Dear Goddess, I’ve been thinking about my life as a nurse these last 29 years. The nursing profession is in the grip of the corporate takeover of medicine, and now that I am freed from this oppressive, fascist medical gestapo, I give thanks every day since starting my new job at a freestanding birth center in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Giving birth at the birth center is not for sissies.
Many of our patients are Amish, but we are attracting people who have insurance. The business is expanding. The plan is to have four birthing rooms in the building we now have, up from two, and move the prenatal and gynecological clinic, as well as the administrative offices, across the street into a future property that just broke ground around 12/25/12.
I was raised in Lancaster city. My family homeopathic physician, Hal Williams, did Amish homebirths back in the 60s and 70s. He also did home visits for all of his patients. My brother told me recently that I am a modern-day Hal Williams, doing home births and home visits in the Amish community.
My job involves attending births, visiting and examining patients in their homes two days after the birth, working in the office, and attending to paperwork that needs to be seen and filed. Nurses also take care of the incoming phone calls and questions from the patients, if they deal with medical situations.
When I am on call at night, and no one is birthing, I can stay home and sleep or work on creative projects.
Our Amish patients are simple yet complex. They are not connected to the world in the same way we are. They are connected to each other and to God. They know what is happening with their neighbors and surrounding community by word-of-mouth. When someone is in trouble, everyone pitches in to help.
They are also naïve and trusting. We went to a talk at a local Mennonite church this past weekend about the horrors of hydraulic fracking for natural gas.
The companies move in on unsuspecting families and offer them money and promises of wealth in exchange for the opportunity to lease their land.
The next thing these family know, the land is no longer theirs and they suddenly find that they are homeless.
These companies are now moving in on the Amish.
The minister who gave the talk calls herself an eco – theologian. I invited her to be on my radio show in February or March, and she accepted.
I want to talk about what people like me, who have an in with the Amish, can do to alert them to the perils of getting involved with these gas companies.
Let us pray for the earth who is our mother and our home.
Om Peace Amen
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Kate’s third Prayer Prescription book will be published Spring, 2013. It is called: Prayer Prescriptions: Spiritual Remedies For Long Lasting Health.
Prayer Prescriptions For Nurse Healers
(The Prayer Prescription Series)
365 Prayer Prescriptions For Dog And Cat Lovers
(The Prayer Prescription Series)
It is so important to tell them the truth these giant companies talk about the money
Not what might happen to their water, the real size of those rigs, the noise how much
water they need to drill and what they put in that water. It is an ugly shell game
However, if they told the truth, no one would take them up on their corporate greedy plan!