Blog on the Lillypad
Friday, February 06, 2004
 | Women ordained as elders and pastors
More debate about women taking pastoral office is swirling around some of the Christian sites. It's like this: Years ago (as in 30+ years), Alice Walker, the African American writer who penned "The Color Purple," wrote a really thought provoking article about achieving racial equality. She realized that there was a danger that once persons of color became "free and equal," they might just slip into all the ruts and traps that have ensnared white people. She tried to envision her hard working mother sitting down to watch black soap operas. It was a ghastly image. Prior to "equality," common, ordinary people in the black community felt called upon by conscience to sacrifice their well being and safety in order to combat segregation. They were hauled away from lunch counters, beaten up, yanked off buses. Their families were harassed; they were evicted; they lost their jobs. And yet they persevered. The writer mused about what would happen when they got what they wanted. Would they soon learn to trivialize their past times as white people do, she wondered? Would they be caught up in "keeping up with the Joneses" once they attained a middle class affluence? |
Dittos on the women in church leadership deal. The Bible is pretty clear that church leadership (in the sense of the teachers/elders) must be patriarchal. Now was Paul writing in terms of his culture? Or was it a law for all time?
I don't even care. Two elderly women from my own conservative church once remarked that I would make an excellent minister. AGH! I haven't come this far just to stick the word "Reverand" in front of my name so I can collect a paycheck like so many male ministers do. I'm not ready to compromise my viewpoint so that I stay in step with the rest of the people in positions of authority. I'll leave that to the men in the ministry who preach one thing on Sunday morning and then make many deals with themselves and with others to remain silent, look the other way, excuse abuse of office, etc.
Women have been propping up the church and moving it forward into good works for centuries. I hope we are spared the so-called "leadership" roles that have created so much division, pomposity, and sheer boring sermons. Oh, and let's not forget all the honorary doctorates that float around some segments of Christianity. Thank God women have been left out of this circus until now.
 We women have too easily forgotten the power exercised by women in the ministry of the Gospel and in the service of Christ. Amy Carmichael opened the way for modern missions, and that happened *after* her mission board rescinded their support for her. Gladys Aylward led a band of orphans to safety across the wilderness of China. And Mother Teresa--barely educated and not at all a profound thinker---stood before the leaders of the world and rebuked the world from the Scripture for the slaughter of children by abortion. No man in religious office, ever, anywhere in the last century, was placed in such a position to address world leaders. And no man under such pressure to say what his audience wanted to hear has instead spoken such truth so plainly and with such clarity.
No human being atoned for by Christ needs to aspire any higher than to serve and to have fellowship with God. When a woman knows her Savior well and has the power of God on her life and ministry, she does not need the recognition of men. She will accomplish the exact task that God appoints for her. I think it's heart breaking to see women stoop to what men have been doing for years--quarreling and quibbling for power and title. |
I have been confronting the corruption in Christian Fundamentalism that remains unchallenged and unacknowledged by preachers for a couple years now. I don't need a title to say the truth. I don't need a title to have the power to persuade others to demand accountability in pulpits. All I need is the word of my Savior to say the truth about the child abuse, sodomy, and child molesting that has gone unchallenged.
Formal, conventional Leadership among God's people right now is so impotent, political, and even corrupt that whether or not women get it makes no difference whatsoever. It's a failed vehicle of authority, and only repentance before God and the forsaking of this world's love of power and authority will straighten it out. AT THAT POINT, we might get some clarity about changing women's roles or altering the church's view of women's service. But for right now, it seems to me that women who choose to fight for leadership and authority in the church just want a right to go swirling down a bowl with the rest of so-called Christian leadership. A title of "Reverand" or "Pastor" just sanctifies it in some way.
Thursday, February 05, 2004
 | The Pen, The Sword, and The Mind
In martial arts, people with good technique who focus on themselves during a fight, how good their technique is, whether or not they are winning, how they plan to win the fight, always get hammered. Self consciousness in a fight produces inefficiency. The time to be self conscious is during drill work. Perfect the techniques in training, but in a fight, let the trained body take over and focus the mind on the other person. A fighter trains himself or herself to be aware and receptive, even in the act of delivering attacks or counter attacks. |
Good writing is like good fighting. The writer must dismiss himself or herself and rely instead on the communication itself. The needs or demands of the reader set the parameters of the writer’s fight, and the communication itself must deliver to those needs. This doesn’t exclude writing fun stuff or fiction. In writing Doctor Who, I understood that readers expected a page turner---one unexpected twist after another. I also recognized that the format of a printed text required greater depth of development than the television series required. The Doctor and the other characters had to take on a new depth. They had to be consistent with what the series depicted and yet more complex.
