The Holy City

Jerusalem is an important place to a great many people, especially followers of three of the world's major religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.  It is a city that conjures up a sense of the holy.  Pilgrims flock to it every year to come closer to the foundations of their faith.  For Jews, the entire city is holy, but especially the Western Wall, which is all that remains of the great Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.  Muslims come to the Dome of the Rock, a shrine that is the third-holiest place in the Islam faith.  Christians make pilgrimages to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which marks the spot where Jesus is said to have been crucified, buried and rose again from the dead, and the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus is said to have traveled carrying his cross.

My husband and I recently returned from a tour of Israel and the most inspiring part for me was the six days we spent in Jerusalem.  Now that we are home, all I can do is think about returning.

Jerusalem is often referred to as “the city on a hill.”  It occupied a coveted strategic high ground at the crossroads of three continents, and because of this, it was besieged, plundered, captured and recaptured throughout the ages.  It is still being fought over today.  But when people dream of Jerusalem, they do not see the modern, politically controversial Jerusalem, but rather the holy, biblical, historical city.

Historically it is a gold mine for archeologists.  Stone houses and artifacts dating back 7,000 years have just recently been discovered in Jerusalem, demonstrating that the settlement existed even longer than had been supposed.  But its archeological sites are revered not just because of their antiquity, but because of the history they bring to life.  They tell God’s story recorded in the Old Testament, a story all three faiths share.  For Christians, they also tell about a man called Jesus, God incarnate, who actually walked among his people in this place.

For most religious pilgrims, the remains that connect to their faith are the most meaningful.  In my case, this included standing on the top of the Mount of Olives looking across the Kidron Valley and realizing that Jesus probably stood here too looking at this same sight as he wept and said:

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).

But Jerusalem today is also a vibrant, pulsating, multicultural, Middle Eastern cauldron of unrest and anarchy.  I could not help but be aware of the competing factions sharing space in this one small city. I realized not much has changed in this regard from Jesus’ time.

First-century Palestine was also a multiracial, multilingual society with political, economic and religious persecution.  Tensions were heightened by frequent uprisings by zealots spoiling for a fight against the controlling enemy power and by a growing impatience for the fulfillment of national aspirations—just like today.

This is also the place where the Bible says Jesus will come again:

For the Lord Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders, gloriously (Isaiah 24:22-23).

Apparently, there is a strange, but well documented, phenomenon connected to this holy city, one I had not heard of before.  It seems that foreign visitors with no previous history of mental illness, fall victim to a psychotic episode while in Jerusalem. They believe that they are figures from the Bible or harbingers of the End of Days.  It has even been given a name—“Jerusalem Syndrome.”

An Irish schoolteacher who came to a Jerusalem hospital convinced she was about to give birth to the Baby Jesus when in fact she was not even pregnant.

A Canadian tourist who believed he was the Biblical strongman Sampson and tried to tear stone blocks out of the Wailing Wall.

An Austrian man who flew into a rage in his hotel kitchen when staff refused to prepare the Last Supper for him.

The majority of those who are hospitalized suffered mental health problems in their own countries and came to Jerusalem deliberately on what they saw as a mission from God. They are mostly harmless but occasionally sufferers become violent.

Israel’s health ministry records around 50 cases a year where a tourist’s delusions are so strong that police or mental health professionals are forced to intervene.  Many more incidents go undocumented on the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Apparently, this phenomenon is common enough that as holy holidays like Easter approach, the city’s hospitals routinely prepare for expected fresh cases as tourists flock to Jerusalem.  Protocol includes alerting foreign embassies that one their citizens believes he is John the Baptist or King Solomon.

There is another subtype of Jerusalem Syndrome which is perhaps the most fascinating.  This group consists of people with no known history of mental illness who also become overwhelmed by the holy city and temporarily lose their minds. Most recover fairly spontaneously, and then, after leaving the country, apparently enjoy normality.  Psychiatrists are skeptical of this “pure” form of the syndrome, however, and most believe there is probably an underlying dormant psychiatric condition.  This group also seems to be people who are extremely devout, and some might say, hyper-religious.  Interestingly, evidence of the Jerusalem Syndrome dates back to medieval times and observers throughout the centuries have claimed that they noted an air of madness that seemed to hang over the city.  J.E. Hanauer, a British traveler and Anglican vicar, wrote in around 1870: “It is an odd fact that many Americans who arrive at Jerusalem are either lunatics or lose their mind thereafter.”

Of note, this affliction has been recorded among Jews and Christians but not Muslims.  A study from 1999 found that “Although Jerusalem is sacred to all three major monotheistic religions….no documentation regarding the syndrome among Muslims was found.”

Is there something about ancient Jerusalem, a disputed city that is so important to people of three faiths, that attracts - or perhaps even causes - a special kind of madness?

My own reaction to being there was certainly not madness, but it did affect me in ways I had not anticipated.  Is this place touched by God in some way, even today?  It is, after all, the holy city.  It was here that Jesus worshiped in the temple, taught on the temple steps, healed the lame man in the Pool of Bethesda, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane and carried his cross to the place of his crucifixion.  I felt closer to him just standing in these sacred places.

And if any further distinction is needed, Jerusalem is the only city that exists twice—in heaven and on earth.

And I John saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband (Revelation 21:2).

The best way I can describe my reaction to my visit to the Holy City is to say my heart was overflowing with emotion and gratitude and joy- to the point where I was near tears.

 It was, I believe, just the experience of being in Jerusalem…

Ode to Odie

Odie

What can I say? If you have never had a dog who loved you unconditionally, you won’t know what I am talking about here. There is something special about the unquestioning love and devotion a dog gives to his person. It’s a permanent thing, which is what makes it so amazing. It’s there when you are showering attention on him. It’s there even when you have just been a jerk and yelled at the poor creature because you were really mad at your spouse. It’s there when all he wants is for you to throw his ball, but you just “aren’t in the mood.” He never holds a grudge either.

Humans, in contrast, remember every slight, every disappointment, every cross word. It may be six months later when in the heat of a totally unrelated argument, your spouse throws in something from the past for good measure. “What,” you say, “You want to bring that up again?” “You bet I do,” they reply through clenched teeth. Your dog would never dream of being so petty.

Have you ever known a human who hung on your every word? Who could look at you adoringly for hours while laying with his head in your lap? When was the last time your human companion waited to take their cue from you as to how the day would go? If you have experienced this with someone we have a name for it- it’s called love addiction: an obsessive emotional attachment to another to avoid separation anxiety and loneliness. Does Fatal Attraction ring a bell?

Your dog has no neurotic need for you to give them their identity, they are very content with just being a mutt. They don’t require constant reassurance that you love only them or that they need you to complete them. All they want is to be able to love you and take whatever you choose to give back to them in return. A biscuit will do nicely. I scratch behind the ears. A ride in the backseat of the car while you run around town cursing other drivers and complaining about the rain. They take it all in stride, hanging their head out the window trying to catch the wind as it swooshes by.

As I get older and find I can’t do as much as I once did, I find myself indulging in self- pity from time to time. A bad knee makes it painful to climb stairs, my stamina is not what it once was, my eyesight is no longer 20/20… Odie too was winding down. His sight was going and he was deaf. He had trouble controlling his balder and had to wear doggie diapers. But he never whined. He never sat around feeling sorry for himself. It took only a look from us at the door for him to know he could come along and his day was made.

We could learn a lot from our four-footed friends. All of us die. The journey can be short or long. It’s how we live it that counts. Odie was determined to taste every one of time’s moments. Swallow. Taste the next. He died at 20 (140 in dog years). He didn’t just stagger on in the end – he was still tasting life. Every morsel he could get of it before he went blissfully to sleep. I will think of him next time I am temped not to savor a day or an hour or a moment.

Obedience

"One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons."

                           Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Why is obedience so hard?  The dictionary says it is compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another's authority. I guess we just don’t want to do what someone else tells us, even if it is God telling us and especially if the request is contrary to our own selfish desires. My experience has been that when God is asking me to do something small it is often not about the request itself but about my willingness to obey. 

A recent example involved my netbook. It suddenly wouldn’t let me into my email so I took it to a repair place nearby. The computer guy reloaded a new Windows 7 and said that would take care of the problem.  After I got it home it worked fine for one day and then did the same thing.  So I took it back and asked for a refund on the repair bill.  Then suddenly it worked again- and kept on working for several weeks.

