We would like to thank everyone that participated in the Go the Extra Mile for Breast Cancer Awareness Walk held on Tuesday, October 29th
This past week I read about an international research project conducted by Science Magazine. Hundreds of “lost” wallets containing large and small amounts of money were placed in locations around the world where they could easily be found, with the aim of the experiment being to see what would happen next. Would one nation be more honest than another? Would a particular age demographic be more honest than another? Would anybody turn in any of the wallets at all? Well the results have been surprising to read. Fascinatingly, the study revealed that the more money there was contained in a lost wallet- the more likely it was to be handed in to the fictitious owner, whose contact details were also left inside. For those of you wondering, Switzerland had the highest overall wallet return rates. China had the lowest, and the U.S. ranked around the middle of the 40 countries, at 21st place.
The project reminded me of those various parables that Jesus told about things being lost. Jesus’ teaching using allegorical stories is recorded in all four gospel texts, including stories about lost sheep, lost coins and lost children, with his intent and focus being to help us to understand the joy of God in the lost being found, and the rejoicing in heaven over those who find true fulfillment and joy in their lives by living fully into a relationship of faith and love with God.
According to the Science Magazine study, and contrary to what many might suppose, it would appear that civic honesty is still alive and well. It’s easy to be despondent about a perceived decline in what one might refer to as neighborliness and honesty, but the research certainly suggests that, when it comes to our society, all is not lost. And as we read in Jesus’ parables about the enduring and boundless love of God, it becomes clear that neither are we. May all who walk the pilgrimage of faith, and who search for meaning and purpose find voice for our hearts desire in the words of Martin Luther King’s favorite hymn; “Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, help me stand. I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m alone. Through the storm, through the night lead me on to the light, take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.” May all those who feel lost find a home amidst God’s love.
Sometimes we don’t realize how noisy our world is until we escape to a place of quiet. The Desert Mothers and Fathers believed that silence and quiet prevents us from being suffocated by our wordy and noisy world. They believed that there is more to silence than not speaking; it is more than the absence of sound. It is that space we create within, that portable cell, of rest and peace that can stay with us wherever we go. Madeleine L’Engle wrote a book called A Circle of Quiet in which she described how every so often she needed out—away from all those people she loved most in the world in order to regain a sense of proportion. Her special place was a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet: “I go to the brook because I get out of being, out of the essential. If I sit for awhile, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.”
Here on the campus we searched a long time for that circle of quiet, that place to gather thoughts and create that space to help us regain perspective. Thanks to the inspiration and persistence of some of our residents, we created such a space but it remains yet undiscovered by many. Irene Cool has helped shepherd the creation of our Quiet Place and I share with you her invitation to visit it.
“Come to the Quiet, Bring Thoughts That You Gather. This is our Quiet Place at the east-side front of the Life Center and across from Ms. Kimberly’s office. It is there for you and me and all others to go to be still, away and alone or with another. It is there for us to pray, say or simply listen. Our room is there for us to rejoice, to sing, to weep but mostly to just be somewhere and away…from noise, from chatter…a free place to speculate or fret. Fragrance fills the silence and helps to call on memories and allows our imaginations of happy times and remembrances of comforting places. Soft aromas can calm, purify our souls and heal our bodies.
The fountain of running water, a gentle mantra, assures us of the power of life…a continuum. A great purifier calms our anxieties. Candles may be seen as a focal point for silence and we can increase our focus and concentration by simple candle gazing…to be mesmerized. The Himalayan salt lamp gives off a soft pink light which brings again the peace of the room to the soul. So all of you who live here, caregivers and others…when you will sometime want a minute to rest…come to the quiet and find your peace.”
One of the things that we are so often asked about by couples visiting Beatitudes Campus and considering their future is about what the future may look like as the years go by. About 70 percent of people over the age of 65 will need some type of long-term care during their lifetime, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). On average, women will need care for a longer period of time (3.7 years), compared to men (2.2 years), and 20 percent of those age 65 and older will need care for more than five years.
An active, healthy lifestyle can help protect your mind and body from disease and injury—which often leads to a need for long-term care. This is why we offer such a wide range of opportunities through the Life Enrichment department.Mike Smallwood and Jon Schilling are always eager to help you put together individual plans to support that healthy lifestyle. However, there are no guarantees in life and the question of whether—and how long—you or your spouse may need care remains unknown.
Since aging is an individual thing, a couple should not expect that both partners will have the same needs throughout retirement. As a couple ages, one partner may require assisted living or skilled nursing services, while the other partner remains able to live independently.
A continuing care retirement community (CCRC)/lifeplan community can help couples prepare for the challenges that an unknown future may offer. CCRCs provide a continuum of services—from independent living to nursing-home level health care—that is available if and when needed. I often hear Becky Black, our Director of Sales & Marketing, refer to it as “peace of mind” in your back pocket. If, after moving onto the campus, one spouse eventually needs a higher level of health care services, the couple can still be together here at Beatitudes.
Here is an example of how a lifeplan community such as Beatitudes Campus can meet the needs of both partners over time:
Jim and Jane move into an independent living apartment or patio home here at the campus. A few years later, Jane is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The couple continues to live together for a couple of years, but as Jane’s needs change, she moves into another section of the campus to receive additional care and support. Jim continues to enjoy the social benefits of living within the retirement community and can visit with Jane, who is just a short walk away, whenever he wants.
Those of you who are reading this article as residents – congratulations! You took one of the most significant steps you could in planning for your future. Those who are reading and still considering—our residency counselors can help you take a look at all of the variables and help you develop a plan. Couples who seek peace of mind in the face of uncertainty may want to consider a lifeplan community/CCRC as a viable retirement living choice to ensure that both partners will be taken care of now and in the future. And residents, don’t forget that you can be financially rewarded for sharing the good news with friends and family – your first successful referral will earn you $1,000 and the amounts go up from there. Stop by the sales center to get your referral form and begin earning!
To serve others, one must be able to connect and listen. To serve others, one must show compassion and humility. To serve others, one must have vision alongside determination and hard work. All of these characteristics distinguish Leroy’s service and involvement in projects within our campus community and in projects benefiting the greater community and neighbors living near Beatitudes Campus.
These were the opening words of our very own Leroy Calbom’s nomination for Volunteer of the Year Award. For those who know him, you know this is so true! It was my absolute honor to be the emcee of the LeadingAge Arizona Awards Luncheon on May 24th and present the well-deserved award to Leroy!
As a past employee and now a resident, Leroy wanted to know more about the neighborhood and how he and the campus community could serve them. Through the Studio, he encouraged other residents to join him in meeting with the City of Phoenix, the Phoenix Police Department, Department of Human Services, Area Agency on Aging and local neighborhood schools, churches and neighborhood associations to find out more. What emerged was that there were many intergenerational refugee families living within a short distance of the campus. When Leroy heard about this, he led a group of fellow residents and sprang into action. He met with the Mosaic Elder Refugee Program at the Area Agency on Aging, became a certified ELA (English Language Arts) instructor and persuaded his fellow residents and neighbors to join him. He persuaded me and other campus leaders to dedicate a room to hold ELA classes for refugee families, and further persuaded the campus leadership to use the campus bus to pick up refugees to bring them to class and take them back to their home. That’s the thing about Leroy – his quiet, unassuming demeanor is a powerful instrument of intentional leadership.
The ELA classes are embedded here at the campus. When Leroy was asked why he did this he responded with “Because they are us. Their story is our story. We are a nation of immigrants and immigrants are part of America’s founding story. Immigrants share the very values we hold dear – work hard, practice your faith, love your family and love this country.”
Please join the campus community on Wednesday, June 5th as we celebrate Leroy and his award during the monthly Town Hall meeting!
George Orwell’s novel, 1984, was so successful at creating an imagined yet potential future reality that seventy years later, one of its most famous phrases ‘Big Brother is watching you’, continues to be used when describing the potential for governments and business to use technology to intrude into our daily lives via technology. This past week, that phrase was used by many journalists writing about another breach of technological security. This time, the text messaging service WhatsApp had been hacked by people who had installed spyware, turning users’ cell phones into a surveillance system by activating its camera and microphone, tracking users movements and extracting information from messages that were sent. As Orwell envisioned, that potential in the hands of those seeking to cause harm or to control others has some very serious consequences and implications. If someone hacked my phone, I suspect the most interesting thing they would find would be my wife and I discussing our dinner plans, but the incident is another reminder of how much we value our privacy. Technology has created a double bind. It facilitates communication to an amazing degree. We can send a message to anyone, anywhere, anytime. But it seems to be coming with an increase in surveillance that makes private communication risky. What are we to do? Throw away the phone and return to sending letters with the Pony Express? I hope not. In Psalm 139, traditionally attributed to King David, we hear a half-complaint and half-rejoicing in the truth that he is unable to escape the omniscient God. ‘Where can I hide from your spirit?’ he asks. He answers his own question by saying that he can’t and that perhaps it doesn’t matter. He knows that God’s gaze not only penetrates the rock of the cave in which he hides, it sees into his very soul. God is able to read his life, decrypt it end to end. To use a modern idiom, David knows he has been soul-hacked. The idea of being soul-hacked would be appalling if the one knowing the secrets of our hearts was a malignant force out to mine the data of our lives and use the information for their own ends to crush and oppress us. But as the Psalmist goes on to say: ‘Your eyes have seen my unformed substance.’ ‘Created my inmost being.’ The God who cracks the encryption of our hearts, created that heart and gives us the code to open it. The One who is watching us, in this instance, is not against us but for us.
Much-loved poet, Mary Oliver, died recently at her home in Florida at the age of 83. She lived for many years in Provincetown, Mass., with the love of her life, the photographer Molly Malone Cook. Oliver got a lot of her ideas for poems during long walks — a habit she developed as a kid growing up in rural Ohio. She wrote about one such walk in her poem “The Summer Day”:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
A friend of Oliver’s described her as “a visionary poet, and she’s also the quintessential tough old broad who finds traces of awe in, for example, scooping out the shining wet pink bladder of a codfish, or getting down on all fours with her dog out in the woods and, for an hour or so … see[ing] the world from the level of the grasses.” What I particularly appreciate about Mary Oliver is that she knew the rewards of paying attention. As Jesus encouraged, she seriously considered the lilies of the field how they grow. Her essay called “Staying Alive,” is about escaping from her difficult childhood into nature and literature. Her work speaks directly to us as human beings in lines such as: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” In her poem, When Death Comes, she beautifully says, “When it’s over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.” Writer Ruth Franklin says her work is infused with a deep spirituality. “The way she writes these poems that feel like prayers, she channels the voice of somebody who it seems might possibly have access to God. I think her work does give a sense of someone who is in tune with the deepest mysteries of the universe.” As we move into the dog days of summer, I look forward to reading more of Mary Oliver. What will you be reading?
Later this month, the parliament of Uganda is due to debate, and potentially pass, proposed laws designed to censor some of the country’s most prominent artists. The proposed regulations include vetting new songs, videos and film scripts prior to their release. Musicians, producers, promoters, filmmakers and all other artists will also have to register with the government and obtain a license that can be revoked for a range of violations. Not surprisingly, the proposals have been condemned as an intrusion into artistic freedom, and interestingly, the proposed legislation has inadvertently sparked a global recognition of the actual influence of what they are seeking to restrict. It is nothing new for the arts to make those in positions of power and control feel uncomfortable, and yet the power of what is sung, and what we ourselves sing, is easily overlooked. It can give a voice to our deepest emotions – and it can help shape our whole approach to life. The Old Testament psalms reflect almost every human condition – anger, grief, despair, illness, desertion, betrayal, and often a deep desire to see justice done. But alongside the lament, we also find praise, thanksgiving and celebration. All life is seen in light of a God whose ways might be beyond our recognizing, but who is to be found even in the darkest of our days.
It was this ability to keep on singing about a liberating God which helped sustain many slave communities in this country during the evil of slavery. Their voices blended in harmony to reach out beyond the drudgery and the misery to a promised land ‘Way over Jordan’. The singing encouraged, motivated, and articulated an important truth which these people had grasped, and were eager to declare with robust passion. What song are we called to sing? Are we singing it, or have we been silenced into submission by those who would prefer not to hear? The Ugandan government might succeed for a while in controlling what’s to be sung. But the song of truth won’t be silenced forever. As Sam Cooke wrote; ‘There have been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long, but now I think I’m able to carry on. It’s been a long, a long time coming but I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will’. May we all find in God the words to our songs, and the strength to keep singing.
Now we are on the other side of Easter. Remember, Easter was not the glorious event for the disciples that it was for us. The trumpets did not sound. Easter lilies and spring flowers did not announce new life in their midst. Unexpectedly, momentarily, they saw Jesus alive and then very quickly he was gone. It had to have been a very uncertain place to be. What happens now? I imagine the disciples were tempted to go back to where they were. They were tempted to go back to who they were. They were tempted to go back to what they were.
I read a meditation during Holy Week that has stuck with me. It keeps challenging my heart and mind. Mary Luti, a longtime seminary educator and pastor writes: “A new command I give you: Love one another as I have loved you…” (John 13:34) It was on the night he was betrayed that Jesus gave us the love commandment. In fact, it was right after his betrayer, flush with silver, left the table and slipped away into the night. Scripture says that Jesus knew where Judas was going. It’s a safe bet the others did, too. Frederick Niedner once wondered whether, after hearing that commandment about the way they should love each other, any of the disciples got up and went after Judas. ‘Did anyone fear for him, miss him, or try, even after he brought soldiers to Gethsemene, to bring him back and talk him out of his shame, his anger, his rapidly deepening hell?’
Did anyone try to love him as Jesus did? Tradition has consigned Judas to a gruesome death and the deepest circle of hell, so my guess would be no. Which means that the church—that’s you and me—hasn’t yet learned the first thing about the love commandment. Or about our own pain. For we all have at least one Judas missing from our tables, out there in the night, unforgiven and alone. And each of us may be a Judas for someone else, absent from someone else’s feast. Maybe when we sit together at the church’s Table to share bread and cup, we should add a chair. And leave it empty, an aching absence. Maybe the sight of that absence would shame us into the world to look high and low for Judas, and to keep looking until all our Judases come home.”
The commandment to love is demanding. How often do we try to make it easy by loving the lovable rather than seeking out those who really push us and make our blood boil? How often have we chosen to continue sitting at the table while a family member leaves in anger out the door instead of getting up and going after them? Who is missing from your table and how do you deal with the aching absence? Who are you wishing would come home? Have you ever been the outcast of the family, the one absent from the feast? Have you ever felt beyond the reach of forgiveness? As a society, who do we leave behind and never go back for? How will you take seriously the love commandment this side of Easter?
EARTH DAY OBSERVANCE…On Friday, April 26th, the residents and staff of Beatitudes Campus are participating in the 2019 Earth Day Observance with what has been termed a “Protect March”. The Marchers will gather outside The Bistro at 10:00AM Friday morning and then proceed to The Everett Luther Life Center. Join us!
In our Easter celebrations, we find the truth of that victory in ourselves and the world around us, which sets an undying flame of faith within our hearts. May that flame burn brightly today and always. Alleluia.
By now, you have likely heard the very sad news that our Beatitudes Campus founder, Dr. Culver H. (Bill) Nelson, passed away on Friday April 14, 2019. Beatitudes Campus has lost a visionary leader and our community has lost an amazing soul.
April is National Occupational Therapy (OT) Month and, as such, Success Matters would like to celebrate the culminating work of two wonderful OT doctoral students on Campus, Chandler Somers and Katie Holmes. The role of an OT has been described as a blending of science, creativity, and compassion, in order to help individuals live their lives to the fullest. While working on their doctoral capstone projects over the past four months, both Katie and Chandler have certainly exemplified these qualities, and we’re proud to share their accomplishments.
During their time on Campus, both Katie and Chandler have been revising and expanding the Success Matters Empowerment Platform in Plaza View Assisted Living. The Empowerment Platform involves a holistic interview to learn about residents’ unique backgrounds, interests, and hobbies. It also includes various wellness screens to provide residents with personalized strategies and recommendations to live a safe, active, and engaged lifestyle.
