Do not touch ANYTHING. No, No. Stop it. Put that down. It has germs. Wash your hands. Wash them really, really well. Scrub!
Go hang out in the bathroom at your local children’s museum. This is what you will hear. Again, and again, and again. This was true way before H1N1. Go outside the bathroom, and stand by the drinking fountain. You will hear a related liturgy. Do NOT put your mouth on the spigot. Stop it. You are too close. Don’t lick the metal! It has germs.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thinking Ethically About Chalice Hygiene
The most read post on this blog is about chalice hygiene, reflecting concerns of many about how to respond to the H1N1 pandemic. My response to this has been to share with others a story often told by my friend and mentor, Professor Amy Laura Hall, who taught me ethics at Duke. I am delighted she has re-told the story online so I can share it with you. Read it all by following the link at the bottom. And then let me know your thoughts once you've allowed yourself to be challenged by her point.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My response is to tell a story. My friend is the Clinical Director of the ED in a large medical center in Chicago. He and his wife have a child who nearly died before he was two--from starvation; the child could keep nothing down. My friend told me that he had a distended belly and looked like the children we see in pictures who are starving in Africa. Finally they had a diagnosis: Celiac Disease! They immediately removed all wheat from his diet and he quickly began to improve. When the little boy was 7, he was being prepared for his first communion. The parents wondered what to do because the wafers in their church were wheat based. On the one hand, wheat made the child deathly ill, but on the other, he was filled with the joyful anticipation of his first communion. The parents decided to share their concern with the child. He replied, "O don't worry, Mommie and Daddy. I'll be receiving Jesus and He wouldn't hurt me. I talked to him last night and I know it will be OK.” The parents knew they could not spoil such faith so with fear and trepidation, they assented to his receiving. The child had absolutely no reaction; his body totally tolerated the wheat in the wafer. To this day, the slightest amount of wheat in anything else he ingests makes him sick but he continues to receive "Jesus" every week.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we need to worry less about hand sanitizers and more about the level of our faith.