know this place

I love the darkness of these days.

Early this morning I sat outside in the darkness, watching the stars and the wind blowing in the trees. It occurred to me that all of this is mine/me, that my boundaries are not limited to my particular body.

The message: “know this place(as yours and you)”.

mountains, molehills, and shots in the arm

Boy, what a great shot in the arm my breast cancer support group was for me last night. They were able to put to rest many of my fears and apprehensions. One woman showed me her "expander" phase breast and I was surprised at how good it looked, scar and all. They all told me that the "drains" (which the whole idea of keeps me awake at night) were not going to be a big deal at all.

I feel like I may be making a mountain out of a molehill here. My sense now is that breast cancer/mastectomy is a lot more frightening for those who haven’t faced it, than for those who have.

I may even learn from these women how to be more gracious with praying.

family and prayer

The good thing about family is the safe cocoon that it offers a child in this strange phenomenon, “life”. Even with disease and death, the family forms a net of safety so that the child lives confidently and fearlessly, knowing an inherent “goodness” in that which is.

I think that perhaps this safety and reassurance of goodness is what we mean to give each other when we say that we will “pray for” them. As well as the acknowledgement that we are all mysteriously here and in this together.

I would like to run away

I am confused and not sleeping well. “Worry” seems to be always with me, and I can’t seem to find my way to the more elusive “quiet”.

Yesterday I lost it at the vet’s office. Jubilee had an infection in her paw that needed to be treated. The vet was young and new, and distracted because of an emergency surgery that needed to be done on a dog that had been bitten by a larger dog. She asked me to leave Jubilee for a few hours. When I picked Jubilee up later, a series of blood tests had been done on her (all were normal) and the bill came to $340. In front of everyone in the waiting room, I ranted that I would never bring Jubilee back and that I should have been consulted about the expensive testing before it was done. John told me on the phone that I sounded frazzled and “like my sister”. Jubilee is still limping.

On top of that, people that I barely know are repeatedly sending me “prayer” cards and putting me on their “prayer lists”. This makes me very uncomfortable. For one thing, I have no idea what it means to “pray for” someone. The only thing that I can relate to in my own experience is holding someone in a place of love and concern within myself. The “pray for” wording feels somehow contorted to me, and I do not understand what it means. But I’m trying to let go of that as just a wording peculiarity. What really bothers me is having my name and predicament broadcast on “prayer” billboards and the like. I do not like the attention on me, I feel a need for more privacy, and I don't know how to be gracious about all of this.

I would like to run away somewhere, to another universe, where there is no breast cancer. I would like to disappear.

into great silence

One of Nancy’s gifts was not a book, but the DVD, “Into Great Silence”.

I have wanted to see the film for a while and, in fact, it was next up on my Netflix cue. But now that I have started watching it, I know that it is a film than I need to own, and watch repeatedly – like prayer.

It is a contemplative film that draws me deep into the mystery of life itself, and leaves me resting in the same Silence as that of the monks.

Especially now, I need to keep my focus on this silence.

The experience of breast cancer is breaking down my old walls of control and visions of “how things are”. When I awaken in the night, I immediately know that things are different now. Life itself is different. I am in a strange (and frightening) land. The old rules no longer apply. And it seems as if I need to discover/uncover a whole new way to be and see. But none of this new way of seeing and being is in my hands.

Silence is the only thing that I have to hold on to.

prayer

I am hesitant to write about prayer because I have such a strong aversion to religiosity. The truth is that, since I was very young, I have been strongly attracted to silent, solitary prayer. As a child, I loved the silent and dark, empty Churches. When the nuns would talk about “vocations”, it was the cloistered Carmelites that attracted me.

Even though my life has not been outwardly “religious” – I am a rebellious “Catholic” – my inner life has always been preoccupied with prayer. My reading has centered around contemplative writers – Merton, Hammarskjöld, the Cloud of Unknowing, Chuang Tzu …

And now. These days when everything seems a bit dazed, different, distracted – I hear/feel clearly the call the prayer. In some ways, it seems as if this “illness” (can I even call it that? I’m not really sick, it’s more like an alarm or something) is a door leading and helping me toward a more simple and easy and nothing-but-prayer way of living.

I have pretty much let go of all of my computer clients until the end of the year, when I am through the surgery and hopefully recovered. Without the stress of “having to work”, my days open up to me to basically do whatever I want. And what I want to do is what I’ve always wanted to do – pray. So I begin to structure my day more like a monk, with prayer the first thing in the morning, and at least once sometime during the day, and then at bedtime. I use 2 books to help – Merton’s “Book of Hours” and a Benedictine Book of Hours – and I only read one short reading from each book per sitting. More than that and I seem to turn the time into “reading” rather than “praying”.

Then I sit. I am just quiet. I let myself go to the deep place in myself where I know God’s presence. I don’t know how long I do this – sometimes for longer times, sometimes for shorter times. I alternate these times of sitting with some simple yoga stretches.

And then I’m ok. And I know that everything will be ok. All I have to do is be quiet, and remember to pray.