Ice Buckets and Pharisees: A Lesson in Gratitude

I have followed the work of Retina Foundation for years now, at one point accumulating binders of articles on potential cures that I printed off of online publications.

Until they got a Facebook presence which keeps followers very well updated. I never miss an update. With this latest one hitting my newsfeed, I feel particularly grateful to these unrelenting soldiers of research especially because the world knows little about their work.

They work to someday bring light to a darkened world, literally. Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is a rare genetic condition that progressively leads to total blindness. It has a very low profile because the % of those affected isn't that large.

I remember the Ice Bucket challenge that catapulted Lou Gehrig's disease into global limelight, providing much needed funds for research into a little-known disease. I wish every silent soldier in unknown battles had their ice bucket moment.

The latest gains made in RP are in gene therapy, a controversial area that also presents a lot of hope, reminding me that no cures come without controversy. An incident is recorded about the Pharisees plotting to kill Jesus for healing a man on a Sabbath.

Our present-day attempts to alleviate human suffering are equally rife with attacks from pharisaic authorities that benefit from the status quo. But we're grateful for those who dare to carry out "Sabbath healings" that involve confrontation with established powers.

We're grateful to those who choose to see the suffering of a minority as deserving of the greatest fight and inclusion into a world they're often locked out of.

We're grateful to those who refuse to say of a situation, "there is no cure", and instead march on through countless days, months, years... fueled by hope.

We're grateful to those who never see failure as a setback but as a block to build upon; and to those who keep funding struggles without counting the stumbles.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Retinitis Pigmentosa

The Child With Two Places

Many years ago, I recall a man coming to mama early one morning while the smokey mist still clung to the hills. He said, "Dada, I'm taking the child to the hospital." Mama said, "Oh, is the child ill?" The man paused and said, "The child has two places." I've always wondered how the doctors resolved that child's "two-places" gender. Our culture is mute about these truths.
This distant memory comes to me because I'm reading an article on healing communities, and then the author says, "As a queer, non-binary trans human with white privilege..." I pause. I don't understand half of it; I understand the meaning of the words separately, but put together to describe one's identity, my mind goes blank.
So I open a separate window and go into research mode, and I find a community of people who deal with bodily non-conformity that keeps expanding. LG.. LGBT... LGBTQIA..... with all its attendant tension. I'm in curious awe again, at what nature, environment, and its human co-creators are up to, and what they do to resolve issues of "two-places".
I live in a time and age when I can consciously observe life shifting and shaping in real time. I also now live within a culture that is more conducive to learning and embracing the myriad shifting-and-shaping and born-this-way of earth's lifeforms, with wonder and awe rather than fear, judgement and rejection. Only the other day, two male lions caught mating in Kenya became the nightmare of that country's moral police.
I long rejected that punitive psychotic deity with an evil streak who hates part of creation and means to burn it in furious fires and watch it squirm in eternal torture because "the bible says so." The God of my mind is an unshackled non-conforming creator who sometimes gives ordinary folk in a Kenyan village a perfectly beautiful child with "two places."
Humans are not alone in this wondrous dynamic creation. But because our interaction is more often with fellow humans, we are bound to miss the same shifting and shaping and born-this-way discoveries with other earthly lifeforms, unless you catch it on National Geographics where those tireless observers of nature feed us with awesome knowledge.

Body art by Yoruba artist, Laolu Sebanjo who calls his style "nxgafromysterics - the mystery of the African thought-pattern". ["Yoruba tradition follows a unique cosmology and asserts that every individual has a specific destiny and fate, placing importance of self-understanding, religious nourishment and spiritual growth"]