The .Plan

Today I was reminded about what a forgetful person I am.

In one of the church services I attended this morning, the pastor preached on the first chapter of Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Remembrance figures prominently in this chapter, with words like “remember” and “recall” and “mindful” and “remind” popping up here and there. The pastor diverged at this point to issue some vague exhortations about “you need to be Christians on more than just Sundays blah blah blah“, but I remained fixed on Timothy, lost in contemplation about what remembrance means (or doesn’t mean) in my life.

I have been rootless since October of last year, and the road trip was supposed to be the crowning endpoint of all this wandering. Now the heart is weary and begging for a rest. But my version of the plaintive “Give me rest” is more or less a pathetic “I want to sit on a beach in Miami and sun myself” — a revision that simply does not square with the call issued by the Author of my life and Editor of my mistakes:

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Here, rest does not entail promises of sun and beach, it involves shouldering a yoke that, while easy and light, is a yoke nonetheless.

Perhaps I am like the grumbling Israelites, who, even though they benefited greatly from unmistakably clear indications of God’s presence in their lives and his desire for them, promptly forgot about him the minute they thought his back was turned. I think that’s why the patriarchs were such avid historians. When I first started reading the Pentateuch, I always wondered why they kept repeating the Exodus story. Over and over. and over. and. over. again. Same damn story, every single time. But then I realized that they had to keep repeating the story, because the Israelites were such a forgetful and ungrateful people.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite passages in the Bible, Joshua 24. Joshua recites the exodus and expansion stories, and this remembrance of course demands a response from the people. His own response? Not “I want to sun myself in Miami”, but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. May it be so in my life.

The United States, not content to poach physicians from developing countries, is now looking to poach nurses as well:

As the United States runs short of nurses, senators are looking abroad. A little-noticed provision in their immigration bill would throw open the gate to nurses and, some fear, drain them from the world’s developing countries… Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who sponsored the proposal, said it was needed to help the United States cope with a growing nursing shortage.
–Celia Dugger, “U.S. Plan to Lure Nurses May Hurt Poor Nations”, New York Times, May 24, 2006

WTF? I would expect someone like Sen. Brownback (remember Jeff Sharlet’s Rolling Stone profile, and remember also Nicholas Kristof calling him “perhaps the most intriguing man in Washington“?) to have thought more carefully about the labor market dynamics of such a policy.

The pecking order is well known: the U.K. and Australia both poach doctors from South Africa; Saskatchewan and Alberta poach doctors from the U.K. and Australia (and South Africa); Ontario poaches doctors from Saskatchewan; the U.S. poaches doctors from all over Canada (and the U.K. and Australia and South Africa).

But what about countries like South Africa? Does it poach doctors from neighboring Zambia and Uganda? No. A few years ago S.A. undertook not to participate in the musical chairs game — even though it really needs more doctors — and actually prohibited the recruitment and importation of physicians from other countries, excepting physicians from certain countries like Cuba and Germany with which the S.A. government has made special arrangements. There may or may not have been sinister or childish machinations driving the policy — with South African politics you never know — but for now S.A. gets a few points from me for taking one for the team.