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Dr. Collins, I just learned of you joining the faculty and administration at the Long School of Medicine UT Health San Antonio. The following is my Face Book posting about you:
"July. 2017, a great move by my School of Medicine when Dr. Chiquita A. Collins became the first chief of diversity.
"The following link is from her time at The John Hopkins.
https://hub.jhu.edu/gazette/2013/june/four-questions-chiquita-collins-diversity-som/
"SETMA and Diversity
Health & Stress: Prejudice, Hatred, Bitterness
"In 2014, NCQA submitted 32 questions to me, the following are my written answers to the questions
NCQA Interview February 14, 2014: Written Answers to Questions Submitted by Ashley Carter NCQA, Communications Specialist
"Question 13 addressed ethnic diversity and disparities, the following is my reply.
NCQA Interview February 14, 2014: Written Answers to Questions Submitted by Ashley Carter NCQA, Communications Specialist -Is there a minority population, and if so, what do you do as far as disease management for minority patients?
About your appointment
https://www.facebook.com/james.l.holly/posts/10211482005860465
I look forward to meeting you after you begin your post in September. I am a 1973 graduate of UT Health. The following link is to my comments upon being Award the Distinguished Alumnus in 2012: Dr. Holly's Acceptance Address for the 2012 Distinguished Alumnus Award University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio School of Medicine
I look forward to your contribution to The Long School of Medicine.
James L. Holly, MD
The following is my personal history about diversity.
James L. Holly, My History
1. I grew up in the South, in a racially segregated and prejudiced society. My first experience with racism and my first conscious recognition of its existence was when I was twelve years old. I lived in the county and our nearest neighbors who lived across the road – not a street or avenue but a dirt road – were Philmore Evans and his family . He had a son near my age named Junior. We played together all of the time, although we did not go to school together. When I was 12, Philmore and his family moved to town. One day, I asked my father if he would take me to Junior’s house to visit and play. It was then that I came face to face with the ugliness of racism.
I remember how offended I was about the distinction and from that day forth I have opposed racial segregation and bigotry. May years later, after I had graduate from Medical School and had started practice in Beaumont, Texas, I was riding with my father down this same, unpaved, country road. At one point my father stopped and called to a man in the field we were passing. The man, John Tom, walked over to my father’s truck. My father said, “I thought you were coming by the house on Friday?” John said, “One of the kids got sick but I’ll be there this Friday.” We drove on and I asked my father what that was all about. By the way, John Tom is African American.
My father said that John could not pay his light bill and he loaned him the money. John had young children and my father loved children, all children, and he would not let them be without electricity. After a moment, I said to my father, “You, my father, gave money to a _____ (and I used a word which is not part of my vocabulary but I used it for emphasis)?” My father began to smile and I added, “You see, Daddy, you talk one way but you live your life exactly as I do. And, don’t ever forget that the social liberalism of my adult life was learned from you as I saw how you treated people even if your words were sometimes different.”
2. When I was 17, I started college at Texas A&M. I wanted to be a veterinarian. In October of that year I because a Christian and if I had any vestiges of racism, they were erased due to my understanding of the biblical admonition that “if a man says he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar and the truth is not in him.” In that year, I visited African American churches and conducted Vacation Bible Schools for African American children.
3. When I was 18, I returned to Louisiana to continue my education, thinking at that time that I would become a minister. I began a ministry at the City Jail. This was 1962 and Civil Rights violence was rampant in the South. When men left jail, I tried to help them find work and places to live and some local people objected. One group threatened me and no one but my father protected me.
4. When I was 19, the President of the Baptist Student Union at our college, where I and my future wife were active, told the Director that I had said that if he didn’t love African Americans (he used a racist term) that he was going to hell. I never said that but I did repeat the verse about claiming to love God and hating your brother. My college was racially segregated and I was identified as the Civil Rights activists on campus.