That’s when I felt the Lord urging me to return the refund.  After debating about it with myself and God for a couple of days I finally complied and returned the refund.  I did the “right” thing.  The guy was truly amazed and delighted and said something to the effect that I’d “made his day.”  Maybe God was at work somehow in him and using me?  Or, more likely, He was teaching me something about myself.  Ironically, as soon as I did this in obedience to the Lord, the computer acted up again and it never worked right again.  Needless to say I struggled for a while to understand this, did God have a weird sense of humor?  Finally I simply came to the conclusion I just needed to chalk it up to an exercise in obedience.  

I think sometimes God wants me to obey so He can let me see an area of my life that has gotten out of control.  I remember around the time we were closing on our new condo, I was busy choosing our paint colors, carpeting, kitchen cabinets, counter tops, kitchen appliances, etc.  It was great fun and I felt like a kid in a candy store.  We had owned our own home before back in Massachusetts, but it was not a new home and I did not get to choose what went into it.  This was a new experience for me and I was very excited.  Everything was pretty much done when I decided that Plantation shutters would be perfect in the office. 

It was then that I heard God clearly say, “No.” 

I was surprised and not a little dismayed.  I have never had to wonder what He means when He speaks to me - l knew immediately that He was referring to the shutters.  I also did not have to wonder about why He would say this.  In my heart I knew I was going overboard.  I couldn’t seem to be content with what we had. I kept wanting more and better.  Wow, I thought to myself, that kind of insatiable greed can just sneak up on you and consume you. Even though I knew this I still wanted to bargain with God!  Will I never learn?  God does not bargain.  So I surrendered the shutters and in a short period of time I forgot all about them, it had never really been about them at all.       

Maybe these little things, these seemingly unimportant requests for obedience, are training for the harder, more important ones?  Whatever they are, I am always just amazed that the Lord draws near and speaks to me at all- the least I can do is obey, even if I sometimes don’t understand what He is up to. 

I used to not be so quick to obey or maybe it was just my doubting it was really God talking to me (or hoping it wasn’t Him).  Now I’m more inclined to just do whatever it is He is asking of me because I’ve learned I get no peace until I do. 

One time, shortly after we moved here to Columbus, I was on my way to work at Columbus State Community College where I taught, when I got into an accident.  I drove into an intersection when my light was red and was hit by a car crossing the intersection with a green light from the other direction.  The impact spun my car around and really shook me up.  Luckily no one was injured and we both only sustained minor damage to our cars. 

Initially, when the police arrived on the scene to take a report, I was still in shock and not sure about what had happened, I did suspect though that it had been my fault and that I had had one of those episodes when your brain goes on auto pilot and you keep functioning while your conscious mind is off somewhere else.  I think it’s been called “Highway Hypnosis” because it is a common phenomenon of drivers.  You are driving along for a few miles on the interstate and then suddenly, like coming out of a trance, you realize you have passed several exits but have no recall of the distance travelled. 

When the officer arrived on the scene to take a report I didn’t say anything about what I suspected.  He eventually wrote it up as a “no-fault” accident and I forgot all about it.  My insurance paid for the damage to my car, but I was bothered by the fact that the other driver, a very nice young man named Keith, who was expecting his first child, (we got to talking while waiting for the policeman to finish his report) had said he could not afford to put in a claim to his insurance company because he did not want his rates to go up.  I remembered feeling bad about that. 

Well, time went by- enough time in fact that the accident finally came off my driving record.  Then, about a year ago, completely out of the blue, God spoke to me in much the same way and said, “I want you to make amends to that young man.”  Again, I did not have to ask Him who He meant- I knew instantly who He meant (that can really freak you out). 

I had buried the incident so deep in my subconscious mind that I had literally forgotten it ever happened.  But God hadn’t forgotten.  He won’t let us sweep things under the carpet.  He calls us to clean up our messes so we can live at peace with others, ourselves and Him.

Even though I knew this, I started to argue: 

“But God,” I said, “I don’t even remember his name or how to get in touch with him and even if I could what would I say?” 

God was silent. 

I pleaded, “It would be humiliating to say it was my fault now, after all this time.  I just can’t face him!”

God was silent. 

I had been down this road before so I knew I was not going to win this way.  I thought this time I was being clever.  I told God, and myself, that I would try to find him (I was being obedient).  Then I promptly forgot about it and got busy with life. 

After a few months God again spoke the same words.  Again, I agreed and then procrastinated.  This went on for about six months! 

I finally realized that I valued peace with God more than my desire to avoid an uncomfortable amends to this young man.   So I took steps to actually find him and it was surprisingly easy.  I simply got a copy of the accident report from the police headquarters downtown (which had his name and address at that time) and then did a people search on the internet. 

Because I finally was obedient, God blessed me in surprising ways every step of the way through my amends process. 

First I needed to get an estimate of the cost of the damage to his car so I could reimburse Keith.  I took a copy of the police report with the description of the damage to both cars to several auto collision repair shops.  At first everyone said they could not give me an estimate without seeing the actual car.  Finally in desperation I screwed up my courage at the last garage on my list and told the guy I was trying to make my amends and work my 8^th Step and I needed to get a ball park cost on damages.  The magic words “working my Step” known by all involved in AA worked.  His whole demeanor changed and he gave me an estimate. I thought that was pretty cool.  Was God smiling?

Then I needed to contact the young man himself and arrange a meeting.  I did not have the courage to call him, so I wrote him a letter explaining that I wanted to make amends to him for not taking responsibility for the accident we had more than five years ago.  I waited in fear and trembling and then finally, after several weeks, I received a reply.  He not only remembered me but was willing to meet with me.   My husband drove me to his house and waited outside in the car.  With much trepidation I went in alone. 

Keith extended a grace to me that I did not deserve.  Our meeting was a blessing I will never forget, and although it came through the forgiveness of this young man, I knew God was using him to bless me for my obedience.  Since Keith was expecting his 2^nd child and had just lost his job, I’m sure God used my check to bless Keith too.  He has a way of working like that, doesn’t He?

And I learned something else too. It is not enough to just obey, I needed to also learn to do so with a joyful heart because the Lord asked it of me. “Do everything without grumbling or arguing” (Phil 2:14). Well, that part I’m still working on, but I do think Bonhoeffer was on to something.

In Search of the Soul

(Topic from The Scribbler's Writer's Group)

I would not have to look further than pop culture for at least one view of the soul. Dating services promise that if you use their services you will find your “soul mate.” The premise here is that we will unconsciously be attracted to the one person who was made just for us, someone who shares our view of life, our desires and goals. Some even say it is a spiritual connection between two souls.

Popular songs often express the sentiment of loving someone completely. Back in the 30’s two of the biggest jazz hits of the day referred to the soul - Billie Holiday’s recording of “Body and Soul” (1930) and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Heart and Soul” (1938).

I mention these examples not to trivialize the idea of the soul, but to show how it has permeated the popular culture and is not just confined to a religious concept. There does seem to be a striking similarity between the two though- only the object of one’s love and devotion is different, i.e. Jesus too taught that a person must love God with their entire being.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10: 25).

Soul is also used to designate a musical genre popular in the 60’s- the Motown sound. It applied to singers who sang with such feeling that they were thought to be singing from their ‘soul.’ The sound had its roots in Southern gospel music.

There is another modern day use of the term soul when used in conjunction with psychology. With my background as a psychiatric nurse I am familiar with the concept “soul sickness,” or demoralization which is characterized by feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Patients with soul sickness are often described as having “checked out” of life. The answer or treatment in our secular culture is therapy, and perhaps medication for depression. Christians include a spiritual approach: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God (Psalm 42).

This concept of soul sickness is also seen in other cultures. The DSM V, the diagnostic manual for psychiatric disorders, includes several examples in culture-bound syndromes.

Among Native Americans, the Anishinabe people (also known as Ojibwa or Chippewa) describe a type of soul sickness called wétigo. Those afflicted with it are called windigos—a term which can be translated as “cannibal” or “soul eater.” Windigos were destructive not only to themselves, but to those around them: they consumed the souls of other people with their greed.

