Faithful Lines / Shirley Vogler Meister

Healthy advice from a hospital calendar

With 2007 so young, I hereby share words of wisdom from a calendar that my sister, Beverley Thurman, gave me when visiting our Belleville, Ill., hometown during the holidays.

The calendar comes from Belleville’s Memorial Hospital, which holds a special place in my heart. Nearly 20 years ago, Memorial’s doctors and staff saved my life. My sister, an Intensive Care Unit secretary, and her daughter, JoAnne Sehr, an R.N. in Nursing Education, were my special support.

The calendar features beautiful photographs captured by hospital staff members plus appropriate quotations.

An excerpt for January is: “The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. … The gift of life is yours; it is an amazing journey. …” (Dan Zadra)

February: “Exercise alone provides psychological and physical benefits. … If you also adopt a strategy that engages your mind while you exercise, you can get a whole host of psychological benefits fairly quickly.” (Dr. James Rippe)

March: “Time and health are two precious assets we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.” (Denis Waitley)

April: “A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.” (Hippocrates)

May: “True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.” (Charles Caleb Colton)

June: “A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.” (Spanish Proverb)

July: “Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.” (Thomas Jefferson)

August: “When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.” (Herophilus)

September: “Our mental and emotional diets determine our overall energy levels, health and well-being more than we realize. Every thought and feeling, no matter how big or small, impacts our inner energy reserves.” (Doc Childre)

October: “For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people’s love and concern for each other.” (Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity)

November: “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and wisest might err.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

December: “Nothing’s better than the wind to your back, the sun in front of you, and your friends behind you.” (Aaron Douglas Trimble)

More spiritually pertinent are words from my parish’s Madonna Memo Calendar from Feeney-Hornak Mortuaries: “In each day expect great things from God. Attempt great things from God. Let silence surround you and you will hear the guiding whisper of God.”

Healthcare professionals especially need such guidance.

(Shirley Vogler Meister, a member of Christ the King Parish in Indianapolis, is a regular columnist for The Criterion.) †