In a stunning development that will likely leave Lee Corso and “Herbie” Herbstreit looking like tiny ants waving their itsy-bitty antennae in a desperate bid for attention, the Lord God Himself has broken His silence and declared His allegiance to the University of Alabama and picked the Crimson Tide to repeat as 2010 BCS National Champions.

Long suspected of rocking the Houndstooth beneath the dense billows of smoke and pillar of fire which conceal Him wherever He goes, God came out of the cloud yesterday and ended all speculation as to His true colors (Crimson and White) before the season even started.

In an Ocular Fusion exclusive, special correspondent Mike the Redneck caught up with The Rock of Ages over a few slabs of ribs at Dreamland BBQ in Tuscaloosa last night following His press conference at The Walk of Champions which featured a spectacular bolt of lightning that simultaneously struck the statues of Bear Bryant, Gene Stallings and the spot reserved for the new monument to current Head Coach, Nick Saban.

The Creator of All Things was incognito, sporting a low-slung Bama cap, Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and a #22 Crimson Tide jersey, and was doing His best to kick back and blend in with the regulars–a difficult task considering His retina-burning luminosity which kept seeping out of His armpits and eye sockets and shooting corona-like laser beams onto the party of four from Eutaw at the next table. [...]

Many people talk–a lot–about their personal faith and how “things ought to be.”

Dr. Tom Little was one of those rare breeds who actually lived what he believed, putting flesh and bones–and blood–to all those words. Rather than yammering on and on until eyes glaze over in “here we go again” ennui, he looked around at the things that were askew and out of balance in the world and then went forth and actually did something about it.

Dr. Little was an optometrist and the leader of a group of medical relief workers in Afghanistan that was mercilessly ambushed and executed in a remote valley north of Kabul recently. The team was working with the Christian relief organization International Assistance Mission and had just completed an eye care clinic for indigent Afghans.

They were a motley crew: Christians of various stripes, local Muslims who were serving as guides and trying to earn extra money for their families, and one unaffiliated “secular humanist,” general surgeon Dr. Karen Woo, who had left behind a cushy job in Great Britain and whose winsome humor, adventuresome spirit and penchant for colorful headscarves were the talk of Kabul–especially among eligible bachelors.

They were returning from their trip when they were tracked down and confronted by one of the armed bands of militants so common in that area of the world. According to Tom’s widow Libby, it wasn’t the first time that had happened. In past instances, Tom and his teams had been able to negotiate, perhaps offering their AK-47-carrying interlocutors some artificial tears to remove the specks of dust from their eyes and conducting an eye clinic right there on the spot.

This time they were not as fortunate. Except for one survivor who successfully begged for his life, each was executed, either by bullet or grenade, one by one.  The Taliban claimed responsibility (though no one can be sure), accusing the group of “proselytizing” and “spying,” citing Bibles and “spy gadgets” found in their possession.

I had never really thought of an ophthalmoscope that way before, but I guess there is some truth in it.

Tom Little was no naive idealist or pampered professional out on a little foreign jaunt to relieve his guilt and boredom. He and his wife had moved to Afghanistan in 1970s following seminary training and raised their three daughters there, surviving the Soviet occupation and rise of the Taliban along the way. He became an optometrist in a roundabout, back door sort of way. The son of an ophthalmologist in New York, Little had worked as an optician and learned basic exam techniques in his father’s practice and was naturally drawn to the work at Noor Eye Hospital in Kabul. Over the years, he learned rough and rugged third-world optometry by the seat of his pants. Even without a professional degree, he ironically became a leading “authority” for eye care in Afghanistan.

In his late 50s, Tom Little returned to the United States and enrolled at the New England College of Optometry’s accelerated Advanced Standing International Program in Boston, which is designed to get foreign-trained medical doctors, optometrists and overseas workers “up to speed” with U.S. standards of care. Little received his Doctor of Optometry from NECO in just two years, graduating in 2008, and returned to Afghanistan hoping to use his training to further the breadth and quality of eye care available in that country. He had always been “Dr. Tom” to his grateful patients, but now it was official.

I think it is important to remember Dr. Tom Little, Dr. Karen Woo and the other Westerners and Afghans who together died a lonely and gruesome death, their only “crime” being that they cared for people who could neither see nor attain the even the most basic medical care. They were not all on the same page in matters of religious faith, but they shared a common goal–a love for hurting people and a burning desire to set the world to rights. When their blood spilled, it was all the same color.

Yes, remember them, and consider well this story as we near the end of our long, hot summer of discontent when so many preachers, politicians and pundits, from the comfort of their air-conditioned caves, weigh in on the propriety of an Islamic community center housing a small area of worship, open to all, designed to promote understanding and good will among various faiths, being built near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

And know this: There is not a single one of those preachers, politicians and pundits–no not one!–who is worthy enough to kneel and lick the dust and blood from Dr. Tom Little’s boots.

Huntsville police and SWAT teams are currently at the scene of a hostage situation in the Medical District.

An optometrist (OD) employed at an ObamaCare-affiliated medical clinic (the one with the new Death Panel drive-thru window) is apparently fed-up to his eyeballs with all the incessant yik-yak from his patients, the constant sniping and backstabbing from co-workers and the drowning deluge of mind-numbing emails, bureaucratic buzzwords and meaningless acronyms (MNEMBBMA) raining down from his overlords on Mt. Olympus.

The OD–OMe! OMy!–has apparently quit his job and gone optical.

Police will identify him only as “Mike the Eyeguy.” According to a department spokesperson, Dr. Eyeguy has apparently been showing several signs of cracking recently. Area opticians have told police that over the past few weeks he has been transposing “minus” signs for “plus” signs, and vice versa, resulting in blurry eyeglasses and a spike in Huntsville metro area traffic accidents. In addition, other local eye doctors and health department officials have noted a recent epidemic of permanently-crossed “googly eyes” resulting from Coke-bottle lenses allegedly prescribed by Dr. Eyeguy.

One patient even said that when he complained about the blinding brightness of the light on the examining scope, the rogue OD, who was frothing at the mouth and quietly humming nursery rhymes to himself, turned the illumination dial all the way up to “11″ and suddenly erupted into peals of “BWAHAHAHA” evil scientist laughter.

Early reports indicate that when this morning’s first patient, who already had crystal clear, better-than-perfect 20/10 X-ray vision in both eyes to begin with, complained to the OD in a small, grating voice which sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard that his vision “still just wasn’t quiiite good enough” and commanded him to fix it “NOW!”, something snapped.  The OD has now taken several hostages and is reportedly threatening to use industrial-strength dilating drops and send them out into the bright sunlight without those little cheap, flimsy paper sunglasses.

In a rambling manifesto posted on Youtube, “Mike the Eyeguy” aired his grievances. The following is a portion of the transcript from that broadcast: [...]

I’ve noticed a certain online phenomenon which seems to be on the rise along with the afternoon’s triple digit mercury: temperature taunting.

Temperature taunting occurs when friends in more moderate summer climes such as Seattle, New Hampshire, Michigan or Malibu post some ironic and sarcastic taunt on their blogs, Facebook or Twitter pages about how “godawful” their high-70s/low 80s/low humidity weather is and “However are we going to survive this heat wave?” or some such nonsense. If it were football season (and yes, Roll Tide, our boys reported for practice yesterday), these so-called “friends” would be flagged for a 15 yard penalty and loss of down.

I can think of several two-word retorts in reply to such contemptuous and gratuitous provocations, none of which I can publish here since this is a PG-13 blog (most of the time). But suffice it to say, we Southerners accept, even embrace, being slowly roasted like overcooked beef left too long in a crock pot.  It toughens us up and tempers our souls, burnishing us into a lively and colorful people who serve as rich grist for gritty, gothic stories that become instant New York Times bestsellers. Yankees may not wish to get drunk, sweat, shack-up, make love, marry, divorce, murder and remarry–all the while praying fervently to Jesus–at the same rate as we Southerners, but they do seem to enjoy lining up and paying big bucks to read all about it.

As our young men don their pads and helmets, an older man rolls up the sleeves of his white, long sleeve, pinpoint cotton dress shirt and loosens his skinny black tie at the end of his work day. From time to time, he has glanced out his window and watched the Hispanic landscape workers, their sinewy, well-muscled arms quivering from the violent rattle of mowers and gas-powered trimmers. Occasionally, they reach up and wipe the beads of summer sweat that glisten like small diamonds on their brows and merge into rivulets of rain that run down the creases of their leathery, brown jaws. They never seem to grimace or complain, and he admires their strength and endurance in the face of such hard labor. He reaches up and wipes his fingers across his own brow, finding it to be clean and dry like usual. He wonders if all the doctoring he does in the air-conditioned comfort of his office can truly be considered an “honest day’s work.”

He stands at the back door to the parking lot and hesitates to cross the threshold, knowing full well that when he turns the handle and tugs it will be like dipping his head into a steaming hot tub and drawing a deep breath; the first inhalation of liquid hot air will fill and sear his lungs, nearly drowning him. With a sigh of resignation, he steps into the sultry sauna, head bowed and braced against the brow-beating sun, and scurries quickly across the sizzling asphalt toward his car. It occurs to him during this short walk that perhaps his so-called life is a mere cosmic prank, that he is not really a rational, upright man, but instead a lowly, crawling ant fleeing the intense scrutiny of a mischievous 12-year-old boy with a very large magnifying glass. He parked in the long, morning shade of a large building, but the shadows have long since burned away, and despite leaving the windows and sunroof cracked, the car’s interior is a broiling inferno. The tan, leather upholstery is sun-baked, cracked like a parched desert floor in several places from years of exposure, and he wishes he could roll back the clock to 2002 and opt for the much-cooler cloth.

He sits on the hot seat just long enough to turn the ignition key. After he starts the AC, he steps back outside as the first wave of cooler air begins to push and disperse the heated gas through the open door and windows. A minute or so passes, and he sits back down, feeling the burning leather hermetically seal his back against the bucket seat, and quickly closes the windows and door to trap the cooling atmosphere for the drive home.  Off he goes, turning the car by gingerly touching the scalding, tightly-stretched leather of the steering wheel with the tips of his fingers, hoping it will cool off soon so he can grab onto it like he’s supposed to.

Once home, he parks in the garage and quickly closes the door. He slowly peels his sweat-soaked back from the seat and enters the house. The 25-year-old air conditioning unit is struggling to keep up, but it is still soothingly cool inside. You would think after surviving the drive home that he would quickly strip to his shorts and put on a fresh, white t-shirt, pour himself a cool drink, sit back in his recliner with the remote and call it a day.

But no, our man is not done yet. [...]

They say our stretch of beach was named for the Satsuma oranges that used to grow meekly there until the two consecutive winters of 1927-28 when massive frosts killed them off for good. Now long stretches of the formerly-white sands, which could reflect the sun so brightly they would burn your corneas if you weren’t careful, are marinated in oil. The orange-tinged granules spread like spilled Tang from the entrance of Perdido Bay, ringed off with long lines of floating boom, through Gulf State Park, past Gulf Shores and the stacked rows of new condos and beach homes rebuilt defiantly in the aftermath of Ivan and Katrina’s twin ravagings, and on to Fort Morgan.

And so, to this day, Orange Beach, Alabama remains appropriately named.

Many have hesitated to make their annual pilgrimages to the Gulf Coast in the wake of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. That much is evident on the first day as we cruise down a practically deserted Perdido Beach Boulevard around 4:00PM and gaze slack-jawed at the nearly-empty condominium and restaurant parking lots, normally overflowing in the middle of July. The missing masses are like the reluctant captains of Admiral David Farragut’s Union fleet as they encountered Confederate mines near Fort Morgan during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” Farragut purportedly yelled, urging his frightened flotilla on to victory.

The quote is most likely apocryphal, but we decide to co-opt it anyway. “Darn the oil, full speed ahead!” is our motto, toned down and euphemized a bit to conform to our more clean-cut Church of Christ proclivities. We could have called and threatened to cancel, and they would have immediately offered us a 30% discount. But that didn’t seem fair to mess with those decent, hard-working, put-upon people like that, given the troubles they already had. It would have felt a little like the kind of price gouging that often occurs after a natural disaster, only in reverse.

No, an annual beach trip is like a marriage; it’s on, for better or for worse, through patches of thick, metallic sheen and thin, non-metallic slicks, in both streaming, “rainbow” ribbons and frothy, sunset-red mousse.

Those are the types of descriptors coined by the pilots and crews of the helicopters and blimps that fly in grid-like patterns a few hundred yards off the coast and used in the “Oil Spill Updates” posted daily on the Orange Beach city website. But as I walk out onto my balcony on the first morning, coffee in hand, and scan up and down the coast while squinting against the rising sun, I don’t make those kind of distinctions right away. Oil blends covertly with blue-green surf, and the only thing I know for sure is that “something ain’t right.”

But as my eyes adjust to the light (a good pair of polarized sunglasses helps considerably) and start to observe the morning ritual of “skimming,” I quickly become an expert “spotter” myself.  [...]

The following is a talk I gave at the Health Talents International Breakfast, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN on 7/2/10.

