"And the Winner Is...Job Again!"
A Sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
August 21, 2011
READINGS: ANCIENT & MODERN
Our first reading is from the Book of Job, Chapter 3:
"Why did I not perish at birth,
and die as I came from the womb?
Why were there knees to receive me
and breasts that I might be nursed?
For now I would be lying down in peace;
I would be asleep and at rest
with kings and rulers of the earth,
who built for themselves places now lying in ruins,
with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver…"
Our second reading is from the 19th Century Unitarian, essayist,
lecturer, and poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement,
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or
to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God
to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is
perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has
burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no
more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied,
and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time
to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present,
but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches
that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot
be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present,
above time.
SERMON
It's with some amount of trepidation that I begin my message to
you this morning. The real theme of I'm here to talk about is, "How
I Spent My Summer Vacation." That wouldn't ordinarily be a
topic that I would find fitting of such attention, but this summer
hasn't really been an ordinary one for me.
Many of you have asked about my trials and tribulations and so
this will provide the opportunity for me to answer your questions
as well is to sort of get all of this off my chest. I think Job
would approve. My hope is that, more important than my experience,
will be the meaning of that experience, and the potential that meaning
might have for us all in accepting what is acceptable in our lives
and doing what there is to be done.
I don't want to hold up my experiences of the last few weeks as
being monumental; I only want to hold them up as my experience.
There are many in our congregation who struggle with far, far greater
challenges than the ones I'm about to relate. There are many in
the world who have even greater challenges, still. That does give
me perspective. Still, I hope that a look at my issues might invite
us all to look at our own, and that in the looking we might find
ways of being more tolerant, more grateful, more generous, more
hopeful and more faithful.
My summer began in something of a hurry. No sooner had our Flower
Communion service ended back on Sunday, June 18th, and I was at
home putting the last few things into my car in order to head out
for Charlotte and this year's UUA General Assembly. I suspect that
some of you were still enjoying our congregation's Annual Picnic
over at the Fried's, even as I was driving past the Joyce Kilmer
Rest Area on the New Jersey Turnpike. I wanted to drive down to
G.A. so that I could take my bicycle along. I don't like missing
any opportunities to get in a couple of rides in any new or unexplored
areas.
I'd noticed that for a couple of weeks before the trip that my
right knee had started to stiffen up. It wasn't especially painful;
just stiff, and it caused me to walk with something of a limp. For
some reason it seemed that, especially when I rode my bike, it would
help loosen up my knee. I don't suppose the long car ride to North
Carolina was particularly good for it, but the two very excellent
30 mile rides I got in while I was in Charlotte were well worth
the schlep. And they did do a nice job of easing the stiffness and
making it easier to walk.
By the time I got back home though, the stiffening had worsened
and by then my knee was beginning to hurt. In retrospect the pain
was really pretty manageable for the next couple of days. It didn't
really get out of hand until three days later. That was the morning
we got up at 5:00 o'clock to catch our flight to Costa Rica, where
I would be performing the wedding of some family friends. We'd been
looking forward to the trip for quite some time. But that morning
when I woke up, it was as though my knee had been rigormortis-ized
and then roasted by some acetylene torch that must have been hiding
under my bed. As you might guess, that did make for quite a challenging
and interesting day of travel.
There really were many nice parts to the Costa Rica trip, including
our first night's stay at Las Orquideas, The Orchids, a beautifully
romantic, tropical, Eden-esque hotel and grounds where we stayed
before going on to the echo resort, Selva Verde, where the wedding
festivities would begin the following night. Before hitting the
road to Selva Verde, we stopped by a local pharmacy where I was
given a shot of cortisone... in the tuchus. Don't let anyone tell
you that nationalized medicine isn't a wonderful thing. It was!
The injection of cortisone cost me $1.40 and the relief it brought
was priceless… as well as almost immediate. By the time we
arrived at Selva Verde in the rainforest jungle, I was almost walking
like a normal person. The effects of the shot lasted for about 30
hours.
The wedding was to take place on the evening of July 4th. When
I woke up that morning the effects of the cortisone shot had disappeared
and the full force of the pain had returned to my knee. The father
of the bride, Pete Ballew, a kind and generous man who is a large
animal veterinarian with a considerable background in human chiropractics,
gave me a treatment that lasted for about 45 minutes. He adjusted
all kinds of things, all over my body, things that I didn't even
know needed adjusting until I felt the relief of their absence.
