A trip to the dentist. How much!!! and 'Oh whats that you are reading?'

 Having spent the last two years returning to Sheffield to our excellent NHS dentist, we have due to a broken tooth ( both of us), ended up having to go private. This is really disappointing because we cannot find an NHS dentist locally. It is just not sustainable to go back and forth to Sheffield especially in an emergency. 

For the last 14 years dentistry has been underfunded. This has made it impossible for many dentists to make it work financially to have NHS patients. This is of course a scandal. Going private goes against my belief in health services which should mean everyone has access to GP's, dentists, mental health services etc, without being dependent on your bank account. 

So we have had to compromise. The treatment we both have just experienced, by an excellent dentist, is eye watering in its cost. That we are able to pay reveals how fortunate we are, and serves to remind me how many cannot, and the damage that is doing to their well being. 

I can only hope and trust that over the coming years our new government will address this issue. Of course it's one of many that they have been left to deal with due to the inept governments that have preceded them, as well as the blind dogma of market forces and belief in privatisation. I can only hope and pray that we will see a shift back to an understanding of community. That we are all interlinked, and by pooling our resources, all might share in the goodness of the earth.

As I sat in the waiting room to have the crown fitted I was reading on my kindle. The dentist who called Jill in first, glanced at me and said "Oh what are you reading". There was a pause . "Genesis" came my reply (actually it was a book about Genesis by Peter Enns). There was much laughter as I"m sure not many people sit there reading a book about a book of the bible. In fact I'm re reading it to absorb afresh the main thrust of the content. Of course it's about community. How a small family grouping eventually became a group of tribes who became the children of Israel. If you want a good overview of Genesis you could do a lot worse, unless your the type who wants their bible to be a rule book, or a manual or an historical account written in chronological order, and you don't want your tidy view of certain stories you thought you knew messed up. This book is a reminder, as if it's needed, that to understand what is written you have to have ancient eyes to do so. In other words you can't read Genesis from the perspective of the twenty first century. You have to be willing to grasp, that this amazing story as it unfolds, was the combination of many sources written well after the events. It was then edited in such a way as to make a story line that reminds the Israel nation that its God who makes them a nation. Yahweh who remains faithful when they don't. Yahweh  who gifts to them how they should live as community. It is of course much more than this, but it is about community. A community that was to share its resources and acknowledge that these things were gifted to them by God. 

Which brings me back to having to go private for dentistry. If we could just get our society back into being a society/community, and not isolated individuals who while they are okay with their wealth can ignore the needs of others. However God brought humanity into existence, God certainly has dared us to live in relationship, and thats a risky thing. But to Love is to risk and we need to risk more.

So below a quote from Martin Buber an Austrian-Israeli philosopher