———————————————————————————————————————————-

Thank you for your introduction, Marie.

I’m a little of a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to direct involvement with Health Talents International, but it’s certainly been on my radar for many years. We came to know Marie and Carl Agee through Cahaba Valley Church of Christ during my student days at the UAB School of Optometry in the late 80s. We were a mac & cheese, beans & weenies poor student family back then, especially after Sandy retired from being a full time CPA to take care of our newborn son. So Marie took pity on us and asked her to do a “little accounting” for HTI. A “little” turned into a “lot”—about 16 years worth. Marie has a way of getting the most out of people.

Marie also asked me many times to consider going to Guatemala on an eye care trip, and I kept putting her off.  I felt I had my own mission in Huntsville, which was certainly true, but I finally realized that it is possible to juggle two things at once, and the time came in my life and in my professional career to “shake things up” a bit, so I finally said yes. Remember that woman in the parable who kept knocking on the judge’s door demanding justice? Marie is that woman. Those of you who know Marie know that she is nothing if not persistent. Thanks for being my friend, Marie, and for not giving up on me.

You may have noticed there’s a little soccer tournament going on over in South Africa. In fact, later this morning, I’ll be searching for a tall cup of coffee and a big screen TV so that I can pull for the Netherlands, aka “Oranje,” aka “The Flying Dutchmen” as they take on Brazil. When you’re a fan of the US National Team, it’s very prudent to have a Plan B.

Oh no, some of you are thinking, he’s one of those soccer people. He’s probably going to pull out one of those little plastic horns and start torturing us with it! Relax, don’t worry, Marie made me leave my vuvuzuela in the car. But yes, I am a soccer person. If you go to my Facebook page you’ll see a profile picture of me dressed in my red, white and blue Nike National Team jersey, blue Nike soccer shorts, Nike shoes, an American flag bandanna on my head, holding the Stars and Stripes in my right hand, my right foot atop a soccer ball, flashing my best “Don’t Tread on Me” scowl. Not that it did that much good against Ghana.

I didn’t grow up playing, but when my sons started back in the 90s, I caught football fever–real football–and fell in love with what we aficionados call, “The Beautiful Game.”

Wait a minute, hold the phone, don’t you mean “The Boring Game?” Don’t you mean that game where they kick the ball around for 90 minutes, sometimes more, often with little or no scoring and everybody gets all excited and acts like the they won the Super Bowl or something when there’s a tie (or in soccer parlance, a draw)?

Don’t you mean “The Wimpy Game?” That game where a histrionic player flops on the field (it’s actually called the pitch) at the slightest contact, the one where the trainers rush on, carry the writhing player off to the sideline on a stretcher where they proceed to spritz his boo-boo with magic water, and lo and behold, seconds later the player springs to his feet completely healed and ready to reenter the match? Don’t you mean that game?

I’m not sure what’s in that magic water, but I know one thing—Oral Roberts was never that good! [...]

So much for another “stouuury book endin’.” Instead, another World Cup, another loss to a more organized, powerful and faster Ghanan team. The “Great Equalizer” strikes again.

I can’t say I’m shocked given the fine players Ghana has (and two of their best weren’t even on the pitch), but I am disappointed that the US National Team squandered a fine chance to equal and perhaps surpass their best finish ever in World Cup play. Poor possession and defensive organization led to the first goal (even US keeper Tim Howard, one of the world’s best, was about a step off in cutting down the angle and protecting that near post), but the overtime game winner by Asamoah “Baby Jet” Gyan was pure soccer artistry.

First touch is everything. A world-class soccer player must be able to “catch” the ball with his foot or some other legal part of the body, even in tight space and under tremendous defensive pressure, and bring it under control the first time he touches it. Then he must be able to do something intelligent and productive with it, like finding the back of the net or a teammate who can.

For many, including young and inexperienced US strikers such as Jozy Altidore, the ball often rolls away into the possession of a defender after the first touch. Or perhaps he is so discombobulated from the tight space and the defensive pressure and the pressing need of the moment that he hangs a cleat in the turf and trips over his own feet.

Others take their first touch and proceed to write their own history.

“Baby Jet” took a high, looping ball on a dead run with his chest and set it in motion just a couple of feet in front of him, maintaining that relative distance even at full speed. He then struck the ball, still bouncing, with such authority that even Howard, with his catlike reflexes, couldn’t collar it. I cannot even begin to describe how hard that is, even though it looks commonplace on TV. Of course, great players always make it look easy.

