...when you're checking the 'organ donor' box on your drivers' license.

Donation After Cardiac Death (Wait, I needed that!)

Donation after cardiac death (DCD) is an emerging standard in hospitals. In the past, brain-death has been the gold standard for the dead. Why does it matter? The demand for human organs in good condition for transplant is ravenous; fresh is better, and transplant doctors would rather harvest the organs as soon as possible after death.

This past June, Ottawa Hospital in Canada announced its first organ transplant in recent history from a patient who hadn't been classified as brain-dead, but whose heart had stopped (that is, "donation after cardiac death" (DCD). By switching to this definition of death for transplant purposes, doctors hope to increase the number of potential donors from which they can be harvested. Physicians at the World Transplant Congress in Boston estimated that the pool of available organs could increase by as much as twenty percent.

Long-time readers of science fiction writer Larry Niven know of a way to increase the pool of available organs by an order of magnitude - organlegging.

The doctor took him apart with exquisite care, like disassembling a flexible, fragile, tremendously complex jigsaw puzzle... If the odds broke right, if the right people came down with the right diseases at the right time, the organlegger might save more lives than he had taken...

Niven gets the early bird award for this one - the text is from his 1967 story The Jigsaw Man. If you think that the illegal harvesting of human organs for transplant can't possibly be a problem, read Real Organleggers: Human Organ Trafficking

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"Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn’t seem to be on anyone else’s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I’d better not marry the natives."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever


Many homeschoolers we know are looking for churches which make a place for them, their lifestyle, the goals they have for their families, children’s attitudes and actions, the husband/wife relationship and more. They feel a need for homeschool children for their children to interact with. And for homeschool parents for them to associate with, also. Families of like minds.

A pastor friend of ours made a very insightful statement in the course of our conversation. "Since most denominations have similar core doctrines and theology, this is not what separates one church from another," he shared. He had my attention. "What sets one church apart from another is what they value."

Whoa. The things they value sets them apart? This kicked in my analytical nature, and I began to peruse this statement from all sides.

Church A, in the middle of Everywhere, USA, might apparently not value homeschooling. They do not want to support a group of like-minded homeschooling parents who want to assemble to encourage and share with each other, with other members of their church.

Church B not only supports homeschoolers, they welcome them, and join together in prayer to ask the Lord to bring more homeschooling families into their congregation.

Church A seemingly appears to have no real use for moms at home – unless it is to serve the needs of the church while the employed moms are working for their paycheck. Their vision isn’t for moms to pour into their little ones’ lives, but to accommodate all lifestyles, and help the working moms by providing a safe place to keep their children while the moms are at work.

At Church B the pastor’s wife teaches a Bible Study on Titus 2:3-5 – older women teaching the younger women how to be keepers at home. Encouraging moms to love their children, to have a vision for raising their children "in the fear and admonition of the Lord."

Large families aren’t understood at Church A, and they just can’t comprehend why some large, homeschooling families don’t like being separated into age-groups so often, but enjoy a family Sunday School class made up of all ages.

In Church B there are families with more children per family than the norm – and even more children than that! Many couples are starting their families and have several little ones in tow. And God is adding to His church daily.

And at Church A they don’t seem to understand honoring husbands by submissive wives. When exposed to this new thought, they challenge, they mock, they watch those living it, and dismiss it. In this area, God’s word and His way are just not understood nor valued.

Church B’s pastor has a vivacious love for his wife – a strong woman in her own right – who chooses to honor her husband, asking for his input in her decisions.

The church we attend affects, not only our lives, but the lives of our children, our grandchildren, and future generations. If we attend a place where we prefer our children "not to marry the natives." Not to join themselves with those with so many differences – not in doctrine, but in values. We don’t join together with them because we just don’t value the same things. If this is how we feel, then is this really the church for us?

Is our great big God, who knows our every desire, able to bring us to a church, which – if we had the faith to put together a "shopping list" of things we would want in a church – has all the things we deem most important?

A place where we can join ourselves to the natives. Jumping in with both feet. Planning things for the teens – and their families. Opening our homes to girls to learn together the lost arts of keeping a home.

The denomination isn’t the most important difference. What separates one church from another is what they value.

From one mother to another,

Kym Wright
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Copyright 2006 - Kym Wright and alWright! Publishing