NEW HAVEN, Conn. --How do we respond to the plagues around us--to disease, poverty, racism, destruction of the earth, loss of faith and meaning? We can turn away, or, says Yale's Alan C. Mermann, M.D., "We can confront the plague and ally ourselves with its victims." In Some Chose to Stay: Faith and Ethics in a Time of Plague, published this month by Humanities Press, he looks at finding the means to stay.
This new book is a collection of essays "about a series of awakenings," says Dr. Mermann, who trained and practiced as a pediatrician before being ordained as a minister. He is the chaplain and a clinical professor of pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine.
As he recounts literature and events that have awakened him, strengthened his own Christian faith, and set him on particular courses of action, he stresses that others may follow other beliefs, other paths. But all of us, he says, need some foundation for ethical behavior. "Faith, conviction and commitment are central to understanding and acting," says Dr. Mermann, who guides students who may hold any--or no--religious beliefs to find a foundation for commitment and compassion.
His essays draw from the Bible, the writings of Henry David Thoreau, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, novels by Alan Paton and Albert Camus, and many other works. He describes such personal experiences as training in a southern hospital where adults were segregated by color but children were not (because they were considered "too young to understand the importance"). He discusses AIDS, Alzheimer's and aching hearts.
The Bible and Thoreau's Walden are works to which he turns "again and again, in the ongoing search for understanding." He follows Thoreau, who "tirelessly tells us we must awaken to the dawn, see what lies before us and the part we will play." He gains strength and courage from Emily Dickinson, who kept searching for meaning, and kept writing magnificent poetry, despite her view of a forsaken universe.
Training in segregated hospital wards opened his eyes, he recalls--and reading Paton's 1948 novel Cry, the Beloved Country, set in South Africa, "laid out the options that confronted me, as if with a call." He tells of answering that call and others.
One of his essays deals with Albert Camus' 1956 novel, The Plague. A memorable character in the novel is a physician who never abandons the plague victims, and Dr. Mermann points out that a major theme is how important it is to be with and for people. The essay goes on to describe a seminar he leads, in which first-year medical students are paired with seriously ill patients--often, dying patients. "It's possible," he says, "to learn to be with and for people."
Elsewhere he writes of such challenges as facing Alzheimer's disease, funding AIDS treatment, and saving our planet from "the ultimate plague"--ourselves. He quotes from Elie Wiesel, Tony Kushner and Harry M. Caudill (who chronicled an industry's destruction of land and of people).
"If and when we decide to save precious lives, offer hope, and be with and for those who suffer and die," Dr. Mermann says, "then we will be living the life we were meant to live. Faith can inform a lively and dedicated response to plague."