If I had scored a goal like that, I would have danced too. But having grown up Church of Christ, I would have probably been issued a straight red card for illegal motion and woeful lack of soul.

So, how does US soccer get from here to there? Soccer in the United States is for the most part an affluent and suburban sport–unlike the rest of the world. Most serious players and their parents have payed mounds of money to play in a club system with the hopes of merely making varsity in high school or maybe snagging some hard-to-come-by college scholarship money.

Even those who make it and play in college often don’t play all four years. They become distracted and lose interest or the injuries mount and they finally hang up their boots. The best player that Huntsville has ever produced played briefly on the US Under-20 team a few years ago and went to UNC-Chapel Hill where he led the team in scoring for a couple of seasons. But he was injured during his junior year and sat out, and by the time he came back as a senior, he suddenly found that he had been replaced by the latest and greatest 18-year-old sensation. Fortunately, he’s a smart guy and has medical school to fall back on.

Somewhere in the barrios and ghettos of America, there are young kids who possess the gift of the “first touch.” Yet even here in my part of Huntsville, players like that wouldn’t be able to afford the fees to play high school varsity soccer.

US Soccer must find a way to change all that. Otherwise, our “first touch” will continue to be our last.

People look at you kind of strange when you tell them that you shelled out good money to attend something called a “Christian Scholars’ Conference” and that you actually enjoyed it. Reactions can range from “What’s a guy like you doing in a place like that?” to “Well, la-de-da!” But believe me, after a long season of Tim James political TV ads and rootin’ tootin’ “Ag Commish” wannabe viral videos, I was ready for a little more “la-de-da” in my life.

You know Eyegal and me–liberal arts geeks to the core. An itch like that doesn’t always get scratched sufficiently in a high tech town like Huntsville, Alabama. To get to those places that rocket science and computer chips can’t touch, we make an annual pilgrimage to The Christian Scholars’ Conference (CSC) at Lipscomb University in Nashville.

The CSC is a place where scholars (and poseurs like Eyegal and me) from Church of Christ-affiliated colleges and universities, as well as many other schools and denominations, meet and greet and explore new ways to integrate their faith with their various academic disciplines. Nashville is traditionally referred to as “The Athens of the South,” and Lipscomb’s commitment to academic freedom and to hosting a world-class event like CSC is rapidly raising her stock and placing her in the same league as her neighbors and longstanding paragons of academic excellence, Vanderbilt and Belmont.

This year’s theme was “Beauty in the Academy: Faith, Scholarship & The Arts.” What’s so special about a bunch of professors, writers, artists, musicians, poets and playwrights convening for some sort of “Campbellite Woodstock,” you ask? After all, didn’t we switch to a Fortune 500 model faith and chase weird-looking and funny-talking people like that out of the Church of Christ a long time ago and replace them with lawyers, engineers, doctors and “bizness men?”

Glad you asked. Well, when was the last time you heard a world-renowned poet and critic like Dana Gioia, devout Roman Catholic and former Chair of the Endowment for the Arts, issue a stirring and urgent plea for Christian writers to rise up and produce another Flannery O’Connor or Walker Percy who will inject a much-needed pulse of the transcendent into modern art and culture to satisfy man’s unconscious spiritual longings, followed by a public reading of his own work? Hmmm?

I thought so. Or how about sitting in on an intimate creative session with musicians like Sarah Masen and songwriters/performers Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist of the alternative/folk duo Over the Rhine?

Never heard of them? Neither had I. But now my iPhone is full of their soulful, sacramental songs, including Over the Rhine’s haunting, eschatological jazz piece, “The Trumpet Child,” a true fusion of faith and art that left the flood-weary crowd at the Friday evening “Tokens Show” leaning into the instrumental riff at the end and looking toward the sky for some soul-saving satisfaction and deliverance. [...]

Dear AZ,

Nice try, but no cigarro.

We know you’re a little sore because “L” comes before “R” in the alphabet. And you probably felt a little trampled upon when we drove an armada of Crimson, elephant-festooned RVs with horns that blare “Yea, Alabama,” not once, but twice, through your state in early January on our way to the Rose Bowl and back (Roll Tide!).

But did you really think you could captivate the attention of the entire country with your so-called “controversial” new immigration law? You call that “controversial?” You call yourself “conservative?” Do the names “George Wallace” and “Bull Connor” ring a bell with you people? Please, in Alabama we put the CON in “controversial” and “conservative.”

Listen up Arizona, this is Alabama–we speak Redneck. If you want to hang with the Good Ol’ Boys, you better step up your game in a hurry. You could start by brushing up on your history and start watching more Jeff Foxworthy DVDs and Dukes of Hazzard reruns now. Because as long as all the politico-wannabes in the Yellowhammer State keep rolling out their campaign TV ads, by the time November rolls around, the only thing people are going to remember about you is that big sink hole that you guys keep calling a “natural wonder.”

Believe me, Tim James’ “This is Alabama, We Speak English, Dadgummit!” spot was just the opening shot. In fact, poor ol’ Tim is looking like a libruhl, soccer-loving, pinko Commie today compared to Dale “True Grit” Peterson, the guy whose “goin’ afta’” the “Ag Commish” office.

His TV add went viral in recent days–you may have seen it even way out there. Heck, we didn’t even know we had an “Ag Commish” until that ad hit. Folks around here got so worked up at the sight of his Winchester and cowboy hat that now they’re talking about him and Sarah Palin saddlin’ up together to take back The White House in 2012. A ticket like that might set the English language back a few centuries. I can see their first presser now–Sarah up there behind the podium, winkin’ and flashin’ that “You Betcha” grin of hers, and Dale right there beside her ridin’ shotgun, just darin’ some cocky, snot-nosed libruhl to ask her a real question.

Yeah, yeah, I know we have Bradley Byrne and Young Boozer who want to represent the New South and show that Alabama can be progressive. They’re actin’ all uppity and tryin’ to show off their phancy learnin’ and what not, but don’t pay them no mind.

Tim James and the True Republican PAC (which really isn’t) dug up some good dirt on Byrne who’s a Duke grad and is running for governor. Turns out all that phancy learnin’ led him to make a few sympathetic comments toward evolution “evilution” and biblical higher criticism a few years back, and Tim and his new best buds at AEA pounced on that like a cat on a June Bug. That slick maneuver forced Byrne into damage control mode to repair his fundamentalist Christian cred among the hoi polloi.

Well played, Mr. James, well played.

As for Young Boozer, the “serious leader” with the “funny name”, he’s a Stanford grad who’s apparently playing up his connection with Bear Bryant (God rest his soul).

Stanford, Bear Bryant–it don’t take a rocket scientist (and Lord knows, they’re a dime a dozen here in Huntsville) to know that dawg don’t hunt. All the Old Boozers down in Montgomery ain’t gonna take too kindly to that brand of monkeyshine.

Give it up Arizona, you don’t stand a chance. We’re going to see y’all’s silly little immigration law and raise you one Dale Peterson and two Tim Jameses. That’s right, ol’ Tim is about to go “nucular,” and Ocular Fusion has the scoop on his next campaign ad. Read ‘em and weep, AZ; it’s only primary season, and we’re just gettin’ started.

Reddest regards,

AL

I don’t always speak Spanish, but when I do, I prefer having Jose Rafael Rodriguez (aka, my translator “Danny”) somewhere in the immediate vicinity. I am neither the most interesting man in the world, nor the most bilingual.

I tried to memorize enough Spanish eye care phrases to get by on my recent trip to Guatemala, but despite my best efforts and intentions, I found myself leaning hard on Danny. I would usually start out the day doing a passable job-abre sus ojos (“open your eyes”), mira arriba (“look up”) –but as things got hot and busier and I became increasingly fatigued, I started to mangle my rote phrases more and more. I would then simply shrug and look at Danny and motion toward the patient with my head, body language for “Yeah, yeah, I know, go ahead.”

He knew I couldn’t get along without him and he relished it and wouldn’t let me forget. One of my favorite things to ask the patient at the end of the consult was Tiene preguntas? (Do you have any questions?). I pride myself on being the kind of doctor who doesn’t rush from the room to put out another fire until the patient has had their say. I would say the phrase perfectly (Prrrray-GOON-toos!) and wait for the patient to reply.

Nueve times out of diez, this came in the form of a quizzical stare and a cocked head. I would shrug and look at Danny and he would repeat the phrase word for word to the patients–the same way I had–and suddenly the proverbial light bulb would appear in one of those little fluffy, cumulus thought clouds above their heads. While the patients would launch into a litany of preguntas, more than I could count, really, Danny would simply look at me and grin. [...]

“What do you want me to do for you,” Jesus asked him.

The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

–Mark 10: 51

Like Blind Bartimaeus, all Marta wanted was to be able to see. She was no whiny yuppie who would be satisfied with nothing less than 20/20 post-LASIK. She just wanted good enough.

Good enough to see the faces of her family, especially the grandchildren. Good enough to take in the vibrant green of the Guatemalan countryside and the eye-catching reds, blues, oranges and yellows of the local marketplace where her friends would gather to sell their handcrafted wares. Good enough to help start the evening fire and perhaps lend a hand with the cooking again. Good enough that her daughter Nicole would no longer have to take her by the arm and lead her around.

Around these parts, weathered, wrinkled farmers in Liberty overalls will sit in my chair and if disease has had its way and our options are limited, I must explain to them in rural vernacular what we’re aiming for. “Good gettin’ around vision,” I’ll say. They connect with my words immediately and nod their heads gravely in understanding.

That’s what Marta wanted too. And it wasn’t the first time she had made the long trip to Clinica Ezell to plead her case. [...]

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

–Matthew 7:3-5

I once had a war hero sitting in my exam chair who had survived all manner of jungle ambushes but was dying from an inoperable brain tumor. He asked me a couple of questions that landed up side my head with the percussive force of an Improvised Explosive Device.

“When you examined me 2 years ago, did you see any sign that I had a brain tumor? If you had used a more extensive visual field test, could you have possibly found it?

I’d rather have been discussing the merits of a no-line bifocal versus a flat top-28, but sometimes you have to go places you don’t want to in this life. You don’t look a dying man in the eye and shoot him a bunch of BS, and I owed this one an answer.

I assured him that the kind of exam we had done two years prior was a typical “one-size-fits-all” with a standard (and clinically acceptable) visual field screener, and there had been nothing askew or unusual at the time to make me think he had a neurological time bomb ticking away in his head, and had there been, I would have gone to the wall, over the wall, and then some to find it. But if it was there and I did miss it, that I was very, very sorry. Or words to that effect.

“It’s okay, ” he said. “I’m not blaming you. I just needed to know.”

A few weeks later he was gone. His obituary in the local newspaper was longer than an Old Testament parchment scroll and filled with myriad family members, military, professional and community service accomplishments. It took up nearly two full columns.

This story, and the one to follow, aren’t the type that well-renowned and well-paid lecturers tell at continuing education meetings. In the lecture halls, everyone is Dr. Kildare (or these days, Dr. McDreamy), and all the patients get better via either a crack diagnosis or a new razzle-dazzle treatment pulled out of a hat, MacGyver style, in the heat of battle. Usually both to hear them tell it. But among the hoi polloi  in the hotel bar at night, with the lights dim and alcohol-lubricated tongues flowing more freely, the truth always comes out.

Now an occult brain tumor is nowhere near a poke in the eye with a pair of needle-nosed forceps, but don’t tell Señor García that. [...]

My earliest memory is of waking up around 3:00 AM demanding my bottle. My mother, desperate for sleep, stumbled into my room, leaned over the edge of the crib with half-closed eyes staring down at me, and handed me one.

It was full of Coke, not milk. I grabbed the bottle and eagerly started to suck its sugary teat. Minutes later, I was back to sleep, and so was she.

I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t read about that little trick anywhere in Dr. Spock. She was “winging it,” as they say. What would I want if I awoke crying at 3:00 AM?, she asked herself, and Voila! just like that she got a few more hours of precious snooze time, and our dentist, Dr. Fitzgerald, was able to send his kids to college.

Down in Atlanta, a board room full of Coca-Cola executives smiled broadly.

My Mom did things her way, regardless of what the book said. The book says that when you’re born with a rare genetic disorder and develop a brain tumor at age 19, or bacterial meningitis in your forties, or ovarian cancer in your fifties, or necrotizing fasciitis (“flesh-eating bacteria”) in your sixties, you generally just lay down and die.

But my mother never cared much for being told what to do. She was proud, independent Scots-Irish, daughter of Clyde McGuire, a man who worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps building the Blue Ridge Parkway during the week and ran a little moonshine on the weekends when he came home to Elsie. Knowing what I do of her, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn she was in the car with him, riding–literally–shotgun.

They say 3:00 AM is “The Devil’s Hour.” It’s around that hour and the two following that the blood enters a hypercoagulable state, thickening up and moving slowly like red sludge through the tiny vessels of our bodies. More people have heart attacks and strokes and die in those two hours than at any other time of the day.

