Cancer

One of my patients is sick. Someone I have known a while, who I have a standing relationship with...he's sick. He has had cancer a while but tonight when I saw him...well, now he is sick. Sick with cancer which will likely kill him.

I did not want to talk to him about his death. I did not want to play chaplain. I wanted to pretend the reality away. The reality is, someone I care about is dying.

I want to fight, but the fight is not mine to have. I want to smile it away, but it does not work like this. I can not polly-anna my way out of someone else's cancer. This one, this patient, will be tough. This will be on my watch I suppose...

I face a lot of dying but this dying is harder because it is not someone else's, this dying is mine in a different way.

And it is harder because I have seen the transition from well to less-so. I saw him healthy and now I see him as his health has taken a step back. It may still return, but the abandonment of health has happened once. And once is all it takes. Poor health is like a lover that cheats. You can forgive the affair but you can never forget that it happened, the trust—if it happened once, it can happen again.

And in this case, it likely will.

God and my Subway Card

This morning I lost my subway card between my house and the platform, when I retraced y steps (thirty minutes later) I actually found it...

Do I believe in God? Yesterday? Edie and I were talking about spirituality. She asked me to define spirituality. I answered, where you feel the power and control is in the world. Somewhere on a continuum between self and God/the unkown. Edie commented—I think you are talking about theology more than spirituality.

She had a point. I thought about it all day. As I spoke with patients and the whole time I thought, who do you think is in charge of your state of being? Of your health? Of your wellness? What role do you play? Do the doctors play? Do I as your chaplain play? Where does God fit in?

I struggle with what I think. Do I think God left my Subway card there? That somehow, it was God that coerced my metrocard to fall from my pocket on to the sidewalk of my street so that I would have to go back and look, so I would be saved from some other experience? So I would be rerouted to a different path, a different destiny? Was my card required as a prop in someone else's life?

Or is it simply, the dumb card fell on the ground and I got lucky-just chance-nothing more-that no one else noticed it or picked it up. Going back and retracing my steps was just what happened. No meaning. It was me, I dropped it, I went back, I did not give up and just buy a new card, I left early enough this morning that I had the time to do this, I had a conference I could be late for (since the first part was just serving breakfast.)

I do not know

What is my theology? I reject that I am solely responsible for my fate and destiny. Maybe I am uncomfortable being that responsible. That means it is ALL on me and I am quite frankly scared of that. I do not feel qualified to be the sole driver.

And yet, I am not ok assigning the responsibility for my life and its direction to someone or something else. And even less comfortable assigning the responsibility of my life to God.

What I do believe...there is something out there greater than we are, but I think we are a part of it too. I think that the “something greater” out there is a feeling, an energy or a power? Which is generated by the goodwill, the connection, the love and relationships between people. It is the Buber I-thou. When I connect to another person or to a group of people, I bring God in to the world, I find God in the world, I create God in the world. Not in an, I am so powerful and arrogant to say that I make God. This is not what I mean. I mean, people also have the power to make God, to create the spark.

This what we do when we meet one to one.

Does Godliness control my life? No, I do not think so. But it influences it. I seek out the God in the world, I love to create God in the world. I said to someone yesterday, I thrive on suffering. It was a tongue-in-cheek thing to say. But it is true on a deep level. My soul is nourished by the connections I make with people and I find that connection easiest to create in a place of suffering.

What does it mean in my life? I have been thinking of my theology of pastoral care. If meeting people, helping people, connecting with people makes and creates a God in the world, then I am seeking a deep meeting when I sit in a room. I believe, beyond the doors of the hospital, in people meeting one to one, people of all stripes and colors, because if they connect, they being God in to the world.

The more people we meet, the more human beings we know, the more people in the world we truly see...the more God we brings. The more God we bring, the more committed I believe we will be...must be to creating a more peaceful, less fractured world.

And as I move ahead into the rabbinate, this is what I am seeking out, this is what I want to do. People often call me a prophet because I have a love for social justice. But truly, it is a misnomer. I do not have a passion for justice, I have a passion for meeting, a passion for people, a passion for connection and belonging to one another. We may call tha social justice, we may call that tikkin olam...but truly...the justice happens second to the meeting of the people, second to creating God in the world.

And now, if someone would just hire me to do that...

Last night on the Subway

Yesterday, Cassi was looking for a story for a curriculum she is working on. She wanted a story whose moral was it takes a village to do social justice, or at least, this is what I was understanding she was looking for. We talked about a few ideas and I went on my way.

As I walked to the subway last night, I noticed two young women struggling to the platform. Both were dressed in hip, contemporary clothing. One was leaning heavily on the other. I assumed one, if not both were drunk or one woman was injured and limping. I stepped on to the train.

At some point, I realized that people were walking towards my end of the subway. I looked up, and there were the two girls. One sitting, the other knealing before her, comforting her. A pool of liquid sloshing about the train below. The sitting girl, Katie, had just vomited all over herself, into her purse, on her coat, the floor, and...on her friend. Vomit and its stench began to pervade the train.

The two girls were a tableau in an ever-growing clearing of empty space on the train. I turned to th crowd and said, anyone have some tissues. Everyone said no except one man. He rifled through his things for them. I approached him, thanked him and explained that the girl who had just thrown up would really appreciate it. I brought the pile of tissues to the girls and helped clean up. The friend, knealing before Katie was saying, it's ok, I am your best-friend, this is ok, we're almost home, it's ok! And Katie kept saying, I'm so sorry, so sorry.

Katie looked awful-very white. And she was clearly mortified. I chatted with them for a few moments...and then...another woman came over. She too offered tissues and comfort. And then...another woman...three people on a late-night train all stepped in to intervene with a vomiting woman.

It was beautiful. As the train approached my stop, I stepped back and marveled at what people could do together, what several strangers on a train could come together to do to repair a small temporary tear in the fabric of the world.

I stepped of the train, my faith in humanity slightly renewed.