My knee was somewhat better when he finished, but he and I both
knew that I had to be driven into the nearest town for another injection
of cortisone. It took a while to find the pharmacy but the mission
was successful. Relief again.
I need to backup for just a moment to the rehearsal on the night
before the wedding. The folks who run Selva Verde had set up a beautiful
area where the outside wedding was to take place. It was an idyllic
opening in the forest with a glistening pond dancing behind the
Chuppah. On the evening of the day before the actual ritual, the
wedding party gathered there and we walked through a pretty typical
dry run of the ceremony. It all went quite well enough until, when
we were just finished, I stepped down with my Teva sandal, onto
what felt like a soft mass of earth. Turns out it was sand, and
as luck would have it, it was a fire ant nest.
I don't know if you're familiar with fire ants, but they're not
a very friendly species. By the time I managed to stomp and brush
them off my foot and ankle, I had a couple of dozen bites or so.
The good news here was that we had some After-Bite, an ammonia-based
product that touts itself as an itch eraser. Of course the cortisone
was also in play and together they pretty much extinguished all
the little fires ignited by the bites. This fire ant thread of my
story continues a bit further down the line.
Back to the evening of July 4th… The wedding ceremony and
the party that followed were lovely. The temperatures in the jungle
were much like many of our days were here in July; somewhere in
the mid to upper 90's. But the humidity was even higher there than
it has been here. It almost goes without saying that the wedding
was a wonderfully warm and very close event.
The day following the nuptials, I would want you to know, was quite
pleasant with the cortisone keeping both the knee and the ant bites
at bay. But when I woke up on the second morning after the wedding,
at about 4:00 o'clock, it was as though my knee had been roasted
again, this time maybe in a blast furnace. Even though there were
still two more days planned for our trip, there was nothing to do
but head for home.
Did you know that it costs a lot these days to change air travel
reservations? But it doesn't cost anything to be wheeled around
the airport in a wheelchair. If you need that kind of service, it's
a godsend, especially when going through security areas or customs.
You get to go right to the front of the line!
I'm going to move along a bit more quickly through the unfolding
of events once I got back home, not because they're insignificant,
but because…well, even Job's story moved a little faster after
a while. A few rather immobile days after getting home a number
of things occurred. The last remaining effects provided by the cortisone
wore off throughout the rest of my body. If you've ever had cortisone,
you know that it does all kinds of wonderful things for your skin
and many other organs throughout your body. By this point though,
its effects were all gone. The bites from the fire ants reemerged
with a vengeance, covering my feet and ankles with various blisters
and rashes and evil looking little bumps.
It was about that same time when other joints in my body began
to ache, especially my shoulders, where some of my mobility was
restricted. My knee was still the biggest issue though. It's not
easy to find an orthopedic doctor who can see you on short notice.
Eventually I was able to get an appointment with a sports medicine
doctor, Dean Filion, who has treated most of the New York Giants
football team. I figured if he could get injured Giants back out
on the field, maybe he could get me back out on my bicycle.
The MRI showed signs of arthritis as well as a complete absence
of any cartilage in my right knee. The treatment was to be three
doses of Synvisc injected directly into the knee, administered on
weekly intervals. Synvisc is a kind of synthetic lubricant intended
to provide between six months to two years of relief. Before I received
the first injection, Dr, Filion removed 70 cc's of fluid that had
built up in my knee. He removed another 70 cc's prior to the second
injection, another 18 before the third, and still 20 more a week
later when I went in for the follow-up evaluation.
I can't really describe the month of July as being one of my favorite
times. Throughout the treatments, my knee showed no signs of improvement.
My reaction to the insect bites was more than annoying, and the
aching joints worsened. I even had a dental emergency, when a crowned
molar disintegrated! Bicycling wasn't even on the horizon. Vacation
plans to Vermont or Cape Cod or anywhere else were abandoned.
Whatever it was that was going on in my shoulders and joints, was
a mystery to both Dr. Filion and Dr. Al Schmidt, my regular doc.
I was given a number of blood tests to see what might be going there.
After several attempts without a definitive diagnosis, we finally
hit pay dirt. One of the tests showed positive for parvovirus.
Some of you may be familiar with parvovirus as it relates to children
or pets. It's a pretty rare occurrence in adult human beings though.