This seems to me to describe pretty well what might happen to a soul not transformed by the Spirit in today’s culture of greed. I can easily picture a corporate hedge fund guy being consumed by a condition like this. Remember Michael Douglas’ famous line in Wall Street- “Greed is good”?

Another example is Susto - A folk illness prevalent among some Latinos in the United States and among people in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Susto is an illness attributed to a frightening event that causes the soul to leave the body and results in unhappiness and sickness. It is believed that in extreme cases, susto may even result in death. Ritual healings are focused on calling the soul back to the body and cleansing the person to restore bodily and spiritual balance.

This one sound eerily familiar when we look at what the Bible says about David in his time of trouble. He cried, “Save me, O God, for waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire. I am come into deep waters, floods overflowing. I am weary of my crying” (Psalm 69:1-3). The root cause of “soul sickness” with David is that his troubles went on and on and even got worse. His soul cried out to God for help, but there seemed to be no answer.

How does the Bible define the soul?

The terms heart, soul and mind are often used interchangeably. In general ‘heart’ refers to the inner man and when used metaphorically can refer to the mind, the emotions or the will, or simply to the person as a whole. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Prov. 4:23). Soul is also used to incorporate our mind, our will and our emotions. So it would seem that heart and soul (back to that jazz song) often refer to the same thing- the inner man. Can be confusing, right?

The mind and emotions are thought to both continually operate upon the will to affect it. We spend most of our life operating from this conscious level. For example, I may have an angry thought which is accompanied by feelings of bitterness and resentment. If unchecked, I may decide to act on my thoughts and feelings and lash out at the object of my displeasure (a willful choice). If this is a pattern with me, I may be known as an angry person.

The soul is the essence of who we are as a person, what is known about us by others and to a greater or lesser degree, what we know about ourselves. It is the part of us in most need of renovation.

We also see the soul in conjunction with the spirit. The soul and the spirit are connected, but separable. Human beings have a spirit, but we are not spirits. The spirit is a deeper, hidden part in man. Conscience is a function of the spirit. It is this spirit that lives on after death. Dallas Willard says:

“The life we live out in our moments, hours, days, and years wells up from a hidden depth...the hidden dimension of each human life is not visible to others, nor is it fully graspable even by ourselves. We usually know very little about the things that move in our own soul.”

Here Christians and non-Christian’s diverge. Secular psychology rejects belief in a spirit component to man, but embraces the concept of the unconscious mind operating at a level below our conscious awareness. This can be an area of darkness, despair and confusion apart from God.

Our spirit is instantly reborn and made new the moment we accept Christ, but the soul is not born again.

Our souls can carry a lot of baggage from our past lifestyle that we need to get rid of. For example, we may have addictions, habits, and hurts from childhood that still torment us and prevent us from being free.

Our souls are transformed by the renewing of our minds:

"And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Romans 12:2).

It is through His Spirit living in us, communicating with our spirit, that our hearts and minds and are brought in sync with His. Our soul also has the power to reject the pleadings of the Spirit if it chooses.

The spirit is the element in humanity which gives us the ability to have an intimate relationship with God and hear His still small voice. The human spirit then in correct relationship to God will bring the soul into subjection to God and the mind and will into subjection to the soul.

A soul in tune with the Spirit will say with the psalmist, “Praise the Lord O my soul” (Psalm 103).

How Are We Caring for Our Mentally Ill Post Deinstitutionalization?

(Article published in Street Speech by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless) 

What is deinstitutionalization? It was a political/social/economic movement which began way back in the 50’s to close state hospitals where mentally ill patients were warehoused for years and released them into the community and the community mental health system.

Part of the impetus for this move came from patient advocacy groups and the civil liberties movement who wanted to end the neglect and abuse of patients in state facilities around the country which were notorious for poor living conditions, lack of hygiene and overcrowding.

Another reason was economic. States thought it would be less expensive to take care of the mentally ill in outpatient treatment, especially with the advent of new antipsychotic drugs which came on the market in the 50’s and 60’s.

A further impetus came when President Kennedy passed the Community Mental Health Centers Act in 1965. It called for a 50% reduction in the number of state psychiatric patients. This shift away from custodial care to outpatient care became known as “deinstitutionalization.”

Communities were expected to put in place a whole range of services including supervised group homes, walk-in clinics where medication could be administered, and enough case workers to oversee patients’ compliance with their treatment plans. As the economy got worse however, many of these programs were discontinued – some were never implemented. It was a good idea which never got the necessary funding and left thousands of mentally ill without any support at all.

Even when communities provided clinics and screening centers, the caseloads of social works were too big to allow the degree of supervision and evaluation needed. John Hughes, the Workforce Development Manager for the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless, spent 30 years working with at-risk people with substance abuse, mental health and housing issues. He says “a caseload can be as high as 70-75, or higher, for a social worker in the field.”

A small number of people who are chronically mentally ill need some level of supervision on a regular and consistent basis, both for their protection and the protection of the public. The average length of stay in our state hospitals today is only between ten and fourteen days. This does not meet the needs of our most seriously ill patients. Hospital stays on acute care psychiatric units in our general hospitals are even shorter.

Patients are then discharged back into the community with a one to two week supply of meds and told to follow-up with their local mental health agency. This requires patients to have the insight to realize they need to stay on their medication, and to take it regularly without supervision, and the ability to be proactive with phone calls and appointments to keep themselves supplied with their medication. Sadly this is often not the case and it is one reason why so many mentally ill people “fall through the cracks” in our system.

Without a support system in place many suffering from mental illness become homeless. Food kitchens thankfully are available to feed the homeless in Columbus. Most are run by charitable organizations and the homeless are grateful for them. But housing is another matter. Our shelters have long waiting lists to get in and as cold weather creeps up on us this will become an even greater problem than it already is.

Barrie Currie, a homeless paper vendor at the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless said, “People go to shelter for many different reasons- most of all because they’re supposed to be safe. However nothing could be further from the truth! There is a lot of violence in places like these.” The mentally ill are especially vulnerable, both in shelters and on the street.

In a recent segment on 60 Minutes this past fall, the lack of adequate mental health services was discussed in light of the recent rise in mass shootings. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, one of the country’s leading psychiatrists, said: “These were preventable tragedies, symptoms of a failed mental health system that’s prohibited from intervening until a judge determines that someone presents an imminent danger to themselves or others. The consequence is a society that’s neglected millions of seriously ill people hidden in plain sight on the streets of our cities, or locked away in our prisons and jails.”

Most of us would be shocked to learn how many mentally ill people are in our jails and prisons. According to Human Rights Watch somewhere between two and three hundred thousand men and women in U.S. prisons suffer from a mental disorder. Using our jails instead of state hospitals to incarcerate those with mental illness who are considered unmanageable or a danger to others on our streets has been referred to by some as a form of re-institutionalization. Ironically, the country’s three largest mental facilities now are the Los Angeles County Jail, New York City’s Riker’s Island and Cook County Jail in Chicago. It seems we have moved from warehousing patients in state mental institutions to warehousing them in jails instead.

The Cook County sheriff, Tom Dart, says, “The prisons and jails have become the new asylums.”

Dart went on to describe how mentally ill prisoners are put into a tiny, confined space, sometimes with another mentally ill cellmate who may or may not be violent. The confinement and lack of stimuli can cause inmates mental state to deteriorate further or exacerbate existing symptoms like depression and psychosis.

“Not treating people with mental illness is bad enough,” Dart said. “But treating them like criminals? What have we become?”

How do the mentally ill fare in Ohio jails? Ohio is now considered a model for the country for providing mental health care behind bars. Following a 1993 class action lawsuit claiming that the care of prisoners with serious mental illness was constitutionally inadequate, sweeping reforms were instituted in the state’s prison system. These included the establishment of Residual Treatment Units (RTU’s) to provide care and supervision for inmates who required special housing separate from the general prison population. Individualized treatment plans are developed for each inmate and in extreme cases they may be moved to the Oakwood Correctional facility for short term stabilization. Ohio is one of only twelve states that has a prison psychiatric hospital. At Oakwood inmates are treated like patients rather than prisoners.

Ohio should be proud of the efforts it has made to provide treatment for mentally ill inmates but our goal must be to provide psychiatric care for the mentally ill in our communities so they don’t end up in prison in the first place.

One such effort to do this is provided by Netcare, serving Franklin, Jackson, Delaware, Fairfield, Hocking, Ross, Fayette, Licking, Madison, Pickaway, and Union Counties. It provides assessment services for the courts to determine the proper disposition for arrestees. Offenders with a mental health disorder are referred for supervised treatment rather than incarceration.

Similarly, Sheriff Drew Alexander, of Ohio’s Summit County took action last year by implementing a new policy which requires violent, mentally ill arrestees to be treated at a hospital or mental health clinic before being referred to the county jail.

“We’re not going to be a dumping ground anymore for these people,” Sheriff Alexander said.

Once released from our jails or prisons, many mentally ill face the same challenges as those discharged from psychiatric hospitals. Homelessness is often one of the main reasons for the high recidivism rate among ex-felons.

Reggie Wilkinson, Fmr. Director of the Ohio Department of Corrections said, “Any person released from prison who does not have a pretty good support system, including stable housing, will have a difficult time staying out of prison. Most stop taking their medication fairly soon after being returned to the community.”

Bridgeview Manor, a residential facility for the severely mentally ill in Ashtabula, Ohio is home to sixteen adult men, most of whom are schizophrenic. It is a residential home in Ohio that provides a place to live and on-site mental health treatment and case management for both indigent clients and ex-felons. More such facilities are needed for the thousands of inmates awaiting release back into the community.

Clearly this situation will continue to be a problem until funding is made available to provide adequate community mental health services. Sadly it appears that this is a population that people don’t care about and so the resources are not there in our communities to care for them humanely.

Home

“It’s tough when you go home because if you‘ve lived all those other places, 

and had all those different experiences, it’s hard to relate to the people you 

grew up with…You can’t unsee what you have seen, unlearn what you have 

learned. The only way to live entirely at ease with one’s hometown is never

to have left”  (The Little Way of Ruthie Leming). 

My husband and I recently took a road trip back to the town of Peekskill in the Hudson River Valley region of upstate New York where my grandparents had lived. I spent almost every summer there growing up and moved back with my family when I entered high school. The visit was a bittersweet experience.

Trying to recapture what I felt at seventeen is not possible. You can have those experiences and those memories for the first time only once. I had been seduced by my own yearning to return to a sense of roots and connection with my family and my home. It was not possible. Not only was I not that person anymore, my home was not the same either. We had both changed and become something different.

Is this why Thomas Wolf said, “You can’t go home again”? Borrowing from his stream of thought on the subject I would say:

I can’t go back home to my family, back home to my childhood, back home to summers and the illusion that the sun is standing still and the future is keeping its distance, back home to evenings of three generations on the front porch glider listening to crickets chirping, back home to one's youthful idea of falling in love, to adolescent moments of pure groupness, those rare, but exquisite times when it feels like everyone is equal and respected and liked, back home to a time when I fit perfectly in my little piece of the world, back home to a young girls dreams of a life of purpose and meaning, to becoming a nurse and to that being enough, back home to belief in forever after.

Nostalgia is defined as pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again. That seems to describe in part what I was feeling on this visit.

C.S. Lewis reminds us that this longing inside us that pierces the heart with such exquisite pain- what we call Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence - are all only cheats. He says in the Weight of Glory, “These things that have captured our hearts have done so because the Romance was calling to us through them; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. It was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.”

What was it that I was longing for? What was stirred in me by this visit home? It had to have been more than just a desire to recapture experiences from my past. Some of those memories I had romanticized. In my mind I made them better and more appealing than they really had been. Even so, they still had the power to stir something in me. As I think about it now, those poignant memories were in reality pointing to something else. Something I could not even name, much less describe. It was like trying to describe the face of God.

Again, I turn to C.S. Lewis for his take on this. He says, “Apparently our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be united with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”

Here then perhaps is an understanding of what I have been feeling about my visit home. It’s not just that I wanted to recapture something special from another time, even if that were possible, but that the image in my mind of home awakened in me a longing for something much deeper.

I’ve heard Christians say we want to merge with the Other; to be one with God. ‘Christ in me the hope of glory.’ These all sound so mystical, but I think they touch on something about this deeper longing.

Standing on the corner of Orchard Street and North Division in front of my old house, I realized I didn’t belong there anymore. Now I understand it was not just because I had changed and my home was not the same, but because it never was what I was longing for in the first place- just a whisper of it.

Grecian Recollections: A Short Story

I woke at six with a feeling of vague unease, as if my mind were struggling free from the last clinging threads of a bad dream. I had slept fitfully, tossing and turning most of the night. Fully awake now, I slowly oriented myself to my surroundings. I was in fact not at home, as my dream state had led me to believe. I was instead lying in a narrow bunk bed in the economical inside cabin of a stateroom aboard the MTS Renaissance on a 7-day cruise of the Greeks Isles with my sister and a teacher friend of hers, named Cindy.

By the time I had my first cup of coffee and walked out on deck, the unease I had awakened with had faded. I found myself thinking of my first trip to Greece fifteen years earlier. Memories collided in my mind spawning both pleasant and painful associations.

Any visit to Greece would resurrect thoughts of my former boyfriend John, a classics major at Fordham University, and of his Svengali influence in my life when I was in my early twenties. The relationship had ended painfully, but I was grateful for the crash course he gave me on the history and culture of ancient Greece, especially the myths of this land. I learned about the battle of Thermopylae, Pericles and Homer. John was a born teacher and he made those ancient heroes and battles come alive. I was particularly fascinated by the legends of Heracles and Oedipus, the abduction of Zeus’ daughter Persephone by Hades, the god-king of the underworld, and of the Minotaur- the offspring of the union between a woman and a bull.

Putting all further thoughts of the past aside, I excitedly prepared to disembark at our first port of call for the day, the island of Santorini. It is a place steeped in mythology. Many believe it is the location for Plato’s story about the lost civilization of Atlantis which disappeared without a trace, sunk into the sea supposedly by the anger of the gods. More likely the legend arose in connection with the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of Santorini during the Minoan period.

Of all the islands in the Aegean, Santorini is, in my opinion, the most extraordinary. To reach it we sailed into a strange enclosed bay surrounded by sheer cliffs topped by gleaming white villages that resembled snow-capped mountains. The effect was dramatic and spectacular. The beauty of this place must depend on light and line. When dawn comes the light is instant and brilliant against the starkness of the volcanic earth. Yet it has an uncanny fascination of its own. It has rightly been called the black pearl of the Aegean. We have been told that the sunsets here are among the most amazing aesthetic experiences that the Aegean can provide. We unfortunately will not get to judge for ourselves, as we will have sailed on to Crete by late afternoon.

The island didn’t have a cruise terminal. Instead we were tendered ashore by small boats and then conveyed up a steeply cut stone staircase by donkey, ascending high above the blue Aegean to the town of Thia.

This unorthodox conveyance was quite terrifying since these “beasts of burden” kept slipping on their own copious deposits of excrement dropped over countless prior treks up this same path. I hung onto mine for dear life. His loud incessant braying sounded like the anguished wheezing of a dying creature. To distract myself from looking over the precipice, and certain death should I fall, I tried to recall my favorite impressions of our time spent in Athens a few days before we sailed.

However, instead of focusing on the amazing sight of the Parthenon sitting majestically high above the city like a beacon drawing all eyes to her beauty, I recalled instead the deafening noise of the city. Athen’s streets were substantially noisier to my ear than New York's because of the ubiquitous motorcycles and the incessant horn-blowing. Traffic is anarchic, cars simply drive over curbs and motorcycles wanting to pass weave through pedestrians on the sidewalks. The air pollution is suffocating due to the lack of any vehicle emissions control laws, but people seemed completely oblivious to it. Gone was the romanticism from my former visit.

When I was here before with John, we stayed in a tiny pension on a side street off of the wide Syngrou Avenue. The neighborhood was lined with small shops: a butcher, a vegetable market, a TV and appliance store, and a laundry. Sandwiched in between were the quintessential Greek icon stores with rows upon rows of saints on display. The more expensive ones had ornate gilt frames with semi precious stones embedded in them. Women tended to buy them and faithfully lit incense in from of them in their homes.

John said this practice dated back to Byzantine iconoclasm. Now it just seemed depressing to me, dead idols demanding propitiation like a child's desperate attempts to please a remote, angry parent.