It’s at this point that I noticed other fanfiction writers got into sentimentality. So did I, of course. There’s no mistake in writing that I haven’t made, and I have made them far more frequently than most people. (This is how I have learned to identify common mistakes.)
Fan fiction writers like to create needs and wounds and hurts inherent in our heroes, but it never works. In fact, it hinders a story. After a lot of debate on the newsgroup devoted to Doctor Who, I realized that many fan fiction writers object to the Third Doctor because he is so arrogant. So in writing him up they either punish him, or they put him into some sort of therapy in which he recognizes his arrogance and changes. But that’s not the draw in Doctor Who. The draw in Doctor Who is that the Doctor is the hero, and he’s got a few flaws.
The real issue to write a Doctor Who story is not what I think he ought to be or what I think would improve him, but what is he and how does a story embellish that?
To create a more realistic view of him, I had to withdraw my presence further from the story.
I began to realize that all writing requires this withdraw of the presence of the writer. In 1998 or 99, I read that the actress, Lynn Redgrave, was going through a very bitter separation from her husband, John Clark. His behavior was so bizarre that I believed that she was in danger from him.
I decided that I ought to try to write to her to explain how men think when they decide to hurt a woman. But how does a nobody like me, coming out of no where, gain the attention and the agreement of a cosmopolitan, stunningly beautiful, upper class woman of vast fortune and fame and hold that attention long enough to make a few vital points? There was always a chance that she would never see the letter at all. But to get it to her and get her to read it, I had to write a letter that perfectly met her needs at that time: her grief, her fear, her shame, her uncertainty.
That first letter to her took hours, as I wrote it up, then weeded out references to myself and my background, then rewrote, then weeded again as I thought through her grief, her embarrassment, and her state of mind.
I realized that I had to give myself some credibility, so I told her I was a third degree black belt. Then I launched straight into the fact that I could see she had made a lot of smart moves, praising her for her strength and courage, which she needed to hear. But, I told her, I didn’t think she was familiar enough with the nature of conflict to fully comprehend what was going on in her battle. And then I explained the concept of martial spirit to her and the different ways that men and women perceive conflict. I closed by letting her know I had another letter to send her to finish up what I wanted to say.
I was surprised but not really shocked when I got a reply from her thanking me. I could see that she had read the letter quickly and had probably skipped the closing paragraph. She had focused on the encouragement I had given her, and the plain facts of how men fight.
So I sent the second letter to her. And like the first, writing it was an exercise in stripping down the writing to what was strictly essential for her to hear. She again replied with thanks.
A few days went by and I followed the case. I felt sure that I could help her further, so I wrote again and asked permission to send her an essay a week, which she gave me.
Over the next six or seven months, I learned (all over again) how to write. I was impressed very much with the fact that a world famous actress was reading my letters. But this is not the Lord’s way, and I knew I had to overcome being that impressed. It would hinder my service to her and it would hinder my writing. But it took a long, long time for me to be able to look past the image of Lynn Redgrave and begin to see to the real person with care and concern. In fact, it took almost two years before I thought I had really gotten over this world’s illusions. And by that time, there was nothing left to tell her!
In the meantime, I had an audience who really needed to hear what I had to say. I had a constant temptation to make myself look good to her, which always hinders effective communication, and I had a whole new learning curve to experience.
I had read Musashi’s Book of Five Rings for myself, to be a better martial artist. But now I was reading it for another person who needed the information more than I ever had. I relearned all his principles and made great new discoveries in his text. From Musashi, I graduated to Sun Tzu’s Art of War (translated as "Art of Strategy" by modern translator RL Wing), which took over the first place position in my admiration.
But as I worked to curb myself, comprehend the real person with whom I was communicating, and reach the truth about struggle and conflict, my views on writing also changed. What the Lord gives us is all that we can give back to the Lord. There is no gain if we amass fortune and praise but fail to write that material that truly serves after the model of Christ our Savior. I never ruled out writing adventure stories, or comedies, or journal entries. All of those can serve the Lord because all of those can help others. But I saw that the end goal of why a writer writes must change for the Christian writer.