And even if you do survive The Devil’s Hour, you can still pass through hell. If you’re world-weary and a little depressed, you can find yourself in that no-man’s netherworld between sleep and consciousness and suddenly realize with stark clarity that you’re going to die. The full force of your own mortality slaps you awake, and you lie there, or sometimes sit up, covered in tiny beads of sweat, realizing it was just a dream–for now. [...]

(This is Part 2 of a series on our recent trip to Clinica Ezell in Montellano, Guatemala. Part 1 can be found here. The following are remarks that I delivered to the HTI Eye/Ortho Team on March 17, 2010 during evening devotional).

First off, thank you Cameron for having my back tonight. He loaned me his Bible after I forgot mine.  I didn’t want to stand up here and scroll through my Bible app on my iPhone–I thought that would look, uh, “unprofessional” (pointing to my Bama ball cap and scrubs).

I just want to clear up one more thing before I get started. I know some of you are probably confused by this whole optometry/ophthalmology thing. The easiest way to think about it is this: Me (pointing to myself) primary care, him (pointing to Dr. Lee Coleman) surgeon.

But the biggest difference between optometry and ophthalmology is this: I personally have no problem projecting my voice over the sound of rotating ceiling fans! (The audience, immediately recognizing the inside joke, erupts in peals of laughter in appreciation of the wit and alacrity of their speaker).

I’ve enjoyed getting to know all of you this week as we’ve formed this team to help the people of Montellano. I’ve noticed that as we’ve tried to get acquainted with each other, we’ve asked the usual questions: What’s your name? Where you from? What do you do (or what’s your major)? Do you know so-and-so?

Or, if you want to go a little deeper: What’s your favorite scripture?

Ask me that question, and I’m likely to reply: It depends.

If you’re talking about my favorite single verse of scripture it would probably be Micah 6:8, you know, the one about “practicing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.” There are so many people quoting scriptures these days–preachers, politicians, athletes, pundits–and frankly many of them are more concerned with scoring ego points or gaining power and manipulating people than they are in getting it right.

This one’s hard to mess up. It follows the K.I.S.S. principle–”Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Perfect for someone like me who needs a little help every now in figuring out what’s True and Important.

If you’re talking about my favorite book, then it would have to be Ecclesiastes. I know, a little weird. Ecclesiastes is the most philosophical and existential book in the Bible, and since I’m a little edgy and angst-ridden myself, it suits me to a tee. Nice to know there’s a whole book devoted to oddballs like me!

But maybe by favorite scripture you mean “favorite story.” That’s what the Bible is, after all: small stories within a larger one, a grand narrative of man seeking God, God seeking man, and His interaction with creation. It’s not a list of rules-to-be-followed, like the step-by-step instructions of an inorganic chemistry titration experiment. It is a story “in progress,” one in which we are all participants.

If that’s what you mean by “favorite scripture,” then it would have to be Mark 8: 22-25. Let’s read it: [...]

The road to Montellano, Guatemala started in a small, dingy gray room on the 11th floor of Roanoke Memorial Hospital on April 2nd, 2009. It was there around 5:00 AM that I held my mother’s head in my hands and shouted words of love and farewell over her as she drew her last breath in this life.

You don’t travel into the Valley of the Shadow with someone and then back out again without being changed forever. The Reaper’s sickle passes so close to your own skin that you feel its wind. It cuts, and if you’re standing near enough, you bleed.

But after the worst of grief passes (and this can take months), your senses are sharpened, your vision more acute. Gradually, you start to see things differently, even some things that you’ve never seen before.

I had never felt “The Call” to be a missionary. I had always supported such work in one form or another, even sending members of my family on trips while I minded the fort at home. I strongly believed that my “mission” here in Huntsville–being the best husband, father, doctor, professor and writer that I can be–was as important as any, and I still do.

But during the months following my mother’s death, as I tended to the difficult drudgery of caring for and resolving her estate, as I watched the house I grew up in auctioned off on a overcast, muggy morning last August, an idea began to take shape, its outline slowly becoming more distinct through the misty veil of tears that clung to me like summer sweat.

My mother had been one of a kind, and my father a gentle soul who had left his mark on me despite his death in 1980 at the young age of 47.  By September, I knew that I wanted to take a portion of the proceeds from the estate and do something special, “out of the box” as I wrote in my last post, to honor my father and mother.

You won’t see the phrase on the Health Talents International (HTI) website or in any of their literature, but the Harold and Christine Brown Memorial Eye Care Mission was born. [...]