It's something of a nuisance for dogs and cats and babies, but it
seems to take a more exacting toll on adults. Significant joint
pain is one of its predominant symptoms. The good news is that the
virus is only supposed to last up to a couple of months. I just
hope the virus knows that.
It was all kind of a long haul. Between the various ailments, especially
my knee, I was rendered mostly immobile. Between the pain and the
narcotic I took to combat the pain, I didn't really have the focus
to do much reading. I watched an ungodly amount of movies; a few
of them were even good. "On Demand," does provide a lot
of good series and documentaries; I even remember parts of some
of them.
This is not to say that I didn't get out of the house at all during
that time. I did on two occasions. Once was to the boardwalk in
Asbury Park and the other to the New York Botanical Gardens in the
Bronx. Both outings were powered by my lovely bride Judy, and were
made possible by a borrowed wheelchair. Let me sum up my experience
of being confined to a wheelchair - there's a lot of difference
say, in riding a bicycle across the country a couple of years ago
and being pushed along beside a bed - of even the most stunning
- perennials this summer. Primarily the differences can be found
in attitudes of humility, dependency, self-worth and patience (on
the part of both the pusher and the pushee). To say the least, it
was a daunting yet learning experience.
Finally though, a distant light began to shine. Sometime during
that first week of August, I began to feel some improvement in my
knee. The Synvisc had begun to do its job! The rashes, blisters
and bumps from the fire ant bites began to diminish. My shoulders
continued to ache, but by then I had begun to learn coping skills
to deal with the pain and limited mobility. By Thursday of that
first week of this month, I dared to begin to think that the siege,
which had taken my summer prisoner, was beginning to loosen its
grip. Then on Friday my lower back went into full spasm, leaving
me flat out and in bed for most of the next week. Oy vey! Just goes
to show I suppose...
So, I want you to know that I have studied the Bible. And I know
Job from the Bible. Job is indeed a friend of mine. And I can assure
you that I am no Job.
From my perspective though, the book of Job is one that's often
misunderstood. It's frequently interpreted to mean that a person
should take whatever life or God deals them and just deal with it
in silence because it's a part of some grand plan that humans are
simply unable to comprehend. A more important truth in the narrative
is that Job survived, not because he was able to grin and bear the
nearly total destruction of his life. He survived because he was
able to express his grief and his anger to God; he was able to get
it off his chest.
He remained in relationship with life by fighting with it. He refused
to be life's victim. Job refused to forsake life, refused to abandon
his God through the very act of expressing his fears that God was
abandoning him.
I'm happy to say that at no point during my summer of discontent
that I feared I wouldn't get my life back. I knew I would. But my
experience did cause me to think about aging process and the prospect
of one day finding myself in some diminished state without much
hope of returning to the kind of able-bodied living that I so much
enjoy. My temporary disabilities lead me to hope that I would, even
in that case, endure what I had to endure, complain about what I
had to complain about, and still find meaning and hope in whatever
openings life might continue to offer me.
I got a phone call the other day from Mountainside Hospital informing
me that May Lipscomb had been hospitalized. May is a longtime member
of our congregation, though we don't see her very often these days.
She is a 93 year old, African-American woman with COPD, Chronic
Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. COPD is always incurable, and unless
something else proves fatal first, it is always eventually terminal.
May is also one of the most positive human beings I know.
After she gave me a review of the events that had caused her to
be hospitalized this time around, I asked, "So tell me, May,
how is your spirit?"
She smiled a big grin, "My spirit couldn't be better."
Then her face softened, "My philosophy has always been - if
I can help myself, then I worry. If I can't, if I can't help myself,
I don't worry. I let that go. I let it go to God or wherever it
will go. I do what I can about things I can do something about,
and I just can't worry about the rest."
Pretty good advice, I think, for any of us going through what we
might consider to be a Job-like experience. And the winner is...
Job again. We should all do so well.
Something I noticed about my own healing process, especially on
a spiritual level, is that when we are wounded our perspective tends
to turn inward. As we begin to heal, our perspective goes back out
to see the world and those around us. Whether that is cause or effect,
I leave to you. Those of you who have suffered great loss, I suspect,
know what I'm talking about. Those of you who might not have, tuck
this one away for a troubled day, when it might at least provide
you with the solace that comes from being in a more familiar place
because your minister told you that there would be times like this.
My hope for us all is that in facing whatever might lie around
or ahead, we might find ways of being more tolerant, more grateful,
more generous, more hopeful and more faithful. We have been given
life, and now it is our turn to give…
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