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?