I realized that I was impressed by writing to a famous actress, but God was not more impressed by service to her than by service to anybody else. All this effort, I thought, all this work, I had dedicated to a person because I was impressed by her. But God values what He is doing in every life. So, of course, I edited out any personal information in the essays and then made them public on the web (Letters to a Great Lady so that they could serve other people.
But this learning experience of how I hinder myself both from effective writing and effective service to God by the intrusion of my self formed a new outlook about effective Christian writing. And I would like to write more about this, but I have to go to work.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
 | What? More Advice?
A reader has written to thank me for my thoughts on writing. Oh, I have so much advice to give on writing! I don’t even know where to start, and where’d that darn soap box go? While I look for it, I’ll tell you this: People succeed in getting published by one of two methods: they are excellent copycats and can produce a stream of derivative stuff. In other words, they figure out what sells and produce more along the same lines. There’s a narrow boundary between crap and quality here, with most attempts at derivatives being on the crap side of the line. Publishing houses weed through a lot of failed stories to find good mass market books. But some of it is really, really good. Every now and then a writer who is writing in the same trend as a successful book will top the original and produce something even better. Don’t dismiss derivatives (which in the business are called mass market books) writing. It’s what most writers do, including the successful ones. Louie L’Amour and Agatha Christie were both mass market writers. |
Then there’s the writer who has a type of story in mind, and it’s original, even innovative. Being successful at mass market stuff is very hard, and being successful at this type is even harder. The writer writes according to a private type, a new type of story that doesn’t fit market genres. Publishers are looking for what sells, so unique books are always a risk. But books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the entire Foxfire series were uniques, and they sold tremendously well in their day.
I wrote derivatives for BJU Press, fitting my books to a pre-determined norm of book type. When I couldn’t take it any more and realized I was rewriting the same story again and again, I stopped. Then I started writing what I wanted to read, and I wrote Doctor Who stories and tried to make them better and better. (These are also derivative, but much more complex than what I had been doing.) Somewhere in there (starting in late 1989 and continuing through 1996) I wrote VALKYRIES, which is a unique book. It’s not really a teen book, not really YA, not an easy book to fit into a slot. And it’s certainly not like anything else that’s out there.
That’s one reason that VALKYRIES sat on the web for six years. People read it on the web and responded very enthusiastically, but it’s not the type of book that a publisher sells. And then a rep from Moody read it twice and decided to take a risk on it. So for me, writing a “unique” was successful, but it was 12 years from the time I started it to the time I was approached by a publisher.
But in terms of what I have just described, there’s (1) derivative writing (mass market) and there’s (2) unique.
Almost everybody starts with derivative writing, and almost everybody stays with it. It sells; some of it is very good; a lot of skill, efficiency, and expertise go into making some of the mass market paperbacks out there.
Now look at writing another way, and you can say there is (1) writing that seeks publication and (2) writing that seeks to communicate vital material.
Some writers just want to get published, and they try to make it any way they can: derivative, unique, even ghost writing or having a ghost writer. A few succeed, but a lot get burned out. Some writers in this group are really looking for approval and validation. That makes trying to get published even more stressful for them.
| After I bailed out of commercial writing with BJU Press, I took a few years off and then returned to fiction writing to write stories that were just good stories. I wasn’t trying to satisfy another person’s requirements for what a book had to be. I wanted to write something that was pure adventure, full-tilt pacing, some humor in places, and lots of danger and rescues. I wanted to write Doctor Who stories, and I did. On the side, I worked on VALKYRIES. But most of my learning took place writing Doctor Who. For one thing, I was spared having to impress an editor. These stories, posted on the web, went right to readers. And readers gave me feedback on what they liked and didn't like. This direct feedback taught me to eliminate wasted words and thin gimmicks. |  |
As I’ve written, unpublished from 1987 until 2001, I gradually learned to follow in the footsteps of my Master: not to seek publication as a person who needs approval, but to use writing to speak on matters that need to be addressed. I’ve written on Mad Cow Disease, weight lifting for senior citizens, martial arts, strategy, and---of course---Christian apologetics. And more. The list is huge. But as I've followed in those footsteps I've learned that there is a great freedom in setting aside the expectations of the publishing industry. When you're not under the restrictions imposed by a market, even a Christian market, you're free to write anything you think you should write. I continued with Doctor Who fiction and built a respectable internet readership. Then I started creating non-fiction essays on the principles I discovered in Musashi and Sun Tzu.
