Post Number Twenty One

Keeping the Covenant

The first Sunday of January has come and gone and once again I led the congregation in praying the Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition.  I have long admired this prayer and recommend its use as a way of reminding ourselves that our true devotion is to God and Jesus rather than to ourselves and our personal ambitions.

Years ago a clergy colleague called me. She was very distressed at a new appointment she was asked to accept. She felt that the suggested appointment was unworthy of her skills.  She asked for my opinion. Being happy with my own situation at the time, I found it easy to suggest that she pray the Covenant Prayer. I remember that she did not find my suggestion very helpful. It is one thing to pray this prayer when we are happy with the circumstances of the moment. It is quite another thing to pray this prayer when life has suddenly turned in a way we never expected or when we come to the realization that some long held dream will never be realized.

Life has turned in a way Terry and I never expected. We look to the future and we wonder just which of our dreams are now in jeopardy. I think back on that long ago phone conversation and wonder if I can now take my own advice.

Answers to these musings remain to be discovered. I do know that I have repeated this prayer daily in the past two weeks. It is part of a fake it 'til you make it strategy. These are words by which I sincerely wish to live. It is just that in this moment I am still troubled by the loss. Call it grief if you will.  I have learned that grief need not wait until a loved one dies. Grief comes at the death or the anticipated death of any of the loves and hopes and dreams we harbor in our hearts. For the moment the prayer does contain one section I can pray with sincerity, "And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine.  So be it."

Dave Gladstone

Post Number Twenty

Chemotherapy: Session One

Sitting in the oncology center as Terry begins her chemotherapy I am wondering how it can be that people working here and people here for treatment can be in such good spirit.  A young woman just came in to talk to a nurse.  Obviously she is well known here.  The staff greeted her by her first name.  She talked as if this was just another stop in a pleasantly busy day.  She joked about the weather and about the holiday and then she mentioned casually that she had just had a scan of some kind and that cancerous spots were discovered on her spine.  She mentioned it with the same kind of tone she might use to inform someone that she had just decided on a new hair style.  In this place the heaviest of medical issues are spoken of as casual routine.  People joke about the flavor they prefer for the poison they are about to receive.

Some may call this denial, but I am wondering if it is really a spiritual comfort with reality - a comfort I have yet to achieve.  "It is what it is."  I hear that phrase over and over again.  These are very brave people.

Dave Gladstone

Post Number Nineteen

What Lies Ahead?

Christmas offered both moments of great joy and times of high stress and anxiety.  How could it be any other way, given the circumstances we face.  Tonight is New Year's Eve and Terry and I will be home together without any other family.  This is not something we dread.  A quiet evening with no responsibility for anyone but ourselves is a good thing.  I doubt that we will stay up to welcome in the new year.  I have noticed that the new year comes whether I am awake to know it or not.

Terry begins chemotherapy on Monday.  She will be five hours at the clinic.  Then she will come home with a pump of some kind to continue the treatment for two more days.  This is the first of eight treatments that will take place every other week.  That will be four months of therapy. By the first of May this part should be over.  I prefer to think of this as eight treatments rather than four months.  Every session represents 12.5% of the journey.  Two sessions and we are 25% of the way home.  That is less discouraging than "four months".  

My ernest desire is that these treatments be effective and that when this is all over this cancer episode will be finished.  However, there is no certainty of that.  All we can do is follow the plan and trust in God and in the efficacy of modern medicine.  We do not know what to expect or how difficult this will be.  We do not know how long it will be before Terry begins to feel healthy once again.  I do not know if I have what is needed to be a help to her and to continue with my ministry at the church.  We do not know what lies ahead.  I can wear myself out if I spend too much time thinking about it.  Never has a new year presented so much uncertainty.

Dave Gladstone

Post Number Eighteen

It's A Wonderful Life

My whole family knows that I am a sucker for sappy sentimental holiday movies.  They have lost a little of their emotional grip on me over the years, but I can still work up a respectable sob over the likes of It's A Wonderful Life.  That particular movie has actually found a renewed appreciation in my life.  I watched it last year just before Christmas and found much more substance than I remembered from earlier viewings.

George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) is a man of high expectations and dreams.  Those expectations and dreams are combined with a strong sense of responsibility.  The result is a conflict of the spirit that leads to his undervaluing of his life and his over stating of the problems he must face.  George is a dreamer and a fixer.  That is a combination certain to strain the spirit.  In the end George comes to his senses and finds joy in the love he has shared in life.  He is set free from both his dreams and his sense of responsibility and finds a renewed appreciation for the reality of the moment and the love it contains.

I may not watch It's a Wonderful Life this year.  I am feeling too close to George Bailey at the moment.  Terry and I have dreams and high expectations for our future.  We want to go places and do things.  But at the moment there is an illness to fix and a new reality we must learn to live with.  I am not contemplating jumping off a bridge, and I do not need a Hollywood angel to help me find my way.  I just need time to appreciate the love that is already ours.  Maybe I will watch the movie again next year.

Post Number Seventeen

A New Perspective On Advent

Last night Terry asked me a question common to this time of year.  "What do you want for Christmas?"  I have answered this question every year of my life with no difficulty.  In fact, I usually anticipate the question and am ready with a list that I can recite when the question comes.  I am careful in preparing my answer that it not be too extravagant in order that my request not be dismissed out of hand.  I learned a long time ago that when it comes to Christmas gift requests it is best to soft peddle one's true desire.  My strategy has been to allow the giver room to exceed my stated expectations.  It is much better to appear pleasantly surprised than to appear mildly disappointed.  This has been my strategy in the past.  It cannot be my strategy this year.

Last night, when the question came once again, I was caught unprepared.  I could not think of a thing.  There was no object that could be wrapped and placed under a tree that seemed to matter in this moment when Terry is struggling to recover from her surgery and the specter of chemotherapy still looms ahead.  What use is another neck tie when our lives, for the moment, are so focused on a battle for health?  Why would I want a new power tool in a moment when we cannot imagine having the time and the peace to build something frivolous?

Our present battle for recovery and health has revealed the shallowness of our previous approach to Advent and Christmas.  What do I want for Christmas this year?

•  Love - Not the sappy sentimentalism so often associated with Christmas.  We need the kind of love that stands in the face of difficulty and gives one the strength to carry on.  The kind of love we have received from this congregation since we learned of Terry's illness.
• Joy - That lightness of spirit that cannot be dampened by the difficulties of any particular moment.  Joy is a perspective that sees beyond the trouble and finds the blessing buried in each new day.
• Peace - A calmness of heart that relies upon our God of love as a foundation.  This is the peace Paul referred to when he told the Romans that there is nothing that can seperate us from the love of God.
• Hope - The ability to embrace the future and claim a place in it.  Hope is that defiant stance that refuses to give in and casts our lot with God's work no matter what.

What do I want for Christmas?  More than I have ever wanted before, and this time I am not willing to understate my desire.

Dave Gladstone