Speaking of falling...

So when you walk into the room of a highly successful 40 year old General Mills Executive with a beautiful wife, and has two adorable boys - who was just diagnosed with Leukemia - you might expect some crazy emotions running around free in the room. That's a guy who has a lot to lose. That's a guy who has probably been so high for so long, that news like this would have to be accompanied by an epic freefall. right?

Well maybe not. I'm constantly being surprised by people here at the hospital, but this particular General Mills exec might have taken the cake for surprises. He didn't act like a person whose life was spinning out of control or like he was in free fall. He acted like a person with solid grounding who was in touch with the core things in a person's life.

The first time I tried to visit him, he was sitting in his room watching TV - a blond haired boy on either side of his hospital bed. He asked me to come back the next morning. So I did. The next morning with his children at home and his wife by his side I stopped to visit and had a remarkable visit with him. What struck me wasn't his strength is such a trying time, it was his openness and vulnerability. He cried multiple times during our visit, but his tears weren't about the disease that had taken over his life. His tears were about the overwhelming support that he had received in the short time that he had been aware of his illness. I could tell that this was a remarkably humbling thing for him.

And when talking about the disease, he showed little except for resoluteness. He shed his tears over leukemia - to be sure - but when I saw him he displayed a remarkable lack of self pity. His disease was not about to redefine his character or his identity. Yet it was also apparent that he had the humility to allow it to change his life. He talked with me today about how this experience was an opportunity for him and how he could use it to raise awareness about the disease. He was one week in, and already he was able to find the blessing growing of the illness.

To be sure, I was both humbled, and inspired.

My feet on the ground

When I read Parker Palmer's reflection on his depression, I wrote in the margin "WTF." If you are reading this and don't know what that means, then I encourage you to find a teenager and ask them. Let me share that quote with you.

After hours of careful listening, my therapist offered an image that helped me eventually reclaim my life. "You seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you," he said. "Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend, pressing you down to ground on which it is safe to stand?"

Let Your Life Speak, 66

WTF right? That's what pulled Palmer out of an eight year depression? It's counter intuitive to think of depression as a friend. Depression is something that we fight. It's something that we medicate to get rid of. It's not something that we embrace. It's not something that call a friend.

Yet somehow when Palmer finally embraced this idea, he was freed. It's bizarre to me, but there is some heartfelt sense to it as well. He goes on to explain.

Depression was, indeed, the hand of a friend trying to press me down to ground on which it was safe to stand - the ground of my own truth, my own nature, with its complex mix of limits and gifts, liabilities and assets, darkness and light.

67.

There is some real danger in these words that should not be taken lightly. I don't think that depression is something that we ought to seek out in our lives in order to ground them. Still, Palmer's genuineness about this makes me stop to consider things for a moment. What if depression is a friend? What if it's a signal that they way we are living our lives are somehow incongruent? Though this need not be everybody's experience, it certainly rang true in Palmer's own struggle.

He writes

The figure calling me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merton calls "true self." ... True self is true friend. On ignores or reects such a friendship only at one's peril.

68

In that place, down at the bottom of being is our true selves. Not up through the stratosphere of expectations that we have, but down through the woods, the dark places, the muck and all of the sin in our lives. That is where we find ourselves.

I'll finish this entry with this quote from Palmer,

When I was finally able to turn around and ask, "What do you want?" the answer was clear: I want you to embrace this descent into hell as a journey toward selfhood - and a journey toward God...I had to be forced underground before I could understand that thew way to God is not up but down.

69

Fear and Fearsome

I'm sitting here again, feeling exhausted bored. In fact, I'm typing with my eyes closed. So I can't be sure if it's my tirednes that's talking or if it's something else, but the hospital seemed to beat me again today.

I'm just starting to pick up on the reason for it now. I went and had my CPE Independent Supervision with Tor today and I talked about how I have been lazy lately. I've been avoiding the hospital. I've been avoiding going into patient rooms. I've been avoiding rejection and I've been avoiding my anxiety. It feels like I am living out of fear instead of living tonto an much more awesome reality that God wants for me. In short, it seems the difference for is the same difference as there is betweeen being fearful and being fearsome.

I want to be fearsome, but part of me is content with my tendency towards escapism. I want to get out of this reality and enter into one where I feel totally safe and accepted. So I go onto the Cincy Jungle, not because I'm looking for news and up to date information on the Bengals, it's because I've been looking for a way to get out. The hospital is intimidating me, and I'm being crushed under its weight.

This is really a hard truth to live into. I want to be a fearsome chaplain here, but instead I am playing the role of the mouse. Hiding is much easier than confronting.

Stuck

Tuesday, June 6th

What do you tell a woman who’s child has become a drug addict? Is there anything that I can say to this woman? Or what about the woman who has just decided to take her husband off of life support because he has lost all brain function? Are there any words for such an instance?

I’m really struggling with this. What is my role in all of this if I don’t know what to say? What is my place if I don’t know what to do? I feel like I’m just making shit up as I go. So many people here at Methodist hospital have so many incredible stories of hardship, while my life has been an incredible blessing by comparison. What do I have to say to these people? How can I be of value to them?

A new Journal about CPE

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I’m listening to “Doubting Thomas” by Nickel Creek right now. I opened up iTunes and put it on random, and that was the first song that came up. I don’t know if there is any significance to it, but it don’t tend to believe in coincidences. Am I a doubting Thomas (and I don’t mean that in an insulting way)? Thomas is sort of a hero of mine because he was brave enough to ask a tough question. I don’t know if the gospel writer intended for Thomas to become the hero of that story, but regardless, Thomas speaks to me in that way.

What do I doubt? I met with a lady today who had a very Pentecostal sort of faith. She was Roman Catholic, who had recently changed to a Lutheran Church and lead a non-denominational women’s Bible Study. She was a woman of faith, but honestly I can’t say that I admired her for it. I feel like I should in some ways, but I just don’t. She wasn’t like Thomas. She seemed to know that God was present. She said that she studied the Bible and not theology in her small group – whatever that means.

I wanted to argue with her, but I resisted that temptation. There’s no point in getting into that sort of a conversation as a chaplain. I was there to talk about how she was feeling, not what she believed about God. Nor could I change her opinion about that in 20 minutes.