David Hilfiker
A Theology of the Cross—Part I
The environmental crisis--especially global climate change--has reached such a point that it is no longer reversible and that considerable further damage to the Earth and us its people is inevitable. Yet very few people--even within the environmental movement--seem to be willing to acknowledge (at least in public) that fact. This sermon and the following one along with the lecture Finding Hope in an Environmental Wasteland explore some of the depth of the environmental crises and the forces that make them virtually invulnerable to the usual modes of attack and explores some possible reasons why the American "positive outlook" may be obstructing our view of reality. The two sermons also look at the Christian "theology of glory" and how Christianity may have played a historical role as well as a continuing role in our illusions. Finally all three begin to look at what hope might look like in our situation.
More on the History of the Black Ghetto
Ten years ago I wrote Urban Injustice, a short book about the history of the inner-city, African-American ghetto. I now think that the book is misleading. It’s not that it’s inaccurate: no one has disputed the claims in the book. But it leaves out three important episodes of overwhelming violence and oppression that are necessary to understanding the ghetto’s history.
A recent speech and slide-show on the history of the Lakota people provides important background. In this fifteen-minute video the photographer contrasts photos of the current desperate poverty of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota with a partial history of the US government’s violent oppression of the Lakota tribes. Before reading on, watch it at: http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html.
The New Jim Crow
Attorney Michelle Alexander has written a most astonishing book, The New Jim Crow, about the mass incarceration of black men in America. The facts themselves are astonishing enough, but even more important is the evidence that mass incarceration is not an attempt to solve a drug problem but to subjugate poor black men. Mass incarceration is how our society keeps the inner-city ghetto devastated. The following is an extensive review. I hope it only whets your appetite to read the book.
More Than Surviving the Crisis
Street Medicine Conference
Salt Lake City
September 28, 2012
I spoke the following lecture in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the annual conference of the Institute for Street Medicine, an advocacy and support organization by and for professionals who offer health care (broadly defined) to individuals who live on the street. Rather than serving homeless individuals in institutions, however, these professionals work on the streets themselves in the United States and other nations around the world.
This is my last speech to a professional audience and it brings together the themes of the American political, ecnomic, social, and environmental crises to explore their complex, virtually impenetrable interweaving. I suggest that given this impentrability, the necessary changes that offer a sane way out will only be possible after a significant breakdown in the current capitalist system. Several other pieces of my writing The Earth's Immune System, Hope in an Environmental Wasteland, Theology of the Cross, and Moral Lapses and Economics) have explored various facets of this subject but this is, I think, the clearest and most complete presentation I have to offer.
About My Cognitive Impairment
In September of 2012 I learned that I had a "progressive cognitive impairment," almost certainly Alzheimer's disease. On this site and on my blog is the story of my day-to-day life with this illness and my reflections upon it. We tend to be scared of Alzheimer's or embarrassed by it. We see it as the end of life rather than a phase of life with all its attendant opportunities for growth, learning, and relationships. We see only the suffering and miss the joy. We experience only the disappearing cognitive abilities and ignore the beautiful things that can appear.
In October of 2013, the near-certainty of my diagnosis was downgraded to "subjective cognitive complaints," a far more ambiguous diagnosis. (Click here for details.) I'm not going to rewrite the entries of this blog for they remain valid for the time they were written. But the story is more complicated.
So the memoir on this site is a story of my journey from diagnosis of cognitive impairment to the current confusion. So far I have been able to welcome this period of my life. In fact and unbelievably, these months so far have been one of the happiest periods in my life.
There's a lot here: a longer letter to friends and readers making public my diagnosis, my autobiography in order to give context to the disease, a briefer story describing the months before my diagnosis, and all of the posts from my blog (see menu), I have also written a spiritual autobiography, my history written from from a special point of view.
(In addition to this writing I am very interested in speaking to or teaching in any venue, but especially universities and medical schools, about my experience. Please contact me.)
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