February 26, 2007 - Trouble Enough

I’ve been encouraged to learn, in recent days, about a new cancer-related service organization that will soon be opening a facility in our area. The Wellness Community is a national organization that provides supportive services to cancer survivors and their families. The new facility, The Diney-Goldsmith Center, operated by The Wellness Community of the Northern Jersey Shore, will open in Eatontown on April 1, 2007.

I’ve known about The Wellness Community (the national organization, anyway) for some time. I think I first read about it in comedian Gilda Radner’s cancer memoir, It’s Always Something. Gilda found a support system there, as she was coping with her ovarian cancer. The Wellness Community must have been a very significant place for her, because, at her death, her family asked that memorial contributions be made to the organization.

The local chapter’s newsletter speaks of “3,500 square feet of space ample enough for multiple support groups, light exercise, mind/body programs, educational workshops, nutrition and cooking demonstrations, social events and more.” These services will all be provided free of charge.

Visiting their website today, I find some material that applies to my particular situation, as a lymphoma patient in remission:

“Thanks to improvements in early diagnosis and treatment, some forms of lymphoma have become more of a chronic illness for some people. That means that perhaps you might have recurrent cycles of disease, treatment, then recovery. Relapse may occur in all types of lymphoma. A lot of people have shared that the fear of recurrence seems overwhelming, especially when treatment ends. The challenge is learning to live in the moment, balancing the fear of recurrence with the desire to enjoy health and wellness.”

“Relapse” is, indeed, the dreaded word for people like me. My next PET and CT scans are scheduled for a week from now. It’s not that I’m spending a lot of time actively thinking about those scans – but, the awareness is always there, in the background, a sort of low-level emotional noise. When I was initially diagnosed, I was not aware of any symptoms. The disease crept up silently, and ambushed me from behind. I suppose that, should I ever have a recurrence, it could very well happen again in just that way: with no warning.

I’m feeling pretty good these days, physically. I’ve been working out at a local health club, the Atlantic Club, and find that it’s helping my energy level and general sense of well-being. Every once in a while, I reach up to the spot on my upper chest, just below the right shoulder, and feel the little knot under the skin. It’s my implanted port, the only physical reminder I still have of my cancer treatment.

Yet, the disease is still with me, and will continue to be with me, even if the scans come out clean. It’s the nature of cancer, and the reason why facilities like The Wellness Community, and the Cancer Concern Center here in Point Pleasant Beach, are necessary.

“The challenge,” says the write-up on The Wellness Community website, “is learning to live in the moment.” Oh, yeah. That about sums it up. We cancer survivors all too easily live in the past, remembering our past struggles, or in the future, dreading that which could (but may not, in fact) be. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has a little something to say about that:

“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:34)

The novelist, Anne Lamott, has that same sort of thought on her mind, as she recalls:

“Some mornings I wake up and I instantly feel discouraged by the world and my government and by my own worried mind. It's like my brain has already been up for awhile, sitting on the bed waiting for me to wake up. It’s already had coffee, and has some serious concerns about how far behind we are already. So I always pray, first thing upon awakening, very simple prayers like the one [my son] Sam prayed years ago when his head got caught in the slats of a chair: ‘I need help with me,’ he whispered…. I know that most of the time, for me, the only real problem is, that left to my own devices, I am on my own mind almost all the time.” ("Every Sandwich," Salon.com)

Let’s hear it for getting ourselves off our own minds! Today’s trouble is surely enough, without borrowing some from tomorrow.

February 12, 2007 - More Than Conquerors

Today, I read an e-mail from my friend, Bill, who sends me a link to some stuff Walter Wangerin has been publishing online. I’ve admired Walt’s work for some time, now. He’s a Lutheran college professor, novelist and preacher, who’s got a wonderful way with words.

What I learn, after visiting his website, is that Walt and I have something in common: cancer. His, too, is lodged in his lymph nodes, though it didn’t start out there. It’s lung cancer, that’s metastasized to several other parts of his body. He started treatments about the same time I did – both chemo and radiation – and his road has been harder than mine.

Walt’s written a series of letters to friends and family members, describing his ordeal. They’re posted online. This isn’t highly polished prose. He wrote some of them in the chemo suite, while hooked up to the I.V.

In his most recent installment (December 13, 2006), Walt reflects on the violent imagery many people use to describe cancer treatment. For a variety of reasons, that imagery makes him uneasy:

“I have never construed my cancer as my enemy. No, I do not judge others who do (thoughtfully) choose it, for whom ‘fighting’ may be a helpful stance and attitude. On the other hand I am critical of the media when, without genuine thought or analysis, it routinely declares in its death notices, that so-and-so died ‘after a long battle with cancer.’ Why does it have to be a ‘battle’? What: are folks with cancer good fighters if they win? Bad fighters, failing knights, if they lose? Can they be heroic only in triumph? It really isn't an issue of defeat or victory. We are all going to die: what a terrible, terribly total annihilation such language must make of our slaughters individual and wholesale, of our universal losses to sickness, disease and death.”

Walt’s musings put me in mind of some words I frequently use in my ministry, from chapter 8 of Romans. It’s one of the most beloved of all scripture passages, in which Paul triumphantly proclaims: “...neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38b-39). I read those words at nearly every funeral I conduct. I figure it’s a good thing to remind grieving people that, in the providence of God, love goes on.

Yet, just a few verses earlier, as Paul’s cranking up to deliver his soul-stirring theological riff, he blurts out a jarring verse, one that seems to contradict his otherwise triumphant language:

“As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered’” (v. 36.)

Coming, as it does, between “If God is for us, who is against us?” and “Nothing can separate us from the love of God,” the image of sheep waddling up the ramp into the slaughterhouse seems just a wee bit incongruous. Where’s the comfort in that?

Much as I hate to cut-and-paste the scriptures, for many years I used to skip over that verse at funerals. “Why inflict such graphic imagery on grieving people?” I used to reason.

I don’t skip over it anymore. The bereaved don’t need the easy certainties of feelgood religion. They already know the feeling of a sharpened knife to the neck. Paul didn’t intend those thrilling words about God’s invincible love for those whose lives are placid and calm, who are winning life’s battles. It’s for those who fear they’re losing, and worry that the time of slaughter is drawing near.

Walt Wangerin suggests that, rather than focusing on winning “battles with cancer,” we ought to talk, instead, about how cancer survivors find the courage to hold their heads high as they endure the disease, and even face death:

“Why not use the imagery that acknowledges how one experiences dying? – how one behaves in the face of death? – what one has to offer those who stand by in love and relationship?... Before sciences and the medical profession began (indirectly) to persuade us that cures could be possible for every disease we might diagnose, describe, explain and name; before commercials began to establish it as a principle that each affliction identified also had an antidote; before our society made ‘feeling good’ an individual human right (setting at enmity anything that made us feel bad) we did not have so self-centered, so childish, so simplistic, so unavailing and purposeless a frame of reference for the experience of sickness-unto-death.... Sickness is not an enemy. It is a rooster's crow, calling me to the truth of myself and to the precise condition of my relationships – God, society, nature.”

We live with cancer. After a while, it becomes like a member of our family (a meddlesome interloper, to be sure, but a member of the family nonetheless):

“For my own part, I recognize cancer cells as parts of me (of Walt, the body-soul continuum), tissue which is part of all my tissue – even as my children are a parts of our family (without whom the family itself would be something else). They (whether cells or kids) become selfish, demanding more of the resources of the family (of the body) than other members can receive. My children are not my enemy. And my diseases, far from acting the foe, are profound initiators of spiritual clarity, devout meditation, a faithful (a peaceful!) seeking after God, praying, shaping thanksgivings for Jesus’s re-building of the relationship between God the Father and me.”

Walt’s right – and so is Paul. Whether we win the cancer battle, or whether we lose, we are so very much more than conquerors.

February 11, 2007 - Small

I’ve been thinking about the vastness of the universe. Today, I preached about it. It’s Evolution Sunday, a day when some of us preachers are trying to help our people understand that religion and modern science are not adversaries, but rather two different ways of describing truth. Here’s some of what I said:

“I remember, when our kids were in grade school, helping them with the obligatory model-of-the-solar-system science project. I can vividly remember helping our son Ben make his model of the solar system. We took a cardboard box, and cut out one of its sides. Then, we covered the inside with black construction paper. Styrofoam balls came next, in various sizes. We hung them from the top of our universe-box with black thread. In the end, what we had was the nine planets (we still had nine, back then), which Ben colored with magic markers, to approximate the colors he saw in his science book.

The only problem is, our model was not to scale. It couldn't possibly be to scale: because we'd have needed a box so big, we couldn't have gotten it into the car, let alone carried it into the school building.

Science writer Bill Bryson describes it this way. Imagine the earth as a pea. Jupiter would be a thousand feet away. Pluto (that planet that, as of last year, is no longer a planet) would be a mile and a half – but Pluto is so small, compared to the size of the pea-sized earth, you'd never even see it. At that distance, it would be like the size of a bacterium. [Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (New York: Broadway Books, 2003), p. 24.]

And that's just the solar system. Venture out beyond Pluto, into the realm of the stars, and the distances become unimaginably vast. One writer has described it this way.

Imagine that each star in the known universe is represented by a grain of sand. How many stars are there in the Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live? Enough to fill a large wheelbarrow. That's 100 billion grains - 100 billion stars are out there, each one potentially capable of having planets circling it.

Now, imagine that you took a thimble, and dipped into that pile of sand in the wheelbarrow. Your thimble would scoop out at least 10,000 grains of sand. That's more than enough to account for all the stars you and I can see from the earth, if we stand outside on a clear, dark summer night and gaze up at the heavens.

OK, so the wheelbarrowful is the Milky Way, and the thimbleful is the stars we can actually see with the naked eye. How many stars are there in the entire universe?

To answer that question, we have to think of a freight train, pulling great, big hopper cars full of sand. Now, if a wheelbarrow represents the Milky Way, then each hopper car holds enough sand to represent hundreds of galaxies like our own. Imagine that the train cars begin to pass us, one by one, at the usual speed of a freight train. We're sitting in a car at the railroad crossing, waiting for the train to pass before we can drive across. How long will be sit there, counting railway cars, before we finally see the caboose?

Three years. Three years of sitting and counting hopper cars – each one of those cars containing hundreds of Milky Way galaxies!” [Based on Terence Dickenson and Jack Newton, Splendors of the Universe, Firefly books, 1997; cited by Ralph Milton in the Rumors e-newsletter, June1999.]

My journey with cancer has been a journey of faith, all along. I can’t claim to have had any blinding revelations, any burning-bush moments. Yet, from the day of my diagnosis until now, I’ve quietly sensed that God has been present, through it all.

I haven’t asked for, nor expected, any special favors from the Almighty. I’ve prayed for healing, and welcomed the healing prayers of others, but I’ve never felt entitled to it – not more than any other person, anyway (no, ordination doesn’t have its privileges, not in that way).

Yet, through it all, I’ve felt the silent nearness of God. And that’s been enough.

I suppose I should feel lucky. I haven’t had the experience of feeling abandoned, nor have I become fixated on the “why” question: on the unfairness of getting lymphoma at age 49.

Given the vastness of the universe, the psalmist’s wondering words make sense. I’ve cited them before, in an earlier journal entry:

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?”
- Psalm 8:3-4

What are we, indeed?

February 7, 2007 - A Glimpse of the Grail

Today I read a news article about a breakthrough in the field of cancer research. It seems researchers at the University of Michigan have, for the first time, identified stem cells that lead to the growth of pancreatic cancer tumors. This is very good news, because it gives pharmaceutical-company researchers a target to aim for, as they seek new medicines to block the advance of this deadly disease.

I remember Dr. Lerner telling me, as he first diagnosed my cancer, that if – hypothetically speaking – I could choose which form of cancer to have, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma would be one of the leading choices. That’s because modern medical science offers several effective treatment options. Research breakthroughs in the past ten or twenty years are largely responsible for this remarkable progress.

If that’s true, then pancreatic cancer is one of the worst forms of the disease to have. When medical tests reveal malignant pancreatic cells, doctors have little recourse other than to dispense the ominous advice, “It’s time to get your affairs in order.” Often, these patients’ lives will be measured in weeks, not months. The article about the University of Michigan breakthrough provides these grim statistics:

“About 33,700 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year, and about 32,300 will die from it. Five year survival rates are a dismal 3 percent. The disease is difficult to detect early and is often diagnosed at advanced stages. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of patients can benefit from surgery.”

A pancreatic cancer diagnosis is a virtual death sentence, with no appeal. Yet, now, for the first time, there’s some hope on the horizon. An effective drug is still years off – sadly, not soon enough for those being diagnosed today – but it surely will come, eventually.

I know a person who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He’s still alive today – not because his disease was cured, but because he was misdiagnosed. In the space of a week or two, he went on the emotional roller-coaster ride to end all emotional roller-coaster rides, as subsequent tests revealed the doctors’ mistake.

We live in remarkable times. “Finding a cure for cancer” remains the holy grail of medical research – and, like the holy grail of ancient legend, it may be just as elusive. Yet, as today’s medical knights-errant ride off in search of their shining prize, they’re discovering all sorts of lesser cures along the way. It’s even possible – as some researchers have speculated – that there may be no single disease called, simply, “cancer.” The word may refer to a large, loose-knit family of disorders that display some common characteristics, but which won't all respond to a single treatment. If that’s true, then victory will ultimately be achieved through the cumulative weight of many small breakthroughs, rather than a single, paradigm-busting discovery.

Either way, the University of Michigan report is good news. For patients with every form of cancer, this sort of thing gives us hope.

January 31, 2007 - Feet of Clay

One of the strange and uncomfortable aspects of being a pastor with cancer is the reversal of roles. Congregations look to their ministers to be strong, to be there for them in all circumstances, to present the sort of reliable public image pastoral-care professors describe as a “non-anxious presence.” Yet, when we fall sick, our human frailty is suddenly out there, for all to see.

That’s not a bad thing. I’d be the last one to pretend to any sort of invincibility. Some congregants may be eager to put their preachers on a pedestal, but that’s certainly not where we belong.

Most ministers have had the experience of hearing the parents of some young child confide, with a sheepish grin, that their son or daughter actually thinks we’re God (or, at least, Jesus). Parents shouldn’t be dumbfounded when their children come up with such an idea. After all, they teach their kids the church is God’s house, don’t they? When they bring them there, what do the children see? They see a person standing up front, lifted high, set apart from the rest of the people. This person is wearing strange garments and speaks with a booming voice (assisted by a microphone, though the kids don’t know that). Deeper than that, many children are highly intuitive. They pick up on the psychological dynamic, in their family system, known as “projection.” Knowing that their parents revere God, they transfer – or project – that authority onto us, the people who have the most prominent role in church.

It’s not only young children who do this. Some adult church members, consciously or unconsciously, strive mightily to do the same to their ministers. Sometimes, in a limited way, this can be in service to the Gospel – as people use us as a sort of transitional stepping-stone on the way to God, the only true object of devotion. At other times, it can verge on the pathological. A few people place such unreasonable expectations on their ministers, that when those hopes are inevitably dashed, they either lash out against us or depart for another church (where, as often as not, they begin the projection-and-disappointment cycle all over again).

Cancer has exposed my own feet of clay, for all to see. It’s a fascinating phrase, “feet of clay.” It comes from a little-known biblical reference, Daniel 2:31-40, in which the prophet interprets a dream of King Nebuchadnezzar. It’s a dream about a monumental royal statue, coated in precious metals and iron, but with feet of clay. A great stone strikes the feet of clay, which causes the statue itself to collapse. Daniel, of course, interprets this vision as a bad omen for the future of the Babylonian king’s dynasty.

When we say a person has “feet of clay,” we mean he or she is only human. Clay, according to the Genesis creation story, is the material out of which God fashioned the first humans. African-American poet James Weldon Johnson envisions that scene in these powerful words from his poem, The Creation:

“Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;
Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul...”

We are clay: all of us, ministers and laypeople alike. But we also have within us the breath of the Spirit. It’s but one more lesson cancer teaches.

January 24, 2007 - Rock Star?

My journey, as a cancer patient, has taken me to places I never imagined I’d ever visit. Claire and I have just returned from what may be - for people like us, anyway - the most unlikely destination of all: Las Vegas.

Our friend, Dana – the member of our church who organized the local Lymphomathon walk last Spring – is a sales representative for Genentech, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Rituxan. When her company was looking for the names of patients who have benefitted from Genentech’s products to address their national sales meeting, Dana submitted my name. I knew nothing of this until I received an e-mail from her, telling me I’d soon be receiving an invitation, and that she hoped I'd accept.

The company paid for all the necessities: our flights, our meals and a couple of nights at the posh Venetian Hotel (where the meetings took place). It was a short stay, with precious little free time, but Claire and I decided to blow my honorarium on a couple of shows: Phantom of the Opera one night, and a Cirque-du-Soleil-type show called La Rève on the other. Both were fabulous.

What was even more interesting was the opportunity to simply absorb the Las Vegas ambience: “Disneyland for adults,” somebody called it. The only real industry out there, it seems, is entertainment. It’s staggering to imagine the vast amounts of money exchanged every day in those huge hotels, for the sole purpose of amusement. I’m not talking just about the gambling casinos, either, nor the notorious “showgirl” lounge acts of the city’s bad old days. Vegas has reinvented itself in recent years, going upscale, becoming a sort of Broadway of the West.

But, I digress. My speaking assignment was among the shortest I’ve ever had: fifteen seconds before a gathering of 2,000 or so Genentech staffers, followed by a two-minute talk to a “breakout group” of 800 salespeople who work specifically with the company’s oncology drugs.

“You’re going to feel like a rock star!” gushed Brenda, the consultant Genentech had hired to coach our little group of twelve patients on our presentations. Brenda’s company had arranged for photographers to snap portraits of each of us ahead of time, and these images became part of a video montage projected on large, stadium-style screens, as the nominators told their colleagues a few things about each one of us. Then, the booming voice of an offstage announcer informed the crowd that each of the people whose stories they’d just heard were actually present in the room. Upbeat rock music started pouring out of the speakers. Spotlights tracked each one of us, as we strode down various aisles, to take our prearranged places on the circular stage.

It was very Vegas – although I expect similar, razzle-dazzle entertainment values are typical of large corporate sales meetings, wherever they take place. I didn’t mind, because – in giving us patients our "rock star" moment – the company’s senior management was sending their salespeople an important message: that they want their corporate culture to remain strongly patient-focused.

Later, in the breakout group, four of us cancer survivors sat on TV-talk-show-type chairs, as a senior executive invited us to share our stories. As we spoke, our images played on the overhead screens: a very public display, as we shared highly personal experiences of diagnosis, treatment and the ways life goes on - a rich mélange of faith, hope and love.

I thanked this small army of salespeople for the indirect role they play in delivering life-saving medicines to patients like me. These folks, of course, are the earnest and well-turned-out road warriors, whom we patients see hurrying through our doctors’ waiting rooms, bearing updates on the latest products and treatment protocols. I encouraged them, on their next trek through a waiting room, to let their eyes linger for a moment on the faces of the people sitting there. Each one displays a story. Each one reflects fears for the present, and hopes for the future. We are the reason they do what they do.

January 17, 2007 - Faith Heals...Online, or Anywhere Else

From time to time, I run across articles that speak of the impact of religious faith on healing. While I’ve yet to see a scientific study on this slippery subject that’s completely convincing, there’s a whole lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests that religious faith is good for our health.

Today, I come upon another one of these: an online news bulletin from iVillage Total Health, a medical information service, that summarizes a recent University of Wisconsin study. The results from this study were published in the February issue of the journal, Psycho-Oncology.

