YL5 Week 3 @ASMPH: The Inner Cell-f + the Cell of Faith

YL5 Week 3 @ASMPH: The Inner Cell-f

The week has come and it has gone; as always, scroll down and skip the summary and addendum below to get started with my reflection the Cell of Faith. A quiz to start the week, two team based learnings mid week and a quiz to end it. It is quite what I expected to experience graded assessments every other day. If anything, it helps keep me on my track to treat the material as seriously as I have made the commitment to pursue medicine. The first exam was based on a the cell we started last week– histology and parts of the cell (both lab and lecture). We then moved on to carbohydrate structure and metabolism, protein structure and metabolism and nucleic acid structure for the last quiz, with team based learning on the electron transport chain and the krebs cycle interspersed in the middle of the week. Today (Saturday) we had an orientation on research methodology and did an afternoon module on fatty acid metabolism– which is in preparation for our exam on Monday on nucleic acid metabolism, fatty acid structure and fatty acid metabolism.

It isn't surprising then, to say that the life of a medical student, academically, is always in transition. There isn't much room to properly end things because, in a way, after a quiz is not an end but a continuation. There isn't much to comment or reflect on like the past two weeks other than to reflect more on how such a tight schedule gives a lot to work with despite the "cell" being so restrictive. On top of this, I presented on Philippine Airlines a strategy map with my group for my MBA principles of management class as well as submitted a paper on the business ethics of University of California healthcare system breaking relations with Catholic hospitals due to the latter allegedly not complying with their anti-discrimination policy. But I will say that it is much more intellectually rewarding to really treat the academic matter seriously, as in always thinking about how it all relates to the bigger picture of medicine. And again, the comparison is an analogy– medicine may like pictures but I think at the heart of medicine is in relations. Every medical student in my cohort has their own story and perspective to share. It's a lot of horizons fusing with the medical school hermeneutic. All within, there is, interspersed, structures that I appreciate and others that I need to work on appreciating more. 

The first point of adaptation for me are transes. ASMPH is known for having a rigid structure of system for transes, which give us access to upper year's transes given that we promise to keep the system going. It's a system of good faith but also tends to fly over my head. It seems to me that if I'm not involved in the process of making the trans, I find little benefit other than an overview or structure of some things to consider if I had not included them in my notes. I liken transes to be like chips– yes they will provide some form of nutrition– but to only eat it is to do a disservice to the body, which is designed to make the most out of a variety of different academic food sources, one of which I favor is the straightforward "book". Whenever I hear of being "bookish" I am reminded of the stereotype that UST, the only other school I was seriously considering in the Philippines, is known for that. I sometimes wonder how it'd be like there, though this thought quickly dissipates as I appreciate the support structure of ASMPH– #NoAteneanLeftBehind. 

Another aspect I've underutilized is also the online learning platform. I find it difficult to get stuff out of "virtual consultation hour" (aka an office hour), especially since it's more like a free for all "who has questions?". It is almost counter-intuitive or hypocritical of me that I tend to go a bit beyond what's required to learn out of sheer curiosity, but then find that when this happens in virtual consultation hour, it confuses me more. I suppose when there is a synchronous activity, I expect more structure of which I can then set up as barriers for me to remind me not to veer off too far from the road. If the barrier pushes me further away, then of course it can be frustrating. Though, that's part of adapting– be aware of expectations and think about the assumptions made.

On the bright side, there are serendipitous surprises that I'm grateful for. For one, my mentor from the transition semester is also going to be my mentor for the next 5 years. Overjoyed, I'm ever grateful for the mentoring from here on out as well as just to know that there's a kind of continuity in a period of transition. On a side note, I also wrote my Examen for August today, which has a template outlining boxes to fill based on the 5 steps of Jesuit examen. I perhaps will amend what I have said about the Catholic-ness of the Examen. I will admit it isn't as Catholic as we'd imagine a sacramental worldview but indeed it is Catholic in the sense of universal–  even Sartre, a prominent existentialist philosopher was known to say that there indeed is a God-shaped hole in our heart (though he affirmed it was impossible to fill, perhaps until the end?). The human being, then, implicitly argued by ASMPH and her Jesuit mission, is indeed a spiritual human being, not merely just a Cartesian dual substance of mind and body. Because there is always a relationship with the spiritual, even if someone proposes these experiences are merely figments/adaptation mechanisms– the "datum" or lived experience begs to differ as a reality. I hope this will be utilized better by our batch rather than merely just a box to tick (I highly dislike merely ticking boxes, it mildly annoys me but sometimes it's required). What does this mean from my lived experience?

The Cell of Faith

Did you know that "cell" originally meant "small monastery", then later "small hut or small dwelling for a monk", which is related to the latin Celare meaning to "hide" or "to conceal"? Etymology is wonderful. We then get this idea of a prison cell, a battery cell, and finally to medical/biological jargon– to the "cell cell"! Concealed within this appropriated "scientific term" is a story of faith, which can also be a story of my faith in this pandemic while in medical school– and in a sense a story of faith for all my classmates, with whom we make up the tissue of ASMPH's organ system. 

While studying the smallest empirical unit of human life, it is hard to see where the soul fits in all this. The soul is "concealed" by the cell, in this sense. If we take a cheek cell and have it replicate apart from the body, is the cell me in a different place? A branch of "Elijah"? Sounds philosophical but the point is easily discerned if we take something simpler. If a leaf falls from the tree does the leaf continue on as a tree? Of course not. Thus, if we are to define a boundary of one "part" of us, the smallest unit we call the "cell", then we have framed our expectations already, and in a way this is necessary as the plasma membrane literally sets it up for us to view it in this way. We can have this thinking, then, of this hierarchy of self-contained systems upon systems upon systems. This is termed, aptly, systematic thinking, which we learnt about in the Principles and Perspectives module not so long ago. 

Again, we "hide" when we define something as fluid as life under these strict terms in order to get something out of it. In the dazzling light of truth, a lens can help reveal certain features over others. Within this "cell", the "soul" of the cell is naturally oriented towards life, unless we consider this "cell" diseased which can be united under the common conception of being-towards-death, to borrow a Heideggerian phrase. Thus, even with something as apparently "objective" as biology, life is already presumed to be seen as the "good". The cell is working towards something and interacts with its environment to do so. The implicit ethics here taken as a moral system is what is called "natural law" thinking, which is wedded to the key Catholic notion of "fides et ratio"– faith and reason– known never to contradict each other. And within this cell as it is hard at work, alone, perhaps like a monk– a lot of what it's doing is working with what has already been "given" to it. It always makes something "out of" what has been given to it. 

I think this is where we can see how the soul fits in on a larger scale. We human beings are defined by the fact that we are made out of these cells, and this "making out" of these cells is what the soul is– the "form" of the body. Faith, in a large sense, is indeed this very "cell". Faith is a gift given to us, and is itself the very response of our beings to the gift given to us. Life is "already there" for us, characterized by a givenness. And in faith's innermost aspect, it really amounts to sight. As Kierkegaard states "faith sees best in the dark", playing with the two notions of sight. The sight of faith is unlike any sense, and it can be a sense in itself that we are just blind to (spiritual blindness) and it takes an active response to the gift (faith) to cultivate what we now "see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face" (1 cor 13:10). But what is concealed within nature is also faith, as it adheres to the natural Law, created by God, the source of all being. 

In my own lived experience, I find it a poignant thing to reflect on this dual sense of cell to my life. In a way, I feel like in a cell, cloistered like a medical monk in a small monastery performing his duties in studying "cells". As I am indeed alone without my family (who are abroad), with the occasional visitors here and there, in this house, usually in a room studying. But while I am performing my functions to maintain a stable medical student environment, I also am maintaining myself in my "spiritual cell", by going to mass (many feast days!) or praying the liturgy of the hours daily (the public prayer life of the Church), which consists of morning, midmorning, midday, midafternoon, evening and night prayers performed in order to "sanctify the day". And I pray even when I don't feel like it, just as I study even when I don't feel like it (to an extent). Though, the more it becomes second nature, the more many aspects of the habitual movements may seem to be "concealed" in the humdrum of everyday. While this may be so, it also reveals something, which we can observe through the lens even on the microscopic level in our lives. Building "habit" is useful here. The Aristotelian-Thomistic significance of Habit is that with practice, we can become what we aspire to be (which in ethics is truly "good"), whereas we can potentially develop unnatural attraction to "vice" if we continue to practice acts that are deprived of the good (i.e. evil). 

