Is G-d a Cardiologist?

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26

The President chose this scripture for the memorial service in Dallas. The President noted that he had made these eulogies too many times during his tenure. I have watched too many. One was too many. But what have I done?  Raised my voice on social media in outrage? What else? Not much. Not enough.

He went on to say after referencing this passage from Ezekiel that America needs a new heart. An open heart. He is right.

But if G-d is a cardiologist I think he would recommend that America have open heart surgery. He needs to wield his heavenly scalpel and make an incision in our chest and part the flesh. He needs to saw through our sternum and open a wide cavity. He needs to use his almighty strength to pluck the stony waste of organ that we call heart from our bodies. And I pray that he casts our old heart so mightily that it exits our cosmos to never return. We need a new heart. A heart of flesh.

But G-d is not a cardiologist. He will not be performing this procedure. He is a spiritual healer. Not a physician. From all that I have seen, he is not an interventionist. He does not break out the defibrillator and shock the heart attack out of us. He lets the cardiac arrest take its course. And then he soothes the survivors in the aftermath. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3

But America needs a new heart. Why does G-d not just make it happen?  In G-d all things are possible, so what is the hold-up?  There is hatred and evil and bigotry beating inside us. The nation is in a state of hypertension, a stroke is imminent and the Great Physician will not reach down from the Heavens and save us. What the hell is he waiting on? Where is he?

At this moment when it is plain that not just America, but the whole world is in need of a new heart, I have lost my patience. I’m fed up. Has the heavenly healer sold his practice to the devil? Has he packed up saying that he has had enough of our murders, our greed, our lack of compassion for one another?  Has he gone fishing? Hell, I would not blame him. I would have given up several centuries ago.

I want to believe that G-d is with us. I want to have faith that there is beauty behind all this pain. That there is some unknown purpose that all of this serves. That G-d is in control. That, as we were taught to sing, “He has the whole world in his hands.” I want to believe that my mortal perception is so flawed that I just cannot comprehend the magic that is happening behind the scenes.  That this world and the bad that happens here is just meaningless and that when we leave this earth all will be revealed and it will be good.

We need a new heart. But I just realized as I wrote this that I ignored the second part of the promise in this passage from Ezekiel, “and a new spirit I will put within you.” America needs a new heart. I need a new spirit. My spirit is damaged. The world seems designed to beat down our spirit, to squash our hope, and tear us apart from each other. How do we get G-d to grant this new spirit to us?

My inclination is to write a nice tidy ending to this post. To say that the new spirit already resides in us and all we have to do is look inside ourselves and find it.

But right now, the news from around the globe is too sad. The suffering is too great. And searching the depths of my soul seems like an overwhelming task at this moment. I will leave that for tomorrow.

Update: I just woke up. It is a new day.  Fortunately, I the end of the work day today, I start a two week vacation. I plan to get some projects done, turn off the news and relax, and spend time enjoying my family. I'm so thankful that I am afforded that kind of freedom, opportunity, and privilege. I wish that everyone had the same. I also plan to spend time reflecting on my thoughts that I put down in this post. I will turn off the noise and look inside myself to try and find the new spirit that must be there. I will think about what actions I can take to create change in this insane world. And I hope that I will return from vacation with a new heart.

Robbery and Delivery or Finding the Pain Behind the Beauty

I knew something was up from the moment he walked in. I had recently been promoted to Pharmacy Technician. From behind the elevated pharmacy counter I had a clear view to the front door.  He had that look that junkies get. You’ve seen it. Wired, agitated, and worn down.

My parents knew the owner of a small but busy drugstore that was tucked away in a tiny strip mall on a back street. That’s how I got the job.  In the growing southern city I lived in, that was how college kids like me found work. We knew someone.  In the mid to late eighties, knowing someone was important. At first I ran deliveries. This consisted of delivering prescriptions to the wealthy white people who lived to the south of our store and to black people, mired in poverty, living to the west side of town. The disparity was striking.

He approached the lower check-out counter directly in front of me and the pharmacist on duty.

Like I said, I knew something was up. Often people who were strung out and short on money to buy their drug of choice, or couldn’t get a scrip, or their dealer had run out would resort to Class V Narcotics. They could get these medicines without a prescription. If you drank a whole bottle it would temporarily provide a high in times of desperation.

 As a delivery driver I drove down private lanes that lead to mansions on sprawling lots.  Many of these private roads had small lakes surrounded by beautiful Oaks and Maples. It felt like I was a million miles from the city. Rarely did I meet the people who lived in these houses.  I either left the package at the door or the maid would answer the bell. The occasional butler would open the door and accept the delivery.

He asked the pharmacist if he could come closer. He had a private medical concern.  Many of the Class V users would fake stomach pains to try and convince us to let them sign for a bottle of Donnagel PG. It was a diarrhea medicine that contained paregoric. I figured that was why he was here, but the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck.

Driving the Chevy Blazer provided by the store, I turned off of main roads into neighborhoods that I had been told to avoid when I was growing up. Dangerous places. Before this job I had driven past these neighborhoods thousands of times. I think white kids like me were born with blinders that kept us focused on the splendid tree lined roads that enabled us to skirt these “bad places”. 

“Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.” 
― Bob Dylan

But here I am. A skinny, pale, stringy haired college kid making my way into a new world. My blinders vanished.

He was whispering to the pharmacist who then turned to me and said, “Can you step out here?”, trying to send a message with his eyes.  The drugstore’s pistol was just under the counter in a bin. I could see it. It was within my reach and situated in a way that would have made it easy for me to slip it into my hand. It was loaded.

Blinders now gone, I’m navigating new places. Seeing with the eyes of a child.  

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of

perception.”

― Aldous Huxley

Wow. Some of these neighborhoods were within walking distance of the street I grew up on. It was as if these cracked streets and dirt roads were somehow hidden like #12 Grimmauld Place under a Fidelius charm. The secret keepers in this case however were not motivated by fidelity, but by a desire to hide the effects of institutional racism.  In this wealthy banking city in 1986, how could there be roads that were not paved?  Or even graveled?

I leave the gun where it is and walk out to the check-out counter.  The pharmacist says we have a problem. The man pulls his jacket back to reveal his gun. He firmly places his hand around the grip.

The people I delivered to in the poor neighborhoods answered their own door. Mostly elderly ladies that lived in small duplexes, apartments, and hundred-year-old bungalows that were crumbling from neglect. Most were happy to see me. These folks didn’t have cars. This was a difficult city to navigate without a car.  Especially if you were old and the bus stop was several blocks away because the bus does not come down these streets. In my experience, all the people who lived in luxury on the private lanes had light skin.  All the people who lived in squalor on the broken back streets had dark skin.  

He says that he does not want to hurt anyone. He wants all of our Schedule II narcotics. He even knows where our safe is.  He goes on to say that he will accompany us to the safe, adding that if we do not cooperate, he will kill us.

Before the delivery job, I had been in a slumber. Living in a dream world where no one was hungry, everyone had a roof over their heads, and we all were safe. I’m awake now. Awake to the disparity that I knew existed. That knowledge had been a brown recluse spider hiding in the dark corners of my brain; not wanting to expose me to its venom.

We give him the drugs.  He starts getting nervous. He’s rushing us now, “hurry up, Hurry up!”.

He orders us to lie face down on the ground. He says “Close your eyes”. This makes me angry. Why close our eyes?  Is he going to shoot us execution style, in the back?

I keep my eyes open. He’s moving toward the door with his pillowcase full of Opioids and his gun pointed toward us. He’s very anxious. He’s hollering that we need to start counting out loud to 100.  “Don’t get up until you get to 100”, he shouts!

He runs out the door.  We are up by the count of seven.  The pharmacist goes for the phone punching 911.  I race for the store pistol.  I swing open the front door, gripping the gun with both hands and extending it in front of me.  I quickly turn one direction and then the other ready to shoot.  He’s gone.  He must have had a get-away waiting outside.

In the weeks that followed I often wondered would I have shot him if I had felt the odds were in my favor. If so, could I have lived with taking someone’s life?  Would it have been justified?  Certainly he knew the risk he was taking as an armed robber.

When I recounted this story to people I knew, most asked the same question: “Was he Black?”

They weren’t investigating the crime. They weren’t detectives trying to sketch a profile. Why this question? I’m not answering that question now. I did not like the question then either.  So, sometimes I said yes and sometimes I said no.  Here is the interesting part. If I said no, the response was consistently, “really? He was white?”. If I said yes, the answer was a nod or,” yeah, I figured.”

We want our fears and our prejudices confirmed. And then we want to hide them away. Just like we hide those who have the least.

We hide them right in our midst behind tree lined streets.

I got the job because my parents knew someone. I understand this. We hire people we know because we trust them. I do this myself.

But this practice is inherently biased.

How to Break Rules and Influence Good Outcomes

There’s a reason we have rules. This is something people say when not following a rule coincides with bad luck. You could break the rule a thousand times without anything bad happening, but you can bet that as soon as something bad does happen you will hear this smug phrase. Can’t you see them shaking a finger at you, talking to you like you’re a child, scolding you for not following the rules?  Man, I hate those people. I hope I’ve never been that person. There should be a rule against being that person.

Here is a quick rule-breaking story. It’s a great story because: 

1. It involves rule breaking. 2.  It involves sticking it to the man. And 3. A whole bunch of good results from the rule- breaking.

So here goes. 

I worked for a company that was becoming quite successful. The owner had invented a product that was revolutionizing the orthopedic industry.  The company was starting to make some real money.  He bought a building in an older industrial area of our city.  Distributions were being made and he was feeling flush.  He was also in a mood to share the wealth. The building was larger than the company needed, so he donated part of the building to a local Meals-on-Wheels program.  You know, the good folks who prepare food and then round up volunteers to bring that food to your Moms and Dads when they get too old to make their own dinner. Ok. This story is not living up to its promise. Not one rule has been broken yet.  But hang on, it's good when it happens.

So when this organization (No, that sounds boring. Let’s just call it Friendship Trays to make it a more fun story). So, when Friendship Trays volunteers come to pick up meals to deliver to all those hungry seniors, they need a place to park so that they can run inside, fill up their little cooler with milk cartons and pick up a bag of hot food, run back out the door, hop in their car and zoom away. 

The company had about twenty employees and the building had about about twelve parking spaces. One of the employees and the owner watched walk-in freezers and giant commercial equipment being moved into the future Operation Center for Friendship Trays. The employee decided to ask, “Where will the volunteers park?” That person had no vision at all.  The owner of the company said that he was going to build a parking lot in the back of the property. Oh. That was simple. Not a single rule has been broken yet. Maybe I should start getting to that part.

The person who clearly had no imagination or vision at all then asked, “What about the railroad tracks?” The owner said that he was just going to ask the railroad company to abandon the right of way and come take up the tracks. They weren’t using them, after all. The person who had no vision, no imagination, and obviously no sense stated, “I don’t think that they will do that.” And then, maybe, just maybe the owner considered that thought for about a millisecond or about the length of time Steph Curry has to think about whether to take a three pointer or not.

                            “No”, he said, “They will.”
                         Swish.

Unfortunately, the man at the local railroad company lacked vision as well. He could not see the future. He did not know that he was defending his tracks from philanthropy’s version of Steph Curry. He could hold up his arms, wave them around, and jump up and down. But nothing was going to stop that ball from going through the hoop. Or, nothing was going to stop a parking lot from going in a railroad right of way. The railroad man asked if there were tracks in the right of way. When he was told that there were, he replied that the Railroad does not abandon any right of way that has a track on it, whether they use it or not. He thought the game was over.

Now here is where the rule breaking happens. 

The owner of the company calls up a guy.  A guy with something called a Bobcat. If you don’t know, it is sort of like a cute little bulldozer.  The guy with the Bobcat was very excited about the impending rule breaking event.  He unloaded it from a trailer and moved railroad tracks like they were pick-up sticks.  He plucked them up and moved them to the front of the building and set them on the curb.  He then proceeded to grade a nice flat space for a new parking lot.

The owner of the company made another call to the railroad man.  Owner: “You know those tracks that were in the railroad right of way?” RR man: “yes.” Owner: “They aren’t there anymore.” RR man: “Where are my tracks?” Owner: “They are on the curb in front of my building.”  RR man, defeat in his voice, “Leave them there, we will come get them.” Owner victoriously asks, “Can I have the right of way back now?”

RR man said yes.

So sure enough they came and picked up the tracks.  

A beautiful, meal fulfilling parking lot was built.

That was twenty years ago and volunteers faithfully come to Friendship Trays and park there every day and run in grab the food and take it to people who are truly in need. Literally hundreds of thousands of meals have made their way from that parking lot to homes all across our city.

Actual Parking Lot from Story

There is a reason we have rules. 

So that we can break them and 

make good things happen.