John and I often had heated debates about our faith. He was a staunch Irish Catholic, I was German Baptist. I never understood how anyone could believe so emphatically in a religion of hollow rituals and ostentatious ceremonies. Still, I kept the small medal of the Madonna he had given me, which he said had been blessed by the Pope when he did a semester of study in Rome.

Back in the moment, I vowed never to ride on any four-footed beast again. I found a lovely taverna to soothe my nerves with a cool drink.

All over Greece tables are traditionally set out in a plaza under shady thick-trunked old plane trees. The sun shone through the branches while the wine flowed. We enjoyed a simple but delicious meal of bread with humus and tzatziki (yogurt, cucumber and garlic dip) with a large salad of slices of onion, ripe juicy tomato, cucumber, olives and thick chunks of feta. There was music and laughter as villagers and tourists alike sat eating, joking and gossiping. The was even a goat tethered in the yard behind us. I felt like I had fallen into a scene from Zorba the Greek.

After a lovely half day of browsing in the shops and soaking in the cliffside view of the cauldera, we set sail again for yet another jewel in the Aegean.

I can't help but wonder what it would be like to live here suspended among the clouds?

War

“War, what is it good for?” This was the question asked by the blatant anti-Vietnam War protest song produced by Motown in 1969. It seemed appropriate for what I want to explore here. (Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine claims this was Tolstoy’s original title for War and Peace? But I digress). Is war ever good for anything? According to the song the answer to the question is “absolutely nothing.” This was certainly the sentiment held by many, myself included, during those turbulent times with regard to this particular war. But is there such a thing as a just war? Was Vietnam wrong, but WWII wasn’t? And if so, what constitutes a good war?

Many times we hear that war is wrong from a "Christian" perspective, because it breaks the commandment that says "Thou shalt not murder." Such an absolute statement creates obvious problems. For example, what does a Christian do in the case of being attacked by another nation or, as is currently the case, by a group of people bent on destroying our country?

It was the great church father Augustine of Hippo who first sought to give some specificity to a definition of a just war. In fact, his position, which he articulated in the early Fifth Century, has long been the Church’s traditional definition of a just war. Augustine held that a just war must have five components. A just war:

(1) Must be waged for self-defense, rather than conquest, plunder, or political oppression;

(2) Must be initiated by the proper authority, i.e., lawful government, rather than an angry mob, etc.

(3) Must be fought with the right intention: peace. It should not be fought to gain land, power, wealth, etc.

(4) Must have a reasonable chance for success.

(5) Must use means proportionate to the goal. If the goal of a war is to liberate an oppressed people, for example, it makes no sense to destroy all their cities in the process, or to bring them under further subjection.

Unfortunately, throughout the Middle Ages, as demonstrated especially by the Crusades, Augustine’s definition was usually not followed. European governments, all of which considered themselves Christian realms, routinely waged war against one another, and rarely for the purposes of self-defense. Even the Pope had a standing army, and he, too, invaded other nations.

Because of the endless European warring, and even more because of the teaching of Scripture, Martin Luther saw few valid reasons to go to war. For him self-defense and the restoration of peace were the only valid reasons to go to war, and even then war had to be begun with great deliberation.

If we look at the various wars America has been in how would they stack up with Augustine’s criteria? Let’s start with the American Revolution. It certainly was not waged for self-defense (no one was attacking us). After years of boycotts and protests in the colonies in response to British taxes and regulations, angry mobs stirred up by the inflamed rhetoric of the Sons of Liberty, took matters into their own hands in bloody skirmishes with the British. Wasn’t this against Augustine’s #2 criteria? (Reading about this time in our history I am struck by how familiar the themes are to our bipartisan bickering today and the American people’s complaints about taxes and government regulations!) Eventually, in the spring of 1775 British troop’s encountered colonial militia in the village of Lexington and that famous shot rang out. Though the source of the shot is unknown, it touched off eight years of war. The question is, were war, revolution, hatred and bloodshed the best way to achieve our independence? How would Gandhi have suggested we go about rectifying taxation without representation?

What about the Civil War? Some people think that the main agenda of this war was to free the slaves. But in reality this was a secondary consideration. The main reason was the preservation of the union. This seems to me to be in opposition to criteria #3- “Must be fought with the right intention: peace.” It should not be fought to gain land, power, wealth, etc. Who knows if it would have been so bad to have had a divided country? Europe does it with the European commonwealth. We know the approach Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have advocated we take- he modeled it throughout the civil rights movement of the 60’s. Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael of course represent the militant approach to righting injustice. Who is right?

What about WWII, considered by most to be the epitome of the “just war?” The Second World War was a global military conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945. It involved most of the world's nations, including all of the great powers. It was the most widespread war in history, marked by the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare. It was the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities.

It is a popular misconception among Americans that the US voluntarily entered WW2, at least against the Germans. In fact, the US didn't. Although the US was leaning towards involvement in WWII, many people still saw it as a "European" conflict. That changed on Sunday, Dec. 7 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. A good portion of the US Navy was destroyed. The sunken ship Arizona still remains there today. The emotional reaction to Pearl Harbor was very similar to the feelings most Americans had after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center: Shock and disbelief followed by anger. The US entered the general war as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the US entered against Japan and did not, repeat not, declare war on Germany. However, a few days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the US, thereby putting an end to the US dilemma. Whether the Americans would have declared war on Germany had not Hitler made the decision for them is one of the great unanswered questions of history. Probably the US would have entered the war against Germany, but possibly not on the scale that it did, and almost certainly not with Germany being given priority over Japan. But nobody will ever know for sure. So it would seem that WWII was justified under the criteria of self-defense.

Other wars in America’s history clearly fail to meet Augustine’s criteria. We undertook the war in Vietnam to support the South Vietnamese in their fight against the North. We ended up with the longest war in American history and the devastation of the Vietnamese homeland. If the reasons for going to war are things like keeping the world safe for democracy by stopping the spread of communism and protecting the American way of life (Korean War) or toppling “evil” dictatorships who also supposedly had weapons of mass destruction (Iraq), are these legitimate motives?

But what about moral causes like freeing the slaves, defeating Hitler, getting rid of Saddam Husain, coming to the aid of Rwanda (I know we didn’t- but shouldn’t we have?) and Bosnia? In other words, isn’t it a noble and just cause to come to the aid of the oppressed? To free the captives and end tyranny?

One of my favorite Christian authors is Catherine Marshall, late wife of Peter Marshall, the famous Scottish-American preacher and Chaplain of the United States Senate. She had something to say about this: “Jesus chose God’s way to deal with the iniquity He loathed. Judas Iscariot wanted his Master to use the world’s technique by rebelling against Rome. Judas, the classic revolutionary, wanted armed political rebellion against the godless forces of Rome. Jesus deliberately refused, thereby telling us for all time, “No, the end does not justify the means.” He chose instead God’s way of changing men’s hearts, minds and lives via the cross. Certainly we cannot ‘love righteousness’ and ‘hate iniquity’ and then use any of iniquities techniques. Those who recognize in Jesus of Nazareth the First Rebel, see equally that his weapons were never those of unrighteousness. He will never allow us to do evil with the claim that it’s to achieve justice or right.”

This would seem to speak to America’s use of torture and other strategies of war which are so controversial. For example, the German’s introduced poison gas in WWI. It soon became used by both sides, though it never proved decisive in winning a battle. Its effects were brutal, causing slow and painful death, and poison gas became one of the most-feared and best-remembered horrors of that war.

No easy answers, but a topic worth thinking about since world peace doesn’t seem to be on the horizon any time soon.

Homelessness in the Wild West

Wagon Train Oregon Trail

(Article published in Street Speech by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless) 

When we think of the Wild West, we usually think of cowboys and Indians, Buffalo Bill and shoot-outs at the O.K. corral. In other words, we tend to romanticize this period in our nation’s history. 

Real life at this time was not like the movies.  Real life was generally much harder, much duller, hotter and dustier.  It had little of the glamour depicted by Hollywood.  There were gunfighters, but shoot outs were few and far between and rarely occurred as a face to face standoff.  Being shot in the back was a much more likely scenario.  There certainly were cowboys, though it was a very hard, unglamorous life.  There definitely were Indians, and yes, they were called “Indians,” not the “politically correct” term “Native Americans.”  What we don’t usually picture when we think of the Wild West is paupers and panhandlers, yet both were very much a part of the Western frontier.

