"Further Up and Further In!"

Our Christian life is like a hallway. God leads us down the hallway and sometimes He opens doors for us along that hallway. We think that when He opens a door, He wants us to go through the door into the room and spend the rest of our lives there. But in actuality He opens the door for just a short period of time, long enough for us to stick our heads through and take a peek inside and learn what we can from the experience. And then He closes the door and pulls us back into the hallway and leads us further on.

Now, the problem is, sometimes we don't want to leave the room and go back into the hallway. He's opened the door for us and we've caught a glimpse of a cozy chair and a warm fire inside, and in the flames of the fire we see all our dreams manifesting before us. We'd just like to enter the room and stay there for good, thank you very much, but we feel a constant, annoying tug at our arm pulling us back into the hallway. And sometimes we waste so much of our lives struggling with God at the door of that room, repenting our sins and heading back to the hallway, then losing our resolve and turning around and walking towards that oh-so-enticing fire.

Imagine how much happier we would have been had we just listened in the first place, closed our eyes to the room, followed Him back into the hallway, trusting Him to lead us to greater riches further on.

Sometimes we don't understand why He opened the door if He didn't want us to stay in the room, but we have to trust that as long as He's leading us from door to door, He is leading us from glory to glory, and we will eventually reach the end of the hallway and go into the room that has no walls, that stretches on forever, that always goes "further up and further in." And like the Unicorn in CS Lewis's The Last Battle, in that room we will cry out, "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here! This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. Come further up, come further in!"

~~~~
The title of this post, "Further Up and Further In," is taken from The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis, and if you haven't read this book yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Moments of Clarity

St. John Chrysostom wrote that when we find ourselves unable to sleep at night, this is a sign from God that something is wrong and we should use our wakefulness as a "period for reflection." He wrote: "So when you cannot sleep, allow the thoughts that lie deepest in your heart to rise up to the surface. Often these thoughts are a reproach, telling you of a sin you have committed or an act of charity you failed to perform."

I had a friend who always attested that her best ideas came to her in the shower. I don't doubt that; my best ideas come to me when I wake up in the middle of the night. It makes sense, actually, because being awake in the middle of the night is kind of like being suspended in time, like being awake somewhere in the Twilight Zone. During sleep, our brains have been getting rid of all the nasty toxic waste from the day before, so we are relatively less foggy, but we are not rushing out of bed to get to work or school; there are no immediate distractions. I really do believe God uses this time to direct our thoughts towards matters of the spiritual life.

So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, don't fret over trying to get back to sleep. (Here's my chance to incorporate some sleep hygiene techniques I had to squeeze into my brain for Step 1). If you don't fall asleep within 15-30 minutes, go to another room and read, have a light snack, do some quiet activity. And wonder if there is a perhaps a reason God woke you in the middle of the night. Maybe you didn't give Him any time during your busy day and He wants to nudge you awake (literally and figuratively), and tell you something that might be kind of important.

C. S. Lewis and Medicine

The Coptic New Year is quickly approaching, and you might be thinking about some New Year's resolutions. I know I am - I resolve this year to read more. With Step 1 behind me, I no longer feel guilty picking up a good fiction book instead of poring over First Aid.

What to read? It's exciting to discover new authors, but tonight I'm feeling a longing for the warm comfort of known and loved authors. Those who know me know that I am simply obsessed with C. S. Lewis. And it's about time I dedicate a post to this mighty man of mere Christianity. I am by no means a scholar or an authority on C. S. Lewis - just an avid fan, devoted reader, and yes, subscriber to the C. S. Lewis Daily Quotes iPhone app (free!).

I envy those of you who have not yet met C. S. Lewis through his writings - what joy awaits you when you first open one of his books! (and for that momentous occasion I recommend The Four Loves, Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, or The Last Battle).

In his collection of essays God in the Dock, particularly in the essays "Miracles," "'Horrid Red Things,'" "Religion and Science," and "The Laws of Nature," Lewis touches upon the subject of the intersection between religion and science. His take on medicine is particularly interesting; consider the following quote from "Miracles:"

"The miracles of healing fall into the same pattern. This is sometimes obscured for us by the somewhat magical view we tend to take of ordinary medicine. The doctors themselves do not take this view. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient's body. What the doctor does is to stimulate Nature's functions in the body, or to remove hindrances. In a sense, though we speak for convenience of healing a cut, every cut heals itself; no dressing will make skin grow over a cut on a corpse. That same mysterious energy which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a body is the efficient cause of all recoveries, and if God exists, that energy, directly or indirectly, is His. All who are cured are cured by Him, the healer within."

PS: A brief introduction to CS Lewis' writings and a few of my favorites!

Fiction:
1) Chronicles of Narnia. (The Horse and His Boy, The Last Battle are my favorites)
2) Till We Have Faces - For older readers, and the source of my absolute favorite CSL quote: "I know now, Lord, why You utter no answer. You are Yourself the answer. Before Your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?"

Non-Fiction

1) Mere Christianity - a must-read. Period.
2) The Four Loves - the starting point from which to begin to understand this most crucial of all virtues
3) Surprised by Joy - his autobiography, which chronicles his conversion to Theism.
4) The Abolition of Man - a hard read, but crucial for understanding Lewis' views on mankind and where we are headed
5) God in the Dock - a collection of short essays
6) The Business of Heaven - a daily reader
7) A Grief Observed - starts with the chilling line "No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear" - a raw account of his grief and questioning of faith, written after his beloved wife's death (cancer).
8) The Weight of Glory - from which comes another favorite quote, "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. 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."

Are there any other CS Lewis fans out there? Leave some reading recommendations in the comments below!!

Rock Bottom

JK Rowling, in her 2008 Harvard University commencement speech, said the following about failure:

"So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. 

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default." *

I think everyone reading this post has experienced failure in his life; in fact, I almost hope that you, dear reader, have had your share of failure. As a society, we value success so much, which is not in itself a bad thing at all. But, as I'm sure my fellow sons and daughters of Egyptian immigrants can attest to, from a young age I have been taught that hard work, diligence, and prayer is the infallible recipe for success, and as long as I stick to that, I will always have "good" things at the end of my road. Having experienced quite a few failures in quick succession over the past few months, I almost wish someone had taught me how to be ready for failure, how to thank God for it, and how to transform it into a chance for growth.

CS Lewis said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."** I cannot pretend to know the reason behind every single failure in my life. Surely, most have been due to my own stupidity. Perhaps some have been due to the shortcomings of those around me. And maybe some have been God's way of turning my feet back towards Him, after I consistently ignored His gentle tugs at my back. Sometimes God strips away relationships and denies us opportunities because it is the only way we will be able to see the gaping holes in our spiritual lives. Gaping holes are scary. I'd rather have the hard failures if it means I'm walking on solid ground.