In August 2001, Moody Press approached me about VALKYRIES. I never tried to market it to them. And this, I realized, is the pace that God has set, at least for me. It’s more important to have that crucial thing to say than to worry about securing a place in publishing.
I realize, of course, that I’m published, so I’ve got room to talk. And the Lord gave me a lot of leeway in giving me what I so ardently wanted as a younger woman and allowing me to be published. But now I’m 20 years older. And now I see the suffering that goes on right in Christianity because people don’t know their Savior. So now I see that it’s more important to have something to say that helps people than it is to secure a slot in a publishing house.
I don’t like the celebrity status that Christian book publishers try to create to market their authors. Of course it’s on a smaller scale than big publishers, but it’s troubling, just the same. Marketing the book, selling a title based on the ideas it conveys, is more honest than selling it based on the writer. We Christians ought to be a people of ideas, not a people of status followers.
My advice to writers: write what people need and put the matter into God’s Hands. That doesn’t mean don’t get critiqued, don’t put yourself out on the web to judge your product by the reception it gets. It doesn’t even mean refusing to send a query letter or synopsis, because you can use publisher feedback (if you get any) to improve your skills. I think a writer has to undergo a rigorous discipline to write with skill and accuracy. And I believe that the process of learning to write must never stop.
But if you make the claim of “being called to write,” then write. Find a way to get important information or vital stories to the people who need to get that information. But don’t be troubled by this world’s outlook on being published, even when that outlook creeps into Christian publishing. Your Heavenly Father has numbered the hairs of your head, and nothing you attain makes you more attractive to Him. He sent His Son to die for you, and that gives you a value that will exceed the station of angels. Because you have Christ, you have everything that heaven offers mankind: fellowship with God, forgiveness of your sin, the favor of God that He pours out to His Son, given to you because you are in Christ.
So write to fulfill the needs of others, and God will send those with such needs to you or help you to find them. But the way He does that may or may not be through commercial publishing.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
 | Those first novels!
Inspired by some of the positive comments I have seen lately, I went through my old things and found a copy of my book, Crown and Jewel I wrote it nearly 20 years ago. Sorry to those readers who like it. But apart from an opening that I do think is very good, I think the book overall is awful. In the strata from which it comes (literature for children produced by monolithically conservative publishers that kept even a great writer like CS Lewis at a distance because he was considered too liberal and too fanciful), my books probably were a breath of fresh air. I don't object to the plot and the gimmicks in Crown and Jewel. I think I did a good job with those elements. It's the writing style that's bad, and the dialogue gets pretty stilted and downright horrible in places. |
It's no great compliment to have gotten published because everything else from similar publishers was so trite and predictable. Not that I'm overcome with shame. Twenty years is a thick buffer and sturdy cushion. But I'm thankful for the spell that Doctor Who cast over me, that sheer joy of plowing into gee-whiz style science fiction and learning to tell a story as tightly as possible. The years I spent unpublished professionally put me back on track again because I had to convince readers one at a time to read my stuff. And I did. And my readers helped me.
When I was twenty-ish I had to learn not to please myself in what I wrote, but rather please the market. It was a good lesson for a person who started as most writers start---self-centered and craving approval. But now I see that the Christian marketplace has shelved that which is truly Christ-centered in favor of that which is derivative, trivial, and faddish. So I am ready to write to please myself again. I want to hold out for my tastes and my ethics in writing. That still means exciting plots with lots of twists and turns, but also Christians who sin, wolves in sheep's clothing, conservatives who exploit the Gospel rather than live it, and the grace of God working in unbelievers where we least expect to find it. There's a lot to say about the grace of God, but many Christian books just make Christians look good.
I don't mean to dump on all my old stuff. Renegade in the Hills (written under my pen name of Andy Thompson) and Abandoned are two books that I am proud of. Also, Courage by Darkness. I can't remember enough about The Two Collars to pass judgement, and I don't have a copy here to read. It won some standing in the now defunct CS Lewis Awards.
