December 12, 2011 – Blue Christmas

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, I know.  I had the fall stewardship campaign at the church, then Thanksgiving, then the start of Advent – all the while dealing with the sandwich-generation issues that are my life right now: young-adult kids coming and going, and caring for my mother who lives nearby and has Alzheimer’s.  Life has been busy (and, thankfully, healthy)!

Yesterday, for the first time, we offered a Blue Christmas worship service at the church.  It’s something I’d hoped to explore in previous years, but it took the enthusiasm of our church’s Associate, Linda, to get it organized.

What a blessing!  Attendance was not large (nor did we expect it to be).  We’d promoted the service as a focused pastoral-care outreach to a select group of people: those who have experienced recent losses, and who feel a bit left out amidst the traditional pre-Christmas merrymaking.  For those who participated, it was a rich and meaningful experience – due, in large part, to Linda, who put together a carefully-crafted order of worship that emphasized the presence of God and the quiet beauty of the Advent season.

Judging from what I know of those who were present, most of the losses were due to bereavement, although we were careful to speak to losses of all kinds, including the loss of jobs and income in this difficult economy.

Cancer, of course, brings its own losses.  Even those who are fortunate enough to go into remission have lost the sense they once had of being healthy.  We’re reminded of that every time we fill in a medical-history form.  Always there is the reality of the cancer, and the thought in the back of our minds that someday it could come back.

Towards the end of the service, everyone was invited to come forward and light an individual votive candle in a blue-glass holder, in memory of their loved one or in recognition of whatever other loss they may have experienced.  The people did that by means of a white, hand-held candle they passed from person to person.  Each one used it, in turn, to light his or her own candle, then passed it to the next person, and so on.

It struck me, at the time, how powerful was the symbolism of that simple act.  Here was a group of people, each of them bearing a heavy burden of grief.  The road each one is walking is, by its nature, profoundly alienating.   Yet, each one passed the light to a fellow believer, all the same.

We receive ministry from others, yet Christ also calls us to offer it.  Even in a season of personal darkness, we can very often still find a little light to offer to another.  This is what life in Christian community, at its finest, is all about.

There are some who maintain that one of the surest ways up and out of the pit of depression is to try to do something for others, however difficult it may be to get started on that.  I think there’s a lot to what they say.

The night before the Blue Christmas service – knowing how few are the liturgical and musical resources to use in planning such a service — I felt led to write the text of a hymn.  It was too late to get it into the bulletin for this year, but maybe we’ll use it next year.

The hymn is set to the hauntingly beautiful tune of The Coventry Carol - a familiar tune to many, but not one we’re used to singing as a congregation.  Not many people who enjoy listening to the Coventry Carol on their Christmas CDs are aware of this, but its lovely melody is desperately sad. It’s the keening lament of the women of Bethlehem, after their male babies and toddlers have been slaughtered by the soldiers of King Herod.  (According to Matthew 2:16-18, Herod was bent on murdering the young Jesus, whom he perceived as a threat to his rule.)  “Lullay, lullay, thou little tiny child” is a lullaby, to be sure, but it’s the last lullaby sung by a grieving mother to the dead child in her arms.  Pretty grim stuff, but also very powerful in a raw, emotional way.

(Scroll down for the hymn text...)

Comfort Your People, Lord

A Hymn for Blue Christmas Worship Services
Text by Carlos E. Wilton
Tune: “The Coventry Carol”

O Lord, we bring to you, this day,

Hearts that are raw with pain:

For sorrow has companioned us,

And in our lives does reign.

You promise to make all things new:

Comfort your people, Lord.

Would that we could turn back the clock

And for one precious hour

Reach out, clasp hands, and touch again

Love’s fragile, with’ring flower!

You cherish all times in your hands:

Comfort your people, Lord.

All through our lives we’ve trusted you

To be most fair and kind:

Though, in the dark night of the soul,

Anger enthralls our minds.

For freedom you have set us free:

Comfort your people, Lord.

We have not always trusted that

Fairness has been your way.

Too soon it’s seemed to watch our dreams

Float up and fly away.