What these researchers did was to examine a group of breast-cancer patients who have been in touch with each other through online support groups. They first gave the women questionnaires, designed to assess their emotional state – both at the beginning of the study and at its conclusion. Then, they analyzed the verbal, e-mail responses of these women over a certain period of time, looking for certain religious words: “holy,” “pray,” “God,” “worship” and the like.

The researchers discovered that “women who used a higher percentage of religious words had lower levels of negative emotions. They demonstrated higher levels of self-efficacy and functional well-being, even after controlling for the pre-program religious belief levels. The participants appeared to use a number of different ways to cope with their illness. These included placing trust in God and finding blessings in their lives. Patients also expressed a belief in the afterlife resulting in a lower fear of death.”


So, it seems faith and healing are intimately related. Just about any pastor – one who’s visited a lot of hospital patients, anyway – could have told the researchers that.

They just had to find out for themselves, that’s all.

January 16, 2007 - The Homiletical Feast

I’m writing these words in Bradenton Beach, Florida, where I’m spending a few days with a group of ministerial colleagues from around the country. We call ourselves The Homiletical Feast. Our official reason for being here is to present papers to one another on how to preach from various Bible passages listed in the Revised Common Lectionary (a three-year calendar of Sunday-morning scripture readings that many preachers use as a guide). Some years, we invite a seminary professor to join our discussion. Other years, we go it alone. This is one of those “other years.” We don’t mind. We’ve come to value each other’s insights so much, that we often learn as much from each other as from the hired consultant.

The biblical and homiletical work (“homiletical” means “preaching”) is what attracted most of us to this group, in the first place. Yet, after not so many years of pursuing this discipline, most of us would agree that the real reason we come – what keeps us returning year after year, anyway – is the fact that this is also a support group.

In our first meeting, each year, we sit around the conference-room tables, lay out our laptops and notepads, and prepare to begin our work of biblical exegesis. Every year, without fail, we end that first session with the laptops still closed and the pens still capped, having spent the whole time bringing each other up to date on our lives and ministries. That opening session is, in many ways, the best part of the week.

Most people outside the trade don’t realize that parish ministry is a high-stress occupation. The old joke is that we ministers have it easy: we only work for one hour a week (well, maybe two, if it’s a big church). In fact – as any one of a whole raft of recent, gloomy books will bear witness – mainline Protestant churches are experiencing unprecedented pressures in America’s rapidly-changing culture. Often, the person who feels these pressures most intensely and most personally is the pastor. There’s a growing consumer mindset, that leads people to expect their church to cater to their every personal whim. “Have it your way,” goes the old, fast-food jingle. Church members hear that drumbeat six days a week, and on the seventh, they come to expect their church to hold the pickles, too. (So much for “Take up your cross, and follow me”...)

Those of us who have been out of seminary more than twenty years or so (as I have) can page through our old student photo directories and marvel at how few of us are still at it. Some of our classmates have simply drifted away from the pastorate, entering specialized counseling or teaching ministries, or leaving the church altogether. Others – having been chewed up, emotionally and spiritually, by nasty church fights – have lost the heart for this work. A few others – only a few, though the newspapers would have us believe otherwise – have gone over to the dark side, falling into illegal or immoral conduct. The dozen or so of us sitting around this table in a Florida hotel are all survivors - and more than survivors. We draw strength from each other, colleagues whom we trust and respect.

I haven’t been to the Homiletical Feast for two years. Last year, I dropped out at the last minute. The very same week my colleagues were meeting together, I was having port-implantation surgery and receiving my first chemo treatment. In my worst moments, I wondered if I’d ever sit at the table with these friends again.

This year, it’s different. Most of my fellow Feasters have been following my progress through this blog, or through e-mail, or through more personal contacts. They know the facts of my treatment, and of my going into remission last May. It feels good, all the same, to tell the story (or at least sketch out its broad outlines), and to hear their words of encouragement and celebration.

“How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life for evermore.”

- Psalm 133

January 12, 2007 - Living with Our Troubles

I ran across this quotation the other day, and it’s still rattling around in my brain, so I thought I’d post it here:

“The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.”

– Bernard Baruch

I didn’t know a lot about Bernard Baruch, other than that he was an advisor to presidents and prime ministers on economic and foreign policy, so I looked him up. I discovered he was a Wall Street whiz kid who made a fortune by the time he was thirty, then went on to a career of unelected public service, advising Woodrow Wilson and FDR, working behind the scenes as an architect of the New Deal. He was something of an eccentric, who, despite his millions, liked to do his political consulting from certain park benches in Lafayette Park in Washington and Central Park in New York.

What does a man like that know about troubles?

Who can say? Struggles with private demons don’t often make it into the biographies. Yet, if the scriptures are right in saying, “human beings are born to trouble just as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7), then Baruch surely had his share.

His homespun advice makes good sense. Some of life’s troubles we can fend off. Others, we can’t. Yet, we all have the freedom to manage and mold ourselves, in response to those troubles. It’s what’s meant by that oft-quoted phrase, “living with cancer.”


