I am sitting at
a coffee shop inside of a library, as fine a combination of institutions as I
can imagine. I am listening to Daniel
Barenboim’s rendition of Mendelssohn’s 'Songs without Words’ on my headphones,
but the tune drowning out Barenboim in my head is The Old One Hundred. I am chant/humming the ending to some 300 year
old Christian hymns for the morning and evening prayers by Thomas Ken that we
now call The Doxology.
Yesterday my
surgeon called me at home. He said he
had the pathology reports from the samples sent for biopsy during my lobectomy
last week. The waiting for the phone
call had been difficult. As the time
Ketl and I first expected we might hear from him passed, I became more anxious.
“Maybe the news is bad and he wants to wait until the 'tumor board' (yes there
is such a group) meets to add authority to his news and treatment plan.” “Maybe
he is too busy and wants to put off bad news.” Maybe, maybe, maybe. You cannot reliably infer from silence.
I had tried to promise
myself to sing Dayenu no matter the news.
Yet despite my prayers, as Ketl and I walked in the evening I grasped
her tight to me and sobbed. I sobbed for
our future, my children, for my life.
Anyone who tells you not
to argue with God has not carefully listened to the biblical texts as they
formulated such ideas. The psalmist, in
a tight spot, surrounded by enemies, or I imagine, waiting for pathology
reports, pleads, “Who will praise you if you send me to the dust of death?” Or,
“Who will sing of your great power to heal, to set things straight, if I am
dead?” (see Psalm 6 or 30 or 115) You get my drift, I wanted to
sing Dayenu, but fear, loss, regret, longing, all rose up as I waited. I always told Ketl I just wanted one more day
to be her husband, the father to our children.
Just one more day. And if given
that day, surely near its end, I would want another. That is why Dayenu is such a profound response
to the inevitable about us.
But now I sit with coffee
and books and Mendelssohn's lieder and The Old One Hundred in my head. The results are negative, no sign of
cancer. No return to the halls of that
surgery unit to hear, and possibly endure, horrors. Time to hold my wife some more. Time to hear
Anya sing and laugh some more. Time to
find adventure and a good night market meal in Singapore with Rachel. As he spoke the words to me, 'the results are
negative’, a new song “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above the heavenly hosts. Praise
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.” just broke into my head. Years of Sundays in church with faithful
parents and later as an adult, 40 days and 500 miles walking and praying in
Spain, holding hands and singing this song after sharing the Eucharist at my
new church, Bethel AME, all that repetition over all those years splashed that
tune and those words into my heart. That
was my Dayenu. Well maybe it wasn't gracious
equanimity in the face of bad news quite yet, but it surely was gratitude for a
return to an open-ended future.
I shared the news with
friends and cribbed from the V'ahavta of my Friday nights, 'Cue up the Doxology
and sing it when you rise up. Sing it
again when you lie down. Sing it as you
enter, and again when you leave. Write
out the words and tie them around your wrist so they are always handy. If you
need to, make a recording and play it through headphones so you are always
humming it. Make sure your children know
how to sing it too. Sing it so often it
is as much you as your very blood and bones.’ So if that 300 year old song is
really the first thing that springs from my mouth when I hear that I am out of
a tight spot and I will live: dayenu. I
will have to keep singing for a while longer to be ready so it springs from my
mouth when the news is otherwise.
Meantime, cue the Doxology.
Ketl's rabbi showed me a 400 mile pilgrimage trail across northern Italy
to the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome. Ketl and I have to get in shape
for surely days of sweat walking through wonders and nights of wine and holding
hands in village squares will be involved.
Cue the Doxology indeed. Hum
along. Buen Camino.
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