The Adventurous Lectionary The Fifth Sunday of Easter May 10,2020 – Patheos

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The Adventurous Lectionary The Fifth Sunday of Easter May 10, 2020Acts 7:55-60Psalm 31:1-15, 15-16I Peter 2:2-10John 14:1-14

On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, the heart of the lectionary readings is John 14:1-14. This reading is both inspirational and challenging. During this time of pandemic, Jesus assurance, do not let your hearts be troubled truly hits home. Without denying our anxiety and concern for ourselves, loved ones, and the nation, Jesus words with his disciples, with a cross looming on the horizon, invite us to reflect on the scope of salvation and trust that God has prepared a place for us and our loved ones that is more than we can ask or imagine. This does not lure us away from our troubled world but places the troubles we face now and in the future in Gods care. While we cannot truly fathom Jesus words, we can trust his words when we are faced with realities we cannot control and must endure. Lifes necessary losses(Judith Viorst) can be accepted gracefully when we know that God is with us and that in the here and now and in any imaginable future, God has prepared a place for us. Like Stephen, we can catch of glimpse of everlasting life in times of threat and debilitation. This vision of Gods presence encourages agency, not passivity, in responding to the real problems of our real world pandemic, poverty, neglect of the vulnerable, political gaslighting, and fear mongering.

From a theological perspective, todays gospel reading can be described as three promises and a problem. As a congregational pastor, I regularly read John 14:1-3 at funerals and memorial services. The implication of Jesus words is that beyond the grave, God has prepared a place for our continuing spiritual adventures. We dont know the nature of this place, but for lack of a better word, we speak of this place as heaven, the realm of the blessed, characterized by many mansions or dwelling places, for our everlasting journey. We have a future and a hope and may enjoy diverse spiritual homes in the afterlife. We can imagine that, like the earthly realm, Gods realm is not uniform, but multifaceted and dynamic, and will be a place of positive relationships in our divine dwelling places. Of course, Gods everlasting realm may be an entirely different plane of existence, whose reality defies anything we can imagine. The dwelling place is wherever God is present, and that is everywhere and in every challenging situation. God is just as real in the here and now hardscrabble world of pandemic as it will be in the sweet by and by when we die! As Psalm 31 asserts, God is our fortress and our times are in Gods hand.

John 14:10 speaks of the spiritual unity between God the Parent and Jesus. The Divine Parent and Jesus are one in spirit: Jesus dwells fully in Gods Reality, reflecting and revealing Gods vision and God dwells in Jesus as his deepest self and animating spirit. This spiritual unity has metaphysical implications: Jesus and the Parent are symbiotically related, experientially permeating one another. While this doesnt give us a description of the Trinity, it does suggest that Trinitarian thinking must focus on interdependence and spiritual unity as key characteristics. When we turn to Jesus, trusting his pathway to wholeness, we can experience Gods energy flowing through us and we can do great things. God is in all things, including us and the least of these in our world, and all things are in God, included in the Heart of Reality.

The final promise is that through Christ we can do even greater things than we can imagine. The nature of these greater things is left vague: does Jesus mean we can heal the sick, raise the dead, and defy the ordinary limits placed on human life, or that we will resonate with spiritual energy as a result of our nearness to God? Does this mean that we can forgo physical distancing to go to worship services and that our neighbors will be immunized from any contagion we might spread? Does this mean we can teleport while we are sheltering in place? For most of us, I suspect not, nor should we assume greater things involves Christian exceptionalism that inspires rights without responsibilities!

The vagueness in this passage may be helpful, because in not fully defining the nature of these greater things, we are given permission to push our limits individually and as communities, even while we are sheltering in place. As I have said throughout my theological writings, there is a deeper realism, a more lively naturalism, indeed, a theistic naturalism, than we can imagine in our current state of consciousness and spiritual evolution. This is part of the regular causality of the universe, and is an intensification of our everyday lives in ways that seem supernatural: resurrection is possible, energetic cures are possible, mysticism is possible, for all whom open to Gods movements in their lives. (For more on my theological perspective, see Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed, Become Fire: Guideposts for Interspiritual Pilgrims, and Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God.)

The problem in todays reading emerges in John 14:6. I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. When I use John 14 at funerals, I stop at verse three to avoid theological confusion and the impact of the more popular interpretations of this passage. How often have people been brutalized by this passage! Historically and especially in recent times, this passage has been used as both a carrot and a stick. It charts out a way to salvation, and denigrates any other pathway to God, whether Christian or non-Christian. From this perspective, doubters, seekers, Christian progressives and pluralists, and faithful adherents of other faith traditions are ultimately doomed unless they explicitly accept Jesus as Savior, usually through reciting some formulaic sinners prayer or creed. Anyone who stands outside these requirements is destined to damnation. As a college student once told me, My parents are good people, but because they arent Christians, if they were to die tomorrow, they would go to hell, along with other good people like Buddha and the Dalai Lama.

This passage becomes the antithesis to the greater things God imagines for it when we interpret it individualistically, exclusively, and literally. Imagination is stunted and the gifts of the Spirit wither on the vine. Moreover, this passage can be theologically destructive if taken out of the context of Johns Gospel and a holistic understanding of Jesus life and message. Jesus ministry was grounded in relationship, rather than creed or theological litmus test. Following the way of Jesus brings joy and salvation; Jesus way, however, is not a demand but a graceful invitation. Jesus barred no one from the path of salvation, although we have the ability to thwart Jesus vision for our lives. Still even those who turn from God are not abandoned; those who crucified Jesus are given forgiveness. Despite our penchant for following pathways of darkness, Gods light still envelopes and enlightens all of us.

Jesus is the way to salvation in an inclusive way. All paths of salvation and enlightenment are grounded in the graceful energy of God. We walk the pathway to many mansions in many diverse ways, lured forward by Gods moment to moment inspiration. We can still speak of Jesus as supreme without denigrating other faiths and casting doubt on peoples eternal destinies. We can understand Jesus pathway as an embracing grace that animates and empowers all authentic paths. We can be confessional pluralists, recognizing that the diversity of spiritual paths is not a fall from grace, but a reflection of Gods personal relationship with every culture and person. Christ is the way that includes all authentic ways, enabling all ways to be fruitful.

When we interpret John 14:6 imaginatively and inclusively, then it becomes our fourth promise: God guides us on the pathway wherever we are on our journey; Gods energy enlightens all persons in all cultures; makes a way where there is no way; and leads all creation in all of its diversity to wholeness. We need this pathway now, out of the chaos of pandemic, toward new visions of our nation, our churches, and ourselves. Let us trust that Gods place is right where we are and we can do greater things as our prayers and calls radiate forth from our households.

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The Adventurous Lectionary The Fifth Sunday of Easter May 10,2020 - Patheos

SAS: Who Dares Wins Ollie Ollerton reveals horrific childhood circus chimp attack left him addicted to booze – The Sun

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ISOLATION is something SAS: Who Dares Wins star Ollie Ollerton knows a thing or two about.

During his time in the Special Forces, he would spend weeks locked down with just a handful of comrades for company, waiting for high pressure operations to begin.

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TV host Ollie, 48, says: Youd be in a remote hangar somewhere, or waiting on a frigate, and youd have no idea if or when the operation would go down. We would have no contact with the outside world, its just you and your crew.

It could be tense not knowing if or when you were going into battle, but you just get through it. I think its why this lockdown isnt bothering me too much now!

But Ollie knows that for many people, lockdown is proving enormously challenging - financially, mentally and physically.

He hopes his new book, Battle Ready, will help - with techniques for changing your mindset for the better, no matter how dark the circumstances.

In the book, Ollie reveals for the first time that he was suicidal, after years of abusing alcohol and drugs.

Having left the Special Boat Service (SBS) in 2000, he went to work in Iraq as a security consultant, before following a girlfriend to Australia. It was during the subsequent years that he had panic attacks so bad he considered ending it all.

He writes: Id had a death wish sat on my shoulder for years. Maybe once or twice Id tried to appease it, pushing the envelope of danger a little too hard. But this was different, it wouldnt be a case of Ollie Ollerton, Special Forces soldier died bravely while engaged in a clandestine operation, but by my own hand.

Ollie says it has taken him until now to reveal exactly how much of a pit he had sunk into because he feared being seen as a cliche".

He says: In my own head I thought I sounded like a cliche. I think thats what holds a lot of people back from speaking out. But I wanted to be totally open and honest in this book. I am sick of people faking perfection.

At one point I could barely string a sentence together because I was in that much of a world of pain

For the same reason, Ollie speaks candidly about his alcohol addiction. While he was in the military, Ollie describes himself as a successful working alcoholic, bingeing while on leave but keeping it separate from the daring work he did in the SBS.

But once the structure of military life fell away and he entered the civilian world, his addiction spiralled out of control.

Meanwhile, he bounced between toxic relationships - Ollie says the first time he was ever single was aged 41 - and also started overusing Valium and steroids.

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Ollie says: At one point I could barely string a sentence together because I was in that much of a world of pain.

"A lot of that was self-induced because there were drinking issues, I was over-excessively using Valium, I was on a path of destruction. I am an extremist, so once I went down that road I got very good at it unfortunately.

It was a chance meeting with a Special Forces contact who organised missions to save kids sold into the sex industry in South East Asia which was to provide Ollie with a path out of the darkness.

He went to Thailand with his contacts organisation, Grey Man, to rescue children sold into prostitution. On one mission alone they rescued 22 kids.

Ollie recalls: We had to do the job without weapons, so there were a lot of risks involved. But knowing these kids had been sold by their parents into a life where they knew they were going to be abused, that just didnt compute.

"For me, the goal was greater than than any risk. I had never felt settled in the Special Forces; it was my dream but when I got there it still didnt fulfil me. But then doing that work in Thailand, I finally felt fulfilled.

The Thai authorities, embarrassed by how Grey Man had highlighted their own failure to deal with the sex trade, put a stop to the organisations activities and threw them out of the country. But a new goal had been planted in Ollie - he wanted to do work that helped people.

He was living in Australia at the time but decided he needed to move back to Britain - and get clean.

Ollie says: I went to my mums cottage in Cornwall, which was empty, and I put myself into my own personal bootcamp to get my drinking under control. I got into a routine of healthy habits and that is still something I do to this day.

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I dont drink anymore. Everything in my life has to have a purpose and if it doesnt it has to go. And alcohol just for me wasnt serving any purpose whatsoever.

Newly sober, Ollie set up his training company, Break Point, and later accepted a role as one of the DS (directing staff) on Channel 4 show SAS: Who Dares Wins, alongside fellow ex-Special Forces heroes Ant Middleton, Jason Foxy Fox and Mark Billy Billingham.

Having had time to reflect, Ollie says his addiction issues dont stem from any of the horrors he experienced in the Special Forces, but from his unusual childhood trauma - almost getting killed by a rogue circus chimp when he was ten.

Ollie had been transfixed by a baby chimp backstage at the circus in his hometown of Burton-on-Trent, when its 50kg mother suddenly leapt from the darkness and almost mauled him to death.

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The experience was so traumatic that Ollie says it erased all his happy childhood memories, and as an adult it was what he tried to drown out with drink and drugs.

Ollie says: You cant expect something like that not to haunt you if you dont deal with it.

Recently, Ollie made an attempt to address his chimp trauma once and for all - with a mystic drug ceremony in Costa Rica.

He travelled to South America to take part in the ritual consumption of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant said to induce visions which heal past trauma and spark spiritual enlightenment.

It may sound weird, but Ollie says it worked for him. He said: Ayahuasca helped me to stop seeing myself as the victim. In my vision I literally was the chimp and it helped me see it from the chimps point of view. She must have been very unhappy chained up in the circus, then she saw me as a threat to her young.

