Angels Among Us
PSA: Yep, this entry is about faith and belief and God and all of it. If you're not interested, feel free to sit this one out. If you have a faith practice and disagree with my views, I'm completely comfortable with that. I'm not comfortable, however, with debating the merits of one faith over another or the debasement of any religious tradition. Please keep this in mind before posting. Thank you and Blessed Be.
Over the years of my struggle with cancer, I've often pointed out and repeated to myself that I have angels. I do. Angels who have been in the guise of family and friends, offering us everything from dinners to dogsitting, sending comfort and love and little treats to me and my children. Angels who have prayed for me without ceasing, from all the corners of the Earth, and among all major religions. I've had several former students fold my name into the Wailing Wall. Christian prayer groups keep me on their lists. A friend of my dad's prayed (and continues, I hope, to pray) for me; she even called me on the phone. One of my Muslim students held a prayer service in my name. My Catholic family prays for me; my sweet Auntie lights candles for me every single day, even if she has to wrestle that one other prayerful lady for the last candle; I showed my children how to light the candles and pray when we visited cathedrals this summer in Santa Fe.
But as for me, I've been strangely silent. I pray with my breath, I give gratitude and thanks for all that is good in my life. I pray for other people's suffering and for the healing of injustices and hate. But I rarely pray for me or about my disease. It's weird. I don't even know why. Maybe I'm not sure how to begin.
More recently, I've had close up opportunities to witness faith at work in others - and yes, I see this as a sign and a reminder that my own spiritual house might be asking for some attention. A dear friend who is staying with us has shared some of her Christian faith journey with me, which has been truly lovely and inspiring to hear, and another friend who is a fellow stage IV CRC survivor has allowed me into her faith, which is Islam. I've known plenty about Islam for many years, since it's pretty important to understand when you're an expert in US foreign policy, esp in the post 9/11 era. And it's the fastest growing religion in the world, so, you know, it probably deserves to be studied by everyone, at least a little. But I'd never really been able to access its everyday vivacity like I have with Christianity and Judaism and Buddhism, because I didn't have any close Muslim friends who have shared their faith with me until now. My friend, E, has shared her faith with joy and offered me blessings and given me hope during a time when I've been feeling a little low on hope and faith. And guess what? It's worked. Islam, my dear readers, is just like the monotheistic faiths that many of you practice.
E prayed with me tonight and first of all, asked for my home to be filled with angels (thus inspiring this entire post, I'll point out) and then said that God (Allah in Arabic) is closer to us than our jugular veins. Think on that a moment. I did, and immediately St. Catherine of Siena came to me: "God is in the soul and the soul is in God like the sea is in the fish and the fish are in the sea." Isn't that the most beautiful way of considering a God? God is no separate entity, but rather the great wide Universe in which we all swim and of which we all are made. In any case, it was a beautiful and uplifting conversation, and I'm thankful to count E as one of my living angels here on Earth.
But there are other angels, too, who have, I firmly believe, guided the hands of my medical teams, who have helped keep me alive when I probably would have expired (especially after my IVC transection in 2013), who have truly sat upon my shoulders and whispered comfort and faith into my ears. Who have lightened my suffering and deepened my joy. And I have blithely accepted all this, with no small amount of wonderment, but without question or curiosity. But perhaps I figured that was only fair, since I didn't really ask the whole "why me???" question when this all began; the only answer I could summon up continued to be, "Well, why NOT me?" So the beauty and solace and strength I've been granted, I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I've taken it mostly in stride, just as I've taken the trials of living with advanced cancer.
The truth is, I don't know what I believe. The truth is, I was brought up Catholic and found as I matured that belief in a Higher Power was easy and right; belief in the Church, however, with its sexism and greed and disinterest in working for social justice was increasingly difficult to stomach. And then the pedophilia scandals began and continued...and "continue to continue," and my childhood spiritual home fell to ashes in my hands. (But then Pope Frances came along and gave me hope again..)
My biggest mentor in the Church, my grandfather, told me before he died that in the end, what matters is what you say to God and what God says to you, and the rest of it really was details. This soothed me then, some twenty years ago, and soothes me now, because I've become increasingly birdlike as I move forward in a somewhat bewildering quest for faith that matters and is meaningful to me, especially now. I find a shiny bit here, in Christianity, and then I discover a similar shiny piece over in Buddhism, or Hinduism or even in Wiccan, and then there's a particularly cozy bit over in Islam, and Judaism offers something else that helps feather my spiritual nest, and so it goes. There's an entire hoard of humanists, writers, philosophers, poets, and so on as well who make up my personal pantheon, I suppose. I can't help but see that as right. I can't help but understand myself as a child of God, the Universe, Ganesh, Allah, and Science, all in the same breath. Because aren't we all connected, completely and wholly intertwined?
It's really beautiful to see things this way, but it also makes it difficult to focus, and easy to dismiss the power of prayer and faith, the indelible knowledge that Something far larger and more cogent and connected sees all and celebrates connections when they're found. That's when Faith, writ large and by whatever name you'd like to call it, speaks most to me. When It leads me by the hand to find a new connection, a new place to gather ground, to rest and find nourishment and joy.
