King's work permeates issues of race

April 4, 2008 Friday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., another preacher has ignited a national discussion about race.

This time, the preacher is Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently retired from the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Many whites heard Wright's cries of "God damn America" -- in a 2003 sermon -- as combative and incendiary, but for African-Americans, the language sprang from the gospels and the sermon from a tradition of pulpit political oratory.

"The use of the word 'damn' in the Bible, in the Old Testament, is a sacred usage," said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a member of Trinity.

"Yahweh damns ancient Israel for moving away from the greatness it could be, through various prophets like Jeremiah, to bring the nation back to the righteous path -- to be the city on the hill," he said.

Americans confused the expression with the profanity "God damn it," he said.

"People don't know the flow of the black sermon," Hopkins said. The speech followed the classic pattern of black church oratory, which stuns with references to injustice and then soars in an uplifting ending.

"To think it would end in anger is an insult to those people," he said.

Obama condemned Wright's words, saying they do not reflect the strides the nation has made in overcoming a past that includes slavery, lynching and segregation. Wright had long been Obama's pastor.

But in a speech that has tallied tens of thousands of hits on YouTube and evoked praise around the nation, Obama also celebrated Wright's sermonizing, which helped him see "the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekial's field of dry bones."

Wright is a contemporary voice of black liberation theology, which took root in the mid-1960s as a reaction against a historical message to look to the next life for salvation. The movement surfaced in 1966, when the 51-member National Committee of Negro Churchmen took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on the ministry to wage war against racism in Biblical terms.

"A prophet's job is to bring God's judgment within a particular context and that's as old as the religion itself," said the Rev. Dante Quick, who spoke at a candlelight vigil Thursday night honoring King at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

"When one reads Revelations, you are reading the words of a man in prison condemning the Roman empire," Quick said. "Many readers of the Bible narrative can point to Jesus as a political victim."

Biblical texts "include rather heated rhetoric that excoriates the dominant powers," said Vincent Wimbush, a professor of religion and director of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures at Claremont Graduate University.

"There is a very long tradition of that. One style is a direct, prophetic, politically aware style," he said.

Clergy in many primarily white congregations have pointed out they also excoriate racism and other social evils from the pulpit.

And black liberation theology founder James Cone wrote in his seminal "Black Theology & Black Power" that the black in black theology encompasses all who are in concert with the oppressed.

"To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are," he writes.

If King is revered today for his eloquent calls for equality and his courage, he endured scorn in his day, and not just from Southern white racists.

When he was assassinated April 4, 1968, King had moved beyond a call for black equality and begun challenging the nation's economic and political institutions. He lost the support of many by condemning the Vietnam War and advocating passionately for workers and the poor, Quick said.

The Rev. Cone embraced King and Malcolm X to forge black liberation theology. He said Malcolm X challenged him about his blackness, King about his Christianity.

Hopkins said the two leaders moved toward each other philosophically as their lives neared their ends.

Malcolm X, a Black Muslim minister and spokesman for the Nation of Islam, was shot down Feb. 21, 1965, during a speech in Manhattan.

The primary surprise for Wimbush is that 40 years after King's death, "we are still segregated along the lines of the 18th century in these Christian churches. "We ought to be asking, what accounts for such ignorance?" he said.

The Pacific School of Religion will take up that discussion throughout April -- Advancing Racial Justice Month -- McKinney said.

"There is a willingness across the board for people to resume the conversation that has been too difficult for too long," he said. "People have feared that (engaging in it) would only lead to conflict. From a theological perspective, conflict precedes reconciliation."

For many black theologians, the gap remains wide.

Wright has been berated for sowing dissension, but the white establishment has done it with impunity, Quick said.

Online

Hear four black leaders speak:

Malcolm X: www.brothermalcolm.net/mxwords/whathesaid24.html

Martin Luther King Jr.: www.mlkonline.net/video-martin-luther-king-last-speech.html

Sen. Barack Obama: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN_Su8ywLwk

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright: ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/21/the-full-story-behind-rev-jeremiah-wrights-911-sermon/

'Emerging church' seeks the justice Jesus sought

Contra Costa Times
June 5, 2008 Thursday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

In an apartment a few steps below street level in San Francisco's Mission District, several people -- most in their 20s -- sat in a horseshoe of couches to consider the meaning of service.

