A Long Sleep, A Long Walk, A Long Wait

     After near 22 hours of sleepless and uncomfortable travel, the plane bumped down too sharply onto the Cebu tarmac, bounced heart stoppingly to the right, screeched back on course, and stopped too quickly, squealing brakes and all: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mactan International Airport in Cebu.  The local time is 21:05 for an on-time arrival.  The temperature is 27C."  By then our squeals had subsided but we continued to exchange wide-eyed glances.
     The vets knew the real race started now.  I, the Cebu rook, just shook my head as the shoving started.  Passport control was ahead.  Little did I know there were 4 lines for Philippinos and one line for all others.  This is a time of moderate rains and temperature in the Philippines.  Chinese, Koreans, and Taiwanese come here like New Yorkers head for Florida in February. An hour and a half later, through customs, and out the terminal, I see the guy holding my name on a sign.  I head over, and off we go.  Check-in was a breeze and within 20 minutes my head hit the pillow, not to rise for over 10 hours!
       The very late morning was just made for a luke warm shower, washing swampy clothes, and heading down for some coffee.  Out my window I spied a fish joint in the street behind the hotel.  At the front desk, I got directions for my amble and a sort of map, a warning that 3k was too far to walk and set out for stop number 1: fish lunch.
     By daylight my hotel is perfectly nice.  Every thing around it looks to be subject to individually initiated urban renewal.  Mounds of debris are everywhere ( it is expensive to get rid of 'stuff') and each mound seems zealously guarded by a street dog who has no problem telling you, 'This my mound so just move the heck along or we'll have trouble.'
     The fish joint was great.  Lunch was long over and dinner wasn't for hours.  I sat outside and yukked it up with the staff who congregated around the 55 gallon drum grill scarfing up tasty bits of chicken and beef the grill guy doled out as he prepped dinner (yeah the par cooked food was going to sit in ambiguous refrigeration for a few hours--thus fish).  I have been told to be leery of the water, so beer it was.  I am not a day drinker so I got tipsy just sipping and waiting for my fish and rice lunch.  I got to watch the young construction workers across the street josh with the girls working the restaurant they were repairing.  Motorbikes delivered pipe, concrete, and wire up and down the street in a never ending flow.  I loved every minute of it: warm, tipsy, good humor with gentle folk, and smiles all around.
     The 3k walk was a bit more than I expected.  Either the hard prior day or chemo fatigue came over me. I sat twice.  I drank a coke.  I drank two waters.  I love bustling Asian cities--the smells, the crowds, the exotic to me normal to residents mind shift, but my weary legs made this a bit of a slog.  Yet the end paid in dividends large.  I was headed to Santo Nino basillica.  Supposedly somebody 'found' an image of the Holy Infant in 1565 and a church was founded there in one of the early Spanish settlements in the Philippines.  Outside the church the lame in body and mind gather, sit, and shuffle to sell candles.  Maybe they hope to get to the water when the angel disturbs it like in the story.  If not they are busy reminding us to look close without smug pity and give because Jesus is before our eyes.  I got there just as Mass in English and, I suspect, Cebuano started.  There were so many folk the officiant was outside.  Inside there were video screens beside the altar.  I took my place and was transported.  Catholics know a thing ot two about joining mind and body in worship to puncuate praise: stand for the gospel, kneel before the bread and wine, sit for the homily, sing aloud, and join hands with neighbors in peace.  All they need is a loud shout of praise when the bread cracks broken, but then I guess they been proclaiming the Gospel for 2000 years without my help.  Guess what--weepy me, wept.  Tired, missing my wife, thankful, so very thankful to be with the faithful calling for mercy and proclaiming grace.  Thankful so very thankful to be alive, simply alive in a world so full of wonder.
I left for dinner already full--- and now, I wait for what seems to be endless hours for Rachel to arrive and more adventure to unfold.
Buen Camino

Urban renewal

Grill guy

I was kind of waiting for the end of the week parade on this one, but no luck.

She said she wrapped these herself.  I was sure tempted.

The altar

A painting of adam and eve

Jollibees is Philippine Mik

I am skeptical of anyone not working at ISR claiming this title!

History is full of ambiguous moral content.

No real pubic transportation,  just jeepneys

Thoroughly mediocre  dinner at a chain (what was I thinking), but this was good.

I was not prepared for blessing!

Prayers for healing have always perplexed me.  Of course, I want those prayers answered.  Who doesn’t want to see healing?  Yet when folks ask others for prayers for healing, I wonder does God need volume to hear and answer?  Are the stories of Yaweh being “roused” by prayer to be taken literally?  When folks report the blessing of healing, I wonder why some are healed and some are not?  Healing violates my equalitarian impulses.  Prayer violates my scientific impulses.  What happens inside a body when we pray for healing?  You and I know that all prayers fail.  Everyone you or I have ever prayed for has died.  What happened?  I’m more of a C.S. Lewis guy, “I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”

For two and a half years now, I have been waging war against cancer. When I first heard the news, I wept.  I mourned for my life, for my wife, for my children.  Sorrow, fear, regret and rage took their turns in my heart.  After living with disease and treatment for these years, I thought I was prepared for what lies before me.  How wrong I was.