As the coronavirus crisis continues, Ollie is currently isolating at home in Shropshire with partner Laura, her son William and best mate Foxy - his co-star on SAS: Who Dares Wins.

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Foxy had come to visit before lockdown was announced so stayed rather than return home to London.

Ollie said: I know Im very lucky and we have to appreciate the situation we are in because it is extremely tough for many people, and there are many more harsh times to come. I want people to be battle ready when this is over.

For now he hopes a new series of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, filmed last year in Scotland, will help keep the nations spirits up.

It sees the DS take on an unlikely lineup of celebrity recruits - including Joey Essex, John Fashanu, Anthea Turner - and Katie Price.

Ollie laughs: When you look at these personalities its like putting the worst recipe for a cake together, ingredients which do not go, and having to taste the cake at the end of it - when youre not allowed to spit it out! The nation will be gripped.

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Extract from Battle Ready

In the Special Forces, a break point is used to Breathe, Recalibrate and Deliver in a pressured situation in order to engage the courage required to accomplish the uncomfortable. Its the difference between blind panic and taking control of your environment before it spirals out of control.

I latched on to the term break point when I was living in Australia. At the time Id started to realise that for years of using drink and drugs and chasing adrenalin highs in war zones in order to feel alive, Id been a fugitive on the run from the real me. Who am I? I wondered.

My recovery began with the self-admission that I had a problem I needed to address. It wasnt the world that was broken and needed fixing, it was me.

Id drunk myself into a cul-de-sac of blackouts from three-day binges that barely masked the pain, only for it to return with bigger teeth. But as soon as I started looking inwards for the answers all these positive molecules seemed to grow and coalesce and creative ideas started flowing.

Break Point is about changing the way we think as people. Its the moment you decide nothing will stand between you and your goals and youre prepared to step into the discomfort in the short term for the long-term gain.

Ollie has recommended an exercise to help people who are struggling amid coronavirus, titled: 'What's worth worrying about and what you can't control'.

He says: "Write out a list of things that worry you and get you down. It may be a long list.

Now make a second list from the first, but this time only include the entries you can control. Youll see that there are actually very few things you currently worry about that you can control.

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By accepting that there are things you just cant change, you start to let them go and immediately feel lighter.

The one thing you have 100 per cent control of, the one person whose behaviour you can change, is you. Accept you cant control others, forget about things that havent happened yet. When you reduce your list of worries you create more space for creativity and to focus on your priorities.

This is essentially what being Battle Ready is all about identifying the stuff that holds you back, dealing with it and getting on with your goals."

Ollie Ollerton 2020. Extracted from 'Battle Ready: Eliminate Doubt, Embrace Courage, Transform Your Life' to be published by Blink Publishing on 30 April 2020 at 20. Audiobook read by Ollie Ollerton available as a Digital Download.

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SAS: Who Dares Wins Ollie Ollerton reveals horrific childhood circus chimp attack left him addicted to booze - The Sun

Karen Armstrong: The Lost Art of Reading Scripture – Tricycle – Tricycle

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As soon as the first humans learned to manipulate tools, they created works of art to make sense of the terror, wonder, and mystery of their existence. From the very beginning, art was inextricably bound up with what we call religion, which is itself an art form. The Lascaux Caves, a cultic site since 17,000 BCE, are decorated with numinous paintings of local wildlife, and nearby, in the underground labyrinth of Trois Frres at Arige, there are spectacular engravings of mammoths, bison, wolverines, and musk oxen. Dominating the scene is a massive painted figure, half man, half beast, who fixes his huge, penetrating eyes on visitors as they stumble out of the underground tunnel that provides the only route to this prehistoric temple. This hybrid creature transcends anything in our empirical experience but seems to reflect a sense of the underlying unity of animal, human, and divine.

From the very beginning, men and women deliberately cultivated a perception of existence that differed from the empirical. Humans have an instinctive appetite for the sacred, for a more enhanced state of being. Until the modern period, it was taken for granted in all cultures that the world was pervaded by and found its explanation in a reality that exceeded the reach of the intellect. In the modern world, we may not cultivate this sense of the transcendent as assiduously as our forebears, but we have all known moments when we are touched deeply within, seem lifted momentarily beyond our everyday selves, and inhabit our humanity more fully than usualin dance, music, poetry, nature, love, sex, or sport as well as in what we call religion.

Throughout history, artists, poets, and mystics have carefully nurtured apprehensions of an ineffable unity of reality. Some of these seers expressed their insights in scripture. Others were inspired by scripture to exercise a natural faculty that brought them important insights that are essential to humanity.

The deep-seated human yearning for transcendence and transformation is a major theme of scripture, as are descriptions of ways of achieving these. Today we are less ambitious than we were through most of our past. We want to be slimmer, healthier, younger, and more attractive than we really are. We feel that a better self lurks beneath our lamentably imperfect one: we want to be kinder, braver, more brilliant and charismatic. But scriptures go further. In Understanding Religious Life, the American scholar Frederick Streng has this working definition of religion:

Religion is a means of ultimate transformation. . . . An ultimate transformation is a fundamental change from being caught up in the troubles of common existence (sin, ignorance) to living in such a way that one can cope at the deepest level with these troubles. That capacity for living allows one to experience the most authentic or deepest realitythe ultimate.

The myths, rituals, sacred texts, and ethical practices of religion develop a plan of action whereby people reach beyond themselves to connect with the true and ultimate reality that will save them from the destructive forces of everyday existence. Living with what is ultimately real and true, people have found that they are not only better able to bear these destructive tensions, but that life itself acquires new depth and purpose.

Scripture emerged when human beings started to live in larger and more complex societies and needed a common ethos that bound them together. The earliest civilizations were founded in the Middle East in the mid-fourth millennium BCE. Before the development of our modern industrialized economy, all states and empires were based economically on agriculture and were maintained only by ruthless exploitation. In every agrarian society, a small aristocracy, together with its retainers, seized the surplus grown by their peasants and used it to fund their cultural projects, forcing 90 percent of the population to live at subsistence level. No premodern civilization ever found an alternative to this pattern. Yet, historians tell us, without this iniquitous system we would probably never have advanced beyond a primitive level, because it created a privileged class with the leisure to create the arts and sciences on which our progress depended.

One of these civilized arts was scripture, and it depended on the civilized science of ritual. In the premodern world, a science was a body of knowledge that required specialized skill and training. Most of historys sages, prophets, and philosophers belonged to the elite classes, who alone had the time to engage in intensive contemplation and ritualized practice. Yet nearly all scriptural traditions express a divine discontent with the inequity of their societies and insist that even the humblest human being was not only worthy of respect but potentially divine.

A scripture can be defined as a text that is regarded as sacred, oftenbut not alwaysbecause it was divinely revealed, and forms part of an authoritative canon. Our English word scripture implies a written text, but most scriptures began as texts that were composed and transmitted orally. Indeed, in some traditions, the sound of the inspired words would always be more important than their semantic meaning.

Scripture was usually sung, chanted, or declaimed in a way that separated it from mundane speech. Even after a scripture became a written text, people often regarded it as inert until it was ignited by a living voice, just as a musical score comes fully alive only when interpreted by an instrument. Scripture was, therefore, essentially a performative art, and until the modern period, it was nearly always acted out in the drama of ritual and belonged to the world of myth.

Today, in popular parlance, a myth is something that is not true. But traditionally, a myth expressed a timeless truth that in some sense happened once but also happens all the time. It enabled people to make sense of their lives by setting their dilemmas in a timeless context. The myths of scripture are not designed to confirm your beliefs or endorse your current way of life; rather, they are calling for a radical transformation of mind and heart. These myths are a way of envisaging the mysterious reality of the world that we cannot grasp conceptually. Myths come alive when enacted in ritual, without which they can seem abstract and even alien. Myth and ritual are so intertwined that it is a matter of scholarly debate as to which came first: the mythical story or the rites attached to it.

In the Protestant West, ritual is often regarded as secondary to scripture or even dismissed as superstition. But before the early modern period, reading scripture outside its ritualized context would have felt as unsatisfactory as reading the libretto of an opera. Sometimes, in fact, ritual was regarded as far more important than scripture. Some essential teachings, such as the Christian belief that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God, are rooted in ritual practice and have little valence in scripture. Other traditions, such as Chan (or Zen) Buddhism, find scripture entirely dispensable. But ritual was rarely discarded: in the past, those reformers who rejected the ceremonial rituals of their day nearly always replaced them with new rites. The Buddha, for example, had no time for the Brahmins elaborate Vedic sacrifices but required his monks to so ritualize their everyday physical actions that the way they walked, spoke, or washed expressed moral beauty and grace.

The myths of scripture are not designed to confirm your beliefs; rather, they are calling for a radical transformation of mind and heart.

Our modern society, however, is rooted in logos or reason, which must relate precisely to factual, objective, and empirical reality if it is to function efficiently in the world. For our full functioning, logos and mythic thinking, or mythos, must complement each other. Both are essential and both have limitations. Myth cannot bring something entirely new into existence, as logos can. A scientist can cure hitherto incurable diseases, but this cannot prevent him from succumbing occasionally to despair when confronted with the mortality, tragedy, and apparent pointlessness of our existence.

The prevalence of logos in modern society and education has made scripture problematic. In the early modern West, people began to read the narratives of the Bible as though they were logoi, factual accounts of what happened. But scriptural narratives never claimed to be accurate descriptions of the creation of the world or the evolution of species. Nor did they attempt to provide historically exact biographies of the sages, prophets, and patriarchs of antiquity. Precise historical writing is a recent phenomenon. It became possible only when archaeological methodology and improved knowledge of ancient languages radically enhanced our understanding of the past. Because scriptures do not conform to modern scientific and historical norms, many people dismiss them as incredible and patently untrue. But they do not apply the same criteria to a novel, which yields profound and valuable insights by means of fiction. Nor do they dismiss the poetic genius of Miltons Paradise Lost because its account of the creation of Adam does not accord with the evolutionary hypothesis. A work of art, be it a novel, a poem, or a scripture, must be read according to the laws of its genre, and, like any artwork, scripture requires the disciplined cultivation of an appropriate mode of consciousness.

Scriptural traditions prescribe different ways of living in harmony with the transcendent, but on one thing they all agree. To live in genuine relation with what Streng called the unknowable ultimate, men and women must divest themselves of egotism. What the Greeks called kenosis (the emptying of self) is a central scriptural theme. Kenosis requires a transcendence of self that is extremely difficult to attain. That is why some traditions insist that you cannot read scripture by yourself. Without going beyond the ego, dismantling our instinctive tendency to place ourselves at the center of the world, scripture remains impenetrable. But nearly all the scriptures present us with the human being who has achieved this transformation and achieved a more authentic mode of being. The scriptures insist that this is not the attainment of a few exceptional people but is possible for anybody.

Before the early modern period, when the Renaissance humanists and Protestant reformers sought to return to the wellsprings (ad fontes) of Christianity, scriptures were routinely revised, updated, and their message dramatically reinterpreted to meet the demands of the present. The art of scripture did not mean a return to an imagined perfection in the past, because the sacred text was always a work in progress. The art of scriptural exegesis was, therefore, inventive, imaginative, and creative. So, to read the scriptures correctly and authentically, we must make them speak directly to our modern predicament.

In many ways, we seem to be losing the art of scripture in the modern world. Instead of reading it to achieve transformation, we use it to confirm our own viewseither that our religion is right and that of our enemies wrong, or, in the case of skeptics, that religion is unworthy of serious consideration. Too many believers and non-believers alike now read these sacred texts in a doggedly literal manner that is quite different from the more inventive and mystical approach of premodern spirituality. Because its creation myths do not concur with recent scientific discoveries, militant atheists have condemned the Bible as a pack of lies, while Christian fundamentalists have developed a Creation science claiming that the book of Genesis is scientifically sound in every detail. Many would be in tacit agreement with the character in Mrs. Humphry Wards novel Robert Elsmere: If the Gospels are not true in fact, as history, I cannot see how they are true at all, or of any value.

This literalistic mindset subverts the traditional art of scripture. Here we have a confusion of genres. Scripture is an art form designed to achieve the moral and spiritual transformation of the individual and, if it does not inspire ethical or altruistic behavior, it remains incomplete. The art of science is quite different, because it is morally neutral. In fact, that is one of the reasons for its success. Science can say nothing about what we should do or why we should do it. It cannot and does not prescribe or even suggest how its discoveries should be applied. Science and scripture, therefore, are chalk and cheese, and to apply the disciplines of one to the other can lead only to confusion.

Scripture has never yielded clear univocal messages or lucid incontrovertible doctrines. On the contrary, scripture was usually regarded as an indication that could only point to the ineffable. Sometimes it even forces us to experience the shock of total unknowing. We see this, for just one example, in one of Indias most popular scriptures, the Mahabharata, which induces a spiritual and conceptual vertigo. Or Mahayana Buddhism, which rigorously rejected essentialism and produced a multifarious canon that demonstrated, insistently, that all our most basic assumptions about the world were untenable.

The purpose of scripture was not to confirm the reader or listener in their firmly held opinions, but to transform them utterly. The art of scripture demanded that it issued positive, practical action; otherwise it was end-stopped, its natural dynamic frustrated. In India, Buddhists devised a form of yoga in which the practitioner extended loving sympathy to all quarters of the world, until he had achieved a state of perfect equanimity and impartiality toward all creatures. Furthermore, the Buddha sent his monks out to travel through the world to help suffering people deal with their pain. Contemporaneously, Jains saw their rituals, which expressed their loving care and reverence for all creatures, animate or inanimate, as far more important than their canonical scriptures. The Quran gave Muslims a divine mission to create a just and compassionate society in which wealth was shared fairly and the poor and vulnerable were treated with respect. Essential to the art of scripture, therefore, was what medieval European monks called intentio, a concentration or intensity of intellect that impelled them to better the world by practical, altruistic action. As Augustine famously remarked: I call charity a movement of the mind toward [the goal of] fruitfully enjoying God for his own sake and myself and my neighbor for Gods sake.

In modern secular society, the privatization of faith has overturned the dynamic intentio of the scriptural genre. Secularizationthe separation of religion and politicscould have benefited religion by liberating it from the inherent injustice of the state, but it has not inspired a prophetic critique of society. Instead, by reducing religion to a private search, it seems to have subjectivized and even trivialized the art of scripture. Instead of extirpating egotism from the psyche, yoga has become an aerobic exercise or a means of easing personal tension and improving physical flexibility. Mindfulness, designed to teach Buddhists anatta (no self )that the self we prize so dearly is illusory and nonexistent is now used to help people feel more centered and comfortable in themselves. The old scriptural ideal of kenosis seems in abeyance.

None of the scriptural traditions could eradicate the systemic violence of the agrarian state, but they offered an alternative ideal, acting as a continual reminder of what should be done. Scriptures express an awareness that such attitudes as reverence for others and respect even for the stranger or the enemy were not easily acquired; they had to be cultivated assiduously. They insist, in their different ways, on the divine core of every single human being. This ideal needs urgently to be restated in a way that speaks to the modern world. In the past, scripture did not slavishly return to a presumed purity in the past; it always moved forward creatively to address new challenges. Unless our traditions can meet this urgent need, we are rendering our scriptures irrelevant.

The Episcopal theologian Hans Frei (19221988) pointed out that in the pre-critical world, even though the scriptures were seen as historical in the pre-modern sense, readers had always reached beyond the texts to address the issues of the day. Origen, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas had assessed current events as either negatively or positively reflecting patterns established in scripture. But during the Enlightenment, the biblical narratives began to be read as history in the modern sense. People forgot that they were written as stories that were merely history-like and began to regard them as wholly factual accounts, and, therefore, for some they became incredible.

Christians, Frei asserted, had a twofold task. They had to read the gospels and their history-like stories with all the critical, literary, and historical acumen that they could muster. They also had to read and interpret their own times with all the historical, sociological, and cultural sensibility at their disposal. Like the renowned Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, Frei believed the Bible should be read in conjunction with a critical interpretation of current events. This should not be a complicated, abstrusely hermeneutical discipline. It simply meant that the Bible and the newspaper should, as it were, lie side by side.

Politics and the Bible should coexist in a symbiotic relationship, Frei argued, because it would prevent scriptures from becoming a convenient instrument for the clerical and political establishments. The gospels dissident ideas about God, justice, equity, compassion, and sufferingmust be brought to bear on our mundane circumstances. This, of course, was not achievable in a single, superficial reading; it could only be the result of a continuous process in which the readers daily transformed their understanding of themselves and the world in which they lived, and then acted accordingly.

Writing in a similar vein, the American theologian George Lindbeck concluded that the Bible should be read in a literary manner. Our reading of scripture, Lindbeck argued, must be innovative. In the past, scriptures were altered and reinterpreted quite dramatically to meet changing conditions, and Lindbeck was convinced that we should continue this tradition. This require intellectual skills that go against the grain of the modern academic reverence for the integrity of the original text. Yet unless scripture is made to reach out creatively to meet our current predicaments, it will fail the test of our time.

Every scriptural tradition has a central theme or motif, which reflects its unique view of the human predicament. Each tradition invests with dignity and significance a way of life in a world that can otherwise seem brutal, pointless, and terrifying. Scripture, when practiced as art, is language made numinous. Scriptures are, as they have always been, works in progress, which draw on the past to give meaning to the present. The message of a scripture is not cast in stone, and no scriptural text has all the answers. Even the inspired words of scripture must eventually segue into the silence that is an expression of awe, wonder, and unknowing.

Adapted from The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Textsby Karen Armstrong 2019. Reprinted with permission of Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

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Obituary: The Rt Revd Simon Barrington-Ward 01 May 2020 – Church Times

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Canon Paul Oestreicher writes:

THE young Simon Barrington-Wards Eden was a Regency terrace close by London Zoo. He heard the animals being fed. God was in his heaven. All was well in his world until Hitlers bombers shattered it. That, as he saw it, was to be the pattern of his life: aspirations shattered and restored. God in Christ had come to earth. So, like Jesus, Dying and behold we live.

A simple recitation of his career reveals none of that. The son of the Editor of The Times went on, as one did, to Eton; service as a pilot in the RAF; Magdalene College, Cambridge; Westcott House; ordination; lectureships in Berlin and Ibadan, Nigeria; the Church Missionary Societys (CMSs) Training College, Crowther Hall, as Principal, and then the post of the societys General Secretary; a Chaplaincy to the Queen; the see of Coventry; and, quietly, a knighthood (KCMG). In retirement, he was back at his beloved Magdalene.

If class were lifes determinant, this obituary would not be worth writing or reading. Were Karl Marx still alive, however, he would have found in Simon a challenging friend. Hegels dialectic would have kept them talking deep into the night. But Simon was a friend to one and all, not one for any party; nor was he a man for fence-sitting. His undivided commitment was to Jesus. He described no moment of enlightenment though enlightened he most certainly was but he could admit to breaking down in tears at the birthplace of Jesus. This was love, passionate love. If only we could start again, he cried. But you can, came the answer. That set the path for his pilgrimage. Christ would be at his side.

From Magdalene, he went to teach democracy to Germans in the Free University of a Berlin that was in ruins. He found himself the learner. With a group of Christians, former Nazis, and former resisters, forgiving and being forgiven, he worshipped in the Dahlem parish church where Martin Niemller had preached sermons that went around the world, published in Britain as The Gestapo Defied by Christ Crucified. Eight years of imprisonment was the price that he paid. Simons new-found Berlin friend who had been ordered to defend the city to the very last introduced him to both Nietzsches philosophy and Brechts plays.

More illusions were shattered. Simon had again to be remade on returning to a chaplaincy at his old college and to holiday work in deprived housing estates. From a defeated Germany in ruins to an impoverished Britain, there was no longer any doubting that discipleship without commitment to social justice was unthinkable.

Three years of teaching at Ibadan University in Nigeria were an immersion in a new world and in a vision of what a world Church might become. In Ibribina, an African prophetess, he saw possibilities of an indigenous Christianity freed from the limitations of the post-colonial missionary assumptions.

For a further six years, now as Dean of Magdalene and with Jean, a Scottish doctor, as an equal partner Simon had time to prepare himself for his significant contribution to the mission of the world Church. Building on the visionary work of Max Warren and John V. Taylor, Simon was invited to establish a CMS training college, Crowther Hall, at Selly Oak, to prepare men and women from home and abroad for mission partnership. This would no longer be our serving them, but a mutual exchange of gifts to serve a rapidly changing world.

The word missionary, with its Victorian overtones, would give way to mission, certainly no longer one party in the Church of England exporting its assumptions to the erstwhile colonies. It was still true that CMS could, in its reincarnation, look both back and forwards to the English triumvirate of Warren, Taylor, and then Barrington-Ward for leadership and inspiration.

There was, however, still a long way to go before the past had really given way to the future. Simon faced an uphill struggle and would go on breaking and remaking himself and his students. In 1975, he was made General Secretary. With the grace to break through every barrier, he led CMS for a further decade by doing what came naturally to him: sharing love with everyone.

Simon arrived in Coventry as its Bishop to do just that. He brought a special gift. In an Essex monastery, he had encountered the Jesus Prayer, a short simple prayer with its origins in Eastern Orthodoxy. It was to become his constant lifeline to Jesus, a line that is open, at all times, in all places. Having been given this gift, he had to pass it on to others. Simon and his soul friend, Brother Ramon, wrote Praying the Jesus Prayer Together. It was published in 2001, shortly after Brother Ramons death.

Simon was good news. With the gospel in his heart, he was a man of joy, bubbling over with ideas: half a dozen before breakfast, as one of his colleagues joked. The good ones would survive, the rest be forgotten. He was ever eager to learn from others. He was an enthusiast. His churchmanship? That word did not feature in his vocabulary. He had charisma, but was no more signed up to the Charismatic movement than to any other Church party. He embraced and took what was good from them all far beyond Anglican frontiers, or even Christian frontiers. His liberality knew no bounds.

That did not make him a signed-up Liberal. He well knew that the market left too many hungry. On the pros and cons of social liberalism, he tended to think that the Holy Spirit could be relied on to move Church and nation forward. A campaigner he was not. There were too many truths in contention. He was, in the full meaning of both words, a Catholic ecumenist with more than a trace of the mystic. If, at times, his feet left the ground, Jean, his rock, would bring him back to earth. Their hospitality, their open house, and open table were a blessing to many in the diocese and beyond.

Some thought Simon nave. His intellect was too good for that. But he did have a childlike simplicity, not too unlike Archbishop Michael Ramseys. If need be, let mind and heart grapple: that is part of the dialectic that he took from Hegels philosophy. And that philosophy he owed in large part to his spiritual and intellectual friendship with the Jewish social philosopher Gillian Rose. For her, his dedication was boundless. It was a soul affinity that, to Simons joy, enabled him to baptise her on her deathbed.

The Church was wise to make Simon Bishop of Coventry. Everything that had been fitted him for Coventry Cathedrals international ministry based on brokenness and reparation, the ministry that I had the privilege to lead during his years as bishop. Diocese and cathedral had in him a true friend. I came to see how much that was worth. There was a downside. If I came to him with an idea that needed testing and critique, he decided to run with it before I was sure it was worth pursuing. That was easy to forgive. His farewell was a pilgrimage round his parishes maybe a little late. Some did wonder, could a bishop who had never been a parish priest really understand them? He saw that as part of his brokenness, which an exchange of love would repair.

In retirement, Magdalene called Simon back to share his many gifts. Finally, with his beloved Jean, separated most recently by the virus, they were in the same rest home and while still on this side spoke last words together by phone.

My epitaph: Fear not little flock, it is the Fathers good pleasure to give you the Kingdom (Luke 12.32).

The Rt Revd Simon Barrington-Ward KCMG died on 11 April, aged 89.

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Zoon Travels to the Past, Present, and Future on Light Prism – American Songwriter

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At one point, Daniel Monkman, also known as Zoon, was educating indigenous peoples on Turtle Island. Somewhat of a nomad from his late teens through early 20s, Zoon, a person of First Nations heritage experienced victimization when he was younger, which led to drug and alcohol abuse, and led him on a journey to rediscover himself, come to terms with his past, and make music.

Referring to his sound as moccasin gaze, the Ojibwe-born singer and songwriter says he found music through spiritual guidance and 12-step therapy, all leading to his debut album, Bleached Wavves (Paper Bag Records), out June 19.

Zoon, a name derived from Zoongideewin, an Ojibway word that means bravery, courage, and the Bear Spirit, opens up another chapter in his self discovery on third single Light Prism.

For Light Prism, Monkman wanted something gentle with no chorus with a vocal melody, so he spliced it from scratch and created his own abstract instrumental.

Light Prism is a memory college, Zoon tells American Songwriter. Parts of it are from my time teaching around Turtle Island, while other imagery is of my home town of Selkirk. Selkirk was effected heavily by drugs and gangs and with that came deaths of youth I had known. Light prism is also about reflection and being able to put things to rest.

Writing Bleached Wavves was like a form of exposure therapy, says Zoon. I had to force myself to confront the source of my anxiety and depression in order to find enlightenment, he says. Years prior to recording this upcoming album I wandered through Turtle Island writing about my past, trying to triangulate the source of my depression.

Through this journey, he did moral self inventory, which he admits was a harsh process, but says it was the push he needed to rediscover his purpose.

I transposed journal entries into poetry and ideas for an album, but I was never able to create the sonic textures that you hear on the record today, says Zoon. When it came time to properly record guitars and textures, I wanted to be easy on myself. I realized that during my journey down the spiral staircase I was very harsh with myself, so throughout the album I made the music very vulnerable and soft.

Light prisms are a collection of memories, and Zoon tapped into a state of reverie from childhood through adulthood on the track from his time on the First Nations Reserve, his struggles with addiction, and friends and family who have passed away, including his best friend Barret Peterson, who is mentioned throughout the albumthe song is dedicated to Peterson and Glenn Olson (oosan).

Light Prism is a hypnotic, melancholy gaze that travels in time (and life) through its soothing trance and earnest lyricism.

Cloudy prisms blur each figures in the video, directed by Drew Rutty, who says that Zoon allowed him to experiment with new lighting techniques and create a visual experience that helped form the backbone of the video. By the end of the shoot, Rutty also became Zoons bassist.

Over the course of editing and adding a shifting pool of color and light to the footage we had,Danasked me to join the band as bassist, says Rutty. Even though the video features no one on bass, the reality is that the bassist is in the video by way of its creation and editing.

Now living 45 minutes outside of Toronto in Hamilton, Monkman says it was hard to find the right group of musicians, but when he met Rutty the two connected instantly.

In the video were missing the bassist but in a weird way were not because Drew was filming but not yet in the band, and I remember at the shoot thinking to myself how I was planning on finding a new bassist, says Zoon. I really like how it all worked out.

Another Bleached Wavves collaborator, Chris Chu from the the dream pop band The Morning Benders, co-produced and mixed portions of the album, and while it was a dream to work with Chu, collaborations are a scarce occurrence in Zoons world.

Im usually very protective of my music, because what I create is very emotional and personal, and I hold everything I do close to my heart, so my collaborations have been minimal, he says. Ive noticed that the more confident I become with my art, the more collaborations I participate in.

Monkman doesnt just sit down and write songs. Most of it comes together by improvisation, which often unravels more. Light Prism dives into Zoons battles with social anxiety and how it led him to live a very nomadic life.

[Through] a nomadic lifestyle, I found myself planting trees in northern, extremely rural communities and drifting around Turtle Island, says Zoon. I gained a lot of inspiration from being on the road and from being isolated in the woods, and a lot of that inspiration found its way into the creation of Light Prism. But the song itself is just a collage of memories from my past, present and future.

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Bradley selected for membership to NC Institute of Medicine – The Cherokee One Feather – Cherokee One Feather

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By SCOTT MCKIE B.P.

ONE FEATHER STAFF

The North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) helps guide health policies statewide, and now a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) will sit as a member of the organization. Vickie Bradley, Secretary of the EBCI Public Health and Human Services (PHHS) Division and an EBCI tribal member, has been selected for membership.

I am honored and excited to be selected as a member of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, said Bradley. The NCIOM is a non-political source of analysis and advice on important health issues facing the state. The organization convenes stakeholders from across the state to study complex issues and develop solutions to improve health care in North Carolina. Ive had the opportunity to serve on various task forces with NCIOM, and I am so happy that I can now represent the EBCI as an official member.

Bradley has been appointed to a five-year membership, and NCIOM members can serve up to three memberships. She has a bachelors degree in nursing from Western Carolina University and a masters degree in public health from Lenoir-Rhyne University. Bradley has worked in health care for 30 years with the last 11 of those as secretary of EBCI PHHS.

The NCIOM states its mission as follows:

To seek constructive solutions to statewide problems that impede the improvement of health and efficient and effective delivery of health care for all North Carolina citizens.

To serve an advisory function at the request of the Governor, the General Assembly, and/or agencies of state government and to assist in the formation of public policy on complex and interrelated issues concerning health and health care for the people of North Carolina.

Dr. Adam Zolotor, MD, DrPH, NCIOM president and chief executive officer, said in a statement, We are pleased to welcome these new members to the NCIOM. We look forward to working with them to continue the mission of the Institute.

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Getting to know: Anna McKean with the Virginia Center for Addiction Medicine – Richmond.com

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Title: Chief executive officer at Virginia Center for Addiction Medicine, an outpatient addiction treatment center in the Innsbrook Corporate Center in Henrico County that offers comprehensive medical and therapeutic care.

Born: New Orleans; grew up in Germany from ages 3 to 15, but has lived in Virginia for longer than anywhere else.

Education: Bachelors degree in political science and economics from the University of Richmond, 1988; masters degree in business administration from Virginia Commonwealth University, 1998

Career: Worked in economic development for the Fairfax Economic Development Authority and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, 1988-2000; led strategic relocation and expansion services for KPMG, 2000; president and chief operating officer of health care company PartnerMD, 2004-2010; headed the population health team as executive vice president, strategic initiatives, at Health Diagnostic Laboratory, 2010-2015; president and CEO of Aviant Health, providing health care consulting, 2015-2019; CEO of Virginia Center for Addiction Medicine, February-present

Where in the metro area do you live: Wyndham

Best business decision: Taking the leap from a well-paying position in a large organization to leading an early-stage company in 2004.

Mistake you learned the most from: I believe that the most important part of leading any organization is having the right team in place. Ive learned to hire people that are passionate and self-motivated; this is especially important in an entrepreneurial organization where there is often a need to evolve roles as the company grows.

First job after college: Marketing research for the Metropolitan Economic Development Council (now the Greater Richmond Partnership).

If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently: Work in an early-stage company earlier in my career because it allows for the ability to have an impact and do meaningful work. Health care innovation is especially challenging because of the payment system and regulation, but there is a huge need for innovative approaches to health care, to improve our system as well as peoples lives.

Book that inspired you the most: Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

Favorite/least favorite subject in school: Favorite: economics and political science; Least favorite: science, which I find much more interesting in application.

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Getting to know: Anna McKean with the Virginia Center for Addiction Medicine - Richmond.com

‘Married to Medicine LA’: Dr. Britten Cole Hints About Who Will Be the Biggest Sh*t Stirrer in Season 2 – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

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Dr. Britten Cole from Married to Medicine Los Angeles said viewers should look to season 1 to know who will be causing the most drama during season 2.

Cole, who is the shows resident anesthesiologist, dished with Showbiz Cheat Sheet about season 2, premiering on Sunday, May 3 at 9/8c on Bravo. She wouldnt identify which cast member would be stirring the pot the most but offered a hint. Take a cue from the first season, she teased. People dont fall far from their own tree and you can guess who might be stirring up a brew.

Cole has often found herself in the middle of the drama. Last season, she likened tensions amongst the cast to her time serving in the military and being stationed in Iraq.

Ive been to war, she told the group in a previous episode. The people I went with, we argued, we fought. We were stressed. But once we left, all I remember were the good times. We have a bond. It will not be broken.

Cole ended season 1 with a tearful announcement that she was moving back to Florida. However, she triumphantly returns to Los Angeles with husband Mack Major and children Ivy and Mack Jr. She said moving to Los Angeles was the goal and she was determined to make it work.

Cole and Major always wanted to live in a warm climate, which was either Florida or California. We chose Florida because it was closest to the East Coast. Our parents were getting older, we didnt want them to have to travel as far. Majors mother has since died and Cole says her mother is younger and still spry enough to travel.

I just had enough of Florida, Cole admitted. California was the other place we talked about and it was on the list so lets just go for it. Orlando was nice but I was missing that city life. [Plus Major] has family in L.A. So it just made sense.

She said the transition has been smooth for her, but her son and husband are still adjusting. For Mack, he struggled a little bit because he didnt have the network in terms of his career that he had in Florida, she said. So for him, it was a little bit more work. He really had to put in hours and make a lot of connections and network a lot. While her daughter seemed to assimilate, her son still longs for Florida.

The season 2 trailer hints that Cole and Major struggle to find their marital groove. The intimacy has just left the building? Cole asks her husband in the clip. Cole told Showbiz Cheat Sheet she thinks her storyline will be extremely relatable to many people who are raising a family.

Viewers will see that my relationship with my husband, my children is a very relatable relationship and theyll kind of see themselves in us, she explained. We have our struggles. Our ups, our downs. Just how were navigating through life, especially with the huge change that weve made.

At one point in the trailer, Cole has a question for her daughter that every mom likely asks around the tween stage. These mood swings, do you think theyre ever going to stop? Cole asks. But her daughter has the perfect response. Its called puberty, mama!

Married to Medicine LA Season 2 premieres on Sunday, May 3 at 9/8c on Bravo.

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'Married to Medicine LA': Dr. Britten Cole Hints About Who Will Be the Biggest Sh*t Stirrer in Season 2 - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

‘We were well ahead of the curve’: How UW Medicine has been continuing transplant surgeries in the face of COVID-19 – Dailyuw

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Paramedics wait outside of the UW Medical Center in mid-April.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect people across the country, there has been a concern that transplant surgery patients could be at a heightened risk for the disease. However, with collaborative policies and the availability of rapid testing, UW Medicine has been able to keep doing these life-saving procedures safely.

Ajit Limaye, director of UW Medicines Solid Organ Transplant Infectious Disease Program, said they have continued transplants with the exception of living donor kidney transplants in the last eight weeks amid increasing COVID-19 activity.

This decision to continue these procedures resulted from a combination of doing risk assessment and working with transplant leadership and the local organ procurement organization, LifeCenter Northwest (LCNW).

UW Medicine has also followed guidance issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services which classified transplants as Tier 3b procedures that should not be delayed if possible.