In black high-tops, Crocs, hoodies and jeans, they looked much like the hipsters who wait in line Sunday mornings for a table at Boogaloo's a few blocks away on Valencia Street.

This group of Christians gathers each week to grapple with seven intangibles: service, simplicity, creativity, obedience, prayer, community, and love. A young man in a cap reads Colossians I aloud while some look down, others into the distance. Midway into the evening, all take to the streets, battling an icy wind to pick up trash, scrub graffiti and post signs in shop windows exhorting people to honor their neighborhood with cleanliness.

The group is part of the decade-old emerging church movement, an eclectic wave of change propelled by the Internet and peopled globally mainly by the young.

Their Jesus is a radical. They have little use for the institutional church, with its buildings, budgets and boards. They meet in homes. Their aim is to live like Jesus, compelled to service among the poor. They eschew congregations for communities. Their faith is not a doctrine but a conversation -- fluid and evolving.

"Experiment is a word we use a lot," said Adam Klein, who helps lead the loosely organized San Francisco community that calls itself reIMAGINE. "Nobody has lived in 2008 before and lived the way of Jesus, so you have to figure out what it means to you."

Their expression of faith harkens back to the early days of Christianity, he said.

"Part of Paul's job was to encourage people to continue on but without the dogma. When Constantine came around and nationalized the church it became a place where power and control were brokered."

Estimates place the number of emerging church communities at several hundred and growing. The Internet has figured hugely into the movement's growth, "not only in connecting, linking, promoting, recording and communicating, but also in the new media mind-set that it is creating," said Andrew Jones, a New Zealand emergent who blogs from Czechoslovakia under the name tallskinnykiwi.

"The net affects the way we think and relate and store knowledge. It is creating a new set of values and a new hierarchy of leaders. We haven't seen the half of it yet."

They know they are not the first believers compelled by faith to give to the needy. Their difference is that traditional Christian charity may involve compassion but not always a commitment to justice, said Brian McLaren, one of the early emergent thinkers and the author of several books, including "Adventures in Missing the Point," which he wrote with Tony Campolo.

"Eventually, we have to deal with the people causing injustice," McLaren said.

That kind of comment has stirred dismay among some conservative Christians, who say McLaren is a political progressive. He has countered that he is not politically progressive if that means living a secular life with government meeting all human needs.

The emergent church emphasizes Christ's message of social justice, seeks the kind of spirituality that flows from that and creates a community that supports that spirituality, he said.

Some emergents embrace ancient ritual, including the Eucharist, and they evangelize, although in social action they may not necessarily talk about their faith at all.

"St. Francis of Assisi said it best: Go preach the gospel and if necessary use words," said Darin Petersen of Oakland, who travels frequently to Philadelphia for community projects. "The best evangelism is living a contagious life."

"The problem with (traditional) evangelizing is that it is delivering answers to people who are not seeking them," he said. "We need to be a peculiar people. Jesus gives the order of what that looks like and what that means."

In an early project, Petersen and 30 others invited homeless people to a cash give-away on Wall Street after receiving a legal settlement.

"It was a beautiful expression of sharing this abundance," he said. "We walked away thinking, what would a daily rhythm of this be like?" After studying the Jewish tradition of using tithes to help care for widows and orphans in the community, they developed a global community of people who share one-tenth of their earnings with those in need. "Jesus was political," said Klein, whose community helped pay for his recent trip to Africa to build mobile medical clinics. "If it was all about the life after, he wouldn't have been killed the way he was."

Some reIMAGINE participants just bought a duplex on an East Oakland street that has been rocked by sideshows and three murders over the past few weeks. They want their new Shalom community to love, serve, and engage the troubled neighborhood, said Nate Milheim.

"What I've been excited about is taking Jesus more seriously as a teacher as well as a savior," Milheim, 30, who is cleaning up the house with his wife, their two daughters and a couple who will share it. "Let's learn from this master, Jesus, this revolutionary, radical guy. I want to explore what it would be to live like him."

"I realize we have a lot to learn," he said. "If the things happen that I dream of happening, it will take a while."

Pew survey: Americans religiously tolerant

Contra Costa Times (California)
June 22, 2008 Sunday

Rebecca Rosen Lum
Contra Costa Times

Most religious Americans believe there is more than one road to God, and more than one divine destination, a new report shows.

The report, released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, undercuts the image of religious Americans as a monolithic group with a predictable ideology and party affiliation. It also shows that most believers do not claim to have the sole route to salvation.

"Not only is there more than one true way, there is more than one true way to interpret their religion," said Pew research fellow Gregory Smith. "The degree to which that held true across the majority of religions, even among evangelical Protestants, that was quite striking."

A majority in only two religions, Mormons, at 57 percent, and Jehovah's Witnesses, at 80 percent, believe their faith is the single path to eternal life. The two groups also believe there is only one way to interpret the tenets of their faiths.

Muslims were among the most devout of all the religious groups queried. Eighty-two percent pray at least weekly, and 86 percent view the Quran as the word of God. But most honor other faiths, and, in the United States, 60 percent see more than one way to construe the teachings of Islam. The data on American Muslim faith practices and attitudes came from the Pew Center's exhaustive 2007 study.

A solid majority of evangelicals, too, agree that other types of believers can attain salvation.

"You might get different answers to these questions if you polled (religious) leaders," said the Rev. Brian Stein-Webber, director of the Contra Costa Interfaith Council. "There has always been a disconnect. This is a very populist survey."

Interfaith campaigns and a cultural emphasis on tolerance is bearing fruit, suggested the president of UC Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union.

"It is the result of living side by side with people of other faiths," said James Donahue. "We see they are good people, they work hard, they have integrity -- why shouldn't they get eternal salvation, too?"

The report is the second part of a landmark survey released in February. Part one documented theological fluidity among Americans: Nearly 30 percent have left the faiths of their childhood -- sometimes adopting a new religion, sometimes none at all.

Based on interviews conducted in English and Spanish with more than 35,000 adults, part two examines beliefs and practices, and attitudes about the environment, homosexuality, abortion, foreign affairs and the role of government.

Overall, Americans' faith holds strong: 88 percent are absolutely or fairly certain about their belief in God or "a universal spirit." The survey also included these findings:

• Most believers expressed dissatisfaction with the country's direction.

• Majorities of every faith group favored stricter environmental laws and regulations.

• Majorities of all faith groups but Mormons said the government should do more to help needy Americans, regardless of the cost.

• The best way to ensure peace is through good diplomacy, not military might, said majorities of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and the unaffiliated.

A majority of Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, the unaffiliated and other faiths say society should accept homosexuality, a belief rejected by evangelical Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and Muslims.

"It's here we see a deep religious divide," Smith said. "Religious groups tend to line up on this issue. These are quite sharp religious distinctions."

Catholics are evenly divided on whether the church should express its views on social and political matters, and close to evenly divided on whether abortion should be illegal in all cases.

"People talk about the Catholic vote," Smith said. "To some extent, this gets to the very core of their diversity."

The survey documented a similarity of attitudes among Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and members of historically black and evangelical faiths.

Overwhelmingly, Mormons (91 percent), Jehovah's Witnesses (82 percent), and members of evangelical (79 percent) and historically black churches (71percent) see God as a person with whom they relate. A majority firmly believe in the existence of angels and demons. Their members attend services consistently, and most say they would resist adjusting their faith to modern times.

Although the prevailing wisdom may link evangelicals to Republican conservatism, 34 percent of evangelicals claim to be Democratic or leaning that way.

"The thing to keep in mind is what this illustrates," Smith said. "We talk about religion in monolithic terms. There really is a great deal of internal diversity."

WOMEN ORDAINED, DEFYING VATICAN

September 17, 2006 Sunday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

At 11, Kathleen Stack Kunster felt a strong pull to the priesthood. When the 61-year-old Emeryville, Calif., woman was finally ordained July 31 in a riverboat ceremony in Pennsylvania, she cried for an hour and a half.

``It was extremely powerful -- amazing,'' said Kunster, who has a master's degree in divinity and a doctorate in psychology. ``I've been wrestling with this for a long time. It feels relentless, the knowledge the person is not doing what they're supposed to do, so nothing else fits. It can be painful.''

Since then, Kunster has undergone a transformation of sorts. Everything clicks. A self-described introvert, she finds herself much more approachable.

``It's like I've come into my own,'' she said.

