A long time ago I learned that there was a big difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker. They can look similar, but they are in fact very different entities.

 
PEACEKEEPERS are people who love peace…. perhaps too much. They have a distaste for conflict that will cause them to tolerate all manner of wrongdoing and injustice. Often they are willing to do whatever it takes to avoid a disagreement or fight. Peace is the ultimate goal, not righteousness. Not fairness. Not justice. They are often willing to ignore or tolerate evil, feeling that maintaining order is more important.

PEACEMAKERS also love peace, but realize that lasting peace cannot coexist with evil. There are times when some disruption or conflict is necessary to set things right. There are times when you have to fight for what is right. Peace is not worth any price. Peace will not last unless it is resting on a foundation of fairness and justice. It must be built on a foundation of righteousness. That is why “giving in” to something or someone who is doing something wrong, though it may delay a conflict, will usually in the end make that conflict worse. Tolerating evil and injustice is short sighted. Fighting against these elements, in the short run, can be very uncomfortable, but in the end will lead to a more lasting peace.

The principles of PEACEKEEPING vs PEACEMAKING apply both to our own individual lives and also to the lives of nations. America needs to stand for righteousness if she wants to be a peacemaker. Tolerance of everything may gain an illusion of peace for a short time, but the day will come when both the peace we have enjoyed and our freedoms will crumble. Worse yet, I fear, is that we will no longer have the the moral stamina or fortitude to fight for what is right and true. We will be another example that “if you stand for nothing you will fall for anything.”

What we desperately need are peacemakers, not peacekeepers. Evil is real in this world. Only by standing for what is right…for righteousness…will we be able to look forward to lasting peace. The battles are everywhere. We were victims on 9/11 of a real evil. France was a victim of real evil a few days ago. There is real evil on our campuses, on our streets, and in our own hearts. Individually, and as a nation, we must decide on which side we will stand. I do not believe that we will be able to stay neutral. We can stay quiet and try to keep the peace, but in the end, if we do not fight for what is right, the evil will come. Peacekeeping does not work. You must make peace by fighting for what is right! In the book of Matthew, Jesus says “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” Where, oh where, are the sons of God in America?

The picture in this post shows siblings. They are ‘black and white’ fraternal twins. Same parents!! The truth shown in this photograph says more than all of the divisive rhetoric swirling around us of late. There is one race…the human race. I am SO TIRED of all the talk about skin color. I do not know why everyone else is not exhausted by it too. Or maybe they are, but afraid to say so.

My eyes are green. My hair is brown (well, ok…gray colored brown) My nails are painted pink. My skin is…….does it matter? Do you want to know the color of my skin? Is it more important than the color of my eyes? The eyes are the window of the soul! The color of my skin is just not that important.

So how can we move forward? We desperately need to move beyond the superficial judging of people. I am all for celebrating one’s ancestry and heritage. It is fun to know from whence you came. But there are saints and scoundrels in all of our pasts. There is saint and scoundrel in each of us! And in America we are a melting pot….we just are not melting together too well lately. Our differences are crystallizing us into separate little islands of discontent. We have so much to be thankful for together in this country….enough of the negativity already! I am an American, descended from immigrants from a foreign land where there skin color was…..mostly similar to mine.

When it comes to food, there is one thing that all physicians agree on. We need to eat! But what should we eat? Little by little we are crossing items off of the list of what is okay to consume. It is becoming very confusing. Most people want to know…. what CAN I eat?

First of all, eat less and stay at a healthy BMI. Obesity is linked to about a fifth of all cancers. However, for many people, their weight will naturally correct to a healthier range if they follow a few simple rules.

#1 – GO FISHING!   Replace a few meals of red meat each month with fish. Americans consume about 2000 pounds of food every year! About 110 pounds of that is red meat. Unfortunately, red meat does seem to contribute to the risk of certain malignancies. We only eat about 16 pounds of fish a year.

#2 – BE FRUITY!   Make every effort to ingest fruits and vegetables in an unprocessed state.

#3 – GO NUTS!   Any kind…every kind…. be careful about those chocolate covered ones.

#4 – CHECK LABELS!  Trans fat is a substance that should be removed from our diet as completely as possible. Though cancer is the number one killer in America, heart disease is number two. If you want to die from something further down the list, learn to read labels and if there is any partially hydrogenated oil present, put that item back on the shelf.

#5 – WATER DOWN!   What should we wash all this food down with? On average, we currently drink about a gallon of soft drink a week! No way! No wonder we don’t feel good. We need to get back to drinking from the tap. We would save a lot of money, both in health savings and at the grocery store.

#6 – GET MOVING!   Get off the couch. You don’t necessarily have to go to the gym….just incorporate more exercise into your daily life. Park farther away. Take the stairs.

#7 – Finally, after dinner….DON’T LIGHT UP!   Nine out of 10 people who die of lung cancer have used tobacco.

Sometimes I get so discouraged! The culture is shifting under my feet. Everything is morphing so quickly. I lose my balance. How does one stay steady through it all?

For one thing, all of my “stuff” has changed. I now love my tablet the way I used to love my sony walkman..or even my transistor radio. And I plan on loving my driverless car or hovercraft someday!

Conventions are changed too. I enjoy texting, but sometimes I send snail mail letters just for the novelty of it. I used to consider it rude if someone did not join in conversation at dinner because of an online conversation with someone not present, but ……WAIT! I STILL DO!

So how do I stay current and up to date without feeling like a dinosaur? One way is to recognize that while much is changing, there are some things that are always the same. Truth is always true. Beauty and goodness are always beautiful and good. These things consistently are present, to some degree, wherever God’s image bearers (us humans) exist. So I am on the lookout for these.

Millennials are different from me. They don’t remember an unconnected world. They travel more. But they are also much the same. They still feel lonely and long for deeper relationships. They still long to be understood. The ability to stay in touch with many more friends, even though they are far away, is a good thing. But deep connections still take time and effort and they miss out on some of that. They are too distracted! That is one of the ways I think they are off course. Though there are others, in some
sense, they are better than previous generations. For one thing, I don’t think they idolize status and material wealth as much. That is a good thing. But then, they also don’t value authority as much, and that is a bad thing. So….

As I think about it, change can be good and change can be bad. But there will always be change. I am going to try and stay focused on finding, in these shifting sands, what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and commendable. I want to focus on these things…to dwell on them and point them out and promote them. And when I find something that is truly pleasing, I am going to try and share it with others……sometimes by snail mail!

This weekend is Parents weekend at my daughter’s university. Yesterday I sat in on a literature class and I left energized! How long has it been since I have been stretched to think outside my normal parameters? To think deeply about the meaning and cultural context of a poem or a short story? Do I think of rap songs as poetry? Did I know that the United States always has a poet laureate to record its history? Sitting just through one college class reminded me how much fun it is to learn! Hard work? Yes? Drudgery? Never! At least not when you listen to a teacher or professor who loves what they are teaching. It is infectious!

So how can we infect our younger people with this love of learning? I confess I don’t know what the answer is to our education system. But it can’t be more testing or better testing. It has to lie with empowering teachers. Teachers hold the key to awakening the love of learning in kids. Personally I remember when history came alive for me. I was in junior high and my teacher started talking about how a personal disagreement between 2 people eventually led to a large fight between nations. Wow! Who cared about exact dates of battles? I was confronted with the big picture in human terms! I will always be grateful to that teacher even though I cannot remember his name. History was a living subject to him and he loved it….so I learned to love it!

Certainly, one of the keys to developing young minds is more reading and less visual stimulation. We were created with the abilitThisy to have vivid imaginations but that skill needs to be exercised. Reading about a scene and then visualizing it is far different from just seeing it on a screen. That is why it is often disappointing to see a movie based on a book you have already read. The characters look different than you imagined!

I believe that teaching is a most sacred profession. How a teacher is teaching children is often more important than what is decided in boardrooms by highly paid executives. It is definitely more important than the latest NFL trade. It is not the place for indoctrination of the latest social agenda. The classroom is for instilling the ability to read, the love of learning, the need and freedom to ask questions, and the confidence to seek out what is true. We, the parents, need to defend for our kids. Let them have their French fries for lunch. It is the Junk Food of the classroom we need to get eliminate from our schools.

It is no secret that the health care field is changing rapidly. It is also no secret that a lot of physicians are not very happy in their chosen profession. Though I am not one of them, I strongly believe that not all of the changes are good. I have been a Family physician for almost 30 years and some of the changes are downright scary. Most days I feel very sorry for patients caught up in an unruly, extremely expensive, seemingly cold and uncaring, often illogical system. They do not feel good to begin with and the human touch they need and should easily find is being systematically removed. Data entry and endless computer screens and seemingly arbitrary obstacles to helping patients leads to a lot of physician frustration. Inspite of that…or maybe because of it…it is more and more important for all physicians to stand up and fight for what is best for their patients.

So what is best for patients? My belief is that we need more primary care physicians. Electronic data systems have changed everything. I know that I am working longer hours, no longer take a lunch break, and am still seeing fewer patients than I used to see. Along with electronic data systems come all sorts of rules and obstacles that do not help patient care. They are designed to help organize, store, itemize, and categorize information that is not helpful to the physician or patient, but must be desired for some reason by someone somewhere…….researchers? government? computer software engineers? I wish I knew!

When someone is ill, in the ideal circumstance, they are seen by a physician who is capable of diagnosing and competently treating 80 percent of their illnesses, whatever they may be. It is important that the initial physician be able also to recognize the warning signals of a more serious disorder and know where to direct the patient for further treatment. This describes a primary care physician. it does not describe a nurse practitioner or physician assistant. They do not have the same length or depth of training and experience and often don’t know what they don’t know. Currently mid-level physician extenders are to operate under a physician’s supervision, but that is not what is occurring in real time. Often, even in the emergency rooms of America, where the sickest patients theoretically go, a physician is only peripherally involved in the patient’s care. Signing off on a chart without examining a patient yourself is not adequate supervision.

So my wish is that there would be a public outcry for better primary care. Perhaps if the public demanded better primary care, medical schools would respond by helping to direct students to take the path. In the past it has been discouraged and frowned upon. Recently a medical student told me she was advised by the school sponsored financial adviser not to go into primary care because she would have a hard time paying off her student loans. It is true that is is less lucrative than pursuing a career as a specialist. Primary care is still, however, as a career, one of the most rewarding!

What do you do when you feel restless and bored?

Make a list of possible boredom busters, adding to it as you go….then when you cannot think of anything to do, maybe it will help.

Here is a sampling……..

1. Surprise someone by writing a Snail Mail letter
2. Try a new recipe
3. Clean to your favorite music turned up loud
4. A long bubble bath with candles
5. Practice makeup tips or new hair styles (if you are male, maybe just practice tying a bow tie)
6. Go for a walk outside or at a museum
7. Look under the seats of your car – always something surprising there
8. Google your name and see what shows up
9. Look through old pictures
10. Read a book by an author or in a genre you have never tried before
11. Plan a trip
12. Just DREAM!

Still bored? TRY BLOGGING!

I think the whole world read the book Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn before I even heard about it.  But I finally did hear about it and wanted to read it .  I bought the book, brought it  home and then found out that my husband already had a copy.  Why am I always the last to hear?  Anyway,  if you happen to be one of the few who haven’t read this book I would recommend it.  It is not the most well written book,  but it definitely puts a different light on recent events.  I did some fact checking and everything checked out.  I sure hope this great nation changes course.  We have been so blessed!!

I recently counted the number of screens in my home.  Including TVs and computers of various sizes, the current count for myself, my husband and our youngest, still at home son stands at 14.  No wonder I sometimes feel frazzled and overloaded.  And when I cannot get a screen to work I just feel stupid.  I am not a big TV person but I do love the news and “talking heads.”   I also, like the rest of the world, have discovered podcasts and Netflix.  But sometimes I just have to say enough is enough!  Unplug!  The sound of silence is still refreshing and healthy.  Ahhhh…….Gentle conversation with others, a quiet walk, a good book…with real pages!    I have noticed that when I unplug and slow down for a short time, my brain begins, after a bit,  to have creative thoughts and ideas again.  The pressure lessens and things look more beautiful.

I think we all are like a frozen computer screen at times…we just need to be turned off for awhile.  I saw this quote by Anne Lamott in a magazine recently.  She said”Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”  So I shall close….time to REBOOT!