For good, all things together work:

Comfort your people, Lord.

My soul, why are you so downcast:

Caught up in grief’s malaise?

We trust the day will soon arrive

When we will sing God’s praise!

Not Yuletide mirth, but Easter joy:

We ask this gift, O Lord.

Copyright © 2011, by Carlos E. Wilton.  All rights reserved.  Permission is given for congregations to reproduce the text of this hymn in worship bulletins, as long as the copyright information is included.

April 27, 2011 – This Is the Life

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.

December 17, 2009 - I Wonder As I Wander

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.

We need them both. One of life’s great lessons, for cancer survivors or for anyone else, is that not all of life is lived in a major key. “Into each life some rain must fall,” goes the hoary old cliché. When we discover joy amidst even the rain, when we can learn to sing praise even in a minor key, we’ve got it made.

“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.”

December 15, 2009 - Expectancy

This time of year, we Christians find ourselves – if we can stop our frenetic holiday preparations for a moment and be still – in the season of expectant waiting known as Advent.

It’s a tough season for most folks to wrap their minds around. Anyone who pays attention to the liturgical year feels oddly suspended between the now and the not-yet. This isn’t helped by the fact that the recommended biblical texts for Advent are of two distinct kinds. On the one hand, there are apocalyptic passages that warn of the final judgment and the return of Christ to judge the earth. On the other, we’re handed kinder, gentler stories like the Annunciation: the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, announcing Jesus’ impending birth.

It can be tough, during Advent, to figure out what, exactly, we’re meant to be waiting for. Are we waiting for Christ to come crashing in and judge this mad, mixed-up world for what it is? Or, are we imaginatively placing ourselves into the Christmas story, waiting for him to be born in Bethlehem again in our hearts and minds?

I have a new appreciation for the ambiguities of waiting, ever since entering my extended, watch-and-wait treatment mode. Of course, unlike the waiting associated with Advent, the thing I’m waiting for is not good. I’d just as soon have my lymphoma remain in couch-potato mode as long as possible. Yet, I do also live my life attuned to subtle signs that could develop.

Every three months or so, I go for another scan: a moistened finger held up to test the wind. Today’s the day: another CT scan at Ocean Medical Center.

Unlike the classic prayer of Christians, “Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come,” I’m very happy to keep on waiting.

December 30, 2008 - Christmas Haste

Christmas has come and gone, without a blog entry. That’s mainly a function of my being so busy.

It was a good Christmas. Ania was back from Chapman University for the holidays, and Ben continues to be living here at the house, as he works full-time giving guitar lessons. My mother, Shirley, is now living back in New Jersey, having moved up here from North Carolina in September. Brother Jim came down from Boston for the holiday. From Claire’s family, we welcomed her sister Eva and her daughter Elizabeth (who also live in our house), as well as her brother Victor from Baltimore, with his kids, Chelsea and Nick; and Claire’s sister Ramona, from New York City. There were a few friends here, besides.

It made for a full table at Wigilia, the traditional Polish Christmas Eve vigil supper from Claire’s family tradition, which we somehow squeeze in between the 7:00 and 11:00 pm Christmas Eve services. (Here’s a picture of Claire spreading some straw on the dining-room table, assisted by Murphy the cat – the straw goes under the tablecloth, and is symbolic of the straw of the manger.)

A few days before the holiday, we had about 30 members of the Youth Connection group here for pizza and snacks, after their annual Christmas caroling expedition to homebound and nursing-home folks.

As for the Christmas Eve services, we had the usual children’s service at 4:00, followed by Candlelight Services of Lessons and Carols at 7:00 and 11:00. My sermon, “A Hasty Christmas,” focused on that line from Luke’s Gospel that describes how the shepherds “went with haste” to Bethlehem.

It’s a perfectly ordinary phrase, but to me it seems to offer a basis for reflecting on how many of us tend to approach the holiday. There are two kinds of haste: the stressful kind that pushes you, and the wondrous kind that pulls you. While the shepherds may have had good reason to fear the angels (who, in good biblical tradition, were anything but gentle emissaries of sweetness and light), I like to think they rushed down off that hillside because of the wonder of Word-made-flesh that was apparent in that humble stable.

From the sermon:

“There is another kind of haste, besides the sort that pushes us. There’s also the haste that pulls us. It’s the same sort of haste grandparents feel, as they’re waiting in an airport lounge to go visit their new grandchild for the first time. It’s the sort of haste a young man feels, when he’s off to pick up that special young lady to take to the prom. It’s the sort of haste that says, ‘Come on, let’s go – every minute we delay is a minute we won’t be there!’

It’s the sort of haste we’ve all come to know, when Christmas is at its very best. It’s not the tyranny of the to-do list, but the joy of a churchful of people singing carols; the glow of the candlelight, passed from hand to hand during ‘Silent Night’; the swell of the organ, as we roll into that first stanza of ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful.’ It’s the sort of haste that beckons us onward, that wins cold hearts over, that pulls us out of the December doldrums and sets us gently down into a holy place, a place of light and love and faith.”

One of my growing edges, in these days of watch-and-wait monitoring of my lymphoma, has to do with maintaining the right kind of haste in my life. Better to be pulled than pushed. Better to be motivated by wonder than by worry.

It's a tough balance to maintain – but I’m working on it.

March 23, 2008 - Encrypted with Christ

For my Easter sermon this morning, I decide to go with a slightly unconventional choice. Rather than basing it on the Gospel lesson (as most worshipers expect), I decide to speak on the Epistle – which, today, is Colossians 3:1-4.

The line that’s grabbed my attention is v. 3: “...for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” It’s an odd statement: for, if the greeting is, “you have died,” then who could the listener possibly be? If it’s a true statement, then what ears could hear it?

Maybe only those who reside in the cemetery. In that place, truer words were never spoken. Yet, like the philosopher’s famous tree that falls in the forest where no one’s around to hear, if we went and proclaimed that message among the gravestones, would we really having a conversation?

The “Aha!” moment, for me, in writing this sermon, was the realization that the Greek word for “hidden” is krypto. It’s a word we know from “cryptology,” “cryptogram,” “cryptic.” That means we could translate the scripture text very literally indeed, so it would read, “your life is encrypted with Christ in God.”

That got me thinking about the Rosetta Stone, probably the most famous code-breaking device of all time. That slab of black, granite-like stone – with three parallel inscriptions, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, another ancient Egyptian tongue called Demotic and classical Greek – became the cryptographic key for unraveling the secrets of hieroglyphics. Up to that point, no one in the world remembered how to read hieroglyphics. The translator, Jean-François Champollion, fulfilled the herculean task of using the stone to break the code. Once he had done so, all other translations of hieroglyphics became child’s play (relatively speaking).

There’s much that is mysterious about human life – and, human death as well. What happens after we die? No one can say for sure – apart from certain, highly poetic passages of scripture that have provided much of the imagery we tend to associate with heaven (clouds, choristers, pearly gates and the like). While a few Christians take such passages literally, most understand them metaphorically. The true heaven is likely to be a bigger reality than earthbound human minds can comprehend.

The theologian Douglas John Hall once admitted that he’s mystified by the resurrection, as well. “I don’t claim to understand it,” he wrote in one of his books, “but I do stand under it.” (You don’t need to understand it; just stand under it – I like that.)

It seems to me, I tell the Easter crowd, that we can look on the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the cryptographic key that enables us to plumb such mysteries (at least, up to a point). The resurrection is our Rosetta Stone. We can’t fully understand the concept, but we can utilize it as a sort of interpretative lens, through which we can view all of life, as well as death.

There is much that is dark and mysterious about cancer, as well. Why do some get the disease, and not others? Why do some have a harder time with it, and others manage to muddle through with apparent ease? How ought we to cope with debilitating side effects, not to mention the sheer emotional weight of carrying such a health burden, over time?

The answers to such questions, it seems to me, are hinted at in Jesus’ resurrection. It’s a story that’s been filtered through centuries of retelling. The only way to grasp it is to accept the biblical witness, in faith.

There are multiple biblical witnesses, of course – and some of them disagree with one another. Does it detract from the authority of the Bible to have four separate Easter stories – some of them contradicting the others?

Not if the resurrection is real.

If the resurrection were not real – if someone had made the story up – you'd expect there would be just one account, perfectly structured and beautifully narrated. What we have instead are these four versions: each one flawed, each one compelling in its own way. Each one tells us something worth knowing, but each one also leaves us feeling hungry for more.

Growing into a serviceable understanding of the resurrection is the journey of a lifetime. For those of us with cancer, who may be faced with the reality of a shorter lifespan, there’s no time like the present for claiming this ancient proclamation for our own.

The Lord is risen – risen indeed!

March 21, 2008 - For Whom the Bell Tolls

Today is Good Friday. The tradition in our community is for several of the churches to come together for an ecumenical worship service. The service, which lasts from noon till 3 p.m., includes sermons and musical contributions by a number of different people. Worshipers come and go within that time period, as they are able. This year, our church is playing host.

Some years I’m one of the preachers, but this time around, the only thing I have to do is offer some words of welcome at the beginning and generally hang around the fringes, giving a nod to each of my colleagues when it’s time for them to step up to the chancel and deliver their message.

The service ends with “The Tolling of the Bell” – a note of solemnity that has a distinctly old-fashioned quality to it. Because I haven’t arranged ahead of time for anyone else to do this, I decide to pull on the rope myself.

OK, I’ll admit it. I could have delegated this small task, but didn’t. For some odd reason, I like to ring the bell. There’s something earthy and satisfying about grasping hold of the rope, placing each of my hands just above the strategically-placed knots, and giving it just the right sort of sharp tug, evoking a resounding “bong” from high overhead.

Thirty-three times I pull on that rope: one tug for each year of Jesus’ life on earth. In between each sounding of the bell, I pause for a second or two. During those intervals, I can hear, through a nearby stained-glass window, traffic noise coming from the street outside.

Here in the church, we’ve just finished three hours of scripture readings, sermons and achingly beautiful music, that together tell the story of Jesus’ passion and death on the cross. The pace is slow: it reminds me of the sort of suspension of time that takes place in a hospital room, with a family gathered around their loved one, waiting for death to bring blessed release. Outside, there are people going about their daily lives, oblivious to the drama taking place within these walls.

I find myself wondering what those people in the street outside are thinking, as they hear the tolling of the bell. Thirty-three slow and steady soundings of a church bell takes a rather long time. It goes on for two or three minutes, at least. In an earlier era of our history, when church bells were used to signal fires, national emergencies and the like, not to mention ecclesiastical observances, the whole town would have stopped whatever they were doing to ponder the import of that echoing sound. Then again, in that earlier era – when the church played a bigger role in civic life – most people wouldn’t have wondered what all the bell-ringing was all about. Good Friday, three o’clock – they would have just known, without having to ask.

Today, though – who can say? Why, there are even some stores that offer Good Friday Sales – as though any day off work and school is a prime opportunity to pull out the plastic and bring home the bacon.

The cancer community’s like that, too, in a way. We whose lives have been touched by this disease hear the distant tolling of a bell, resounding through our consciousness. Outside, life goes on, oblivious. Inside, we look at one another, and know.

January 2, 2008 - Mileposts

Here we are, on the day after New Year’s. I spent New Year’s Eve at home with family – though I won’t say it was one of those proverbial quiet evenings at home. We had quite a houseful this year. Between Ania (and friends) back from college, and some of my in-laws up from Baltimore, we had a crowd. After an evening of hors d-oeuvres and board games, we stood around the TV screen, watching the Times Square ball drop. Then, the teenagers and young adults burst out onto the front porch with kitchen pot lids and spoons, and pretty much woke up the neighborhood (if, in fact, anyone was actually sleeping). Ah, youth!

The passage of time from New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Day is one of those non-events. The only people who feel any different on January 1st, as opposed to December 31st, are those who spent a little too much time in their cups the evening before. Otherwise, there’s nothing different about New Year’s. It’s a day like any other.

It seems important for us homo sapiens, though, to mark the passage of time with milestones like these, now and again. As contrived as events like the Times Square festivities are, they seem weighty with cosmic significance. The year 2007 will never come again. Hail and farewell.

For me, it’s hail and farewell to my year of relapse. I’m still in relapse, technically, but with the cancerous lymph nodes presenting themselves as stable, the worry of late summer has pretty much sputtered out, ending not with a bang, but a whimper. Maybe the cancer will crank up and do something again in 2008, but then again, maybe it won’t. The only certainty about 2008, it seems, is that the present ambiguity will likely continue for a while.

I’m going to have to learn to live with it. I figure I can, but it will take some doing. I learned to live with a cancer diagnosis, after all, and I learned to undergo chemotherapy. Surely, I can figure out how to live a life in which the only certainty is uncertainty.

There are others who live this way, of course – due to different sorts of health concerns, or a host of other reasons. It still feels a little new to me, that’s all. But, the newness is wearing off fast.

The words of an Irish toast seem especially appropriate:

“As we start the New Year,
Let’s get down on our knees
to thank God we’re on our feet.”

I’ll drink to that.

December 24, 2007 - The Widening of Time

I’m taking a break from writing my Christmas Eve sermon to add a few words here, about the holiday and about how I’m doing.

I just read an online update from Walt Wangerin, a Lutheran pastor and novelist who, like me, is dealing with cancer. (I previously mentioned Walt in my Februrary 12, 2007 entry). Also like me, Walt has been engaged in a hard, uphill struggle, but has now emerged onto a sort of plateau. He has gone from thinking death was near to realizing he will likely live quite a while longer.

Back on August 10th, when he was still feeling sick, Walt wrote these words:

“Time used to tumble for me. Like the mountain stream that breaks at the big rocks, spouts and plunges at speed from crags to canyons. Time was narrow and very fast.

Now Time has slowed to a stately progression. I measure it in day/feet – feet per day. For there are fewer days left to me and heavier feet for the passage. Slowth: it requires enormous patience. Slowth: a damming of anxiety. The consequence of a body restrained, slower than an infant's crawl. My motion by disease reduced to the child's eternal wait for good things far away.

On the other hand, slowth's no trouble at all. Where once Time tumbled, now Time has widened. Like the river that covers a broad plain. And the patience I thought was severity has become my benefaction.

I don't look forward so much any more, dashing to grasp the future. I look left and right. I've the Time, you see, to scrutinize all that is. And what is companions me.”

As of his most recent update (November 26th), Walt is in a very different place. Like me, he’s had reports from his doctor that indicates the cancer has not progressed further. Consequently, he’s now got a different perspective on time:

“...my more earthly anticipations are turning toward living as well, yes, yes, yes – and with them come back again the old responsibilities little and large, personal and public; come back anxieties over things unfinished, the sense of the terrible rush of time eating away my days, my plans, my hopes of completing this thing and that.”

I can attest, from my experience, that it’s a strange thing to return to ordinary life, after some time spent dealing with life-threatening illness. I feel, at times, like I can’t trust good news to be good. After spending a long time waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s hard to avoid keeping an ear out for it.

Yet, as Walt observes, there are certain advantages that come from the perspective offered by the valley of the shadow of death:

“And there at the threshold of eternity my casual sins, the bitterness certain people have conceived and still hold against me, the unresolved, unresolvable troubles lingering in relationships – all these diminished. The lesser the time, the less pressing these. What a lightness of spirit such a shuffling off afforded me. How sweetly my preparations for death consumed me. How elemental, how simple the holy focus of my attentions. And I knew no fears that I might still wound my friends or aggravate my family. We were at peace. I didn’t have time to destroy that. Dying made me a very good man. And mortal sickness drew both patience and compassion, mercy and love from all those so dear to me.”

I’m sitting at the computer keyboard, listening to glorious music on the radio from the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge. There’s a timelessness to this beloved service: the soaring voices of the choirboys, the mellifluous, English-accented readings from the King James Version of the Bible, the beloved carols and anthems. It’s Christmas coming round once again: the same, year after year.

But, it’s also different. Two years ago, my Christmas was swathed in anxiety, as I was living into the reality of my diagnosis. Last Christmas, I took comfort in the fact that I was in remission. Now, I’m no longer in remission, but am on a similar sort of plateau to the one Walt now occupies. I could be here a very long time before undergoing further treatment, or perhaps it will be sooner. Only God knows.

The only thing to do is, as Walt says, to look for those places in life where Time widens, and attention is sharply focused on the things that make for peace.

Christmas can be such a time. As the organ music swells and choirboys sing on, I realize that.

A joyous Christmas to you!

November 24, 2007 - Tree Farm

This afternoon, we pile into the car with various family members and drive to Conover’s Christmas Tree Farm in Wall Township, to pick out our tree for this year. Besides Claire and myself, it’s Ania (visiting from California for the Thanksgiving holiday); Claire’s brother Victor and his two kids, Chelsea and Nick; and our niece, Elizabeth, who lives with us.

We’re not going to bring a tree home today. We’ll wait till it’s closer to Christmas. By going out now, though, we can tag ourselves a good one, and know it will be ready for us as the holiday grows closer.

Eventually, our tree will sit off to one side of the Manse living room, where it will be ready for the youth-group Christmas carolers to sit around, when they return for hot chocolate after singing for some of our church’s homebound members. It will be the centerpiece of our family Christmas celebration too, of course.

It’s an ideal day – sunny, not too cold. We walk up and down amongst the rows of trees, searching out the ones that still display the two-part paper tags indicating they’re unclaimed. After a good bit of walking, we call everyone together for a consultation, settle on a tree that seems tall enough and full enough, then tear off the lower portion of the tag.

It’s interesting to observe the differing sizes of trees. Here and there you can see where the farmers planted a row of 6 or 8 trees of one particular type, that are of similar heights. Other places, you can see where a tree has been cut down in the past year or two, and has been replaced with a seedling.

This is not a business for people who thrive on instant gratification. To operate a Christmas tree farm, you’ve definitely got to take the long-term view. Evergreens are comparatively fast-growing trees, but still it takes 6 or 8 years before they grow big enough to grace someone’s living room. Most other agricultural operations have an annual harvest. In the Christmas-tree business, you plant your seedlings, then you watch and wait.

I’m learning to take a big-picture view with my cancer treatment, as well. My indolent cancer cells are growing, but slowly (or perhaps, with the “stable” results from my last CT scan, they’ve plateaued for a little while). There’s a part of me that wishes for a swifter resolution, in the form of some immediate treatment, but that’s not going to happen. Beating this thing is a long-term proposition. Like tree farmers, we’ve got to think in terms of years.

For today, though, it’s a nice outing with the family. A little normalcy. Life is good.

December 22, 2006 - Thoughts Beside the Christmas Tree

Well, it took me a while to hang those Christmas lights. I’ve been having a little difficulty staying on task, these days. But it got done, eventually – just an hour or so before our church youth group arrived for their annual, post-caroling Christmas party.

We finally did get our Christmas tree, too – again, just long enough before the carolers arrived to get the ornaments hung. The local Christmas tree lots were out of the good stuff, by the time we got there, so we drove the extra distance to a tree farm. We happened upon the right candidate just before it got too dark to see – a huge white pine (a kind we’ve never had before). It fills up the living room rather nicely – and, being recently cut, it’s not likely to lose its needles any time soon.

These days before Christmas this year are busy, and full. I can’t help thinking back, though, to last year, when Christmas was an altogether different sort of holiday for us.

My cancer diagnosis was only a couple of weeks old. I can remember numbly going through the holiday motions – getting a tree, decorating it, hosting the annual Youth Connection party – but I honestly can’t recall what I was thinking, through most of that time. I was a jumble of emotions, having just “come out” to the family and the congregation as a cancer patient. I can remember wondering, glumly, if that would be my last Christmas – maudlin, maudlin! – though those are sort of thoughts that do bubble up, when the diagnosis is still new.

This year is entirely different. The little family rituals we go through, in these pre-Christmas days, are comforting rather than disturbing. Last year, I thought I might be dying. This year, I know I’m living with cancer.

And that’s OK.