Kunster is part of a ripple of women who have decided to stop waiting for the Vatican to ordain female priests and go it on their own. Twelve women joined the priesthood with her last month.

In ceremonies held around the world, women bishops, themselves ordained by supportive male bishops are anointing women into the priesthood. The male bishops have remained anonymous for fear of retribution by the church.

The women say their training is as rigorous as that for male candidates, and omits only conversations with the diocese, which does not recognize them.

The ceremonies have taken place on waterways -- the Danube, the Ohio River, the St. Lawrence Waterway -- because water carries profound symbolism in the Christian faith and they cannot go through the ritual in a Catholic church.

``I have been called for a very long time and I am not going to wait any longer,'' said Victoria Rue, who, as a child, stood on the steps of her front porch to dispense Necco Wafers in a communion re-enactment with the children of the neighborhood.

Rue, who holds a doctorate in theology, now teaches at San Jose State University and conducts services for the school community with Kunster and Don Cordero, a Jesuit priest who was excommunicated after marrying.

The Catholic Church has not permitted women to be ordained since the 13th century. In a 1994 papal letter, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the rule. The church ``has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church's faithful.''

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, has sent to the Vatican the name of at least one woman who has joined the priesthood.

``From the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church, they are not considered to be valid ordinations,'' said the Rev. Mark Weiser, spokesman for the Oakland (Calif.) Diocese. ``It's important for people to know that any sacraments that one of these women perform, we would not recognize.'' Such sacraments include marriage, baptisms or last rites.

But some scholars say they have found evidence that ordained women routinely performed sacraments up until the 1200s. These scholars include former priest John Wijngaards, who has dedicated himself to helping women enter the priesthood.

``Women seem to have been ordained as priests in some regions,'' he said. ``However, it was commonplace during the first nine centuries for women to be ordained deacons, especially in the Eastern part of the church. Since this ordination was a truly sacramental ordination, women were therefore admitted to holy orders.''

With a shortage of priests in the U.S., couldn't the church benefit from women priests?

``I know there is plenty of work and not enough priests to do it,'' Weiser said. But, he said, the shortage has fired up plenty of parishioners with skills to donate their time to the church doing administrative tasks, freeing priests for other duties.

Some may wonder why the women fight so hard to belong to a church that does not want them in its highest ranks.

``That's an excellent question, and a lot of women waiting have become ordained in other faiths,'' largely Episcopal, said Sharon Danner, spokeswoman for the Women's Ordination Conference, a support organization based in Virginia. ``That's a very common thing. Their faith is so important to them. They won't give up hope.''

Rue says her point isn't just to break into the priesthood, but to recraft the church as less hierarchical and more inclusive.

``I do not want to be part of a club that is exclusive,'' she said. ``We are very, very concerned about returning the church to the way it was when Jesus founded it, with all people welcome at the table.''

Faith's role in healing draws scientific study

The Bradenton Herald (Florida)
December 29, 2007 Saturday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum, Contra Costa Times

Carla Dodd was 43 and pregnant with her second child when two rapid-fire brain hemorrhages threatened to end her life.

Her husband, John, is a medical malpractice attorney - logical, analytical.

But Dodd says he thinks prayer had much to do with his wife's long-shot recovery.

Scientists are taking a hard look at the value of faith as an instrument in healing.

Numerous studies show a link between faith and outlook, faith and well-being, faith and healing times.

Scientists at such prestigious institutions as California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Duke University in North Carolina and the George Washington University Institute for Spirituality and Health in the nation's capital are exploring the relationship of prayer and faith to healing.

More than half of physicians in an April survey by a group at the University of Chicago said that religion and spirituality significantly influence patients' health.

But the exact mechanism by which it works remains elusive.

"Does it change your blood markers?" asked neuropsychiatrist James Duffy, president and CEO of the Institute of Religion and Health in Houston. "You're going to see a lot of research directed at that over the next few years."

Religion can help those with chronic conditions, including traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke and arthritis, say the authors of a study at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

"Religion is infrequently discussed in rehabilitation settings and is rarely investigated in rehabilitation research," said University of Missouri health psychologist Brick Johnstone. "To better meet the needs of persons with disabilities, this needs to change."

Yoga, reading of religious texts, meditation or the laying of hands have value in a clinical setting, the researchers concluded.

To inquire about a patient's religious beliefs "is no different than inquiring about their sexual, psychological, substance use and legal histories," said Johnstone, who directs the university's Spirituality and Health Research Project.

"Our goal is to bring to the conversation that health is more than fixing your body," Duffy said. "Health is a transformative process that involves healing the spirit."

Hospital officials have long left patients' spiritual needs in the hands of chaplains, but they increasingly are reaching out to faith communities.

Parish, or faith community nursing, which combines spiritual and health services, has exploded since the American Nursing Association recognized the specialty in 2005.

Today, an estimated 10,000 faith community nurses work in American congregations.

John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., recently advertised for a supervising nurse with theological education. The new manager will offer support to nurses who work in religious congregations.

"We have a mission statement that says faith plays a role in healing," said Dwayne Michael, director of pastoral care at John Muir. "We do a spiritual assessment (of each patient)."

"With the exception of hospital chaplains, a focus on the spirit is not often found in the delivery of health care," said Rebecca Faith, who counsels, instructs and refers parishioners at First Congregational Church of Oakland, Calif. "Parish nurses fill that gap."

Faith works as a nurse practitioner at the University of California-San Francisco and is a registered nurse at Alta Bates Summit Hospital in Oakland.

Many chronic health problems have at their root a spiritual as well as a physiological dysfunction, she said.

"I see an epidemic of anxiety and fatigue among women. I will say, 'How's your spiritual life?' and (a woman) will say, 'I used to meditate but I don't anymore.' "

A spiritual emptiness helps spur addiction, and irreverence for the body as a sacred vessel can lead to disorders such as obesity and hypertension, she said.

"What do I do with them? I pray, I enter into an I-thou divine relationship and I covenant with the community," she said. "I speak to their values and beliefs."

Many of her patients believe in intercessory prayer, she said.

In San Francisco, a leading researcher in mind-body medicine found a positive link between intercessory prayer and the well-being of people with AIDS.

Prayed-for patients in a study by late University of California-San Francisco professor Elizabeth Targ had fewer setbacks and lived longer than a comparison group. A follow-up study found the same results. Targ later found a link between spirituality and well-being among women with breast cancer.

A connection notwithstanding, Jeff Leinen, medical director of the emergency department at Sutter Delta Hospital in Antioch, Calif., has qualms about medical practitioners assuaging the spirit. For one thing, it is too easy to impose one's faith on a patient, he said.

Leinen says a prayer before he performs a procedure or when a patient dies, "but I say it quietly, and to myself."

"Everybody has their own faith and belief," he said. "You have to be very, very careful."

At Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., which offers classes in yoga and meditation, "We only do what has been shown clinically to work," spokesman Jim Caroompas said. "These are very efficacious."

Some academics recoil at the blurring of the line between faith and health care, saying prayer, meditation and other faith practices resist definition or measurement.

Far more studies show no link between religious belief and healing than a positive one, said Richard Sloan, a Columbia University behavioral medicine professor and the author of "Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine." Suggesting one can mislead people and put an unfair burden on them, he said.

"Look, nobody disputes that religion and spirituality bring comfort in a time of difficulty, but when spirituality is brought into medical care, it is another issue entirely," he said.

"It can do all sort of harm because it causes people to confuse medical care with other aspects of their lives," he said. "It can lead them to avoid conventional medical care. And it can lead them to believe their health problems are from inadequate faith and devotion."

John Dodd, whose wife and daughter are now healthy, smiled when he was told about Sloan's skepticism.

"He doesn't realize there is so much to the art of medicine that is unknown," he said. "(Doctors) don't know everything because a lot of it isn't in their hands - the unknown, the unpredictable, the unforeseeable."

Guatemalan girl gets life saver, but family running out of time

Nov. 15, 2006

Pixieish, long haired and gregarious, Isabel Bueso, 11, wants to be a dancer and has a ballerina's extension to prove it.

Since she came to the United States from her native Guatemala, Isabel has tried horseback riding and ice skating. She names five best friends from her fifth-grade class at Lafayette Elementary School.

Point a camera her way and she mugs coyly.

She is also one of 1,100 people worldwide suffering from Maroteaux-Lamy Syndrome, an enzymatic disorder that ravages all the major systems of the body.

That she can do things like ride her bike in the park is a testament to a first-of-its-kind enzyme replacement therapy that has changed her life -- but has put her and her family in a harrowing conundrum.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical brought Isabel, her parents and sister Ana, now 14, to this country on tourist visas to participate in a study of the experimental treatment.

Her parents, skilled professionals, must now choose whether to live on charity in the U.S. or return to Guatemala and do without the medicine that is saving their daughter's life.

"We found out without the right visa, we can't work," said Karla Bueso. "Our hands are tied. We couldn't bring the medicine back to Guatemala, but we couldn't stay here because we couldn't work."

The breakthrough enzyme therapy has not yet been approved for use in Guatemala.

"She has improved significantly," said researcher Paul Harmatz, associate director of the Pediatric Clinic Research Center at Children's. "We are very optimistic."

Isabel suffers from mucopolysaccharidoses a genetic disorder. Sufferers lack the enzymes that break down and recycle waste in cells. Instead, waste builds up in cells, disrupting their function. It progressively damages the heart, bones, lungs and central nervous system.

Without the therapy, waste would quickly reaccumulate, accelerating the damage, Harmatz said.

"We virtually never see a patient with her level of disease beyond the age of 20, 21," he said.

Karla Bueso, a marketing specialist who once routinely arranged high-level corporate news conferences, found a modest apartment for her family not far from Children's. The Buesos spent much of their savings on furniture and bedding.

Karla and her husband, Alberto, a computer engineer, volunteer their time at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, where they are members. Alberto Bueso set up a computer network for the Monument Crisis Center in Concord.

On Wednesdays, Karla Bueso helps Isabel keep up with her schoolwork during her six-hour infusions at the hospital.

"My life changed so much," she said with a smile, selecting a file from a box of folders on the illness and its treatment. "I've become an expert on bargains. I got this printer at a garage sale for $2."

A Spanish-speaking aide who helped Isabel at school introduced the family to Lorraine Lyon, a church elder. The church quickly became a second family to the homesick Buesos and their ailing daughter.

"Isabel has become a grown person within herself," Lyon said. "She is a much stronger person than most people her age."

While they anxiously await word on their visas, the church has been paying their rent and buying their groceries so they can put all their resources into Isabel's medical treatment.

"This is a social justice issue," Lyon said "I've written to Ellen Tsauscher, Barbara Boxer, others. I've gotten form letters back saying 'We've passed your information on.'"

The H-1B visa allows U.S. employers to hire overseas professionals for up to six years. A lawyer is working for free to help them.

Healthy at birth, Isabel suffered respiratory infections during her first year of life.

But sobering evidence of a much larger problem appeared with a full-body X-ray: Virtually every bone in her body was damaged.

One day, Karla Bueso read an intriguing article on the seven types of MPS. She e-mailed the doctor, who invited the family to the United States to take part in a study of six patients. Her group was given a placebo, but after the six-month study concluded, she got the real thing -- and will as long as her family remains here.

Isabel said her worst problem is boredom during the long hours she spends in the hospital.

"It's fun when my sister comes," she said. "We can play."

When she first arrived in this country, she could barely walk.

"She had so much pain in her legs," Karla Bueso mused. "Now she can ride her bike in the park."

Commitment to aid fills life of cardiologist

Contra Costa Times
March 28, 2005 Monday FINAL EDITION

By Rebecca Rosen Lum, Times Staff Writer

Before work one stingingly frigid November morning, Jeff Ritterman drove out to Point Isabel, and, as the sky lightened to a pallid gray, joined several others to protest what they saw as the inadequate cleanup of a Superfund site.

A month later, he flew to Jordan, where he brought medical supplies and heard testimony about the health effects of the U.S.-Iraqi conflict.

The expression "be here now" seems coined for the Richmond cardiologist. He appears to have infinite curiosity, passion and focus for the issue in front of him, whether an individual patient, his community or large-scale epidemics.

"The first time I met him was when he showed up to a public hearing for the draft environmental impact report for Campus Bay," said Sherry Padgett, who heads Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development. The group monitors the cleanup of the former Stauffer Chemical plant, a Superfund site.

"He sat up front by himself and asked a series of very probing, intelligent questions," she said. "He came up to me afterward and gave me his card, and said, 'Send me everything you've got. I'm not letting go of this.'"

