Recovery

Another photo sent to me from Trinidad; this one is of Point Matelot, the most north-easterly point on the island.  One of the many rivers (to us, they’re rivers; to everyone else they’re rivulets) empties into the Atlantic Ocean.  The weather is getting nice enough now that I don’t feel the strong pull to head home, although I really miss people (you know who you are.). I spent the day recovering from yesterday’s fun.  I didn’t do a lot, but it was enough that I’m low-level tired (meaning that I could push myself to do stuff, but I’m also feeling irritable, which is a sure sign of tiredness.). I realized the irritation when I wanted to shout at Don when he asked me to repeat myself (he’s reached the age and stage where adult men lose their hearing, especially around the women in their life) and then when I evicted Jerry from the bed this morning because I needed sleep and he wanted to play.  I just looked at the time and thought I’d write a quick note and head off to sleep; I’ve got early appointments for the next few days, so sleep is a major priority.  Don’s watching hockey, so I’m free…

I’m going to need a conversation with my parish priest, because (I’m also going to ask for your collective wisdom, please) when people tell me about purported miracles, I immediately disbelieve them and start to question their bona fides.  You all know my stance on the people who send me those “take this fruit/tea/special mix and it will cure your cancer” messages.  I find that when someone starts off with, “I have this friend who…” somehow managed to have their (unspecified) cancer vanish after eating/drinking some obscure item “leaving doctors baffled” but somehow, “doctors and ‘Big Pharma’” don’t want the news to get out, my cynical levels blow into the danger zone.  I’m told to “keep an open mind about this” but I don’t believe those stories.  Not even a tiny bit.  Not even when my close friends swear that they know the person themselves.  I know, intellectually, that miracles can and do happen, but honestly… some of the stories strain credulity to the breaking point, and then I write off the speaker as “deluded.”  One such case, today I was told by a random person that a friend of a friend had had a cancer (type, stage, previous treatments all unknown) who was told that drinking “milk from a double-humped camel” would cure them, so they travelled back to Somalia and drank nothing but camel milk for 30 days and allegedly was cured, no sign of any cancer.  I asked (because I’m Admiral Bubble-Popper) where did they find the “double humped camel” in Somalia, since it’s only found in northern China and Mongolia in the Gobi desert, and the response was, “You know the Somalis are very resourceful people.”  Someone else wanted me to try the “secret cure” that has been hidden for over 600 years but which was known to “cure the bubonic plague” — leaving aside my lack of plague infection, the list of ingredients included items that were completely unavailable in Europe or Asia at the time (they’re indigenous to the Americas, and this predated regular interaction with them)  I’m told to “keep an open mind” and overlook these glaring inconsistencies and try the colloidal silver solution, guaranteed to cure what ails me.  The reason that Fr. Steve might need to be involved is that as a practicing Catholic, a belief in miracles is a given: I mean, central to the faith is that Jesus rose from the dead, not exactly everyday activity!  

Why is it that I can accept certain miracles — I hold and firmly believed when my aunt called me the day before I saw my doctor to say, “your doctor is wrong.”  I can accept the miracle that I’m walking around even after having lost most of my organs and having gone through multiple treatments, etc.  I can accept that friends, who have faced all sorts of painful times, are alive, well and happy.  But tell me that someone went on a diet of eating nothing but boiled rice for 6 months and their disease disappeared, and all that comes out of me is a sceptical “not bloody likely!”  Is it that I’m rigid in my beliefs and anything that challenges them is automatically rejected?  I hope not!  Am I unwilling to accept what I have not seen for myself?  Is it that I’ve fallen into a trap of thinking that everything has already been explained, and anything outside of that is not credible?  I would hope that I have a healthy level of curiosity and a spirit of investigation that is at least willing to consider “three impossible things before breakfast” but somehow these “friend of a friend” stories just don’t make it past my smell test.  If someone said, “Hey, maybe you should talk to my doctor, who has made a special study of <condition related to me> for a second opinion” I’d probably do it.  But “Hey, my friend has this miraculous cure” and I tune out.  Of course, the flood of fake and twisted news doesn’t help either — so many stories on the internet that have no relationship to facts make it even more challenging for me to believe hearsay!  Plus a lack of credible supporting evidence just doesn’t help the cause of the storytellers…

Have I gone too far to the other side, though?  Your thoughts are desperately needed on this, because if I’m rejecting possibilities then that’s not good.  I think that it’s time to go play with the little monster, who managed to tangle himself into my crochet yarn, tied his back legs together and then tried biting me when I went to untangle him… he’s glaring at me from the blanket on the floor as if blaming me for getting his legs snarled in the yarn!  I’d better go apologize… Good night!