New York missive no 68 - God and the lack of

On Monday the midwife we saw said how relieved she is that the maternity ward at St Vincent’s Hospital is probably staying open. Not only because it means the nurses there will keep their jobs, but because, she said, it’s one of the few remaining obstetrics wards in New York where childbirth is still seen as a natural process, to be celebrated, rather than an encumbrance to be dealt with as quickly as possible with the aid of cesarean deliveries and pain relief methods. Long may it last.

Oh well I spoke too soon. Just after typing that last night we turned on the news to see that the latest deal to save the hospital - with Mt Sinai Hospital - has fallen through.

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Everyone seemed to be reading about God this morning on the W train, while I was reading about Nietzsche. Not about him, exactly, but Irvin Yalom’s novel When Nietzsche Wept. It revolves around Nietzsche's fictitious treatment by the doctor Joseph Breuer in late nineteenth century Vienna, when, as Yalom describes in his note at the end, the “ticking embryo of psychotherapy” was in place. There is much discussion between the two about truth, and some about God, or the lack of. So far those discussions are driven by Nietzsche’s alluringly honest skepticism and Breurer’s battle to counter it. Breurer presents it as debilitating, even though to himself he acknowledges that he shares much of Nietzsche's beliefs and just is not brave enough to wholly embrace them. Or resists embracing them, so he can continue to pursue the semblance of a stable life. “Truth,” says Nietzsche at one point, “is arrived at through disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so!” And “Surely, you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.” The woman to my right on the train was reading the chapter of Mary Kay Ash's autobiography called “God first, family second, career third.” And the man to my left, a book called “Learning God’s ways.”

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Along the boardwalk at Brighton Beach the other weekend mothers pushed children in strollers and care-givers pushed the elderly in wheelchairs. It seems we start and end life being pushed around on wheels. Or to go even further back and forward, start and end life plugged into life-support machines – dependent.



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Well Spring is in the air but those three entries are not particularly cheery. Time for a snooze.