5. When I was 20, I went to Africa as a summer missionary. I spent three months in Kenya. When I returned to the United States I was deeply committed to the dignity and value of all human beings. In October, 1964, I spoke to the State BSU Convention in Monroe, Louisiana. There were 2,000 students there and I spoke on Civil Rights and the Love of God. I was never asked to speak in the State of Louisiana again until 1994 – thirty years later – I spoke to 500 community leaders and I spoke on Civil Rights.
6. When I was 21, in 1969, I married Carolyn Bellue. We have been married for 52 years this August. We taught school the first year of our marriage. One of my students was mixed-race Cajun who was brilliant. She was very poor. Carolyn and I took her and bought her a red dress and other clothes so that she could come to school. In 2008, 43years after the event, I contacted Vivian by letter. It was a year before she wrote back. She indicated that she had had a difficult life but that things were better. She said, which brought tears to my eyes, “When I was in the 7th grade a teacher and his wife bought me a red dress. It was the only dress I ever had. I wore it until the fell apart. Was that you?”
7. When I was 22, my wife and I moved to Waco, Texas, where I started graduate school at Baylor. My wife was a team-teacher with the first African American to teach in a predominantly Caucasian school. Her name was Minnie Cooper and we became very good friends. It seemed ordinary to us when we had a gathering at our home to invite Minnie. We were told that that just was not done. We ignored the mores and enjoyed our friend being a guest in our home.
8. In 1969, at 25 years of age, I started Medical School at UT Health San Antonio Long School of Medicine. Three months later, I stared a health-careers program for indigent and Hispanic children.
9. In 1975, Carolyn and I moved to Beaumont, Texas. As a young doctor and his wife, we were invited to join the Country Club. I asked, “Can African Americans and Jews join?” The leaders said they had never been asked the question. I said, “I’m asking.” They came back and said yes they could. I asked to see the provision in their by-laws. They said that it didn’t exist. I said, when it does let me know. Several months later, the by-laws had been amended and we joined the Country Club. After a few years, it was obvious that we didn’t belong, so we resigned. We were treated very well at the club.
10. In 1979, we started a ‘street ministry” in the inner city of Beaumont. We ministered to poor and largely African American children. We began taking them to our church which was segregated, not by choice but by practice.
11. In 1995, I founded Southeast Texas Medical Associates, LLP, a multi-specialty medical practice. In addition to building an award-winning practice, which is accredited by four national accreditation agencies, SETMA worked toward and achieved the elimination of ethnic disparities in the treatment of diabetes and hypertension.
12. SETMA has supported a local organization named “100 BLACKMEN of Greater Beaumont, Inc. – “What they see is what they’ll be.” The Platinum Sponsor plagues which hang in our Executive Office suite states, “Presented to S.E.T.M.A. In recognition and Appreciation for All You Do As Medical Physicians and Attention You Give to your Patients Daily. You Are Making it Possible for Us to Continue Giving Scholarships to First Time College Students and Expand Our Scholarship Program By Supporting Them All The Way Through College. The 100 BMGB Scholarship Program.”
13. In 2015, Mrs. Holly and I helped underwrite the Frank Bryant Memorial Lecture Series at UT Health San Antonio. Dr. Bryant was a distinguished physician in San Antonio. We did not know until after we had helped underwrite this lecture series that one of SETMA’s partners and another physician in Beaumont are married to daughters of Dr. Bryant. In 2017, The Bryant Lecture was entitled, “Achieving Health Equity: Tools for a National Campaign Against Racism,” presented by Camara Jones, M.D., M.P.H, Ph.D., immediate past president of the American Public Health Association
The following is a Link to Dr. Jones' address which I have read and posted on my Face Book page: http://www.kpihp.org/how-racism-makes-people-sick-a-conversation-with-camara-phyllis-jones-md-mph-phd/. The following is my comment about this article on my Face Book page: This is an insightful and provocative examination of health and race. Many will object to the term "racism," because it is generally thought by many that they personally are not racist. This makes "structural racism" invisible to them. Worth reading and thinking about.
Some of my personal experience with racism is addressed in the following Commence Address to the May, 2016 graduating class at Northwestern State University. At 27 minutes into the following video, Dr. Holly is introduced by a graduating senior. At 30-47 minutes Dr Holly's address is presented. Northwestern State University 2016 3 PM Commencement, May 6, 2016
In March, 2016, Dr. Holly was inducted into the Northwestern State University Hall of Distinction called The Long Purple Line. The following are links to a two-part history of Dr. Holly's time at Northwestern. In part two Dr. Holly addresses his experience in Africa and with Civil Rights. Northwestern State University and the Long Purple Line Part I Northwestern State University and the Long Purple Line Part II
I could go on and on but the pattern for our lives was set and we have been unswerving in our commitment to social justice and civil rights. But mostly, we were committed to treating everyone with dignity, respect and compassion.
Conclusion
The following two articles further reflect my life-long commitment to diversity
Black History: Remembering Great Black Men
James L. Holly,M.D.
February 21, 2008
Your Life Your Health - The Examiner
February has been being celebrated as Black History Month since 1926. But, why is this fact an appropriate subject for a column on health? Principally, because bitterness, hatred, prejudice, anger and bigotry affect the physical health as much as they poison the soul of men and women. The improvement of the mental, spiritual and emotional health of a nation will improve the health of the members of that society.
Whether you agree with his politics, or support his candidacy, all Americans should be proud of the fact that an African-American currently has a serious chance of becoming President of the United States. And, it is not only the Democrats who have such a candidate. Many believe that if General Colin Powell had offered himself as a candidate, the Republicans would have nominated him.
But, how can the knowledge of and the celebration of any history and particularly of Black history improve our public health? As we "know people," even vicariously, through the study of history, we can grow as individuals, as a people and, indeed as a nation. My pilgrimage from the social mores of my youth which included racial prejudice began in Africa, where I served as a summer missionary in 1964. I fell in love with the African people and that love immediately extended to the African-Americans in our country. I realized how deeply the racial strife in our country was when after speaking to a state-wide religious youth group in October, 1964 and addressing the implications of our faith upon civil rights, as a student I was never asked to speak in the state again. I realized anew how hard these issues are to resolve when I spoke to a pro-life rally in that same state thirty years later. When I stated that the racist is blood-brother to the abortionist, there was not the enthusiasm that there was for opposing abortion.
Two incidences in Black History still haunt me. These incidences continue to remind me that we must never forget the sickness of racism, for if we do, we will be doomed to repeat the history which we failed to, or refused to remember.
Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman
The first incident was the murder of Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, young men whose names ought to be remembered for the books they wrote, or for the influence they had in the lives of their own children. Tragically their names, forgotten by most, are remembered because on June 21, 1964, they were murdered just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi. At the same time that I was in Africa proclaiming that God loves all men and women, some of my fellow southerners were murdering God's children.
Five days before the murder of these three young men, members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan burned the Mount Zion Methodist Church in the all-black community of Longdale near Philadelphia. On July 24th, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited Longdale and spoke what I believe to be the greatest indictment of the contemporary Christian church I have ever heard. He said, "I feel sorry for those who were hurt by this, but I rejoice that there are churches relevant enough that people of ill-will will be willing to burn them. This church was burned because it took a stand." One of the greatest regrets of my life is that I have never been a member of a church that anyone wanted to burn!
These events were portrayed in the movie Mississippi Burning. But for me, the most compelling portrayal of this tragedy is a book, We Are Not Afraid: The Story of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney and the Civil Rights Campaign for Mississippi, which was published in 1988 by MacMillan, and written by Seth Cagin and Philip Dray. It is a book, which both shames me as a Southerner and stimulates in me hope that the day will come when all our children are "judged by their character rather than by the color of their skin."
Forgotten, these murders become meaningless acts of violence; remembered; they become signposts warning all of us that hatred, prejudice, racism and bigotry - all synonyms for the base instincts of men and women—lurk in the shadows of every society. For these shadows to dominate the light only requires, as Edmund Burke aptly said, "for good men and women to do nothing." For us to say nothing and to do nothing is to yield the field to the shadows, to the darkness, to the evil which only awaits an opportunity to spring out of its cage which is fashioned by alertness and which is locked by public denunciation of evil.
