Since my December 2, 2005 Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma diagnosis, I've been on a slow-motion journey of survivorship. Chemo wiped out my aggressive disease in May, 2006, but an indolent variety is still lurking. I had my thyroid removed due to papillary thyroid cancer in 2011, and was diagnosed with recurrent thyroid cancer in 2017. Join me for a survivor's reflections on life, death, faith, politics, the Bible and everything else.
Easter’s come and gone. The day, anyway. For Christians who follow the liturgical year, the season lives on, in the forty days between Easter Day and Pentecost.
Today I ran across this quotation from a collection of sermons by Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat (HarperCollins, 1985). Buechner is a preacher’s preacher. Although he doesn’t step into a pulpit that often, his influence as a writer is widespread, and much-appreciated by those who craft sermons week in and week out.
Here’s the excerpt: “Anxiety and fear are what we know best in this fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumors of wars. From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it. But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the Cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, his will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.”
What I like about this expression of Easter faith is its realism. There no illusions, here, that life is never hard. There’s no attempt to sell the idea that God offers the baptized a “Get out of suffering free” card. There are plenty of purveyors of spiritual snake oil out there who carry around whole stacks of such cards, and hand them out as a come-on. (It works. They always seem to be surrounded by hopeful hordes waving dollar bills.)
Buechner’s got too much integrity for that. For him, the cross is not an item of sparkly gold jewelry, but an “obscenity” that — paradoxically — leads to glory.
For people with cancer, or anyone else who’s on a hard road, there’s hope in that vision. Hope doesn’t come from finding a way around life’s struggles and heartaches. It comes from resolutely forging on through them — knowing that, on the other side, someone’s waiting for us. Someone who’s been through it, too.
Today I read an article by my friend and seminary classmate Kathleen Long Bostrom (“Identity Crisis,” Horizons, The Magazine for Presbyterian Women, January/February 2014). It speaks to where I am right now, in these days of recovery.
Kathy’s writing about what it feels like to take early retirement, for medical reasons. (She’s been dealing with a chronic obstructive lung disease for some years now.) Kathy had been serving as a co-pastor alongside her husband, Greg Bostrom. He continues in the pastoral role, in the same church. She’s now devoting her attention to her part-time writing career (she’s an acclaimed author of religious children’s books).
In my case, no one’s talking about retirement. The breathing difficulties caused by my matched pair of pulmonary emboli are expected to diminish in time. I fully expect to return to full-time pastoral work when that happens — but for now, I’m on temporary disability from my work at the church. With the three hospitalizations I’ve had this fall and winter (the most recent ending on December 28), I’ve had a few setbacks of the two-steps-forward-one-step-back variety.
Back in 2006, when I was receiving chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, I was also dealing with a kind of disability. But, that was different. With a once-every-3-weeks chemo cycle, I could anticipate one week of being out sick, a second week of moderate energy, and a third week of relatively normal functioning. I never did go on full-time disability.
It’s different this time. The blood clots in my lungs restrict my breathing, meaning I get winded very easily — even after the relatively minor effort of climbing a flight of stairs. I’m making progress with my outpatient physical therapy, but it’s slow (especially since each hospitalization has led to some deconditioning, setting me back a few spaces on the recovery gameboard each time).
The nature of pastoral ministry is such that it’s hard to step back from full-time to part-time. As far as the congregation is concerned, you’re either back or you’re not. I’ve received advice from numerous people not to attempt part-time ministry. It’s hard to set reasonable limits. It’s easy for a task-oriented person like me to overwork. Also, the congregation tends to think that, if they see you up in front, leading worship, many will assume that you’re back 100%, even if you’re not.
I asked my pulmonologist, Dr. Gustavo De La Luz, how long it will be before the emboli dissolve, and he said the average is 3 months. I’m coming up on that date at the end of this month, and I have noticed some modest improvement. The last scan I had at the hospital showed one embolism has gotten smaller. But I’ve also had unusual complications: the big internal bleed I had during my first hospitalization, and two incidents of temporary kidney failure, caused by the CT-scan contrast dye (which my body can evidently no longer tolerate).
The result is that my disability is frustratingly open-ended. No one can predict with any accuracy when I’ll be ready to return to my pastoral duties. Recently, I’ve been advised to fill out the Presbyterian Board of Pensions’ disability paperwork, so that — if I’m still sidelined when I hit the 90-day anniversary of my diagnosis at the end of this month — I can begin collecting a temporary disability pension (which would save the church two-thirds of the salary they’ve graciously continued to pay me).
I learned years ago that, if there’s any advantage to receiving chemotherapy for lymphoma, it’s that the treatment’s progress is tightly regimented. With one treatment every three weeks, there was a predictable “chemo cycle” governing how sick I could be expected to feel.
Not so with this pulmonary embolism thing. The clots will dissolve when they dissolve. No one can predict how long that will take. Nor can anyone predict how fully the lungs will recover after the clots are gone. Some patients find that some of their lung tissue has become “necrotic,” after all that time deprived of oxygen from the bloodstream. That essentially dead lung tissue will never recover. No one can predict how much necrotic tissue there is, nor how it will affect my long-term recovery. The deep-vein thrombosis in my leg (for which I’m being treated with the anticoagulant, Coumadin) also bears careful watching. I’m wary of the possibility of another hematoma, even though I’m on just one anticoagulant rather than two, and I’m being carefully monitored by a hematologist (my oncologist, Dr. Lerner).
During my cancer treatments, I was able to make some modest plans around the ups and downs of the chemo cycle, that’s not possible in this case. I’m living day-to-day, pursuing a recovery of indeterminate speed and duration.
I can vividly remember the experience, on Easter Day, 2006, of looking across the street from my bedroom window, sick as a dog from my most recent chemo treatment, watching the congregation arrive for worship in all their Easter finery. It was a strangely disjointed feeling. It felt unnatural not to be there.
With my present pulmonary difficulties, that’s my experience every day.
Which brings me, at long last, to Kathy’s insightful article. She admits to feeling a certain kind of “identity crisis” as she transitions into early retirement — becoming no longer one of the church’s pastors, but merely the pastor’s wife.
“Who am I,” she writes, “now that I am no longer the pastor? Who are any of us, apart from the labels that define us, that can be cumbersome, even limiting, but that also give us a sense of identity and purpose?”
Musing on the experience of serious illness, she observes how we can “lose our intrinsic identities even further and become ‘a cancer patient,’ rather than ‘Joan, who happens to have cancer.’”
When I was in the hospital, I wore a plastic ID bracelet with my name, my birthdate and a bar code on it. Every time a nurse came in to give me medication, or a technician to draw blood or give me a breathing treatment, I would be asked to repeat my name and birthdate, so the hospital employee could check that information against my bracelet. Then, the person would scan my barcode with a little handheld device. This was for medical-records purposes, but I was also aware that it was related to the hospital’s billing process. It was the medical equivalent of waving a box of Cheerios over the bar-code scanner at the supermarket checkout. Every pill I swallowed, every new bag of IV saline solution, had its price.
In the hospital, the uniformity of my hospital gown and the ubiquitous presence of my ID bracelet proclaimed that my identity, as a patient, was pretty much limited to my medical condition. Pastor, husband, father, friend — all those roles diminished to secondary importance. Name, birthdate, barcode: those were my new identifiers.
Now that I’m home, and my main activity is getting better, it still doesn’t feel all that different. Many of those things I used to do, by which I defined myself, aren't part of my life at the moment. Even with family relationships, things have changed. I no longer do many of the things I’m used to doing as husband and father. Others must do some of those things for me.
Kathy quotes a little poem by theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Who Am I?”, which concludes with these words:
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.
Kathy then goes on to observe: “I am who I have been from the very beginning: I am a child of God. That has never changed. It is who I will always be, even though that identity has gotten lost in the shuffle of my labels. First and foremost, now and always, I am a child of God, which is what we all are, no matter the labels that have stuck to us over the years.”
I found a great website today called the Lymphoma Club, which includes a helpful page containing tips for those newly diagnosed with lymphoma. This list is a bit long to absorb on one reading — 27 tips in all — but it’s well worth having a look at.
I’ve rearranged some of them into what I’d consider my Top 10. So, they’re renumbered, with the most important at the bottom. Where I thought a couple of the originals overlapped, I’ve combined them. I’ve added my own comments after each one.
10. Get organized. Consider a binder.
Or a series of computer files. Or whatever works for you. But you’ve got to have some kind of system for managing the tsunami of data you’re about to get hit with — some of it electronic, some of it paper (lab reports, prescription scripts, etc.), much of it stuff you’ve never heard of before. Start keeping an overall calendar of your treatment: you’ll be surprised how fast the weeks and months go by, and before you know it, you won’t be able to remember how many CT scans you’ve had, and when. Get in the habit of keeping a current medications list. You’re going to be asked for that information more times than you could possibly imagine (mine lives in my smartphone).
9. Find cancer support groups (ask your cancer center or search online).
For whatever reason — pride, idolatrous self-sufficiency, reluctance to deal with the weird reactions we ministers get from some people outside the church setting — I waited way too long to do this. The time to start going to a support group is BEFORE you think you need it. From the day of your diagnosis, you’re a cancer survivor. So, you can be sure there’s more than one group out there where you’ll be welcomed like you’re family, and (just like that old sitcom theme song) everybody knows your name.
8. List ways family and friends can help you (chores, rides, cleaning, etc.).
This is a biggie. If you hear that little voice inside your head, saying “But I don’t want to impose on others,” speak sternly back to it, saying “GET BEHIND ME, SATAN!” (That’s a biblical allusion, for those unfamiliar with it.) You’ve got cancer. You need help. There’s absolutely no glory in trying to go it alone. Get used to it.
7. Have a trusty advocate join you during appointments to take notes and help ask questions.
Remember that tsunami of information I mentioned above? This is one essential way of managing it. The necessity of bringing a friend or relative with you goes way beyond just sorting out a lot of medical jargon. You see, there’s a very common emotional reaction that’s especially strong at the time of diagnosis and just afterwards. You’ll be having a perfectly rational conversation with your doctor, and you’ll say to yourself, “No need to write that down, I’ll remember it,” then five minutes later as you’re walking out to the car, you’ll say, “Now did the doctor say my cancer is large-cell or small-cell, and which one is more treatable?” This has nothing to do with your intelligence, nor your memory power. It’s a species of denial. No matter how much you may imagine you’re cool, calm, collected and handling this pretty well, the reality is, you’ve just learned something that’s rocked your world, so your subconscious is saying, “That’s enough, I’m outta here!” You need that second set of ears, especially now.
6. Get educated. Know the details of your cancer diagnosis but don’t spent too much time online.
This is information-tsunami management, part two. To some extent, how you do this is an individual thing, but there are so many advantages to doing it — taking charge of the situation and becoming your own advocate — that this one makes my top-ten list, hands down. There’s a wealth of information out there, but the trick is separating the wheat from the chaff. Start with a good book on the details of your disease (I recommend Living With Lymphoma by Elizabeth M. Adler, a microbiologist and lymphoma survivor - Johns Hopkins, 2005). As for the internet, don’t be afraid to troll for useful information online — it’s not so much the amount of time you spend online, as where you go to find your information. Start with highly-reputable sites like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, or the National Cancer Institute, or the websites of world-renowned cancer hospitals. Then, move slowly outward from there (but always following links from these trusted sites). If you have any experience at all surfing the net, you already know it’s the Wild West out there when it comes to documentation and accuracy. It’s so very easy to wander down one of those electronic rabbit trails, and before you know it, you’re reading about how to cure lymphoma by wearing a crystal around your neck. Know, also, as you cancer-surf, that we all have a common defense mechanism that leads us always to jump to the worst-case scenario. All we need do, sometimes, is glance at a list of possible symptoms, and we’re quite sure we’ve got every one of ‘em. (The defense-mechanism angle is that our subconscious irrationally imagines we can protect ourselves from pain by inoculating ourselves with that same pain, even if there’s scant evidence for it; one of the reasons we have doctors is to protect us from such craziness). Oh, and the other, similar tip about learning to read a lab report is absolutely correct. Learn what the most important of those little abbreviations on your CBC (complete blood count) mean, so when one of them shows up as elevated, you don’t flip out. Sometimes an elevated count is a big deal, but more often than not, it’s just normal variation.
5. Feel free to seek a second opinion.
I agree with this as far as it goes, but I’d be much more emphatic. (Deploy megaphone.) GET A SECOND OPINION, STUPID! (Put away megaphone.) Sorry for the “stupid” moniker, but I had to get your attention. It doesn’t matter how much you like and trust the doctor you start with, cancer research is such a huge and complex universe that no single individual could ever be familiar with it all. If your oncologist is any good at all, he or she will have absolutely no problem with your seeking a second opinion, and will probably encourage it. On the other hand, if your oncologist bristles at the suggestion and starts bragging about his or her own medical credentials, then RUN, DON’T WALK to another doctor who better demonstrates the spiritual gift of humility. It’s exactly that sort of fall-in-love-with-yourself pride that leads doctors to overlook important details. Nowhere is this more crucial than in your all-important pathology report. And, do you know what? Your pathologist is by far your most important doctor you never meet. (The pathologist is the one who looks through the microscope at your biopsy slides and identifies your type of cancer cells, carefully counting how many of them there are, which determines the whole course of your treatment.) When you go from your local physician to an evaluation at a major cancer center (or, if you start with a major cancer center and go from one center to another) you get a new pathologist’s opinion along with it. You may well stick with your original doctor after getting the second opinion — or not, it’s up to you — but even if you stick with the original doc, he or she is going to be grateful that you presented the second opinion, which makes diagnosis and staging easier. (IF the doctor’s any good, that is — see “humility,” above.)
4. Pick an oncologist, one you feel comfortable with. Preferably an expert in your type of cancer.
You DO have a choice. It’s your cancer, so you have a right to find a doctor you have confidence in. Whether it’s your first stop or a second-opinion consultation (see above), I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend checking out a National Cancer Institute (NCI) comprehensive cancer center. These are the cancer research hospitals that have access to the most up-to-date research findings and are able to point you to clinical trials, if that’s called for. If it’s a long journey between your home and a comprehensive cancer center, then consider working through a local oncologist who has strong ties with one of those centers (that’s what I do). And by the way — this is also real important — the mark of a good cancer hospital is not, I repeat, NOT how much money said hospital spends on TV advertising. The most prolific advertisers among cancer-treatment hospitals are certain for-profit institutions who garner impressive treatment results by cherry-picking the most treatable patients on the front end, discouraging those whose prognosis is less positive. (You won’t find these big advertisers on the NCI’s list, and there’s a reason for that.) This is ethically questionable behavior on the part of those who most stand to profit financially from that sort of approach. As with anything else that's driven by the profit motive, caveat emptor.
3. Continue to celebrate life in spite of cancer. You still have your identity. Don’t lose it. Participate in hobbies, live life and do the things you love to help keep you focused.
We’ve already established that a cancer diagnosis rocks your world. But that doesn’t mean you need to stand idly by and let it take over your world. Don’t let yourself become a cancer victim. Be a cancer SURVIVOR. There’s a huge difference, that has a lot to do with the degree to which you spit in cancer’s face and go on living your life, anyway.
2. Find ways to relax and cope (yoga, guided imagery, music, hobbies, faith etc.).
OK, I’ve elevated this to number 2, even though I have a major quibble with how it’s worded. Faith is not, I repeat, NOT in the same league as music, hobbies and the other items on that little list. There’s a common tendency in our non-sectarian society to label faith a “leisure activity” and lump it in with all sorts of more trivial pursuits. A cancer diagnosis doesn’t just rock your world, it rocks your spiritual world. Whatever sort of faith you profess, this is the time when you most need to get serious about your faith-tradition and tap its resources. The benefit of doing that goes way beyond merely “relaxing and coping.” Your house of worship, if you have one — church, synagogue, meeting-house, temple, whatever — is the place to wrestle with the big questions, with help and advice from wise guides who have the life-experience and faith-experience to help you sort these issues out. (If you don’t have a house of worship, I advise you to find one.) Remember, houses of worship were in the healing business long before hospitals even existed. Nowadays, they perform their acts of healing alongside of, and in sync with, medical science, which means you get the best of both worlds. Your house of worship is also a great place to connect with friends who can, indeed, “help you” (see number 8, above).
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the number one tip for dealing with a new lymphoma diagnosis...
1. Take a deep breath and go easy on yourself.
Know that right now, today, is just about the worst time in the whole progression of your disease, whatever the ultimate outcome. Diagnosis is hard. (I’m not talking about it from the doctor’s standpoint, but from yours.) It’s hard because, in running the race for a deeper, more all-encompassing health, now is the time when you have to go from zero to a hundred in a matter of feet, not miles. So, treat yourself right, especially at this time. In the eyes of your Creator — not to mention those of your family and friends, and even yourself — you’re worth it. You really are.
Go ahead, now, if you’d like, and check out the other items on the original list. Most of them are pretty good, and very much worthy of mention. But these are my Top Ten, and I’m sticking with ‘em.
Finally, take a look at this short video, which comes from the same Lymphoma Club website. It’s guaranteed to lift your spirits and give you hope.
Episcopal Rector Gary Jones, a fellow cancer survivor, writes of a recent visit to his oncologist’s office that revealed to him a little bit of Easter.
Gary
hadn’t been to the office for some time, and looked quite a bit
different from when he had been going there regularly for his chemo
treatments. His hair had come back, for one, but he also knew he looked
and felt stronger and more fit.
He heard a nurse in an adjoining
room call out his name, as the next patient to be seen. “Gary Jones,”
she said, in a deadpan, professional tone. But then, she recognized the
name. “GARY JONES!” she cried, with laughter in her voice, and came
running out to greet him with a smile.
Let’s have Gary continue the story himself:
“At
first, she didn't recognize me, because she had never seen me with
hair. And besides, I had started weeping when I heard her calling my
name. I don’t know what happened to me; I just couldn’t help it.
But
I recognized her. She had cared for me for months. She was my sister,
my mother, my friend, my priest. In the way that Jesus intended us to
be for each other, I realized that she was my Lord, whom I recognized
when she called my name.
Ubi caritas, Deus ibi est. ‘Where there is love, God is there.’”
What a blessing it is to be recognized. And what a further blessing it is to be recognized by name! We honor one another when we welcome one another by name.