What we can learn from the cell is that though it is small and enclosed to perform a function, it is engrossed in an environment it interacts with. In a sense, the cell and its environment are interconnected. The cell is not the environment and the environment is not the cell, but nevertheless they are connected. The cells are in the environment, completely engrossed in it. We are too engrossed in it, we are being-in-the-world and only in abstraction do we step back and consider ourselves as being separated from the world. Nevertheless, one can't abstract without having something to abstract from. The same is with faith and spirituality. One cannot deny faith without having faith to deny or a relation to something outside yourself if there was no relation to deny in the first place. But what tends to happen in the grind of every day is that we can "bracket" or "abstract" parts of ourselves in favor of running another part of ourselves efficiently. Indeed, the cell can shut down the krebs cycle in favor of gluconeogenesis, but it would be unnatural to do so in an abundance of glucose and a low amount of ATP. It would be... well... un-healthy and detrimental to our well-being. So too, I think is the cell of faith concealed in ourselves, dormant and underutilized. What happens if we just ignore it? Do they just become inclusion bodies we train ourselves to ignore when performing a microscopic examination of our lives? Of course you could, but it may just be that what you ignore is what is the problem at hand.

Human beings can't help but have faith, it comes with being both rational but also limited in knowledge. The world out there is given to us because we are engrossed in it. It was already there when we reflected on this, and from this effect we can reason to the one cause of it all. The unmoved mover touches all material substances closer than the distance between any two substances that exist. In other words, as St. Augustine says He is "more intimate to me than I am towards myself". 

And so in my microscopic examination of the cell of faith, I find that the "mitochondria" of the faith cell is indeed prayer. Prayer is the mitochondria of the small monastery– the cell. In my own prayer life, I have come to reflect upon a couple of psalms this week, particularly one from the regular cycle (Psalm 94) and the daily continuous repeated optional contemporary psalms prayed during the daytime prayers.        

To begin with the latter, I've been reflecting primarily on this concept of the Lord's being with us. 

"If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here" - Exodus 33 (Moses to God)

"If the Lord had not been on our side" this is Israel's song- Psalm 124:1 (found in midday prayer)

"If the Lord does not build the house, in vain do its builders labor"- Psalm 127:1 (found in midafternoon)

If the LORD were not my help, I would long have been silent in the grave (Psalm 94:17)

"I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind"- Ecclesiastes 1:14

What these four collection of verses I've been reflecting on mean to me is primarily a nuanced take on the Lord is always with us. As the first 4 verses quoted give, they are all hypothetical statements that emphasize a point. Moses pleads with God, who had just called the Israelites a stiff-necked people and said He did not want to go with them, out of his faith, knowing it would be pointless to do anything without God being with them on their side, to be [our] help or to build the house. It is tethered to the Israelite identity even if many Israelites are forgetful of this, and constantly show their unfaithfulness. This ties in with the vanity quote– everything that can be seen under the sun (natural light/vision) is really just vanity and a striving after the wind. What is more important is the sight of faith, that gift which drives everything visible. But when the invisible gift-giver of faith acts, then it is no longer vanity when we act in response to it. 

What is beautiful to reflect on is that while it may be imaginable, dare I say abstractable, to think of the Lord not being on our side or building the house, no matter what we do, He is there with us and working within us whether we are moving towards sin or holiness, it is all ultimately to unconceal the human heart. "Where sin is, grace abounds all the more" (Romans 5:20). But it is impossible, unhealthy and detrimental to believe that He is not there with us. 

And such a firm negative statement is hard to assert and incorporate willingly in to everyday life since it isn't practical. It is why there is a minority of committed atheists while there are many agnostics and apatheists who give up or ignore the question of God. But inaction is an action itself that may actually be more sinister because it is done without full knowledge or consent. One gets attracted to what is unnatural by default and osmosis; but at the same time these are all just abstractions, bracketed concepts that are put aside in order to make for oneself a cell without God. Now this, hides and conceals all the more what is lacking. Nevertheless, we strive for the truth and when the truth remains hidden, grace moves us to explore the mystery further. We are called to prayer, to talk not to ourselves but to something moving us that is also beyond us.  It is what leads St. Augustine in his Confessions to reflect and realize in the hiddenness and apparent silence of God in His life a self-correction: “Dare I say you were silent, O Lord, when it was I who was wandering still farther from you”. For our cell of faith, a microscopic review of one's life through the high powered lens of faith reveals that prayer is its powerhouse for the cell's functioning and well-being. Prayer is the response to the gift to work towards optimal functioning– to being more closely tethered to the good. 

I end with an excerpt from a prayer by Karl Rahner: