Sickness unto Death?
Unto death? Not really, but if one has something that bothers the body one begins to wonder if it might me lethal.
Three weeks ago I astonishingly observed that a tingling, which started a few days beforehand, had grown into somewhat alarming numbness in feet and hands. The most alarming thing for me was that every day I had less strength in my muscles, starting from the legs but slowly taking over the whole body. I went to the doctor and she had no idea what it was, then I went to the hospital and they had to test me for a whole day to find out what I might have. They took water from my spine which should not hurt at all, but the lady seemed to do it for the first time and I was screaming and moaning like never before because she kept hitting some nerves and muscles inside my spine. At least the water gave them a hint what caused this strange symptoms. They guessed that I had something called Guillain-Barr syndrome (German) which was caused by a virus. They sent me home and told me to return if it got any worse and gave me some painkillers.
The next morning I woke up and realized that my face also started to get lame. It became hard for me to move the right side of the face. A bit alarmed, I called the hospital again, whereupon they invited me to return immediately. There some neurology (nerves) experts examined me again and decided that it would be better for me to stay in the hospital and begin with the treatment immediately. I found out that they did not treat me earlier because the medicine is very expensive and can give all kinds of side effects. The problem with the sickness is that it can rapidly advance and befall the muscles of the lungs and for that affect the breathing. So there I was a few hours later in the intensive care station with all kinds of surveillance equipment on my body and needles feeding treatments directly into the blood.
Finally I had some time to reflect of what was going on. I was loosing control over my body, thanks God I could still walk, but did not know for sure what I had and where it was going to lead. For some reason I felt serene and at peace. I remembered the last stroll I took outside, it was a sunny day and as I walked I played with the idea that it might be the last one for a while or for good, and I gave thanks to God for walking. It would be the last stroll for almost two weeks.
The medicine I received were Immunoglobulins, extracted from blood of other people, they strengthen the immune system and are a well known cure for the complications I've had. What gave me troubles were the the side effects of the medicine. I was really sick, had to throw up and couldn't sleep. The treatment took five days, a few hours each. I dreaded it because now my tormentor was not the disease but the cure. After five days it was over though, and to my relieve the lameness stopped progressing. The doctors announced that I'm progressing positively but have to stay another three to four days. Therapy started and I got lots of visits from my friends. Chrystal stayed close to me, the troubles brought us to places of despair and helplessness which we never experienced together before. It brought us closer and gave us more respect for each other because we realized how deep our souls can resonate when plunged into a situation of despair.
Now looking back I thank God for his mercy. One fourth of the people with Guillain-Barre is struck so severely that they loose control over breathing, up to four percent dies. I probably will regain almost 100% of my strength but might never regain the full measure of endurance I had before.
Thank you for your concerns and prayers during that time and even now.
Some Thoughts
I've been writing the last six months, but not on this blog; I've been working on an essay and now it's finished. So I'll return to my blog and will pick up where I left off. We're on a journey to a place unknown, in faith we move hoping to find a home for our souls. My searching took me to the outskirts of philosophy, I still don't understand the power and meaning of our rationality, but what I've seen so far has told me that there is a wold of understanding things in a depth and austerity that reminds me of the sea. Nietzsche describes the journey of a man, searching for his own virtue, like a wave stealing all his self imagined greatness. The same man standing on a different shore will one day, by the same wave, be refunded all he's lost:
Verily, I have taken from you a hundred formulae and your virtue's
favourite playthings; and now ye upbraid me, as children upbraid.They played by the sea- then came there a wave and swept their
playthings into the deep: and now do they cry.But the same wave shall bring them new playthings, and spread before
them new speckled shells.
The paper I've been working on, compares the Christians and Greek virtues. Plunging into Plato's great vision of virtues made me realize that I had no understanding of words I thought I grasped: Justice, Wisdom, Love. It truly feels like as if a wave washes everything away I thought I understood. It's a strange liberating feeling acompanied by guilt. As if I'm loosing faith. Is this true? I do not know. I can't say no, but neither yes. I think our souls need room to breathe. To feast on what it has acqired by great turmoil and hardship, to then be able to dispose what is not good.
(For Tii)
A Year Ago…
One year ago I started my pilgrimage. It was an exciting day for me (see this post http://www.lukebuehler.com/?p=38). During that time I often wondered where this journey would take me. What God would do in my heart. Somehow I felt that there would be some detours until I would reach my goal, but what has actually happened in the last year, has far exceeded my guesses. From that day where I did my first step out of the home of my parents to start walking, I often dreamed about how it would be to reach Jerusalem. Over time it became more and more a symbol, the determination to reach the actual city didn't become any weaker, but it found a spiritual companion that empowered it even more. After a year I'm still half way, I stopped in Istanbul, never crossed the Bosporus to Asia. If cities have a symbolic meaning for me (and they do), then Istanbul is the life in the middle, since the dawn of history caught between the interests of the west and orient. Its the city of both continents and has thus two hearts: The heart of Athens which is cradle of our western civilization, and the heart of Jerusalem, our spiritual mother. I for my part long more for Jerusalem than for Athens and interestingly the reality of my pilgrimage reflects that. I had a good offer from someone I met during my trip, to work in Athens and stay there for the winter. I could have had an apartment there and made some money with which I could have finished my trip, but I felt like that it was not right for me to do this detour and I declined. Only to come back to Switzerland one month later from Istanbul? Yes. Where the pilgrimage of heart and body will lead I do not know, but one day I will make my home in Jerusalem. Hope with me.
Recap of a Discussion
Once a week we meet to discuss things of our hearts, to state questions not answers. Last time it was deep and it reflected some of the ideas I want to express here. Therefore I want to give here a recap. By the way this is our website: http://dankrusi.com/thefellowship/
The topic was as follows: Materialism, is this our new religion? As a discussion starter we stated that the problem of consuming is only hard to see in the case where it hurts others and are ignorant of it. Where either the consumer or the seller directly suffers under it, it is not hard to show why one shouldn't engage in such a trade. The problem is if we do wrong when we act as a consumer but do know know the full consequences if it. We read a quote of a ancient myth that Plato uses in The Republic: The Ring of Gyges. It's the idea of having a means to escape the consequences of our acts of injustice (Tolkien took up on this idea in the Lord of the Rings). The difficulty is now that we willingly choose to be ignorant of our acts of injustice, which is especially easy in materialism because the problems are outsourced in a global economy to places where we'll never hear what our Nike shoes do to the factory workers. To overcome this issue takes a lot of effort on our side to educate ourselves what effects our western life style has on the whole world. Then having that knowledge to feel actually responsible and act upon it is the hard part. There are two main spectra, one where we are responsible as an individual guided by our moral compass and one where we are responsible as a citizen in society, responsible for our laws to reflect our convictions. It starts with the first one resulting in a certain lifestyle, then it moves on to our social responsibility. Last night we primarily focused on the lifestyle. I think looking at this it becomes quickly evident that we long for practicalities. Examples we can follow. So we shared some of our ideas. Someone said its important to start with reflecting on actions we do. Thinking first. The someone said he wishes he could take more time to just be quiet and think, but that our fast paced industrial lives leave no room for that. Quickly we realized that we all regularly attempt to take more time to be alone and think but that it quickly fails due to other priorities that dominate such "none sense". If we have a ten minute slot before bed time we quickly fill it with a YouTube clip or something similar. I threw a realization into the pot I had a week ago or so, that we work long days with soul consuming jobs to earn lots of money with which we finance our expensive free time in which we try again to make up for our meaning less time at work. During our 20 minute lunch time we have to buy overpriced fast food wrapped in ridiculous amounts of plastic, just because we do not have the time to prepare real food. There are many more examples that quickly show bountiful evidence of a senseless lifestyle that we are often guilty of. Returning to the question, how we should live then, we felt the necessity to reflect more on what consequences our western lives have. It's easy to say we should just all live in the mountains but how do we act as citizens of the centers of civilization, namely the city.
Next time we'll discuss more what it means to acquire a reflective lifestyle and how we should relate to the issue of social justice. I'm looking forward to it.
Remnants of Humanity
I want to start this discussion with a poem I wrote the last two days. It expresses the pessimistic view I want to take at the beginning of the journey so that we can long for the promised land of hope.
Remnants of Humanity
Humanity was beautiful and barren.
An inner beauty the shone brighter than the sun,
and it came from the barrenness of her desires.
Through an adulterous act she gave birth to a child all in her image,
but the beauty was of her body and not of her soul.
Humanity named her Philosophy.From the sons of god to the sons of men everyone longed after the grown child.
And she gave them everything;
war and peace,
the knowledge of good and evil,
and many other important things.The desires of Philosophy gave birth to another child.
He was bright and proud.
Even more beautiful than his mother
but a heart laden with arrogance.
Philosophy named him Science.No one knew how much grief he would cause.
In his youth he took the throne from his mother,
raped nature and made her queen.
It was against her will but all authority was given to him.Both mothers looked at their offspring,
Humanity at Philosophy,
and Philosophy at Science
and they thought of them as bastards.
But after they had wept a smile appeared,
for what mother does not learn from her child?Humanity now far in years,
looked and saw in Philosophy truth.
Eventually she died of her grief,
having lost everything to Philosophy.
Some remained carrying her name,
but her daughter often disputed if they were worthy of it.Philosophy having reached the great age of her mother,
looked and saw in Science humanity.
But she died too after her son took the throne.
A sad and lonely death,
unrecognized she rotted away in the gutter.Science now the age of his mother,
looked and saw nothing.
Everything dissolved into nothing
and having no guidance he put a violent death to himself.With it came the end to the remnants of humanity.
We've come a long way. Looking back to the rise of history we can trace an evolution. How much was it for the better and where was it for the worse? Today we live in the age of science and his children. We are immerged into post-modern civilization and its culture. Surrounded by all the things of the 21st century the question is how will we emerge. The starting point is to view ourselves not as the peak of humanity (in the evolutionary sense), but as the remnant of humanity, understanding that we have come a long way of many mistakes, seeing the whitenesses of history as guides to humility instead of steps to greater self gratification. I mean by that, that we view ourselves as creatures in need of grace. Everything has been tried, has succeeded and failed and everything has once be known. The hope will not be in the discovery of a new solution, a new way how to do things. My hope is in the believe that a long time ago we were made as an icon of God. We have strayed in acquiring the likeness of God and are now lost down a path where we are dependent on grace to find a way back.
Next: In the age of technology, is our trust in information and knowledge eligible? (I would love to have a discussion about that because it is a question I have (of course) no definite answers for)
How Should We Then Live?
Even though I haven't read the book (yet) it's a question that burns on my heart more than anything. I'd say in the digital age the pace how our environment changes has become far quicker than anything we could ever imagine, almost exponential. For an old man his youth used to be the moral standard. Now we can sometimes look back 5 or 10 years and already feel stretched in our acceptance of what is permissible. It put a huge weight on our generation and the ones to follow. I love to observe the evolution of the internet, especially the social networking aspects of it. Or I'm interested in the movie industry how they push the limits to tingle the bellies of the entertainment gluttons living in the 21st century. There's so much information, different views on things, songs, papers, magazines, blogs, web sites, emails (ahhh the inbox) it has become hard to filter. Living in 2000+ as a 20 something the questions of theology, meaning in life, and even sometimes survival have almost faded a bit into the background and one question remains: How should we live? How should I live? And I like especially the sentence: How should we then live? I feel like a teenage kid after the teacher has told me something for hours I put up my hand and say provocatively, "so what? What should I do with it?". All I can say after been to every kind of church, having bought every consumer good (I already have and iPhone 3G), seen many movies, read piles of books, how should I then live?
I believe as pilgrims to the meaning of live this questions has become more pressing than ever. We have left behind the save lands of traditions, where you just do things because thats how they've been done for ever. Unfortunately have we embarked on a trip into an open sea on a nutshell, for my part I don't see land yet. Through our emancipation to total independence, we hold a powerful freedom to do with our time almost anything we want. But just like an investor who has a lot of cash, the first thing he asks is where to invest.
I feel like I'm facing an identity crisis. There's a lot of meaning in life I know it, but how to connect it to the personal life style? What's your life style?
I want to explore some of the things people go to find meaning in the next posts and express my thoughts. I feel like we are often just like pilgrims going from one thing to the other hoping to find a home. Consumerism, friendships, activism (green, politics, human rights), mysticism (new age, etc), church, parties, partner...
More Pictures Online
Originally uploaded by Luke Buehler
I've just uploaded all the pictures on Flickr. Enjoy.
Canada:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukebuehler/sets/72157604305016027/
Road Trip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukebuehler/sets/72157605874870522/
Back Again
After another great month in Pennsylvania, with the parents of Chrystal, I returned home to Switzerland.
We lived quite far out in the country among the Amish. Surrounded by the awakening of summer and beautiful nature I enjoyed a slow time there. Much reading and tinkering. I fell even more in love with Christal as be both realized how deeply our souls are connected. So it was all too harder to say good bye again and leave without her. At least she already had a ticket and would follow two and a half weeks later.
Coming back I felt quite disorientated, the journey is still on my heart like coals giving life to flames of motivation to do anything. I feel like I can't really return to anything unless I have finished my walk to Jerusalem. It's like Santiago in The Alchemist that needs to find the treasure buried at the pyramids. Having said that, the stream of live pulls me right back in. Before I went to the north America we stared a cell phone software company. Coming back I returned straight to that life, had to find an apartment, work. This is all natural but the problem is that it is so easy to just let go of the dreams when everything becomes so comfortable. The challenge is to keep the coal burning so that there is at least some fire in life.