Recessions, like wars, have always been an integral part of American history and both have always been major contributors to homelessness. Shortly after our War of Independence, the nation witnessed the first in a series of depressions that have caused tremendous economic havoc. One of the worst was the 1837 crisis and the six-year depression that followed. This was a formidable financial meltdown, even by today’s standards. The origins of the panic were risky speculative lending practices in western states, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble and erratic American banking policy. Wages throughout America fell by 30-50 percent. There were no unemployment figures kept at the time, of course, but had there been, they would have been horrific. All of this sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it? History has a way of repeating itself.

Public demonstrations by out of work residents of Boston, Philadelphia and New York City brought out hundreds of thousands of people in 1839 and 1840.  Making conditions even more critical was the arrival of a massive wave of poor immigrants, many from the Irish potato famine.  Major port cities in the east became a hub for the growing concentration of the unemployed and the homeless, greatly taxing public resources.  

Thus the economic hardship in the east became the major motivation for those making the long, often arduous journey west.  The first wagon trains of pioneers headed westward in 1841 along the overland trails- the most famous was the Oregon Trail.  They were in search of cheap land and a better life.    

People looked to the West, specifically California Territory and Oregon Territory, as though it were a biblical “Promised Land.”  Even the farmers of relatively economically unharmed Midwestern and Plains regions felt the wanderlust and started selling out or abandoning their homes and farms to get in on the westward migration. 

       

Then in 1848 gold was discovered in California and thousands of young men set out to make their fortune.
Most of these fortune hunters left for California in 1849 and were therefore known as the “49ers.” Those lucky enough to arrive first were able to find nuggets of gold in the streambeds and made quick fortunes. The gold was literally free for the taking. Yet the majority of those who made the trek out West were not so lucky, especially those who arrived late.

In addition to the lure of gold, others headed west to join crews building America’s railroads.  Both of these opportunities to make money brought waves of Chinese immigrants to America in the mid-1800’s.  They brought with them the habit of opium smoking.  Opium dens, places where opium was sold and smoked, soon sprang up in the alleys of San Francisco’s Chinatown and the Barbary Coast district. 

San Francisco 1849

San Francisco was initially just a way station for picking up supplies on the way to the gold-filled foothills.  In this wide-open town every kind of vice was catered to in the numerous brothels, saloons, dance halls, gambling houses and opium dens.  Lawlessness was rampant.  Prospectors who came into town from the gold fields could lose their fortunes in a flash in a game of cards or find themselves assaulted and robbed in a back alley.

Surprisingly, some of California’s first millionaires made their wealth, not in gold, but in selling supplies to the prospectors.  When the hordes began to flood the city prices on everything rose astronomically.  Eggs could cost $50.00 a dozen and blankets sold for anywhere from $40.00-$100.00.  But just like the unpredictability of the miners striking it rich, it was the luck of the draw for these merchants too.  Some were wiped out by disastrous fires that swept through rows of hastily constructed wooden buildings. In less than two years the city burned to the ground six times.  

As the city of San Francisco grew in population, so did the ranks of the homeless.   The city went from a population of a few hundred in the 1840’s to over 20,000 by 1850.  Alcohol and drugs, particularly opium, were readily available creating a subculture of addicts.  Others became beggars after having failed to strike it rich in the gold fields. They were left penniless after spending everything they had getting to California and buying their mining supplies.  Still others blew whatever they made in panning for gold in riotous living.  Panhandling became a way of life- a life we see again years later among many of today’s homeless.

Sadly, the Civil War seemed to be the saving grace of many of these destitute homeless.  It provided an opportunity for work for many unemployed, rootless, poor and homeless men.  Once it was over, however, its aftermath produced a huge new wave of destitute, displaced and dispossessed people. They included wounded war veterans, freed slaves, and widows and orphans.  The need for assistance was now beyond the capacity of local governments and charity organizations and the federal government became an actor now for the first time in helping the homeless.

Again, the end of the war encouraged many to venture West in search of land, work on the railroads and jobs as cowboys in the cattle industry, which in the late 1860’s started to drive cattle to new railheads for mass distribution.  By the turn of the century most of the opportunities for easy to find work on the frontier were gone.  The railroads were built, the gold rush had ended, the land fenced and in many places the transient cowboy was replaced by the permanent rancher.

Homelessness in Colonial America

"Sturdy Beggars"

(Article published in Street Speech by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless) 

The problem of homelessness in America is not new.  As a matter of fact it is as old as the settling of the country by the colonists.  Just like today, people became homeless for a variety of reasons and stayed homeless for varying lengths of time during America’s first two centuries.  The first arrivals in the New World came from a broad cross section of English society and included many of England’s wandering homeless, vagrants, criminals, the mentally ill and misfits of all sorts.  Intent on increasing the population of the new colonies, English officials routinely offered criminals the choice of boarding ships headed for America as an alternative to going to prison.  Thus the potential was there from the beginning for the problem of homelessness to be introduced into the colonies by some of the new arrivals.  Many knew no other way of life and were ill equipped for survival on their own.  But not all new arrivals were reprobates.  Some who came were mountain men, hunters, trappers, and fur traders.  The movie Jeremiah Johnson accurately depicts this type of rugged individualist.  Others were seeking freedom, especially religious freedom or land and a chance at a better life.

 

The colonists needed hard workers to tame the wilderness.  Trees had to be felled, houses built, and land cleared for farming.  A strong community spirit quickly developed where everyone pulled together for the common good.  Those who were not willing to pitch in and do their part were called “sturdy beggars,” an English term for those who were fit and able to work, but begged or wandered for a living instead.  Since taking care of them put a serious strain on the meager resources of new communities, they were mostly left to fend for themselves and often starved or froze to death. 

As the colonies became self-governing communities, they enacted laws to keep order, levied taxes to generate revenue, and elected officials to manage town affairs.  Early welfare practices were modeled on the English Poor Laws enacted by the British. This included cash assistance known as “outdoor relief.”  Those eligible were usually long- time members of the community who had experienced a personal calamity like an injury, a long-term illness or the death of the family breadwinner.  The elderly, widows and orphans were also looked after.  Because local communities had to pay a special poor tax in order to provide this relief, assistance was neither generous nor frequent.  

Just as colonists believed they had a duty to care for their neighbors in need, they also believed they had the right to refuse aid to “outsiders.”  This led to the common practice of “warning out.”  It consisted of a notice ordered by the Board of Selectmen of a town, and served by the constable upon any newcomer who was likely to become dependent on town resources.  Communities thereby pressured or coerced undesirables to settle elsewhere or wander from colony to colony in search of aid.  The first “warning out” was recorded on June 6, 1654 in Plymouth Colony.  

As more and more settlements were established, skirmishes erupted.  As early as 1675 there was an Indian uprising known as King Philips War.  The effects of warfare quickly became the biggest cause of homelessness in colonial America.  It was a major consequence of the French and Indian Wars of 1756-63 and later, the American Revolution.  The classic, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, is a story about the conflict between the French and the English that takes place in colonial America.  It paints a visceral picture of this period in history.  It was not a safe time for homesteaders living in isolation in the wilderness.  When war forced them to flee their homes they usually lost everything.

Another contributing factor to homelessness at this time was the economy.  What early colonial prosperity there was resulted from trapping and trading in furs. In addition, fishing was a primary source of wealth in Massachusetts and from 1612 tobacco was grown in Virginia. But throughout the colonies, people lived primarily on small farms and were self-sufficient.  If crops failed or market prices on commodities fell, hard times followed.  The colonial economy suffered one such downturn in the 1720’s and 30’s which led to a rise in the homeless population. 

Immigration of poor people to the colonies also led to a rise in homelessness.  Immigrants often arrived penniless, having spent their savings on the trip to America.  Many also arrived sick and could not find work.  Some cities, like Philadelphia, responded by passing a law allowing local authorities to expel arriving indigent immigrants.  In 1719 the arrival of hundreds of improvised Scotch-Irish refugees led authorities In Boston to order one ship of immigrants to leave the community at once. 

