Strange Tony,
I ran across something you gave me after I joined our hospice and began to be confused by Gentiva management. I found your message as our office prepares to move locations under Humana. They are:
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - J. Krishnamurti
If we were in a healthy, functional situation, with wise, experienced leaders, it would probably make sense to speak our mind with total confidence, and share our honest feeling-reactions, and appeal to common sense, and point sincerely to what is fair and just, and to what is most likely to fix what is broken.
But sadly, the current society does seem to be very dysfunctional. I can't help thinking that this means we have to be, as Jesus put it, "as clever as snakes". We can't fight the frequent battles all dressed up in our brightly colored uniforms, out in the open field, standing in neat, disciplined rows. We have to do as some did in the Revolution, crouching in the forests, wearing deerskin and soft-soled moccasins, and learning to strike and flee with stealth.
Some of the situations confronting us seem so patently absurd! The motives given of course sound very noble and saintly, but we can't help seeing and sensing a lot of hidden agendas, power games, paranoia, and all of the "games people play". It's lamentable, but it's the present climate we find ourselves in.
It seems to call for a day-by-day discernment. Is today calling for simple honesty? Or is it calling for slow, cautious, deliberate, snake-like cleverness. More and more these days, it seems to call for saying less instead of more, for going with the flow, even though the flow is not a sensible one.
There is one bit of good news in this crazy atmosphere. Very many of the kooky decisions and plans simply don't last long! The fanfare and boasting quickly fade. Three or four weeks after the loud display of grandiosity, it all just goes away.
Is this ideal? No. Does it tear at our sense of rightness and reason? Absolutely. But as someone once said (possibly the guy who came to be called the "Buddha", or awakened one) "Avoid the company of deluded people when you can. But when you cannot, then keep your own counsel."
There is in this present situation, no good support to be found in the system. "Like sheep without a shepherd". But there is support here and there in individuals who are not as asleep as the crowds. And there is support, as ever, in one's own depths, where our very Source abides, below and beneath the noise, the worry, the reacting, the rush, and the insanity of the times.
I believe your words are even more applicable today to our hospice, even our greater society. I am grateful for them and for you.
Anonymous