Other recommendations from organizations such as the United Network for Organ Sharing have been directed to test donors for COVID-19.

While some centers may have chosen to pause transplants due to the potential risks of COVID-19 exposure, Limaye said UW Medicines immediate access to laboratory testing for both donors and recipients has allowed them to do transplants while maintaining the safety of patients and preventing transmission within the hospital.

A lot of transplant centers in the United States didnt have access to real-time testing, Limaye said. Most places are now getting up to speed, but we were well ahead of the curve in terms of implementing that.

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Although the number of transplants has decreased slightly since the COVID-19 outbreak, Limaye said its not what might be expected.

It's supply and demand so we have this demand of patients who are already on the list, but even the supply side was affected, Limaye said. Theres a lot of reasons that the number of donors has gone down a little bit over this period, but not as much as some people might have predicted.

Doctors have also been analyzing how transplant patients could be affected by COVID-19. There is not much known about this yet, but Nicolae Leca, medical director of UW Medicines Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program, said the biggest concern is in the context of immunosuppression, which is part of the post-transplant period and can put patients at a higher risk of acquiring an infection.

However, Limaye said this doesnt necessarily mean transplant recipients will do worse if they get COVID-19. In a case series recently published by the American Journal of Transplantation, Limaye and his colleagues described four of the earliest COVID-19 cases in transplant patients from UW Medicines transplant program, all of whom are recovering and showed good outcomes despite being on immunosuppression.

As they continue to serve transplant patients and other patients across UW Medicines large area of clinical service, Leca said that they are providing telemedicine services for more effective communication, which is something they've been trying to implement for a long time.

Although the new normal will look appropriately different, I truly hope we can look forward to providing the same excellent transplant services beyond COVID-19, Leca said. Possibly even better, due to the changes we are making to our evaluation processes and improvement in patient satisfaction with telemedicine.

Currently, UW Medicine is working to reopen its living kidney donor program, which had previously been deferred, and Limaye said there are hopeful signs that the curve is flattening.

We have policies and procedures in place to keep it safe, both in the hospital as well as the community setting, Limaye said. We want to make sure that patients and the community understand all were doing to keep this life-saving procedure safe for people, and thats why weve continued.

Reach reporter Shannon Hong at news@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @shannonjhhong

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Sex Matters: How Male-Centric Medicine Endangers Women’s Health and What We Can Do About It by Dr Alyson J McGregor review – The Times

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When Alyson McGregor visited a simulation laboratory in a medical school, she was shocked to discover that the only female body in the room was actually a male simulation model in a blond wig. She had just given a lecture on sex and gender in medicine, so perhaps she should have been braced for it. Students, she says in the foreword to her book, are trained to look for male patterns of disease, trauma and pain on male bodies, on the assumption that men and women are biologically identical. The key argument of her book is that they arent.

McGregor is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a leading expert on womens health. Her TEDx

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Sex Matters: How Male-Centric Medicine Endangers Women's Health and What We Can Do About It by Dr Alyson J McGregor review - The Times

College of Veterinary Medicine to host May 1 virtual graduation, oath and awards ceremony – Tuskegee University

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April 30, 2020

Contacts:Anissa Riley, College of Veterinary MedicineBrittney Dabney, Office of Communications, Public Relations and Marketing

Tuskegee Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine will recognize its Class of 2020 graduates during a virtual graduation, oath and awards ceremony on Friday, May 1 at 1 p.m. The ceremony will recognize the colleges 56 Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree candidates with the administration of the Veterinarians Oath followed by their Awards Ceremony.

Dr. Ruby L. Perry, dean of the veterinary medicine college, will preside over the program. Dr. Roslyn Casimir, associate dean for academic and student affairs, and Dr. Gopal Reddy, associate dean for research and advanced studies, will assist during the virtual ceremony.

The ceremony will be broadcast live on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/tuskegeeuniversity.

One of the greatest honors I have as dean of the college is to preside over our graduation ceremony, Perry said. Im sure that as family, friends, alumni, the university community and other supporters look on from their personal destinations via the universitys YouTube link, we will all celebrate the major accomplishments of the Class of 2020 as they realize their career goal of becoming a veterinarian, and not let the coronavirus crisis keep us from celebrating their big day.

The virtual ceremony will have many of the elements of a traditional graduation and will feature presentations of the class challenge and class reflections/vision for the future, as well as the administration of the Veterinarians Oath. At the end of the graduation, a special veterinary awards ceremony will be presented to the Class of 2020, over which Casimir will preside.

Perrys closing message to the Class of 2020 graduates in her letter states, The Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine (TUCVM) family, now the home of your alma mater, salutes you on your successful journey through the professional program to achieve the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree, which is the culmination of your achievement. Although the COVID-19 pandemic required your class to complete your journey here differently than previous classes, the Class of 2020 you are commended for the resilience and finishing STRONG!

The colleges Class of 2020 represents its 71st class to receive DVM degrees from Tuskegee University. With this graduation, the College of Veterinary Medicine has awarded 2,850 veterinary medicine degrees.

The Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine, accredited by the American Veterinary Medicine Association Council on Education, has educated more than 70 percent of the nations African-American veterinarians. It has also been recognized as the most diverse of all 30 schools/colleges of veterinary medicine in the U.S. For more information about the college, visit http://www.tuskegee.edu/vetmed.

Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine Class of 2020

Drew J Agnew, NaImah N. Anderson, Jami A. Baraka, Gavin L Beard, Kaya S. Bryant, Cameron Q. Buck, Alexandria D. Bufford, Brandon M. Butler, Gabrielle A. Carson, Airene F. Caver, James L. Charlot, Maria E. Colon, Morgan Cornelius, Geishly A. Cruz Matos, Amanda K. Cvengros, Shahkila N. Daniels, Sheridan B. Dillon-Robinson, Randolph Green, Jonathan M. Gunn, Channing C. Hatchett, Travares L. Heath, Christina M. Kaye, Krystal P. Lebron Ortiz, Annie Lin, Victor Lopez, Lynh M. Ly, Jasmine N. Lyons, Tracy H. Mandrona, Laurie M. Mangeli, Angelica L Martin, Keila M. Martinez Medina, Danielle N. McCullough, Carsen T. McDonald, Adalis Montero, Tina S. Montgomery, Lizbeth M. Morilla, Imani N. Nicolis, Aubrey R. Norman, Pedro J. Olivencia, Luis A. Pizarro Viera, Lorena Sandoval, Anthony O. Sena, Crystal A. Serrano, Danielle Silvia, Chantel P. Simmons, Dianna V. Smith, Imani C. Smith, Kimberly S. Snook, Bradley C. Stinson, Ariel R. Truitt, Christina R. VanTassel, Alexandra M. Varela-Ortiz, Jamie M. Wall, Damali D. Zakers, Juliana Zamora, and Jose P. Zayas.

2020, Tuskegee University

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College of Veterinary Medicine to host May 1 virtual graduation, oath and awards ceremony - Tuskegee University

WVU Medicine on front lines of COVID-19 battle – The Daily Times

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(Editors note: This is the third in a series of stories detailing West Virginia University President Gordon Gees thoughts on how the university is helping guide its students and the entire Mountain State through the COVID-19 pandemic. Gee also focuses on WVU Medicine, the future of higher education and college sports as we approach a new normal.)

MORGANTOWN West Virginia University President Gordon Gee says he believes the universitys WVU Medicine network of hospitals has helped West Virginia more quickly address the threat of COVID-19.

On April 21, Gee spoke online with the Ogden News editorial board about West Virginia Universitys medical facilities that have helped address the threat of coronavirus.

West Virginia University has 16 hospitals throughout the state under the WVU Medicine banner.

If you take a look at the heat map of the state (where COVID-19 outbreaks are occurring), the universitys health system now is really the net significant provider of healthcare for the state, Gee said. Because of that we were able to immediately make a lot of choices, I think, in terms of what we are doing with the virus and how we dealt with it. Thats very important.

Gee also said the university has put its resources toward coronavirus research and one of the universitys top experts has taken on a statewide role in battling the disease.

Dr. Clay Marsh, vice president and executive dean for health sciences at WVU, was appointed Coronavirus Czar for West Virginia by Gov. Jim Justice. Marsh has been a key voice in daily public briefings on coronavirus and has helped steer much of the states medical response to the disease.

Marsh is one of the bright lights in medical education, Gee said. West Virginia has been much more fortunate than others. I dont think that fortune comes from chance, I think it comes from planning. Were happy about the role the university has played in that regard.

Gee said if West Virginia University had not had the opportunity to use all of the WVU Medicine facilities in a concentrated effort, the immediate and future impact of coronavirus in West Virginia would have been and will be more severe.

Take a look at the evidence. The evidence is powerful, Gee said. The very fact that we have been much more successful as a state is a great example. I am absolutely convinced it made an enormous difference.

(Erb can be contacted at merb@newsandsentinel.com)

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WVU Medicine on front lines of COVID-19 battle - The Daily Times

‘Married To Medicine’ Star Dr. Heavenly Insulted Dr. Kendra’s Husband And It Caused A Ruckus – BET

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Married To Medicine: LA premieres tomorrow night (May 3), and if this preview clip is any indication, this season is going to be crazy.

In a promo for the premiere episode released by Bravo, fans of the show finally get to see the full story behind Dr. Heavenly Kimes and Dr. Kendra Segura's recent drama. To refresh your memory, Dr. Heavenly says Dr. Kendra has been threatening to fight her, but didn't exactly reveal why.

Well, now we know. Turns out, Dr. Heavenly made an unwelcome comment about Dr. Segura's husband and his, well, manhood. "You called her man's d**k small," Jazmin Johnson says to Heavenly, confronting her about her role in the drama. "And then you go and repeat it."

Dr. Heavenly vehemently denied the accusation, saying "I just asked a question."

See how Dr. Kendra reacted to the "question," below:

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'Married To Medicine' Star Dr. Heavenly Insulted Dr. Kendra's Husband And It Caused A Ruckus - BET

Northwestern Medicine music therapist on the power of music in coping with isolation – Chicago Daily Herald

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From the citywide sing-alongs to the burst of new Tik Toks, music is playing a huge role in helping people cope during COVID-19 social isolation.

Jessica Pouranfar, MT-BC, NICU-MT, NMT, music therapist at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital and Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital, discusses the mental and physical benefits of music.

Q. Social media is filled with people singing and dancing during social isolation. What is the power of music to help us cope?

A. For musicians and performers, this is the perfect opportunity for them to practice, share their music on social media, and use it as a means to connect with the world outside. The good news is, you do not have to be musically inclined to reap the benefits of music!

Aside from playing a musical instrument, music listening in itself releases endorphins in your system. When listening to music that you enjoy, dopamine, the "feel-good" chemical, and serotonin, the "happy" chemical, are released in your brain giving you a sense of pleasure and boosting your mood. Music is a great motivator and music with a strong beat will make you want to move due to a psychological phenomenon called entrainment. This is why so many people listen to music when exercising and dancing. Could you imagine doing these activities without some beats?

Q. How can music help relieve stress?

A. Along with dopamine and serotonin that is released when listening to music, oxytocin is a hormone released while singing which can alleviate stress and anxiety. Studies have found that singing decreases feelings of depression and loneliness. You don't have to be a great singer to sing! Also, any kind of active engagement in music can help relieve stress such as playing an instrument or moving/dancing to music.

Q. Is there a certain type of music you should use for meditation and stress relief?

A. For meditation, it is recommended to use music without lyrics and something with a slow tempo. Music can actually lower blood pressure and reduce respiration rate when used intentionally, so be sure to listen to something that is soft, slow and pleasant to your ears.

