Netflix's Avatar Series is Faithful to the Original, but Misses a Lot of Marks

This week the first season of Netflix's long awaited live-action remake of Avatar: the Last Airbender finally aired. It would be an understatement to say that this project has been the subject of great anticipation, and I think if we're honest we also have to say that it's been the subject of quite a bit of trepidation as well. Avatar is one of the more beloved series to receive the modern remake treatment, and it also has the notable characteristic of having originally aired during a relatively more recent time period (the series premiered in 2005) meaning that unlike many other remakes today's prime streaming demographic contains the very same audience that experienced the original as children. In other words, the average Netflix user might have a lot more nostalgia about this property than others that have been produced in recent years. How does this new version stack up? Read on to find out (with spoilers for both the original and this new 2024 series).

To cut to the chase, Netflix's new live action Avatar: the Last Airbender is easily the best modern adaptation of an older property that I can think of. This is above all because it has the distinction of being about the only such adaptation which has tried to remain true to its source material. It's not perfect (something I'll address in great detail shortly), but overall Netflix's Avatar simply feels like the thing it's based on in a way that other modern adaptations just don't. While the norm for these kinds of projects is to want to subvert the original or to update for modern sensibilities, Netflix's Avatar just sort of... well, wants to tell the Avatar story that its fans know and love, and it wants to tell it in a way that's for the most part deeply respectful of the source. 

That doesn't meant it copies everything beat for beat - it definitely doesn't - but the story is still the story. The characters are still the characters. In an incredible feat for a 2024 release, the genders of the original characters are still the same genders in the remake, the races are still the races, and for the most part even the overall roles are still the roles. There's no hint here, for instance, of diminishing Aang's role as the primary protagonist to give Katara a more important position. Sokka is still the "brains" of the group. Zuko is still filling his iconic role, not Azula. Even if these sorts of riffs on original properties can sometimes work, it's incredibly refreshing to see a modern remake allow something to simply be the same thing that made it popular in the first place. 

To be sure, there are some "tweaks" made in the interest of the modern concept of political correctness, but they're much more in the spirit of the kinds of adjustments that were common before so-called "wokeness" took over the entertainment industry. For instance, after Katara challenges Master Pakku because he won't train a female, other women are inspired to insist on fighting alongside the men when the Fire Nation attacks and Pakku eventually makes a brief, private comment to Katara about his learning the importance of change. That's it. Almost any other modern adaptation would have had Katara win the fight with Pakku outright, but that's not what this series does. 

This doesn't mean that there have been no other ill-conceived changes. In what is probably the worst misstep, the 2024 series chooses to give Bumi - one of the original series' most beloved characters - the Luke Skywalker treatment, inexplicably changing him from an eccentric mentor of sorts into a bitter old man who is angry with the Avatar for having disappeared - in spite of the fact that in this version, Aang winds up trapped in the ice for a hundred years by accident and not because he is fleeing his responsibilities. The animated Bumi puts Aang through a series of tests to teach him an important lesson that he'll need to ultimately win the day. This one does it, apparently, to lash out at him and convince him that there's no hope. In this version, it's not Aang who learns from Bumi, but Bumi who learns a lesson after being corrected by Aang. It's an extremely unwelcome change on the level of the treatment of Faromir that fans of The Lord of the Rings remain angry with Peter Jackson over. This is probably the one place in this first season where modern Hollywood sentiments actually do rear their head in a destructive way as the tired trend of beloved characters being reimagined as bitter, cynical misers plays out. 

Other changes that just don't work tend to be less about specific characters - though they do impact specific characters - and more about the overall approach to the series. Whereas Nickelodeon's series unveiled its story and its characters at a deliberate pace, keeping some things closer to the vest than others, this version wants to lay everything out up front. Rather than shrouding the Firelord in mystery for two entire seasons, a choice that gave the original Ozai a mythical stature when audiences finally met him in the third season, Netflix shows him to us from the very beginning - and shows him extensively. He loses a lot of his gravitas as a result. Whereas the original allowed Aang (and the audience) to learn about the terrible fate of the Air Nomads as part of his journey, this version tells the young Avatar about it almost as soon as he's out of the iceberg and actually depicts the genocide in an elaborate battle scene. Even Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, who were introduced in the original's second season and served as its primary antagonists, are given far more than mere cameos in the first season of this adaptation. On the other hand, in one of the more unfortunate oversights, it feels at times as though Appa, who was a fully fledged character in the 2005 series, barely gets even a cameo here. 

And so this is ultimately the most serious criticism I can offer of 2024's Avatar: in many ways it seems to fall victim to the same errors made by the mythically bad 2010 M. Night Shyamalan film. The fundamental problem with that film was always its pacing. It was just too rushed and offered no room to breath for the plot, the characters, or even the actors (literally- go back and watch the film and pay attention to how fast they're expected to get their lines out most of the time). Now make no mistake:  this series is far, far, far better than the 2010 film. I could see myself watching this one again! Still, I couldn't help but be repeatedly reminded of Shyamalan's film by the way that this series just wants to get everything out there on the table almost as fast as possible. It's a good series, but it really could have benefited from slowing down and giving things a bit more room to breathe.

Another way that this adaptation unfortunately calls the 2010 film to mind is in the relatively... off characterizations of most of the key figures. Unlike the film, it's clear that the creators of this series at least understand the personalities and the thought processes and the motivations of each of the characters and are aiming at reproducing those various qualities here, but by and large they too often miss the mark. At one point in the season's final episode after the battle is won and the heroes set off for the next leg of their journey, Sokka makes a comment about wanting to eat something, to which Katara jokes that everything is always about his stomach. This line is a perfect fit for these characters in this situation - in the Nickelodeon original. The problem is that in the Netflix series nothing has to this point ever been about Sokka's stomach. 

It's as if the creators know who the characters are supposed to be but never went about actually including moments in which they exhibit any of the relevant traits - maybe, again, because they are trying to cram so much story into so relatively little time. Aang is occasionally light-hearted and is frequently compassionate, but overall he's just very serious all the time. Iroh clearly exhibits a deep love for Zuko and occasionally says something mildly humorous about food. He also sometimes says something that feels like it's supposed to make him seem wise, but overall he's just very serious all the time. Bumi occasionally exhibits quirky and eccentric behaviors but is overall just very serious all the time. 

You get the idea. Pretty much everyone is overall just very serious all the time. The creators have clearly wanted to give this live-action series a more mature tone - and understandably so - but the balance is just off. What's more, the series' depiction of Roku actually proves that the live action characters can work with a more light-hearted, almost whimsical approach. Roku here is a perfect rendition of what Iroh could have and should have been, but instead he frequently comes across more like The Legend of Korra's Tenzen than the wise, joyful uncle Iroh. Sokka is a bit of a standout. Of all the main characters, he feels closest to what long-time fans would expect. He could let the classic Sokka silliness surface a little bit more often, but overall he's not bad. 

Other exceptions, like Zuko and Azula, go in the other direction as they're somehow both too serious and not serious enough. Netflix's Azula does not strike me as a genuinely dangerous, ruthless sociopath driven by the insatiable need to receive her father's unattainable love and approval. Instead, she's a sort of bratty teenager who thinks she's more important than she is. Think Veruca Salt or Kylo Ren, but with more "I want to go to the mall." This Zuko, meanwhile, is much more obviously fragile and traumatized than the original's. The original Zuko, of course, was a traumatized character, but his trauma was buried much more deeply and when it finally did become visible it was also apparent that he had the inner strength to deal with it. This Zuko's trauma is apparent from very early on and he really does not convey much inner strength or much of a sense of one whom life has robbed of his youth. Unfortunately, I think in many ways the Shyamalan Zuko was a better Zuko than this - at least so far. 

Still, the series does many things right. The art direction is excellent. The choreography does a fairly good job of translating the iconic bending and combat styles into live action. With some exceptions (as discussed above) there is overall a strong balance between allowing the story room to develop in its own way and keeping things true to the original. I would even go so far as to say that this series is a compelling retelling of the original story which kept me wanting to see the next installment. While it does have some significant flaws, it's one of the few things released in several years that I was able to genuinely enjoy. I'm not sure whether that's giving a backhanded compliment or not, but regardless I hope that we will soon see a second season and a third, and that future installments will improve even further on what has been a good start. 

There Could Have Been a Different Ending to the LOTR. Would it Have Been Better?