~~~~~~~~~~
*You can read the full transcript of Rowling's speech and watch the video here.

**This quote is taken from The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis.

Medical Musings

This is inspired by a post on the blog "Not So Spiritual Words."  I cannot take credit for the original humor, but I couldn't resist borrowing the idea for a Coptic Rx post...who can deny that med school needs a little humor now and again?

You know your med school professor is a ___________ because ____________:

Psychiatrist: right before he walks into the auditorium, you sense a disturbance in the Force

Pediatrician: her stethoscope is pink and dinosaur band-aids are falling out of her scrubs pocket

Emergency Med doc: he delivers a 140-slide powerpoint lecture in 13 minutes flat

Dermatologist: upon entering the lecture hall, you think for a second you accidentally walked into the lobby of the Ritz 

Ophthalmologist: upon entering the lecture hall, all the nerds have assembled to the front  

Pathologist: his lectures run overtime by 30 minutes and could have been summed up with one slide: "this stuff's not supposed to be there"

Surgeon: he succeeds in making everyone who attended lecture feel like an idiot by the time lecture's over  

Anesthesiologist: he succeeds in making everyone fall asleep by the end of lecture...and you seem to have gaps in your memory when you wake up

Radiologist: his first words upon entering the brightly-lit auditorium are "Oh my God, this is blinding me."

Neurologist: somehow, a discussion of where the lesion is turns into a riveting argument about the meaning of life 

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

I remember being asked this question a lot when I was a kid. Every year I had a different answer - first I wanted to be a computer software engineer just like my dad, then I wanted to be an astronaut (that was my Star Trek phase), then there was a crazy year when for some reason I thought I wanted to be a doctor (hehe), then it morphed into a desire to be an architect, followed by a history teacher, then a math teacher, then a freelance artist.

I recently witnessed a dad asking his daughter the same question and she eagerly answered, "A doctor!" After giving her a high-five, I turned to my friend, who is about to enter medical school, and asked him the same question. He looked at me, surprised, and said "A doctor," and then, thinking I meant what kind of doctor he wanted to be, added, "An otolaryngologist."

But that's not what I meant. I know what he is going to do for the rest of his life. But I wanted to know what he wants to be. 

Being a medical student identifies me, but it doesn't define me. It has changed me, molded me, pushed me to grow, but it does not complete me. I will be a doctor (God willing), I will practice medicine, I will try to help people with illnesses as much as I am able. But that is not the end of what I want to be.

I encourage all those reading this post to ask this question to yourselves, right now, no matter how old you are, how settled in your career you are.

"What do I want to be when I grow up?" Or maybe a more appropriate rendition of this question is, "Who do I want to be?"

