Author to speak at 6th annual Cell2Soul retreat

Author Brian T. Maurer is slated to speak at the 6th annual Cell2Soul retreat to be held at Sheep Hill conference center, Williamstown, Massachusetts, the weekend of October 1 – 2, 2011.

Maurer will deliver a short talk entitled “Donning the Yoke” on Sunday morning, October 2nd.

Additional topics at this year’s gathering include the medical humanities, surviving survivorship, absolute self-care, dignifying dementia, navigating madness, the odyssey of coyote medicine, and sacred undertakings.

Readers interested in additional information can access it here.

The Inflammatory Response

“It’s truly amazing the progress we have made in our understanding of the disease process and how to treat it—all through basic cellular research. I have witnessed it all over the course of my career.”

I sat next to the Chinese woman and stared out of the salt-streaked window at the white-capped waves, conscious of the slight pitch and roll of the ferryboat. She was a Ph.D. biologist who headed a lab devoted to pharmacological research for treatment of dermatological disease.

“Thirty years ago,” she continued, “we treated the pain of rheumatoid arthritis with almost no thought to attacking the disease at the root of the problem—autoimmune inflammation. Now we have mapped the biochemical cascade of the inflammatory response—cytokines, prostaglandins, interleukins, components of complement—and we are in the process of designing drugs to block these agents to prevent tissue destruction. It is all so fascinating.”

We were returning to Hyannis from a weekend medical conference devoted to soft science on Nantucket Island. Ironically, here we sat discussing the benefits of basic medical research. There is always more than one perspective when it comes to the practice of medicine.

How much of what we experience as disease is in reality the result of the human body’s response to certain agents, such as viruses, bacteria, and other toxic agents?

A recent article in the New York Times spoke to this very idea.

A new insight in cold science: the symptoms are caused not by the virus but by its host — by the body’s inflammatory response. Chemical agents manufactured by our immune system inflame our cells and tissues, causing our nose to run and our throat to swell. The enemy is us.

The inflammatory response: a potent cocktail of the so-called inflammatory mediators that the body makes itself — among them, cytokines, kinins, prostaglandins and interleukins, powerful little chemical messengers that cause the blood vessels in the nose to dilate and leak, stimulate the secretion of mucus, activate sneeze and cough reflexes and set off pain in our nerve fibers.

Listening to my colleague speak, I thought back to a patient I had recently evaluated, someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a different kind of inflammatory response, where labile emotions flare in the limbic system of the human brain.

Perhaps one day basic medical research will enable us to delineate specific biochemical pathways that trigger such responses; and, in turn, help us to formulate pharmaceutical agents to block the cascade that results in the downward spiral of major depression.

With our current state of basic medical research we stand poised to micromanage these medical maladies.

What’s good for the cell is ultimately good for the soul.

The Naïve Narrative

In his recent column In Defense of Naïve Reading, Professor Robert Pippin speaks to the state of literary criticism as it is taught on university campuses. His contention is that, although the current trend is to scrutinize the literary arts through the lens of the natural scientific research model — with the ultimate end of developing a “science of meaning” — creative works themselves were never crafted to serve research. Rather, their authors penned them as works of art, works meant to speak to us at the deepest level of our being.

In Pippin’s words: “Literature and the arts have a dimension unique in the academy, not shared by the objects studied, or ‘researched’ by our scientific brethren. They invite or invoke, at a kind of ‘first level,’ an aesthetic experience that is by its nature resistant to restatement in more formalized, theoretical or generalizing language.”

Pippin goes on to say: “Likewise ─ and this is a much more controversial thesis ─ such works also can directly deliver a kind of practical knowledge and self-understanding not available from a third person or more general formulation of such knowledge.”

I was reminded of these words during small group discussion at our recent Cell2Soul gathering on Nantucket. One of the presenters, a young physician, published author and director of a narrative medicine course, put forth his observations on illness. Illness, he maintained, separates us from our bodies. Illness diminishes us physically and morally. Illness alters the way we perceive the world and our place in it. Illness threatens us at the core of our being.

This young physician examined illness in various spheres of influence: illness and the self, illness in the doctor-patient relationship, illness and the family unit, illness and the community. He is working to formulate a theory of illness and its impact on the individual, the family, the community and society, in part to provide a framework for and justification of the study of narrative medicine in the medical school curriculum.