Shyaam Shabaka, founder of the Richmond EcoVillage Farm Learning Center, coaxed Ritterman onto the board of Food First, an Oakland-based think tank focused on food and development policy.

"He's very active in the community -- a doctor doing everything he can to keep people out of the hospital," Shabaka said.

That takes teamwork, Ritterman says.

"We have a lot of things here in Richmond we have to look at if we're interested in the health of the community," Ritterman said. "Pesticides sprayed next to an elementary school -- local concerns that impact on people's health."

He encourages his patients to strap on a pedometer and count their steps, as he does. They can visit his Web site and track his success at meeting his own 5-mile-a-day goal.

"I challenge them. I say, 'Beat me,'" he said, grinning.

He urges his patients to stock up on organic fruits and vegetables every Tuesday at the weekly Farm Stand farmers market, a three-way partnership among Kaiser, Richmond EcoVillage and the county's wellness program, which he helped found.

"Health is not just the absence of disease but a state of physical, mental and spiritual well-being," he says on his Web site.

On a recent afternoon, he took time to show a reporter pictures from his trip -- some quite grim, such as the remains of a child torn apart in a cluster bomb blast. After an interview, he'll head out to a memorial service for a former patient.

The next day, after his clinic hours, he'll speak at Boalt Hall about the health and human rights consequences of the war.

"He's very focused, very calm and extremely smart -- which is probably how he manages to do everything he does and stay so calm," said P.J. Ballard, media officer for Kaiser Permanente.

Flanked by al-Jazeera reporters, Ritterman in January joined parents whose children have died in the terrorist attacks of and conflicts that followed Sept. 11, 2001. They were part of a peace delegation to Amman, Jordan.

The group included a woman whose firefighter son died in the World Trade Center conflagration, a couple whose only son died in combat, the mother of a young man killed when he stepped on a cluster bomb, and more.

"We did a lot of crying," Ritterman said. They transported $500,000 worth of medical supplies in car trunkloads -- to avoid attracting bandits -- and brought $100,000 in cash to buy more.

Once there, he found a cosmopolitan population -- well-schooled, well-traveled and surprisingly open-minded.

"And everybody, everybody smokes," he said. "I thought we'd get that 'You infidels!' stuff, but no."

Nothing prepared him for the testimony of a Jordanian physician who detailed a startling spike in the number of children born without lenses, and in some cases, without eyes at all. The phenomenon has been linked to exposure to depleted uranium.

"I was just sobbing," he said. "Since then, I've done tons of medical research, but before that, I'd never heard of it."

Ritterman's "great affections to the innocent Iraqi peoples -- touch me in the heart," said Mohammed Salman, a doctor who has been following the eye condition anophthalmia. He has documented 13 cases to date.

He was surprised to encounter one upshot of the preconflict sanctions against Iraq: Doctors had not seen medical journals in years.

"Doctors would tell me, 'You've got to understand, we're 10 to 13 years behind.'"

Ritterman also met a father and son with leukemia. The family had moved to Jordan to get medical care but couldn't afford living there. Ritterman sent them his honorarium for a speech at Stanford University.

Since he returned in January, he has been trying to rally interest in the spate of anophthalmias. He has been speaking at medical conferences and universities throughout the country.

"I'm committed to sharing this experience. It's citizen diplomacy."

He has two grown children, Miranda, a Ph.D. candidate focused on epidemiology and public health, and Judah, a psychology project manager, both at UC Berkeley.

He met his partner, Vivian Feyer, a psychologist who also owns a fair trade import business, when he swung by a pal's place for lunch and found her there, house-sitting. The two have been together five years.

She wasn't seeking a romantic commitment; "he was just the most loving person I'd ever met," Feyer said.

"He's taught me a lot -- especially about being in partnership. And it's really not about compromise. It's about wanting each other to be happy."

"When we realize we're starting to fight, we shift immediately. We have a commitment not to invest in someone winning and someone losing, but in the success of the relationship," she said.

Both juggle full schedules, but increasingly work and travel together. Feyer shot all the photos of the trip to Amman.

For Ritterman, Tuesday is a community meeting at the Martin Luther King Community Center. Wednesday, he joins a weekly drumming circle. There are all-day clinics, speaking engagements, hospital rounds.

"The world is holding so much sadness," he said. "But I feel energized."