Saturday, February 12, 2011

Comment on Gabrielle Giffords

I have shared many times before about how I think the mainstream media wastes so much time and coverage on petty matters in our day-to-day lives.

If there is one series of small events which deserves our attention, it would be the slow, deliberate, and miraculous recovery of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

She has recovered from a devastating shot to the head, to lying in critical condition, to being able to see and recognize others, to asking for basic foods.

These incremental steps are remarkable. These are the types of small events which we should be paying more attention to. To see this woman come back from such a savage attack as she and many others had endured is simply wonderful.

Though she is a member of a different political party, I still have great respect for her as a human being. Here's to her full and complete recovery in the near future!

1 comment:

  1. Congresswoman Giffords is recovering rapidly from the vicious assassination attempt that she endured nearly two months ago.

    Reports disclose that she was singing "American Pie" by Don McLean, one of my favorite songs.

    She also remembered the words to some Hebrew prayers.

    Giffords' recovery is both remarkable and realistic. Alzheimers' patients, for example, remember the lyrics from songs that they sang in their youth, despite suffering through the advanced stages of the disease. Music has the profound capacity to enable memory and facilitate retrieval, even in the aftermath of neural trauma.

    The congresswoman's "revival" of religious material is also very moving, but explicable. Because of the rhythm, repetition, and recurrence which characterize devotional exercises, they share the same staying power as music pieces in general.

    In addition to the nature of her recovery, the emergence of the divine in her rehabilitation casts a warm glow in the midst of the senseless tragedy which so violently hindered her life.

    May her recovery continue at a speedy clip.

    Shalom!

    ReplyDelete