Recently I came across an interesting video about the unpublished, original ending to the Lord of the Rings. This would have been in the form of an epilogue. Take a look at the video for yourself. As the author of the video notes, Tolkien seems to have favored this ending but he reports in some of his writings that he did not ultimately include it because of an overwhelmingly negative response from those to whom he showed it. Why might this be? I admit to not yet having been able to read the epilogue in its entirety myself, but going off of what is remarked upon in this video (which seems well done), it would appear to me that a fundamental problem with the epilogue is that it is in some ways dissonant with some of the themes of the Lord of the Rings and even sends conflicting messages within itself.

One of the novel's most significant themes concerns the view of nature and simplicity as the ideal or most "human" way of living. The Shire is representative of that simplicity in its purest, most preserved form, and the hobbits themselves serve, in part, to represent the idea of man at his most natural, even unfallen state (of course, Aragorn also plays into this, but suffice it to say that the theming and symbolism in Tolkien's writing is polyvalent). This is why, though some may find the Scouring of the Shire a bit vestigial or superfluous - and understandably, given that they follow the climax of the story - still others consider it so essential that they regard the films' exclusion as being a serious, fundamental mark against them. The Scouring was important to Tolkien because it serves to juxtapose the theme of nature/simplicity with its parallel themes concerning technology and society. In the Scouring the simplicity of the utopian Shire is lost as all the evils of the rest of the world have invaded it. We can see these ideas found in the epilogue in various ways, including in Aragorn's having forbidden men to enter the Shire. The Shire is, in Tolkien's Middle Earth, a paradise and the ideal world. Even the restored kingdom of men is comparatively tainted, and so they are excluded almost as fallen man is excluded from the Garden of Eden. In returning home, Sam has undertaken a journey from that ideal Shire out into the wider world. He has experienced adventure. He has seen incredible sights that no Hobbit could ever imagine, and he has even gotten to see the Elves and their world, something that he had always longed to do. Yet Tolkien's overall message is that in the Shire the Hobbits always had the perfect life - the life untainted by evil, by the cares of the wider world, by technology, etc. What Sam had longed to see and experience was all in a sense illusory - for he already had it in the Shire.

Though I am a big fan of Jackson's films, the ending is one thing that I think they actually get sort of wrong - and oh how ironic it is given how much time is given to the multiple endings of the Return of the King. The problem is that when we finally see Sam come back to Rosie and Elanor, the idea Tolkien wanted us to have was that he truly was home in the fullest sense, having everything he could ever want or need or even yearn for. Yet whenever I watch the film (which is at least once a year, and usually more frequently) I can't help but feel a bit deflated when Sam comes home and greets his family and heads into his home. The films do such a good job of creating an amazing world and showing the incredible sights and adventure and love and kinship among the fellowship that it's hard not to see Sam as returning to a life that is comparatively empty compared to all he has lost. - and of course, that's not at all what Tolkien intended. It's the complete opposite, in fact! This, then, is I think, the problem with that epilogue: it ultimately has Sam looking beyond the Shire and back into the greater world. In one sense, certainly, there is a profound indication that all that he needs is there at home in the Shire, as we read that Elanor fulfills all of his longing for the elves. Yet on the other hand, we're told that she is Elven in many of her characteristics - so there is perhaps a subtle message, even if unintended, that The Shire itself has NOT fulfilled Sam in itself, but rather what has seen his longing fulfilled is that something of the outside world has come to the Shire in Elanor. Perhaps there was a deeper meaning here in Tolkien's mind so that it is not so much that Elanor is truly Elven - how could she be, after all, as a Hobbit? - but that Sam perceiving her in that way points to his having found true fulfillment there, at home, in the Shire. That seems a subtle point to try to get across in Tolkien's particular style of writing, if he did intend it this way.

Then, of course, the epilogue ends finally with Sam hearing the sea almost as if it calls to him. This may be even more harmful to the overall ending, because remember that Tolkien crafted much of the rest of the epilogue, and the ending of the book, and even as far back as the Scouring of the Shire to reveal how the Hobbits in general but especially Sam - who had for most of his life longed to see those things beyond the Shire - have gone to the world, seen all one could ever hope to see and more, and found their true fulfillment in the Shire. If we read that even as he takes his family into his happy home and closes the door Sam is thinking, not of what he has, but of what he once had and what he might have again by leaving the Shire, then a major part of the message that Tolkien shaped his entire story around is lost or at least severely compromised.

The Masculine, the Feminine, and the Incarnation

 For the feast of the Holy Family, our priest opened his homily by asking what to many people was probably a fairly deep question: why was Jesus born a man, rather than a woman?

Our priest’s answer was that it is a mystery. Mysteries, he said, call us to accept what has been revealed and at the same time to contemplate them. Through this contemplation, we will come to better know God. He then proceeded to drive at the idea that the Sacraments are mysteries – in the Eastern Church rather than "Sacraments" they are actually called "Mysteries," after all – and encouraged us to spend time contemplating our own baptisms, confirmations, marriages, etc.

This is a worthwhile way of answering this question, but I do have to say that while there’s truth and value in talking about the fact that some aspects of the faith can be described as mysteries – the Trinity, the Incarnation, the problem of evil, to name a few – I think that there is a tendency to be too ready to declare of different questions that “it’s a mystery." While ultimately it is true that something like the Incarnation and all of its aspects are a mystery, if we simply leave it at that we miss out on a lot of what the riches of the Christian tradition can teach us about some of these things. 

For example, we can learn a lot by answering the question from that homily with a little more detail than the priest chose to get into on Sunday morning. Why was Jesus born a man rather than a woman? The answer is simple: it's because we’re not pantheists, of course!

We tend to think of masculinity and femininity as adjectives that we use to describe things that in some ways are like men or are like women. For example, we call ships “she” and “her” and talk about their “maiden voyages” and so on because they carry people within them like a mother carries her child within her womb. We also talk about nations and even the whole earth itself - or, as they'd say in some cultures, the whole earth herself  - in feminine terms for the same reasons.  There are many other examples you can probably think of for “feminine” objects. It’s not as common in Anglo cultures to think of objects as masculine, but we do tend to think of some traits as masculine. For instance, we think of silence or stoicism as more masculine. Even in our modern gender-neutral culture we tend to think of strength as masculine, and we tend to think of different roles or tasks like building and fixing things as masculine.

In other parts of the world it’s more common for objects to have a masculine sense to them. For instance, outside of Anglo cultures tools are sometimes considered masculine. Why tools? Tools enter into a picture only briefly when there is something to be done. They build and then are removed until there is need of a repair. Whereas in biology a woman carries a child for months, the man enters into the scene only briefly, depositing his seed to effect the creation of the child before stepping back. In most cultures, fathers are also traditionally thought of as being somewhat “removed” from their children even after birth, stepping in when it is time to educate or to discipline - but sharply contrasted with mothers whom we think of as being ever-present with a child all the while as it grows up. Other objects which it's common to consider as masculine - at least in many cultures - include the sun and moon.

And here we have almost arrived at the answer to our original question, for while from our human perspective we start with biological male and female and assign our sense of gender to objects which seem similar, from the Divine perspective the reality is actually the reverse. Remember that God uses creation to tell us about himself and about spiritual realities. In Genesis he says, “Let us make man in our image” - the “us” referring to the three persons of the Holy Trinity - and then creates the human family to serve as a type or “model” of his triune nature. He creates a vast, almost limitless universe to help us have some vague sense of his true limitlessness. The book of Hebrews talks about the way that the design of the tabernacle and sacrificial system of Israel were instituted as models of the true heaven and the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In a similar way to all of this, God creates male and female – masculinity and femininity – to teach us about deeper spiritual realities.

The fundamental reality of God is that He exists – that He is. His existence is not only essential to who He is, but it defines who He is. When asked His name, God responds to Moses with, “I Am That I Am,” or simply, “I Am.” For Aquinas, this is nothing else than the most basic definition of what God is: that Thing which exists for Its own sake and is contingent upon nothing. Critically, this means that creation is not a part of God (panentheism), and neither is God identified with or as creation itself (pantheism). God exists on His own, for His own sake, independent of everything else and contingent or dependent upon nothing. God’s creation is distinct from and separate from him, completely. Another way of putting this is to say that he is eminent over creation, or put into the context of human language that we have been discussing, he is masculine to creation.

Students of history or religion may recall the fact that Israel was fairly unique among its peers in a way that may at first seem like a random anthropological oddity: they exclusively had male priests, whereas female priests were much more common among the other ancient cultures. When we consider things from the standpoint of viewing the masculine and the feminine as intentional parts of God's "creative symbology," we realize that this is not at all random because Israel was also unique among its peers in that it believed in a God who transcends and is outside of and is beyond creation. Outside of Israel, pagan religions famously worshipped gods that were a part of creation. They built statues and practiced idolatry. They worshipped the sun, the moon, the stars, and other aspects of nature. When God inflicted the 10 plagues on Egypt, these were not simply punishments for the Egyptian people, but were rather acts whereby God exerted and demonstrated control over things that the Egyptians worshipped as Gods. God showed his eminent power over the immanent river, which the Egyptians worshipped, over the Sun, which they worshipped, over the Pharoah, whom they worshipped, etc. Simply put, outside of Israel gods were believed to be, not eminent, but immanent – not outside of and beyond creation, but a part of creation.

This is why pagan religions had female priests but Israel had only males: pagans offered worship to gods who were with them and who were immanent to their existence and so they had priestesses, whereas Israel offered worship to a God who was apart from them and eminent over creation and so they had male priests. To moderns, these ideas about the deeper meaning of the masculine and the feminine have for the most part been lost, surviving only in the way that we sometimes talk about some objects as female or some traits as male, but to the ancient peoples these ideas were much more a part of the fabric of their understanding of reality. It made sense to them - heck, it was obvious to them - to have priestesses for the worship of gods who were a part of creation, because they understood the symbology of the masculine and the feminine. This is also why God reveals Himself as masculine – as “He” – when of course He does not have a biological sex. Biological sexes – male and female and sperm and eggs and all of that – were created by God, but they are not something that God Himself has or is bound to. He created these to reveal deeper realities to us, and He reveals Himself as “He” because He is not a part of creation but is over and apart from it, just as in our everyday experience a father is “over and apart” from his children. The way human, biological males “work” is ultimately intended as one of the many lessons God intends to teach us about Himself by weaving them into the very fabric of creation.

This is why Jesus was born as a male rather than a female: because Jesus is God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and God is eminent over creation. We say that in the Incarnation Jesus entered into creation, and that “mere” fact – that to be with us in creation he, being totally separate and distinct from it, first had to enter into creation – means that he would be a male. For, although Jesus was for a brief time in creation he was still and is still something distinct from and other than creation. Could Jesus have been born as a female? Metaphysically speaking, I suppose so. God has no biological sex, and the hypostatic union of the Divine and human natures in Christ is already so miraculous and impossible a reality that there’s no reason to think God couldn’t have become incarnate as literally anything he chose to be – even something other than a human being. Yet He had revealed himself as masculine, not to mention that he had established the entire society and structure of the Jewish religion around the idea of God as masculine, to convey his otherness, His eminence... in short, to help a world obsessed with worshipping the things they could see and touch that He was not one of those things but was beyond the bounds of nature and even of the world itself. 

One might reasonably ask where this leaves women. If masculinity helps to reveal God’s otherness and eminence, does that mean that femininity is somehow “less Godly” or less special?  Surely not, for whereas God in His being is other and eminent, in His actions he is with us.  God acts within the world, and femininity is one of the ways that He reveals his active presence in the world to us. As God gives life, so too does a mother (consequently, this is why the modern attack on motherhood is ultimately just an attack on God Himself). As God comforts and heals, teaches and guides, sustains us and gives of himself to meet our every need, so do the women of our world do these things, and not only for their own children, but – at least traditionally – for all of society. There is a reason that in the gospels we see a group of women constantly accompanying Jesus, helping out with things, and a reason that it is Martha, a woman, who is found worrying about taking care of everybody’s needs. There is a reason that since the earliest days Christianity extolled the Virgin Mary as a key part of the faith and that Christians have since the first centuries of the faith turned to her for things they hope to see done in the world even as they have given exclusively to God Himself their transcendent worship. 

In fact, historically there have been some suggestions of a certain feminine quality to the Holy Spirit, especially in Eastern Christianity. Ultimately the Holy Spirit is in fact masculine because the Holy Spirit is God and God is other, but the reason that these suggestions ever existed is because Holy Spirit is God’s active Power in the world. The Holy Spirit is that by which God does things and effects His ends. It is the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, that remains with us after the Ascension – and femininity represents immanence and withness. Finally, let us be careful: that Jesus is “God With Us” does not alter the fact that He is still in His being apart, other, separate from creation.

Jesus, then, was born a male because, instructed by God's own self-revelation we are not pantheists or panentheists or adherents to any number of other doctrines which would hold God to somehow be part of or within creation. Jesus' Incarnation as a male can teach us an enormous amount about Himself and, ultimately, ourselves - especially when we consider that the Church - that is to say, all of us - is ultimately feminine in relation to God. Altogether, we - male and female - make up the Bride of Christ! Still, after all of this, could we say that Jesus’ Incarnation as a male rather than a female is a mystery? Certainly so. The Incarnation itself is already definitively a mystery – something that we can never fully plumb the depths of. It’s one of the central mysteries of the faith, in fact. Clearly, then, aspects of that great mystery - like what sex Jesus took upon himself - can also rightly be called mysteries. A mystery, in the Catholic faith, is often defined as a set (or a pair) of facts which we can confidently understand each on their own, but which we cannot through reason alone understand how to harmonize. God is three, but God is one. Jesus is man, but Jesus is God. Etc. They are truths of the faith which we can always consider and analyze and ultimately contemplate until we understand them better than we did before, but which we can never fully understand. There are a lot of clear logical reasons for Christ’s incarnation as a male, but ultimately there will always be more that we don’t understand than that we do.

Exodus 90 and Catholic Lay Ministry's Marriage Problem

 

Note: In this post I focus very heavily on Exodus 90, only briefly mentioning the broader problem. Nevertheless, I hope you'll take my thoughts here as a more general commentary on the state of Catholic lay ministry in general, as much of what I highlight about Exodus 90 can apply to a far broader range of lay ministry for spouses!

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Today, New Years’ Day 2023, marks the opening date for this year’s Exodus 90. For those who have somehow never heard of the program – quite a feat as Exodus 90 really has been remarkably successful and widely spoken of over the past few years – it is a 90 day Catholic spiritual exercise for men which aims to help them to grow stronger in their faith and religious practice. Described by its creators as well as just about everyone else as “intense,” Exodus 90 is built on the three pillars of prayer, asceticism, and fraternity. It wouldn’t be wrong to describe this as a sort of “super-Lent” which lasts more than twice as long and calls for even more extraordinary and wide-ranging sacrifices, but in truth it’s a lot more than that. In spite of the very much old-school self-denial and sacrifices involved, Exodus 90 really has enjoyed tremendous and growing popularity among both single and married men since it first came on the scene in the 2010s – and it’s also totally contrary to the Catholic theology and spirituality of marriage.

Central to the Catholic understanding of marriage is a total union of man and woman in which nothing is held back. The Catechism of the Catholic Church introduces the Sacrament of Matrimony by saying, “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life…” (CCC 1601) In the Scriptures Jesus, quoting Genesis, describes marriage in particularly striking terms, speaking of it as a union of such intimacy that, “a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24, Matt. 19:5)  Pope St. John Paul II, commenting on this passage (something he did extensively) notes that in speaking of a one-flesh union the Lord didn’t intend to refer only to the physical union of the conjugal act, but rather that the message here was of a total and complete union of two people, who, moving from the original solitude which characterized their lives up to that point, were now in marriage united so intimately and so totally in every way that they could be described as being of one flesh. “They are no longer two,” Jesus says (Matt. 19:6) While I think that there is a lot of good in Exodus 90 for single men, there are at least three ways in which it contradicts the theoretical (i.e., theological) and practical (i.e., spirituality) aspects of Catholic marriage.

First, Exodus 90 tries to establish an area of a man’s life which his spouse is separate from but which contains some of his most important, most vulnerable, and most intimate thoughts and practices. It calls men to make a wide range of sacrifices, including fasting, abstinence from meat, alcohol, sweets, snacking, television, sports, listening to most music, and (apart from what is necessary for work, paying bills, etc.) all technology use. These sacrifices are aimed at deepening a man’s relationship with Jesus Christ; alongside these, men are supposed to participate in daily prayer including making a holy hour (at a church) every day, but since even with a prayerful attitude it would be extremely difficult to go at this sort of stuff alone they are meant to be undertaken in a fraternal community of other men who are also participating in Exodus 90. One might naturally think that a man’s one-flesh partner, his bride with whom he has the most intimate earthly relationship, would also be a part of all of this – except that Exodus 90 actively discourages wives from being so.

For example, on the Exodus 90 landing page for wives are three main points, one of which is “It’s His Exodus, Not Yours.” This is a message that is found over and over throughout the materials related to wives that the Exodus 90 creators have produced. The idea is, on the surface, a good one: Exodus 90 calls men to a lot of sacrifices, but these sacrifices shouldn’t be impositions on a wife.

What does this mean for wives? Ultimately one of two things: either live different lives from their husbands – something that is obviously contrary to the one-flesh union – or try to join in with their husbands. The problem is that Exodus 90 sends what can only be described as mixed messages on the latter. While some materials encourage wives to try to join with their husbands in their sacrifices, others encourage them not to or even outright warn against this. The reason? After the success of Exodus 90 prompted many calls for a version geared towards women, the creators commissioned an order of women religious to create just that — only to hear back after several months that the sisters had prayerfully discerned that the model is not one which supports a woman’s spirituality.

Thus, having read through as many of their materials which I can without getting out my credit card (the 2023 version has really stepped up the level of paywalling behind a subscription compared to past years) I would say that on balance Exodus 90 actively discourages wives from trying to participate. Husbands are therefore being encouraged to deepen their spiritual lives by establishing whole patterns of life which they are encouraged to keep separate from their families and to share mostly with other men in their fraternities.  I want to be sure that I’m being fair here to Exodus 90 and its creators, because I think they’d respond here by saying that men are encouraged to try to incorporate their families into their new ways of life – for instance, by finding things to replace their TV time with which can incorporate the entire family. The problem is that there is, again, some pretty conflicting messaging here which makes this sort of suggestion feel more like an afterthought because the strongest emphasis, which repeats over and over throughout their materials, is absolutely on the idea that a man’s family shouldn’t have to participate in his sacrifices or have their lives significantly impacted by his participation in Exodus 90 – and because of another, even more important point that I’ll get to shortly.  

The second problem is that Exodus 90 introduces significant friction points into marriages and asks men to do things which make them less present to their families. This might be one of the more controversial points I raise, because I can imagine people jumping up here to shout out that Exodus 90 is very clear that it should make men more present to their families, not less. These are nice sentiments, but I just don’t think they are going to hold true in practice. First, the sacrifices that men are called to in this exercise are so wide-ranging that they can’t help but impact a wife and family – and this is something that in 2023 the Exodus 90 website and other materials acknowledge and emphasize.  Having followed this program for several years, it’s been interesting to see how their messaging has evolved and developed. I say this largely in praise of the people behind Exodus 90: it’s clear that rather than resting on their laurels and insisting that what they had was fine the way it was that they’ve put in efforts to improve things and try to address shortcomings, the most glaring of which has always been with married men (this makes sense because the exercise was originally developed for seminarians).  In past years their materials didn’t go as far in acknowledging that sacrificing meat, television, and many other things were inevitably going to impact a man’s family. This year they actually do get pretty explicit about this. I don’t know what’s been going on behind the scenes, but interestingly enough this is the first year when they have explicitly had wives of past participants working to try to improve the program and I wonder if this is a consequence. In any event, even if they’re to be lauded for doing a better job here it doesn’t change the reality: Exodus 90 is by its nature going to make things a lot more challenging in many homes.

The problem runs deeper than this, though, because Exodus 90 doesn’t only call men to eliminate things from their lives, but also to add things. In particular, they are called to add time for a daily holy hour and for fraternity. Now to be clear, these things are not bad – on the contrary, they’re laudable! - but they certainly take a husband out of the home, and for men who are fathers (especially fathers of young children) this is a big deal. Already one of the most common blind spots for fathers is recognizing how much their physical presence matters to their wives, even at the expense of doing other work that matters, including other work for the family. I was recently watching a video of a woman trying to explain how she feels abandoned when her husband comes home and starts doing work around the house like mowing the lawn. Even though in his mind he is doing something for his family, she has been alone taking care of three or four young kids all day long, without help or even just the opportunity to socialize with an adult, and so when her husband walks in the door and immediately leaves again even to do something important it hurts. An Exodus 90 man leaving his wife at home with the kids to go spend time with the guys is for Christian fraternity rather than to watch the game might make it technically better, but it isn’t going to change the way it impacts his wife – and there are still other problems. For instance, in my research into this topic I’ve read criticisms from wives of participants and one of the most common sore spots is that Exodus 90 encourages men to make all major purchases subject to “approval” from his fraternity. “I’m not going to ask permission to replace our oven if I need to,” one woman wrote. Again, ask yourself: does a norm like this help to foster unity in a marriage?

New to 2023, Exodus 90 has tried to address these sorts of issues by producing a companion book written by wives for wives and intended to help “with the spiritual challenges of this journey” (p. vi), and the very first section is about “Family Unity.” On the one hand this is good and demonstrates that the people behind the Exodus 90 have recognized some of the potential pitfalls of the exercise and have made efforts to address them. On the other hand, much of the advice in the book amounts to telling wives to suck it up because trust them, all of these hardships will be worth it in the end. If that sounds like it might not be a fair characterization, consider a few quotes from the book:

“Although the disciplines of the journey are just for men, the actions of our husbands and fathers do affect the whole family and will be an adjustment for everyone.” (p.vi)

“While it does cost the whole family something, it also pays back in much greater returns.” (p. vii)

 “You may soon begin to wonder—is this all really worth it? Whatever your husband’s goal for this journey is, it ultimately boils down to overcoming the chains of sin. Whatever his particular struggle, rooting out attachments will be good for your family. You need to believe in this truth.” (p. 1)

“Accept that this is hard, and annoying, and frustrating all at the same time. Realize that no matter how annoying this may be for you, this is the good work of rooting out sin and cultivating virtue. It’s the hard work of change, but it is so worth it.” (p.7)

It’s important to be clear about something here: sometimes some act of suffering or some hardship is helpful or important and worth it in the end. Taken on their own, the statements above (and the many others like it throughout the booklet) are true. The problem is, remember, that these are being offered as reassurances to wives whose husbands are being asked to undergo extraordinary spiritual exercises without them and which will nevertheless impact them significantly. These are generally speaking good exercises in a vacuum and for a single man, but for a married man this is all being handled in a way that is not in keeping with the one-flesh union of marriage, and that is the problem here.

The third, and probably the most significant problem, is that Exodus 90 specifically excludes wives from participating in some aspects of their husbands’ deepening spiritual lives. Reiterating a point that has appeared in past years, the wives write in their companion booklet, “both husbands and wives need to realize that you cannot be his accountability partner. You are a support, but you are not in charge. He needs his team of other men—on the same journey—to keep him accountable. Also, he is an adult. Allow yourself to trust both your husband and the group, and don’t nag or criticize.” (p. viii) As their husbands get closer to Christ, Exodus 90 tells their wives to… butt out. That’s harsh, and taken as a whole it’s not entirely accurate because there are ways in which Exodus 90 encourages spouses to develop their spirituality together. The problem – the significant problem – is that there are also ways in which they’re told that the men need to do things without (not merely separately from, as in point one above) their wives. The booklet reiterates this:

“During your husband’s journey through Exodus, this humble though courageous and actively supportive role modeled for you here, is the very role you are called to play. Though it can be tempting to try to either participate in his journey in the same way, or in a parallel way (i.e., a women’s version of Exodus 90), your role during this time is much simpler. You are there to support, to enable, and to help.” (p. 14)

What’s more, this model of spirituality as Exodus 90 envisions it doesn’t stop with the conclusion of the exercises on Easter, but continues beyond: “Does this mean that the role of one who supports, enables, and helps is always your role in your relationship? The answer is complicated—in some ways yes, and in some ways no.” (p. 15) Reading through more of the text, it seems that the people behind Exodus 90 see this through the lens of traditional gender roles, as though this idea flows from embracing a more traditional view of marriage – but while I’d laud that attitude, the reality of things seems a lot more like an embrace of more traditional secular views of gender roles than of traditional Christian views of gender roles. Sure, the 1950s man who spends his evenings at the corner bar and his Saturday mornings on the golf course with his buddies might not respond well to his wife trying to hold him accountable and live a more moral life – but far from being something a spouse can’t do, in the theology of marriage of St. John Paul II this is one of the primary roles of a wife (or husband).

I realize that this is already a very long post, but I want to dig into this just a little bit more because the fact that Exodus 90 says that women cannot be their husband’s “accountability partners” is not only incredible in light of Pope St. John Paul II’s teaching, but also reveals in a particular way the fundamental problem with the whole thing. One must ask: why can’t wives act as their husbands’ accountability partners? I can think of at least three responses. First is that some of the things a man needs to be held accountable for include the way he treats his wife, and so she can’t hold him accountable for these things. This is true, but it’s of course going to apply to everyone as far as their own treatment is concerned, and in any case it’s no reason that a wife can’t help a husband be accountable for things other than the way he treats her. Second is that there may be something related to the proper gender role of a wife which would make it unfitting or improper for her to correct her husband. This seems to be closest to what the Exodus 90 materials suggest, but I’ll simply say that I will take St. John Paul II’s theology as definitive here. Third would be that a man would not be very responsive to his wife’s efforts to hold him accountable – that he wouldn’t take it well.

Of the three, this third is the only one that holds up to any kind of scrutiny, but it is also the most contrary to the concept of the one-flesh union. In marriage, husband and wife form a union that is so close and so intimate that they are no longer two but are one flesh. A man who can’t take feedback from his wife well is living, not the Catholic concept of marriage and the one-flesh union, but a secular vision of manhood which in its pride can’t admit to a wife having anything over oneself.  Certainly we are not all perfect and we do not always live out the reality of this perfect matrimonial union as we ought, but when the spiritual exercise which is calling us and helping us to live out Christ’s call to a greater degree seems to embrace that fallen attitude, there’s a problem. For all of its talk about promoting better marriages and helping men to grow to be better husbands and better fathers, is at the core of Exodus 90’s understanding of marriage an erroneous, secular concept of marriage as an adversarial relationship? Often reading through the companion guidebook and other materials I very much get the impression that there is this view of marriage that really does not fully grasp the depth of union which it consists of.  

In fact, there is an important statement near the beginning of the companion booklet which further hints at this problem. That statement comes as part of the introduction which tells wives why this companion booklet exists at all:

“While some men are great at communicating with their wives about what they are doing and why, we have found that many men and their wives have struggled to communicate details and expectations for the journey they are both about to begin. In order to help with this problem…”

Notice that the creators see the problem they are addressing not as the way the Exodus 90 exercise itself engages with married life, but rather with the way men have communicated with their wives about Exodus 90. They don’t see the problem as having anything to do with Exodus 90 itself, but with the fact that wives don’t understand it. The creators do ultimately blame this on men rather than their wives, but nevertheless I hope it isn’t putting too fine a point on it to say that this all feels very familiar when thinking about the way that Adam and Eve try to pass the blame around when confronted with their first sin in Genesis, a sin that was also a consequence of the spouses’ failure to act in union with one another. It’s not that the dynamics are all exactly the same, but nevertheless we do see one key similarity in that rather than leaning into the unity of the spouses, what we see here is a case of the individuality of the spouses being cited to try to dismiss a problem which at its core concerns a question of a lack of union. 

While the Exodus 90 organization has apparently and mercifully thought better of it this year, some of their promotional and "how to talk to your wife" content of years past really reinforced this for me. One series of graphics depicted a grown man, hands clasped together and eyes looking up in petition reminiscent of a child asking a parent if they can please go to that party/trip/sleepover/whatever that they really, really, really want to. I wish I could provide an image, but somehow these seems to have been entirely removed from the internet. Suffice it to say that they did not engender the idea of a mature man in a mature relationship with a woman having a mature discussion about a spiritual exercise he would like to do. In fact it very much came across as an example of that same paradigm of an adversarial relationship between husband and wife - or at least of one where the two spouses are not of one mind. Again, I really do wonder how much influence the women who have come on board to help have had on refining the image that is put forward. In past years much of what could be found about Exodus 90 had a "by single men for single men" vibe to it, whereas anything I can find now has much more of a sense of maturity and professionalism to it. 

To be fair, Exodus 90 is not the only example of Catholic lay ministry that has had this problem. For most of its long history even as venerable an organization as the Knights of Columbus required men to take an oath not to tell anybody what takes place at some of its ceremonies – including, explicitly, spouses. I’ve heard all of the justifications before: nothing that is covered by the oath is contrary to the Catholic faith, or anything that would ever concern a spouse or anything that would cause any kind of problem. The only reason for this oath, people would insist, was to avoid spoiling things for men who might join the organization in the future. Forgive me if I find all of these arguments to miss the point, which is that the one-flesh Union of man and woman in marriage is complete and radical. Man and wife are “no longer two,” as Christ says, but “one flesh.” It is a total self-giving, holding nothing back. As I’ve noted – to very positive reactions – to Confirmation classes, one doesn’t append a “but” or an “except” to the marriage vows. No great story ends with the hero saying to his beloved, “You are mine and I am yours, but…”

Nevertheless and to their credit Exodus 90 and the Knights of Columbus do attempt to fulfill a role which is sorely lacking in the Church: ministry to and for the married, family demographic. There are all sorts of things for children, teens, young adults, and the elderly. There are even an increasing number of options for young married couples – but for those who have been married for a few years, especially if they have children? There’s almost nothing. Unfortunately, I think that in practice, Exodus 90 also fits into the standard paradigm of lay ministry: it’s great for young singles, but for middle aged men with families, it is just too compromised. To their credit, its creators do at least seem to be trying to improve matters, and it would be altogether wrong to fail to acknowledge that there has been a lot of good fruit from Exodus 90. For all of the wives who have had bad experiences with their husbands participating, there are also many who have seen very positive changes in their spouses. We do need to acknowledge that, even as we recognize what issues there may be.  We should certainly pray for their success as they try to make their exercises better – just as we should work to establish stronger lay ministries for this neglected married/family demographic. We should also work hard to promote a better understanding of the true depth of the union of, well, everything that matrimony calls us to. This is, after all, a big part of the problem:  far too many people, even those faithfully dedicated to serving married couples, simply don’t see the radical nature of marriage for all that it is.

On My Experience with T2 Diabetes and the Terrible State of Medical Care for the Disease

 

At the beginning of February 2023 I learned that I was T2 diabetic. I had a random blood glucose reading of 225 (should be < 127) and an a1c of 9.1 (should be < 5.7).  It’s now been about 3 months and my random levels average around 103 while my a1c is 5.5.  I accomplished this by eliminating almost all carbohydrates from my diet (and I have been gradually increasing these amounts as my health has improved), exercising extensively, and overall losing around 40 pounds to date with more dropping off daily.

Most of the doctors and nurses I see are relatively astounded by this rapid change. The standard in the medical community is to regard T2 diabetes as a hopelessly progressive disease which can at best be managed with medication and even then with results which are likely not that great. To see such a rapid turnaround is not something most doctors are used to. This is not surprising, as the advice and standard of care for T2 diabetes is harmful and contributes to the worsening of the disease. In some ways this is changing for the better, but very slowly, and more so at a kind of “grass roots” level than systemically. Here is what I have learned through my experience.

What is T2 Diabetes?

 For readers who are not familiar with the basics of this disease, T2 diabetes is a condition in which the body does not properly manage levels of glucose in the bloodstream. This causes everything from high blood pressure to poor circulation to nerve damage, leading to degeneration of eyesight, heart attacks, and all sorts of other problems. The problem that causes all of this is the improper functioning of two organs: the pancreas and the liver. The pancreas is supposed to produce insulin, a hormone which is necessary for glucose in the blood to be used by cells such as muscle cells for energy. In a T2 diabetic person, the pancreas does not produce adequate insulin for the amount of glucose in the blood. Relatedly, cells become resistant to insulin so that what insulin is produced does not work as efficiently as it is supposed to. The liver is supposed to turn stored energy back into glucose when the body needs fuel but a person has not recently ingested anything which can be readily converted to glucose (like sugar or other carbohydrates). In a T2 diabetic person, the liver produces too much sugar when it is not needed. Together, this one-two punch causes high levels of glucose in the bloodstream as the liver produces too much and the body’s insulin response is unable to adequately “spend” that glucose. 

What is the standard treatment for T2 diabetes? For decades the norm has been diet, exercise, and a medication called metformin. Metformin was discovered in the 1920s and began to be used for treatment of T2 diabetes in the 1950s, though was not used in the US until the 1990s. It works primarily by slowing down the liver’s production of glucose but also has the effect of reducing insulin resistance. This also helps the pancreas because part of the problem with the pancreas in T2 diabetes is that it has been overworked because of the excess glucose from the liver. Exercise helps increase the insulin sensitivity of muscles, at least temporarily. Reducing the intake of sugars helps for obvious reasons. In more severe cases, T2 diabetics require insulin injections as well.

Diabetes and Nutrition

 This all sounds pretty logical, so why do I say that the standard of care makes the disease worse? There are two major problems, the first concerning diet. In the US, the recommended daily consumption of carbohydrates (for a non-diabetic) is for 45-65% of calories to come from carbs, which works out to 130g – 325 g per day depending on the caloric intake one is following. For diabetics, the American Diabetes Association (to which almost all doctors and hospitals turn for the standard of care) has for years recommended 130g – 225 g per day: in other words, the same as a non-diabetic. When I first met with the diabetic educator at the hospital and told her that I was had begun to eat around 20g or fewer or carbs per day, she said that on the low end I should aim for 30g per meal, 3 times a day, or even 45g x3 per day.

