Next, Stafford moves to the issues of poverty and a call to focus on children. 

American Idol Gives Back, a huge, self-congratulatory fundraiser, was a fascinating context in which to read this quote:

In a brief overview, Stafford, highlights economics, health, education, environment, socio-political and spiritual issues involved with poverty.  He warned against “microwave solutions” and suggested a slower “crock pot approach”.  I’ve flirted with the idea of really studying economics one day.  This section fed that flirtation and made me thirsty to understand.

At this point I take a respectful exception with Stafford’s solution.  In short, he suggests changing one child, who will change that child’s family, which will influence a church and eventually transform communities.  He employed surveys that study the statistical percentage of people who become Christians at a certain age, such statistics decreasing as the person ages. I have heard these same surveys used to promote certain evangelistic outreaches to children. 

But is this the focus of the Bible?  Certainly the gospel is preached to all people, which includes children.  But shouldn’t we be preaching to fathers and mothers who will influence their children (household) rather than vice versa?  The last verse of Malachi speaks of turning the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.  I think the order of the verse is significant. 

So opens a book written by a father two years after his son died of a brain tumor at the age of seventeen.   The title, taken from my favorite Donne sonnet, was the reason I picked this book up. 

It’s a sad story, but it really didn’t move me; it didn’t cause even one teardrop to fall.  That bums me out and makes me wonder what’s wrong with me. 

Perhaps I was too detached, too clinical in my reading.  Johnny Gunther died of a malignant glioblastoma, the same tumor my sister had/has (part was removed and part remains).  Whenever I give medical histories and mention the glioblastoma the nurse sighs and asks how long my sister lived.   Defying all odds and attributable only to Divine Providence, she’s lived with this tumor nigh until thirty years.  It was interesting to note the treatment prescribed in 1947 and see how much has changed. 

The alternative diet therapy, considered quack treatment, turned to by the Gunthers in desperation added many months to Johnny’s life.   What diet you ask?  Saltless, fatless, sugarless, with lots of fresh fruit and fresh veggies, oatmeal and an apple-carrot mash.  Add in multiple enemas a day.  “The regime was certainly onerous.  Johnny said wearily after the first week, ‘I even tell time by enemas.'”

Perhaps I didn’t connect because the family didn’t share my faith in and dependence on God to make it through this kind of crisis.  However, I would say that was true of Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking and I was touched by her grief.  Johnny, best described as a humanist, wrote an Unbeliever’s Prayer: