The Song of the Sorrowing Church

I suspect you will find (among pastors generally, or among particular congregations) those who will rejoice greatly in singing the oldest song of the church, as well as those who complain bitterly about it. 

Similarly, there will be some who complain and some who celebrate singingnew hymns and songs, even the newest. 

There will also be advocates and opponents of singing songs from the global church. 

It is harder to find, most likely, advocates for singing hymns or songs that are “blue,” and quite easy to find those who object to it.

This is not a reference to anything profane or vulgar, of course, but speaks of singing songs and hymns that are "blue" in the sense that we speak of a particular genre of music as “the blues.” The church needs to sing songs that contain an element of lament or sorrow.

The sound of faces scrunching up in disgust is palpable: "I don't go to church to be sad." "I thought Jesus was supposed to make everything better." “Church is supposed to be an escape from that.” (I have actually heard that last claim.)

Here's the thing, though; the most prominent and widely cited biblical warrant we have for singing together as God's people contains plenty of lament. I speak, of course, of the Psalms, sometimes known (exaggeratedly, but not too much) as "the Bible's songbook."

Even Protestant reformers who were leery of congregational singing (for example, John Calvin) found the Psalms an acceptable outlet for congregations to sing. And the Psalms, as you might know, contain plenty of lament. Some of them are heavy with grief, and some of them are even more angry than lamenting.

Consider, for example, Psalm 137. 

You might recognize this psalm by its opening verse; "By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion." The tone is set, and it doesn't let up, unlike many lament psalms that include brief interludes of praise, or at least attempted praise as a conclusion to the psalm. This one starts dark and turns darker. 

The first six verses of the psalm are fairly familiar. The lament at being mocked with the request to “sing one of the songs of Zion!” (verse 3) by their captors and tormentors cuts deeply, and the emotional avowal not to forget Jerusalem – “let my right hand wither!” in verse 5 – is both emotionally wrenching and poetically exquisite in its expressiveness.

Things go much bleaker from there, though. In the final three verses of the psalm the emotional tone plunges into full-fledged cry for vengeance. In case you have forgotten those verses, or have somehow managed to avoid them, here is a reminder:

7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jersualem’s fall,

how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!’

8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator!

Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!

9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

This shocking passage begins relatably enough. The tone of lament present in the first six verses of the psalm grows more intense and is attached to a specific event, the destruction of Jerusalem. The new element here is the naming of a specific enemy, the Edomites, and the request that God hold that destruction against them. 

It is in verses eight and nine that the psalm “goes dark” in a way most of us simply cannot contemplate in an act of meditation or even worship. Babylon, the “devastator,” becomes the focus of anger again, and the screaming yearning for revenge erupts into a vicious curse against them, invoking the brutal destruction of “your little ones” as the psalm rages to a close.

That is a dark, violent image, and many congregations are possibly unaware that the passage and its violent imagery actually exist in scripture. For those occasions when this psalm appears in the lectionary, for example, pastors might well shorten the psalm, only including the first six verses – the much more familiar and less violent portion of the psalm. Similarly, many settings and paraphrases of the psalm for congregational singing do not include the final three verses in their paraphrase or setting. 

The collection Psalms For All Seasons: A Complete Psalter for Worship, living up to its title claim, does include settings of Psalm 137, both settings for chanting or reciting and settings for strophic hymn singing. The chant settings do include the full psalm. One such setting is accompanied by a psalm prayer, the final verses of which seem to address the rage found in those final three verses:

When loss and grief rob us of song,

may we entrust our hurts and hatreds to you,

the true and final judge of all. Amen.1

Here is one possible way of including the full psalm in worship without leaving its seemingly unspeakable conclusion dangling in midair, without comment or interpretation.

Of the versified paraphrases of the psalm included in the collection, two of them do not include the final three verses in paraphrase. The third, however, does address the verses, albeit in paraphrased commentary rather than exact reproduction:

God of memory, I remember children tumbling, not in play.

I will not forget the longing to strike back in that same way.2

Richard Leach’s hymn does in fact cover the whole psalm, and while not directly quoting the challenging verses, the setting does capture and confront the singer with the desire for vengeance found in the psalm. The singer or congregation is thus confronted with the stark realization of the anger found in the psalm and the even more stark possibility that we, too, could feel such anger in such a setting.

It is not necessarily the purpose of this discussion to recommend going quite as dark as those last three verses of the psalm, but it is clear here that the psalmists recognized lament and sorrow – and even anger – to be as much a subject of song in worship, as much a care to be brought before the Lord, as our praise or our petitions. For that matter, scripture more generally is not averse to lamentations, not with a whole book by that very name included in Hebrew Scripture. 

Where this gets tricky, though, is in the practical challenge presented here, one even I cannot do much about. There really are not many such hymns out there these days. Aside from psalm settings, one could say there are extremely few lament hymns.

That hasn't always been the case. I was at a Sacred Harp sing a few years ago, and perusing the printed collection (and a few of those chosen for singing) I was reminded that lament was very much a part of the songs created in the shape-note tradition. They sing about suffering, they sing about dying, they sing about parting. They sing songs of weeping and mourning. Alongside songs that look towards hope beyond the grave are songs in which death, for example, has a hard finality to it, such as the song “Thou Art Passing Away” found in the 1854 Southern Harmony and Musical Companion3:

Thou art passing away, thou art passing away, 

Thy life has been brief as a midsummer day; 

Thy forehead is pale, and thy pulses are low,

And thy once blooming cheek wears the ominous glow.

Thou art passing away from the beautiful earth, 

Thy much lov’d abode and the land of thy birth; 

From its forests and fields – from its murmuring rills,

From its beautiful plains and its herbage-crown’d hills.

…

The light of thy bounty has faded and gone,

For the withering chlls have already come on;

Thy charms have departed – thy glory is fled; 

And thou soon will be liad in the house of the dead.

This medically observant hymn contains a full seven stanzas of like tone, of which these are the first, second, and fifth. These constitute a small but non-negligible portion of the hymns in such books as Southern Harmony, Sacred Harp, orMissouri Harmonythat were popular in the nineteenth century. 

Of course, death and illness were inescapable companions for many in that era, in a way that modern Christians simply do not experience them. This distancing from death and illness undoubtedly fits hand in glove with the distance the church is prone to keep from grieving and lament in worship; which is the hand and which is the glove is a question worth considering. Still, many of our ancestors in the faith faced death and illness more frequently and more directly in lifetimes marked by struggle and hard toil. 

Mainline moderns are not accustomed to that. Beyond our medical advances and avoidance techniques, we also have our reputation for excessive moderation (yes, that phrasing was deliberate), and while that mostly gets blamed for keeping out more exuberant songs, it also reins in our singing experience in the opposite extreme.

How to bridge the gap? A hymnal that includes a psalter (a collection of psalm settings) is a start, as at least some of the lament psalms are going to be included. A very few hymns that provide for lament for specific conditions have made their way into newer hymnals like Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal (and that collection does come in an ecumenical version that does not have the word "Presbyterian" in the title). But the repertoire of lament hymns is not large.

Still, it matters to make some space for singing lament for a similar reason that it matters to welcome songs of the global church: it becomes a means of including. Inevitably somebody in your congregation is going to be in a condition of sorrow. Maybe it may be a short-term situation or a more ongoing condition. They are there, in your congregation. Is there any part of the service, any service of worship, which gives voice to their sorrow and encourages them to lift that sorrow up to God? (One might be tempted to mention intercessory prayers, but those are often targeted towards those specifically suffering physical illness, which is not always the case for those in need of lament.)

So I am asking you (and asking myself: see below) to do something that is not merely emotionally or intellectually hard to do, it's practically difficult to carry out as well. But there is a place for it, not every hymn (again those reversible caveats apply--not everything that is sung should be "blue," not everything that is "blue" should be sung), but some space for worshipers to lift up their grief not merely in a formal, constrained space of public prayer, but in the viscerally physical act of singing, and singing together.

Maybe this is a call for new hymns. Maybe I am unwittingly calling for radical change in how we think about worship. Either way, all those Delta bluesman were not wrong; sometimes you gotta sing the blues, even (or especially) to God.

If indeed I am asking myself to take up this challenge, I can say that I have done what I can in at least one way, one that adds to the repertory of lament hymns. Below is a text I wrote in spring 2019 in anticipation of major surgery:

With our earthly bodies broken,

            While our hopes fade into fear,

Bodies failing or cut open,

            Fates we never want to hear:

Where is Christ, the Great Physician?

            Where is Jesus’ healing touch?

Dare we question why this torment,

            Why we suffer pain so much?

Have we sinned somehow, unwitting?

            Have we failed to honor you?

Is there some great deed of service

            That we somehow failed to do?

Though your words refute such wond’ring,

            Make it clear that’s not your way,

Still we cannot help but question 

            When there’s nothing left to say.

Still you promise not to leave us,

            Though our doubting is not stayed.

You have claimed us in your kingdom,

            Though our fears are strong arrayed.

Should we fail yet to recover,

            If our wounds can never heal,

Let us not despair of knowing

            That your care for us is real.

I make no claims for this as a perfect or ideal hymn of lament, but I can vouch for its directness and honesty, even after having come through the surgery and recovering more effectively than I might have hoped. The grieving is still real.

So yes, absolutely yes, sing something old, and sing something new, and sing something borrowed, and sing something blue -- something that lifts up our sorrows as well as our joys. Do not be a separatist, confining and shutting out the voice of the sorrowing. Sing with all of God's children, even those whose voices are more likely to cry than sing, and remember who we are and whose we are, and that sometime the one in need of a song of lament will be you.

---

1Paul Detterman, Psalm prayer for Psalm 137, in Psalms for All Seasons: A Complete Psalter for Worship (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive, 2012), 896.

2Richard Leach, “God of Memory,” 1994 (Copyright 1996, Selah Publishing Company), as included in Psalms for All Seasons, 900.

3William Walker, Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, ed. Glenn C. Wilcox (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1987), 329.

Hymns: they're not just for worship anymore (actually, they never were)

So I've experienced something of a mild breakthrough in my most elementary experimentation in hymn-writing. A recently completed and posted hymn actually crossed the century mark in viewings on the little hymn blog I sporadically keep up. This recent hymn was not only viewed by a lot of friends, evidently, and maybe even some folks I don't know, but was also shared on the Facebook page of the presbytery in which I serve, which was a bit surprising, but nice.

This one is a bit more personal than most of my hymn efforts. While some were written to be used when preaching a particular sermon (like this one, which was so used, or this one, which didn't get completed in time for use), many had their roots in mundane old class assignments in seminary, and quite a few were pretty random, even to the point of waking me in the middle of the night and not letting me sleep until I wrote them down. This one was deliberate, a specific attempt to grapple with my own current health situation in hymnic form. It may have touched a nerve. (As of now it's the third-most viewed hymn on that blog, behind two of those linked just above.)

A friend let me know that she had shared the hymn with a friend of hers, who I gather to be in their own precarious health situation. This helped answer something that had been nagging at me, and also reminded me of a basic truth about hymns.

I was beginning to wonder if there might be a little vanity in posting these things online and social media. This isn't something from which one makes a living, and I have very little expectation that any of these hymns will go anywhere. So, why post? That piece of information gave me my answer; even if a hymn goes only one place, it might well be desperately needed in that place. As long as I'm going to write the things, letting them go out and possibly find a place where they might be needed or useful is only proper to do, I guess.

More basically, I was reminded that hymns, while most ideal for singing as a congregation, are not only for singing as a congregation. And they never have been.

Even before singing hymns in a congregation was a thing, such songs had another function; teaching. In a pre-literate age, one of the most effective ways of conveying a tidbit of doctrine or theology was in song; people liked to sing, and it gave that tidbit of learning a fighting chance of being remembered. They were a form of popular song, and were deeply tied to the theological teaching of those who wrote and taught them. (There's a whole scholarly book on this connection of hymn and theology in the work of Ambrose of Milan, who was writing such songs way back in the fourth century.) In other words, it's perfectly o.k. to sneak some hymnals into your Sunday school classrooms and let song break forth, and I don't just mean in the children's classrooms.

Clearly, a hymn can become a means of personal comfort. Here is where those wildly individualistic old hymns and gospel songs have potential value. In devotional use, a hymn that is all about "I" actually makes sense. While I'm always going to want to keep careful watch over how often such songs get into congregational use, personal devotional use is a natural home for such works.

Anyway, as I now launch into an extended leave of absence for those aforementioned medical reasons, I am beginning that time with a three-week stretch of professional development sandwiched around a week of vacation with my wife. The first of those events, later this week, is an actual workshop in hymn writing. Since what was little more than a dabble has begun to claim more of my attention, I figure I might as well probe a little further to see if there is something worth pursuing about it. I may just get shut down, or I may be encouraged. Who knows? But I am reminded that there are a lot more potential reasons to pursue such a venture besides Sunday mornings.

They even write books about using hymns as devotions, see?

Survivor's guilt

I'm less than a month away from the second anniversary of my surgery.  Woohoo.

I will always be able to remember the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shootings; the first reports of that mass murder were just coming in while I was in the prep room waiting, I thought, to get resected and spend the rest of my life with a bag attached to my side.  That such was not the case was my pleasant surprise in coming to.

Today (or late last night, depending on your point of view) saw another campus shooting, in the main library of my doctoral alma mater at that.  Those just happen now, and The Powers That Be insist this is somehow necessary for Freedom.

Today was also a memorial service on the seminary campus for a classmate who died last week after a struggle with cancer in the brain.  I knew she was a little older than me, but only found out this week that she was the same age as my youngest sister would have been had she lived.  That sister died about fourteen and a half years ago, from cancer in the brain.  Some of us get virulent, killer cancer.  Some of us get "lucky" with cancer, if the word "lucky" can ever be used with the word "cancer."

Maybe I get it again someday, and am not lucky.  I'm a good candidate to do so someday.  Anyway, I've realized that having been through a major illness like that was going to form a lot of my pastoral care in ways that would have been different if I hadn't gone through it; being on the receiving end of pastoral care was my clinical pastoral education.  I'm now realizing a different aspect of that experience and its less-helpful impact on my potential as a caregiver.

Why did I get the less-destructive, or slower-growing, or otherwise non-fatal cancer?  I get that "the rain falls on the just and the unjust," but some of us sure end up being more drenched than others.  My sister is dead, my classmate is dead, and I have to go to the bathroom inconveniently often.  There's no fairness, no justice even, in that.

This is a headspace that won't work.  At some point, presumably, I'll end up in a call, and I'll have to be pastor to a person dying of cancer, and that headspace won't work.

We are called to minister in a world that still doesn't really have a good grasp on cancer, in the long run, my own recovery notwithstanding.  We are called to minister in a world where too many people treat a sports team as their preferred object of worship.  We live and work and preach in a nation where a little mass murder in the library is The Price of Freedom, and being able to get health care for cancer or a gunshot would or anything else without going into monster debt is a pipe dream.  We live in a world, frankly, where I have to wonder if Jesus would actually last three years of itinerant preaching before getting crucified.

Whether it's my former classmates already serving in a call, or those of us not quite there yet, or those of us who never will quite get there, this is the world.  Frederick Buechner follows that phrase with "Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid."  There are days or weeks when seeing the beautiful things is awfully hard in the face of the terrible things, and the last seven or eight days have been such a period, right after coming off a wonderful high point, which somehow seems more devastating.

I'm beyond the age of throwing youthful temper tantrums.  I have things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  I will be grateful for what it is to come.  But there are days when the only prayer I can pray is "Why?" and that's not going to change just because I have a "Rev." in front of my name, presuming we actually get to that point.

The whipsaw

Sunday was good.

Charles Stanford is one of those composers you miss if you're the snobbish type who only indulges in The Great Composers.  He wrote some absolutely gorgeous symphonies and orchestral works (a symphony and a handful of rhapsodies bearing the "Irish" nickname are personal favorites), and some of his church music is just mind-altering, or perhaps soul-altering.  We sang one of those Sunday morning, and it went reasonably well for the church choir with which I am singing right now.  That was good.  The niggling internal difficulties weren't apparent until Sunday evening and didn't seem a big deal.  The guest cat, one which (we believe) lives at a house across the street and up a little, did show up a good bit Sunday.  She's a tiny thing, at least compared to our two monsters.  She'll eat whatever she's given, but by Sunday it was becoming apparent that she was at least as much wanting attention as food.

Monday was pretty decent too.

Classes actually went pretty well.  For once I actually felt somewhat prepared for the first class, and not as if I were dog-paddling furiously merely to avoid drowning.  In the second our first test of the term was returned and I actually did better than expected -- all my questionable answers, or those that seemed questionable at the time, I had in fact gotten correct.  Class itself went fine as well, and the guest cat didn't seem quite so desperate, though in truth I wasn't home so much to see.

Tuesday was a bit rough.

Most of the day was spent at the Virginia General Assembly, where the organization for which I am working for my non-parish internship was coordinating speakers at a public hearing.  First of all, about two and a half hours standing in line; signing in my appointed speaker; then keeping a place in the hearing room for another two hours.  Up to that time, the groups working on opposite sides of the issue (distinguishable by different-colored t-shirts) in question largely kept to themselves.  Once in the meeting room, however, the containment began to break down, and a few exchanges turned ugly.  I had one man lie directly to my face (he gave off a classic tell, one any poker player would recognize), and overheard another exchange in which one (white) man called a (black) woman with whom he disagreed an absolutely awful word (no, not the "n" word) as the capper of an incredibly vulgar and virulently hateful rant.  The testimony itself was a little less awful, if only because nobody called anybody by such a word.  Still, to hear canards that were debunked at least three years ago repeated as gospel truth (by that I mean repeated by a preacher) and to have a doctor say something that was so easily debunked by my own experience with the health care system of the USA for the past year gave me a twitch.  After being free to go, a nine-block walk through Richmond, while actually pleasant at the time, agitated some muscles that only today are starting to calm down.  I did have a good lunch at a place in Shockoe Bottom I'd never known before, and a good potluck dinner on campus that night helped somewhat, and I got off a blog post that took my mind off the crud of the day and helped lift my mood a bit.

Wednesday was amazing and horrible.

This blog, your humble Notes on a Fool's Errand, got linked Wednesday!  Twice!  Tuesday (I think) I had gotten a message from a blogger with whom some of you may be familiar, one with much credibility and popularity as a young voice in the world of mainline/emergent/something or other Christianity, following up on messages we'd exchanged a previous week, indicating he planned to blog on the subject at hand and seeking permission to identify and link to me, which I was happy to give.  (I am not identifying him because I've not decided how much of his hipster cred would be damaged if I pointed out that I used to be his handbell choir director.)  I've said from the beginning I don't write this blog in expectation of heavy traffic, but on the other hand I'm not opposed to it.  Then Wednesday morning another figure of significance, whom I had referenced in the Tuesday night post and tweeted apologies for the tongue-in-cheek treatment of the subject, tweeted back that she planned to link that post in her next blog entry (via The Christian Century, no less!!!).  And she did!!  And not to rip it apart!  To quote from it, with my name on it!!!  This will be the only time my name will ever get into The Christian Century in any form, I can assure you of that!  I don't want to be a prideful person, but up to that point Wednesday was a happy morning.
Then I went for my medical appointment.
I believe I've mentioned in past entries some things that, post-surgery and post-chemo, don't quite look right.  A slightly puffed-up kidney, a ureter that looks partly obstructed by...what?  scar tissue?, a few odd pockets of air where they shouldn't be.  Well, attempts to go at the unexplained via antibiotics changed nothing, according to a CT scan of two weeks ago.  That means the only way to get at what that thing is, is by opening me up again, to see if it's scar tissue, or possibly a tumor.
To hear that last word was the breaking point of my week.
I was in fact given an option; to have exploratory surgery now (or as soon as it could be set up) or to wait three months, get scanned again, and proceed from there.
To avoid stress, which is a known killer in several parts of the galaxy, I'm opting for the latter.  Despite the presence of the unknown...thing, there is nothing else in any of my blood readings or any other tests that points to the presence of any kind of cancer at the moment.  The oncologist doesn't seem to think it's cancer.  Even the surgeon doesn't really seem to think it's a tumor, but doctors aren't cut out for not knowing.
I cannot cope with being cut open again.  Not now.  I have too many things to do, things that matter intensely to me, between now and the end of January.  In February you can cut me open.  In February you can cut me up and stuff me and mount me on your wall if it's that important to you but NOT NOW. My body is not ready just ten months after the fact.  Or my mind isn't ready.  Either way, it counts.
Whether now or later, surgery this year threatens my ability to graduate in May.  It's already shot down any chance I had of going to the Middle East (Turkey, Israel, Palestine) in May with Union's travel seminar.  I wanted to see all those New Testament sites, and I also wanted to see Gallipoli.  Wanted it so badly.  So much for that.
Anyway, back to Wednesday: I tried to go on to campus for chapel after the surgeon dropped that on me.  Mistake.  I was not at all ready to talk about it, but I couldn't really think about anything else.  Should have just gone home, but I wasn't even ready to face my wife.
Oh, and that intestinal distress from Sunday night?  At its peak by now.  And the guest cat was apparently hanging around our house most all day.  About the only positive thing I could do that afternoon was be a safe space for a stray cat.  I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to be healthy enough to be anything else.  I got through choir rehearsal that night, mostly because it was fairly sparsely attended and nobody really questioned me about much of anything.

Thursday was somewhat better, but still...

Having spent about half my internship hours for the week Tuesday, and knowing I'll spend about that many Saturday, I only went for a meeting over coffee with the organization's program director, a mentoring meeting.  As my direct supervisor was out of town, she was the only one to whom I could break my health news for now.  Otherwise the talk was something of a debrief from Tuesday's event and an overview of some of the things for the big event for the area presbytery at the General Assembly in January, my main internship responsibility (and one of the reasons I'm inclined to put off surgery).  It was actually a good and interesting discussion that helped me understand the work I'm in so much better, and the particular kind of endurance it takes to do it.  I think I even managed not to sound like a total idiot.  Still, I think it's fair to say that the previous day's news was hanging over me throughout the day.  I was distracted enough that I got lost trying to get out of Shockoe Bottom, ending up across the river in a place I didn't know and only getting my bearings when I stumbled onto I-95, which isn't particularly close to where I live but does give me a way to get there.  Attempts to study or prepare for a presentation in class this week were as pointless as bailing buckets on the Titanic.  Again, about the only other constructive thing that happened Thursday was more time with the guest cat.

Today was...meh.

Physical therapy this morning (oh, did I mention I'm also being treated for carpal-tunnel syndrome right now?  And me typing this oversized entry with my braces nowhere in sight.  Idiot), then lunch with my wife as a chance to talk things through a little more.  I think she understands, a little, why I'm still inclined to postpone surgery.  I don't expect her to understand fully.  There's still some hope, with a stent inserted (every male reading this should take a moment now to uncross your legs and recover from your wincing), the kidney issue may relieve itself and perhaps allow for some non-surgical options to be explored.  I am playing that low-percentage chance, against the risk that if it's a tumor it decides to spread widely between now and then (also a low-percentage chance; the highest percentage chance is...nothing changes and I get cut open in February).  Then class this afternoon, the in-class component to the internship, where I displayed the snarky, cynical side I usually try not to unleash around campus. On the other hand, a nice dinner out (thanks for the gift cards, in-laws) did help break the funk, if only a little.  And now, this blog entry.

So, there is my week.  Judge it as you wish.  Tomorrow is a busy day, representing my internship organization at the local presbytery meeting.  Church Sunday morning, another good anthem, though not quite as good as the Stanford.  Unless something changes my mind, I call the surgeon Monday morning and report that I'm choosing the wait-three-months option.  Classes on Monday, including the presentation I still need to get together.  Internship on Tuesday.  What should be an interesting chapel on Wednesday, and then finally get on a plane Wednesday night for a much-needed fall break vacation at my wife's favorite place in the world.  She will be happy and that will make me happy, at least for a few days.

Then back to it.  Whether I'll ever graduate from here.  Whether I'll ever be healthy enough to graduate, or to be called to a church or any other kind of vocation for which I might have been preparing here, or whether I'll ever be able to do any damn thing besides add to that Death Star of medical debt that is already beyond what I'll ever be able to pay off even if everything breaks right (and yes, this is after insurance, such as it is).  Whether, in other words, this fool's errand was in the end even more foolish and pointless than I could have ever imagined.

Clearing up some things: the latest health issues

Bodies, wonderful creations that they are, can be strange.  They are adaptive things.  They react when their natural processes are interfered with.
Over the course of the last year, I've been targeted with radiation, cut into (and some stuff removed), and pumped with nasty and sometimes poisonous chemicals.  I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, that my body has reacted in strange ways.
Right now I have two issues going on, both possibly (but not definitely) related to cancer treatment.
Issue one: excess tissue buildup, or something like that -- possibly scar tissue? -- that is possibly impinging a part of my urinary tract, causing one kidney to become a bit dilated.  Also (related or not?) a buildup of gas where gas cannot, technically, happen under normal circumstances (no, not that kind of gas), in the general area.
Issue two: fingertips that are, well, feeling strange.  Not numb -- definitely not that.  Not hurting, really. But...sensitive? Tight? Feeling as if they're swollen even though they're not?
Saw a urologist today.  I appreciate a doctor who takes a go-slow approach.  I'll have an ultrasound in that general region in a couple of weeks to see if the antibiotics I'm on actually help things return to normal.  If not, I may have to have a stent placed in that tube.
See a neurologist at the end of the month about the fingertips, in search of neuropathy or some similar.
The tissue buildup issue may be related to radiation, surgery, or both.  The finger issue may be a late-blooming side effect of chemo.  Cancer: the gift that keeps on giving, even when you'd rather it not.
The bizarre thing is that, unlike when diagnosed with cancer (I didn't expect that diagnosis but I knew something was up), I'm actually feeling fairly good these days.  Finally with some distance from chemo and the bacterial infection that followed, I could actually say I wasn't feeling sick or draggy.  We were able to go down to North Carolina for a wedding and I didn't actually feel a whole lot of fatigue, no more than one normally might expect.  If there's an infection in there it has a funny way of (not) showing it.  Yet that PET-CT scan last week showed something was off, and a new round of visits to new doctors is the result.
So that's what's what at the moment.  This is not so much the "omg!" kind of news that cancer diagnosis was; these are more "wtf??" results, notable for strangeness and incomprehensibility than immediate threat.  To be sure, if the ureter is blocked that has to be fixed -- I don't need a failed kidney. Still, this doesn't have the same shock value as that news of a little over a year ago.
Meanwhile I start an internship (non-parish version) tomorrow and started a church choir singing gig yesterday.  Life goes on until it doesn't, and ideally that will be some time from now.

One year

One year ago today I posted a blog entry that began with the following: "No point in beating around the bush.  That colonoscopy yesterday led to a diagnosis of cancer of the rectum."

In the intervening year I have been bombarded with radiation, cut open and mutilated, and poisoned.  I don't really know yet whether the cancer is still there or not.  I have a PET-CT scan scheduled for September 3 in aid of answering that question.  I'm supposed to have a colonoscopy as well, but that hasn't been scheduled yet because of the infection referenced in the last blog post. In fits and starts, the effects of that infection seem to be fading at last, though I still have to be extra-cautious about what I eat, apparently.

In the intervening year I have ranted and screamed and pouted; made strange jokes and indulged in bits of gallows humor; suppressed even more humor that would inevitably, given the nature and location of the cancer and treatment, descended to "bathroom humor" level; been surprised not to wake up with a bag attached to a hole in my side; taken enough Imodium that I should own stock in the company by now; had legs that would not let me rest at all; been unable to leave the house and gone anyway; preached a sermon while totally hopped up on painkillers; and gone through all manner of other health traumas and indignities that I have not described in this blog, and probably will not.  You can't handle the truth.

In the intervening year I have staggered through Old Testament as one wandering in the wilderness; practice-baptized a baby; broken bread; been on the giving and receiving end of pastoral care; attended my first classes via video hookup; made the rookie mistake I always warned students against, biting off more subject than I could possibly chew in the given paper assignment; led a worship ritual in a park; gotten to know A Brief Statement of Faith well enough to hack my way through teaching a class on it; preached five times and chanted a psalm in worship, for internship credit; tried and failed to be a polity wonk; become a candidate for ordination; completed three of my four senior ordination exams and have the fourth in progress (results not to be known for a few weeks); and somehow managed not to wash out of seminary.

In the intervening year I have gone to Disney World and walked, very slowly and with lots of stops, "around the world" at Epcot; gone to spring training for the first time since moving out of Florida; gone back to Lawrence for the first time since moving and, to be honest, kinda wished I could've stayed; stood on the edge of the Konza Prairie and let the wind nudge me about like tallgrass; finally taken a bite of the Little Apple; been to the Vietnam memorial in D.C. for the first time in years; been to George Washington's birthplace, James Monroe's birthplace (or the empty spot on the ground where scholars think it is), Thomas Jefferson's famous house, and James Madison's not-so-famous house (but no Civil War sites); been to Flying Squirrels baseball games and Spiders basketball games in Richmond and Nationals baseball games in D.C.; spent a tremendous summer working in the soon-to-be-trendy town of Ashland, VA; gone to three of four weddings in a summer of more-weddings-than-I've-been-to-in-my-married-life-so-far-combined, all for outstanding people, classmates, and friends half my age or less; and somehow managed to stay awake for some of it.

I've been alive, wondered if I was dead, sorta wished I was dead, was glad to be alive, didn't want to get out of bed, couldn't go to sleep, gotten up a dozen times in the middle of the night, and am still here for whatever reason.  And here comes another year of it.

So August 24 is going to be one of those days.  Diagnosis Day?  Your Life Is Now Hell Day?  Your Body Is Against You Day?  Whatever.  I guess I'm still here.  And that exegesis exam doesn't give a rip about any of this.  So, hopefully some sleep, and hopefully fresh for a new day of whatever the heck this life is.

Health blahs again

I'm beginning to hate my body.

No, not in the body-image sense (I more or less made peace with that some time ago).  I mean I hate my body, and the way it seems intent on betraying me.  Certain old heresies in the church are starting to sound appealing.

The latest is some sort of intestinal infection that is being highly resistant to treatment.  I won't discuss the effects; you really don't want to hear it.  Suffice to say I'm more or less constantly on edge, not to mention (again) tired a lot, in ways that defeat efforts to start rebuilding my stamina.  One doesn't want to be dozing off while trying to work with weights.

It's just strange to be fighting to stay awake at 8:00 p.m.  And it's not helpful with ordination exams this weekend.

Anyway, more tests are now on order.  Perhaps the infection was not as simple as previously diagnosed.  I have trouble caring any more.  I'd just like to get through the day and night without disaster.

Of course this kicked in just a little after chemotherapy ended.  Naturally, just when I was looking forward to starting to recover a bit.  So much of the summer has been spent fighting this instead of getting my strength back.

I have ordination exams to take.  I have classes and such for the fall to get ready for.  I have blog entries I'd much rather be writing than another health whine.  Instead I'm just trying not to doze off in the middle of an ords review.

I cannot suck it up and put on a happy face at the moment.  I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.  And that's about as much as I have energy to say tonight.

Stumbling across the finish line

I'm ... so ... tired.

(No, I'm going to resist the urge to crack a Blazing Saddles quote here.  Really.)

I am in the midst of my final chemotherapy treatment.  Yesterday was transfusion day, a three-hour session (down from four the previous sessions) wherein most of the chemo drugs are pumped into me.  The final act of that day is a pump being attached to the port in my upper chest, containing a drug called     Fluorouracil (I had to look at the pump to remind myself of that), which pumps into me over forty-six hours.  About twenty-four hours or so from now, that will be removed.  And with that, hopefully, chemotherapy will be over.

Finally.

I am not exactly bursting across the finish line with tremendous vigor and vim.  I can't say that anything hurts, really, but I have an absolute lack of energy.  And this being the last treatment, and the effects of these drugs being cumulative, the fatigue factor has kicked in hardest now.

I can't imagine things getting worse, but they easily could have been.  My every-other-week treatment regime was interrupted back in April for my trip to Kansas for candidacy status.  Were this the final of eight consecutive biweekly treatments I might not be out of bed.  (I had to take a nap in the middle of writing this paragraph, to give you an idea.)

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis has his senior devil Screwtape advise his hapless nephew junior tempter Wormwood that fatigue itself is not enough to cause a soul to slip over into temptation; rather, the unexpected demand upon the already fatigued soul that is far more likely to be the tipping point.  Further, Screwtape adds that "fatigue can produce extreme gentleness, and quiet of mind, and even something like vision."  I know I've snapped enough times at the former provocation, but gentleness, quiet of mind, and vision seem in short supply.

I do, at least, have a better clue to the difference between fatigue and laziness.  There is a lot around here that not only do I need  to be doing, but want to be doing as well.  The moment I try to get up and work on it, though, I can feel my body collapsing.  I'm not above stretches of laziness; hopefully in the future I'll be more aware of when i'm really tired and when I'm just being lazy, and be able to address it more appropriately.

This will pass, I know.  It might be well into next week, but it will pass.  Of course therein lies one of the reasons mental quiet is absent now; what follows is nothing but a period of waiting.  At some point I'll have to have another colonoscopy or endoscopic ultrasound to see if anything is left of that damned cancer.  Until then, mental quiet is not really going to happen.

Right now I'm just tired.  And in less than twenty-four hours the pump comes off, and in a few days to a week my fingers won't tingle when I touch something cold (and I'll be able to enjoy some ice cream). I have an appointment with the oncologist on July 15, at which time presumably the scope will be scheduled.  My energy hopefully will be able to recover, although the summertime heat won't help with that.  Sometime in August I'll know if perhaps this battle is done (for now -- I'm not naive enough to think I won't be a cancer risk for the rest of my life), if August 2012-2013 is going to be my "cancer year," or if there's more garbage yet to come.

In the chair

This is that day.

Normally treatment is on Monday, every other week.  Due to yesterday's holiday, the schedule is pushed back a day.  I get the chemo cocktail for four and a half hours and have the pump added today, then I return Thursday to have the pump removed and get a shot of something called Neulasta to try and keep my white blood cell count up.

The picture above is actually from two weeks ago, but the visuals are pretty similar each week.  I arrive at Thomas Johns Cancer Center at Johnston-Willis Hospital near Midlothian, about a ten-minute drive from where we live.  First stop is the lab to have blood taken for testing.  In all honesty, that's my least favorite part of the day, particularly when it involves having my finger pricked.  I don't like any sharp object poking holes in my body, but in my finger...ouch, ouch, ouchouchouch.  Having it taken from my arm is no picnic, but these days I'll prefer it to the finger-prick.  Ouchouchouch.

After a few more minutes wait it's time to enter the transfusion room.  Most weeks I'm the youngest patient room and it isn't close, and today doesn't seem to be an exception so far.  It's typically about noon when one of the oncology techs starts to hook me up.

Back on March 1 I had surgery to have a transfusion port installed in my upper chest, on the right side.  In the picture above the port area is somewhat concealed by my shirt.  During the week when I'm not hooked up to the port, it's a little odd to feel this lump in my chest and know that it's (hopefully) part of the solution, not the problem.  It doesn't hurt, but I can't really say that I don't know it's there.  It's enough of a lump that it's impossible not to notice.

For today, that port is the means by which the day's cocktail of drugs passes into my body.  The tech is generally kind enough to numb the spot thoroughly before inserting the connection into the port, so I can't really say I feel what's going on (believe me, I look away).  Once that is done and the tech can see that the connection is secure (unfortunately, this involves seeing "blood return" issuing from the port into the injection tube.  Now you know why I look away), the initial preparatory drugs can be hooked to the tube and the day's fun can begin.

In the mix of drugs that get pumped into me in a given session, almost as many of the infusion liquids are devoted to preventative measures as to the chemo itself.  At least two of the first to be injected are primarily for the prevention of nausea.  It should be noted that these apparently work, as I have not really had a major problem with nausea, aside from one day several weeks back (and that was as likely a consequence of a poor meal choice as anything).  Eventually a saline solution is hooked up to keep a regular flow going and to act as a little bit of a buffer against the chemo drugs proper doing too much damage.

Another of the preventative drugs administered is a kind of steroid, which means that I'm suspended from Major League Baseball (the NFL would obviously have no problem keeping me on if I were in it) and that I will have a pretty ravenous appetite tonight.  That effect passes after a day or so, otherwise I would end up even more unsightly than I already am.

I know when the serious drugs are being administered, not because I can recognize anything by name (please, prescription and drug names might as well be in Sanskrit -- thanks to biblical study I'm more comfortable with Greek* than with these drug names, and therefore the old "it's Greek to me" line doesn't apply), but because of the protocols that kick into place.  I get not one oncology nurse, but two; I have to repeat my name and date of birth, and the second nurse is double-checking and observing closely as the IV bag is hooked into the system; and the nurse is wearing an extra protective gown.  No fooling around here.  One of those drugs can feel a little cold as it enters my body; otherwise I can't say I notice much when the transfusion is happening.

*I didn't say I was comfortable with Greek.

If you've spent time in a hospital, you probably remember that a typical IV drip doesn't go quickly.  By the time the various preventatives and chemo drugs are swapped in and out, I spend about four and a half hours in the chemo chair.  The IV bags and monitor are on a rolling stand, so I can make the trip to the bathroom when necessary.  My arms and hands are not particularly encumbered, so I can do serious things like complete classroom assignments such as papers or take-home tests, read articles, etc.; or, I can do silly things like live-blog my chemo, as I'm apparently doing now.  Back at the beginning of April I tried to catch some major-league baseball on Opening Day, but the poor quality of the wifi connection and the lack of any sports channels on the room's TV system doomed that for the most part. Conversations are sometimes possible, but frequently other patients are either asleep (particularly the older ones) or accompanied by friends or drivers and are therefore primarily in conversation with them.

And, well...there's not a lot else to describe.  The transfusion room has been, at least the six days counting today I've been here, a drama-free zone.  The techs and nurses are generally friendly and highly capable, and the patients are frequently asleep or otherwise involved.  Generally, not much happens aside from the individual treatments going on at any given time.

I would not have you think my regime is typical.  Some patients actually receive their treatment not through a port, but through a typical IV hookup in the arm or hand.  I have to admit I'm happy to have the port in that regard, as strange as it feels sometimes.  Most patients don't stay as long as I do, but then they're often coming every week or even more often, whereas I do get two weeks between Monday treatments.  That fact has probably been why I've been able to keep up with classes and otherwise function like a normal human being.

If this week is typical, I'll be famished tonight; my fingers will tingle when I try to handle anything cold, possibly the rest of the week; and I'll be fairly fatigued for three or four days -- not debilitatingly so, but noticeably.  I'm rather happy that this week is an "off week" for me; I really don't have anywhere to go before Friday of this week, which means I'll be free of the pump before then.

The pump is the last part of the chemo treatment, and probably the most obnoxious because of the inconvenience it causes for parts of three days.  It gets linked into the tubing hooked to the port at the end of today's treatment, and has to remain attached for forty-six hours (yes, forty-six and not forty-eight).  Typically the pump is kept in what is often called a fanny pack, with the tube snaking around from it to the pump.  This tends to require a buttoned shirt if I'm going out, so that the tubing can be slipped in between buttons and kept from getting caught on other odd stuff like doorknobs.  Around the house it's less of an issue, but in any case it gets pretty darn tedious, and makes a lot of ordinary activities a bit more laborious.  Since I tend to keep the fanny pack positioned on my right hip, it means I can't sleep on my right side -- usually not a problem, but a little inconvenient some nights.

On Wednesday afternoon (Thursday this week), forty-six hours later, the pump (which looks a bit like a water balloon encased in a plastic jar) is removed and a last flush is pumped through to clear the port, which then is bandaged for a few hours (with an ordinary band aid, mind you); the last injection goes into the fleshy part of my left arm, and I'm done.  Free at last, free at last...

Once Thursday is done this week, I'll have two more treatment cycles to go, which means chemo is done on June 26.  I'll see the oncologist mid-July, at which time a determination will be made about when to do another endoscopic ultrasound or other scoping procedure to see what's left of the cancer, if anything.  Obviously what happens next depends on what that procedure shows.  I'm studiously avoiding expectations of any kind at this point.

I can already feel the fatigue starting to settle in just a little bit today.  Having this kind of stuff pumped through you is going to be a wearying experience, with some lingering effects.  Yard work is beyond me right now; between the labor and the sun exposure I can't cut it ("it" being the lawn at this point).  Sleep, though it certainly comes and sometimes when I least expect it, is a little bit more fitful.  The cold sensitivity is rather inconvenient; I can cook dinner, but my wife has to handle the cold stuff.

Still, considering that others can and do have a much tougher time with chemotherapy treatment, I can't really complain.  Despite my general bulginess and non-athleticism, I was apparently a reasonably healthy person (aside from the cancer), in that I've come through radiation, surgery, and now most of chemo without many of the usual side effects and not a lot of degradation to my body.  I'm losing hair, but not at any faster rate than I was before starting cancer treatment (I do wonder if my beard is turning white faster, however).  The presence of the port limits what I can do in terms of upper-body exercise, but the legs are continuing to be in fairly good shape.  My brains haven't totally deserted me, as I apparently managed to get through classes in better shape this spring than back in the fall.

There will also be long-term ramifications, of course.  I'll always have to be on guard for cancer.  The financial ramifications will be devastating (not going to get into that here).  Insurance may be tricky, particularly between graduation from UPSem and finding a call (thank God pre-existing conditions won't be allowed to deny me coverage...).

At this point, though, all I can really do is get through each treatment, while working on my internship this summer and getting ready for ordination exams in August.  I don't see a point in whining too much as long as I'm being spared the worst effects of the chemo that so many people have experienced in the past (and still do in some cases today).  If the chemo is judged not to have worked, mind you, I'll be whining pretty fiercely, but that's still a couple of months away at the least.

So, that's about what it is these days.  Nothing terribly interesting, but it is a fairly large chunk of my life right now.

The obstacle course

I'm not the kind of hyper-popular blogger who is missed by thousands when I go missing for more than a week.  I know that and I'm o.k. with that.  Still, for the faithful few who do keep up with this blog, I do try not to let too much time lag between entries.

So it's been a couple of weeks since last I blogged.  I got to enjoy our vacation with my wife's folks, including a couple of spring training games.  I even got to operate the radar gun used to measure pitch speeds by one scout.  Need proof?  Look here.

I only hope I didn't ruin some pitcher's prospects by screwing up the gun's reading.  Baseball careers are fragile things, especially for pitchers.

I had and have to remind myself that I needed that break.  It's hard especially to remember that right now, as the end-of-semester crunch becomes more and more present, with papers to write, projects to prepare, trips for non-vacation purposes (including my first trip back to Kansas since moving) including the ordination process and its next step for me, and of course the continuing fact of being treated for that pesky cancer.  Whichever poet penned that line about April being the cruelest month is starting to sound prophetic.

Chemo is still a draining thing, but a day or two of fatigue and some tingling fingers are hardly the kind of side effects I feel highly compelled to complain about, compared to what others have gone through.  It isn't how I planned to spend my middle year, mind you, but I do know I'm fortunate compared to many who have been far more wracked by their treatment than I.

I'm reminded again that I've been fortunate to be surrounded by an array of incredibly supportive and caring people.  Many of them are also pretty stunning ministers-to-be, like this one.  If your idea of the future of the church hinges on preserving existing institutions or maintaining social or cultural status, you're probably down and out about it; when I look at the people who are going to be part of helping shape and guide that future, I feel a lot better.

What role I play in that is still a part of the process unfolding.  I can't know which direction things will go; I still feel a strong pull towards the doing of worship and liturgy, but there are other things that start to make sense to me as well.  Too soon to talk about them here, but it might be a topic for future blogs.  We'll see.

In the meantime, the cruelest month awaits, the gauntlet is thrown down, the obstacle course demands that I run it.  And if it turns out to be a couple of weeks before the next entry I beg your indulgence.

What I can handle

Chemo week two is in progress.  The "pump" (I don't hear it pumping, but apparently it is) is delivering the last of my chemo cocktail between now and some time Wednesday, and it remains attached to me until then.  It's a bit of a bundle, not large but awkward, and keeps me from sleeping on my right side if nothing else.
It can be a long day in the transfusion chair.  Fortunately, my professors are kind enough to supply me with plenty to do while in that chair.  In my approximately four-and-a-half hour stint there today I read for Old Testament and Sacraments and completed a morning prayer service to lead the week after spring break (and worked Ray Bradbury into it).  Not bad, but not a form of study inducement I recommend.
Today was different from two weeks ago; at least one patient in the transfusion room was not old enough to be my parent.  For the most part they either have company with them, are glued to the TV (the two are not mutually exclusive), or are asleep or trying to sleep.  At least I add variety to the room, I guess.
The thing about being treated for cancer in one area -- the rectum, in my case -- is that the area in question is not, by a long shot, going to be the only one affected by the course of treatment.  My bladder had nothing to do with this and is yet getting freaked out by the treatment, if nothing else than by getting a continuous feed of liquid for four and a half hours every other Monday.  It isn't the only part in that region, either.  It gets a little difficult to keep up with so many body parts in rebellion.
Eating is also becoming an interestingly unpredictable experience.  I truthfully have no idea at this point what will settle well with me and what will create problems.  Fruits have been cooperative so far, but vegetables far more unpredictable.  A nice salad might sound good right now, but only if I can camp out near the bathroom for the following 24-36 hours.  Beans and peas seem to be o.k., but corn is a raging disaster.  Meats seem more or less cooperative, breads problematic at times.  It's an adventure, and not always one I'm ready to handle.
More than once of late I've seen riffing on the horrid platitude that people exchange, in a well-meaning but disastrous way, with those who have been beset by some hardship or tragedy:

"God won't give you more than you can handle."

One such riff is humorous: a Facebook card that adds the sentence "Apparently God thinks I'm a badass."  The other approach, in more than one source, is a sound and well-needed theological debunking and dismantling of the saying itself.
Let's be clear: I am NOT "handling" this, certainly not by myself.  My wife needs to be elevated to sainthood, I don't give a tinker's damn if she isn't Catholic.  Not only is she taking on even more of the everyday things, she's also handling the business side of the cancer, which should be an automatic in for sainthood.  You believe in supporting the poor, Pope Francis?  Get on it.  By the time this is over we will qualify for sure.
Professors have gone out of their way to keep from drowning me and have been far above accommodating.  Fellow students have quietly stepped in to keep me from wiping out of classes when I've had to miss more than once.  My little on-campus job is still there.  The ministry development office has adjusted to my need to change my plans for internship this summer and next year.  Folks at the church(es) we've attended have constantly been there for support.
Hell, no, I'm not "handling" this.  Not even remotely.
It might seem cruel to say that God deliberately does give us more than we can handle (though not nearly as cruel as saying God creates some specifically for eternal torment, and Calvin got away with that), but maybe it's so.  Of course, it isn't a random bit of torture; we are reminded precisely that we cannot handle things by ourselves.  We aren't lone rangers, and those who insist on riding that way are completely divorced from what God wants us to do and how God means for us to live.
We live dependently on our sisters and brothers in Christ.
We do not handle it by ourselves.  We do not "in our own strength confide" to borrow from Luther's hymn.  We do not beat cancer by ourselves, we do not beat unemployment by ourselves, we do not beat prejudice by ourselves, we don't beat anything by ourselves.
And when we aren't the ones being beset by tragedy or hardship, we're supporting and carrying and bailing out our sisters and brothers who are.
And I have just typed about the most anti-American bit of scribble I've done yet in this blog.  We are the land of "rugged individualism" and all that.  This probably explains why we have done such garbage in the name of Christ.
I've railed against establishment Christianity before.  I'll spare you.  But American Christianity had more or less the culture for much of America's history and absolutely squandered it on comfort and power and moralizing.  We don't know how to live dependently on one another.  We don't know how to trust one another that much.  We have no concept of how those Christ-followers lived in Acts 2, and we'd probably be horrified if we did.
I have not "handled" this illness and treatment, not at all.  I've been carried through it.  I've been bailed out.
And that's what living in the body of Christ means.

Putting the "fool" in "fool's errand"

There are times when I, even amidst all the cancer stuff, look ahead and get absolutely giddy with anticipation of whatever pastoral vocation may lie ahead.  I'm never so naive as to think such a vocation won't have its perils and pitfalls, but the idea of being in the church, living out a ministry that begins with presence and patience and listening and reflecting and waiting for that little twinge that says "now, the Lord is doing that new thing -- watch!  pay attention!" gets a little thrilling, particularly for someone whose existence has been a bit peripatetic up to now.

Then there are the times that make me shake my head and say "You're kidding, right?  You?  What makes you think you're ever going to get there?"

Seldom is there any one thing that makes me go there.  And it's not so much that that's a sad or frustrated place, as much as it is a place that makes me take a deep breath (as every person, nay even ever sentient being, even those out there in the universe whose physiology doesn't even require breathing, must do on occasion) and see myself as the most oddly-shaped peg (nothing nearly so simple as "square," not me) possible in a world of varying sizes of round holes.

For example: for our section this past Thursday in my Sacraments independent study, the assignment was to prepare and deliver a prayer of Thanksgiving Over the Water, part of the baptismal liturgy.  It could have been one of the prayers from the Book of Common Worship, it could have been from some other liturgical source, from another denomination or none at all; it could have been an original prayer (and I had written one the previous week, so that was already available).  Monday during my chemo transfusion I took to the web, to make one last sweep, so to speak, and see if anything promising turned up before I went back to one of the above.  I did find a compelling responsorial prayer from an Australian prayer book, which looked like a strong possibility to use.

Then, to my surprise, turned up a version of such a prayer from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, set for intonation.  Of course I had to go for it.  The issue was settled before I even knew what I was doing.

In a world where the church is constantly under pressure to adapt and change and morph boldly into the future, where a whole Presbyterian organization is devoted to figuring out what "NEXT Church" looks like (they just had a big meeting this past week), where the past is something to be treated as if it carried bubonic plague, I'm off in my little corner chanting prayers like an addict.  Who am I kidding?  They don't hold meetings devoted to "PAST Church," and I'm off chanting almost by reflex.  I'm not that far from fifty.  My middle year of seminary is getting whacked around by cancer treatment.  My car CD player is far more likely to be occupied by Coltrane or Mendelssohn than by whoever this Mumford & Sons outfit is.  I am not a polished or highly refined physical presence by anybody's standards.  I'm not what anyone would call a particularly inspiring dynamic or outgoing leader type (my style, such as it is, is rather more quiet with much question-asking).  I'm not particularly well-connected.  I don't have any grand visions for the future.  Who am I kidding?

And yet the fool's errand continues.  There is no turning back, not because I haven't thought very hard about it at times, but because the thing, whatever it is, is still out there.  I'm less certain what "the thing" is anymore; I still imagine some form of pastoral calling, but my life has been so whacked around of late that I have to be open to different avenues by which such a vocation may be lived out.  Whatever that might be, I'm still on the path towards it, wherever that is.

I'm still here because every now and then my mind explodes in class, or in chapel, or just sitting and reading or talking -- not a destructive, waste-laying explosion, more like the Big Bang, with pockets of life springing out where there was only chaos and void before, and I know that another piece of the puzzle, another building block, has fallen into place.

I'm still here because I cannot get free of that sense of vocation, acting much like a particularly strong undertow, pulling me in directions I would not have imagined before, drowning me in a hope and a passion from which I have no desire to be rescued.

I'm still here because I can't imagine being anywhere else.  Even if I don't see anyplace for the bizarrely-shaped peg that I am to fit into.

Prisoner of the good face

I've had a few responses to the last post I put up here, all from friends of various amounts of history.  Some by Facebook comment or message, and even some by regular old email, a technology I'm beginning to forget how to use (sadly, no comments directly on the blog, alas).  All contained varying degrees of support or encouragement as well as making some kind of response to the content of the post.

One of those responses, from a longtime friend and confidant, put out the idea that (at least in his case?) what might be called "inspirational" about my current circumstance and response to it is my honesty.  Apparently some of the posts along the way have come off as more direct and unfiltered than one is accustomed to seeing.  I suppose there might be some truth in that.  Even if I'm not dying from this cancer, I guess somehow I've come to the point of being unwilling to be anything less than direct about this illness and how it is affecting me, mentally and emotionally as much as physically.  That may put some people off, but it may draw more people, if the page view stats this system provides are any indication.

In its own way, that's a little sad.  Or perhaps, it points to something the church needs to think about.

I've been fortunate that, with one or two exceptions, no one has really found anything unacceptable or unforgivable in any of my rants to this point.  I've been surrounded by a community that has been unbelievably supportive and caring, both at the seminary and in the church we attend.  I know of many churches that offer services of healing and wholeness, specifically designed for the kind of persons going through illnesses like mine and much worse.  Churches visit, they provide meals or rides or all sorts of other support.  Churches do a lot for people in suffering, I'm not so naive as to deny that.

I wonder, though, if there is something we sometimes overlook.

Church can, at times, be the hardest place to be for a person going through difficult times, physically or otherwise.  It can be a place where one feels compelled to put a good face on things.  Your soul may be tearing you apart, you might only barely be able to look another in the eye, but it's church, and you can't go around disrupting things, so you put on the good face.  Then you do it again the next time you're at church, or if you run into some of your fellow church folk at the supermarket or elsewhere.  More good face. (Then there are some who can't stop themselves putting on the good face even when they are among dear friends and fellow sufferers begging them to be real and open up.  But that's another issue.)

Is there a space where the suffering can suffer out loud?  Can we be so closely knit a body of Christ that we can go ahead and feel that screaming pain from our brother or sister without being scandalized or finding that person's pain and anguish somehow scandalous or improper?

I've been told that for Americans, the default, almost mindless answer to the usual greeting question "how are you doing?" is an almost reflexive "fine" or something similiar, whereas if you ask that of a British chap he'll immediately tell you not only that things are lousy, but exactly why -- awful pain in that left knee, cold that won't go away, rotten week at work, and so forth.  An American might be taken aback in the face of such directness.

I guess that my own situation is making me think more about what kind of space we allow for suffering and the anger and sadness that comes with it.  Are we too ready to imprison the sufferer, or ourselves for that matter, in the good face?  I can't say that I really have anything specific to propose here.  I have said many times before in this blog that I don't have answers and I don't have anything original to say.  I can only wonder if among all the things the church as a body of Christ-followers for those in suffering or pain or sickness or despair, if there's some way to create space for the anger and sadness and raging that goes on inside the soul of the sufferer, instead of too easily pointing to some supposed saintly model of suffering in which the patient shows nothing more than a beatific smile and heavenward glance, like something out of a martyr myth.  (For one thing, being martyred for your faith is nothing like having cancer or having your spouse killed by a drunk driver or any number of other sufferings.)

I don't deny it's hard.  It terrifies me every time I let loose with one of these, hearing voices from way back in some (imagined?) past castigating me for being so weak or faithless.  Or some imaginary "coach" telling me to "suck it up" and "quit being a sissy" (or worse) (and I never really was an athlete, so I have no idea where that comes from).

But I've learned enough to know that the longer that anger stays imprisoned behind the good face, the longer it will corrode me from within.  Even now, with a little better health for the moment and a couple of days of release, I'm in at least a decent place for now as chemotherapy starts tomorrow.  I'm not looking to run off and do Gene Kelly's Singing in the Rain routine by any means, but I'm in a place where the anger has run its course.  We'll see how things go tomorrow, mind you.

And I guess I've been challenged to try to be more perceptive and more open to others who are in the depths of suffering or anger or sadness or despair.  I can't say I've got a great track record there myself.

Darn it, this growing up business is difficult.