In 2006 I spoke to a group of Army chaplains, all colonels and generals, at Hilton Head, South Carolina. Having almost no personal exposure to the military, I was impressed by the pervasive discipline. Meetings started on the dot at "0800" or "0900," speakers presented for at least an hour, and no cell phones went off or got used for text-messaging.

Citing a passage in my book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? I told of the stunning scene I had witnessed at the headquarters of the Soviet KGB in 1991 when a Russian colonel repented of his nation's behavior and vowed to place a copy of the New Testament in the hands of all two million members of the Russian army. After his passion and sincerity had melted my initial skepticism, I realized to my shame that I had disobeyed Jesus. "Love your enemies," he said. "Pray for those that persecute you." Not once in the Cold War of my lifetime—and I grew up within range of Soviet missiles in Cuba—had I prayed for my enemies.

"Who are our enemies now?" I asked the chaplains. "We know them by name and face, for Donald Rumsfeld put bounties on their heads and distributed their images on a pack of playing cards to your troops." I then flashed onscreen a photo of a dozen al-Qaeda terrorists. "What would happen if every church in the United States adopted a member of al-Qaeda, learned to pronounce his name, and prayed for him. Isn't that what Jesus asked us to do?"

A short time later I heard from an Army reserve chaplain whose commanding general had attended the gathering at Hilton Head. Just before mobilizing for a year of duty in Iraq, as part of his civilian ministry he launched a web-based prayer movement called Adopt a Terrorist for Prayer. He registered the website as ATFP.org, an ironic echo of the Defense Department's own "Anti-Terrorism Force Protection." On it he posts photos of actual terrorists from the FBI's and State Department's most-wanted lists and invites users to "adopt" one to pray for. More than 800 people have done so.

Warfare against terrorists has a spiritual component, believes Thomas Bruce, the Army reserve chaplain, who has a doctorate in ministry. He recruited a board of directors who have experience with spiritual warfare, including an African-American survivor of the civil rights movement and a Cuban-American former agent of drug enforcement. As he deployed to Iraq, Bruce urged, "While I beg you to pray for soldiers, I beg you also to pray for their enemies. When God answers those prayers, this war will end."

Later, on returning from Iraq, Thomas reflected, "For the past year I have been in harm's way at the front line of America's national response to terrorism. Through this website everyone can join the front line of a Christian response."

He writes on the website, "The intent of terrorists is to inspire terror. According to Jesus, the antidote to fear is love. When we hate, we are reactive victims. When we love we seize the initiative. Love for country helps soldiers to risk their lives. Love for children enables parents to discipline them without being intimidated. Love for us took Jesus to the cross. Love for enemies will give courage to face, overcome, and transform them and the environment that breeds them."

Not everyone appreciates Thomas's efforts. When CNN online reported on ATFP.org, reactions ran two to one against the effort.

Some verged on ridicule: "Christians come up with some goofy stuff. This is right up there." "Love your enemies, and your enemies will KILL you."

Some mocked prayer: "There is no end to the madness in religion; Prayers do nothing, well except for being a lame excuse for doing nothing." And, "How about using this 'prayer' energy to feed starving children."

Some disagreed with the entire concept: "If you harbor anything but hatred for these terrorists, your morality is simply malfunctioning."

Some gave political retorts: "I decided to use this site and pray for G. W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but I couldn't find them on the list."

Undaunted, Thomas is raising funds to improve and expand the website. Having served on the front lines, he has no illusions about the challenge that terrorists present. Nor does he underestimate the power of prayer, citing an example from the Book of Acts:

Historically, Stephen was the first fatality in terrorism directed against Jesus' followers. As Stephen died from stoning, he prayed, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Later Saul, who had supervised Stephen's stoning, met Jesus in a vision and repented. Can we pray today like Stephen prayed then?

He adds one last poignant question, "Would Saul, who became the Apostle Paul, have met Jesus if Stephen hadn't prayed?"

 

My Longest Day

Last weekend was the fourth anniversary of the rollover accident which I describe in the first chapter of What Good Is God? Appropriately, we spent it with some wonderful friends from the church in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where I spoke on Prayer the day before my Ford Explorer slipped off an icy road and tumbled over and over down an embankment.

February 25, 2007, was the longest day of my life.  In all I spent seven hours strapped to a body board as doctors tried to determine whether a fragment of the crushed vertebrae had punctured my carotid artery.  "We have a jet standing by to fly you to Denver for emergency surgery," the doctor told me.  "But, truthfully, if the artery is punctured, you won't make it."

Seven hours is a long time.  I reviewed my life, regrets and nostalgic memories both, contemplated a possible future as a paraplegic, called loved ones to tell them goodbye just in case.  As a Christian writer, I knew I should be thinking spiritual thoughts, but I have to admit that my main regret was that I had climbed 51 of the 54 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado.  I can't die yet—I have three more to climb, I kept thinking.

That same summer, after the neck brace came off, I climbed the last three 14ers.  Now, four years later, I'm back skiing moguls and enjoying this grand world.  I feel very blessed, and will never forget the born-again feeling of getting another chance at life.  Not everyone has that chance.  I have friends who went through similar accidents and never walked again, and others who have permanent brain injuries; the crosses beside the Colorado roads (and on Colorado mountain trails) bear witness to still others whose lives ended abruptly.

During the recovery months I heard from friends, loved ones, and readers whom I have never met.  As I read the kind of heartfelt words that people often don't express until it's too late, I felt like Tom Sawyer attending his own funeral.  On down days, I sometimes rummage in a box and re-read them.

The overwhelming gift I take away from my accident is a bedrock sense of gratitude for life itself.  This afternoon I stopped work and hiked along a ridge with a view of snow-capped mountains, sat on a rock and watched the birds flit from tree to tree, startled a herd of deer grazing on the hillside.  Spontaneous praise spilled out. For all its problems, this world is a magnificent place.  I rejoice that I am still here to enjoy it.

"Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!…Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do."  (Ecclesiastes (9: 4, 7)