It's not about your career goals, it's not about hopes and desires for marriage and a family, it's not about a bucket list of countries you want to travel to, things you want to see, mountains you want to climb, books you want to write.

All those goals are well and good in and of themselves, but what does it all come out to? How does it help you grow? What are you going to take away from those experiences? How will you give back to the world?

I know what I want to be - I want to be a better, kinder, gentler person. I want to be wiser, more well-read, more understanding, more forgiving. I want to stop doing stupid things and conquer my pride.

So, what do you want to be?

Day 18 of the Great Lent: Don't be "holier" than others

One of the greatest champions of the Orthodox Church is, in my own opinion, Fr. Thomas Hopko. Among his plethora of sermons and lectures, he has delivered a podcast on Ancient Faith Radio with a list of 55 maxims, one maxim for each day of the Great Lent.

Today's maxim is: 

"Be an ordinary person. Be one of the human race. Don't ever say: 'I thank you God, I'm not like other people.' Try to be like others as much as you can. Be ordinary. As the Russian writer Chekov said: 'Everything outside the ordinary is from the Devil.'"

This powerful maxim can be applied to the spiritual life in so many ways. The first thing I thought of when reading this maxim was the similarly-themed quote from CS Lewis' Mere Christianity:

"One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons -- marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning."

Not only does this quote scream "DON'T JUDGE OTHERS!!", it also gives a powerful argument as to why the world is not divided into "good people" and "bad people," "good things" and "bad things." The music or movies that I see as a temptation may not pose the slightest threat to another's spiritual life. My fellow Christian's greatest worldly struggle may seem to me a fool's trick. Lots of people choose not to drink for religious reasons, but my idol, CS Lewis, loved beer and often said so in his writings.

Something I have discovered is that, unless we are in a position of taking care of someone else, like a father of confession or a parent or older sibling, these are things we should not worry about except in our own lives.

I recently found myself in a situation where I erroneously judged someone very dear to me for just such a reason. My initial reaction was to defend myself, build up the usual wall of excuses of "step 1 studying" and "school" and "stress," and then I realized - no one wants to hear it. Like my fellow med student was saying the other day, we chose this path. No one forced us into it. We knew how difficult and stressful it would be. We took the plunge, and now we must build our wings on the way down. Should our relationships with others suffer because of a voluntary choice we made? Do we let our interactions with others slide downhill without making a conscious effort to become better at all times even in the midst of running through med school?

This life as a Coptic Christian and as a medical student is only going to get harder, more stressful, more demanding. And yet I never want it to become an excuse for myself to "let myself go," so to speak. With this post, I urge all my friends and those know me and care about me, and those of you out there who know medical students, to constantly encourage them to better themselves all the time (while please kindly being sympathetic to their perhaps marathon of sleepless nights!). Don't let us slide. Please. Keep watch for our souls when we are too tired to keep watch for ourselves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update: Fr. Thomas Hopko passed away yesterday, March 18, 2015. The world lost a great man, but heaven gained a great saint. I will not post anything about his life or works; what can I say that would do him justice? You can google him and find all his podcasts on Ancient Faith Radio. Pray for us, Father.

The Nativity and Crucifixion from a Medical Perspective

I recently came across an incredible article titled "A Physician's View of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ," in which the author describes what must have happened to Christ's body during His Crucifixion in medical and anatomical detail. I will be the first to admit that I've always pretty much taken this salvific and life-giving event for granted, but reading this article really made me realize how much excruciating pain Christ must have endured as His holy Body was stretched far beyond any imaginable limits.

I mean, one lesson I certainly never had in Sunday School was how exactly one dies by crucifixion - Is it from loss of blood from the nail piercings and eventual hypotensive shock? Is it from dehydration mixed with unthinkable pain and emotional agony?

Here's how the article's author describes how difficult it must have been for Christ to even draw in a breath of air while He was on the cross:

"Hanging by his arms, the pectoral muscles are paralyzed and the intercostal muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled. Jesus fights to raise Himself in order to get even one short breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream and the cramps partially subside. Spasmodically, he is able to push Himself upward to exhale and bring in the life-giving oxygen."

Intrigued? Read the rest of the article here.

If that isn't enough to set your medical mind reeling, consider also the verses from Luke that chronicle the Visitation of St. Mary with Elizabeth:

"Now Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth." - Luke 1:39

In fact, there is only a single verse in all the Gospels that describe the actual journey of St. Mary to Elizabeth. We know from Luke 1:26 that the Annunciation of Christ's birth to St. Mary occurred in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, and since St. Mary stayed with her cousin for three months, it is conceivable that she was with Elizabeth until the birth of St. John. This probably means that St. Mary left her house to visit Elizabeth right after the Annunciation, when she herself was in the first month of her own pregnancy with Christ.

