Not only do we set the parameters for what we give up (sugar in coffee? A second cup of coffee? All the coffee?), but we decide what kind of thing we want to give up (or take on) — and why. Here are a few broad categories of ways to observe the penitential season. One or the other may be more spiritually fruitful for you, but none of them is really wrong . . .
Read the rest at the Register.
***
Remember when Ann Coulter pronounced missionary Dr. Brantly a big jerky, inconsiderate showboater for going into Africa to treat Rbola patients, like selfish, jerky showboaters tend to do with their “Christian narcissism”? Remember how little good Brantly was doing, according to Coulter, with his thoughtless act of leaving his perfectly good country and then coming back home?
Well, guess whose blood is helping to heal the nurse who selfishly contracted Ebola while caring for a dying man in Dallas? Yarr, Dr. Brantly’s blood. Back in July, Brantly
“received a unit of blood from a 14-year-old boy who had survived Ebola because of Dr. Brantly’s care,” the missive said.
Now months later, Brantly, who has since recovered from his battle with the virus, has passed on the favor. A 26-year-old Dallas nurse named Nina Pham, who contracted the illness while treating the United State’s first Ebola patient, has received Brantly’s blood. It’s not the first time it has been used to treat Ebola patients. Recovered Ebola victim Richard Sacra got it, as well as U.S. journalist Ashoka Mukpo, who last night said he’s on the mend.
Injecting the blood of a patient like Brantly who has recovered from Ebola and developed certain antibodies is a decades-old, but promising method of treatment that, academics and health officials agree, could be one of the best means to fight Ebola. Called a convalescent serum, it might also save Pham, an alum of Texas Christian University.
A physician gives over his body to help the sick and dying, and through his blood, they are saved. I’m just going to let that sit there for a minute. Aw heck, I’ll sit here with Dolly Parton:
