This year's feast

Lutheran, The, Nov 2002 by Schaper, Donna

Cancer deepens my thanksgiving for numbered days, for rainbows and for turkeys

By diagnosis of breast cancer a year ago turned out to be an invitation to a rich spiritual feast. At first, it turned the tables on me. As a pastor and friend, I've accompanied so many people through the whole journey of cancer that I thought I was peculiarly immune. I had become quite a know-it-all, saying things like "There are plenty of cures for cancer today."

Indeed, there are plenty of cures-- but that doesn't mean cancer isn't a fierce shark invading our previously quiet swimming pool. Whether it "bites" us or not, the pool is no longer as serene or safe.

Cancer is a stubborn biological fact. It can kill you. Stress-free and stressed-out people both get it. The reality of this became my first course at the feast of spiritual dimensions.

Facing the reality of cancer is hard for anyone. For a Christian, the experience of disease and the difficulty of cancer comes within God's creation, as have health and wonder.

So the first, and foremost, spiritual aspect of cancer is accepting that it's a possible path to mortality, sometimes a very painful one, in this world that God made. Our ride may be here.

The psalmist already has taught us to "number our days" and treat them well: Cancer makes us get real about this spiritual mathematics. Oddly, gratitude is the message of these limits on our time.

Once, while vacationing in Hawaii, I made a game out of counting rainbows. Three or four would come every day. I'd send postcards saying I was up to 12, 13, 14. Then it was time to leave that gorgeous island. But I wanted to hit 15 rainbows. Only 14 had come my way.

I asked my daughter: "Is it wrong to want just one more?" She said it was an "insult to the rainbow" to want more. Thanksgiving for the number of days or rainbows that we have is magnificent. Coveting more is greedy. On Thanksgiving Day, we enjoy the turkey and trimmings that are laid before us. We don't demand next year's feast at this year's table. And so the knowledge of mortality deepens our thanksgiving for numbered days, for rainbows and for turkeys.

Linked to our cancers

Personal responsibility is a second aspect. Surely humans have exacerbated the conditions for cancers to grow. We live stressed lives and we foul our nests. We eat in unhealthy ways. These conditions aid and abet cancer, if not cause it. We wail with Paul: "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (Romans 7:15). We find ourselves oddly linked to our cancers.

A third spiritual dimension is pain. People who have cancer report from the wilderness of their illness that pain can lead to a strong godliness: We can get stronger at the broken places. For many, cancer is an initiation into deeper, fuller lives. This is true especially for those who don't go to "war" with it.

When we can't hold ourselves up any longer, the community holds us up. And learning this is another course at cancer's table. I had never so richly relied on others in my life as I did before and after my surgery. I came to appreciate the power of prayer, knowing dozens of people were in a chapel offering their hope as I was wheeled into surgery. Flowers arrived, and people took the cat to the vet when I couldn't.

Cancer patients experience tremendous loss of control. Doctors take up all our time and make us wait too long in sterile offices, while telling us to make decisions about our treatment. Those without health insurance live in economic fear. The insured are bombarded with forms.

People with younger children say all they want is to live long enough to raise their kids and not inoculate them with their fear. Protecting others is a strong beat for men and women. We know just how much others depend on us, and we're afraid they won't know what to do without us. That very thought embarrasses us because we clearly had as much a part in creating that bargain as not. Role loss is as threatening as hair loss. Dealing with loss of control, we learn, is also part of the spiritual feast.

By cancer's training, we develop strong spiritual muscles. We learn as we go along that we have what it takes to face mortality and God's decision for death as part of life. On the day of the first diagnosis, few have a smidgen of the spiritual strength needed. But the resources do come, the same way fur comes to rabbits by winter.

I recall some instructive rabbits from our years in Vermont. My children and I walked past a sign: "Free-- bee bunnies." The kids went into an immediate sit-down strike, refusing to budge without bunnies. I argued that the animals wouldn't survive the winter. I was ignored. Guess what? The bunnies did stay alive. How? By growing fur as they needed it.

People with cancer grow fur as we need it: We do what we think we couldn't, and many do "it" well. The spiritual feast is a training table too.

But our new muscles are never all-- powerful. Some days we're out-of-- control, scared stiff, pretty angry, staring at the fates. We know, as well, that we've become a burden to others. But it's these very others who hold us up. We who have been squeamish about suffering end up with horrible vomiting and hair loss and burnt skin-the "cures" for cancer-and we wake up, eventually, to new mornings.