As Jesus honored Mary Magdalene, that Resurrection Day. And as he honors us, still.
Happy Easter Season!
(Gary is Rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia.)
Because noon-to-three comprises the biblical hours of the crucifixion, this year we simply opened the church for prayer during those hours. It’s our last nod to the Good Friday afternoon worship tradition. I wasn’t in the Sanctuary the whole time, but to the best of my knowledge no one took advantage of the opportunity.
That’s not a huge surprise. The contemplative tradition feels foreign to many Presbyterians. We tend to be a pragmatic bunch — not the sort of crowd who flock to an opportunity to gather for silent prayer.
Besides, to a culture that increasingly worships youth and health with a zeal bordering on idolatry, the figure of a tortured man gasping out his last breath on a cross seems the antithesis of any sort of victory.
In past years, at three p.m., we would conclude the community service by ringing the church bell thirty-three times – symbolic of the years of Jesus’ life. Although the Sanctuary was empty, I went in there today anyway, took hold of the bell rope, and slowly rang it. Thirty-three times feels like an eternity, when you space the rings out with a few seconds in between each one.
Outside, through the stained-glass, I could hear the sound of traffic and glimpse the wraithlike shadows of passing cars: people on their way to who knows where, very likely oblivious to the tradition that three o’clock was the hour of Jesus’ death.
If they noticed the sounding of the bell at all, would they realize what it was about?
I’ve always found the ringing of church bells to be significant in ways beyond words. In the year of undergraduate study I spent in Oxford, I used to look forward to the time each Sunday evening when all the change-bell ringers from the parish churches and college chapels, by common agreement, simultaneously practiced their trade. It was a glorious cacophony I will never forget, a mellifluous, rippling series of sound waves washing over that city of spires.
In years past, church bells functioned as many towns’ public-notification system. Like the Emergency Broadcast System that interrupts radio and TV programming every once in a while for a test, church bells fulfilled that function in years gone by. Public joys, civic celebrations, urgent alarms: all were heralded by the ringing of the steeple bell. In the era before loudspeakers and sirens, it was pretty much the loudest, most sonorous thing around.
That function has long since been supplanted by electronic systems of various kinds. Our local volunteer-firehouse and first-aid sirens are way louder than any church bell in town. In the days following Hurricane Sandy, the local Office of Emergency Management sent out daily information bulletins via telephone robocall. A viral message on Facebook, as we all know, can reach millions in the space of a few hours, if its recipients are keen to propagate it through their slacktivist mouse-clicks.
All that made me feel like a bit of a dinosaur, yanking on that bell-rope thirty-three times in an empty sanctuary, beside a street filled with drivers on their way to who-knows-what sort of Easter holiday sale. (I’ve actually seen a few ads for Good Friday sales in recent years. Now there’s a sacrilegious cluelessness that beggars the imagination!)
American hyper-individualism has been on the rise for generations. Has it reached its spiritual apogee in today’s bland acceptance of "Have It Your Way" McReligion as the national creed?
“Cast off the ties that bound Our hearts in Christian love: The fellowship of kindred minds: To that we give the shove.”
(I just came up with that. Inspired, or what?)
Pulling on that bell rope, I had a odd mental association with the time of my cancer treatment. That’s such an isolating experience. When you mention to someone, “I’ve got cancer,” you can see from the look in their eyes — the oil-and-water mixture of sympathy and fear — that you’re all on your ownsome when it comes to empathy (unless, of course they happen to be survivors as well). As for other neighbors, if they’re at all adept emotionally, they’ll be quick to share sympathy: but truly entering into the experience is — understandably — beyond them.
The bell-tone reverberates, over the parade of preoccupied passersby. What can we do but sound it anyway, hopeful that, somewhere, someone looks up and displays a half-smile of recognition?
Today’s Good Friday, and it fell to me to give the sermon at our local Community Good Friday service, sponsored by churches of the Point Pleasant/Bay Head area.
I’ve preached many a Good Friday sermon in my time, but today I was struck by the words of Jesus from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is of course quoting Psalm 22:1, one of the gutsiest laments in the Hebrew scriptures.
Many Christians find it hard to stomach this awful scene depicting the Son of God in abject despair. Some of them deal with their discomfort by staying away from Good Friday services altogether (or, at least, from worship services like ours that strive to regard the hard reality of the crucifixion without blinking). If relentlessly practicing positive thinking is your thing, and if – like some of my Baptist friends – you just can’t hold back from cheerily uttering that Pollyanna proclamation, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!”, you’re probably numbered among this group.
Other than boycotting Good Friday, the other way to manage such cognitive dissonance is to imagine Jesus wasn’t really so Godforsaken as all that. Following the lead of the Gospel-writer John – who, unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, is more inclined to portray Jesus as omniscient, and eerily aloof from even his own sufferings – they seek to to rationalize away his sense of abandonment.
That view of Jesus is actually heretical, as the church has traditionally viewed it. The traditional doctrine of the Incarnation declares that, during the 33 years of his earthly life, Jesus was truly God and truly human. In a reversal of the state of affairs that’s prevailed through much of history, Christians in our highly-churched American culture are more likely to struggle to accept Jesus’ humanity than his divinity.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, as he wrestled with the decision he had made, he could only turn to God in prayer – just like any of us. He could only ask God to “take this cup away from me.” He didn’t say, “What do you think, God, hasn’t this show gone on long enough – isn’t it time, now, for me to overturn this cup?”
Throughout his earthly life, Jesus suffered and struggled, feared and doubted, bled and died – much like any of us. The scriptures teach that he was unlike us in one respect – that he did not sin, and therefore went to the cross blameless – but in every other way he was human. And that is why he was impelled to cry out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Do you think he didn’t really mean that? Do you think it was just a line in a play, spoken for our benefit? Do you think he knew all along that it would come out OK in the end, that this death – that was even then wrapping its cold, bony fingers around his neck and starting to squeeze – was not really death, as we know it from the experience of others (and will one day know it ourselves)?
No. When Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I take him at face value. I believe he means what he’s saying. I believe he truly feels Godforsaken.
That’s a colorful word, “Godforsaken.” It hardly even sounds like an English word at all. It’s more like one of those intricate, compound German words: schadenfreude or weltanschauung, or even the lowly pepper-cookie, the pfeffernusse. The German language has that capability of combining shorter words together in a long string. I’m glad that, in this instance, the English allows us to do so, because no other word captures the sense of abandonment and desolation, the fear and anxiety, the doubt and despair, that’s caught up in that word, “Godforsaken.”
Sometimes we speak of “a Godforsaken place.” That expression is reserved for the driest of deserts, the most isolated of islands, the most barren of landscapes. The geography of the human heart it describes is equally desolate. That’s what Jesus was feeling, there on the cross. The pain he felt in his body was only the half of it. The sense of abandonment that tore at his heart was just as agonizing, maybe even more so.
Those of us who have had to cope with that unwanted guest, Cancer, gate-crashing our lives perhaps know something of what this means. There may have been times when the word “Godforsaken” accurately described the way we felt.
Christian essayist G.K. Chesterton captures the sheer absurdity of God’s son crying out “Why have you forsaken me?” as he observes:
“When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God.” [Orthodoxy (Moody, 2009), p. 20.]
We don’t like to think – no, not even imagine – that “God was forsaken of God.” God’s supposed to stay in heaven, and all is supposed to remain right with the world. The crucifixion was the one time in the history of the universe when that did not happen, when the fundamental balance of creation was thrown off, when chaos seemed briefly to reign, when the interrelationship of the three persons of the Trinity was severed, when darkness descended in mid-afternoon and the very earth beneath our feet rocked and reeled.
Speaking personally, I still don’t understand why it happened. Yes, there are many competing theological theories of the Atonement, of why and how Jesus had to suffer and die so sins might be forgiven. None of them, at the end of the day, answers every question. I also don’t understand how it happened. My mind is just too small to take in the mystery of the Incarnation, the complexity of the inner workings of the Trinity, the marvel of divine Grace.
Although I don’t understand why or how the crucifixion happened, I can say I’m awfully glad it did happen. I’m glad because, when I look on from afar, from the perspective of twenty centuries, at the spectacle of “God forsaken of God,” as Chesterton says, I know that because of what Christ has done, I will never be Godforsaken in quite the same way. Through every trial and tribulation, through every pain or struggle divine Providence may in the future place in my path, whether my lymphoma creeps back into my life again or whether it doesn’t, I’ll always be able to look to the cross of Jesus and know that I am not alone, that there is one in the heavenly places praying for me who knows what it means to be human.
To me, that’s what’s so good about “Good Friday.” I would never be so bold as to ask one such as Jesus to go to the cross for me – I do not deserve it – but the good news is that he has done so, anyway, of his own accord. For that, I am grateful beyond words.
This Easter, I preached on the topic, “This Is the Life.” While, for many, it’s a phrase that conjures visions of shady cabanas on tropical beaches, shrimp cocktail and umbrella drinks close at hand, I was thinking about something different.
And no, I wasn’t thinking about what this guy means by the phrase, either:
“This is the life” is Jesus’ promise to his disciples in John 10:10, as he proclaims, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” It’s a promise they wouldn’t begin to understand until after the resurrection.
This whole matter of abundant life takes on a different cast when that life includes cancer. What does it mean to “have life abundantly” when that life, for a cancer survivor, includes a low-level sense of foreboding that’s always lurking somewhere?
I think Matthew’s account of the resurrection supplies an answer. It employs a curious turn of phrase, describing Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (probably Jesus’ mother), as they rush from the tomb, having heard the angel tell them Jesus has been raised from the dead. Matthew says, “they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy...”
Whuzzat? With fear? And great joy? Sounds like an oxymoron.
No, it’s no oxymoron. Our emotions are seldom simple and elemental. They’re often mixed.
Actually, there are times in life when fear and joy do coexist. Try to imagine the first time you fell in love, and realized that person you loved felt the same way about you. Did you ever feel more alive than in that moment?
And wasn’t it also true that, having asked that special person (or having been asked) to go out on a date, and having heard that person say yes (or having said yes yourself), the thought suddenly occurred to you that you would have to actually participate in said date, and you would somehow have to avoid making an idiot of yourself? Fear and great joy!
Or, think about the most significant graduation ceremony of your life, that highest level of education you’ve completed. If you were able to attend such a ceremony, recall the joy of accomplishment you felt that day, in cap and gown, looking around at the grinning faces of all your classmates. Remember, too, the other thought that came to you at that moment: “What am I going to do tomorrow?” Fear and great joy!
Brides and grooms on their wedding day, first-time parents driving that baby home from the hospital – on these and many other occasions in life, fear and joy coexist. Not without some tension between them, perhaps, but there it is. This is the life.
The two Marys were likely feeling something similar, because the first thing the risen Jesus says to them is “Do not be afraid.”
This has nothing to do with whether or not they may happen to disbelieve what they’re seeing, or whether or not they suspect it may be some sort of ghostly apparition, some wraith vomited up from dark places to bedevil them. No, I think they realize who it is, and can at least grasp the bare outlines of the paradigm-busting wonder that’s taken place. I think the two Marys are afraid because they realize what the resurrection is going to mean for their lives.
Surely these wise women realize that, if they continue on as Jesus’ followers, and go tell the other disciples the good news they’ve just heard and seen, they’re going to unleash into the world a powerful force that there will be no stopping. From this day onward, they’re going to be riding a mighty wave that will propel them onward with terrific force – and at times that position on the crest of the wave will be a dangerous place to be.
Yes, of course they’re going to do it, of course they’re going to bring the good news to their companions. But their fear and their joy are intermingled.
This is the life. This is the new life God has given them. Yes, perhaps they recalled hearing Jesus say he’d come that they might have life, and have it abundantly, but until this moment those had been nothing more than inspiring words, a rhetorical flourish. How could they possibly have known that new life would come to them through the nail-pierced hands that now rest on each of their heads, and through the nail-scarred feet they are even now washing with their tears?
The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard once described this aspect of the Christian life using a very vivid image. He said that sharing the Christian faith with others is like handing them an extremely sharp knife.
A sharp knife is a useful tool. The greatest chefs, in fact, take meticulous care of their knives, sometimes even packing them into special carrying cases and bringing them home at night, so no damage will come to them. No one, Kierkegaard goes on, would think of handing a sharp knife to another person as one would hand over a bouquet of flowers. It’s just not done.
One of the first things we teach kids, in our church’s Cub Scout Pack and Boy Scout Troop, is how to safely hand a knife to another person. The boys don’t earn their “Totin’ Chip” – the special wallet card that allows them to carry a pocketknife – until they learn how to hand an open knife to a fellow Scout handle-first, and not let go of it until the other person says, “Thank you” – indicating he’s got it safely in hand. That’s because a knife is a useful implement, but it’s also dangerous. You’ve got to have a healthy fear of knives before you can use them safely.
Faith is just that sort of tool for living life as a cancer survivor. Most of us aren’t going to be cured, physically, by our faith. For whatever reason, God doles out complete spiritual healing only rarely, and according to no logic we can understand. Yet, if we’ve learned how to take this elegant tool in hand and use it safely - preventing it from slipping and causing further injury - we’ll find ourselves much better-equipped for living through days and years of remission and relapse, of tests and treatments.
Christian faith doesn’t put an end to fear. It does, however, take the natural, human fears we all have and puts them in perspective. Without the inner peace that comes of faith – which we Christians describe as knowing the risen Christ – the ordinary fears of human life can rage out of control, wreaking havoc in our lives, and in the lives of those we love.
The crucial difference comes from the other part of the equation: the “great joy” that counterbalances our very human fears. We can still seek it, even in the midst of cancer. Even a cancer-burdened life is still life, and Christ has promised that, in him, we can live abundantly.
“During my illness, I had the presence of an angel that came and visited me...” This is a remarkable video, from the Livestrong website. The speaker is Matthews Brown, a leukemia survivor. It’s just under 4 minutes long, so it won’t take too much time away from whatever else you’re doing.
In the course of my ministry, I’ve heard some remarkable stories of spiritual experiences. I’ve never seen an angel, myself (at least, not the supernatural variety). Based on what I’ve heard from others, though, I’d say Matthews’ experience is unusual, but not as unusual as all that. Things like this happen to people more often than you may think.
We’ve all heard the truism, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” I found that to be true of my own cancer experience. From the square marked “Go,” it looks like it's a long way around the spiritual Monopoly board, but you do find yourself “passing Go” from time to time and collecting $200.
Let us give thanks for unsolicited, grace-filled experiences, through which we learn what remarkable spiritual resources are available to us, and how deeply we are loved!
If you’re a cancer survivor, how has the spiritual side of the experience been for you?
This past Sunday, I preached on the story from the Acts of the Apostles about the raising of Tabitha. It’s one of a small number of biblical passages that recount not merely a healing, but the raising of a person from the dead. Although the Apostle Peter performs the miracle, it’s clear he sees it as the work of the risen Christ.
Preparing my sermon, I was struck by a rather unusual detail. Before performing his miracle, Peter cleared the room. Why was that?
I figure it was because Peter was none too sure of his ability to do anything helpful. This isn’t a sick woman, he thought to himself. It’s a dead woman. Dead is dead (unless, of course, you’re talking about Jesus’ resurrection, but that’s a story for another day).
You’d think, had Peter been more confident, he’d have practiced a little showmanship. You know, given the miracle some pizzazz. Wow the crowd.
But, no. Peter will have none of that.
When in doubt, pray. Having no other option, that’s what Peter decides to do. Falling to his knees, he offers fervent prayers to God: to get him out of this situation, to do something to help this grieving community – and, yes, even this poor, deceased woman, wherever in heaven or earth her soul may be.
After praying, Peter turns to Tabitha and simply says, “Tabitha, get up.” She does! The crowd outside is astounded when they see their beloved Tabitha, alive again. It just may be, though, that the most befuddled person in the village that day is Peter himself.
Many of us have been there before, in situations that seemed hopeless. It’s a story repeated time and again, in hospital corridors and family waiting rooms, as a doctor says to an anxious family, ”I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do.”
We’ve all heard of deathbed miracles, of course, but we also know these are few and far between. I told the folks in church on Sunday that the one miracle I have seen, time and time again, is how hope – that most persistent of Christian character traits – has a way of arising out of even the darkest of situations.
Sometimes that hope is as simple as being able to persevere, to get up and face another day without falling apart emotionally. Sometimes it’s the ability to let go and die with dignity. Sometimes it’s reconciliation with a loved one that we never imagined could have happened.
On his knees, alone in that small room except for the corpse stretched out on the bed, Peter may have feared his hope-reservoir had run dry. But then, when he least expects it, God breaks in once again, revealing new possibilities.
Such hope differs from what usually passes for hope in our culture – at least, as the word is used in everyday speech. Eugene Peterson points out that what a lot of people call hope is in reality something different. It’s wishing, not hoping – and wishing and hoping are not the same thing:
“Wishing is something all of us do. It projects what we want or think we need into the future. Just because we wish for something good or holy we think it qualifies as hope. It does not. Wishing extends our egos into the future; hope grows out of our faith. Hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing.”
Peterson goes on to say that we can picture wishing as though it were a line coming out from us with an arrow on the end, pointing into the future, pointing toward that thing we most want to possess.
Hope is just the opposite. It’s a line that comes from God out of the future, with its arrow pointing towards us:
“Hope means being surprised, because we don’t know what is best for us or how our lives are going to be completed. To cultivate hope is to suppress wishing – to refuse to fantasize about what we want, but live in anticipation of what God is going to do next.” [The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Eerdmans, 1993)]
To me, that’s a beautiful and liberating insight. Yes, we all want certain things in this life. Yet, our wishes and God’s intentions for us may not always coincide. At times, God may have an entirely different plan – which means that, for us, the way of freedom and peace lies not in somehow pulling God around to our way of thinking, but rather letting go and trusting God to be in control.
Preparing my Easter sermon based on Luke 24:1-12, I was struck by the reaction of the male disciples to Mary Magdalene and the other women who brought them news of the empty tomb and of the angel’s message: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
Their first response was to consider it “an idle tale.”
“Idle tale” translates an uncommon Greek word whose meaning is “nonsense” or “delusional.” If the women’s breathless announcement is in fact the first Christian proclamation, then it means we preachers started out with a score of 0 and 1 from the get-go.
Which is no big surprise – because the resurrection isn’t exactly an easy truth to absorb. In contradicts one of the most foundational of human experiences: that dead is dead, and there’s no coming back.
I thought about that sort of thing a lot when I was feeling ill from my chemo treatments. What if the treatments were unsuccessful and I was soon going to die, I asked myself? What if, someday soon, I was going to shut my eyes not only to this world, but to everything else? What if this life, this consciousness, that is me would suddenly blink out of existence? What would have been the point of it all?
My mind danced with that bleak idea from time to time, but didn’t invite it home. I kept returning to the truths of my faith, and especially this truth that is the resurrection.
I told the folks in our church yesterday that this whole “idle tale” response is actually a sort of backhanded testimony to the truth of the resurrection. If you were to set out to make up a story about a man being raised from the dead, would you be so quick to admit that some of the people who most wanted to believe it to be true rejected it, at first?
Similarly, if you were going to go out and make up a story about a man being raised from the dead, would you include details that made you, yourself look like a clueless doubter – as was the case with Peter? If you were interested in spreading a made-up story in the intensely male-dominated Roman world, would you make women the first witnesses of the resurrection – women, who were considered, back then, to be second-class citizens, whose testimony the male-dominated society considered unreliable?
Of course not. There are an embarrassing number of loose ends connected with the Easter narrative. Four different gospels tell the story, as well as certain passages from the letters of Paul – all of them differing from the others in one detail or another. If your purpose were to make the whole thing up, you would have managed your sources a little better.
The result is that it’s impossible to put the various Gospel accounts together in a single narrative – just as it would be if there had been multiple witnesses recording their impression of a single, dramatic incident, each from a different angle.
The resurrection is jarring and unexpected. The great Reformed theologian Karl Barth says somewhere that it’s “not a natural ‘therefore’ but a miraculous ‘nevertheless.’” Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams – a distinguished theologian as well as senior leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion – likens it to the Big Bang. When we celebrate Easter, he writes, “we are really standing in the middle of a second ‘Big Bang,’ a tumultuous surge of divine energy as fiery and intense as the very beginning of the universe.” (Tokens of Trust, p. 95)
These are outrageous claims – but in their very confusion, contradiction and sheer outrageousness, they’re true to life, in an odd way. Such a mind-bending, paradigm-busting event could never be encapsulated in a tight, little spin-controlled story.
With all those lights of inquiry shining upon it from so many different angles, the resurrection is like a person moving across a room, lit up by a strobe light. You know how that looks: a person lit by a strobe seems to move in a series of jerky, disjointed snapshots, rather than the seamless, smooth motion of movie film. Under such lighting, you can get a general sense of what’s happening, what various events are taking place – but not how they flow from one to the next.
There are still significant gaps in our understanding of the resurrection – and always will be, this side of heaven. That doesn’t mean it’s not true. It means it’s a truth too big, too complex, too wonderful for us to fully comprehend.
One of the hardest things to do, in ministry, is to stand by people who are going through hard times: not trying to change the situation, but just being with them, accepting things as they are.
An invaluable lesson I learned, years ago, in my clinical counseling training in seminary, is that sometimes you can’t fix it. Sure, there are some counseling situations in which an easy answer – be it a scriptural citation or a word of practical advice – can make a world of difference. But, not every situation is like that. Sometimes the only thing you can do is to be there – accompanying people through their difficulties, sometimes even to the edge of the grave.
It’s one of the reasons (among many) why I have such admiration for my wife, Claire - a minister who works as bereavement coordinator for a hospice program. Accompanying people in just this sort of way is what she does all the time. When she was a hospice chaplain, she worked directly with dying patients. Now, she specializes in accompanying family members through their days of mourning.
Claire’s grown used to a certain awed response she gets from people she meets for the first time. They often say something like, “More power to you! I could never do a job like that,” or, “That must be so hard! How do you keep doing it, year after year?”
Frequently, she gets another sort of response: “I think hospice programs are wonderful. The hospice team was such a help to us when my mother was dying!” A person who says something like that has come to appreciate the value of standing by those who are suffering. It’s like the famous first line from Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Ehrenreich has gotten a lot of press because of the forthright way in which she takes on the 200-pound gorilla of the self-help world: positive thinking. Her point is that our culture so unquestioningly considers positive thinking to be a good thing, that in situations – like the final stages of hospice care – in which it’s no longer appropriate, people just don’t know what to do. They feel abandoned, adrift, without the familiar life preserver of positive thinking.
Many of us think that, in a tough situation, we’ve got only two choices: think positively, or give up altogether. My point in Sunday’s sermon is that, while positive thinking is often a good thing, there are some situations in which it crosses the line into magical thinking – which is not. Some things that happen to us in life are simply bad things, and there’s no getting around it. It’s one thing to cultivate a positive outlook generally, but it’s quite another to believe we have an obligation to think positive thoughts all the time – and that, if we don’t, we’re somehow putting ourselves at risk.
Sadly, some cancer patients get precisely that message from those around them. Some feel guilty, beating themselves up because they can’t keep the sunny side up all the time. If their disease progresses, they feel irrationally responsible for failing to stoke the positive-thinking furnace.
The positive-thinking movement is very often an ally of Christianity, but there’s a point at which the two part ways. Bottom-line, the Christian prescription for spiritual health is not positive thinking, but rather, repentance and the forgiveness of sins. As the Gospel-writer Mark sums up the essence of Jesus’ message:
“Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”[Mark 1:14-15]
If we’re constantly trying to push everything but positive thoughts out of our minds, we’ll never be able to recognize sin in our lives, because we’re so afraid of the negative thoughts that go with it. Without a recognition of sin, there can be no confession. Without confession, there can be no forgiveness. And, without forgiveness, there can be no experience of grace.
I ended my sermon on Sunday by telling a familiar story from the classic Broadway show, The Music Man. It’s about the con man, “Professor” Harold Hill, who travels around selling band instruments to schools, promising he’ll stick around to teach the children how to play – but he never does. He always hops the first train out of town as soon as the money’s in his pocket. In the Midwestern town of River City, though, he falls in love with Marian the librarian, so he’s got to think of something. Harold’s problem is, he knows nothing about music. He’s not a professor of anything, except shady deals.
What he does is tell the children they can learn to play their new band instruments using what he calls “The Think Method.” All they have to do is think of the melody he tells them to play, recalling it over and over in their minds. When they pick up their instruments, he promises, they’ll be able to play it perfectly.
Well, the day of the first band concert comes, and Harold’s ready for his slippery scheme to fall apart. The children pick up their instruments and start to play. The sound that emerges is one of the most awful things you’ve ever heard – everything you’d expect from a teaching strategy so ill-conceived as “The Think Method.”
Wonder of wonders, a miracle occurs. The parents of River City are so pleased to see their children tooting away on the band instruments, they completely ignore the fact that there’s no discernible melody. Professor Hill’s reputation is saved, and he settles down in River City to marry his beloved Marian.
Positive thinking won’t teach us how to play the trombone, any more than it will guarantee we’ll beat cancer. The lesson of The Music Man, though, goes beyond the concrete task of producing the right musical notes at the proper tempo. It’s a lesson about grace and love and unconditional acceptance of children by their parents. Professor Hill’s brand of magical thinking was a complete dud, but the magic of love proved far stronger.
There is no greater magic in the world than this. It’s the love of God, that Christians believe is experienced uniquely in Jesus Christ. We believe that love was demonstrated for us on the cross of Calvary, and is given to us as an unconditional gift. It comes to us in good times and in bad, in sunshine and in storm. “Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift!” – 2 Corinthians 9:15
On of the beloved songs of the upcoming Christmas season is “I Wonder As I Wander.” The song was written by a musicologist named John Jacob Niles, based on a fragment of folk music he discovered.
According to the Wikipedia article on the carol, in 1933 Niles was traveling through the Appalachian region of North Carolina, looking for traditional tunes. He was attending a fund-raising meeting held by an evangelistic group who’d been run out of town by the police (I’m sure there must be an interesting back-story behind that!). In his unpublished autobiography, Niles tells of how he first heard the song:
“A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.”
Niles was enchanted, and asked the girl to sing the line again. He offered her a quarter to do so, and she gladly complied (this was 1933, the midst of the Great Depression: folks earned money any way they could). Seven times he asked the girl to sing it, giving her a quarter each time. Seven quarters later – a dollar seventy-five, not a bad price in the 1930s – he had enough of a sense of where he was going with his composition. What he had was, in his own words, “three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material – and a magnificent idea.”
I think you’ll agree: a dollar seventy-five (in 1933 dollars) was not a bad price to pay for a hauntingly beautiful melody that’s become a Christmas standard.
“I Wonder As I Wander” is in a minor key. More often than not, hymns are written in a major key. Those hymns are bright, joyful, triumphant. The minor-key hymns, by contrast, are quieter, more introspective, more reflective. Some are even somber.
“I wonder as I wander out under the sky How Jesus the Savior did come for to die For poor orn'ry people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander out under the sky.”
Today I come across a blog entry from last April by Dana Jennings, a New York Times reporter being treated for aggressive prostate cancer. Dana is Jewish, and writes eloquently on the intersection of faith and cancer. Here’s an excerpt:
“One of our cultural verities about serious illness is that it often challenges our faith. But for me, if anything, having cancer has only deepened it, heightened it.
I have spent the past year in the dark ark of cancer, and there is no question that I have become a new man. I’ve been granted a wisdom that only arrives at the rugged confluence of middle age and mortality. And I know, soul deep, that I have not been cut open, radiated, and tried physically and spiritually so that I can merely survive, become a cancer wraith. Since my diagnosis – after shaking off the initial shock – I have kept asking myself, in the context of my belief: What can this cancer teach me?
The most surprising thing I’ve learned is that cancer can be turned toward blessing. Through the simple fact of me telling my cancer stories on this blog, many of you readers, in turn, have told your own stories. And that mutual sharing of our tales has changed my life for the good. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, 'Life is not meaningful, unless it is serving an end beyond itself, unless it is of value to someone else.'”
I like Dana's concept of cancer being “turned toward blessing.” I won’t ever be able to consider cancer a good thing, but our miraculous God can wring blessings out of even the darkest episodes of life.
In a remarkable way we, too, can be turned toward blessing. When we are able at last to make the move from cursing our fate to blessing others by our actions, we know the seeds of healing are taking root in our lives.
Rabbi David Wolpe recalls how, when he was laid low by chemotherapy, a verse from the Psalms kept coming to his mind:
“From out of the depths I called unto God; He answered me and set me free.” (Psalm 118:5)
“Out of the depths” is a classic expression of lament. Wolpe brings added perspective as a scholar of the original Hebrew:
“But ‘the depths’ can be translated as ‘narrowness’ and ‘free’ as ‘expansively.’ A literal translation is – ‘from my narrowness I called to God and I was answered by breadth, O God.’ My world grew through pain and the increasing recognition of the ways in which it both opened my heart and helped me draw closer to others in pain. A single verse opened a world and a way of seeing that gave me strength and the breadth promised by the verse itself.
My spirit opened to an infinitely larger Spirit. When in pain, we tighten up like a fist. It is easy to push others away – after all, they are not feeling the pain – and to turn increasingly inward. Only I matter; only my pain is real. The Psalm urged me to expand, allowing me to embrace others, to understand that pain need not always be private, unshared. Open up, the Psalmist taught; both in heaven and on earth you are not alone.”
- Why Faith Matters (HarperOne, 2008), pp. 159-160.
Paradoxically, the experience of serious illness can deepen the life of the spirit. That was Rabbi Wolpe’s experience, and in the long run, it's been mine as well.
There were no epiphanies – no memorable, soul-stirring moments of encounter with God. Just a broadening of life, at a time when all the wisdom of the world could predict nothing but a narrowing.
I’m not sure how often this is true of people who approach an experience like cancer without the resources of faith to draw upon. I’d be curious to hear some personal testimony from atheists or agnostics on that subject. It seems to me that, without faith, cancer therapy can only be a narrowing experience. So many limitations, so many life-changes, arise in the form of side-effects. Fatigue alone – probably the most common and pervasive of side-effects – is a significant narrowing experience.
The gift many people of faith are fortunate enough to receive, out of cancer treatment, is an unexpected experience of spiritual breadth.
