Minutes of Meetings with God
and with Myself

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Strange Turns ...

Driving, alone, down to Tennessee and back gave me a good deal of time to think and to pray. I would like to say the "thinking and praying time" brought me to some dramatic moment of enlightenment and understanding but it didn't. And it didn't, because most of the time was given to fretting about things I can't do much about and to fussing with God about those things in my life and in the lives of people I care about that weren't going the way I felt they should go. I was talking to God, but mostly not giving God a chance to get a word in edgewise. The miles and miles of interstate highway rushed under the car, the scenery (some of which was particularly beautiful, especially in the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee) came and went in almost a blur, and I had a whirl of thoughts and feelings going on inside me. They were thoughts and feelings about aches and pains, about the successes and failures of our lives together as families and friends and believers, and about life and death.

Most of my thoughts and feelings were centered on two people who are important to me (my Mom and our friend, Nancy) and who had one life wrenching thing in common. Both found themselves with an uninvited and unwelcome "guest" in their bodies and in their lives. That unwelcome guest, that visitor that they didn't expect and didn't want was cancer.

The trip to Tennessee was to visit my Mom, who I hadn't seen since her cancer surgery last November. Thanks to the kindness and generosity of one of her sisters, Mom had a chance to fly from Florida to spend a couple of weeks in Tennessee with her three sisters and her brother. Mom and I really needed to see each other. Too much "stuff " was happening in and around her life and the "stuff" was becoming the occasion of a widening spiritual and emotional gap between us. Neither of us wanted that gap to grow any wider and long distance telephone calls weren"t helping us understand each other better. I love my Mom, and I desperately wanted to see her (to reassure myself that she is doing alright). But I also had a sense that sometime during our visit, I would have to "say my piece" about the "stuff" that was happening. I wasn't sure Mom would be willing or happy to hear what I had to say.

Early the morning after I arrived in Tennessee, when everyone else in the house was still asleep (my aunt and family are not "morning people"), I found Mom outside on the deck, sitting in the swing with her cup of coffee. And we talked. We talked about her cancer and the course of her treatment (thank God there are no signs of it and she hasn't been getting sick from the treatments) and we talked about "the stuff." I said my piece, Mom listened, she said her piece, I listened. We didn't agree about some things, some important things, but when the conversation was over there was something we agreed about with certainty: we love each other! The bridge of love connects us, even though we are two very different people who live very separate lives. We got up from the swing, gave each other a great big hug and a kiss and, then we went to Hardee's for biscuits and gravy. Life can take such strange turns, but love can see us through.

During the trip South, our friend Nancy was very often on my mind. As I recall, at one point, my cousin Chris (who is a seminary professor and a pastor) and I were waiting in the car while my uncle ran into the supermarket to get one or two things. I mentioned our friend Nancy's situation to Chris and told him that I really expected to get a call at any time that would let me know that Nancy had died. Chris, who has such a gentle spirit and who knows what it means to lose people dear to him, assured me that he would keep us all in his prayers. Chris and I talked of other things until my uncle came out of the store, but Nancy stayed in my thoughts.

Nancy's experience with cancer was not at all like my Mom's. In a matter of months, Nancy just got more and more bad news about her disease. The discovery of the cancer took Nancy by complete surprise. She had gone to the doctor with a comparatively minor complaint. She was a person who took care of herself, ate right, exercised regularly, did not have the habits of smoking or drinking that would increase cancer risk, and there was no remarkable history of cancer in her family. At each stage of dealing with the disease, Nancy looked for the best to happen, but it didn't. And, at each stage, although she faced some very trying, difficult decisions, Nancy did her best to comfort and reassure those whom she cared about, and who cared about her, who were caring for her more and more as she found herself less and less able to care for herself.

Nancy often gave the appearance of being "just" wife, mother and University of Michigan football super-fan, but there was so much more to Nancy. She was a spiritual pilgrim who explored the nature of God, the fabric of cosmic realities, and the depths of human beings. Nancy and I were both seekers and, although we had known each other for almost 25 years, we had only just started to learn from each other. Nancy and I did not always agree about things. I thought her to be braver and, perhaps, more brash than I am. She went down some paths that I could not bring myself to try. She was one who answered the question: "What would I do if I knew I would not fail?" with "JUMP!"

Nancy was one who prayed and she became a person who kept a spiritual journal. She became a person who meditated. She read and she experienced and she grew. Nancy was troubled by the condition of her world, by the human condition that she saw. And she was deeply disappointed by the way many of us who say that we are Christian so obviously fail in fundamentals of compassion and joy. She had come to a point at which she was in the process of serious examination of her life. She was looking at her life, yet again, to see what she could find of God there in new and comforting ways. She looked at herself with a great deal of honesty and resisted the temptation to the neurotic "over-scrupulousness" that so many of us who aspire to spiritual growth often fall into. She searched Eastern and Western religions for direction and comfort.

Nancy had deep and profound questions about Christianity, but she lived a practical Christian life. As her spiritual pilgrimage continued, as her cancer spread, somewhere, in all that was going on, Nancy found her heart and listened to it. What she heard was divine love and joy. Finally, Nancy wrote to those she cared for: "If I can leave you anything, anything to ease the burden of death and dying, let it be that you know the true nature of our being is LOVE, not fear! Love is a thousand times stronger than fear. Love begets Love."

Life can take such strange turns, but LOVE ...