The American Diabetes Association has a website which provides recipes for diabetics, along with nutrition information for each. Looking at a random sampling of meals we find the following:

·         Greek lasagna: 37 g carbohydrates

·         Beef Stroganoff: 29 g

·         Chicken and Vegetable Casserole: 23 g

·         Protein Muffins: 14 g

·         Chicken Taquitos: 35 g

·         Baked Parmesean Chicken: 6 g (BUT is pictured alongside a plate of pasta)

·         Scalloped Potatoes: 29 g

Some of these meals are lower in carbohydrates than others, but nevertheless many have levels of carbohydrates which are no different from what a non-diabetic would eat. This is even more obvious when looking at the recipes themselves, which are often just normal recipes. What makes them “diabetic friendly” or healthier in any way? In a few cases they replace sugar with a non-caloric sweetener like Splenda, but usually they just replace beef with turkey and use low-fat versions of traditional ingredients. Not only does this have nothing to do with the particular needs of a diabetic’s diet – it’s worse than that because low-fat items often have more sugars or carbohydrates than their full-fat equivalents.

A growing number of doctors have been recommending that their diabetic patients eat more reduced carb loads and have been finding great success with this approach. The American Diabetes Association has also slowly been integrating this kind of diet into their recommendations, and in fact all of the materials I can find from them today are significantly better than they were even just two months ago. Still, they have not removed their older, out of date recommendations either, and from talking to a lot of diabetics nationwide it seems that the average medical practitioner working with diabetics is still using the ADA recommendations from 20 years ago.

Aids and Obstacles

Eating a lower carbohydrate diet successfully is much easier than it used to be thanks to the popularity of the keto diet and the gradual acceptance of it by the medical community as a valid dietary option. I have never really eaten a full-on keto diet myself, but the many keto products available in the grocery stores these days have made it possible for me to eliminate carbs in ways that I couldn’t have even just a few years ago. At the same time, the food industry falls far short of being nearly as much of an ally as it could be for conscientious diabetics and other low-carbohydrate eaters because their focus is still very much aimed at “trendier” avenues of food technology. The biggest obstacle turns out to be something that is of great help to another group of people: the gluten-free enterprise.

It is possible to find almost anything in a gluten-free variety these days and has been for some time, but most gluten-free products are anything but low-carb. Often they’re higher in carbohydrates than traditional equivalents because of the particular magic blends of starches and wheat-free grains that are needed to make items that act and taste like traditional foods. Manufacturers also — understandably — often want to incorporate as much of a “regular” recipe into their products as possible: for example keeping real sugar rather than sugar substitutes, to try to minimize the gastronomic impact of removing wheat from a product. With only so much space on store shelves and in manufacturers’ production lines, items which are gluten-free but not necessarily suitable for people who have trouble with blood sugar spikes take precedent. To a degree savvy people can try to make lower carb options at home, but not everyone has the skillset to do this or the time it takes to experiment enough to get things right. More importantly, the reality is that a lot of this stuff can’t easily be done at home. There is an enormous amount of research and science and experimentation that the food industry has put into developing decent facsimiles of various foods and much of what is available for low carb eaters (mainly stuff marketed towards ketogenic dieters) is made with ingredients and processes that may be impossible for the home cook to imitate.

Matters are made worse because of a lot of misconceptions diabetics have about food and poor or inadequate education on the part of their care providers. For example, a very large number of diabetics think that gluten-free foods are automatically good for keeping blood glucose low. As noted above, nothing could be further from the truth. Additionally, there is what I would call a very damaging message often given to diabetics that whole grains are 99substantially better than their refined equivalents. Eating white rice is advised against for diabetics, but brown rice is fine. White bread is a problem, but not whole grain bread. Etc. In practice, the difference is extremely minor. If a cup of cooked white rice is going to spike a person’s blood glucose to unacceptable levels, so is a cup of cooked brown rice. These recommendations remain in the materials and advice given to diabetics, but I have not encountered a diabetic who can eat these things with any kind of difference from their refined equivalents.

No, Not like That!

The other big problem with dietary recommendations is what I have come to think of as the golden calf of diabetes medicine: sustainability. I call this the “golden calf” because from everything I have seen it’s almost an idol which is put above all other things and I think it’s genuinely harmful. When I first started my aggressive diet and exercise regimen, the medical people almost objected, not because it wasn’t working (I had brought my level down SO much in the first 3 weeks that my a1c – a kind of average of abut 3 months’ time – had dropped from 9.1 to 7.2, a change that many patients will hope but fail to accomplish over years’ time) but because they questioned if it was sustainable.

Now I admit that I never planned for this approach to be lifelong - I was doing the equivalent of 60 miles per day on an exercise bike after all! – and I told them this, but they could only consider the value of long term, permanent changes.  To put this in perspective, forget about diabetes for a moment and simply consider a person who wants to lose weight. Say that the person is 300 pounds today and is able to get the weight down to 225 with an aggressive approach, but then finds a middle ground whereby he is no longer losing weight but is not gaining it, either. The way the medical field talks about diabetes management is the equivalent of dismissing that that initial push to lose 75 pounds because the person is not going to continue that particular lifestyle forever, even though he continues to live a relatively healthy lifestyle afterwards.  A big reason for this is because of what might be the most controversial, poorly understood, and important idea to ever enter the discussion in diabetic medicine: remission.

Diabetes Remission

On the subreddit for type 2 diabetes at the end of the list of all the usual community rules – don’t be racist, keep the discussion relevant, etc., –  is one zero-tolerance rule that reads more like a statement of faith than a rule: “T2 Diabetes can’t be cured or reversed. Put into remission, yes. Controlled, absolutely, but…” Posts violating this rule will be removed and the user posting them may be banned. Occasionally the moderators will allow a post to remain but add a big tag reminding readers of the hopelessness of the disease. 

That may sound like a pretty harsh take, but it’s well deserved. You see, there is a large number of users who have seen turnarounds like mine (or better!) and who comment on posts from newly diagnosed people or those going through a rough time to offer encouraging words or to share their own experience of what helped them to improve their condition. People who have just been told by their doctors that they have reversed their diabetes or received similar news will post to share their joyful news. Without fail, as soon as a such positive comment is made naysayers descend like a pack of Dementors to suck all of the happiness away. They circle like vultures squawking, “Can’t, can’t, can’t!”

It’s truly one of the most discouraging things I have encountered, and until I got my own bearings this attitude really shook me.

In truth, the idea of remission of diabetes has been becoming more mainstream in recent years. Peer reviewed research has focused on this possibility in the past decades, and in 2021 an international group of organizations like the American Diabetes Association, some of its European equivalents, and various diabetes focused medical journals released a statement acknowledging the possibility of remission of T2 diabetes and establishing clinical standards for recognizing it. It’s a very new idea, at least in terms of “official recognition” – meaning that the idea that T2 diabetes is lifelong, progressive, and can only be managed with an overall negative long-term prognosis is very entrenched. Any suggestion of a better outcome is still rejected by many as pseudo-science or false hope – even with names like the American Diabetes association behind it.

Even among those who acknowledge the possibility of remission the idea is still often neutered of most meaning. All it means, many will say, is that a person’s blood glucose levels remain below the diabetic range, but it doesn’t mean that their actual body function is normal. A person in remission still can’t eat, they might say, a few slices of pizza without seeing a huge blood sugar spike. Many who have been through the experience themselves disagree, reporting that after a certain point they regained the ability to eat normal meals without abnormal, diabetic blood glucose spikes.

What, then, is the reality here? What do the medical organizations say? What does that 2021 statement say? The truth is that they don’t. They don’t answer this question. In fact, they don’t even raise the question. They simply define remission as a person having an a1c below 6.5 for at least three months without diabetes medication and say that more research is needed to understand the implications. Again, this is an extremely new concept – so new that it seems few of the experts want to even acknowledge the question at this point.

The Cutting Edge

On the other hand, doctors and researchers who have been working on diabetes remission long before it entered the mainstream conversation do answer the question: it’s all about maintaining the conditions which led to the diabetic remission in the first place. Generally speaking, this means keeping the weight off. While not all T2 diabetics have weight problems and not all people with weight problems develop T2 diabetes, there is broadly speaking a strong connection. Increasingly it is suspected that when too much fat “crowds” the pancreas and liver it inhibits their function. In any case, both the cutting edge doctors from years past and the major medical organizations who have only recently started to speak about remission agree on one thing: significant weight loss seems to be the primary “weapon” to use against diabetes, and in those who achieve remission it seems to follow loss of significant amounts of weight – over 30 pounds on average. Keep the weight off once remission is achieved, those pioneers would say, and the diabetes will not return. 

Even as low-carb eating and weight loss begin to take hold as a mainstream treatment or management approach for T2 diabetes, still another, almost opposite standard of care is surging in popularity among doctors: treat with more aggressive medication earlier. It used to be that a newly diagnosed diabetic, unless the case were severe, would be treated with a low dose of metformin which would be ramped up over time as required. Yet in recent years a plethora of new pharmaceuticals have emerged which have much more profound impact and which doctors are more and more turning to first. Almost everyone reading this must have seen ads for these drugs given the enormous distribution that they enjoy. Rybelsus, Jardiance, Ozempic, Trulicity, Mounjaro, the list goes on and on. They work in a variety of ways. Some cause the body to express excess glucose in the urine. Others, called GLP-1 Agonists, prompt the pancreas to produce more insulin and are gaining rapidly in popularity today. Some reduce a person’s appetite, or make it more difficult for a person to overeat. Some do more than one of these things at the same time.

Yet these medications do not come without some concerns. The most alarming is the possibility that they may lead to a more severe form of diabetes down the road. Recall that part of the problem in T2 diabetics is that after years of excess glucose in the blood and the pancreas working extra hard to try to keep up, it begins to burn out. GLP-1 agonists encourage the pancreas to produce even more insulin, and so the concern – thus far elevated by the results of some research studies – is obvious. May these miracle drugs lower blood sugars for some years only to lead to a more severely damaged pancreas in the long term? This concern is of particular note if indeed many people can see remission by something as simple as weight loss. Apart from this nightmare scenario most will also consider as a given that living without medication is better than living with it – i.e., that a healthy body is better than a medicated one. Financial matters are also a concern.

And so for the treatment of T2 diabetes, there is a branch in the path. On one side is a small (but growing) number in the medical field who believe that for many diabetes can best be managed by eliminating most carbs from the diet and can even be put into remission with significant enough lifestyle changes. To them, remission means something closer to a full reversal –and indeed, many use this term. Their patients’ conditions often seem to improve. Their approach is generally one of aiming to help people reduce or eliminate medications and return to a more normal, if more moderate, lifestyle. On the other side is the overwhelming majority whose position is generally characterized by a more aggressive pharmacological treatment plan, one that allows patients to live long-term as diabetics but with reduced risks as compared to people in whom the condition is uncontrolled.

Speaking for Myself

Personally, I am very glad that my doctors - though not on what seems to be the cutting edge of understanding T2 diabetes - were at least not inclined to more aggressive treatment. If the doctor had told me on day one that I was being put on a more aggressive medication, I not only would have accepted it – I would have been happy about it. I just didn’t know much about the topic, and certainly not enough to make any kind of judgment about what approach would be best for me. I also wouldn’t have known what was possible for me to accomplish if I had simply been put on a medication that made things appear to be better.

On the other hand, I’m distressed that almost every degree of success I’ve had has had to have been achieved by ignoring almost everything the doctors and nurses have said or suggested. The very first thing I was told – by multiple people – was that I had to eat three meals a day, plus snacks. I couldn’t skip meals or fast anymore. I did that for a few weeks, but had much better success after switching back to a more disciplined version of intermittent fasting, a dietary approach which has only recently started to lose its taboo among doctors but which has shown tremendous results in diabetics. I was told I had to eat more carbohydrates, something else which I tried, this one only two or three times as it was pushing my glucose levels back up above 200 – at least at the time. My commitment to exercising as much as I did was questioned. I was told – bizarrely – to stop testing my blood glucose more than once a day. Before long I had a spreadsheet which allows as many as 14 readings a day and the data from which has proved invaluable in better understanding what has been happening and figuring out what was working and what wasn’t.

Am I being too harsh? For instance, exercising 4 hours a day really is a bit crazy, isn’t it? I’d grant that individually some of the points of “disagreement” with doctors may be more nuanced than I’m able to adequately express here.  What I would say, though, is that it is clear that taken collectively all of the things I have been told have been harmful rather than helpful. Even the most spot on doctor is going to have areas of disagreement with patients at times. That shouldn’t mean that the sum total of the doctor’s advice is so backwards.

The Bright Side

There’s been a lot of negativity here, so I think it’s worth closing out on some positive notes. What good things have I learned? What hopeful things have I learned? The most important is simply that there is hope. Certainly it’s true: I am not everybody and not everybody has the same body as I do.  Some people are starting off with their diabetes in a much worse place than I did. Not everyone has the physical or even just scheduling ability to start exercising as much as I did. Some people will do everything that appears “right” with little to show for it. Yet overall, on balance, there is hope. T2 diabetes is by no means the “life sentence” that it once was – or at least that it once was believed to be.

We also live in an age when so many of the things that I and so many others have found to work so well are much easier or more accessible. With the rise in popularity of keto, grocery stores now offer appealing low-carb bread options. Sugar substitutes have progressed to the point that they are generally pretty good. I remember when I was in high school trying sugar free candy and finding it pretty unpleasant – but these days it’s not all that different from the real thing. The internet also makes available so many ideas and recipes and approaches to try to replace things that you may want to leave off of your plate for a while. Please don’t take away the wrong message here. I’m not saying that modern technology should be abused by a diabetic to indulge in all the same vices that may have caused him problems in the first place. What I am saying is that when you’re trying to make such radical changes to something as fundamental as what you’re going to eat for months on end, it helps if you don’t have to suddenly give up everything you ever enjoyed.

In terms of specifics, there are lots of small "life hacks" I've learned in the last few months, especially in terms of food preparation. I've learned that when a gluten free product is low carb the texture and structural integrity can be improved by (ironically?) adding vital wheat gluten, now readily available in most grocery stores. I've learned that keto branded bread can be dried out and broken up to make a pretty good lower carb stuffing. I've learned that starches like potatoes and rice and be be transformed into what's called a resistant starch by cooking, cooling, and reheating them, reducing their impact on blood glucose by a pretty decent amount - meaning that a dish like fried rice is not a half bad option (as long as your glucose response isn't just off the charts). It turns out that radishes cut up and roasted can imitate a potatoes surprisingly well. Pork rinds ground up make one of the best facsimiles for breading on chicken or pork. Speaking of facsimiles, there are lots of brands that make keto or low carb versions of different foods and overall they're hit or miss, but anything made by the brand Quest is almost  certainly going to be excellent. Sugar free chocolate actually tastes pretty good these days, and mixed with some nuts and low-sugar dried cranberries makes a great lower-carb trail mix. Most beef jerky has way too much sugar in it, but making a low sugar version at home is surprisingly easy. Eating a dinner of only meat can actually still feel satisfying every now and then so long as you pair two meats that are dissimilar. Keto sandwich bread and hotdog and hamburger rolls are pretty darn close to the real thing and eating a few meals a week with them (cold cut sandwiches, hamburgers, bratwurst, etc.) can go a very long way to keeping you satisfied with how many "carbs" you're having. If you have to do fast food, chicken nuggets, even with their breading, are a decent option to have instead of fries with your burger to lower the overall load. Individually packaged foods - like those individual bags of potato chips or single serving microwave containers of rice  - are not economical but make it much easier to "cheat" responsibly now and then since you can see exactly how many carbs are in them and are more locked in to that serving size. 

And so on. 

I want to be clear in closing that I understand the vast differences that people will face in their own experience of not only diabetes but also any other medical concern. My experiences are not going to be universal, and even though countless others report the same it doesn't mean that there aren't people out there for who things may go very differently. I've also been lucky: I've done a lot of math with a huge number of blood sugar and a1c readings and determined that my condition seems to have been caught extremely early, which by all accounts makes it much easier to bring things under control and even reverse/remit/whatever the whole thing. Still, I hope what I have written about helps someone, and I very much hope that we can as a society fix so many of the problems that I've noted herein. 

 

Rise of Skywalker Review (spoiler free)

The moment the opening crawl hit the screen and that first triumphant blast of brass filled the theater was the moment I knew that Star Wars Episode IX was going to be a disappointment. I had gone into the cinema that day hopeful for at least a decent, reasonably satisfying conclusion to the "Skywalker Saga," and, having kept somewhat aware of leaked plot points I thought that JJ Abrams might manage to deliver on some of the hype surrounding the film. However, with that opening chord and that yellow, all caps font scrolling up the screen comes the weight of over four decades of beloved mythos and all the expectations of one of the most significant cultural phenomena of modern times. It was when I saw that first text, "Episode IX," and heard Williams' now forty-two year old score that I knew I was going to be disappointed, that this film could not possibly live up to it's predecessors. It was then that I finally admitted to myself that these new Star Wars films were always destined to fall short of holding a candle to what came before.

Over the next 140 minutes, the film seemed to answer me: "Amazing. Every word of what you just thought was wrong."

Beginning in the first few moments and continuing onward until the end, The Rise of Skywalker just feels like a Star Wars film. Of the Disney era outings, it's certainly the most reminiscent of the classic and prequel films - and I don't mean that it lifts from them in the way that The Force Awakens is often regarded as having taken from A New Hope. There might be a few plot elements here or there that one might consider to be especially similar to events in The Return of the Jedi, but by and large this film is its own.

No, The Rise of Skywalker feels like Star Wars in its tone, in its themes, and in its characters. The best way to put it may be that if The Force Awakens seemed like an attempt to make a film that commemorates the Star Wars of old and The Last Jedi seemed like an attempt to make a film that moved on from the Star Wars of old, The Rise of Skywalker seems like a film that simply builds on and continues the Star Wars of old. In other words, it's the first film of the Disney era that really feels like the next chapter in Lucas' story rather than one which is just offering remarks on that story as if it were some old relative to be remembered or laid to rest.

This doesn't mean that there is not some fan service in The Rise of Skywalker. There certainly is, but it's fan service done well. This film is packed with references which honor moments and characters from the previous films without feeling out of place, superfluous, or tacked on. This may be because rather than trying to treat those beloved moments or characters as a kind of fodder for easter eggs or cameos the way that Episode VII, and to a lesser degree Episode VIII, did, The Rise of Skywalker looks back in order to fulfill arcs and to pay off on the emotional investments that those earlier films made. For example, there are a couple of scenes involving C-3PO and R-2D2 which very much evoke memories of these characters from as far back as their first scenes in the Tunisian desert in 1977, but here The Rise of Skywalker uses these moments to bring a kind of emotional closure to the characters, a catharsis which draws meaning from those previous eight films rather than simply pointing to them in some kind of ostensibly clever reference.

As for the new characters introduced in The Force Awakens, there is no question that The Rise of Skywalker makes the best use of them and gives them the most genuine character development out of their three films. Characters like Poe and Finn, badly underutilized and left to stagnate or to repeat already completed character arcs in the previous films are finally able to shine. It helps that for the first time we actually get to see all of our heroes together for most of the film. One of the things that made the original Star Wars films successful was the dynamic of the various main characters playing off one another as the plot moved them from place to place. Until The Rise of Skywalker, the new generation of heroes hadn't really had a chance to do that. This film provides that chance and pulls it off well. It also handles the headliners much better. Rey finally feels like a fully realized character complete with weaknesses and personality that shows some evidence of having developed in all those years before we first met her on Jakku. She was certainly the most interesting character in either of the other two sequel films, but given what those films did with everyone else that doesn't say as much about her as it otherwise would. In The Rise of Skywalker she feels much more well rounded, almost like the difference between (if the cross-franchise reference can be forgiven) the difference between a season one Star Trek: The Next Generation character and the same character from the show's final season. The film even manages to do something with Kylo Ren that is much deeper than either of the two extremes we saw from him in previous films. Most importantly, all of these improvements feel natural; I never felt like I was being shown a scene just to make up for the inadequacy of some other film.

This film also does a much better job of incorporating the older heroes than the previous films. Where in Episodes VII and VIII Han Solo, Chewbacca, Luke, and to a lesser degree Leia felt at times more like transcendent legends who were just there to guide or inspire the new heroes, here Chewbacca finally feels like one of the gang, Leia feels like a peer to the new characters (which is especially amazing given the constraints that Carrie Fisher's death placed on the production of this film), and even Luke (minor spoiler?) comes across in a way that just works better than in the previous films. When Lando shows up, he never feels like someone so much larger than life that he can't fit with everybody else. (As an aside, Lando's character is one of the most uplifting parts of this film and I don't think anyone in the theater got away without smiling at his scenes.)

The Rise of Skywalker is far and away the most thematic of the sequel trilogy and this is one major way that the film feels more at home among the original films than among its more immediate predecessors. The first six films of the franchise, to one degree or another, were thematic; the better of them had an almost literary quality. In The Rise of Skywalker, there are several themes, two of which stand out very clearly: first, that a person is not defined by their identity, and second, that a person is never alone when they stand up for what is right. (There is a third that is worth listing here, but due to the risk of revealing a major spoiler I will omit it here). What really stands out to me is that these are the kinds of themes which transcend the confines of whatever conceits exist in a given story and so elevate the story to something greater than the sum of its parts. Without getting into a lengthy diversion, I will say that the thematic quality of this film is one of the reasons I think that in the long run it will stand the test of time along with predecessors like The Empire Strikes Back.

Before closing, it would be remiss not to address this film's relationship with The Last Jedi. It is no secret that film was extremely divisive, with some regarding it as the second best film of the franchise and others considering it an unforgivable offense against all that has ever been good in Star Wars. It is also no secret that The Rise of Skywalker is widely regarded as having taken efforts to walk back or to "fix" things which many fans disliked about that film. There is no question that on some points The Rise of Skywalker does look at things from The Last Jedi from a different point of view," to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi. Nevertheless, what stands out to me about these elements is how subtle and well-executed they are. Nothing in The Rise of Skywalker ever flatly contradicts or even dismisses anything from The Last Jedi. Nothing ever feels forced or as though it's only there in the film in order to revisit something from the previous film. If anything, most of these moments are so well executed that they make it seem as though they were always the direction that Rian Johnson's outing was planning to take them in the first place. In fact, I would say that on balance The Rise of Skywalker honors The Last Jedi more than it re-frames it, for those two major themes mentioned above (your identity does not define you and those who do what is right are never alone) are two of the closing thoughts that Johnson leaves viewers with in his film. The Rise of Skywalker may indeed "amend" a few things from The Last Jedi, but in the end, more than anything it builds on the direction and message that that middle installment took us in all while doing so in a way that should more than please The Last Jedi's critics.

The Rise of Skywalker is not a perfect film. There are a few plot threads that seem to have been dropped or forgotten about, although these are nothing major. There is also one moment in particular towards the end of the film which seems like a genuinely bad example of fan service, one which I think the film would be far better off without, but I can say that, knowing about it and dreading it going in, the rest of the film is so good that I think in the end it's only a minor annoyance that didn't detract at all from my enjoyment of the film. There are some force powers introduced which on the surface don't seem to make a lot of sense, although if you think about them enough I think they can be explained (which ameliorates the problem but is nevertheless really not ideal). It also does a disservice to Kelly Marie Tran by relegating her character to very much the background of the story. Indeed she's hardly present and could be removed altogether without changing anything else about the film. Part of the problem is that her character never really seemed to have a purpose in the first place, and this film is very tight, leaving little room for that which doesn't factor into the story it's trying to tell. Still, if she was going to be established as a major character in the previous film this one probably should have done something with her. I have read in many other reviews that the first half of the film has too rapid a pace or that it moves too quickly from one sequence to another. I could not disagree more, and in fact my wife and I both felt that the worst part of the film was when the pace briefly slows down in the first half.

On the whole, The Rise of Skywalker is an outstanding film when taken on its own. When taken as the final word on a nine-film saga which began with an all-time cultural phenomenon, it is not perfect but it is still very much a satisfying conclusion. I hate to keep comparing it to the other Disney era films because it is worthy of being spoken of on its own, but I know that this is the context in which many will think of it. The Rise of Skywalker is far more substantive than The Force Awakens, so those who found that film to be empty or to be a rehash of the original trilogy ought to find much more to chew on here. Those who hated The Last Jedi should find a lot to like in this film and should find it much more to their liking, but at the same time those who enjoyed that film should be able to see this one as a natural progression. I would already place it above all of the prequel films - which some may not regard as a significant accomplishment - and even perhaps above one or more of the original three films - which most would regard as quite an accomplishment. I doubt many will share my opinion in ranking this film quite so highly as to displace any of the original trilogy, but in the end the point is that even if not everyone ranks it quite so highly as I do, it is nevertheless a very strong film which is worth your time and which deserves a place in the pantheon of the more beloved of the Star Wars films.