If you are experiencing stress or anxiety, start by listening to music with a faster tempo and louder volume to match your state and gradually diminish the speed and volume of your song selections as you continue to listen. It is helpful to create a playlist for yourself that you can use when you are under stress so that you're not having to shuffle through and think too much but rather just push 'play' and breathe! Be careful not to use music that is tied with a bad memory as this can trigger a negative reaction and has the power to make you feel worse.

Q. What tips do you have for an optimal experience?

A. It is important to set up your atmosphere when using music for an optimal experience. This means dim the lights, make sure the temperature is just right, turn off your phone, get into a comfortable position, and minimize all distractions to use music mindfully and purposefully.

You can also add other sensory stimuli to your music listening experience such as candles, scented lotion, essential oils, or a heated blanket. Be sure to listen to music that satisfies your preference; if you listen to Mozart and you don't like classical music, it won't help you. There's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to music selection and no special genre that works the best so listen to what you enjoy! 15-20 minutes a day is all you need to actively listen, relax, and reset.

Q. What is the difference between music therapy and using music therapeutically?

A. It is important to note that music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program (American Music Therapy Association).

Research shows that live music works best when targeting specific needs. Board-Certified Music Therapists (MT-BC) use music very intentionally in live sessions using specific techniques and interventions geared toward each individual's goals of care.

Music can be very therapeutic and a powerful tool to use at home and on your own, just know it's not the same thing as experiencing music therapy.

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Northwestern Medicine music therapist on the power of music in coping with isolation - Chicago Daily Herald

Essay: Narrative Medicine In The Time Of COVID-19 – WUWM

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The coronavirus has transformed how hospitals are operating. Hospitals that once bustled with activity have been reduced to treating only the sickest among us, and many medical students who once roamed the hallways have been sent home out of concern for their health.

Lake Effect contributor Bruce Campbell is a head and neck surgeon who's been teaching medical students at the Medical College of Wisconsin for the past 30 years. He reflects on teaching his students outside of a hospital in this essay titled Narrative Medicine in the time of COVID-19.

Lake Effect contributor Bruce Campbell reads his essay, "Narrative Medicine in the time of COVID-19."

I am an educator, but I rarely work in a classroom. As a faculty member at the Medical College of Wisconsin for the past 30 years, I tend to teach medical students and residents in the operating room, at the bedside, in clinics, and in conference rooms. My teaching is one-on-one, face-to-face, elbow-to-elbow. Thats what Im accustomed to and thats what has always worked for me.

With the arrival of COVID-19, all of our medical students in Wisconsin and around the country were sent home out of a concern for their health. Fourth-year students went from being a few weeks from obtaining their MDs to becoming nonessential. We cant see them to teach them.

Over the past few weeks, medical students have found amazing ways to volunteer in the community. To help keep their education on track, though, I was asked to rapidly develop an online Narrative Medicine course, teaching a topic about which I have studied but for which I have never taught.

READ: Waiting For Coronavirus

With lots of help, I created a syllabus. The students will study stories of ambiguity, pandemic, and the wider world. As we delve into literature, poetry, and art, I hope that the emotions and lessons we encounter will help them understand themselves, appreciate their patients, and discern their purposes.

It is a shame that the pandemic separated students from the work that they are called to do. Being in the hospital would have provided opportunities to learn from faculty, residents, nurses, housekeepers, aides, therapists, social workers, chaplains, dietary workers, and the maintenance people all of the folks in a hospital who do their best and put themselves at risk every day.

I admit that teaching this course makes me nervous. I will be covering topics about which I am still learning myself and using technology I really dont understand. As Ray Bradbury once said, I will jump off the cliff and learn how to make wings on the way down. But, thats OK.

I hope that some of the stories we read together will plant seeds that will take root and grow. One day, when they are allowed back in the hospital, one of the students will meet a patient whose life is glancingly similar to someone we met in a short story, a poem, or a painting. Maybe they will remember. If so, they will be a better physician for that patient. And maybe they will be a better teacher when the next pandemic arrives.

Lake Effect essayist Bruce Campbell is a head and cancer surgeon at Froedtert Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin. Many of his essays appear on his blog, Reflections in a Head Mirror. Campbell joined WUWMs Advisory Board in 2013.

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Essay: Narrative Medicine In The Time Of COVID-19 - WUWM

Time to tee off (safely) – Medicine Hat News

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By RYAN MCCRACKEN on May 2, 2020.

rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com

Golfers can finally get out on the local links, with four courses in Medicine Hat opening this weekend under the provincial governments relaunch plan.

Although it comes with a number of strict guidelines, Medicine Hat Golf and Country Club general manger Cam Jacques says there will be very few changes to the golf itself when they open to members and public on Sunday at 9 a.m.

The key thing is were just trying to eliminate as many touch points as possible, thats our mandate, said Jacques. Since were not going to be raking the bunkers theres no rakes there because its a touch point if your ball rolls into the bunker and its in a big hole or a foot print because it hasnt been properly raked by the person before, were letting people use a preferred lie. So you can pick up your ball, put it in a nice lie, hit your golf ball out of there and then just use your feet to smooth it. Otherwise, the golf except for that will be regular golf. There will be regular tees, regular greens, the golf course is in really good condition.

Rakes wont be the only thing missing from courses. In an effort to cut down on contact points, garbage cans, ball washers, and benches will be removed or out of use, while tee times will be spaced out further, carts will be restricted to one per household and flags cannot be touched.

The flag stays in the whole time, said Jacques. The ball goes into the hole and theres a little hook about six inches up from the bottom of the flag. You just use your putter to pull it up and the bottom of the cup just rises up and your ball just comes out of the cup. Voila.

Connaught Golf Club will also open up on Sunday, while Desert Blume and Paradise Valley are moving forward with Saturday launches.

The plan is definitely to open, said Desert Blume general manager Trevor Ellerman, adding the club will only be open to members. We have a list of recommended ideas from the Alberta Golf Association, so were going to follow that to start with. It starts with tee times the intervals will be more spread out at least a 15-minute interval, which then puts us at about 12 people per hour who can play.

Cottonwood Coulee will wait until Monday. General manager Mac Baker says theyre holding off to ensure all provincial guidelines are met.

We have some guidelines from our own association that were planning on following, but the government said (Thursday) in a tweet that part of their guidelines would be available Friday afternoon, said Baker, adding tee times are already filling up. Weve had a lot of people calling and booking tee times. Were open to the public. For the first week, were allowing our members to book three days in advance and the public can book one day in advance.

Redcliffs Riverview Golf Club has decided on a Wednesday start, noting in a Facebook post Thursday night that they had expected a mid-May date to coincide with what Saskatchewan had announced.

As for driving ranges, Cottonwood Coulees will remain closed, while Desert Blume hopes to have its range open for warm-up and MHGCC will operate its range at half capacity.

Only every second stall will be open, said Jacques. We have 10 stalls regularly but theyre only about six feet apart, so well just have five stalls open. That way theyll be 12 feet apart.

Jacques added staff will be out supervising to ensure proper social distancing guidelines are met. Golfers also must remain in their vehicles until at least 15 minutes prior to their tee time, then they can finally get out and enjoy some socializing under the sun.

I think golfers are just so excited, said Jacques. Im sure Ive had 55 calls since (Thursday) at 5 p.m., since the announcement. People are just so excited to be able to go outside, play golf, see some of their friends and just get outside and go for a walk in the park.

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Time to tee off (safely) - Medicine Hat News

May Day! May Day! Is Government Out of Control? What It Means to Investors – Stock Investor

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It seems monstrously wrong to surrender the world to the looters, and monstrously wrong to live under their rule. Francisco dAnconia(Atlas Shrugged, byAyn Rand)

Everything will end badly. Bill Henry(Maxims of Wall Street, p. 111)

The Four Horsemen of Free Enterprise Meet Up!

Yesterday, I co-moderated a unique two-hour MoneyShow webinar, an Economic Summit.Steve Moore, Art Laffer, Steve Forbesand I labeled the Four Horsemen of Free Enterprise discussed and debated the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in Wuhan, China, on the markets and our liberties.The webinar was hosted byKim Githler.

We debated at least five vital subjects on the minds of every investor: economic recovery vs. stagnation; inflation vs. deflation; gold vs. stocks; liberty vs. safety; and the November elections.You canwatch the video here.

I highly recommend it. The two hours whizzed by for me as a panelist.

Art Lafferwas the most optimistic, predicting a V-shaped recovery.Hes even more upbeat about the coronavirus.It is not as dangerous as we thought, even for him, an 80-year-old.In late February, he told Fox News he was not getting on an airplane to California to speak.

Now he says hes willing to fly again.

Art, along with the two Steves, are thought leaders in the newly appointedWhite House Committee to Restart America.He said that both Moore and Forbes addressed the audience of 200 members of the Committee, including many business leaders, encouraging them to open their businesses as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, they are hamstrung by government officials who are severely limiting the recovery.

Dangers Ahead

Yesterday, it was announced that gross domestic product (GDP) fell an incredible 4.8%.Two months ago, economists expected a 3.1% increase!

When the economic top-line, gross output (GO), is released for the first quarter, it should be even worse. Now economists are predicting a $4.6 trillion deficit for 2020-21.

The Fed is pumping trillions of dollars into the economy.Money has never been easier.

And where is that money going?Not the economy, which is still reeling from the lockdown.We could see more than 30 million Americans go without work and 30% of all small businesses collapse.Pension funds will go bankrupt.

Why Is the Stock Market Moving Higher?

Rather, the new money is going into the stock market.Stocks are always forward looking, and that means investors are upbeat about the possibility of a turnaround.

Even oil stocks are moving back up!

Thus, we remain fully invested in the market, especially tech stocks, health care, financials and gold.

In yesterdays MoneyShow webinar, Steve Moore and I discussed the possibility of an L- or U-shaped recovery rather than a V-shaped recovery.Unless the government loosens its stranglehold on the economy, I see an inflationary recession/depression coming on.

The Greatest Danger Ahead:Loss of Our Liberties

My greatest fear is excessive government power.AsTuto Quirago, former president of Bolivia, once said, More and more, everything is either prohibited or mandated.

Without any legislative approval, governors and presidents are signing executive orders requiring us to wear masks, prohibiting us from walking down the beach or telling us we cant play golf or street basketball. Its crazy.

I askedSteve Forbesif he envisions a time when the next virus vaccines will be mandated, or, asBill Gateswants, forcing us to provide a health certificate to get on an airplane.He says no, but Im not so sure.

There is growing censorship in social media, where Facebook and YouTube, among others, are shutting down people who dont follow the established line of thinking.It is a serious problem.

Forbes is more bullish on stocks than gold.Gold is a good hedge in a crisis, but once the crisis is over, stocks are better, he said.

Im recommending both.The crisis is far from over.

Robert Wolf, Economic Advisor to Obama, Eyes the November Elections

Robert Wolf,former chairman of USB Americas, and an economic advisor to President Obama, was on the program.I asked him why the Democrats have chosen such a weak candidate as Joe Biden rather than a young, vibrant leader likeMark Cuban(who is considering running as a third-party candidate).

Wolf acknowledged that the Democrats have had their best results with younger presidents, such as John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but he said that Biden was a good choice because Trump is too divisive and the country needs a healer like Biden.

May Day!May Day!Early Bird Discount Ends Today!

We will continue this debate at FreedomFest.We are calling an Emergency Meeting at FreedomFest 2020, July 13-16, Paris Resort, Las Vegas,and TODAY is the final day to take advantage of the early-bird discount.See below for details.

It is absolutely vital for you to attend this meeting in July.We are seeingpermanentchanges in the United States, and not all for the good you will need to make important changes in your life, your business and your investment portfolio.That is what our emergency meeting is all about, and will be led by top authorities includingSteve Moore, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Steve Forbes, John Fund, Matt Ridley, Tom Woods, Grover Norquistand financial advisorsAlex Green, Louis Navellier, Rob Arnott, Jim WoodsandHilary Kramer.