As part of her individual capstone experience, Chandler has just finished up leading and analyzing the efficacy of the Beatitudes Campus 6-week SAFER Stepping falls prevention course. This course is offered two to three times per year, and involves exercises targeted to improve balance, as well as discussion about potential fall risk factors. Chandler spent time researching current best practices for falls prevention, in order to provide background and evidence for the course. The data collected from participants across the 6-week program indicates that participants did, in fact, have decreased falls concerns and increased knowledge about various fall risk factors, including medications, vision, hearing, nutrition, and brain health. If you are interested in participating in the next SAFER Stepping course starting in July, contact Jessica at #16110 to get added to the list.
Katie’s culminating individual project involved creating and leading the workshop Tools for Stress-Free Living, an 8-week program focusing on the concept of resiliency and emphasizing the ability to find the positives despite adversity or struggles. Discussion and activities included heart-focused deep breathing, engaging the senses, exercise, reframing personal stories, mindfulness, and journaling to facilitate healthy coping strategies. The goal was to engage the participants on both an individual and group level, fostering growth, reflection, and reciprocal learning. On average, participants decreased their perceived stress levels by 15% over the course of the 8-week workshop.
Throughout each of these projects, Katie and Chandler made wonderful connections with residents and staff, explored practical and creative interventions for the wellbeing of older adults, and served as a valuable resource on Campus. Perhaps most importantly, they learned so much from their experiences with you all and are truly grateful for their opportunities at Beatitudes Campus.
If you would like to join Success Matters in thanking Chandler and Katie for their tremendous work, and wish them well in their future careers as OTs, please join us in the Plaza Bistro on Thursday, April 25th at 10AM for treats and refreshments.
Country Singer Kenny Chesney sings a great song called “Don’t Blink.” The song’s lyrics tell of a younger man’s encounter with a 102-year-old man who was being interviewed on the news. The interviewer asks the man what’s the secret to life, and the older man looks up from his pipe, laughs, and says, “All I can say is don’t blink”. I have to share just a couple of the verses: I was glued to my TV when it looked like he looked at me and said: “Best start putting first things first” Cause when your hourglass runs out of sand You can’t flip it over and start again. Take every breath God gives you for what it’s worth. Don’t blink, just like that you’re six years old, And you take a nap, And you wake up and you’re twenty-five, And your high school sweetheart becomes your wife. Don’t blink, you just might miss Your babies growing like mine did, Turning into moms and dads, Next thing you know your better half of fifty years is there in bed, And you’re praying God takes you instead. Trust me friend a hundred years, Goes faster than you think, so don’t blink. So I’ve been tryin’ to slow it down. I’ve been tryin’ to take it in, In this here today, gone tomorrow world we’re livin’ in. Don’t blink.
Chris Wallin was inspired to write the song after he lost three major family members within a two-year period. There was a line that he wanted to put in the song that never made it in: “We always send flowers to people when they’re gone. We should send them when they’re living.” Don’t blink. No truer words are there. I was thinking about this when our daughter Maddie came home from college for Spring Break. She is just weeks away from finishing her first year at NAU and we were already talking about what she might do after graduation! How could the years have gone by so fast?! Maddie wants to speed up time and jump to when she’s 21 and free to do what she wants and I know I’m going to blink and she’ll be walking down the aisle getting married. Don’t blink. Time seems to go faster and faster the older you get (the young never believe that). Sometimes it can be helpful to remember that yesterday is gone, tomorrow isn’t here, so today is all we’ve got. The days fly by, but there is only one today so we must rise to each new one determined to make it count. What will you make of today? Maybe do something to make life better for someone other than yourself or do something that will make a memory. Do something you’ve never done before. Do something fun and funny. Talk to someone you haven’t talked to in a long time—call them up or write a letter. Tell them that you love them because you may never get to say it again. Don’t blink.
This year, as well as fasting from my favorite treats, I have also been accompanied on my Lenten pilgrimage by the poet Malcolm Guite’s book Word in the Wilderness; A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter. Poems are an ideal companion for the season of Lent as we seek to reorient ourselves to God, with poetry often providing a call for us to ponder the wonders of the world around us while looking and listening for God at work in us.
One of the poems included in Guite’s collection is entitled How I talk to God, by Kelly Belemonte.
“Coffee in one hand leaning in to share – How I talk to God. ‘Momma, you’re special’, three-year-old touches my cheek – How God talks to me. While driving I make lists: done, do, hope, love, hate, try – How I talk to God. Above the highway hawk: high, alone, free, focused – How God talks to me. Rash, impetuous chatter, followed by silence – How I talk to God. First, second, third, fourth chance to hear, then another – How God talks to me. Fetal position under flannel sheets, weeping – How I talk to God. Moonlight on pillow tending to my open wounds – How God talks to me. Pulling from my heap of words, the ones that mean yes – How I talk to God. Infinite connects with finite, without words – How God talks to me.”
This beautiful work causes us to ask ‘What is prayer?’, and reminds us that a life of prayer is both speaking to God, but also listening, in turn.
In his reflection, Malcolm Guite says this;
“Saint Paul calls on us to pray without ceasing, leading some contemplatives have interpreted that as a call to leave the world with its business and distractions and seek long swathes of uninterrupted time devoted to prayer and prayer alone. Others have seen it as a call to have a continual hidden mantra, wheeling and cycling beneath all we do, providing an undercurrent or ground note of prayer beneath all our daily activities.”
In different ways for different people, both of these approaches are valid and neither exclusive of the other. Perhaps the greatest gift of Belemonte’s poem is to remind us, once again, that each day we find ourselves in conversation with God within the ordinariness of our lives.
May we all spend this season of Lent attuned to that conversation, to both speaking and listening, so that that the very rhythms of our everyday lives are opened up to God, and offered up as our unceasing prayer.*
Once again, the world has witnessed another atrocity born out of hatred. The faces of the fifty victims of that murderous shooting, of people gathered together in worship and prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand appear in our newspapers and on our screens, and once again the question is asked; `how did we get here?’ Free societies are an open marketplace of ideas and convictions, however the pluralism and freedoms which we hold dear is indeed fragile. As we have seen in the live-streaming of this latest tragedy, it has become much easier to dole out division and bigotry to an eager and growing audience. Social media sites like Facebook will again come under increased criticism for what they allow to be uploaded and shared, and rightly so. However, our response in the face of such horror needs to be an enduring one, born out of desire to invert the extremism of hate into the radicalism of love. As Professor Mona Siddiqui wrote last week, “Laws can curb the excesses of human behavior, but ultimately it’s our individual moral commitment to human fellowship and friendship which changes relationships and communities.” When we resolve to live out of love rather than submit to hatred, to live as peace-builders rather than turning away from others who are different from ourselves, then we can begin to have the difficult conversations about how we got here and how we can live into the model of humanity attributed to Saint Francis; ‘where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy’. To love requires much more of us than to hate, and yet, even in the shadow of these days following this massacre, we are witnessing the healing power of human solidarity. May this solidarity and opposition of hatred continue to grow, and may we all commit ourselves in our own way – by prayer, words and deeds – to its flourishing.
One of the scriptures that is read in the beginning of Lent is about the temptation of Jesus by the devil for forty days in the wilderness. He was tempted with hunger, with power, and the need to prove who he was. Whether or not you believe this actually happened or whether you believe in a hoof and horns Satan or “Tempter” as he is also known, we cannot deny that temptation is very real in our experience of being human. Lent invites us to pay particular attention to our lives and seek self-knowledge. It is in understanding and acknowledging our limitations, our weaknesses, and the urges that have defeated us in the past, that we are better prepared to battle temptations. How do we react when we are struggling with injured pride, a wounded ego, fear of not being appreciated, or anger at being ignored?