For those who of us who were alive at the time of these murders, but who were busy with our own lives and did little or nothing to turn the tide of evil led by the Klan and white, Southern, religious bigots, remembering may be the only act of true repentance and contrition with which we can expiate our own souls.
Yet, remembering is not enough! We must also act.
We must make certain there is no vacuum of moral authority in our own circle of influence in which the dark shadows would feel welcome to strain against their cage and their locks.
We must make certain that everyone in our community knows that no one can take another human life with impunity.
We must make certain that our personal and public embracing of our brothers and sisters in creation, regardless of race, creed, national origin, color or culture, is so positive and so pronounced that the evil shadows will shrink from the competition.
We must make certain that everyone in our community knows there are no human beings on whom there is "open season."
We must make certain that our acts of charity - our acts of genuine love and kindness, not of arrogant noblisse oblige - toward everyone within our community declare that there is no segment of that community without worth, value, dignity and protection.
We must make certain that everyone's child has the protection of the passion and zeal with which we protect our own child, grandchild or loved one.
June 16, 2008 will mark forty-four years since the evil shadows were welcomed out of their cage in Mississippi. As we remember these martyrs to the freedom of all men and women, we must push back the dark shadows in our community by extending love, kindness and mercy to all men and women, boys and girls. And, we must do it spontaneously, joyfully, consistently, constantly. In that way, we can build in our hearts, families and community, a fitting memorial to these three who had the light of their life snuffed out by the evil darkness. We can let them live again as the light of our lives, enlarged by our remembrance of Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, pushes back the dark shadows, which engulfed them. We can let them live again as we make certain that no one's child is consumed by the hatred which engulfed them.
Steve Biko
The second incident took place thirteen years later in South Africa. My mind echoes with the melancholy but triumphant refrain of the first stanza of a song sung at the funeral of a remarkable young man:
Nkosi Sikelel' I Afrika (God bless Africa)
Malupakm' upondo Iwayo (Raise up her spirit)
Yiva imitandazo yetu (Hear our prayers)
Usi - sikele (And bless us)
I first heard this haunting melody in the movie, Cry Freedom, which portrays the life and death of Stephen Biko. The movie, based on Donald Woods' 1978 biography, relates the story of a modern hero, a hero whose story must not be forgotten, and whose life and legacy have lessons for us today.
Donald Woods was Stephen Biko's friend and biographer. He said: "…Steve Biko was the greatest man I ever met…He was a statesman, in that sense of the word in which it is applied to Abraham Lincoln, having that breath of vision and that wider comprehension of the affairs of men and nations that is conveyed to the listener through more than mere words." (Biko, Donald Woods, Paddington Press, distributed by Grosset & Dunlap, New York & London, 1978, p.60) Stephen's message was called "Black Consciousness."
His philosophy rejected the premise of South African society that Blacks were inferior emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. "Black Consciousness" included the rejection of "black" as a designation for evil, and the embracing of "Black" as lovely and desirable. In one humorous, but telling, exchange in Cry Freedom, a judge asked Stephen, "Why do you people call yourself black, you're more brown than black?" Denzel Washington, who masterfully portrays Steve Biko, rejoined, "Why do you call yourself white, you're more pink than white?" To which the judge responded, "This is true!"
Anyone who understands the biochemistry of skin pigmentation knows the absurdity of making judgments of character on the basis of such a superficial trait. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. echo in one's mind, "I long for the day when my son will be judged by his character rather than by the color of his skin." The memory of the death of Stephen Biko causes me to hope that another generation of American youth will grow up knowing this great man. As I look upon the face of each African-American child in my office and community, I hope that I am looking into the face of an American Steve Biko.
