Now then, did you ever wonder how medical people keep their sanity? Did you ever wonder how anybody in high pressure jobs keep their sanity? Take me for example. How do I manage to keep a sense of proportion in the midst of all that comes into the life of a priest. The answer is, among other things, blogging!

If you are in any doubt at all about the medical people take a look at The First Draft, a mediblogging project. Here several bloggers, probably upright and upstanding professionals in the medical world, write a paragraph in turn, coming up with a somewhat bonkers story. It makes compelling reading, all the while thinking, ‘I could be facing one of the authors across a consulting room desk’!

Somebody wrote me saying they appreciated the sense of fun coming through the writing here. While religious practice is deadly (there goes that word again) serious pointing as it does to realizing the cessation of suffering, there is room for laughter. Hopefully not at the expense of others. To do that would not be right.

Over there in the medical blogging world, which I have obviously been exploring of late, they are casting votes for various categories of medi blogs. I went over and cast my vote for our ER nurse, down-under.

Hah! I wonder what happened to the Buddhist blogger awards this year.

This blog is a re-write of the one I did earlier, a couple or so hours ago. I’d published in haste. Perhaps because I didn’t want to think too much about the subject. Scars. That’s scars to the body, physical scars. Perhaps also in haste because I needed to get to community tea and I was already late.

Dr. Charles who writes a medical blog attended on a young woman who in the prime of her life was in a serious car crash. Her story is told and it is disturbing, yet good to read.

It just so happens I have been talking about scars with somebody. I don’t find them easy. Now I’ve had pause for thought after reading the young woman’s story. Scars are so associated in my mind with shame and blame and fury and secrets and guilt and just about every other kind of negative thought. However, it need not be this way. The good doctor sees scars as having a story, sees a way to turn around the mind. Few of us remain unscathed. One way or another we carry the marks of our lives.

Once one faces something which is disturbing or frightening it ceases to have the power it once had. That is one of the blessings of meditation.

Now here is the origin of the word scar.

The word scar was derived from the Greek word eschara, meaning fireplace. Traditionally the fireplace was in the heart of the house, and around it most domestic activities took place. It was the center of family life and an area where children gathered to be with family. It was a common setting for injuries, many of which resulted in wounds. Eventually these scars became so associated with the hearth that the language used to describe the end result of healing became indistinguishable from its cause.

So there is a good reason to visit Brighton Beach. There is now a wifi hotspot spread out between the two piers, free surfing on the beach. Not bad, not bad at all.

I’d go there as a child, to Brighton, to visit my Great Uncle who lived in a square with a very large garden with lawns in the middle. It was exactly north of the West Pier, Regency Square I think it was called. He had been in the first world war and latter he was an Oxford Don. I knew I should be impressed by this. He had a rug which was actually a tiger, the remains of a tiger that is. There was a head, I remember it’s teeth particularly, and the rest of it being the furry pelt was spread out behind and around the head. I always asked where he got it from and he said he had shot it in the square. Believe it or believe it not!

So Brighton has some memories lodged in my skull. Wonder what happened to the tiger! And if you follow that link you will discover lots of other beaches around the world with Wifi Hotspots. No, I doubt if anybody is going to rush off and visit them however it is an interesting concept. To take ones laptop to the beach! Not something I will be doing for sure.

And while on the subject of laptops there is an initiative to supply One Laptop Per Child. That’s specially developed laptops that can be mass produced at remarkably low cost. They look and sound rather good, they’re green too.

Mobility, the ability to compute and connect almost anywhere. There is something about this that catches my attention. Maybe I’m just a hopeless case, but maybe not. I heard of a women in Alaska held hostage in her home. She got on the Internet in the room where she was being held, and got help. She could have been anywhere.

I wonder what my old Great Uncle Artie would have thought about all of this. As an Oxford Don today he would no doubt embrace technology, as he embraced shooting stuff in the war.

People are of their time.