Religion - Nadia Bolz Weber, Pastor

I have read a couple of books and many blog posts from Pastor Nadia. This one I copied to share with you. I will also find the link so you can follow her if you wish to. This is an excerpt "On Sept 2nd, Eric and I stood on a beach in St. Bees watching the grey movements of the Irish Sea before taking our first steps of a 200 mile walk that would carry us clear across Northern England to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea. The tradition is to pick up a small stone from the first coast and carry it in your pocket until you place it on the second. Before we left, friends had asked what they could pray for.

They only answer I could summon was, “acceptance”. So that was the stone I carried in my pocket. That of a small, smooth prayer of acceptance. It was all I had that I thought might, maybe, perhaps slay the Goliath I was facing. Because sixteen days before leaving for Wainwright’s Coast-to-Coast hike, I was diagnosed with invasive ductile carcinoma. Breast Cancer. A treatable, survivable form of Breast Cancer, but breast cancer nonetheless. “C.a.n.c.e.r” As a word, “cancer” could really use some synonyms. How is it that we have but one word for such a wildly broad spectrum of implication? Cancer is the term for something as simple as a suspicious mole removed in your doctor’s office AND for Leukemia. That one word, “cancer”, when spoken for the first time by your doctor is a gunshot. It’s footsteps behind you in a dark alley; a tornado siren, and your spouse saying “we need to talk”, all rolled into one.

Acceptance When friends asked what they could pray for, I knew I did not need bravery. I did not even need strength, per se. I just needed acceptance. Why? Simply because I had cancer and wished I did not. For 2 weeks I walked with this simplest of prayers. When it was raining and I wished it wasn’t – I’d ask God for acceptance. When the trail was steeper than I wished, I’d do the same. When my legs ached and I longed for a place to rest and unlike on the Camino there were no café’s at which to stop, I’d repeat it. Acceptance. When I wished the day’s walk was over but we had two more kilometers to go and those two kilometers felt like five, I’d whisper, “acceptance”.

A prayer, a reminder, an aspiration. Each time I noticed myself wishing things were different, that the weather, the trail, Eric, or I myself were different, I whispered my one-word prayer. I hoped this tiny stone could hit my denial square in the forehead, knock my fear on its ass, and flatten self-pity. Because cancer is a giant, and I am so small, so ill-equipped, so prone to oppositional behavior. So in this way, over the course of two weeks trudging across England, I practiced acceptance I mean, what other options did I have? Fight the wind? Resent the cold? Be more miserable than necessary? I’ve done that throughout my life, and I’m exhausted. When we got home from the walk, I told my spiritual director Jane about my one-word prayer. On the day of my surgery she sent me this perfect text message.

“Mental health is a dedication to reality at all costs”.

-M. Scott Peck

Making peace with what is becomes a struggle when the “is” in question is not what we want; when what “is” changes us, humbles us, reduces us. When the “is” isn’t even clear yet, because you’re waiting on pathology reports. My God, the whole thing feels uncanningly like grief. To be in grief is to be emotionally left behind. The person IS gone, the job IS lost, the body IS changed but the world in which that’s true feels 1,000 miles away from you and you’re left in a ghost land of what was, crawling through a desert of molasses toward the country of what is. And it is a fucking process.

When we got home from the walk, I told my spiritual director Jane about my one-word prayer. On the day of my surgery she sent me this perfect text message. “Mental health is a dedication to reality at all costs”.

-M. Scott Peck

My God, the whole thing feels uncanningly like grief.

To be in grief is to be emotionally left behind. The person IS gone, the job IS lost, the body IS changed but the world in which that’s true feels 1,000 miles away from you and you’re left in a ghost land of what was, crawling through a desert of molasses toward the country of what is. And it is a fucking process.

Nadia Bolz-Weber from The Corners From: thecorners@substack.com