While the “wandering poor” could be found throughout the colonies, it was in the cities where they were most conspicuous.  Some cities established workhouses where inmates could be whipped if they refused to work or they were put in jail and subjected to hard labor.  In the colony of New York it was customary to inflict various types of corporeal punishment on convicted vagrants, including stockades, pillory, ear-cropping, and branding.  The Puritan work ethic supported this punitive approach to vagrancy, a view which was strangely at odds with the Puritan belief that charitable giving was a religious duty with no distinction made between the deserving and undeserving poor. 

Boston passed an act requiring their homeless to be ‘bound out’ to families needing laborers or servants.  This was a form of indentured servitude dating back to the early years of the American colonies. Workers or servants were not paid wages, but received food and shelter and clothing instead. All of these approaches were based on the belief at the time that the “idle poor” were unlikely to work unless forced to do so.  Public policies like these kept the growth of homelessness, for the most part, within manageable proportions. 

Prior to 1700 homelessness was considered a minor problem in the colonies.  Compared with many parts of Europe where the number of beggars in rural areas reached massive proportions, itinerant beggars here were not yet a serious problem.  The growth of homelessness in urban areas was much more significant, but even in our most populous cities like Boston, Philadelphia and New York, they did not compare to London or Paris.  Homelessness in young America would not become a significant problem until well into the next century.  

Homelessness and Addiction: A Double Jeopardy Explored

(Article published in Street Speech by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless)

I grew up in New York City where my father was a fireman. My first exposure to the homeless was at around the age of twelve when my father took me with him to the Bowery Mission. He, along with other firemen and policemen, belonged to the Christian Alliance of Policemen and Firemen. They served meals and presented the gospel to the homeless alcoholics who came into the mission for sustenance, and perhaps a bit of human compassion.

The Bowery area of lower Manhattan reminded me of a wasteland buried in a corner of an otherwise vibrant, thriving city. As I think of it now, the images it evokes are of broad streets, empty of traffic on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Only when you looked for them, or when pointed out to you, did you notice the bodies slouched in doorways, most clutching bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. They were so still; as if props placed there for a movie set depicting the morning after some invisible plague had struck. This was the face of homelessness I saw back in the sixties and it had a strong impact on me.

Has this image changed over the past decades? I think we would all agree that it has. Today the face of homelessness has expanded to include men and women of all ages who have been released from psychiatric hospitals and have “fallen between the cracks” of our current community mental health system. It also includes young Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans- men and women, who are now joining the Vietnam-era veterans who are still homeless. Families have increasingly become homeless due to the current economic recession. Children who have run away from home for various reasons and sometimes women escaping from abusive situations also contribute to the new face of homelessness. In other words, there are as many reasons for homelessness as there are homeless people.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the fact that substance abuse continues to be the most significant problem connected to modern homelessness. Drug and alcohol abuse can cause people to fall into homelessness but the struggle to stay alive on the street often drives homeless people to drugs and alcohol. It’s a chicken and egg scenario.

A 2008 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors asked 25 cities for their top three causes of homelessness. Substance abuse was the single largest cause of homelessness for single adults (reported by 68% of cities). Substance abuse was also mentioned by 12% of cities as one of the top three causes of homelessness for families.

Emergency shelters, soup kitchens and job training help the homeless to regain their independence. But it is critical to develop resources with the focus of resolving not just homelessness, but addiction as well.

Public perception concerning homelessness and addiction is also a problem. Both are issues that do not elicit much public sympathy. For many people, providing support to homeless individuals who use drugs is counter-intuitive. This negative bias coupled with the economic disadvantages of people suffering through both homelessness and addiction can make it difficult or impossible to seek and obtain proper help. With resources already stretched thin in most communities, homeless people with addiction problems are generally not a priority.

Street Speech helps change that negative bias by providing public education about the complex issues of homelessness. It also puts a human face to an otherwise impersonal societal issue. Vendors connect with their customers and share a bit of themselves over time so that they both come away with an appreciation and respect for each other. I felt the same way about the exchanges at the soup kitchen in the Bowery with my father and the homeless he was there to serve.

Gaining a Perspective on Current Politics and World Affairs: Why I Don’t Take Things So Seriously

I “came of age” in the tumultuous 60’s.  I don’t believe politics had any impact on me at all at this time.  I was totally self-absorbed, as most teenagers are, and dealing with angst of adolescence and adjusting to a new high school.  Events like the building of the Berlin Wall, astronaut John H. Glenn’s orbit of the earth, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, the escalation of the war in Viet Nam were all momentous times in our history.  They surely rival current events with the election of our first black President, the ongoing unrest in the Middle East and the assassination of the US Ambassador, and three other Americans in Libya. But I have no recollection of discussing them over the dinner table with my parents, hearing about them in school or watching them over and over again on the nightly news.  In fact I never read a newspaper and rarely watched the evening news on TV back then.  I must confess I was totally unaware of (and probably would not have cared) what was going on in the larger world around me.  Such things as the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and the first successful heart transplant went unnoticed by me.  What I do remember was when the Beatles stormed America and appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show."  I was shocked and saddened by the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy (I remember going to view his body at St. Patrick’s Cathedral).  I also remember watching Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon and the coverage of Woodstock-"Three Days of Peace and Love" that drew hundreds of thousands to a farm in upstate New York (I was on the wrong coast at the time).  Even though I was of voting age during these years, I don’t remember ever doing so.

The decade of the 70’s I think mirrors current events on the world stage- the antiwar movement with riots on college campuses and a huge protest march on Washington, legalization of abortion by the Supreme Court, the Arab oil embargo which caused severe shortages and skyrocketing energy prices, and the economy in the worst recession in forty years.  Several scandals during this decade seem eerily similar to the current intrigue with Libya. The Pentagon papers scandal in 1971 involved the unauthorized release of a 7000 page document to the press. The papers were top secret US Department of Defense documents pertaining to the US involvement in the Vietnam War spanning a period of 1945 to 1971, commissioned by the Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. Daniel Ellsberg, a worker with this department leaked the ultra-secret information to the New York Times when he became disillusioned with the role played by the US in the war.

The Watergate scandal, however, is probably the most infamous political scandal that US has ever witnessed. It left such a long lasting impression on the collective consciousness of the American public that ‘Watergate’ became synonymous with scandal. The Watergate scandal was basically a botched bid to re-elect the then president Richard Nixon to office in the approaching elections.  Five former CIA operatives and a former NY district attorney broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters on May 27, 1972.  The men tapped phones, photographed documents and indulged in shadow practices.  A second break in attempt was spotted by a vigilant security guard who called in the Washington police. The five men were arrested and with their arrest, subsequent investigation began to unravel what was one of the worst scandals that the US had ever seen.  The President’s involvement in the affair was proved beyond doubt by tapes which had recorded his private conversations with top ranking officials of the government. Coming on the heels of a complete denial by the President of any knowledge of the affair, these tapes sealed his fate. Faced with imminent impeachment, Richard Nixon was left with no choice but to resign as President of the United States on August 9, 1974.  The scandal is also well known for the mystery source that fed the investigative Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, most of the critical information. The unidentified source was simply known as the ‘Deep Throat’.  It was an era of social and political upheaval (aren’t we hearing the same said about this present era?).

There was upheaval in my life during these years too.  I married an alcoholic, gave birth to my son Jason, divorced and became a single mother, got caught up in the drug culture for a brief time, and started nursing school in Los Angeles-again (3rd time is a charm).  No wonder I had only a passing interest in world events and still didn’t bother to vote.

The 1980’s were known as the “Me” generation of status seekers. During this decade hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and mega-mergers spawned a new breed of billionaire. Personalities like Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley epitomized the meteoric rise and fall of the rich and famous. “If you've got it, flaunt it” and “Shop Till you Drop” became watchwords of the day. Cocaine was the drug of choice and disco clubs like Studio 54 became famous for the hedonistic lifestyle of the decade. The sexual revolution, ushered in during the 60’s, with its dictum of free sex, led to the AIDS epidemic, devastating the gay community. The decade began with double-digit inflation, and high unemployment. The Iran-Contra Affair (86-87) had all the earmarks of the current Libyan embassy scandal. This scandal took place when Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Many of the murkier details of the scandal are still hidden thanks to a thorough hush up job by loyal Reagan officials and it is still not clear to what extent the President’s complicity goes in the affair.  The scandal revolved around the arms-for-hostages deal which the US government allegedly arranged with some politically influential Iranian groups. The plan was to facilitate the safe return of US hostages who were being held in Iran by terrorists. The profits from these deals were going into funding the Nicaraguan contras, for whom President Reagan had expressed support earlier.  Although a direct link was never established connecting the President with the dealings, critics believe that the orders did come from high up in the line of command and that Reagan was in the know all the while. The President did publicly accept moral responsibility for all the dealings even though he was ‘unaware’ of them.  An investigative committee was appointed by Reagan himself, which, understandably, declared him innocent.  On a more positive note, at the very end of the decade the Berlin Wall came down!

