Troubled Waters

Awhile back I received a very inspiring e-mail from a long-time friend of mine in Portland Oregon, herself a cancer survivor, which said in part:

“In my experience, cancer is many things. It is a nuisance, a wake-up call, a spiritual initiation (if you learn to embrace it), a gift and an opportunity for very deep healing on all levels.

You can heal yourself, Tim, and you will be a better, more compassionate, happier person at the end of it. Every cancer patient has to ask a very real question of themselves: "Do I want to live"? If the answer is yes, the next question is "Am I willing to do everything it takes to survive?!" A lot of times there is deep inner emotional healing that needs to take place. Each person is different. You need to access your own inner knowing about what this cancer is about for you.

My most important words of advice to you (for what it is worth): Let the love into your being, Tim. It is all about love. I wish you much learning on your healing journey.”

I’ve been pondering over this e-mail ever since, looking for my own “inner knowing” about my disease and also whatever “deep inner emotional healing” needs to take place in my own life right now. And much of this introspection is also trying to make sense of another strange thing that happened to me just the day before, when I picked up my Greek Testament -- just to move it off my nightstand, really -- and tossed it on the bed, and it fell open to John 5. Not exactly a portion of the Gospel I’ve spent a lot of time with myself, but apparently a favorite passage of the previous owner of this particular volume...and suddenly there I was at the sheep pool at Bethesda among the blind, the halt, and the withered...and there was this same question all over again: theleis (h)ugies genesthai -- “Wilt Thou be Made Whole?”

Then, of course, comes all that business about the troubled waters and no one to help and the legitimacy of working/healing on the Sabbath. But the command is simply “pick up your bed and walk” -- and apparently not down into the healing waters, but to walk away -- back home -- wherever that might be after 38 years. And I’ve never really understood the relationship between the question and the command: “Will you allow yourself to be made whole?” “Then pick up your bed and WALK!” What is the connection between the Wish and the Will? How much of our healing is a product of our own effort, and how much is simply an openness to being and seeing ourselves as whole?

And then there’s that root again: genesthai/be made = Genesis, Generate, Generosity. Seems like that word pops up a lot in my life these days. Anyway, enough of all this. I have other things to muse about this Sunday.