Summer had finally emerged and we were sitting out on my front steps, enjoying the afternoon heat and watching some of the other kids play out on the street. Some of the teenagers were casually tossing a football around, throwing it high and watching it bounce among the electrical wires, tree branches, and car windows before skittering along the pavement to be chased endlessly by the smaller children. Others were riding their bicycles for show, popping up the front wheel as they furiously pumped their pedals to … [Read more...] about Do Doctors Make Bank?
Shootings and Samaritans
I found out about the Newtown shooting while working in a pediatric clinic. In between seeing children with sore throats and rashes and sniffles, I would hover over the computer and read more about other children torn apart by gunfire. I found out about the Boston bombing while working a long shift in the hospital. While examining patients in their rooms, I couldn't help but sneak peeks at their TV sets as the chaos unfolded. Often, I simply stopped what I was doing and watched the news alongside them in silence. We … [Read more...] about Shootings and Samaritans
Cheap Justice, Cheap Grace
In watching people die, I have come to better appreciate how much meaning people attach to a body and how death has a way of revealing our most elemental beliefs about what remains. I have talked to patients in their final moments, have shoved long needles into pulseless vessels, have held the hands of weeping mothers and wives and sons, have electrified bodies on hallway floors, have carried severed limbs and have watched blood and vomit and blood fly through the air during final resuscitation attempts. I have stayed … [Read more...] about Cheap Justice, Cheap Grace
Beyond Ordinary and Proper
"There is something wrong with you," she said, her face twisting in genuine disbelief and horror. "You are crazy." I laughed, but comments like these were starting to get to me. At work, I've been sharing more and more about what my life in the city is like. By this I mean telling the fun and juicy stories: nearly getting jumped, waking up to gunshots, living next to pedophiles & sex offenders, finding gas leaks and mice in the kitchen. I should have known that focusing on these more dramatic & exotic … [Read more...] about Beyond Ordinary and Proper
Public and Personal Encounters with Evil
By any account, media coverage this week has been saturated in violence. We have been inundated by graphic and raw descriptions of the Boston bombings, a live-birth abortionist, and even the Senate's rejection of expanded firearm background checking. These are public tragedies: public displays that evoke charged words like evil, hellish, terror, moral failure. They are also riveting, partly because their scale is rare, but also because they have taken such personal forms. Each of these were made more horrific because … [Read more...] about Public and Personal Encounters with Evil