Accompanying me as I deal with the rough and unpredictable emotional weather of metastatic breast cancer has been three slim morning and evening prayer books by John Philip Newell: Celtic Benediction; Sounds of the Eternal: A Celtic Psalter; and Prayers with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace. 

Celtic spirituality celebrates that we and all that is have been created in the image of a loving God revealed through as well as beyond the five senses; human beings are integral to the goodness of creation. This Gaelic heritage is opposed to the Mediterranean tradition which focuses on our original sinfulness: only our spiritual nature can redeem us from our condemned physicality. This sin comes through Eve/women; thus the abusive treatment of women and of this fragile Mother Earth our island home is justified as is violence, both aggressive and passive-aggressive. In Celtic spirituality body-mind-spirit are one we all are one with every other aspect of creation.

Reading these Celtic prayers which include brief passages from the Biblical Wisdom tradition has stilled my racing thoughts. These prayers have drawn me into an expansive vision of the pervasive presence of the Sacred “within and all around.” As I have literally rested into the prayers, I have sensed the immense mystery of this universe contained within other universes. Infinite. Imagined but not understood. Words inaccessible. Breaking open our finite, constrained, unimaginative images of and words for “God.”

“God” for whom I have sought meaning beyond the traditions suddenly sang out to me once again. The traditional narrow understanding and imaging of God as male, patriarchal and hierarchical had haunted me for decades. Now I know viscerally, in my body, and mystically, in my soul, that this mystery of which we all partake is infinitely beyond our ken as well as the lived reality in which we live and move and have our being.

From “Sounds of the Eternal,” Sunday Morning Opening Prayer

In January 20, 2018, I was diagnosed with Metastatic Breast Cancer.  By mid-May my husband and I had both retired and moved to what had been our summer home on an island off Portland, Maine.

Now in July 2019 I am relaxing into writing my cancer reflections from the physical, emotional, relational and spiritual fronts of living into dying. As with my sharing in Part I written in 2017, I write these explorations so that others might know what I am learning as I live further into my living into my dying.

It wasn’t until a month after my diagnosis that I asked my oncologist what stage cancer I have. I had researched stages but had not connected the dots that metastatic is Stage 4 cancer. For me understanding the complexity of having metastatic cancer is a gradual awakening.

“Metastatic,” as most people do not know means “beyond stasis”; in other words, the medications I take will be chasing cancer cells for the remainder of my life. My primary breast cancer was Stage 1. I had a lumpectomy and an excellent prognosis–operation, radiation, very low probability of returning cancer.

This time cancer cells are in my bones. Cells can travel to the bones, liver, brain, anywhere they choose; eventually the game will be up. Bone metastases are the most hopeful starting point. I am thankful that my present medications are still working according to my scans taken in June. My oncologist tells me I have “very little cancer.” PET scans or a combination of CT scans and bone scans are the principal ways we can know where the cells are active since they light up these places. My next scans are in November.

Those are the physical facts–other than the considerable pain which can surface in my joints wherever it chooses plus other side effects which blindside me. Just as I think I know what to expect, I am surprised by a new and unexpected side effect, putting me on notice that I am not in control.

However, over this past year I have been able to track what is happening–the first six months I plowed through all the side effects except the fatigue which drove me to rest on the bed for an hour at a time. We had to move on moving day, a daunting challenge which we completed by keeping on keeping on until the last counter was wiped down and the front door closed. I have begun to acclimate to expecting the unexpected. Since I cannot anticipate what will happen next, I am learning to cope with what is happening from moment-to-moment in my physical being. As I have been told my palliative care doctor: Joy, this is your life now.

Future posts on the emotional, relational and spiritual fronts.

Addendum: FYI, As I return to posting after a post-Trump election hiatus, I am learning more WordPress.com operational details that I expect will turn up in my posts. More to come.

As one small step for womankind—humankind–I now raise up the women’s stories by remembering a changing variety of women with a variety of roles, “God of our Fathers and Mothers, God of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, of Deborah, Ruth and Naomi, Jacob, Rachel and Leah.”

When we read seeking deeper levels, Biblical stories become complex and enriched and a complex, multi-dimensional God hidden within flattened patriarchal and male-centered interpretations of these narratives appears. As you read or hear Biblical stories, I invite you to focus on the women, take the bits and pieces and interpret them through your eyes, bring them out of the shadows of the traditions into the light of new revelation, out of silence into proclamation.

Ask questions. What are this woman’s characteristics? What is her importance to this story? How is her story told in my faith tradition? Does she have a voice? If so, what does she say? If not, what do I imagine she wants to say? How could her story be told differently?

Today I invite you to begin with the Book of Ruth, a six chapter short story of women, by considering the characteristics of these two women. You might recognize the power of the elder Naomi’s radical crone wisdom when it is joined with the adventurous and risk-taking spiritedness of the young foreigner Ruth. Together they use their energies and resources to devise a plan for survival in a patriarchal culture which does not look kindly on women without male protectors. By the end of the Book, they not only have survived but are thriving. A child has been born to Ruth, a child whom Naomi helps care for. Women of their chosen community name the child. Women helping women, a younger woman and an older woman teaming—and scheming– together, for the welfare of all, surrounded by a community of women welcoming the child of the foreigner and celebrating new life.

I also encourage you to try imagining God explicitly as a woman. How might she be imaged creatively? How might your naming God as female empower you to work to change your faith tradition? Expand your worldview?? Shatter the ultimate, the stained glass ceiling? What feelings are awakened as you question and imagine?

As women have released energy repressed and blocked by abused, oppressed, and ignored Biblical women, space has been created for narratives and images to evolve into greater fullness. These discoveries invite other women and men to play along by re-imagining their own faith images, narratives and journeys.

Within this space, created by rage and outrage held in tension with delight and celebration, the ancient Hebrew figure of Divine Wisdom is re-members. In Hebrew and Christian testaments she is Divine Wisdom, Sophia in Greek. She who was present in creation calls us to revel in that Creation. She calls all who will listen to come to her and eat at her groaning table filled with food for body, mind and spirit. She is ready to impart her wisdom to those who yearn to exchange their heavy and unbearable burdens for a yoke which is substantial and meaning-full, yet easy and light. In this image of the Divine Feminine who was present with God in creation, we re-member the image of God in which we, women and men, were created: male and female God created them.

Through our ongoing work, wo-men continue to reclaim authority and voices both to interpret the scriptures and to name the Holy and themselves, moving from rejection of our bodies, minds and spirits toward self-love and self-acceptance, using our imaginations to connect the snippets of our heritage to create greater fullness of life for all Creation. (End)

So what? What does this story of my mother’s and my trauma and silencing have to do with biblical stories of women and with you?

Biblical women’s stories are most often told in snippets, sentences here and there, regularly ignored by our traditions except as an incidental part of the overriding narrative of powerful and revered men. Overwhelmingly, men have shaped the way Biblical narratives have been interpreted over the millennia. Now it is time for women and understanding men to raise up women’s narratives—Biblical and personal. Narratives are always shaped from snippets with the imagination bridging and enhancing the snippets to create enlivened and enhanced meaning. If we do not shape our stories, someone else will—or the stories will remain snippets with no significant effect on others.

In my own life, I read back from the way I react today to threatening—whether real or not– authority how my fearful reaction silences me, often fear of shaming myself by misspeaking. Other times I am fearful of negative reactions and judgments meant to dismiss or belittle my meaning.

In writing this talk, I chose to begin with my mother’s words, “Now I understand the suffering of the Jews.” I will never know the substance of my mother’s wrestling to understand the suffering of the Jews; however, by writing these words I have encountered the depth of my mother’s integrity in confronting my granddaughter as a daunting adversary, then through her lawyers fighting for justice against my grandfather’s will, and finally in the unremitting agony of her living day-by-day with my grandparents’ cruel legacy.

Now it is our turn to encounter stories of Biblical women with the same determination, deciding for ourselves whether their stories are life-giving or death-dealing to us as women.

Christianity began as a movement within the Jewish faith, incorporating the Hebrew Bible into its liturgies and stories—bending the Jewish stories to fit Christian theology. In Eucharistic services—the Mass, Communion, the Lord’s Table—the Episcopal Church has always traced its history back to Abraham. One of these prayers begins: “God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob….”

In 1977 I heard the woman priest celebrating the Eucharist say this prayer differently. She said, “God of our fathers and mothers, God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel….”

“God of our mothers, Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel….” For the first time I heard myself named! Passionate energy surged through me, body, mind and spirit. What had been flattened out by leaving out women’s names, in an instant, came alive for me. I had never experienced myself as excluded by the Church; in that moment, I knew I had never been fully included.

During church services I began experimenting, calling God “God” instead of “Father”, “Lord”, “He”, or “Him”. Instead of singing “God of our fathers,” I sang “God of our mothers,” making my mother’s faith visible, our names heard. Trying to decide whether to study psychology or theology, it dawned on me that I had to study both. I asked myself, “How can I dedicate myself to helping people heal if God is imaged as a man? Women cannot become whole if wholeness is imaged as male, if there is a stained glass ceiling. Neither can men become whole if they have to be like god in order to be worthy.”

Subversively, I framed my subsequent calling to the priesthood: to work for change in the male-centered language and, consequently, the patriarchal theology of the church. I created a course which focused our thoughts on the characteristics and actions of women in the Bible, uncovering how focused the church’s teachings and liturgies are on the actions of men and on a male God. This is how I came to pay attention to the complicated relationship between Sarah and Hagar, mothers of Judaism and Islam.

In the seminal story of Genesis, traditionally told as the story of Abraham, the voices and traumas of Sarah, married to Abraham, and Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave, have been diminished and even silenced. Their twice-told story (Genesis 16:1-14 and 21:8-21) sets the women against one another on the basis of race, age, class, marital, and childbearing status. The ultimate worth of each woman is measured by her body’s ability to conceive and bear a male child. Because Sarah has not been able to conceive and bear a son for Abraham, she chooses the younger Hagar to conceive a child by him. As Egyptian and as slave, Hagar is helpless to defend herself against Sarah’s command and Abraham’s demand. She is subject to Abraham and Sarah’s whims. However, Hagar’s more youthful body becomes her advantage over Sarah—she is able to bear Abraham a child when Sarah is long past childbearing age. This woman against woman, horizontal as well as vertical, violence of Sarah against Hagar is worsened when Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar’s pregnancy, even though under Hebrew law the child will legally be Sarah’s and Abraham’s. Hagar is sent into the desert by Abraham to die until God’s messenger appears to her and sends her back into the whirlwind of Abraham’s family. With Ishmael’s birth, Sarah’s position in the hierarchy becomes more tenuous.

Once Sarah bears her own son, Isaac, her jealousy takes an ugly twist into envy that wants to destroy the threat embodied by Hagar and Ishmael. Out of her fear that Ishmael, Abraham’s first born son, might displace Isaac in the line of inheritance, Sarah demands that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert where they are certain to die. Abraham’s willingness to abandon his own child is echoed through centuries of men willing to deny their progeny when it is convenient for them to do so.

However, the narrative changes in an unexpected way. In the desert for a second time, just as Hagar and Ishmael are facing death, God’s messenger again appears to Hagar and promises that her son will be the progenitor of a race of people, just as God has promised Abraham and Sarah that Isaac will be. These direct appearances of the Holy to Hagar, a woman, an outsider, a slave, is the first biblically reported epiphany or appearance of God to a woman. We are confronted by an evocative, inescapable paradox which haunts humanity through history: Ishmael, the son abandoned by his father Abraham, is to become the mythic progenitor of the Arab race while the mythic Isaac fathers the Hebrew people, a clear premonition of Israelis set against Arabs.

Today our assignment is to ask: How could this story be told differently? My friend Ilene told me about a play in which seven imaginative alternative scenarios are imagined. “What if Abraham had not been so solution-oriented and instead had said, ‘Sarah, look how well Ishmael is playing with his younger brother Isaac. They are laughing together.’” I ask, what if Sarah had trusted there would be enough for everyone to share? In addition, we have to deal with a male God who encourages the contentious story to evolve as it does. A formidable conundrum for us to wrestle with with our eyes open, and listen to with suspicious ears, wondering how to proclaim this contradictory God.

TALK GIVEN DECEMBER 2, 2016 NYC 

KEEP MOVING FORWARD:

THE ANN AND GERALD STEIN WOMEN’S CONFERENCE: FROM WEARING THE GLASS SLIPPER TO BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING (EDITED)

I am speaking from my inside experience of the Christian faith. I am speaking about the trauma of silencing in our lives as women and in our religious traditions as well as learning to break that silence by speaking truth about our own stories and experiences. Finally, I am speaking as a white, well-educated, feminist elder who honors indigenous wisdom.

This has not been an easy talk to prepare. My inner voice keeps asking questions, almost taunting me to remain silent. What can I safely say? Whose toes might I tread on? Whose ire might I stir up? What dare I say? And underneath is the question of fear: what will happen to me if I do speak what I have experienced and how my faith has evolved?

And my gratitude for this opportunity at this crone wisdom time of my life celebrates my determination to speak as deeply as I am able, to push the envelope for women everywhere. Actually the process turned out to be challenging and invigorating. I ended up with more questions than I have answers and I love questions which expand my understanding of the way the patriarchal institutions work to silence women—as well as their children and men of integrity.

My story of wearing the glass slipper is about the traumatic generational silencing of women in my mother line. Then as I discuss the story of Hagar and Sarah, I will note my discovery of parallels between my story and the traumatic silencing of women in Biblical stories. Finally, I will encourage as well as seek to empower us to break our silences so that our voices shatter the stained glass ceiling.
~~~~~~
My story begins when I am talking on the telephone with my mother. My brother called to tell me she was in the hospital. Talking with her I realized she was dying– but more than that happened. This is the part that I usually skip because it sounds peculiar, even uncanny. Our conversation seemed casual, even normal– except several times her voice turned away from the telephone as though she were talking to a roommate saying, “Now I understand the suffering of the Jews.” Then she returned to our conversation.

The next morning when I arrived at the hospital, my mother had no roommate. And she was bleeding out. Eventually, I would call her death a passive suicide. She had hidden the lump in her breast until the raw redness screamed cancer and my father insisted she see a doctor. The loss of her breast was the final insult to a life already broken. Given nerve damaging drugs as she struggled with profound depressions and over-medicated with estrogen for severe hot flashes, she developed grinding pain that reduced her teeth to little nubs which cut into her tongue until she could barely speak. Silenced as a child by the emotional pain of being born unwanted to competitive and cold immigrant German parents; as an adult self-medicating with alcohol against the traumas of her mother’s suicide followed by her father’s disinheriting her, she had given up on being able to live a productive life. As we three children left home, she gradually became wracked by inescapable physical and emotional pain, telling my younger brother, “The pain begins before I am awake.” Two weeks before she died, all the nubs of her teeth were taken out. We had our first lively conversation in years.

Now in the hospital bed, her blood draining through various tubes, she was peaceful and smiled easily as though she were saying to me, “This is my death. Don’t replay how things could have been different; this is my choice. I am letting you go so that you can live a fuller life.”

She did let me go AND she left me her legacy: “Now I understand the suffering of the Jews.” These words became my marching orders: to piece together the snippets of her story so that I could weave our mother-daughter stories together to find some meaning and break the silence so that I can speak our reality. The place to begin was confronting my grandmother’s traumatic silencing, piecing together what I could of her narrative.

At the end of the 18th century, my grandmother’s Huguenot family fled horrific religious persecution in France for Mainz, Germany. A hundred years later, my grandmother, her mother, sister, and kid brother Jacob immigrated to the United States. Over the next 25 years the women created a flourishing seamstress shop in Philadelphia, earning enough to put Jacob—the male child– through Penn Law School.

My grandparents married when they were 36. An independent woman pressured to marry the successful, domineering, 36 year old German businessman. The oft-told tale says that four years later my grandmother was preparing to go back to Europe to help WWI refugees– or was she actually leaving her marriage??– when she found out she was pregnant with their only child. Occasionally my mother alluded to her miserable childhood. Her trunk would be packed for a summer at camp, away from her parents; then the night before she was to leave, my grandmother would say, “Oh, you will become homesick.” And the trunk would be unpack, my mother’s respite denied. When my mother gave the valedictory speech at her Quaker high school graduation, her parents hid in the back of the auditorium, fearing she would falter and embarrass them.

In December 1940 my parents had been married six months and were living—blissfully, my father always said– as newlyweds in New York City when they found out my grandmother had committed suicide. When she returned to Philadelphia, my grandfather told her, “If you come home and take care of my house [where her mother had hanged herself in the basement] for me, everything I have will be yours.” My mother kept her side of the promise. Born over the next three years, my two brothers and I were brought home to live in that house where our grandmother had hanged herself, where my grandfather sat in his gold chair wreathed in cigar smoke listening to news of Germany’s victories and eventual defeat. It took me until I was 50 to realize I was named Joy because my father hoped as a girl child I would bring Joy back into my mother’s life.

Then in April 1945—I was 2 ½, my younger brother born Aril 24th– as the concentration camps were being opened, my Quaker-educated mother fought uncompromisingly with my German, Nazi sympathizing? grandfather. I must have been frightened by the fighting, I must have sensed the danger as well as my mother’s persistence. In September 10 days before he died, my grandfather used his last weapon to punish my mother; he wrote her out of his will. His lawyer told him, “I refuse to disinherit your only child who has cared for you. You will have to find another lawyer.”

My mother could live in the house where my grandmother had hanged herself, but my parents would have to pay $35 each month, exactly what my father weekly salary. If my mother divorced my father or he died, she could live there rent free.

My mother kept up her fiery resistance: she sued his estate all the way to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania– and lost. Inexorably silenced by her father’s will.
She never told my brothers and me a coherent story about my grandmother’s suicide or grandfather’s betrayal; only the occasional sentence or two when she was drinking. Without a story, I too was silenced. I could not understand what had happened, only experiencing my mother’s agony. Putting her sentences together into a narrative with some continuity became my mission. I was determined to break the spell of my heritage: my grandmother’s suicide and my mother’s passive suicide. Late in his life in response to my insistent questioning, my father reluctantly said, “Yes, your grandfather was a misanthrope.” A people hater.

I imagine my hearing my mother’s resisting my grandfather’s misogyny; then when the concentration camps were liberated, her outrage by his either defending the Nazis or denying the truth about the concentration camps. I am certain this is when I learned to want to seek and to speak the truth as my mother had. After my grandfather died, I also learned I would be punished, abandoned and disinherited if I challenged those with authority over me. My lifetime dilemma with which I struggle even today. (continued)

Gordon, Charlotte. The Woamn Who Namd God: Abraham’s Dilemma and the Birth of Three Faiths. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009.

Trible, Phyllis and Letty Russell, eds. Hagar, Sarah and Their Children: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives. Louisville, KY: Westminster Press John Knox Press, 2006.

These two books have extensive and thorough bibliographies for further resources. I will post a number of books regarding the generational impact of trauma in the near future. Please comment on my blog or send personal questions to my email joymills@verizon.net

Please excuse format errors. I will sort them out with my computer consultant soon. Thank you for your patience.

“If Not Now, When?” ~~Hillel

 Antidotes to despair: (begun early Wednesday, November 9, 2016)

My first response to the thought of a Trump presidency came as I awoke Wednesday morning: He is as bad as we think he is. I know this because I know sociopaths do not change, their pathology pervades their personality.

Later, in the midst of despair, I overheard my husband who teaches public speaking to graduates students from around the ten globe at a major university tell a student, “You listened to the small voice within you and spoke from a place of deeper truth for you.” My preoccupation with mourning our loss immediately shifted. I need and want to listen to the still, small voice within me. And here I am writing this blog.

Action can move us from despair and disbelief: for instance, writing this blog after a long silence during which I seemed to have nothing to share. Listen to the action you are called to. No action which adds to your sense of well being is too small. I have already received a concise and powerful poem and an inspiring Facebook post.

Take time to reflect on the deepest meaning you can find. Listen to Hillary’s Wednesday morning speech. Remember that Hillary won the popular vote—as did Al Gore when the Supreme Court decision led to the election of George W. (sometimes referred to as The Shrub!–humor can also help.) Find your words and speak your truth in a way true to you. Use your particular  gift of expression to heal yourself and the world.

I will continue to blog as thoughts arise in me—as they did this morning, November 11 as I honored the Great Spirits on my deck and was surrounded by Earth Mother’s beauty and the heightened danger she she now faces. I will include websites that are energize me. Be sure to wear your safety pin (see Huffington Post story) prominently.

Here are two actions I am involved in addition to blogging and working on my book with renewed commitment:

December 2, I have the privilege of speaking at The Ann and Gerald Stein Women’s Conference “From Wearing the Glass Slipper to Breaking the Glass Ceiling.” This conference is sponsored by The Jewish Board for Family and Children’s Services and held at the United Jewish Appeal Federation, New York City. Through telling my story, I will address our ongoing stories as women who are called on to confront oppression in a patriarchal and hierarchical world that we had hoped was passing way.

December 5, along with friends, I am attending the Inspirational Speeches night given by my husband’s students. Email me for more information: joymills@verizon.net

Tell me more. I am curious….  I am interested….  I am wondering what you are thinking/doing…. It seems to me you are saying/what you did….  I hear you saying. (paraphrase)….  I wonder why you did/said….

A way of listening that invites the other person to respond as they choose–or not to answer at all. They are statements that give permission to answer or not. They leave space for the other to know you are thinking of them. They create space for the other to ponder the question at another time.

These calmly spoken statements are not questions. They are not demands. They avoid Yes and No answers. They offer a choice of whether or not to respond. They tell the other person that you are thinking of them, what they have done or said. They appreciate and respect the other person’s boundaries. They are open-ended. They suggest spaciousness and graciousness, honoring the other person’s choice, yet letting them know you are thinking about them even when you are away from one another. They are not intrusive, yet they communicate attentiveness and interest.

Be curious. Let the other person know you care without being intrusive–or as many questions do, offer the possibility of non-starter Yes or No answers. These statements say I want to listen to you because I value you and think about you when you are not here. They are about listening to them first, not pushing your own agenda.

And they can also be used for your own reflection as you ponder these statements in an effort to discover more about your own thinking. Try writing out one of the statements; then write out your response. When we do this, we befriend ourselves as we want others to befriend us and as we want to befriend others.

I commend to you this Op-ed piece from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/opinion/campaign-stops/lets-grow-up-liberals.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share “I voted for Bernie Sanders. But it’s enough with the purity already.” Kevin Baker, Essayist and author of The Big Crowd challenges us not to opt “for suicide by Trump. Let’s grow up, liberals, and take our party and our country back.”

I am dreading the Republican Convention. Thankfully, I do not have regular TV here on the island. We can use our Apple TV Air Play for NPR Newshour recaps, limiting our exposure as well as keeping ourselves informed. I am already profoundly saddened as I think about the millions of Americans who are buying into the Republican fiasco. Blaming the Republicans is too easy. I sorrow for our country because I believe the reaction to Trump represents an already deep divide in our culture.

We are in crisis as a nation. The word “crisis” in Chinese includes characters for both danger and opportunity. It is up to us, individually and collectively, to be become aware of and live intentionally into the many and diverse life-giving opportunities revealed by this crisis. We will be called in different ways. I encourage you to listen to how you are called to respond. The following is part of my response—passing on more information about listening to one another.

Learn to Listening First. See listenfirstproject.org  The website opens: In today’s polarized world, we’re committed to turning the tide by starting new conversations that cross aisles, demographics, and everything else that divides us. We believe when people genuinely listen in open and honest conversation – especially with someone on the “other side” – our relationships, communities and culture are transformed. Like all change, this won’t be easy. But it starts with us and it starts with you.

See also Urban Confessional: A Free Listening Project @UrbanConfessional-Facebook

The following is a report on listening at the Republican and Democratic Conventions from Kay Lindahl of thelisteningcenter.org:

Benjamin (of the free listening project) is going to Cleveland on July 20th and 21st with 2-3 volunteers and a film director who will be recording whatever happens with Free Listening. He has had a great response to the Huffington Post video about Urban Confessional and Free Listening – and has informed them that he will be taking the project to Cleveland. A woman in Philadelphia just contact him about being the point person there. She lives near the Convention Center and has already recruited 3 more people to be on her team.

Pearce (of Listen First) is going to send business cards to Ben with the ListenFirst pledge on them. He will send posters to Lynn in Philadelphia. Ben has had responses to the project from around the world.

If you are attending either convention or live nearby, please contact Benjamin at the free listening project.

Your suggestions and intentions during this crisis are welcome in the comment space below.

“You can choose to experience your body as being wasted away by cancer or as being re-absorbed by Spirit.” These words spoken to him by Buddhist monk and teacher Shinzen Young radically changed my husband’s living and dying. They continue to change mine.

My husband was an Episcopal priest. On the Feast of The Epiphany January 6, 2002, we quietly celebrated the 40^th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. Twenty days later at 7:47 a.m., Saturday, January 26, he died as quietly from a virulent type of prostate cancer which had progressively and mercilessly attacked his bones for twenty months.

He will be remembered by many people for his grace-filled dying; however, he will be remembered by many more for his empowering and spirited sermons. He would skillfully and surprisingly interject rollicking, yet relevant, humor at the appropriate moment; then drop just as suddenly into communicating his strongly held belief that we are created to live fully, love wastefully and become all we are able to become. Listeners could easily ponder his message again later because he would focus on three points drawn from his understanding of that day’s Gospel reading, grounding these points in everyday life.

In memory of my husband, I intuit here the three points he would have extracted for a sermon based on Shinzen’s words: we have a choice; we are invited to participate actively; living and dying is a dance between two realities.

We have a choice. Our decision informs the way we live and, consequently, the way we will die. Do we acquiesce to or fight against the outrageous slings and arrow of fortune; or do we create space in ourselves for meaning to evolve? By clarifying the alternative understandings of bodily wasting away and re-absorption by spirit, Shinzen shocked my husband into recognizing that the choice belonged to him. Day after day as his life ebbed away, Lew consciously chose to let go more and more into the process of re-absorption.

We are invited into active participation. The creative, intelligent Energy we sometimes call God invites us into active and conscious engagement with the dying process rather than passive acceptance of, fighting against, or wandering purposelessly into death. Engagement with this Energy creates meaning from what could seem meaning-less. My husband’s process established a rhythm between inward and outward movements. I watched him become deeply contemplative as he reflected on his experience of living and dying. And I heard him deeply engage people willing to enter into the profundity of his experience as it intersected their own.

Living into dying is a dance between two realities. Shinzen calls these realities the cosmic and the personal. Cosmic: transcendent, mystical, transpersonal intimations of immortality beyond the five senses. Personal: fully feeling the vicissitudes of gradual and ultimate loss. My husband said, “Don’t tell me I am going to a better place. Here is good enough for me. I do not know whether it will be better; I only know it will be different.” Slowly, his dying became a both/and experience, moving from the paradox of the either/or to the reconciliation of both his inexorable and painful bodily wasting and his joyous and grace-filled re-absorption into Spirit.

On this side of my husband’s death, I am learning that the cosmic encompasses the personal and brings me to a peace that passes, yet also gives, understanding. I live in the midst of paradox and reconciliation every day. In a moment I can drop into the void of personal loss and trauma—and even there I find fullness of life. I discover the void is not empty. It is full of memory and meaning, angst and release, complexity and texture, exquisite sorrow and deep peace. My whole being can be wracked with pain as the two realities collide. For a time I am in a frighteningly altered state; my familiar personal reality becomes fluid and unstable. Each time this happens I am increasingly aware that I exist in both realities simultaneously, knowing and not knowing all at once: the bittersweet experience of living into dying.