ON THE MOVE-HOW DOES THE BRAIN CREATE THE MIND?

I just read Oliver Sacks’ memoir, On the Move. Sacks was physician, neurologist, and author. As a neurological physician, he was memorably played by Robin Williams in the film “Awakening,” based on Sacks’ book of the same name. The film also stars Robert DeNiro as a patient.

I did not learn of Sacks through the film, since I am--for a reasonably educated and worldly 20^th century person--remarkably ignorant of films, especially considering that my granddaughter has a master’s degree in film studies from The U of Chicago. I first became aware of Sacks through his writings in “The New Yorker,” which led me to two of his many books, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and River of Consciousness. [Yes, that’s no mistake above. I am a 20^th century—not a 21^st century—person.]

I’m glad that I read those two books, in that order, for in between the first one to the latter, Sacks evolved from a classical understanding of neurology, as a sort of regionalized computer [although he was never a psychological behaviorist Skinnerian, as I was taught to be as an undergraduate] to the current plasticity model, generated most notably by Gerald Edelman.

Edelman’s theory is that each human brain evolves from birth to death in much the same way that humanity has been evolving as a whole for millions of years.

As a plastic neurologist [my term] Sacks’ main curiosity became: How does the brain produce the mind?

Sacks himself had an “interesting” brain. Among other things, he had prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize and distinguish between faces. Physical accidents, such as one that left him with a feeling that his leg was no longer attached to his body, became research fodder. He was a graphaholic, writing millions of words in journals throughout his life and, once written, never looking at them again. As a young physician, his compulsive brain, with its desire for movement, would cause him to ride on a motorcycle for ten hours at a time, without stopping, 100 miles per hour, at night.

Most interestingly--although most of the volume of his book is about his varied work as a physician with people with brain problems, and his collaboration with various researchers--he talks about his life in terms of love and loss, home and away, joyful and dreary, the way any one of us would, almost as though his understanding of brain mechanisms had nothing to do with his own living.

That’s the difference between brain and mind. Through research as a physician and living as a person, Sacks understood that brain and mind are not the same. I suspect he smiled as he titled his book. “On the move” is really about how the brain evolves to create the mind.

I personally believe that God, as Creator, is “involved” in general evolution. I think that the Edelman theory of the brain means that God is involved in the evolution of each of our minds. We call that “spirituality.”

In other words, as St. Augustine said it, “God loves each of us as though there were only one of us.”

John Robert McFarland

“With God, time is eternity in disguise.” Abraham Heschel

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FIRST SWALLOW

I can count on getting only one thing done each day, the first thing that I do. After that, I’m tired. Anything that comes up, I can say, “I’ll do that tomorrow.”

So the first frog I swallow each day had better be the biggest one.

That’s what we used to say in working days, about having many tasks to do. If you have three frogs to swallow, swallow the biggest frog first. Then all the others will go down more easily.

Now I say it not to make the following jobs easier, but just to be sure I get the most important job done before I run out of energy.

Being without energy has its problems, but there is an upside. I used to do all the unimportant stuff first—clearing the deck so I could really concentrate on the important stuff when I got to it. Answer the email before really writing. That sort of thing. Rearranging the deck chairs.

The problem there, of course, was I often didn’t get past the deck clearing. Now I know I can’t even try to clear the decks. I have to go right after the big kahuna. [I have no idea what a kahuna is, but that sounds good.]

John Robert McFarland

 “Documenting evil is not the same as doing good.” Craig Greenfield

THE EARTH STILL TURNS-ISAIAH 52:7

 I have returned

from the mountain

and my feet are still

beautiful despite

the wearying climb

the strained muscles

the thorny bristles

the stony pathway

because I bring

good news

despite the fall

of the descent

the trees are blossomed

the birds are singing

the clouds are drifting

the earth still turns

John Robert McFarland

“God contains everything, and nothing contains God.” Irenaeus

ANOTHER BAD PLAY ON “CINCO DE MAYO”

A recent story in our local newspaper noted that a woman had stabbed a man because the sandwich he brought her from a fast food place did not have enough mayo on it.

Talk about “killing the messenger!”

I have no idea where to start trying to understand the “why” of that episode. Did he purposely tell Devin at Burger King to omit the mayo because he did not want the woman to have it her way? Did this happen all the time? Was this the last straw? Did some childhood trauma give her a weird and lasting need for mayo as her comfort food?

As Luther said, “Give a woman enough mayo and she’ll eat for a day. Don’t put enough mayo on it and you’ll surely pay.” Well, maybe that wasn’t Luther.

Anyway, on this day, of all days, if you bring a woman a sandwich, for heaven’s sake, and your own, put enough mayo on it.

John Robert McFarland

IRRELEVANT OBSERVATION: Every TV series ends up being a soap opera. They may start out trying to thwart terrorists, or catch criminals, or extol family life, or get laughs, but as the producers and writers run out of story lines, they are all about which amnesiac has whose baby.

LOOK FOR THE HELPERS, LIKE RILEY HOWELL

The McFarlands gathered last summer to tell one another how we have not changed a bit since the last reunion—even though we looked at photographs of times past that prove we lied about that--and also to tell one another how many aches and pains we have developed since we last saw each other face to face,

I put one of those lie-proving photo albums together myself, out of the many boxes of loose photos we have here and there. It includes the men of my father’s generation in their WWII uniforms. It was a generation of wingmen. [I include women in that title, of course.]

“Wingman” these days means something quite different. Guys talk about taking a wingman along to a bar as they try to pick up women. The characters of “The Big Bang Theory” TV show say the wingman’s job is to back up their lies as they talk to a woman.

When my Uncle Jesse was a Navy pilot, though, “wingman” meant someone who was watching out for you, someone you relied on for the truth, even if it meant telling you there was an enemy on your tail. Especially if it meant telling you there is an enemy on your tail.

Television’s Mr. Rogers says that his mother told him, “Look for the helpers.” The helpers are the wingmen. Like Riley Howell, the twenty-one-year-old student at UNC-Charlotte who charged the shooter in his classroom. He was killed in the process. He undoubtedly knew he would die if he did that. But he did it anyway, and he saved the lives of his classmates.

I mourn for Riley and for his parents and for all who loved him. I pray for the passage of his soul. But I know that he lived more in one moment than most of us do in a lifetime, and I honor him.

In this world of greed and selfishness, where money and power are the only things considered good, look not to the takers but for the helpers. Trust your wingman. Like Riley Howell.

John Robert McFarland

“Without courage, no other virtue is possible.”

AFFIRMING THE PAST

One of my youth fellowship girls became a famous porn star.

She was a teen-ager, in the same class as one of my daughters, when I pastored the church in her small suburb town. She did not come to worship, nor did anyone else in her family, but she liked the sponsors of our youth fellowship, whom she knew as teachers in her school, so she came to the youth fellowship. Also, she came to me when she got into trouble.

Actually, I went to her. She ran away, and after a while ended up at an uncle’s house. They called me to come talk to her. They said she wouldn’t talk to anyone else.

I know now that teenage girls often run away because they are sexually abused. I know now that many, probably most, porn actors were sexually abused as children. It was thirty-five years ago, though, when Lisa ran away, and I knew little about why girls ran away or became porn actors. Not many other people did then, either.

She was willing to talk to me, just the two of us in the back room of her uncle’s house, while various family members hovered about in the rest of the house. She talked, but not really. I knew she was holding something back, but we could not get to it. I had the feeling that she was waiting for me to ask the right question, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

I tried to listen to her, and get her to talk about what was important to her. She told me she was interested in acting. I have always been interested in drama, too, and I have done a little acting. I said maybe the youth fellowship could form a drama group, and she could be in it. She said she thought that would be great.

I tried to form a group, without success. No one else in youth fellowship was interested in a drama group.

As soon as she graduated from high school, Lisa went to California and got into a drama group, one quite different from what we would have had in youth fellowship. She was very successful, in terms of porn acting accolades. She died in her early thirties of AIDS.

I know that I did not “fail” her. My contacts with her were marginal. I did the best I could, with limited resources. Many other people had much more influence on her, for good or for ill. But I still regret not being able to form that drama group. I still wonder if her life might have turned out differently if she’d been able to act in church instead of in front of a cheap camera.

Dealing with regret is a major issue for older people. We have been through a lot, and failed in at least some of it. We have done things we should not have done and not done things we should have done.

Occasionally I hear someone reflecting on his or her life and saying, “I have no regrets. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

If you have no regrets and would not change a thing, what in the world is wrong with you? You’re just a damned fool! You have not learned a thing! Where is the so-called wisdom of age if you couldn’t do it better the second time?

Erik Erikson says that old age is the stage of final integrity vs despair. We cannot change what has been. If we cannot affirm the lives we have lived, despair is our only option.

Affirming your life, however, is very different from having no regrets. I do not think you can affirm your life if you have no regrets. The only way you can have no regrets is by denying your past. You did do some things wrong, and if you are not sorry about that, you are simply denying reality. Or you are an old sociopath. And everybody knows there’s no sociopath like an old sociopath. [Okay, the actual saying is: “There’s no fool like an old fool.” But it means the same thing.]

Affirmation of the past means accepting reality. I heard the story of a man who was new in town. He visited from church to church, but none of them seemed quite right. One Sunday he arrived at a church a little late and got in just as they were intoning the prayer of confession: We have done those things we ought not to have done, and not done those things we should have done. He breathed a sigh of relief and said, “My kind of people at last!”

I have plenty of regrets. I hurt feelings. I took wrong positions. I was cowardly and kept silent when I should have stood up for the truth and justice. I neglected people I should have cared for. I said a lot of stupid things. I told jokes when I should have kept my mouth shut. I did not form a youth fellowship drama group. If I could, I would change many things. Still, I affirm who I have been, warts and all, regrets and all, because I know God forgives me, and so I can forgive myself.

Paul Tillich said that forgiveness doesn’t change the facts, but it changes the meaning of the facts.

To affirm the past, we must accept forgiveness for our mistakes. First we have to admit that we made mistakes.

John Robert McFarland

“Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.” Rollo May

INVENTING THE METHODIST CHURCH

I think it was Robert Schuller, of all people, who said, perhaps 30 years or so ago: “If the Methodist Church did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.”

His point was that all other denominations were either on the right or on the left of the theological/social spectrum. Only Methodism occupied the broad middle.

Chinua Achebe named his classic novel of African culture clash Things Fall Apart, from the line in W. B. Yeats poem, “The Second Coming:”

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.

 Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

That seems to be the way with the United Methodist Church as the center of the theological spectrum. Things are falling apart. The center is not holding. Anarchy is loosed. We are all saved by the blood, but some are more saved than others. We have lost our innocent conviction that the arc of history, or at least the arc of the church, bends toward justice. There is both a weary absence of conviction and misplaced passionate intensity.

In a similar vein to Schuller, U.S. Grant often said that America had three political parties: Republican, Democrat, and Methodist.

Methodism has always been the quintessential American denomination, the broad middle. As such, we have always harbored the best of Christian conviction and the worst of Christian separatism and exclusion and everything in between. In the Methodist manifestation called The United Methodist Church, the separatists and exclusionists have prevailed. Grant, a life-long and committed Methodist--committed to defeating the exclusionists without excluding them--must be turning over in Grant’s Tomb. [1]

Methodism, though, has never been primarily a church. It is a movement, and as such, it now must move on to new manifestations. Soon The UMC will be just a footnote in the history of bigotry, but Methodism will go on. I regret the demise of The UMC, but I am a Methodist, not just a United Methodist.

It turns out that The UMC does not have open doors, open hearts, and open minds, despite its claim, but the movement of Methodism has always had such, and continues to be open to all, regardless of how closed the doors and hearts and minds of its largest ecclesial entity might be.

Maybe the absent proofreaders had it right all along: Soon I shall be an Untied Methodist.

John Robert McFarland

JOHN WESLEY’S RULES FOR LIVING

[What it means to be a Methodist]

Do all the good you can

In all the ways you can

To all the souls you can

By all the means you can

In all the places you can

At all the times you can

As long as ever you can

[1] I highly recommend Ron Chernow’s biography of Grant, a recent Christmas present from historian daughter Katie Kennedy.