If anyone still reads this blog, I give now one advice. Free yourself to go and see the world if your heart calls you to do it. Many smile down on those with the urge to go and find themselves in the big world, but there is something about bursting this bubble we live in and learning to walk outside of it. There you'll fell like freedom is approaching. Don't mistake this for freedom though, traveling is no freedom. Maybe all inclusive beach holiday. But just going without a plan will stretch you and make you realize that we are all bound to needs and desires. The fulfilling of those need outside of the bubble helps to find the inner freedom. People, that you never would talk to, have to be talked to. Places where you'd never sleep at have to be chose as the place for the night if you sleep or not. Go out and see for yourself. Take the courage.
It's nice for me to say this, and I've learned it on my travels, but I have to be honest its hanging on a thread right now. Include me in your prayers that the pilgrimage will continue.
Road Trip Part II
I totally forgot to write about the end of our awesome road trip trough the USA. So here it goes.
Our next stop after Boise was Salt Lake City which is somewhat a strange city, the streets are all numbered according to how far away they are from the Mormon temple which is in the very center. So after ending up on the wrong corner of the city we found our host. He showed us around the city and told us many interesting things about the Mormons who basically control Utah.
Our next destination was Denver. We arrived late at night because we got caught in a snow storm. We had several inches of snow which was strange because spring was supposed to be here already. The guys we stayed with had an absolute party apartment where we were warmly welcomed with a beer (and many more followed). I really liked the long philosophical discussions until 3 in the morning. After two nights we moved on, the next place in Kansas city was so good that we wanted to stay an extra night. Our hosts were a cool couple that owns a house in a nice part of town. Couch surfing is sometimes truly amazing; since they were out with some friends when we arrived they just left us their keys to their whole house! We never met them before and they trusted us so much. They took us out to real deal Kansas City BBQ, which is world famous. I've never eaten such good BBQ before (and so much), a kick ass blues band was playing that made the evening a special memory.
As soon as we got to Saint Louis we realized that there was much to see too. Our host showed us around and especially told us about the well known City Museum. This has almost nothing to do with a regular museum its more like a unorthodox fun park. There are all kinds of things welded together, many caves ans slides for crawling around. I think after three or four hours there we all had bloody knees. Ryan our host was once again an interesting person, we had many things in common and once more couldn't stop talking. Traveling is so good, because almost every day we meet someone that has a character that we just wanted to explore like new found island. I think thats what gets people actually hooked on exploring the world: It's less about the places and more about the cultured people. I think it's addicting!
From Saint Louis we decided to drive straight home to Pennsylvania which was about 16 hours or so, but we split up the driving which got us back to Chrystals parents at 3am.
More about my stay here in the Amish country side in the next post.
On the Road Again
I'm on the road again. Last Saturday Chrystal graduated, all in black robes and the square hats just like we know it from the movies. Then we packed up got everything in our car including her younger brother Ben and started driving back to Pennsylvania. We had 3700 miles ahead which translates to about 6800 kilometers. So I think its justified to call this a road trip. We are planning on taking it slow, visiting cities and consume some eye-candy that the USA has to offer. Since we're couch surfing every city also brings its own social adventure. Our first city to visit was Portland. We drove right into down town and were surprised to find ourselves to be in one of the nicest cities in North America. Chilling out on the main square, an open-minded black guy introduced himself as our tour guide. Of course we were happy to accept his offer and follow his lead to one of the coolest book stores ever, Powell's books. After that we started looking for the home of our host that was ten minutes outside of the city. We found ourselves in a cute wooden floating port where we were warmly welcomed to the house of Dave, who is also the port master there. After showing us around we just looked at each other and realized that the adventure of driving out into the blue has hit us again. It was a very interested night and we met many good people that we will remember for quite awhile. Two highlights were definitely burned into our memories: a big old Danish wooden boat maintained by two of Dave's friends and his awesome singing, which made the whole crowd become quiet. We finished the evening by philosophizing deep into the night. The next morning we headed to Idaho, which brought us along a broad river to some glittering waterfalls, vast prairie's and stormy mountains. We drove for almost 8 hours when we finally arrived at our destination, Boise Idaho. We called up Nick and we met him at his apartment. We chatted with Nick and his girlfriend and also his brother and we had some really good chocolate chip cookies. They offered us the kitchen so we made some pasta ate dinner as we watched their game of scrabble. It was so nice to eat a good meal after driving in the car all day. So far we've had pretty good weather, only a small bout of slushy rain as we went over a mountain pass. We'll tell of the rest of Idaho and our venture down to Salt Lake city in the next post.