Lessons Learned: Keep moving forward! Keep learning how to write. Add more spaceships to your stories (hee hee).
 | Crossing the Rubicon: Giving notice at my old job
Well, it took longer than I thought, but at last Rick (my soon-to-be-new boss) got the offer letter to me at about 1:00 via e-mail. As I waited, I developed a whopping big stomachache waiting for it to come. So I printed it out, signed it, and got directions from him via e-mail to deliver it to his home where his wife would receive it for him. (It had to have my real signature to be valid, not a photocopy, so I couldn't fax it.) |
Even though I have to wait until *he* signs it to be officially hired, I went ahead and turned in my two weeks notice at work. Then as I felt really unwell, I printed the driving directions, took the letter, and left. I dropped it off with Rick's wife. Now I am at home, and you know what? I feel fine. I'm such a weeney about stress!
Anyway, my salary is exactly what I made this past year on contract, still not up to what I once made at Glaxo, but I get benefits, two weeks of vacation and two weeks of sick time, eight holidays, and a chance to build my skillset. I am scheduled to start my new job on Thursday, Feb 19, the day whch is also the 17th anniversary of the day I earned my first degree black belt. (Hah!)
 | Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Once again, as part of my reading club experience, I have been assigned to read a book for my group's monthly discussion. The latest picks is Johnny Got His Gun. This book chronicles the intermittent dreams and growing consciousness of a young man who wakes up in an army hospital and gradually becomes conscious enough to realize that he's been ripped apart by a bomb: a quadripelegic who has also lost his sight and hearing. The weight of the story is his recollections of his very idyllic life before he went to war. |
A popular review of this book remarks that it was kept obscure for several years because it was introduced just as the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Obviously, in an era when the Poles had to fight to protect themselves from the open pillaging of their country (which the Nazis carried out in short order), this book's flaws would become too apparent. Just as the sheer extent of the main character's wounds are unlikely, his incredibly tranquil and fulfilling life before the war are unlikely.
Like any argument that rests upon a rare extremity of evidence, JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN fails in its logic. It is merely propaganda, because the argument rests entirely on one person in one extreme situation.
As tragic as the main character is, the book starts out flawed because it shows only one perspective. In 1939, when the Nazis actually were burning down synagogues, raping women, and deporting Polish Jews to Buchenwald and Treblinka, this book could not sell well because the opposite side of the question of the necessity of war had become too urgent. Men and women who did not go to war were reduced to smoking hulks of flesh simply because they were Jewish or epileptic or dissidents. So Trumbo's argument falls flat.
I think the story is tedious, predictable, skewed, and too overtly propagandistic. If you want a great anti-war novel, I would urge you to read the classic, RED BADGE OF COURAGE. It's shorter, more terse, has more impact, takes a wider scope, and has better literary quality.
Another flaw is that a lot of Trumbo's argument is not really against WAR, but is against WARTIME PROPAGANDA. He swaps the two concepts and really batters the straw man of propaganda without ever discussing war itself. At the end of the book, when even the main character seems to be threatening war to get what he wants, the reader still has a question unanswered: Is it ever right for a person to pick up a gun and fire at an advancing aggressor? Becuase that's what war is. And that question is never answered.
If you argue against the parades and the high talk of dying for honor or for liberty, or handsome uniforms, or ribbons, you are back to propaganda. That's really what Trumbo rails against in his book.
But when you talk about the Nazis battering at the gate and having the opportunity to pick up a gun and drive them off, then you're talking about war. Trumbo fails to discuss this idea with any depth.
I don't know why this book is considered a classic. If he'd taken half the length to say what it says, it would have said just as much with perhaps more power. But because he over-hammers his point, the reader swims in overt emotional manipulation. And the book begns to lose its effectiveness well before the end.
There are reasons to reject some wars and refuse to fight. But this book never gets to those reasons. At best, it shows us that it is really stupid to listen to wartime propaganda and sign up to fight just because everybody else is doing it. Granted, that much is true. So I would call it an anti-propaganda book. But did you really need an entire book to tell you not to fall for propaganda?
 | Negotiating the New Job
Rick, my soon-to-be new boss called last night to "negotiate" the terms of my new job. It went something like this: Rick: "Well, I've been authorized to offer you this much, Jeri." |
He's going to e-mail the benefits info this morning. We hope to do signatures through faxing and PDFs so that we can end the day with the contract signed and the deal complete.