I applaud his efforts. In academic settings it is always necessary to justify what students need to learn to become competent in their chosen careers. A well-developed theory lends credence to academic study — and ultimately, acceptance of the particular discipline. In Pippin’s words: “We certainly need a theory about how artistic works mean anything at all, why or in what sense, reading a novel, say, is different than reading a detailed case history.”

When I engaged him in further discussion, the young physician maintained that the illness narrative could not stand alone by itself. It is too soft a subject to garner academic recognition.

Personally, I believe that narrative, like art, whether in written, cinematic, poetic or visual format, is sufficient to speak by itself. Although narrative understandably deals with the particular, it encompasses the universal, and so becomes relevant on a profound level.

Simple vignettes, simple narratives, in the hands of a skilled teacher, can be used to impart universal truths — scientific or moral — which every clinician needs to learn.

Nantucket Bound

How Melville’s Ishmael got from Manhattan to New Bedford is unclear; but for the record I drove to Hyannis, taking the Bourne Bridge across the Cape Cod Canal and pulling into the Yarmouth lot shortly before eleven o’clock on a crisp clear Friday autumn morning. The shuttle driver dropped me off at the dock just in time for me to purchase my ticket for the high-speed ferry to Nantucket.

Onboard the M/V Iyanough I stowed my bag and elbowed my way through the mass of humanity in the main cabin to the upper deck, where I found an open spot on the fantail. I stood at the head of the port ladder and surveyed the harbor as the boat’s engines kicked in. Slowly we backed out of our berth and turned toward the channel that led to the open sea.

“At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood onboard the schooner,” Ishmael tells us. “Gaining more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh, the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings.”

As we slid into open water, the helmsman eased open the throttle. When we approached 35 knots, a roostertail of fine white spray spewed from the stern. Through this mist in the midday sun, ephemeral rainbows skirted the air.

“Rainbows to do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor,” Ishmael observes. “And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray.”

The long dark ribbon of cape stretched across the horizon, dotted here and there with fixed white pixels: tiny man-made structures resting on this spit of land. Below the ribbon lay the grey-green white-capped sea. You could tell where the sea ended and the land began from the way the distant whitecaps faded and formed against the backdrop of the fixed white houses.

My glasses fogged with salt spray. I licked my lips and tasted the salty sharpness. I turned my collar up against the wind and felt the dampness of the sea on my back.

“How I snuffed that Tartar air!” Ishmael exclaims. “On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast, ducked and dived her brows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted; every rope yarn tingling like a wire…”

As we dipped and rolled through the waves, I surveyed the cast of humanity sprawled before my eyes: older men, grey-haired, baseball caps pulled down low on their foreheads to brace their eyes against the sun and spray; newspapers roughly folded and stuffed into back pockets of faded blue jeans; spotless tennis shoes. Young men sporting close-cropped reddish-brown hair, wrap-around sunglasses, hooded fleeces, pressed white Bermuda shorts, moccasins on sockless tanned feet.

“Methinks I have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death,” Ishmael muses. “Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks that my body is but the lees of my better being.”

Older women, thin, with sparkling eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, close-cropped; bandanas wrapped round their necks; cardigans, slacks. Young women, hair billowing like auburn sails in the wind, peacoats buttoned down over striped sailor’s jerseys, each one clutching an iPhone or equivalent. One bald-headed man hung by the railing off to port, coughing into the wind. A little curly-haired girl wearing a pink baseball cap and jersey to match held her mother’s hand.

As we approached the island, the ferry slipped between the red and green nuns and cans that marked the channel; while on either side a string of underwater rocks rose to form parallel jetties. Suddenly off to starboard a stunted lighthouse hove into view. We rolled past sloops and ketches reefed at their moorings. All along the wharf tiny houses stood in a row, grey-shakes with white trim. Up on the hill the golden dome of a church mushroomed above the roofs and widow walks.

“Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning: so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.”

Cormorants watched in silence while we slipped into our berth. The ferry shuddered as it struck the fenders at the dock, then stood still. The gangway dropped with a metallic clang, and we stepped onto solid ground once again.