It’s what I’m doing these days, and millions of other people, besides.

I like Baruch’s emphasis on not only living with our troubles, but growing with them. It’s all in the choices we make: whether we crawl into a corner and moan, or whether we move forward in spite of it all.

January 10, 2007 - The Inner Life of a Cell (Video)

Reading through the blog of Lynne Dahlborg, a gallbladder cancer survivor – “Life Changing Cancer” – I come across a link to a very cool video, “The Inner Life of a Cell.” Evidently, it was put together by some people associated with Harvard University, matching electron-microscope pictures with a new-agey soundtrack.

Viewing it, I’m reminded, yet again, of the remarkable processes going on inside me, on the molecular level. The cells in our bodies are numbered in the millions (maybe even billions). Most are healthy, but sometimes cells appear that are malignant. All follow the detailed instructions encoded in their DNA – a biochemical script that tells them precisely when to be born, when to die, when to multiply, when to mutate.

We are, all of us, at the mercy of these microscopic processes, although we’re scarcely aware of it. Indeed, most aspects of the microscopic reaches of our own bodies are every bit as incomprehensible to us as the stars and planets were to the Psalmist of old, who writes:

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?”

– Psalm 8:3-4

January 8, 2007 - Identity

Today, Claire and I go down to the motor vehicle agency to renew our driver’s licenses. This is a much bigger deal than it’s been in the past. It’s the first time, in these post-9/11 days, that we’ve had to comply with New Jersey’s new “6-Point ID Verification Program.”

We’ve done our homework. We’ve heard the horror stories of people being sent back home, again and again, until they could finally present the right combination of documents. We checked the brochure ahead of time, and have come armed not only with our old licenses, but also our passports and a bank statement with our home address on it. Four points for the passport, plus one each for the old license and the bank statement, add up to six. That gets us over the threshold, convincing the people in Motor Vehicles we’re motorists, not terrorists.

The place is crowded, as motor vehicle agencies always seem to be. The system runs smoothly enough, but there’s a whole lot of sitting around and waiting for our names to be called.

The final step in the five-step process is getting our pictures taken. For many people, the phrase “driver’s license photo” has become a byword for “awful.” Ours aren’t so terrible, though. There’s a holographic image of the state seal hanging down over my forehead, but if you ignore that, it’s not a bad likeness.

The whole process is perfunctory and bureaucratic, until it’s time to stand before the camera. The previous steps in the process have all involved data-gathering, and for them we’ve been paged using our full names. For some reason, the photographers call everyone up using first names. It’s almost as though, having run the bureaucratic gantlet, we’ve become friends. Well, maybe not friends – but at least the Motor Vehicle people know we’re not going to wash out now. If you make it as far as the camera at Motor Vehicles, you’re going home with a new license, for sure.

Maybe it’s because we’ve made the grade, but the people who run the cameras are friendlier than everyone else in the agency. No bureaucratic poker faces in this department: these clerks smile back, and even ask if our photos look OK to us, offering to re-shoot them if we don’t like them.

I think these people are friendlier because they spend their days dealing with faces, not facts. Hundreds of times a day, they look into their computer monitors and see real, live people – members of the human race, in all their wondrous diversity.

Throughout my cancer journey, I’ve gone to all kinds of places to receive medical tests and treatments. I’ve been poked, prodded, punctured and palpitated. I’ve been the name on the tab of numerous file folders, and the ID number that distinguishes one billing record from another. But, through it all, I’ve been a person – a living, breathing, hoping, dreaming human being.

The best medical practitioners are the ones who never forget that – who look up at me and see not a case, but a character.

December 29, 2006 - Becoming a Statistic

Today, riffling through a pile of accumulated mail, I come upon a terse letter from someone who works for the Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). It reads as follows:

"I am in receipt of your application for Optional Death Benefits. I regret to inform you that you do not meet the medical underwriting requirements and are, therefore, ineligible for participation in the program at this time. This decision was based on the information provided on your medical statement."

So, I've been rejected for supplementary term life insurance. I can't say I'm terribly surprised, but it is disappointing. I'd been hopeful that my in-remission status, combined with the power of the relatively healthy group that are my colleagues in ministry, could put me over the top.


Evidently, it was not to be. The medical underwriters took one look at the words "Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma" on my application, and concluded they don't like the odds of my living another ten or fifteen years.

I suppose that makes me, officially, a statistic.

Usually, when we hear that someone has "become a statistic," it means they've already bought the farm. The car's wrapped around the telephone pole, upping the county's annual death-by-auto total by one. It's an oddly dehumanizing negation of a life, that expression.

The teenage driver laid out in the casket in the funeral home is obviously so much more than a statistic. The teary-eyed family members – eager to reminisce, as though spinning tales would bring their loved one back to life – know that very well. Yet, to some anonymous actuary running his or her finger down a long column of numbers, that makes little difference. Do the numbers breathe? Do they laugh? Do they cry?

Oh, come on. They're just numbers...

Exactly.

Oh, well. I'll just have to prove the underwriters wrong, I guess.

(Just to spite them, of course...)

December 26, 2006 - Light in Darkness

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light..." (Isaiah 9:2) Those words have always given me a thrill on Christmas Eve.. There's something about that primal image of light in the midst of darkness that emboldens the human soul.

These are the words I chose, this year, as the basis of my Christmas Eve sermon. It's a different crowd I preach to, on Christmas Eve. Most preachers find this to be true. A good many of our Sunday-morning regulars are on the road, visiting friends and family for the holidays. Many of the others who show up are the "C and E" people (that's "Christmas and Easter," for the uninitiated). I've been at this church long enough, now – sixteen years – that I know a great many of them, by sight if not by name.

As I was thinking about what to preach to this very different congregation, I realized many of my listeners would not be up on the details of my medical situation. Some of them might not know I'm in remission. So, I decided to include a brief medical update in the early part of my sermon. This is what I said:

"If you'll allow me a few moments to speak personally, it's a special joy for me to be here, this Christmas – because last year, at this time, I wasn't entirely sure I would be. Just over a year ago, I learned of my cancer diagnosis – Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. By the time Christmas Eve rolled around, I'd learned just enough about the disease to know I had a tough road ahead. Chemotherapy was in my future, and I'd heard all the horror stories, and then some.

Most cancer survivors will tell you that the time right after diagnosis is the darkest time. One year ago, I was right in the midst of all that, trying to bring a Christmas Eve message of light and peace and joy. Last Christmas, if truth be told, I felt more like those people of whom the prophet Isaiah speaks: the ones who walk in darkness.

This Christmas, praise God, my treatments are all behind me. I'm still in remission, with every hope that good health will continue for a very long time. I've learned a few things, since last Christmas, about faith – the same sort of things Paul had learned, I suppose, by the time he wrote these words to his friends at Philippi:

‘I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.' [Philippians 4:11b-13]

‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.' I wonder if you or I ever truly understand what a marvel light is. You know, not even the scientists have figured it out. They've sought to understand light, at its most basic level, and they've come up empty. One of the greatest debates in twentieth-century physics was whether light is, fundamentally, a particle or a wave. Then, the strange new field of quantum mechanics opened up, and word finally trickled back from those investigations: light is both – and neither. There's one thing about light I do know: you've got to be in darkness, yourself, before you fully appreciate it. You can't do a whole lot of stargazing under the streetlights of a shopping-mall parking lot."

Lots of people – including a great many in our Christmas Eve crowd – have been doing just that, in recent weeks. They've tried to snatch a few moments, amidst the holiday madness, to glimpse a star or two. Yet, in this consumer culture, the places where most of us spend our nights simply aren't dark enough to catch sight of the one, true star.

The personal darkness that comes with a cancer diagnosis does provide a certain clarity of spiritual vision. I wouldn't wish the experience on anyone, of course, but it does offer that small side-benefit. The message I have for anyone else who's traveling the road of serious illness is this: Watch for the light. Truly, it is there.

December 23, 2006 - Back in Control?

I read something interesting the other day – some eloquently-crafted reflections by Elissa Rubin, a television producer and friend of Leroy Sievers, the National Public Radio commentator who’s also keeping a blog about his experiences with cancer. Elissa composed this reflection after visiting a chemo-infusion facility at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, while filming a special on cancer for the Discovery Channel. Leroy posted it in the December 20th installment of his blog, My Cancer:

“What struck me almost instantly was that no one really looked sick. People were in street clothes, flannel shirts and blue jeans, carrying purses and computers. There was a woman in a purple cashmere sweater, one man in an elegant business suit. No bathrobes, no hospital gowns. Aside from looking a little tired, no one looked like he belonged in a hospital. Or that their lives now hinge upon what happens in this room, or that each one now exists in a world of prognoses and time limits. None of that was evident. I felt like I was looking around the platform of a metro station, except for the surreal fact that everyone was hooked up to a machine, with chemotherapy running through their veins, killing the cells that are trying to kill them.

Then you look around and think about what it means to come here, every week, sometimes from hundreds of miles away, and sit plugged into a machine for six hours. You see a room of horribly interrupted lives – the job promotion that just couldn't be taken, the missed soccer games, term papers that would have to be turned in next semester, maybe next year. Marriages thrown into shock, children put in the upside-down position of having to worry about their parents. If anything, this should be a place of raw emotion on display – after all, everyone is in the same position and everyone knows what the person next to him is probably thinking and feeling. It should have been a room filled with anger, yelling, objects crashing against the wall – yet no one even looked particularly sad. This was a place of remarkable calm. Maybe because it was a place – the only place right now – that offered anyone any hope. People were here to fight their cancer, to get better, to keep on living. This was the place for the people who have that option – the so-called lucky ones. At least their doctors were able to offer a plan – one that explicitly said, ‘You do have a chance to beat this, to live longer.’ This was a room of science and medicine, bright lights, protocols and doctors. Finally, there was an opportunity to do something to a disease that had stripped you of all control.”