| Yesterday I gave an informal tip to my project lead (not my manager) that this was coming. I told her I would keep her informed. But she's already figured out a couple ways to manage things if I go. I won't tell my manager until the signatures are on paper. Getting the job required a unanimous decision from the three people who interviewed me, and Rick has assured me that it was a pretty easy decision. They like my drive and motivation, and my skill set is as close as they can get to what they want: a person half way between tech writer and analyst. He told me that he really loves his team, and they are all people who say what they think and can defend it, but they listen to other ideas as well. So it's a smart, savvy, challenging place with a lot of snap but also friendliness. Rick and I both profess Christ as Savior. That's a nice bond to have. |  |
No more steel-toed shoes and hardhat! Jeri is returning to the white collar world of clinical research!
Sunday, February 01, 2004
 | Perpetua: A Bride, A Passion, A Martyr by Amy Peterson
Amy Peterson's first book, about to be released through Relevant Publishers, is about the early church martyr, Perpetua. This amazing woman, at the age of 22, suffered arrest, imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of the Roman government. She was sustained by a sharp awareness of the presence and majesty of God, an awareness that overflowed into dreams that comforted her and others with whom she was imprisoned. Inded, the tone of Perpetua's final days is not one of sorrow but rather joy. The book has not yet been released, though amazon.com has a slot for it, as well as an ISBN number. |
Update Click here for my review
 | Back to the Massage Therapist
I've said this before: If you think massage is this calming, soothing, relaxing method of pampering yourself, you've obviously never tried trigger point massage. And I hope you never have to! But if you've got real muscle pain, trigger point is the way to go. But it really, really hurts. The therapist finds those exact points where the pain is most intense (the "trigger points") and centralized. Oddly, some pain from muscle spasm is "referred pain". If you can get the centralized point to relax and get back to normal, the referred pain will diminish. After the therapist finds the real culprit point, she (or he) puts her elbow right on the spot and then presses all her weight into it. It's amazing how precise an elbow can be in a spasmed muscle. My therapist's elbow feels like a red hot needle. |
I pay $40 per half hour for this treatment, which is about the normal rate. When the pain gets really, really bad as she works, I start to yell. She always backs off, and I say, "Don't stop; omigosh, don't ease off! This is costing so much money! Just keep doing it! I'll just yell." this always makes her start to laugh, but she usually does as I ask, or she adroitly takes a different spot to give me a bit of a breather. My therapist is a very gentle, soft spoken person, and my sheer intensity amazes her. The fact that I want to attack my pain like we would attack an enemy is contrary to her theory of therapy. But she will do as I ask her to.
| And she's good at locating those trigger points and mashing them with her needle-like elbow, under her full weight. She'll even stand on a stool in order to get all of her weight focused into a defiant muscle. There comes a point when the pain is so bad that I start using cuss words. Nothing of the sacrilegious variety. And I always apologize. But it's agony, yet so expensive I don't want her to ease off. So it goes, "Oh d--- it that hurts! Oh s---! No don't stop Gayle, keep going. I can't afford to rest. OK great! That's it. Oh s---- that hurts! No that's OK, keep going! D--- it! I'm sorry I'm swearing. I usually don't---Whoa, d--- it!" And on like that.
When I first started to see Gayle, my therapist, we had a lot of cuss intervals because my trigger points were so bad. Mistakenly, I would think she was pressing in at full bore, and then she would tell me she was only lightly pressing, but the trigger point was ultra-sensitive. |  |
Yesterday, when I went back to see her after about 8 weeks off, I expected a tough session. It was a two-cuss interval therapy, meaning there were two intervals in the half hour when it got so agonizing that the strong language popped out of me. But I could sense that actually the trigger points were responding pretty well. After the first couple times that she gave them the treatment, they smoothed out a bit more, and it wasn't nearly as bad.
I realize that I will need to see her on a consistent basis, so we are trying to work out a payment plan.
Last night when I talked to my good friend Bruce (a pal since childhood), he told me that he sees a massage therapist regularly (once a month) for a full hour. Bruce likes to play basketball and lift weights, and he has a tricky back as well. Once a month is enough at this point for him to have pretty good freedom of movement, but I am amazed that he can take an hour of therapy. He told me he has a pretty high threshold for withstanding that type of thing, and no, he doesn't burst out into four-letter words during treatment.
