Inflection Points

Best Beloved,

Joan Didion opens her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, this way:

“Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”

Sometimes there really are the rare, unambiguous life-quakes during which the very foundations of our beautiful life-mansions are ground to dust, the ground falls away, and it is impossible to pretend that life will ever look the same again. Even the idea of rebuilding is undeniably absurd, and the only choice is to gather up the few things we really need, leave the rest, and move along. Perhaps there is grace in these moments, even if there is suffering.

And of course, not all of these life-quakes are necessarily defined by suffering. It hasn’t happened to me, but I’m told that people actually do win the lottery. You might suggest that winning the lottery is a curse, and I don’t pretend that falling into a vault of money will fix everything that ails us. But it’s disingenuous to suggest that the moment the lottery machine spits out a ping-pong ball with someone’s last number, their life hasn’t changed - for better and/or worse. Probably and.

But there are often less dramatic shifts in our paths: Sometimes we come upon a simple switch-back that eases the climb up steep, rocky terrain, and once we crest the ridge, we continue in the same general direction on which we set out. But sometimes something more significant is happening. Sometimes the path is truly changing direction, and the destination is far different than the one we believed we were approaching. It often always takes time to know for sure.

I have grown convinced that this is the very nature of being, not just of a cancer patient or the family member of a cancer patient, but the nature of being for all of us. Life often does change in an instant, but we usually don’t know it at the time. It’s almost impossible for me to believe that you cannot think of any number of events that found you, events that barely registered in your consciousness at the time, but events that fundamentally shifted the direction of your life.

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Anyway, it feels like this week may have included a number of turns that may be something. Or nothing. They might just be switchbacks, or they might signal, as Didion suggests, that life as we know it has ended, and a new life begun, even if we don’t yet know it quite yet.

When you walk with Love, either option is thrilling. Terrifying? Sure. But also thrilling.

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What turns this week? Kathryn set into motion a career change that will give her the freedom to spend more time with Carley and me, and it seems to be pointing her in a new professional direction that taps deeply into her unique gifts in an organization that speaks directly and lovingly into her soul. None of this is certain, but I am full of hope, and I wonder where it might lead. Mostly, I so deeply admire the courage it took to take this step. It is not for the faint-hearted.

Medically, my white cell counts were lower than they have ever been, and due to the risk of infection, we have delayed the round of chemo that was set to begin this past Thursday. For how long? I don’t know. This might be just a blip and my numbers may bounce back so that we can pick up treatment on Monday. Or maybe it’s something bigger than that. Life-quake? Switchback? Major change in direction. It will take time and distance to know. Stay tuned.

(Monday afternoon update. It was a blip. Counts have recovered and I begin round 9 tonight. This is very good news!)

Other things I’m paying attention to: This week I discovered frozen croissant dough at Whole Foods and apricot fruit spread on a warm, freshly baked pastry. There was a man at the farmer’s market who gave us his last sample of lemon dill humus and generously shared a bit of his story with us. The hummingbird returned after a couple weeks away. My friend Padraig introduced me to a television show that made me laugh right through my concern over blood counts. Ohio State didn’t play, and TTUN didn’t lose, yet I somehow survived the weekend. This week I put the new Nick Cave album on repeat, and Carley survived a minor (and scary) health event.

Where is all of this going? Anywhere? Nowhere? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to see.

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Finally, this week, some seemingly random and unrelated things converged in a marvelous way that forced me to consider the very idea of love more deeply than I had ever dared to consider it. How many times have we talked about all the words we toss around like everybody just sorta knows what we mean, but when we dare to look closer, there is far more confusion than we imagined there to be. It never occurred to me that love might be one of these words until this week. What does it mean when somebody says, “I love you.” I think it might actually mean anything. It might mean everything. But it takes time to know.

This thought began with last week’s post and the suggestion that we are already far more than our thoughts, our feelings, our deeds and accomplishments, or even our beliefs, and that rather than being the things that make us lovable or not, these are the very things we often use to hide our truest selves from the world. The shiny objects we use to distract the eyes of strangers, friends, and even our lovers, from our true selves. Yesterday, a friend suggested that though we long for our truest selves to be seen and loved, many (all?) of us seem to have been convinced that if we were ever truly seen, then our rejection is all but assured. So we hide. That seems so true to me.

Then what might it mean to love? What if we begin with what love is not? I think that love is not to analyze or even to strive to understand another. It is not to validate another’s accomplishments and beliefs, or to admire any of the egoic ornaments they use to hide who they truly are from a scary world. In fact, I wonder if by doing so, I am wittingly or unwittingly, encouraging those around me to stay covered in the armor of their feats. If I am validating their fears, and encouraging them to continue to hide behind what they do. That is not, cannot be, love. How could it be?

So what is love? I am wondering if love is the fulfilled promise to patiently pay attention to another. To wait for another to reveal who they truly are, past all of the accomplishments and beliefs and adornments. I wonder if love is the fulfilling the promise never, ever, ever to walk away or to look away. The promise to behold with deep compassion, and to invite our beloved to see themselves in, or even through our compassionate eyes, and in so doing, to affirm their innate belovedness that depends not on what they do, but who they are. To affirm a belovedness that depends only on their creator and Grace that has already been offered.

And just suppose that is precisely what it means for God to love us. That God sees us, as we are, and holds us not in contempt, but compassion. What might it change if we could believe that God sees us and delights in us. Not what we do, or who we might someday become, but who we are.

Might that just change everything?

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A friend sent this to me earlier this week, and it stopped me in my tracks:

Maybe to say, “I love you” is to say, “I believe the most beautiful Truths about you, and I will stay with you for as long as it takes for you to believe them, too.”

This is precisely what I hope you hear when I say, “I love you.”

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But that’s not quite enough, is it? I think, to invite others to shed their ego skin and then for us to marvel at the Word inscribed into their hearts is important, but we have to do the same, don’t we? To love completely is to shed our own insecurities and allow ourselves to be seen. How often have we talked about that place where the trace between giver and receiver melts into nothing? Where Lover and Beloved are indistinguishable? I wonder if this isn’t what Buber meant by I-Thou.

I can’t help but go back to the “greatest commandments.” I’m just wondering here, but it resonates deep, deep inside of me. It’s risky to paraphrase, but can you indulge me?

If you make loving God your starting point, then you cannot help but love those God made as He made them/us, without all of the make up and finery that they/we put on before heading out the door each morning before they/we let anybody see them/us. This is the beautiful elusive truth of their/our already belovedness.

Could this be what we have been dancing around about from the very beginning? And perhaps this week contained a beautiful life-quake, after all. Better even than winning the lottery.

Oremus,

C

P.S. I love you.