I collected my bag and found my way into the cobblestone street. After a brief walk I retired to a raised concrete curb. As I took stock of my next steps, a white van with the words “Nantucket Inn” stenciled on its door crept by. I flagged down the driver and caught a ride to what would be my lodging for our weekend gam.

Author to speak at 5th annual Cell2Soul retreat

Author Brian T. Maurer is slated to speak at the fifth annual Cell2Soul retreat the weekend of October 8th, 9th and 10th, 2010, on the island of Nantucket.

Maurer will deliver a presentation entitled “Melville’s Spirituality in Moby Dick,” on Sunday morning, October 10th, at the Nantucket Inn.

Additional topics at this year’s conference include medicine and the arts, music and healing, caring for the caregiver, and the power of stories.

Readers can access more information about the gathering here.

To Poets Unpublished

Cell2Soul—first the online journal, later the blog—was originally conceived by the editors in part to be a venue where struggling writers, artists and photographers could see their creative compositions appear in electronic print.  For decades, perhaps centuries, much artistic talent never saw the light of publishing day; mostly because the industry scrutinized what went into print—and was highly particular in its selections.

The advent of the World Wide Web markedly altered the publishing landscape.  Now independent authors and artists can post their creative work regularly for all to savor.

Yet what of those past creative artists who never achieved the recognition they deserved in their lifetimes?  Emily Dickinson published fewer than a dozen poems before her death; Keats succumbed to tuberculosis in his mid twenties, before he was acknowledged as a master poet.  He died expecting that his name would be writ in water, as witnessed by the self-authored epitaph on his tombstone.

Here is my humble tribute to those myriad unknown writers, poets and artists down through the decades.

To Poets Unpublished

I pour a glass to poets past
Who struggled as they wrought,
And wrestled to compose each line
From wisps of conscious thought.

Those ideas forged with wit
Or written words to woo—
Phrases by the soul-heart knit
Into the rhymed milieu.

Only such impressions last,
Only verse prevails,
Only words will fix them fast
Against what time assails.

But what of you, disbursed,
Who failed what you essayed;
Who counted out your metered verse
To lose the hand you played?

Like Housman’s athlete dying young,
You slipped betimes away
And never had the trophy won
Before that close of day.

So let us gather, poets all,
Of mortal and immortal line—
And raise this toast, each one to all—
With water writ, or wine.

2010©Brian T. Maurer

Full Moon over Kitchen Creek

It was dark when we left the barn after the last lecture.  Outside, Jim’s wife waited for me with a flashlight.  I pulled my sleeping bag and duffle from the back of my Subaru and followed her across the meadow.  High above the barn where the haflingers were bedded down, a full moon broke through the clouds.

At the far end of the meadow we found the path that led down the hill to the hollow above the creek.  You could hear the water rushing down over the rocks in the night.  Off to the left I could make out the lines of a cabin in the moonlight.

Jim’s wife opened the door.  I followed her inside and threw my bag and duffle on the high bed.  She lit an electric lantern and held it up so I could survey the room.

“You’ll probably want a fire for the night.  Stoke the stove full and let it burn down to coals.  It’ll be nice and toasty inside.  I left a couple of heavy throws on the bed in case you need them.  Breakfast is at eight o’clock.  Good night.”

I looked about the room.  The cabin was perhaps fifteen by thirty feet, housing three windows, one on each side and another in front next to the door.  A writing desk stood opposite the double bed.  Another wooden desk stood at the far end near the wood stove.  The tinder box rested against the opposite wall.  A double bladed ax leaned up against the back wall, and a number of fishing poles lay cradled in a rack on the wall above the ax.  One of them—a fly rod—looked to be at least ten feet in length.

Three chairs rested between the desks and the bed.  I thought of the three chairs in Thoreau’s hut:  one for solitude, two for company, three for society.  This night only one would be necessary for me.

I set a lighted match to the kindling and stoked the stove with several split logs.  The dry wood caught quickly.  The fire made a whooshing sound as flames drew up the flue.

I rooted through my duffle and pulled out a set of long johns.  I undressed by the light of the electric lantern and hung my trousers and shirt on a nail by the window.  The thermometer on the wall read 52 degrees.

In the desk I found two books:  one on fly-fishing with an introduction by Jack Hemingway and another with watercolor prints of various species of trout.  I laid out my sleeping bag on the bed and crawled in and paged through the book on trout until the words fell out of focus.  Afterwards, I turned out the electric lantern and drifted off to sleep with the sound of the cascading brook in my ears.