I spent the decade getting serious about parenting and building my career. I watched the news more but was not greatly affected by it. I was making enough money to live comfortably for the first time and I was enjoying my life. I was living first in Boston with a childhood friend, after purchasing our apt. when it went condo, and later in a lovely house in Great Barrington in the beautiful Berkshire Mountains in Western Mass. As the decade came to an end, I remarried. I seemed to have reigned in my inner demons enough to live a less chaotic lifestyle and I was beginning to see that my life could be stable- financially and emotionally. As I think about it, I have never been afraid of a downturn in the economy or of being unemployed. I never gave much thought to what politicians in Washington were up to either.

The 90’s are known as the electronic age with the birth of the World Wide Web in 1992 changing forever how we communicate. Other highlights in the 1990's included the United States playing the role of world policeman, sometimes alone but more often in alliances. The decade began with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the resultant Gulf War. In 1993, war was in the African country of Somalia, as television images of starving children led to an attempt to oust the warlord, General Mohamed Farrah Aidid. By September, 1994, the U.S. was once again sending troops to a foreign country to overthrow a military dictatorship, this time in Haiti. In 1996 about 20,000 American troops were deployed to Bosnia as part of a NATO peace keeping force. In late March 1999, the U.S. joined NATO in air strikes against Yugoslavia in an effort to halt the Yugoslavian government's policy of ethnic cleansing in its province of Kosovo. The decade was to end much as it began with U.S. forces deployed in many countries, and the U.S. playing arbitrator, enforcer, and peace keeper throughout the world.

On the domestic front the big issues were health care, social security reform, and gun control - debated and unresolved throughout the whole decade. Violence and sex scandals dominated the media throughout the decade. President Clinton’s sexual misconduct led the pack, especially the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The country was shocked by the blatant perjury that the President had committed by lying under oath after the evidence was made public. He narrowly escaped impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. Incidence of violence included riots in South-Central Los Angeles after four white policemen were acquitted of video-taped assault charges for beating a black motorist, Rodney King, a bomb was detonated in the garage beneath the World Trade Center, the trial of football hero, O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her male friend, Ron Goldman pitted whites against blacks when he was acquitted, the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, and a disturbing rise in school shootings, the most lethal of which was at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. On the positive side, the booming economy led to record low unemployment and the stock market reached an all-time high as individuals learned to buy and trade via the Internet.

Personally, my career reached an all-time high too when I was appointed Director of Patient Services at the Austen Riggs Center. My second marriage threatened to end as badly as my first until a move to Little Rock and some counseling and a recovery program gave us both a new lease on our relationship. So once again, personal issues took precedence in my life and world events were only of mild concern.

The New Millennium began with Y2K fears proving to be unfounded and George W. Bush taking over the Presidency. On Sept. 11, 2011 Al Qaeda terrorists crash three planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Other significant events included the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan to Iraq with the subsequent scandal over faulty Intel. Sound familiar? 2007-2008 is notable for the election of Barack Obama as America’s first black President and the financial crisis, considered by many economists to be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It resulted in the threat of total collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market also suffered, resulting in evictions, foreclosures and prolonged unemployment. I had begun to vote at last, but never enthusiastically. I didn’t believe it meant much or would really change things for the better in America or the world.

Political corruption may be defined as bribery, graft, extortion, robbery, patronage, nepotism, cronyism, conflict of interest and kickbacks. Political corruption in particular has a long history in America dating back to before the American Revolution. Ethically questionable behaviors have haunted American politics from the time Europeans settled the country. With the availability of land, bribery and graft led to highly unethical practices. Royal governors and officials used their positions to enrich themselves and Colonial merchants ignored tariff duties and mercantile regulations. The taming of corruption was a major feature of the federal Constitution of 1787.

By the early nineteenth century, governmental contracts provided possibilities for official malfeasance. For example, fraud, corruption and greed in the Bureau of Indian Affairs was rampant in the 1800’s. Agents accepted bribes from companies with licenses to trade on the reservations of many Native American tribes. The scandals of the Ulysses S. Grant presidency are legendary. One such scandal involved Grant’s brother-in-law. In 1869 speculators Jim Fisk and Jay Gould attempted to corner the nation’s gold market. They enlisted the help of Grant’s brother-in-law, who had pledged to prevent the President from acting to ruin the scheme. The scandal became known as Black Friday.

Another was the Credit Mobilier scandal. A dummy corporation was set up for the completion of the last 600 miles of the transcontinental railway by Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts. The scheme was to have Credit Mobilier, which was entirely controlled by the same people, bill the Union Pacific for the costs of constructing the railroad. There were no other bidders for the work, so UP paid much more than Credit Mobilier spent. As a publicly traded company, Credit Mobilier could point to a record of profits that demonstrated that it was efficient and profitable, so its shares traded at a high price. Ames distributed shares to members of Congress at prices well below market. Those members merely had to sell the stock at market to reap large profits. During the subsequent Congressional investigation, it was found that more than thirty individuals representing both parties had received benefits, including the future president James A. Garfield. Stockholders, as well as the federal government, were bilked out of millions of dollars. Despite the loss of $20 million (a huge sum in the 1870s), no prosecutions ever occurred.

FYI: This type of corruption still goes on, for example, with members of government profiting from insider trading. With public confidence in Congress at an all-time low, a bill was recently introduced (The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge- STOCK- Act), which makes it illegal for members of Congress and their staffs to trade stocks based on inside information learned on the job. The very fact that this bill has been drafted makes it clear that such practices are common.

Here are a few more examples from the past: President Lincoln, at the height of the Civil War, replaced department head Simon Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton because of corruption concerns. The disputed election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, who lost the popular vote but won the presidency with one electoral vote, was the worst political corruption (until the 2000 presidential election). The election season degenerated into the opposing sides launching vicious personal attacks on the opposition candidate- just like today. Is the practice of special interest groups making large donations to campaigns to ensure their candidates victory new to the election process? Think again. In the Presidential Election of 1896, the financial titans of the time period—John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J P Morgan—gave financial support to the Republican Presidential nominee, William McKinley, to defeat Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan, and even threatened their workers with lost jobs and closed down industries if Bryan won. Corruption is not limited to the federal government either. Local governments, such as the infamous Tammany Hall in New York and the Daley political machine in Chicago were corrupt and accepted illegal contributions from business and others.

Sexual scandals are nothing new either. Here are a few highlights from further back in our America’s history: Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, had an affair while he was married to a woman who was also married. He was blackmailed by her husband, forcing Hamilton to confess and tarnishing his career. Thomas Jefferson was accused of fathering the children of his slave. President James Buchanan (D) and future Vice President William Rufus King (D-NC) were the subject of scandalous gossip alleging a homosexual affair in Washington, D.C. for many years. Andrew Jackson referred to them as Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy (1850s). The list goes on and on and on.

Conclusions: There is an old adage that says, “Be careful what you ask for.” The Bible tells us that the leaders of Israel wanted a king like all the other nations had. Samuel the prophet was very upset with their request and asked the Lord for advice. The Lord told him to give them what they requested, “But solemnly warn them about how a king will treat them.” The Lord then goes on to describe the misuse of power, the servitude, and the taxes that would break the people’s backs. He knew what kind of rulers they would have and what sort of government. He ended by saying “You will beg for relief from this king you are demanding, but the Lord will not help you. And so it was and so it still is (I Samuel 8: 4-18).

I do not think it is a coincidence that the end times will be ushered in by the Antichrist coming to power as a political leader! There is nothing new under the sun, what seems so disturbing now with our federal and local government leaders has been done before- many times. We live in a fallen world and it is the nature of politics and politicians to breed corruption.