What do you believe?
Over the years of my struggle with cancer, I've often pointed out and repeated to myself that I have angels. I do. Angels who have been in the guise of family and friends, offering us everything from dinners to dogsitting, sending comfort and love and little treats to me and my children. Angels who have prayed for me without ceasing, from all the corners of the Earth, and among all major religions. I've had several former students fold my name into the Wailing Wall. Christian prayer groups keep me on their lists. A friend of my dad's prayed (and continues, I hope, to pray) for me; she even called me on the phone. One of my Muslim students held a prayer service in my name. My Catholic family prays for me; my sweet Auntie lights candles for me every single day, even if she has to wrestle that one other prayerful lady for the last candle; I showed my children how to light the candles and pray when we visited cathedrals this summer in Santa Fe.
But as for me, I've been strangely silent. I pray with my breath, I give gratitude and thanks for all that is good in my life. I pray for other people's suffering and for the healing of injustices and hate. But I rarely pray for me or about my disease. It's weird. I don't even know why. Maybe I'm not sure how to begin.
More recently, I've had close up opportunities to witness faith at work in others - and yes, I see this as a sign and a reminder that my own spiritual house might be asking for some attention. A dear friend who is staying with us has shared some of her Christian faith journey with me, which has been truly lovely and inspiring to hear, and another friend who is a fellow stage IV CRC survivor has allowed me into her faith, which is Islam. I've known plenty about Islam for many years, since it's pretty important to understand when you're an expert in US foreign policy, esp in the post 9/11 era. And it's the fastest growing religion in the world, so, you know, it probably deserves to be studied by everyone, at least a little. But I'd never really been able to access its everyday vivacity like I have with Christianity and Judaism and Buddhism, because I didn't have any close Muslim friends who have shared their faith with me until now. My friend, E, has shared her faith with joy and offered me blessings and given me hope during a time when I've been feeling a little low on hope and faith. And guess what? It's worked. Islam, my dear readers, is just like the monotheistic faiths that many of you practice.
E prayed with me tonight and first of all, asked for my home to be filled with angels (thus inspiring this entire post, I'll point out) and then said that God (Allah in Arabic) is closer to us than our jugular veins. Think on that a moment. I did, and immediately St. Catherine of Siena came to me: "God is in the soul and the soul is in God like the sea is in the fish and the fish are in the sea." Isn't that the most beautiful way of considering a God? God is no separate entity, but rather the great wide Universe in which we all swim and of which we all are made. In any case, it was a beautiful and uplifting conversation, and I'm thankful to count E as one of my living angels here on Earth.
But there are other angels, too, who have, I firmly believe, guided the hands of my medical teams, who have helped keep me alive when I probably would have expired (especially after my IVC transection in 2013), who have truly sat upon my shoulders and whispered comfort and faith into my ears. Who have lightened my suffering and deepened my joy. And I have blithely accepted all this, with no small amount of wonderment, but without question or curiosity. But perhaps I figured that was only fair, since I didn't really ask the whole "why me???" question when this all began; the only answer I could summon up continued to be, "Well, why NOT me?" So the beauty and solace and strength I've been granted, I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I've taken it mostly in stride, just as I've taken the trials of living with advanced cancer.
The truth is, I don't know what I believe. The truth is, I was brought up Catholic and found as I matured that belief in a Higher Power was easy and right; belief in the Church, however, with its sexism and greed and disinterest in working for social justice was increasingly difficult to stomach. And then the pedophilia scandals began and continued...and "continue to continue," and my childhood spiritual home fell to ashes in my hands. (But then Pope Frances came along and gave me hope again..)
My biggest mentor in the Church, my grandfather, told me before he died that in the end, what matters is what you say to God and what God says to you, and the rest of it really was details. This soothed me then, some twenty years ago, and soothes me now, because I've become increasingly birdlike as I move forward in a somewhat bewildering quest for faith that matters and is meaningful to me, especially now. I find a shiny bit here, in Christianity, and then I discover a similar shiny piece over in Buddhism, or Hinduism or even in Wiccan, and then there's a particularly cozy bit over in Islam, and Judaism offers something else that helps feather my spiritual nest, and so it goes. There's an entire hoard of humanists, writers, philosophers, poets, and so on as well who make up my personal pantheon, I suppose. I can't help but see that as right. I can't help but understand myself as a child of God, the Universe, Ganesh, Allah, and Science, all in the same breath. Because aren't we all connected, completely and wholly intertwined?
It's really beautiful to see things this way, but it also makes it difficult to focus, and easy to dismiss the power of prayer and faith, the indelible knowledge that Something far larger and more cogent and connected sees all and celebrates connections when they're found. That's when Faith, writ large and by whatever name you'd like to call it, speaks most to me. When It leads me by the hand to find a new connection, a new place to gather ground, to rest and find nourishment and joy.
What do you believe?
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