Now, what really gets me going over this is that St. Mary voluntarily left the comfort of her house in Nazareth, went into the "hill country" (that sounds super comfortable, read: sarcasm) with "haste" to a city in Judah, a journey that has been estimated to be about 100 miles. That's about the distance from NYC to Philadelphia. These days, that would be about a 1.5 hour car ride. Two hours with that gosh-darn traffic. In the ancient world, where you're probably hitching a ride on a donkey? 3-5 days at least (donkey transportation averaged 20 miles a day, camels anywhere from 30-100 miles a day, and walking can get you 20 miles a day, but I really sincerely hope St. Mary didn't walk it).

So the point is the last thing I would want to do in the initial stages of pregnancy when my hormones are raging and morning sickness is making me nauseous and vomiting my breakfast, is take a 100-mile journey through dusty, unpaved roads to visit someone else who is even more pregnant than me, and then take care of her for three months (I get exhausted after 20 minutes with a patient!). It just highlights how utterly unselfish and loving the Virgin Mother of Christ must have been, and I can truly believe that she did all this without even the slightest thought of complaint!

 

Waste Your Time Wisely

I grew up with an unorthodox Orthodox priest. That is to say - he was (is) so strictly adherent to Orthodox living that by today's standards, it's unorthodox. And I love him dearly for it. One of the things I love and appreciate most about my priest is that he has these sayings, his words of wisdom, that he repeats constantly to us in Sunday school and in his Sunday morning sermons. "Love in truth and truth in love," he always says, or "Ma'feesh cell phone fe kenesah! [No cell phones in church!]," or "Odas sa'a tamania! [Liturgy is at 8:00!]"

But my favorite of his, and the one that always plays back in my mind as I grow older, is "Your time is your life. You waste your time, you waste your life."

Your time is your life. You waste your time, you waste your life. Your time is your life.

Never have these words meant so much to me as they do now, in this isolated, surreal five-month block of time that I think of in my head as "Step 1 time," in which I have absolutely no free time at all. (Even writing this blog post is cutting into time I have scheduled to be studying an Infectious Disease lecture...hopefully it's a wise waste of time...). A recently graduated medical student once told me, "You'll never again in your life be able to study for anything the way you are about to study for Step 1." That's how intense the studying gets for this most crucial of licensing exams.

And now that I'm scheduling every precious hour of my life so precisely in order to achieve my end goal, now that every minute must be spent carefully in order to avoid any wasted time, I think back to how much time I wasted before and almost cringe at the remembrance of how much time I have wasted in my life. Did I really spend the summer binge-watching three full seasons of that TV show in one week? How could I have possibly let three months go by last year without opening my Bible just once? What have I been doing with my time? What have I been doing with my life?

No, I'm not having a mid-life crisis. I'm young, naive, bold, idealistic. But now that I can't afford to waste any time for fear of performing poorly on this exam, my eyes have been opened to just how poorly I have been using the time God has granted me in the past 20-odd years. Nothing will bring this time back. And boy, I really hope I never see the day when I am kneeling in front of the Almighty and He asks me, "What have you done with your time? Why did you waste your life?"

My dear friends and readers, never say to yourselves, "I don't have time." YOU HAVE THE TIME. If you are reading this and haven't yet said your daily prayers, GET UP NOW AND DO IT. GO. Close this window and close Facebook and hide your phone under a pillow for ten minutes and GO READ YOUR BIBLE. Don't let one more day go by in bitterness and hurt feelings and just go apologize to that person against whom anger has been festering in your heart. Go be productive and useful to society and expand your mind and learn something about the world. Go to church and sing praises and cry for forgiveness. GO. Don't waste your time. Your time is your life. Don't waste your life. 

"The Road Goes Ever On and On..."

Happy New Year's to all my dear readers!

2015 is not a year I have been looking forward to, primarily because of that monster of an exam, the United States Medical Licensing Exam Step 1 (known affectionately as just "Step 1" and in nightmares as "oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-step 1!!!!") occurring sometime around the mid-year.

This is probably the most important exam of my medical career, as it determines where I will match into residency after medical school. It requires a tremendous amount of preparation and discipline. I have sitting next to me a schedule for every single day of my life from January 1 - Step 1 Exam Date. Everything in my life in that 5-month time period - studying, church services, exercising, break times - is scheduled down to the hour. Gunner life.

So, the next five months will require the greatest amount of sacrifice I have ever been asked to make. I'm freaking out slightly even as I write this post.

Are there any other 2nd year Copts out there who would like to share their horror stories? Ideas for success? Prayers? Cries to the heavens for mercy? Share them in the comments below. And to all my other readers, please show your support with kind comments of encouragement and prayers for yours truly.

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." I pray to God that I survive to see "white shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."

And may the Journey begin.