We even have confirmedHillsdale Collegeas a sponsor, as well as theClub for Growthfor the first time.

Ten Bagger Penny Stock Opportunity!

Good news for myForecasts & Strategiessubscribers:I have come across a potential ten bagger in the mining business, and its selling for under a buck!

It is literally a penny stock that trades on the over-the-counter market, but with gold in a major upward trend, it could be selling for dollars very quickly.It is selling for pennies because the mining company will be producing gold starting in 2021.Fortunately, they already know how much gold there is (6.6 million ounces, which could make it the sixth-largest gold mine in the United States). This is not an exploratory mine, but a mine in the development stage.

It owns a world-class, multi-million ounce, low cost, open-pit mine in a historic district that has been held back from development because of environmental issues.That is all about to change.The feasibility studies have been made, the permitting is moving forward and production is expected to start late next year.The project is located in the western United States and has quietly attracted some major players, including Franco-Nevada and Barrick Gold, the second largest mining company in the United States.Moreover, recently abillionaire hedge fund investorwas invited to check out the property and bought an entire new funding valued at over $30 million.The whole amount!

But because its a micro-cap penny stock, I cant recommend it in my newsletter, trading services orSkousen CAFE.It can only be made available to a small number of investors.

So, Im offering to give you the name, symbol and background story of the mining company to the FIRST 200 SUBSCRIBERS ofForecasts & Strategiesto sign up for my 40thanniversary celebration at this years FreedomFest, July 13-16, 2020, at the Paris Resort in Las Vegas.(Yes, the hotel plans to be open, and we are also offering for the first time live streaming, so if you cant make it, you can still see the show.)

Now is the hour of decision!The longer you wait, the higher the penny stock is likely to move, given the positive outlook for gold.And over 70 subscribers have already signed up.

Note: If you have already signed up for this years FreedomFest, you automatically qualify to receive the name and symbol of this penny stock.Just email me atmskousen@chapman.edu, and Ill email you back.

I enjoyed stacking silver coins on myMaxims book.

Three Special Offers to All Subscribers Who Attend FreedomFest

In addition, when you come to FreedomFest, you will receive (1) a 2020 uncirculated American Eagle silver dollar, and (2) an autographed and numbered copy of the 7thedition of The Maxims of Wall Street.All three gifts a silver dollar, a copy of the Maxims, and the name of the penny stock are yours as a big thank you for joining me and celebrating the 40thanniversary ofForecasts & Strategies.We will have a special reception for all my subscribers, a chance to meet and have a picture taken with me,Steve Forbes,Alex Greenand other celebrities in attendance.Again, the attendance is limited to 200 subscribers.Plus, of course, youll also enjoy three glorious days of great investment advice and how to survive and prosper in 2020 and beyond. For details about all the speakers, panels and debates, go towww.freedomfest.com.TO REGISTER:To sign up for this years FreedomFest,click here now, or call toll-free 1-855-850-3733 ext. 202.Be sure to use code FF2020EAGLE to receive all your exclusive benefits.

And if you are not a subscriber to my newsletter, go towww.markskousen.com, and sign up for only $99.95, an introductory offer for one-year only.

May Day!May Day!May Day!

Note:The early-bird discount ends TODAY!! The full price at the door is $599 per person, butyou pay only $399 per person/$299 for spouse/partner.Rates go up on May Day.

P.S.I was pleasantly surprised and honored by thefollowing announcementby the Center for Individualism.

You Blew it!Dr. Anthony Fauci Says No Sports until 2021

The alarmists are still among us, even as the evidence is growing every day that they are wrong and the novel coronavirus is far less fatal than previously thought.

For example, this report fromDr. Scott W. Atlas, a highly respected Stanford University medical doctor and professor (named one of the Best Doctors in America) has been writing and speaking out under the title: The Data Are In.Stop the Panic and End the Total Isolation.Click hereto read about his findings.

Dr. Atlas admits that Stanford and other universities made a mistake shutting down schools and sending their kids home.According to him, the fatality rate among students is almost nonexistent.

Or read my son Toddssummary of the evidence, which has gone viral recently.

Yet, people likeDr. Anthony Fauci,who theNew York Timescalls the countrys top infectious disease expert, are acting as if nothing has changed in the science.

Safety, for the players and for the fans, trumps everything, Fauci said. If you cant guarantee safety, then unfortunately youre going to have to bite the bullet and say, We may have to go without this sport for this season.

Earlier, he said that professional sports leagues could return to play, but with no fans in the stands.

I would love to be able to have all sports back, Fauci said. But as a health official and a physician and a scientist, I have to say, right now, when you look at the country, were not ready for that yet.

We need to get back to where individuals, businesses and organizations make their own decisions about the safety and well-being of their employees, customers and suppliers not overweening government officials who think they know it all.Thats the American way of freedom that we are sadly losing very quickly in this once great country.

Lets play ball!

Update: Today, we witnessed another example of abuse of power.California Gov.Gavin Newsom,a power-hungry bully, has just closed all beaches in the state after witnessing thousands last Saturday leaving their homes and enjoying a fun day at the beaches while ignoring social distancing guidelines.But we only have our representatives to blame for giving elected leaders excessive emergency power through executive orders.You can say goodbye to the land of the free in 2020.

Originally posted here:

May Day! May Day! Is Government Out of Control? What It Means to Investors - Stock Investor

The Discovery of Heaven: A real Dutch Dutch classic – DutchNews.nl

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When I told Dutch friends of mine that I was going to tackle the Dutch classic The Discovery of Heaven (De ontdekking van de hemel) by Harry Mulisch they were not supportive. It was the worst book I read in high school, one told me. You should make an appointment with your therapist, youll need it, said another.

Published in 1992, IT was voted the Best Dutch Language Book Ever in 2007 by readers of the NRC newspaper. When Mulisch died in 2010, prime minister Mark Rutte described his death as a loss for Dutch literature and the Netherlands. The film adaptation starred no-one less than Stephen Fry and was directed by Jeroen Krabb, so the odds for a good read were high.

The Discovery of Heaven opens with two angels having a conversation about getting the 10 Commandments back. It turns out, for reasons not explained, the angel ordered to fetch them cant go to earth so must resort to a Rube Goldberg-esque series of events to ensure the tablets are returned, including both World Wars.

In essence, the story follows the lives of two men, Onno and Max, whose friendship ultimately leads to a son, Quinten, who, at the end of the book, ascends to heaven to take back the tablets having taken 905 pages to do so.

The main female character, Quintens mother Ada, spends 75% of the novel in a coma, which seems to be par for the course in terms of how classic Dutch literature treats women. Its unclear who the father of our Jesus-like hero is, as Ada has slept with both Onno and Max on the same day at, where else, a conference of revolutionaries in Cuba.

Complicated

The book is also set in 1968, so when Ada is critically injured in a car accident that leaves Onno and Max unscathed, it is decided that Onno couldnt possibly raise the baby alone. Rather, Max couples up with Adas mother, Sophie, who Ada hated, to raise Quinten.

It is, in all, a complicated, and messy family history, but strangely gripping. And if you skip over the angel bits, the book feels authentic in a way that other classics such as Turkish Delight or The Evenings or even The Dinner does not in this foreigners limited experience at least.

The discussion Onno has with his family over who will raise Quinten is frank and direct in the typically Dutch way which everyone who has sat in on a difficult Dutch family discussion will relate to. The apartments they live in are small and cramped and short distances are depicted as insurmountable.

Dialogue

Mulisch is impressively good at creating dynamic characters with complications and quirks who genuinely interact with one another. His dialogue, in particular, feels so realistic you think you might just be sitting in a cafe, next to those two men, as they argue over philosophy and politics.

At the same time, bring in the angels and The Discovery of Heavenreminds me somewhat of Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged, which clocks in at 1,163 pages, and spends so much of the book trying to shove philosophy down your throat that the story is utterly lost.

And yet, when it comes to The Discovery of Heaven, I did mostly enjoy it.

A major caveat to the English version is the questionable translation at times. Paul Vincent translated the work into English in 1996 and manages to bungle a critically important line in the book, when Max tells Ana to bring yourself off (Dutch: maak je jezelf klaar) after leaving her unsatisfied during a sexual encounter.

The moment is pivotal. Ana leaves Max after this incident, which results in her ultimately marrying Onno and becoming pregnant. A much better translation would be get yourself off and this isnt the only instance in the book where, after referring to the Dutch version, I felt better words could have been chosen.

Despite these few niggles, The Discovery of Heaven is much more enjoyable than many of the other Dutch classics I have tackled and, most importantly, it feels quintessentially Dutch. Just skim the parts where the angels are talking.

You can buy The Discovery of Heaven at the American Book Center.

Review by Molly Quell

The DutchNews.nl team would like to thank all the generous readers who have made a donation in recent weeks. Your financial support has helped us to expand our coverage of the coronavirus crisis into the evenings and weekends and make sure you are kept up to date with the latest developments.

DutchNews.nl has been free for 14 years, but without the financial backing of our readers, we would not be able to provide you with fair and accurate news and features about all things Dutch. Your contributions make this possible.

If you have not yet made a donation, but would like to, you can do so via Ideal, credit card or Paypal.

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The Discovery of Heaven: A real Dutch Dutch classic - DutchNews.nl

How Coronavirus Mutates and Spreads – The New York Times

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The Coronavirus Genome

The coronavirus is an oily membrane packed with genetic instructions to make millions of copies of itself. The instructions are encoded in 30,000 letters of RNA a, c, g and u which the infected cell reads and translates into many kinds of virus proteins.

RNA instructions to make the ORF1a protein

Start of coronavirus genome

Start of coronavirus genome

Start of the

coronavirus

genome

Start of the

coronavirus

genome

In December, a cluster of mysterious pneumonia cases appeared around a seafood market in Wuhan, China. In early January, researchers sequenced the first genome of a new coronavirus, which they isolated from a man who worked at the market. That first genome became the baseline for scientists to track the SARS-CoV-2 virus as it spreads around the world.

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

Genome Wuhan-Hu-1, collected on Dec. 26 from an early patient in Wuhan

A cell infected by a coronavirus releases millions of new viruses, all carrying copies of the original genome. As the cell copies that genome, it sometimes makes mistakes, usually just a single wrong letter. These typos are called mutations. As coronaviruses spread from person to person, they randomly accumulate more mutations.

The genome below came from another early patient in Wuhan and was identical to the first case, except for one mutation. The 186th letter of RNA was u instead of c.

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th RNA letter changed

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th RNA letter changed

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th

RNA letter

changed:

Genome WH-09, collected on Jan. 8 from another patient in Wuhan

186th RNA letter

changed:

When researchers compared several genomes from the Wuhan cluster of cases they found only a few new mutations, suggesting that the different genomes descended from a recent common ancestor. Viruses accumulate new mutations at a roughly regular rate, so the scientists were able to estimate that the origin of the outbreak was in China sometime around November 2019.

Outside of Wuhan, that same mutation in the 186th letter of RNA has been found in only one other sample, which was collected seven weeks later and 600 miles south in Guangzhou, China. The Guangzhou sample might be a direct descendent of the first Wuhan sample. Or they might be viral cousins, sharing a common ancestor.

During those seven weeks, the Guangzhou lineage jumped from person to person and went through several generations of new viruses. And along the way, it developed two new mutations: Two more letters of RNA changed to u.

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated

This mutation also changed an amino acid

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated

This mutation also changed an amino acid

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated. This mutation also changed an amino acid.

Genome GZMU0030, collected on Feb. 27 in Guangzhou

Another RNA letter mutated. This mutation also changed an amino acid.

Mutations will often change a gene without changing the protein it encodes.

Proteins are long chains of amino acids folded into different shapes. Each amino acid is encoded by three genetic letters, but in many cases a mutation to the third letter of a trio will still encode the same amino acid. These so-called silent mutations dont change the resulting protein.

Non-silent mutations do change a proteins sequence, and the Guangzhou sample of the coronavirus acquired two non-silent mutations.

Amino acid change in the ORF1a protein

Amino acid change in the E protein

Amino acid change in ORF1a

Amino acid change in E

Amino acid change in the E protein

Amino acid change in the ORF1a protein

Amino acid change in the E protein

Amino acid change in the ORF1a protein

But proteins can be made of hundreds or thousands of amino acids. Changing a single amino acid often has no noticeable effect on their shape or how they work.

As the months have passed, parts of the coronavirus genome have gained many mutations. Others have gained few, or none at all. This striking variation may hold important clues to coronavirus biology.

The parts of the genome that have accumulated many mutations are more flexible. They can tolerate changes to their genetic sequence without causing harm to the virus. The parts with few mutations are more brittle. Mutations in those parts may destroy the coronavirus by causing catastrophic changes to its proteins. Those essential regions may be especially good targets for attacking the virus with antiviral drugs.

Total number of amino acid substitutions found in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

Total number of amino acid changes in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

Total number of amino acid changes in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

Total number of amino acid changes in 4,400 coronavirus genomes from Dec. to April

Longer lines may show places where the genome is more tolerant of mutations.

Gaps may show critical spots in the genome that cannot tolerate mutations.

As mutations accumulate in coronavirus genomes, they allow scientists to track the spread of Covid-19 around the world.

On January 15, a man flew home to the Seattle area after visiting family in Wuhan. After a few days of mild symptoms he tested positive for Covid-19. He became the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States.

An X-ray of the patients lungs showed evidence of pneumonia.NEJM

The genome of his virus contained three single-letter mutations also found in viruses in China. They allowed scientists to trace the mans infection to its source.

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Genome WA1, collected on Jan. 19 from a man in the Seattle area who visited Wuhan

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Identical genomes collected on Jan. 21 in Fujian and Guangdong provinces

Five weeks later, a high school student in Snohomish County, Wash., developed flu-like symptoms. A nose swab revealed he had Covid-19. Scientists sequenced the genome of his coronavirus sample and found it shared the same distinctive mutations found in the first case in Washington, but also bore three additional mutations.

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

Genome WA2, collected on Feb. 24 from a high-school student in the Seattle area

That combination of old and new mutations suggested that the student did not acquire the coronavirus from someone who had recently arrived from another country. Instead, the coronavirus was probably circulating undetected in the Seattle area for about five weeks, since mid-January.

Since then, viruses with a genetic link to the Washington cluster have now appeared in at least 14 states and several countries around the world, as well as nine cases on the Grand Princess cruise ship.

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

Genome collected on March 5 from two passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship

A different version of the coronavirus was also secretly circulating in California. On Feb. 26, the C.D.C. announced that a patient in Solano County with no known ties to any previous case or overseas travel had tested positive.

A sample taken the next day revealed that the virus did not have the distinctive mutations found in Washington State. Instead, it only had a single mutation distinguishing it from the original Wuhan genome. That indicates that it got to California through a separate introduction from China.

Genome UC4, collected on Feb. 27 from a patient in Solano County, Calif.

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How Coronavirus Mutates and Spreads - The New York Times

No leadership and no plan: is Trump about to fail the US on coronavirus testing? – The Guardian

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A broad coalition of US health systems has mobilized to ramp up coronavirus testing in a national effort on a scale not seen since the second world war. But declarations of false victory by the Trump administration and a vacuum of federal leadership have undermined the endeavor, leading experts to warn that reopening the US could result in a disaster.

Interviews with agents on the frontlines of the coronavirus battle lab directors, chemists, manufacturers, epidemiologists, academics and technologists reveal as diverse an application of the legendary American ingenuity as the century has seen.

Test kit manufacturers are running production lines around the clock to triple their output, and triple it again. A private healthcare institute in California has constructed a mega-lab to process thousands of tests daily and deliver the results by text message alert. In smaller labs across the country, microbiologists improvise each day to fill unpredictable supply chain gaps that might leave them without swabs one day, and without crucial chemicals the next.

Its incredible what weve done together over a short period of time, Donald Trump said at a White House briefing this week, praising his administrations response to the pandemic.

But analysts say that without centralized governance and coordination, the national effort remains a competing coalition of state and local outfits hampered by duplicated work, competition for supplies, siloed pursuits of non-transferable solutions and red tape that leaves some labs with testing backlogs and others with excess capacity.

All of which leaves the US without a unified, coherent strategy for testing and contact tracing to contain a virus that does not respect state borders and has already killed more than 60,000 Americans.

Without it, the imminent experiment of reopening the country could be catastrophic, warned Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina in a conference call with reporters this week.

My concern is that well end up right where we have been, with major cities having healthcare systems that get overrun quickly because of major outbreaks, Mina said.

Im afraid well just end up repeating the past

Meanwhile, as states begin to relax social distancing measures, the Trump administration is spreading dangerous misinformation, denying persistent supply shortages, underestimating the number of Covid-19 cases and exaggerating the margin of safety conferred by the current volume of testing and contact-tracing, experts say.

Weve done more than 200,000 tests in a single day, Mike Pence said at a taskforce briefing this week, in which Trump touted testing as one of the great assets that we have in reopening the US.

But at current testing levels, with only rudimentary plans for contact tracing for new cases, the US will be flying virtually blind as it reopens, said Glen Weyl, a technologist who co-authored a report issued by Harvards Safra Center for Ethics that calls for 5m tests a day by early June.

No, definitely not, you cant open up with that number, Weyl said of Pences announcement. Its not even remotely in the right ballpark. Its off by a factor of 10.

Testing is one of the biggest challenges the coronavirus crisis poses. And as Asian countries that have succeeded in temporarily containing the virus have shown, testing strategy is entwined with the need for contact tracing and isolating confirmed and suspected Covid-19 patients.

There are multiple categories of tests with multiple different modes for sampling, storage and transport. A test might detect the virus itself, detect traces of the virus or detect the bodys reaction to having had the virus. The experience of being tested could be different in each case. One patient might have his or her sinuses probed by a swab at a drive-thru, while another might spit in a tube at home and another give a blood sample at a clinic.

Each test has a different degree of reliability, with different amounts of time and labor required to complete the boomerang curve of sample collection to testing to result report.

We have too many [brands of] tests, and now there are a lot of people who are committed to their tests and they run their tests on their platforms, said Paul Reider, a renowned research chemist in the pharmaceuticals industry who teaches at Princeton University.

We have too many [brands of] tests, and now there are a lot of people who are committed to their tests

If we had an effective administration this is where the federal government comes in they could essentially turn around and say, What we would like to do is, we want one test, maybe two, that are fast, that are accurate, that are scalable and transferable, .

You want a gold-standard test.

In the US, regulatory and administrative hurdles are everywhere, with clinics unable to send samples to private labs that might be out of their usual networks, a lack of protocols for reporting testing data, slow regulatory approval for the use of alternative testing materials, insufficient federal funding to support lab efforts and no central leadership steering the countrys massive laboratory apparatus.

We dont have a system thats ever been built for surveillance, for wide-scale population surveillance or wide-scale testing for people who arent presenting to the hospital or the clinic, said Mina. The demand is just so much larger than our system was built for.

The Trump administrations response to this complicated thicket has been to declare the federal government a supplier of last resort and wish the states luck. Its pretty simple, Trump has said. They have tremendous capacity. We hope to be able to help out.

In an attempt to meet the demand they have encountered, lab scientists have improvised constantly, substituting materials where possible or stacking testing platforms from different manufacturers Roche, Qiagen, Abbott, Hologic, DiaSorin so that if one goes down another can take its place.

The result is that labs have delivered an unprecedented number of tests in record time but with a fraction of the potential efficiency that could be achieved through better coordination, said Reider.

If Jared Kushner wanted to do something decent, and Vice-President Pence, they could try to standardize and distribute nationally a global test, said Reider. At least make it available and let people choose if they want to use it.

The Harvard report called for the establishment of a Pandemic Testing Board akin to the War Production Board that the United States created in World War II. The director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota calls for a new Marshall plan to stand up testing in the US.

But no efforts to create such a central authority are apparent, said Michael Osterholm, CIDRAP director, who described a shortage of reagents, or chemicals used in testing, on his Osterholm Update podcast this week.

We have had a number of our testing laboratories unable to get the needed reagents they couldve and shouldve had to increase testing, Osterholm said. We really need a Marshall plan where the federal government and the private sector get together and decide what are the challenges, what can we do to quickly boost these reagents, what can we do to actually increase the reagent pool?

Demand signal or no, some big private sector players have already moved aggressively. Early on in the crisis, Color, a private healthcare institute that does genomic testing in California, resolved to stand up a mega-lab that is now on the verge of processing 10,000 tests a day, with a goal of expanding that capacity by an order of magnitude, said Othman Laraki, CEO.

The company has since partnered with the city of San Francisco to provide Covid-19 testing for all private-sector and nonprofit essential employees, as well as any resident with symptoms who cannot find testing elsewhere. Next-day results are delivered via email and text-message alerts.

Our thinking was that you needed to have a few massively scaled labs as opposed to having a big sprinkling of small-scale labs, Laraki said. We believe thats the way to build the type of capacity thats needed really to bring the country back to work.

In Minnesota, academics at the state university partnered with scientists at the Mayo clinic, one of the countrys premier labs, to deliver on a challenge by governor Tim Walz to stop coronavirus in the state with comprehensive testing and contact tracing.

We really need a Marshall plan where the federal government and the private sector get together

We just made the decision that were probably going to be on our own and that we need to be ready to care for our patients, said Tim Schacker, vice-dean for research at the University of Minnesota and an architect of the project.

As a first step, the scientists invented a molecular test that was mostly independent of the supply chain problems, Schacker said.

Robin Patel, the president of the American Society for Microbiology, said supply chain issues continue to represent a daily challenge for laboratories, from swabs to chemicals to materials used to extract viral RNA and amplify DNA.

The situation has changed, yes, but its a different situation every day, so using the word improved is I dont think appropriate, she said.

This isnt just an American situation. People throughout the world are dealing with the same issues. The supply chain were talking about is not just an American supply chain, its a worldwide supply chain.

To celebrate Americas reopening, Trump appears to be preparing to hit the road, with plans to visit warehouses and factory sites to advertise the economic comeback he has promised. We built the greatest economy the world has ever seen, Trump said this week. And were going to do it again. And its not going to be that long. OK?

Polling indicates that a majority of Americans does not share Trumps optimism. About two in three Americans think restrictions on restaurants, stores and other businesses are appropriate, and 16% on top of that wanted tighter restrictions, a poll this week from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found.

Top epidemiologists believe its possible that the US could get some kind of reprieve from the virus in the warmer months ahead. If that happens, the summer could feature the scenes Trump has dreamed about, of packed churches, humming factories, crowded beaches and sold-out flights.

But Trumps dream that the virus will simply disappear is just that a dream, epidemiologists say.

I hope that over the course of the next few weeks to two months, were going to actually see a substantial reduction in transmission, Osterholm said. And if it does, it shouldnt be interpreted that we won, or that somehow were in control.

I hope that the case numbers continue to decrease over time, but Im also very, very aware that theyre coming back, and we just have to remember that.

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No leadership and no plan: is Trump about to fail the US on coronavirus testing? - The Guardian