Some Thoughts on God, and Poison Ivy

I hate mowing grass. In fact when it comes to all things grass-mowing, the only thing that I hate worse than mowing grass is to have a patch of grass that has not been mowed. I hate this because it creates the appearance that the owner of this given patch of grass is so lazy as to be practically non-existent from the point of view of his fellow grass-mowers, who it must be said also hate mowing their grass so much, that they cannot resist squeezing a little pleasure out of it by feeling superior to anyone who dares shrug in the face of agronomical convention and just “let it grow baby.” And, thus, “cuticus ergo sum, (I mow, therefore I am), with apologies to Mr. Descartes.

About the only thing that makes mowing the grass bearable for the 150 minutes or so that I spend each Saturday doing it, is that things tend to occur to me out there that give me pause for thought afterwards. Today for instance, I had a few thoughts about the existence of God, or lack thereof, as illustrated by a poison ivy plant.

It has been wet here for so long that I caught myself staring longingly at a picture of Death Valley last week. Everything in the plant kingdom is very much loving this, and manifesting this happy fact by growing twice as tall, twice as fast. And this includes the poison ivy. In fact, I have had at least one patch of poison ivy lesions on my body every day since late April. And I am not the only one. There was more scratching going on in my last staff meeting than take place in a whole month of games at your average Major League ball park. I think that one of the Department Directors actually engaged in a cup adjustment during his Power Point moment. So when I saw that little three-leaved devil poking its head through a clump of moss today, I began to consider what the existence of such a plant suggests about the existence of a supreme being.

According to monotheistic belief systems, God loves us the most of all the things he created. After all, he even let us name the damn things, and how many of you would let just anyone name your children for you? So that would seem to imply that everything else in the universe would occupy a subordinate position to we homo sapiens, and essentially be placed here for either our delight or our use. And, it must be said that this seems to hold for most things; I guess thanks are in order for the iPod, the sun, the Fender Stratocaster, the fact that you can get a grape to ferment so delightfully, and of course, hardcore pornography. Even George W. Bush was not without usefulness in that he helped expose the religious right as the nutcases they are and also damaged the political future of his smarter and therefore more dangerous brother, Jeb. But, consider the poison ivy plant.

This shiny little dermatological WMD cannot be eaten, woven into cloth, smoked, or used for ornamental purposes. It appears to exist solely to make us miserable and grease the pockets of the companies that produce prednisone and Caladryl. I once knew a guy who burned some of the stuff by mistake, got a little too close to the smoke and, voila, internal lesions! I have heard that you can get it in your EYES for crying out loud! It resists eradication efforts like a Kansas School Board resists science in the classroom. It grows stealthily, among the plants that you actually want to be there, and is so unassuming and humble that you don’t even notice you have been hit with the misery bomb until the scratching starts. Why would a god who loves us above all else invent something like this, and not even give us the courtesy of a warning to steer clear of it? I mean, at least he warned the first couple of us to avoid the fruit of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” right? (Of course, this brings up the question as to why he would not want us to acquire knowledge of good and evil, if he wanted us to pursue the one and avoid the other, but that is a question for another mowing session) And isn’t the arrangement supposed to be that we get hit with nasty maladies after consciously doing something that is enjoyable but sinful? I mean, I get the whole gonorrhea thing. Maybe the logic of it would be apparent to me if only wicked people, like Democrats, the ACLU, Richard Dawkins, and the members of the National Science Foundation were susceptible. I guess that one thing that bugs me is that this seems to violate our contract with the almighty, and nobody appears to know how to reopen negotiations. I mean, Falwell is dead, you know.

One consideration that comes to me is that God may place some importance on the poison ivy plant. Maybe not as much importance as say, a human stem cell, but some modicum of tenderness in the old omnipotent one’s heart. I could accept this I suppose, were it not for the fact that he NEVER EVEN MENTIONS POISON IVY IN HIS ONLY PUBLISHED WORK! Now, in the Bible he sets aside some blood-soaked plot development to express his love for pigs and shellfish (i.e. don’t eat em), sets Sinai up for sanctification by setting part of it on fire before he literally throws the book at Moses, even speaks up for the rights of the sperm cell by severely regulating its use, and so on. Of course he devotes a lot of celestial hard-drive space to his hatreds, e.g. the Hittites, the Babylonians, Baal, Ra, uppity women, menstruating women, the anti-slavery movement, any heterosexual act with someone who actually appeals to you, including…..well, “you,” and, in a major disagreement with Jerry Seinfeld, he definitely thinks there IS something wrong with the whole gay thing. But, not a single word about the poison ivy plant.

Would it have been too much to ask for a little blurb among all the hate-speech and the begots, in maybe, Exodus say, as a warning to look out for this little green bastard? How hard would it have been to have thrown in something like:

“And lo did the Israelites travel with their asses into the land of Balthar Gilgamesh, and there did they retire in the evening for juleps and toddies and to have knowledge of the slave-girls of the Hittites, that God in his mercy didst provide, and when they awakened in their hunger the Lord of Hosts didst command them to go forth and gather the bounty of the land about them that they might eat. But, alas, did the Lord thy God not say unto them to take not the three-leaved plant of shiny countenance, for it is beloved in His holy sight? And lo, the wicked among them who aspired to botanical knowledge didst cast off the Lord’s admonition and didst proceed to take the three-leaved plant of shiny countenance and did eat of it, and make of it a nice tea, like unto the shrooms of wisdom, and also did lie upon its leaves in their slumber, and behold, their sufferings were great.”

Now, is that really too much to ask? How much human misery could have been avoided with just that much of an effort. I mean, he would have had to put way more time into figuring out the stripe patterns on the Zebra or the intake manifold on a ’72 Camaro. And its not like Western Christendom would have failed to notice the reference, after all he granted his book near exclusive rights to the information/entertainment market for more than 5000 years before allowing You Tube, CNN, or existentialist literature to gain mind-space. Not much else to do on a Saturday night in the 12th century, and that’s if you had a candle.

And so, when considering the poison ivy plant I am left to assume that I am either right in my atheism, or that God is just as inconsiderate as those who stand chatting in the aisles of my neighborhood Target Store as if they were in the designated site of the International Idiot Convention. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to see if we have any more Caladryl.

Ralph and Ozz-man

I saw the Ozzy t-shirt as I rounded the corner onto the long-term ward early that Monday morning. I was still in the vague mental fog common to the barely post-dawn hours, but I recognized the leering visage of Ozzy Osbourne on a well-faded, formerly black concert tee from across the dayroom. The person wearing it, whom I will call Ralph, was not usually seen out of bed before 8am, so there was that novel element to the scene as well. He was standing there by the full length windows, staring obliquely out at the mist of the breaking August morning.

"Hey Ralph," I called softly, not wanting to disturb the other patients who were not yet awake. "Nice shirt dude."

Now Ralph is not known as much of a conversationalist, so I was mildly surprised when he responded with a monotone, "Yeah, thanks Phaedrus." I was going to continue on through the dayroom to the next ward when he asked, "You like Ozzy?" The emphasis was on the 'You," as in "What is such an obvious nimrod doing asking about the Ozz-man?"

Now, I should admit at this point that metal music is no longer at the top of my playlist these days, but at one point I could hold my own in any discussion of the merits of Mercyful Fate relative to Accept or Motorhead, and I had a roommate in college who subscribed to Kerrang magazine. I was also willing to play in any band that was popular enough to keep my bar tabs paid, and in the mid-80's, this meant lots of exhausting nights thrashing out the kick-drum machine gun of Iron Maiden and Metallica covers. I had the hair, the emaciation, the spandex and black leather, in short, the full catastrophe. I could understand however, Ralph's mild disbelief that the figure I cut today, which my wife defines as "premature old-man preptile" is merely the latest iteration of a former head-banger.

The other thing that it is important for the reader to understand is that I had never developed much of a relationship with Ralph. I was actually surprised to hear him call me by name. He is not one of the usual group of patients who greet me enthusiastically when I make my rounds, eager to talk about whatever they may have on their minds at any given time. Ralph is generally quiet, muttering under his breath in response to the voices he hears in his head when he talks at all. He can also become quite violent, in a Martin Scorcese movie fashion, which is to say "extreme and without fanfare." His schizophrenic symptoms are never fully controlled by his medications, so he is tortured by insulting voices most of the time. He recognizes that other people do not hear them, and seems to struggle to avoid acting on them, although he is not always successful. Several years ago he attacked one of his nurses and she required hospitalization for her injuries. He sometimes attempts to "protect" himself by "replacing" his skin, in a kind of personal ritual. He is solitary and typically irritable. I had attempted to engage Ralph in conversation more than 50 times over the years, without much success. The most I ever got was a grunted out "yeah," or "uh-uh" to any comment or question. This was the first time he had ever initiated any exchange with me. I recognized a rare opportunity.

"Oh yeah, Ralph, I do like Ozzy. The Sabbath stuff, and especially the 'Blizzard of Ozz' album with Randy Rhoads. What about you?"

"Yeah, I like that too, and 'Bark at the Moon' kinda too."

I could see the light of connection, as he made full eye contact with me for the first time ever. Moments like this are precious, as one halting, disease-altered, bundle of consciousness reaches out to make itself understood to another. I sat down in a blue plastic chair and gestured with my head for him to join me, subtly, so that if he did not want to he could act as if he had not picked up on it. I wanted to be careful not to issue a directive that he would have to refuse if he was not comfortable with it, injecting a point of conflict between us. He came over and sat down, with a chair between us.

He asked me if I had ever seen Ozzy, like a child might ask if you had ever met their favorite quarterback or movie star. I told him that yes I had, twice. We talked about what the shows were like, and I tried to remember and describe things with as much sensory information as possible; what the arena looked like, the smells, the cigarette lighters held aloft, the thud of the bass that you feel in your chest, the screaming lead arpeggios of Rhoads' black Jackson guitar, and Ozzy himself, stalking the stage like Yeats' "rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born." I gave it my best. Ralph seemed to like it, looking into my eyes without a trace of the menace that he can sometimes convey. It was one man in his 40's talking to another whose life had been sadly made smaller by schizophrenia and poverty of opportunity.

In ten minutes it was over. He had reached the limit of what he could focus on, and his tolerance for close human contact. I noticed him beginning to look away distractedly, uncomfortably, and I made my exit. He did not return my farewell, just returned to looking out of the window. But he and I had made a discovery together that morning, we had found a pathway along which our two minds could meet up again in the future. I was thrilled.

What I did not tell Ralph that morning was what happened the morning after that first Ozzy show, in October of my 20th year. I stumbled my way through a "Learning Theory" exam, sleep-deprived and hung over and wanting to be elsewhere. When the Professor handed mine back to me, with a large "D" on it, he asked me to come to his office after class. "Mr. Phaedrus, this is not acceptable work for someone with your abilities. How can you explain your chronic underachieving?" I told him that I had been to a concert the night before, and that I was sorry about the test, blah blah blah. I just wanted to get out of there and go to bed. He let me go with a parting shot; "Phaedrus, you are wasting your life on stupid things like Ozzy Osbourne concerts, if your aim is really to help people with mental illnesses. Please think about that."

My professor was largely correct of course. I have had to work harder than most of my professional peers in order to rise though the ranks, playing catch-up really. I have foregone some of the things that they see as the fruits of their labor now, because I was borrowing against mine in my youth. But, the professor was not completely right. There is potential value in all life experiences. Sometimes an experience from a mis-spent youth is the crack in the door of another's dark consciousness.

5 Thoughts Before Breakfast

1. Why is it that the press continues to refer to Barack Obama and other such individuals as black? He is bi-racial, with a black father and white mother who raised him largely on her own, in Kansas no less. I cannot decide whether this tendency is based on patri-centric notions of lineage, vestiges of Jim Crow thinking in which a given amount of black "blood" consigns one to that category, or what? If Derek Jeter's mother were black would he be referred to as white just because his father was caucasian? I think that what disturbs me the most about this and related topics is how increasingly meaningless it is to categorize people according to external characteristics in a world in which such distinctions are getting much blurrier. I see it as an unfair limitation. I see it as a reluctance to move steadily in the direction of MLK's "content of our character" focus.

2. My graduate school advisor saw psychotherapy as a "potentially corrective emotional experience." I tend to see elections in the same way. After 12 years of Reagan-Bush, Bill Clinton provided a correction in those areas in which Republican sensibilities had pushed out too far. After 8 years of Clinton, GWB promised to restore the luster of propriety to a White House that needed adult supervision. After 8 years of W., the country seems to feel that we need to return competence to the Executive Branch. Each change provides the potential corrective experience for the excesses of the previous period. And so, this year we will have either a Maverick Republican, a forward focussed Camelot II, or a return to the wonkish ruthlessness and partisanism of Clinton Redux. I lean towards the Dems this year whenever I think about the Supreme Court, but do I really want to hear Hillary's "nails on a chalkboard" speechifying for the next 8 years? I might want to vote for Hugo Chavez after surviving that.

3. The Wall Street Journal sported a story this week on how Mormons have been "dismayed" at seeing how they are perceived by great swaths of the public during the Romney run for President. I have to wonder what they must have been thinking if they are have been taken aback? The evangelicals hate them just like any other group who does not toe their theocratically xenophobic line. The seculars can't believe that any modern person could believe that the earth was punted across the universe from Kolob's celestial zip code after the fall of Adam (or Michael the Arch-Angel for those really in the know.) Even country-club Repubs are put off by what they perceive to be an over-emphasis on the role of religion in the lives of LDS. On the Democratic side, it will be a long time before the racial insults are forgotten, and feminists have as much to focus their ire on in LDS history and doctrine as they do the more mainstream religious right groups, maybe even more. Now, I don't condone supporting or opposing a candidate just because of their religion, but it is a legitimate factor in evaluating a candidacy. The fact is, however, that Americans are far more prepared for a minority or female President than they are a Mormon one. I don't see why LDS would've been thinking otherwise.

4. Is it just me, or is anything that makes James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter unhappy likely to be a damned good thing?

5. Is there anyone else out there who feels that the "tragedy" at the heart of the Britny Spears' debacle is that the world is so obsessed with it. I work in a hospital full of individuals who face more daunting mental health challenges than she ever will, with far fewer resources to draw on for hope and support. I don't see anyone on You-Tube crying for them. And they have not spent their time polluting the airwaves and the minds of impressionable young girls with execrable music and crippling messages about what they must be to gain appreciation in this world. At least Amy Winehouse has talent. I don't wish continued misfortune on Spears, in fact I hope she gets it together for the sake of the people in her life that actually care about her as a person, but I do wish people would grow up and realize that she is not that important in the great scheme of things. Harsh? Maybe... but as my friend Mary Lisa puts it, "I'm just sayin."