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Ms. Dowd,
I've often disagreed with you in the past, especially in relation to the Clintons, but lately you have been right down the center on the issues. The article was absolutely pro-Women, pro-Adults and pro Logic. I detest people who treat women, or anyone, as "lap dogs for Jesus" and cannot stand men who have no humility when it comes to recognizing their inadequacy of information in regard to what it means to be a woman. The Doctor may not realize, since he doesn't come from a sophisticated theater background, that "sense memory" (imagine a loving Jesus i.e. "Daddy", in the room. Mix that in with the "Bride of Christ" role and it gets even more complicated ) exercises have been used forever in the theater to create a character, build healing (e.g. Epidorus in Greece) and solve social problems in theatrical ensembles since before the writing of the great Greek Dramas. This is one more example of the Christians taking credit for Intellectual Capital that they have essentially stolen from some other non-Christian culture while raising the capital of their own Messiah. They also use it to infantalize while the Greeks used it to create mastery in the Artist with all of the healing that implied. Cynically one might consider this in the intent of certain fundamentalists, as a way of keeping the general public ignorant of such things, as oppossed to the NEA and their support of modern expressions of Greek theatrical methods. The Fundamentalists desire to give Jesus the credit for Aeschylus, or in the case of the proposed Dr. Hager, for its most recent variant of Stanislavski and the "Method." Today, we are still enmeshed in the "ownership" of
certain religious "Capital" in the Middle East that allows casual murder and the
suspension of the rules of morality in relation to which Ancestor belonged to
whom, i.e. was Abraham Jewish, Christian or Moslem? Or
was Isaiah Christian or was Jesus Moslem? It depends on who you ask.
Such problems make all three religions suspect when handling
the secularism required for the government. It is only fair to
consider any solution, proposed by these faiths from a place of
logic. And further, any claim of ownership of ideas
by any of these three should be considered in relation to world history and
the cultures surrounding them throughout the ages. That
Bishop's hat for example is Mythrian. You should also consider all of the
alternatives for solutions to the medical issues perported to be solved by
faith. If one faith does well, is it the best solution of all
of the faiths?
As for Menstruation I believe the Native American attitude is more enlightened than the "endure it because God loves you and without pain there is no gain" quote from the Dr.Hager. According to Romans 5:1-11 one could consider that it means that God believes women superior and so, like a fine racehorse he must handicap women in order to make it fair to compete with the inferior men. Why should women be more subject to the "whims of God" otherwise? But then, according to the fundamentalists, women are subject to the whims of their husbands. The Native way is a little like the former but with
different emphasis based upon eternal principles found in nature.
They tell you to learn from being touched by Nature in a way that Men
cannot. The same is true for childbirth. As
for the "subject to the whims of the Husband" you can forget
that. They say that Women's natural cycles are examples
of women's closeness to the roots of birth, death and purification in ways that
men can never know. If they take
advantage and learn from their nature then they have a greater experience with
the eternal verities than men who can do the same only through effort and
imagination. It is less likely that women who have experienced
the death of a child and are in touch with the lessons from that experience,
would choose to destroy as casually as most men contemplating
war.