Nelson Mandela - the Legacy of a great statesman
The Amnesty Commission's pardon for the men involved in Steve's death stirred up anger in my heart. The thought that the men who murdered him; robbing the world of a great man; and many of us of the opportunity ever to know him, should and will cause anger. Yet, in his counsel to the Commission, South African President Nelson Mandela demonstrated the wisdom he had learned through the pain of his own life.
Mandela counseled forgiveness. He argued that the evil of prejudice and racism must stop; anger must be replaced with forgiveness. Regrettably, it is those who have been hurt the most, who alone have the capacity to stop the madness. It is those who deserve it the least, who will be the greatest beneficiaries of the end of the madness. If South African society is to be healed, Mandela argued, the murderers of Stephen Biko would have to go free.
It seems so unjust, but then, humans reserve forgiveness and mercy for those whom we think deserve it. To forgive someone who doesn't even know they need forgiveness, and to forgive them when their only motive is to escape the consequences of their wrong actions, even when they haven't changed the attitudes which motivated their wrong actions, takes a maturity and a greatness possessed only by great men like Stephen Biko and Nelson Mandela.
Perhaps though, as we remember these great men, those of us who are not great, can act with greatness, as we forgive one another, and as we make sure that we don't forget Stephen Biko. Perhaps we can only help in small ways, but we must try. One way is to make certain that all of our children know the story of Steve Biko, to make certain that we know that what is portrayed in the movie Cry Freedom really happened, and to know that the only hope for its not happening again is for us to harbor no prejudice, no hatred and no anger in our own hearts.
For Black History month read the stories of these five great men. If you cannot find the books, rent or buy the movies. As you experience the anger and fury of injustice, let your soul be expiated by forgiveness. As you share the anger of African-Americans, remember the words and example of Nelson Mandela. If you and I will do this, then Black History month can positively and constructively impact the future for us all.
Health & Stress: Prejudice, Hatred, Bitterness
James L. Holly,M.D.
July 19, 2012
Your Life Your Health - The Examiner
Stress is a major contributor to poor health. We most commonly associate stress with emotional distress, fatigue, insomnia, worry, anxiety and other common causes of the symptoms of stress. Annually, SEMTA completes a “stress assessment” on each patient we see. The reason is that often when the stress is relieved, or addressed, the physical symptoms disappear. For instance, a patient with diabetes and high blood pressure was not treated to goal. Try as we could, we were not successful. Then the patient was asked about stress factors in his/her life. A significant interpersonal relationship which was creating overwhelming stress in the patient’s life was discovered. Through multiple agency intervention, the stress was relieved and the patient’s diabetes and high blood pressure responded to treatment.
Before SETMA began using electronic patient records (EMR) in 1999, we could not effectively tract changes in patient’s vital signs. For instance, with the EMR, we were able to look at vital signs over time. We began to see patterns, which were not obvious with paper records. We noticed that with some patients, their blood pressure would be uncontrolled at the same time every year. This observation allowed us to address stress factors in the patient’s life, rather than just adding more medication. Often we found that a personal tragedy had taken place and that each year at that time grief overwhelmed the body’s defense mechanism. With this awareness, rather than adding more blood pressure medication, we were able to deal with the real cause of the physical symptom, stress.
The following is the Stress Questionnaire SETMA uses. By looking at the elements of this stress analysis, you can see the things which are associated with stress: inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, sedentary lifestyle, social isolation, weight gain, financial pressures, excessive alcohol consumption, etc. Some of these are signs and symptoms of stress and some are causes of stress, but the idea is that stress and stress relief are important issues in your health and well-being.
The importance of this score is both its results and its content. The elements of the assessment alert a healthcare provider and a patient to the things which cause stress and points to means of stress reduction. Stress is destructive to the human body. Stress increases blood pressure and pulse, both of which can contribute to heart disease. Stress increases certain chemicals in the body all of which in excess amounts are harmful to health. It is often possible to improve the control of diabetes without more medications by the reduction or elimination of stress. And, it is important that the best stress reduction does not come from a pill but from life-style modification and the elimination of stressors in one’s life.
