the art of disappearing

I am relishing this four day weekend as if I've never had one. I ate Thanksgiving dinner with the goal of eating so much that I would feel sick, and by golly, I met my goal. I raked leaves today and raked and raked and it was good for my soul. I am in tight with the trees in my yard; they watched as I cleaned up their mess. They did their job, I did mine. It is very important to be near trees. They ground us, they provide stability when life is swirling; they are nourishing just by being there. I sat outside while the sun went down. I did NOT go into any stores. I watched football, and it was most satisfying to see Nebraska beat Colorado for the last time before joining the Big 10 next year.

Here is a poem about being intentional about what we do with our time and who we spend it with. I like Naomi Shihab Nye; I really mean it. Here she is reading. You can see kindness in her eyes and hear it in her voice (yes, she wrote the poem, Kindness, that I am so fond of.)

I am not completely healthy, and I am not completely free of anxiety about the future, but today I am doing a relatively good job about living in the moment. Sometimes it's just all good enough!

Thanksgiving

Though our mouths were full of song as the sea,
and our tongues of exultation as the multitude of its waves,
and our lips of praise as the wide-extended firmament;
though our eyes shone with light like the sun and the moon,
and our hands were spread forth like the eagles of heaven,
and our feet were swift as hinds,
we should still be unable to thank thee and bless thy name,
O Lord our God and God of our fathers,
for one thousandth or one ten thousandth part of the bounties which thou has bestowed upon our fathers and upon us.

----the Hebrew Prayer Book


Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus

----1 Thessalonians 5:22

Listen, there aren't words to express how thankful I am...I will eat a real Thanksgiving meal, I will feel well, I will rejoice in God my Saviour ... I remember where I was a year ago and I am overwhelmed with gratitude and joy. Thanksgiving day...every moment...I overflow with thanksgiving. Can you imagine?

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

November 24

Turkeys
resting in refrigerators
thawing toward Thursday.
---Steve

let the holidays begin- random act of culture

On Saturday, October 30, 2010, the Opera Company of Philadelphia brought together over 650 choristers from 28 participating organizations to perform one of the Knight Foundation's "Random Acts of Culture" at Macy's in Center City Philadelphia. Accompanied by the Wanamaker Organ - the world's largest pipe organ - the OCP Chorus and throngs of singers from the community infiltrated the store as shoppers, and burst into a pop-up rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah" at 12 noon, to the delight of surprised shoppers. This event is one of 1,000 "Random Acts of Culture" to be funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation over the next three years.

courage

Throughout the past year and a half, few concepts have provoked more thought in me than the concept of courage. My mother-in-law, who is showing some good improvement (she has regained her speech and use of both arms and legs after a small stroke like event, and some seizures), is on the oncology ward at a local hospital. I was nervous about setting foot on the oncology ward...too many reminders there for me. On my first visit, the gentleman in the next room was noisily vomitting again and again for about an hour. It was quite distressing...not just feeling badly for him, but re-living my experience with simultaneously undergoing chemo, radiation, and stomach infection from the implanted feeding tube last August. Oh, but I felt awful. I was thinking about courage back then, and lamenting my absence of that noble trait. Then, over time, I reconsidered. Courage was not, I concluded, an absence of fear...rather, courage was more perservering through one's trials in the face of fear. Perhaps I gained a little courage along the way this past year. But being on the oncology ward this past week frightened me. Just seeing the sign "oncology center" while waiting for the elevator up to the fifth floor frightened me. Seeing elderly patients, hooked up to IV's, barely conscious, frail and fragie...I couldn't detach like I have in the past. The thought that I "know" what could await me...more cancer, aging, alzheimers... (my father's demise)...perhaps all three simultaneously... is different from the abstract concepts these things once where. Perhaps alzheimers is still abstract, but I had some pretty strong glimpses of disorientation and confusion when I was liberally self-medicating with narcotics, sleeping pills, anti-nausea meds, and a handful of other assorted pills, along with sleep deprivation and dehydration during the worst of my days last year. I was dazed and confused!

Anyway, back to the idea of courage... visiting my mother-in-law on the oncology ward made me feel envious of those who perish due to a sudden coronary event, fatal gunshot, plane crash,etc. It takes such courage to die well while dying slowly. To endure with acceptance and patience the slow decline. Amazing courage. When the time comes, I want to go quickly, and I see in this, again, the absence of courage. When the time comes for me to take that final ride, I pray it will be on a super-speed bullet train. Yet, truth be told, I also have learned a little to trust God to get me home even if it must be on the local commuter train that stops to let passengers on and off every mile or two. To die slowly in discomfort, then, must make the final arrival ever so overwhelmingly joyful.

Another thing. I saw nurses and nurses aids last week who were so comforting and careful with patients...gentle smiles and soft voices while helping clean up messes with reassurance and compassion. How much do they pay these nurses aids? Not enough, not enough. I felt so much appreciation for what I saw them do. They have courage and compassion in doing their job so well. Day after day, month after month. I tell you, I fought back tears. It brings to mind the hug I got from Ethel, the woman who opened the door at Methodist hospital and arranged valet parking for those too ill to walk from the parking lot. Every day, as I got sicker and sicker during my treatment, Ethel greeted me with warmth and compassion. Now, when I return for three month check-ups to the oncology center in Omaha, Ethel still greets me like I was her only son returning from the battlefield! She practically suffocates me with her hug.

so...here is a poem by Marianne Moore...I posted it last year, but it is worthy of another post. It's a little more complicated than the usual poems I post, but I like it. The idea of a captive bird, steeling itself up and singing with all its might, in the face of its captivity... that's what I want to think about doing in the face of a slow dying. Courage.

What Are Years?

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, -
dumbly calling, deafly listening-that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in it's defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.


Marianne Moore

On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate Psalm 145

I am having one of those overwhelming moments of gratitude. This morning, since there was snow on the ground (just an inch), I decided to forego the ol' morning walk, and head down to the basement where a hardly used, but fancy, elliptical exercise machine keeps watch like a guard at Buckingham Palace (i.e. motionless) in a hardly used exercise room. BC (before cancer) I could get on that machine for 20 minutes at a good brisk pace without much difficulty. I tried it once a few weeks post treatment last November, and after 5 minutes in very slow motion, I was wiped out and ill for the rest of the day. So...after a year of walking, I decided to get back on. And...to my delight, I did 20 minutes, got my heart beat up, worked up a sweat, AND FELT GREAT. Not only that, but I think I am at a weight I wouldn't mind staying at for the next few decades, God willing. Twenty pounds lighter than my BC weight, but perhaps, a perfect weight for my height. Room to put on 5 or so pounds at Holidays, and room to not worry about calories. I am quite pleased, and feel so dang healthy again. It's that feeling of timelessness...that youthful vitality that makes chronological age seem so irrelevent...yes I know I am not 25, but I feel 25 after working out, which, come to think of it, was something I rarely did when I was really 25. So now I'm thinking I want to get that up to 30-40 minutes on the elliptical by spring, and dust off the weight bench and pump a little iron as well. I have fully accepted that I am not going to play 2nd base for the NY Mets; in fact, I don't even think I'll try out for the Cubs... you know, even a reasonably successful Minor League career does not appear to be in the cards. Further, it is highly unlikely that I will learn to play guitar and be the opening act for the Bob Dylan tour. But, having seen Bob Dylan a few years ago...I'm not sure I want to open for him at this point...he's not the Dylan I used to love. So...I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing...and practicing gratitude for the good strong days as they come.

Yes I am feeling strong and healthy, yet, there has been given to me a lifetime constant reminder, in the form of a continuously dry throat, a voice that wears down as the day goes on, and some altered taste buds, and the haunting echo still ringing in my ear of the ENT's voice as he pronounced "Stage four cancer"...these shall serve me well...to keep me humble, and appreciative of how far the Lord has brought me in a year...and how every day left is a gift that I have been mercifully given.


Tomorrow, I formally go through a ceremony to begin my year as a Benedictine Oblate Novitiate. And one other thing I must mention. Please pray for my mother-in-law, Barb, who is hospitalized with cancer that has spread to her bone marrow and has had something like a stroke this week, and is unable to speak...and please pray for my wife Kathy, who has attended to enough sick and, yes, dying family members this past year to last a lifetime. In the midst of my gratitude, there is also the real presence of painful sorrow and grief to attend to.

Here's a segment from a great poem by Mary Oliver (they're all great!).

On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)
Mary Oliver

Every morning I want to kneel down on the golden
cloth of the sand and say
some kind of musical thanks for
the world that is happening again—another day—
from the shawl of wind coming out of the
west to the firm green

flesh of the melon lately sliced open and
eaten, its chill and ample body
flavored with mercy. I want
to be worthy of—what? Glory? Yes, unimaginable glory.
O Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.

"retelling" of our pain

I am pondering a few things here. What happens to all the pain we endure in the course of a life? Who can carry such heartache and sorrow. Not I. Recently I've been thinking back on where I was last fall. The "thinking back" is nowhere near as powerful as the experience I lived. I know, because I chronicled it via the "Deeper than Cancer" blog, and I have recently been re-reading day by day my October and November of a year ago. When I re-read those posts from last fall I am stunned. Though it refreshes my memory, it also seems as if that journey was another person's in another life. I can read it, and remember it; at the same time, I can no longer hold the emotional component of it. I distance myself... It was simply too much. Even the intensity of my connection/disconection wrestling match with God...too much for me right now to grasp. If you had a painful childhood, maybe you know what I mean. On one level you remember, but on another level...it is a bad dream and not a reality you lived.

Ah, but there was also healing in that blog, for me, and there was love and gratitude. So, yes, I guess we don't have to carry all that pain. There is healing of our physical and emotional wounds. Yet, isn't there always something that lingers... something that triggers those old feelings when we see the house we grew up in... when we clean out the closet and find that old reminder of our past? And when I read those posts, which for some reason I feel compelled to do, it is akin to seeing a house I grew up in... it is still very unsettling to me. I was writing out my experience in such an unedited and raw way, that it is an almost hyper-real reminder of pain and despair that remains... available online and continuously "present" and looking squarely at me...possibly for the rest of my days...(what happens to inactive blogs...do they stay online forever and ever?). And I think I will never be free of the need to go back and re-read it and remember... do we all need to re-live and re-examine our pain so much or is it just me? I suppose it is the curse of introspection.

So, here is an interesting poem...at least the first part of the poem speaks to me about what I am experiencing.

Naming the stars
Joyce Sutphen

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.

the gift of an hour

Being grateful for small things...how about getting an extra hour to spend or save. I was blog-surfing (is there such a phrase?) just now. When you look at most blogs...you see a link on the bar at the top that says "next blog." It seems that about 50% of the time when I click on that tab I get a blog with some collection of photos, about 30% of the time I get a blog that is not written in English, and about 30% of the time I get a blog that appears to be a family chronicle with pictures of happy kids and family outings...invariably the blog is written by the Mom. (Where are all those families on picnics?). OK...some of you readers are now saying...ha! that adds up to 110%, this guy can't even pick 3 numbers to add up to 100. Why am I wasting my time here...I'll just hit "next blog" and move on. Well, big deal, big deal... I did it on purpose; life and time are never so precise... Anyway, every once in awhile you get a treasure...an interesting blog or a wacky blog or a blog about visits to cemeteries all over eastern Europe, etc. (and now, you are thinking...this guy can't even spell "cemetaries"... well, again, if it's that big an issue, move on...

While we are talking about other blogs...I also notice that many blogs, with nothing more than family trivia, i.e. writing about going to the post office or grocery store or burning the lasagna and having to eat hamburger helper instead... have 286 followers...not that I am complaining nor comparing...but, come on... I have six followers, and I think one or two of them are "spam" that hack on to every blog ...I am going to submit this blog for the title of "least followed blog" and see if I can win something. I am trying to get my cat to sign up as a follower, but he's off in the corner pawing "next blog" on his laptop. (Truthfully, though, I am always touched by the "comments" that appear, and I know that you, too, are reading this, even as I lament about it...so...heck...I am even grateful for the two spam followers).

So, while blog surfing, I found this poem...I think the person writing the blog wrote the poem, and I like it. I like the poem, and I like the idea of it, and I'll think about it this Sunday morning at 2AM (in my dreams).

Fall Back

It’s returned, that hour lost last April,
slipped in at 2am while a half-moon gleamed
in the pine. Hovered while I slept,
unclaimed angel, tick-tock.
But I don’t desire to use it yet —
I want to be selfish, I want to hoard.
I want to tear it into ten-minute bits,
fold one into my wallet for the late appointment,
one in the vegetable bin when lolla rosa
need last until supper. Under my pillow
to extend the dream, in the oven to slow
Quick Yellow Cake. I’ll give one to my son
to get out of jail free. And one
I’ll bury in the garden in eternal plastic,
mark an X with apples. Maybe
I’ll forget it’s there. And just maybe,
in the next century someone will unearth
a ten-minute treasure, spend it lavishly.

copyright 2010 T. Clear