To the Native Americans and most Indigeneous
Cultures it is the balance of male and female qualities in both men and women
that teach us the meaning of our lives and what it means to be children of the
Great Mystery. Exploring and working for balance makes us all
inadequate in the light of the real knowledge and mastery of the Great
Mystery. Personally, give me competence and mastery
balanced with faith in the exploration of the Ultimate Mystery any time over
"book learning.*"
Thanks again. Cousin REH * Headaches: in regard to the Matthew quote this is an example of the sleazy slipperiness of fundamentalism that slides effortlessly from concrete to metaphorical meaning without principle. If another religion or person does the same, fundamentalists claim that person is suffering from "relativism." But when they ignore the obvious meaning of things in favor of metaphorical "process meanings" they too are practicing the type of "relativism" they blame on Democrats and other demons in their pantheon of villains. I agree with metaphorical meanings and I think
everything is time/space bound in its applications. Yes I
would even say "relative." It is the hypocrisy of the
process of the average fundamentalist preacher who denies the validity of Usury
and the Kosher Laws, for example, and explains both as metaphors, while, at
the same time advocating total abstention from certain
Heterosexual or Gay lifestyles, as absolute
sins, that I take issue with. (No metaphor allowed
there! They are literal about what they want and metaphorical
about what they don't want to observe.) I was trained by
fundamentalists and at one point their "relativism" became
too slippery and sleazy for even an old relativist like me. You
don't have to make such "principles" simply about sex you know. They
can apply to the local oil refinery, strip mine or internal combustion engine as
well. Once a process is defined as a principle it travels and that
is when it get uncomfortable. Do we want a the head of a
scientific section of the government to be insensitive to such
things? (REH)
October 9, 2002 Tribulation Worketh Patience By MAUREEN DOWD wASHINGTON � W.W.J.D. at the F.D.A.? We may soon find out, if W. David Hager becomes chairman of the powerful Food and Drug Administration panel on women's health policy. His r�sum� seems more impressive for theology than gynecology. "Jesus stood up for women at a time when women were second-class citizens," Dr. Hager says. "I often say, if you are liberated, a woman's libber, you can thank Jesus for that." A professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kentucky, he has a considerable body of work about Jesus' role in healing women, and last summer he helped the Christian Medical Association with a "citizens' petition" calling on the F.D.A. to reverse its approval of RU-486, the "abortion pill," claiming it puts women at risk. (RU-486 or RU-4Jesus?) Karen Tumulty reports in Time that the F.D.A. senior associate commissioner, Linda Arey Skladany, a former drug-industry lobbyist with Bush family ties, has rejected doctors proposed by F.D.A. staffers and is pushing Dr. Hager. The policy panel, which helped get RU-486 approved, will lead the study on the hot issue of hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women. As Time notes: "Some conservatives are trying to use doubts about such therapy to discredit the use of birth control pills, which contain similar compounds." Dr. Hager wrote "As Jesus Cared for Women," blending biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from his own practice. "Jesus still longs to bring wholeness to women today," the jacket says. He writes about a young patient named Sparkle who gets a job at a strip joint in Kentucky and becomes promiscuous and gets several sexually transmitted diseases. Sparkle reminds him of "a woman Jesus met who was generally known in her town as a sinner, but whom Jesus saw through eyes of love." With his wife, Linda, he wrote "Stress and the Woman's Body," which puts "an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends Scripture readings to treat headaches (Matthew 13:44-46); eating disorders (Corinthians II, 10:2-5) and premenstrual syndrome (Romans 5:1-11, "Tribulation worketh patience.") To exorcise affairs, the Hagers suggest a spiritual exercise: "Picture Jesus coming into the room. He walks over to you and folds you gently into his arms. He tousles your hair and kisses you gently on the cheek. . . . Let this love begin to heal you from the inside out." Dr. Hager is also an editor of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies, and the Family." One of the pieces, "Using the Birth Control Pill is Ethically Unacceptable," says scientific data show that the pill causes abortions. Dr. Hager said he disagreed with that piece. He says he prefers not to prescribe contraceptives to single women, but will if they insist and reject his advice to abstain. He says he does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert IUD's. "I am pro-life," he says. "I believe sex outside of marriage is a sin. But I am not against medication. The fact that I'm a person of faith does not deter me from also being a person of science." But unlike C. Everett Koop, who did not let his evangelical beliefs influence his work as surgeon general, Dr. Hager has written that it is "dangerous" to compartmentalize life into "categories of Christian truth and secular truth." Once again, the Bush administration seems to be sowing skepticism about science for the sake of politics. It has smothered the promise of stem cell research to extend and improve life with the right wing's reverence for "life." A Washington Post article last month reported that the Bush crowd was restructuring scientific advisory committees on patients' rights and public health, "eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices." Dr. David Kessler, the former F.D.A. commissioner who is now dean of the Yale University School of Medicine, warns: "If the criteria to be on an advisory committee are based on a political litmus test, that will set this country back." Are we so worried about medieval villains abroad that we no longer worry about medievalism at home? |