Prejudice
It is not often discussed in relationship to health but hatred, bigotry and prejudice are major stressors in society and in the lives of those people who are prejudiced. I grew up in the South and experienced the destructiveness of racial hatred from both the victim’s and the perpetrator’s perspective. It is story for another day, but I journeyed from being a bigot to the recognition of the dignity and worth of all human beings regardless of race or color.
The good news is that as I write this article, I have in the forefront of my mind the fact that my grandchildren do not see others through the prism of color. I have watched them with their African-American or Hispanic friends. I have listened to their conversations and watched them interact. They don’t see color. I have smiled in appreciation and admiration of this progress. Yes, there are vestiges of racism in our society, in places more than vestiges. And, tragically, race is used by liberal and conservative politicians for their own political purposes. These residual elements of bigotry will not disappear accidently. Like any physical or mental health improvement, the elimination of bigotry will require intentioned action. As I have wished to eliminate any semblance of ethnic prejudices from my life, I have looked for ways in which to use the word “black” in a positive context. “Our company is in the ‘black,’” which is positive and good. We most often use “black” in a negative context such as “they are the good guys, they wear white hats,” or worse yet, “He was ‘black balled.’” With a little reflection, you will see how foundational the concepts of “black” and “while” are to our society, and you will see how the last vestiges of bigotry will require our divesting ourselves of this dichotomy.
When I was in college, the great fear was of communism. As a result, a required subject was added to the curriculum. All students had to take a course in communism. Communism, by and large, went away, so that course has been dropped from the curriculum. It occurs to me that the course every high school and college student ought to be required today to take is a course in the Civil Rights Movement. It is impossible to read of Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King, Jr., W.E.B. Dubose, and thousands of other heroes without being grateful for the price which has been paid for my grandchildren to live without the health hazard of bigotry and racism being a part of the fabric of their life.
Do you every wonder whether future generations will have to learn history through movies? It is a shocking realization to become aware that you have lived so long, to discover that what you learned as personal experience is now the substance of what needs to be taught as history to the generations which have come after you. With Civil Rights, we are at that point. We must learn history lest, as one historian opined, we be condemned to repeat it.
I have recently seen most of the movie, The Help. It was supposed to be funny from what I had been told, but I was furious throughout the movie. I grew up in the South and the movie was too close to the truth to be funny. Throughout the movie I had to keep reminding myself that these were actors. The main Caucasian character was Hillie. She played her role so well, she was loathsome to me. Almost all of the vestiges of racism depicted in The Help were familiar to me but there were a couple which had never occurred to me. One is that housekeepers, domestic workers or whatever classification you apply to people who work in other people’s home are often not covered by Social Security, Medicare, have no paid holidays, vacations, sick leave or health insurance. It is possible to be a bigot and to pay these fees. But, the providing of employee benefits to those who work in your home, particularly when they are of another race, is one objective way of declaring your recognition of your employee as a person with value as you treat them with dignity and economic equality.
The Help refers to the Murder of Medgar Evers, which reminded me of the movie Ghosts of Mississippi which documents Evers’ assassination June 12, 1963 and the trial of his assassin three decades later. It reminded me of Mississippi Burning which documents the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael Schwerner, a 24-year old from Brooklyn, New York, and 21-year old James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi, were working in and around Neshoba County, Mississippi, to register blacks to vote, opening "Freedom Schools" and organizing black boycotts of white-owned businesses in Meridian. It reminded me of Cry Freedom, which tells the story of Steve Biko being murdered by the South African Government. We cannot leave to Hollywood the moral education of our children. It must be done in home, church and school.
Hatred and Bitterness
The real health tragedy of racism, prejudice and hatred is experienced by the children who grow up being treated like second class citizens, where success is the exception rather than the rule. The harm to the health of the bigot is not the great tragedy, but those who consider themselves to be neutral - neither a bigot nor an activist against bigotry - must be reminded of the famous truth, “All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men and women to do nothing.”