I have been fortunate in a way.  The cancer has been slow to grow.  I have had time to adjust.  I have had time for treatment. I had lung re-section surgery.  I had one half of a round of chemotherapy, but the side effects were so severe my oncologist stopped it.  The cancer metastasized into my spine. I had immune therapy.  I had radiation to relieve the pain in my back.  Yet none of these treatments stopped the slow growth of the tumors spreading through my lungs.  The sluggish speed of the growth furnished me with time to contemplate the road I walked. 

All through this time, prayer has supported my oncologist’s work.  My prayers rise daily.  I’m sure, in their own way, my wife and children have prayed.  I send out email missives and my sister, and her Sunday school class, my niece, my cousins, my friends from across the years, all have lifted me up in prayer.  When I told my Sunday school class of my diagnosis, one of the women came to me, laid hands on me and exclaimed, “Begone!”

In December of 2018 my oncologist stopped the immune therapy because it had proven ineffective.  She enrolled me in a clinical trial that combined an older chemotherapy drug with a new drug.  The old drug shrunk lung cancer tumors in about 10% of patients.  The new drug was being tested to see if it would goose up that number.  The side effects of the first round were very difficult.  I got a blistering body rash, nausea, neuropathy in my feet, the skin peeled off my hands, the hair on my body thinned, and I lost the hair on my head.  During Christmas’s 12 days, I shaved my scalp and sang “Chrome for the holidays.’

Others say they offer fervent prayers for my healing.  I am sure they do.  Instead of praying for healing, I usually prayed to walk into the looming valley of the shadow without fear (well, much fear) in the face of despair.  I told several of my pastor friends, “All prayer runs out, all prayer fails.  Jesus is Lord and that comforts me in the face of the inevitable. That’s all I need, the affirmation that Jesus is Lord.” 

I went to church with my mother back in the late fall.  She has dementia.  Every day, near every moment, is new for her.  Yet as the choir launched into “Jesus loves me this I know” she still knew all those words.  I wept.  That is all she, and all I, needed or wanted for the road ahead.  The firm conviction that I was in the wounded hands of Jesus sustained me because, “Jesus loves me this I know.  Even as the side effects of the new chemotherapy trial knocked me down, it was not the hope of sudden cure, but the deep theology of my mother singing the song “Jesus loves me this I know” that kept me from falling.

Because of the clinical trial protocols, I had a follow-up CT scan in early January.  The evening of the scan I left for Florida to be with my father-in-law as he faced his own cancer diagnosis and to be with my mother-in-law as she descended the steps of dementia too.

Two days after I arrived, the oncologist office called.  Colette, my oncologist’s nurse said, “The new scans are back.  Your tumors have shrunk.”  I was stunned into shouting “Praise God”.  I danced.  I wept for joy.  My Jewish father-in-law gave me an embarrassed smile.  I called my wife and told her I wanted nothing more than to plant a big wet sloppy kiss right on her warm lips.  I wanted to hold my children.

I, who talk a good game about God’s mercy and care, was not prepared when it came my way.  I was completely floored.  Blessing, blessing, blessing rolled over me and I was thoroughly unhinged. 

The psalms sing of blessing.  Jesus names those who mourn, and I sure mourned, as special recipients of blessing.  The great biblical story ends with tears being wiped away in a city with streets lined with trees whose leaves bring healing to entire nations.  And me, purportedly a student of that great story, well I guess I just learned something quite new—prepare for blessing.

It still doesn’t seem fair—why me and not the young gaunt girl I saw in the infusion center today?  Why me and not the old frail man in the wheelchair?  Yet, inexplicably I have apparently been given more than I expected.  There is so much I don’t understand, I just accept this with joy.  The end will still come, but for now, I sing the Doxology in the tune of the Old One Hundred.  Praise God the author of all blessing: expected and unexpected alike.  I thought I knew all about it.  I was prepared for the worst (well sort of), but for now, unprepared as I was, my mourning has been turned to dancing.

Once when I was 57 years old, I walked 500 miles across northern Spain on pilgrimage.  Buen Camino!

Advent, Christmas, Epiphany

I have never simply re-posted something on my blog site, but this is a new year eh?  A pastor from Rochester Hills, Kenneth Tanner, whom I read on FB periodically, wrote this meditation on Christmas as practiced/envisioned by the Church.  With his permission, I reproduce it here.

I have fortunately been married to a Jew for near 40 years.  Our household reflects that wonderful tradition---no Santa’s, fake trees, and Black Friday storms. I just find it kind of, at best, superfluous --- especially when accompanied by appeals to “Remember the reason for the Season.”

For the last couple of years my own devotions have carried me toward celebrating Advent, Christmas in 12 days, and Epiphany.  So, this essay by Tanner says a whole lot about Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany that warms me.  Enjoy and be filled.

I love it when the retail-driven cultural Christmas draws to a close and the ancient, worship-oriented celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas begins.

Yet below the tinsel and lights and shopping malls and parades, there is a genuine longing in many (most?) to connect to the deep hope offered by the real Christmas.

And this anonymous desire for Christ, these pursuits of joy in disguise, indicate that many still understand that something authentic needs to be celebrated even if they cannot name the hope and peace and love they long for, and Christians need to rejoice that this is so.

When the rest of the world—and too many of my brothers and sisters in Christ—moves on, when the hustle and bustle of pre-Christmas frenzy comes to an abrupt close on December 26, then the church can get down to the authentic work of worship, of communion, of contemplating the unfathomable mystery that God has become human so that humanity might participate in the divine life.

An angelic messenger. A conception. A visitation. A prophecy. A census. A journey. No place to shelter the virgin. A cave. Oxen. Sheep. Shepherds. More angels. A birth. The profound humility of God in coming among us as a helpless, silent baby in obscurity and poverty, amid shit and straw. A woman clothed with the sun. A child with an iron scepter to rule the nations. A dragon. A cosmic battle between Light and darkness. Three Maji. Herod. Warnings in dreams. A slaughter of innocents. The flight of a refugee family from political terror.

Christmas is an endless story with innumerable chapters and yet an earth-bound event of blood, sweat, labor, dirt, and breath—of struggle with evil and glory in the highest—that changes everything in the cosmos, changes all times and spaces.

G.K. Chesterton understood a hundred years ago that we humans want to distract ourselves by ornamentation and sentimentality and kitsch from a life-converting, dramatic encounter with the deeper meaning of the Incarnation, from a meaningful encounter with Christmas, one that requires *everything* about us to change.

And part of the great rush to busyness and distraction is precisely that the real Christmas imposes serious challenges.

Real Christmas asks humanity to at last comprehend what manner of God made the world—One who discloses their eternal community in the weakness of a human child placed in a feed box—instead of projecting false gods from our vain imaginations, making idols of envy and anger and vindictiveness and hate and coercion and power that look all-too-human.

Real Christmas asks humanity to understand what it truly means to be human, and we are not human until by grace we become human as God is human.

Real Christmas answers both challenges with a person, with a Son, Jesus Christ, in whom the world encounters its genuine God and—for the first time—an authentic humanity.

Real Christmas challenges our politics. It says that all self-seeking rule, our tired struggle for domination of others, our desire to be “great” is at an end.

Real Christmas tells us that genuine authority and power is others-directed and self-sacrificial; that the real king does not seek his own, does not keep a record of wrongs, is not jealous or envious, or boastful or coercive but patient and kind and gentle and long suffering.

Real Christmas names Love as the very essence of the Creator and tells us that this God has become human, become flesh—forever—in Jesus the apprentice carpenter from Nazareth.

Real Christmas challenges our economics, our national identities, our international borders, our ethnic and family narratives, our sense that our tribe and way is the best and says there is now no distinction between rich or poor, young or old, male or female, Jew or Greek.

Real Christmas announces a new kingdom where everyone is welcome and cherished by the Father as co-heirs of an everlasting rule of love governed by a profound humility beyond description, that chooses to reveal itself to the cosmos it loves in unimaginable, surprising vulnerability and contingency.

Real Christmas challenges our violence and announces the arrival of a king who is not a warrior god but a peacemaker. Swords are beat into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and humanity must now get back to creation care and koinonia, our true vocations.

Real Christmas is about God becoming flesh so that humanity can participate in the divine life. God becomes part of the human story, so that we might become part of the divine story. He shares in our blood so that we might share in his.

Real Christmas challenges us to leave our distraction, our endless activity, and enter the mystery, to slow down long enough so that we not only approach in utter awe this great Love lying in the feed box alongside Mary and Joseph but that we cease being mere spectators and *enter* this great revelation by contemplation, by meditation on this new way of being human that participates without disruption in the divine life on the pattern of Jesus Christ.

And then this real Christmas challenges us to get down to living this new humanity *now* for the life of the world, for the life of *this* without end world that God cherishes, on the pattern of our helpless infant God.

And so we mark time by the Word made flesh and this reorients us, helps us truly live our days on the pattern of his great humility.

A blessed Epiphany to all my Western Christian brothers and sisters, and a blessed Christmas Day to all my Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters. Christ is born! Much love and grace now and always.