Got a nice note from an old friend, chiding me for my comment in my post yesterday. (It wasn’t from the author of the comment I was responding to.) My friend thought I should be more open-minded about how to deal with the ongoing pain I am experiencing, and should reconsider alternative medical treatment. I thought I would post my response, and save myself from having to explain the same thing to others:
My comment reflects how much of a hard-nosed skeptic I have become in the last 15 – 20 years. At the very least, homeopathy or acupuncture needs the willing suspension of disbelief from the patient to have any chance of working, and I’m just not capable of working up to that. The realities of life have just been too hard-edged for me to put faith in prayer or magical thinking.
It’s not that I am bitter, or brittle. In fact, I am remarkably optimistic and hopeful, given all I have lived through and all I have seen. But I am much less willing to invest my energy into any enterprise which doesn’t seem to be well grounded in proven reality. I look for tangible ways to manifest my hopes, and to do what I can to help others.
Communion of Dreams is one such effort – entertainment, perhaps a little dreaming to inspire, maybe with some ideas to provoke thought. Caring for Martha Sr was another, and from that sprang a book which I hope will be able to aid many others in very real and tangible ways.So I appreciate your thoughts, and your motivation, in writing. But though I may be in pain, I prefer to proceed on my own path. It is one I understand.
Jim Downey
* I don’t really need to explain, do I?
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Communion Of Dreams 
[…] I’ve noted recently, I’m pretty much a hard-nosed skeptic. But as I said in that post: But I am much less willing […]
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