Whether it is the plagues of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, violence, inaccessibility to preventive and screening health care, medications or routine healthcare, poverty, or illiteracy, all members of our society pay a tragic price for the perpetuation of the evils of bigotry, racism, prejudice, bitterness and anger. And. the price to which we refer is not essentially economic.
It is faith which makes the past of significance; it is love which makes the present joyful and fulfilling; it is hope which makes the future a positive expectation. It is the past which gives meaning to the present, and it is the future which gives purpose to the present. It is the present which connects the past and the future. And, it is the knowledge and the sense of all three regardless of our geographical location which makes us human.
As we make decisions about our healthcare, it is not just so that our bodies will continue to function - that is the biology of all mammals. As we make decisions about our health, it is because of the voices, the eyes and the hands of those we love and care for, as our experience of them and with them connects all of our senses in a web of "common sense."
Some years ago, a lady worked for my wife and me as a housekeeper. Our children did not call her by her first name, as they would not any adult. We introduced her as Mrs. ______, when we had guest. She was reliable and hardworking. She did a task which some would call menial but we did not. In addition to caring for our home, she often cared for our children, which was no menial task, as they are our greatest treasures. I remember when we attended a family celebration in her church. This lady who had served us for years, morphed into an elegant lady who was articulate, who was looked up to by others. She was the "queen bee," being served by others and the day was not even in her honor but she was deferred to and addressed with respect. This server was being served. Our respect for her grew as we saw her through the eyes of others.
Seeing Others Through the Eyes of Another
SETMA employs several hundred people. Often I kibitz with those with whom I work every day, but I always do it with the knowledge that to a little girl, to a little boy, or to several children, they are the world. I want to make sure that when they go home in the evening, it is with a spring in their step and a smile on their face for the little ones to whom their services is vastly more important than what they do for me.
As each of us are at once the served and again the server it reminds me of the ultimate example of the dichotomy of, at one time being the served, and at another being the server. Jurgen Moltmann wrote a book entitled, The Crucified God. Grappling with the Gospel of Christ he argued that Christ went to those who were "other" than Himself. He, Who could lay claim to being the Ultimate Served, became the Server. He saw us through the eyes of Another, Who loved us and to Whom we are the world.
In the same context Ernst Kasemann addressed the concept of worship in his Commentary on Romans, where he said:
"...Paul takes the guiding theme of spiritual worship as may be seen from what is said about the living and well-pleasing sacrifice...Yet, Paul also parts company with mysticism by incorporating all life and stressing corporeality as the...sphere of this worship... Christian worship does not consist of what is practiced at sacred sites, at sacred times, and with sacred acts. It is the offering of the bodily existence in the otherwise profane sphere. As something constantly demanded this takes place in daily life, whereby every Christian is simultaneously sacrifice and priest. Here the universal priesthood of all believers is proclaimed of which I Peter 3:8 can even speak in terminology taken from sacral law."
Complex language perhaps, but the basic concepts are, for Moltmann, that we act divinely when we see those who appear different from us as the same as us, i.e., when we see the server as one worthy of our service. Thus perceiving them so, we serve them by our kindness and graciousness in their service to us. For Kasemann, worship of God is most clearly done as we serve others with our acceptance, kindness and graciousness, even when they are the server and we are the served.
Wealth and Worth
In this world, there will never be equality of wealth, but there must be equality of worth. If we are to be healthy, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, we must purge ourselves of bigotry, prejudice, hatred and bitterness. The steps in successfully doing that are so ordinary and so simple they may seem insignificant. It can be done and it must be done. And, it must be done now.
We must no longer depend upon our “religious” fervor for evidence of our spiritual worth; we must find our truth worth in how we care for our fellow man, and particularly when that fellow man, woman or child looks, lives, and even acts differently.
James (Larry) Holly, M.D.
C.E.O. SETMA
www.jameslhollymd.com
Adjunct Professor
Family & Community Medicine
UT Health San Antonio
Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine
Clinical Associate Professor
Department of Internal Medicine
School of Medicine
Texas A&M Health Science Center
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