That experience of being stripped of control goes with the territory, for those who have cancer. So many aspects of life are put on hold, when the single most important thing you can do is to sit next to an IV pole and wait for the drip, drip, drip of those toxic compounds. When it’s all over, and that blessed word “remission” resounds through the corridors of the mind, is there a corresponding return of the feeling of being “in control”?

Only some of the time – at least, that’s been my experience. I seem to alternate between taking up the tasks of life with enthusiasm and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m living into this experience of survivorship one day at a time.

Being a survivor isn’t as easy as it may seem, to those who haven’t been through a life-threatening experience. One may imagine – from the outside, looking in – that, once the all-clear is sounded, everything simply reverts to the way it was, pre-cancer. Not so. There’s a new appreciation for what’s important in life – and a corresponding impatience with everything that isn’t. It’s hard to make long-range plans. Like nearsighted people who have lost their glasses, we cancer survivors can only see so far. We live in the present, more than we used to. In the back of our minds is a low-level, but persistent anxiety, that bobs up to the surface of our minds, unbidden: What if it comes back?

In such moments, there’s still that worrisome feeling of loss of control. We no longer see ourselves as captains of our own destiny (as though we ever were).

A ministerial colleague shared this prayer, a couple of years back. I believe she said it’s from a book called Prayers in Celebration of the Turning Year, by Edward Tyler:

Since we cannot make the journey backward into innocence,
help us to go forward into wisdom.
Since we cannot begin again from the beginning,
help us to go faithfully on from here.
Since we cannot turn ourselves by our own willing,
will you turn us, Great God, to yourself.

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.

December 11, 2006 - Following the Star

Yesterday, I accompanied a group of church members to see the new film, The Nativity Story. I'd heard good things about this fresh retelling of a very old and beloved story, and I wasn't disappointed.

Unexpectedly, I found myself in tears at a few points: when Mary and her cousin, Elizabeth, recognize the wonder of two very special babies growing within them; when Joseph agrees to stand by his betrothed, despite the scandal of her seemingly illicit pregnancy; and, of course, at the birth itself. I don't usually cry in movies, but this one had me blubbering like a fool. (Well, maybe not blubbering, but as close to it as I typically get.)

Everything I've been taught in seminary about Bible study says this is not how to approach these ancient texts. Matthew's and Luke's nativity stories should not be harmonized into one, say the biblical-studies professors. These are two completely separate accounts, that by all rights ought to stand on their own. Matthew tells of wise men traveling from the east, and Luke of shepherds and angels. Matthew's more interested in Joseph's role, and Luke in Mary's. There's nothing in the Bible to justify the conventional Christmas-card tableau of shepherds and wise men all showing up at the same time, gazing in wonder at the babe in the manger – as a beaming star directs the world's attention to the scene, like some first-century shopping-mall spotlight (I wonder how Herod's soldiers could have missed that)?

But that's what this film portrays. It's the iconic Christmas image, a celluloid version of the familiar Christmas creche, beautifully and sensitively re-created. I'm surprised by how powerfully these images still speak to me, even after years of objective, academic study.

My academic theological training says I should remain objective, analytical, unmoved by this ancient, holy drama. Oh, stuff it, Inner Voice of Logic. It's my ticket, and I'll cry if I want to.

I've been paging through a book a friend sent me, some months ago, that I've had on my to-do list for a while. Terri is a fellow pastor, and a cancer survivor. She found it helpful, during her own treatment.

In Cancer As a Turning Point, psychologist Lawrence LeShan suggests that some cancers could be linked to personal frustration, resulting from a feeling of being blocked in one's vocational life. LeShan's theory is that this blocked feeling suppresses the immune system, making us susceptible to illness. LeShan's book is filled with anecdotes of patients who decide to chase long-deferred dreams, taking the advice of folklorist Joseph Campbell to "follow your bliss," and who get better.

"A very large number of us grew up oriented toward what we should do rather than what we would enjoy doing; toward what we should want in our life rather than what we really want. Our actions are usually based on these ‘shoulds' rather than of the question of ‘what would fulfill me – what style of being, relating, creating would bring me to a life of zest?' This is the life, this life and the search for it, that mobilizes the immune system against cancer more than anything else we know today." - Lawrence LeShan, Cancer As a Turning Point (Plume, 1994), pp. 62-63.

I sent the people out from worship yesterday morning with the charge to "follow the star" in this Advent season. I wonder what that means for me, as a cancer survivor?

My cancer is changing me – making me less inhibited about crying in movies, more drawn to expressive, creative activities, less patient with routine, administrative grunt-work. I feel much more likely, at this stage of my life, to set out, magi-like, questing after some beaming star, than to sit behind a desk, making sure every "i" is dotted and every "t" crossed. This means I've been dropping some balls, administratively speaking – not compulsively cleaning up so many messes around the church, tolerating a bit more chaos than usual. (I've found that many of these low-level problems eventually resolve themselves without me.)

Maybe that's my spiritual growing edge, these days.

Today, I should be paying bills. I think I may hang Christmas lights, instead.