Sometime during the night I got up to check the stove.  The fire had burned down to glowing embers.  I slipped on my boots and stepped outside.  Overhead the full moon burned in the night canopy.  This was Lorca’s luna, one and the same, sailing through a sea of smoky clouds.  A poem by e. e. cummings came to mind—

 !
O (rounD) moon, how
do
you(round
er
than roUnd) float;
who
lly & (rOunder than)
go
:ldenly (Round
est)
?

I returned to bed once more and awoke several hours later to find the full moon sitting on the edge of the silhouetted black mountain above the gorge.

I was up at first light.  The stove was cold.  Methodically, I stripped off my long johns and donned my clothing.  I gathered my gear and stowed it back into the duffle bag, rolled up the sleeping bag, stuffed it into the sack and cinched the drawstring tight.

I stepped out into the cool morning air.  For the first time I noticed that the maple leaves had turned a golden yellow; many had already fallen to the ground.  I hiked up the back hill to the pasture, carefully separating the hemlock branches now wet with dew.

The haflingers were out feeding on their flakes of hay.  They looked up when I stepped out through the trees, then resumed their breakfast.  I watched them eat before descending the hill back to the cabin.  Jim’s wife was calling from the path.  “Come up to the house.  You can get a hot shower before breakfast,” she said.

It was only when I turned to leave, my arms laden with gear, that I glimpsed the painting wedged on the shelf above the door below the beams.  A white-bearded man bowed his head over hands folded next to a crust of bread.

Author to speak at 4th annual Cell2Soul retreat

Author Brian T. Maurer is slated to speak at this fall’s Cell2Soul gathering at Mason Hill in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts on Saturday, October 3, 2009. Maurer will deliver a short presentation on Henry David Thoreau and the significance of his philosophic outlook for contemporary living.

Of the many observations that we could make about the man Thoreau—indeed, we could make many, because, like us, Thoreau was a complex human being with his own inconsistencies, pet peeves and private issues—today I will emphasize two:  the satisfaction he derived from working with his hands, and the cultivation of his spiritual awareness.  The two are not mutually exclusive.

For further information on this weekend retreat click here.

“Measuring a Life” in Cell2Soul

“How do you measure a life?

“At first glance it sounds so simple. Stroll through any cemetery or graveyard, visit any sepulcher or memorial, and there before your eyes etched in granite you will find the answer: name, date of birth, date of death. In Western culture, we measure a life by its longevity. Yet there is much more to a life than just its span of years….”

My essay “Measuring a Life” has been published in the winter 2006/7 issue of Cell2Soul. This piece is a synopsis of the presentation “How Do You Measure a Life?” that I delivered at the premier Cell2Soul conference this past November at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Petitioning for the Right to Die

Today’s New York Times (December 20, 2006) carried an article highlighting the cause célèbre of Piergiorgio Welby, an Italian poet, now bedridden and ventilator-dependent after suffering with muscular dystrophy for 40 years. Mr. Welby has petitioned the Italian government to allow him to end his life. “I find the idea of dying horrible,” Mr. Welby says, “but what is left to me is no longer a life.”

An Italian court has denied legal permission for a doctor to sedate Mr. Welby and remove him from his respirator. He says he is not seeking to commit suicide, but to remove himself from medical treatment he does not want. “What is natural about a body kept biologically functional with the help of artificial respirators, artificial feed, artificial hydration, artificial intestinal emptying, of death artificially postponed?” Mr. Welby has written.

“If it is done privately, there would be a way to accommodate his desire to discontinue life support as a burdensome therapy,” said Dr. Myles Sheehan, a Jesuit priest and physician at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago. “But if it is done publicly, it’s a big mess, because of the direct link to euthanasia.” Dr. Sheehan is an expert on ethical issues surrounding euthanasia.

Welby’s book, Let Me Die, brings to mind another book, Cartas desde el infierno (Letters from Hell), written by Ramón Sampedro, a Galician quadriplegic sailor who petitioned the Spanish government to permit him to end his life. Sampedro ended up committing suicide with the help of a friend. His story is told in the motion picture Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside), which I reviewed in the Summer 2005 issue of Cell2Soul. Interested readers can access my review here.