Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship
Tuesday gratefuls: Dreams. Shadow and her doughnut. Tom and Paul. Happy Camper. Clinical trials. New drugs. Dr. Bupathi. The long, slow march.
Teshuvah. Tikkun. Rabbi Jamie. Artemis in Winter. Gardening. Horticulture. Garlic awaiting Spring. Snow in the forecast. Moisture. Drought. Trees. Wild Neighbors.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow
Week Kavannah: Hakarat Hatov. Gratitude.
I chose this because Tom and Paul are coming. Ruth, too. And, my 79th birthday. And, for life, my precious.
Tarot: Seven of Stones, Healing.
Focused on physical healing, I sometimes lose sight of teshuva, returning to the homeland of my soul, my Buddha nature.
One brief shining: Healing, the delicate process of becoming whole, is not only for the physical body and reaches into life, whether in a healthy or a sickened body, so much so that even a body with a terminal disease can experience healing, wholeness.
Back to my then close friend Steven Miles’ question: What is health in a dying man? I’m inching toward an answer, or at least a personal response, one based on etymology and grounded in theology.
Yes, I’m thinking of myself, for whom healing has become a fraught term since my cancer could no longer be cured. True since 2019 when I finished my first and long series of radiation.
Two years later my first metastases showed up, tipping me over into stage 4 prostate cancer. That was also the same year Kate died.
Let me ask Steve’s question in a personal way. What is health for me in this stage 4 time, knowing stage 5 is death? It’s helpful to me to look at the etymology of healing. Healing comes from the Old English hæling. It can mean restoration to health, of course, but it can also mean restoration to wholeness.
Before I go further, I want to say again: Life is a terminal disease, one with many paths but only one destination. Cancer is no more the certain cause of my death than any other; it’s just the most obvious possibility.
What is healing in a dying man such as myself? Or, such as you, reader? Can I heal even in Stage 4? Can I be restored to wholeness? I say yes.
Wholeness and teshuva. When I let cancer dominate my thoughts, which happens more than I wish, I commit hamartia, a Greek word that means to miss the mark though often translated as sin.
I find teshuva a much better antidote to hamartia than a desire for salvation to wash away my sin. A pox on that idea. No. When I miss the mark, that is, when I turn away from wholeness, I need not external salvation from a punishing God or his Son, but to return to the homeland of my soul.
We are whole, healed whenever we can look up from our blinkered obsessions with illness, money, achievement and see once again the unique and rare gift we are. Just as we are. Whether in robust physical health or further along our way to that most ancientrail and ultimate mystery, death.
When I take my attention away from blood draws and clinical trials, I remain who I am, who I was, and who I shall be. Curious, active, a seeker after knowledge and justice. A guy thrown into the mid-point of the last century and tasked with being myself in the years since 1947. Cancer included.
Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress
Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso