DR.GEORGE LAMORE

Note by Editor: Dr. LaMore is Professor Emeritus, Religion and Philosophy, 43 years, Iowa Wesleyan College. Dr. LaMore is an illustrious speaker, well known throughout Iowa and nationally. I feel privileged that he, his wife, Jane, and I developed a personal friendship while George and I were teamed to lead students in the School for Lay Ministry. I would like to have had them included in this edition of Recipes for Living, but current health problems prevented it. However, Dr. LaMore offered this "squib" from his Mt. Pleasant News column, April2, 2004: "Outside the Box."

Parson to Person: "Man does not live by bread alone" - especially since Dr. Atkins. But this biblical take on carbohydrates has something much larger in mind: namely, that the human spirit cannot settle for the confines of earth, air and water.

In our time of stunted secularism one hears plaintive attempts to replace terms like TRANSCENDENCE and SUPERNATURAL, with expressions like THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX or PUSHING THE ENVELOPE. Come again?

So maybe you've sworn off church and paid your respects to religion solely by cringing through Mel Gibson. Even for you, the most available form of transcendence is EMPATHY. Empathy is the starting place of transcendence and, I think, the most basic and elusive of all virtues. Without it you can take nothing beyond yourself as seriously as you take yourself. So, for you, God is real - in name only.

Empathy, as mysterious as it sounds, is this: Love-plus­Imagination. These two are essential to living "outside the box." Bill Clinton campaigned on, "I feel your pain." That ever include Hillary?  Shouldn't have come hard - he was causing it.

To try - at least try - to look at things with the eyes of another, to surmise your own second-opinion, is the only thing that equips you for friendship, for marriage, or Dr. Phil.

All of us exhibit empathy (hide the envy) when a friend wins the lottery or life is good. But think: it is the broken hearted that need you most, and, moreover, you're probably next. When love and imagination combine by the sickbed, empathy is transformed into the miracle called COMPASSION.

"We have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses," says the Bible, "but one who was tempted every way that we are." Or, more than that: He was wounded for our transgressions ...bruised for our iniquities ...the chastisement of our sins was born by him...and by his stripes we are healed."

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Last Revised November 11, 2012