Post 38 - Cancer SUCKS

She stepped up to the microphone, cleared her throat, peered out at the audience (who responded with chair shifting and anticipatory laughter), put down her book, adjusted the mic, and she promptly turned around to take a drink. Seriously. Sneaking a look up at all of us, her fellow choir members, with a crookedy knowing smile, she turned. We were hers. They were hers and she knew it. It was a moment of sheer impossible audacity. She could have read the phone book and people would have sat at the end of their seat, would have leaned in rapt attention, we would have let go and laughed. It was beautiful.

My friend Meta is a stitch and a person for whom i hold deep love. When she let me, and her other 73 good friends, know she had cancer I knew I would shaved my head to be with her. "You are not going any where I can't go" I replied when she opened the door that evening. While obviously tinged with false bravado it was/is the only act of faith I can concretely give her from 600 miles away. Meta had been through cancer before, she was in our home when my beloved partner Mike died. So it is important to me that we both know that hers is not the same story. 

What is it like to sit this image of a comedian who has audiences waiting for her words next to the image of courage that cancer demands of you. Cancer sucks, not only for the obvious reasons - like, oh yeah death or dismemberment - cancer sucks because it invades every pore of your life. The very dust of your home becomes ladened with fear that did not exist a moment before. What are the numbers this week, what do they mean, how do we get them to change. The sun shining through the trees suddenly seen from your bed in the middle of the day. The hushed voices, the people all saying things will be OK, the books that once gave you comfort are too heavy, the food that filled you and made you feel whole tastes like a bad penny. So many things change. You also get to live for a brief and honest moment when it is clear - every moment - clear what matters.

My friend Meta amazes me. OK that seem obvious. I have come to expect to be amazed by people who are moving courageously through life - but Meta does this "thing" in the same way that she delivered that speech. Meta laughs, she lets other people laugh, she takes her time, she is audacious - she will not let cancer define who she is. Just like my Mike, Meta seems to say with her very life - cancer may claim more than I ever want - but it will NOT claim the me of me that is me to my core. Meta will now be someone who has survived cancer, but that will not always be the thing with which she leads a conversation. Because of this, when she reaches for the mic and turns and smiles I will not think solely of her as someone who once lost her hair to survive.

OK cancer sucks, and it is a reality that we live with. This week my friend is tired. So if you pray - I am going to ask you to pray. Pray that she sees her balding head as beautiful, pray that she claims her way (not mine not yours), pray that food tastes good, pray that her bones carry her, pray that the walk to her friends is not too long, pray that she laughs, and finally pray what you know she might need.

That night with the microphone, well later, sitting around in the after glow, I asked her about that thing she did to make people laugh and wait and lean in, that thing that she does so well. Meta said that she has learned that she can take her time. That people will wait to laugh, to be together, to be seen, acknowledged, drawn out, drawn upon, and will wait because ultimately we trust. 

Hmm a microphone might be the best teacher for how to sit with cancer - who knew.

Post 37 - Into the Myst

I look for the portal, in my well ordered closet
             to another place.
I can see the beauty there,
      sense the wild opportunity.
      feel the sun filtered by life.
But the portal is is guarded by the excesses of my life - things - ideas - order - wealth

Like a sumo wrestler the guard waits confident the weight of all that is will hold me.

If I turn around and walk out a door
      is there another way
      guarded only by a fog of uncertainty?

Do not pause to think too long, move, Get Out.

- Karen

Post 36 - What the saints teach us

Chicago - COS icons

To create an icon is to encounter a person you think you know. Through prayer, sounds super simple eh?
HA!
Once my knees hit the ground all bets are off. I might be changed, if I am lucky. I might have a conversation, if I try. I could find inspiration if that is what I seek.


Choosing a saint to create I must put myself in the way of prayer.
I submit to choosing and being chosen.
Choosing a saint to create I must put myself into a place of wonderment.
How did this happen that this person became who they were? What draws my attention in this time?
Curious I engage you?
I draw not what you looked like but who you are - to me - to the world - to spirit - to prayer - to the holy - to faith - to Gd.




Did they become themselves?
Did they dive into a holy presence?
Did they dance so hard that the body they knew shook off in favor of becoming a new being?




Of course I have heard of John, Francis, Jude, Simone, Theresa. I know they inspired others. They became so much that they emanated the presence of Gd.

As I understand it to become a saint in the Roman Catholic tradition you have to have performed three miracles. What would I do?
- Be nice to someone I really do not like.
- Gave away something that I loved.
- Heal myself so that I might heal some others in the world.
- Live simply
- Love with mercy
- Seek forgiveness
- Trip and rise, and trip again
Today all of these seem like simple miracles. Probably not enough to make a saint but still they are a place to start.

**********************************************************

About Icons: (From the service at COS)

An icon is an image that speaks to us. In fact the most important thing is not so much that we look at the icon, but that we allow the saint to look at us through this sacred sacramental image. A quick glance does not allow us to enter its mystery. We must quietly contemplate an icon before it can speak to us.
Beauty cannot be grasped, manipulated or owned. It is always a gift. We can only gaze and enjoy. Icons show us a way into the divine beauty that can sustain and refresh us.

An icon is an invitation to the experience that Francis Thompson expressed in his great poem ‘In no strange land’:
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee, 
O world unknowable, we know thee, 
Incomprehensible, we clutch thee. 

Post 35 - Leaving another job behind

Karen - Chicago/ Chattanooga/ Life

You never know when you start a conversation with someone where it might end up.

Back in November a conversation to say good bye to a good friend led to a temporary position as a remote software tester. Now November of 2012 will go down in my life as a time of transitions. Moving from Chicago. Putting Mike's house up for sale. Being granted sponsorship from Second Unitarian. Ending my job with Rainbow Hospice. Starting work at Care Team Connect. Transferring worship leadership for a contemplative Anglican service back to the more capable hands of the Rector at COS-Chicago. On November 19th Pam and I packed up the car - found a suitable place for Christmas Penguin (yes literally watchin' our back for the 900+ mile to Chattanooga via Cleveland) - got the last bag of Garrets popcorn and took the skyway toward Indiana. If nothing else we were on an adventure.

Of course so much of this was prompted by what seemed to be a sudden shift in my faith journey. Rejected as priestly material by a Bishop (the brand of heretic is what I claim) I was thrust head long back into that gritty aspect of life we call "the desert." Ah the desert where deception, possibility, cruelty and temptation live in diametrical opposition to the reality of your life. The reality of my life.

The reality was and is that I had claimed Christianity as I believed the words of Jesus - Love your Gd and love your neighbor (Mk 12:31). I had struggled with these concepts all my life and at COS in Chicago I found a group of people who were struggling with this core as well. I was not attempting to hide my doubt of John 14:6 the only way. I was trying wrestle with how I related to Gd. I can not be sure but I think I missed the boat on what most people would call Christianity. I spent my time looking at the life of Jesus not worrying as much about his death.

The stark desert reality that has come through to me in the months since that phone call from Bishop Lee (taken on a 4 lane freeway in the middle of Naperville IL) is that to be a Christian probably means believing that we are all born sinful and that Gd sent himself to die so that we could know forgiveness. That to be an Anglican means that celebrating communion is a celebration of the feast on the table. I know, I know, I know for four years I said these words what did I think they meant? I am not sure I have the space to write that today - though I have 15 more days (weeks) to document with this year question. ...

Let me start here. I believe that we are broken and I believe that Gd responds to this broken nature with love. Not fear, not reprisal, not terror, but Gd responds with love. I believe in the table of Gd but not necessarily what is put on that table. The communion we celebrate is the conversation - the conversion - of our individual nature to one of unity and humble communal celebration.

To often in my life  conversations have become a sneaky way to create landing points for my opinions. I try to allow others thoughts to creep in and settle - yet - my opinion and perhaps lack of listening skills can get in the way. Conversation brings with it the notion that I might be changed by the thoughts that you have. Conversation means that I might just be converted by you into a better self or into this conversation. Conversation in this way becomes communion. Bread broken the stuff of our lives. Wine the drink that allows us to see each other as whole and holy, even in the presence (perhaps because of the presence) of our broken nature.

The desert brought forward two things - I am likely not a Christian in most people eyes, certainly not in the eyes of the Bishop of Chicago. Though I claimed this monicure while walking within the processions that make up the Episcopal Church - I am not an Anglican. An Anglican must be one who speaks the words and believes first even if there is doubt. Not one who comes with doubt in search of words that might hold.

The desert that I have inhabited of late takes on many different aspects, sometimes we find mirages, sometimes we find oasis, sometimes simply an offer that would chain us to security when freedom calls. I use this metaphor of the desert as that is what I have been walking with in this time as I sort through my life and try to understand the will of Gd in all that has happened.

I know that I am a minister. I thought that I was called to the ritual and practice of the Episcopal church. I have come to recognize that that discernment came when viewing this faith from within the procession not from the pew. I love Gd and I live within the worship of the holy but I would be hard pressed to state unequivocally that Christianity is the only way to that fount of blessing. I believe that the love of Gd stretches to all, it is our choice to partake or not of that gift (universalism). While I know that this is a belief that is held by many in the pews.

I think that Bishop Lee was probably right in labeling me a hertic (well that would be my choice of words given our dialogue) within his church. A Bishops role is, after all, to watch over the welfare of the church and its teachings. The Episcopal church is founded on the life and resurrection of Christ. So with me there is discord, while faithful to Gd, while profoundly moved by the ritual of communion, I am wrestling with the term Christian these days. A follower of Jesus and his teachings - yes. A believer in all the scriptures - no. A faithful follower of all the teachings of any church - ha. And there, there plainly, is the challenge. "You have a Franciscan call" - Bishop Lee stated. What Francis heard from Gd - fix my church.

So I am headed back for ministry within the faith of my youth - Unitarian Universalism. Which for me is the practice of the table, not the practice of what we put upon it in eucharist. It is a place where seekers come in search of community. Community that demands the best of us so that we might be saved and go out to serve the world.

I believe that we all have moments of transcendence moments when we know Gd, when we know ourselves to be part of a larger whole. These moments might come from being loved, from reading and absorbing scripture, from a pure sense of joy in service, from music, from worship, even from preaching, and from many many other places. I believe that these moments can transform us into our best selves. I know that is what I always pray for - still - these moments can slip through my fingers if I am not called to work with them in community. Community where other people hold up a mirror to my life and allow me to see what is actually going on rather than that for which I have hoped.

This is the work in any UU church (or in any congregation) that we call one another to wrestle with our moments of transcendence in hopes that we will be transformed. For UU's that means living in relationship (covenant) with one another - not believing the same thing but living to bring one anothers faith forward from the beliefs that have evolved for us from our experiences of life.

This week I left another corporate job.
I left because it is not the work I am called to in the world.
I am not a Christian. I am a believer in the table. I am a minister to the possibilities of conversation. I am a lover of life and of this wild and broken world. I am a caller of the holy into present moments. I am - no more than you - I am.