One step we can take is to recognize when we are most vulnerable. The mental health and recovery-oriented fields use the acronym HALT which stands for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. When you ask yourself, “Am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired right now?” it makes you stop and think about how you feel before you react to a situation. Each one of these four physical or emotional conditions, if not taken care of, leaves an individual vulnerable for relapse. Relapse for an alcoholic or addict means resumption of using alcohol or drugs to manage the discomfort, but even those of us not suffering from chemical dependency have our own forms of relapse (excessive gambling, eating, shopping, TV watching — to name just a few). Relapse may also show up as falling back into old beliefs about ourselves that result in feelings such as shame or guilt.
There is no getting away from sometimes feeling hungry, angry, lonely or tired so the more self- aware we are the better. Hunger, of course, describes the most obvious physical condition of lack of food but hunger can also point toward emotional needs: hunger for attention, for comfort, for understanding, or for companionship. Just as food takes care of our physical hunger, the solution to emotional hunger is community. Anger is a little more complex to understand. The way we express anger often takes destructive forms. We either turn anger against ourselves or against others. Anger can range from criticizing and belittling to name-calling and physical violence. Anger can also be like a repeated tape loop; in that case it’s called resentment. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests that a person with resentment towards another pray for the other, that is, imagine all the good in life that we would like to have for ourselves to be bestowed upon the other person. You don’t have to call it prayer; choose a word that works for you.
Next in the HALT acronym is Lonely, which can be a frequent companion for some. It is similar to Hunger in that the solution is the same, namely community. The last of the HALT acronym conditions is Tired. We all have a tendency to ignore tiredness at times. Many of us do not get enough sleep and being tired, overloaded or overwhelmed can affect our well-being. HALT, is a practical tool for everyday living. Thanks to the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, where this acronym initially emerged, for using their experience to benefit us all.
Music connects us to one another. Music is the language of the soul. Music knows no boundaries of time or place. Music tells stories about peoples’ triumphs and tragedies. Music can evoke strong feelings, from ecstatic joy to devastating sorrow and all that lies in between.
There are occasions and events that move us beyond what might ever be imagined and leave us wanting to invite others to join us. One such event is Violins of Hope, a concert experience enjoyed by about twenty Beatitudes Campus residents at Central Methodist Church on March 3. Beatitudes Campus resident Cecilia Rolston commented that the event was “so heart-warming and beautiful” and “provides hope.” Others in attendance echoed Cecilia’s comments.
What are the Violins of Hope? These are violins actually played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust, including in the concentration camps. Our residents who attended this concert heard beautiful and powerful music produced by three of those surviving violins played by members of the Downtown Chamber Series. They also heard the story of these instruments as each passed through the horrors of Nazi genocide into the skilled hands of Ammon and Avshi Weinstein who restored each one. Through their restoration project, the Weinstein family gave new voice to the instruments and to all people and generations traumatized by the Holocaust. The violins symbolize the power of music and highlight resilience and hope.
Equally moving at the March 3 concert were the performances by the remarkable young musicians and singers with Rosie’s House (one of the largest completely free music programs in the nation for youth who would otherwise not have such an opportunity). The voices and spirits of youth were also very heartbreaking and hopeful when the Phoenix Girls Chorus sang a Yiddish Lullaby in the opening performances of Violins of Hope on February 23-24. The Phoenix Boys Choir will be singing in a performance on March 24.
Want to Know More About the Violins of Hope Events in March?
On March 19th a Tribute Concert honoring those who perished and those in the Phoenix community who survived the Holocaust. Charlotte Adelman, a Holocaust survivor and friend of the Beatitudes Campus, will be featured at this concert.
Until March 24th, 21 of the violins will be exhibited and the story of each recounted at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts (Free admission).
Until March 26th, a photography exhibit at the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center will showcase the work of Ammon Weinstein as he restored each violin.
As you read this article, we hope you are interested in finding out how to attend the Violins of Hope activities, concerts, exhibitions, and lectures throughout the remainder of March. Do visit the main website page for more information or ask a friend to help. It is best to scroll down the page until you reach the section listing all of the March events and click on the event(s) of interest. Here is the website: https://violinsofhopephoenix.com/buy-tickets/events
Please note that Beatitudes Campus will not be providing transportation to any of the remaining Violins of Hope events.*
