The Very Rev. David Giuliano

... continued from Moderator's Blog: Through the Valley of Shadows

Notes from the Valley 18: “Miracle” Cures, January 3, 2008

Yesterday afternoon I was helping Jeremiah repair his foosball table. He and some friends were moving it in the back of a pick-up truck. The truck got stuck in the snow. One thing led to another and a leg was broken off. He spent most of yesterday getting bolts and advice at the “Home of the Handyman” and drilling out the stripped ones. We got it home in the van and were in the process of gluing and screwing a broken hunk back on when the phone rang. Pearl called downstairs that it was for me.

The voice on the other end exuded cheerful familiarity. “Do you have a few moments to talk?”

The needle on my telemarketer radar bounced into the yellow zone. “I’m in the middle of something right now. May I ask what you are calling about?”

“When would be a good time to call back?” Red zone.

“How ’bout you tell me what you’re calling about and I’ll let you know if there is a good time to call.”

He launched in, “Well, I’m calling about your cancer…”

Apparently, he has access to a cancer cure that has been researched at McGill University for a decade and has the endorsement of 20 research physicians. Maybe it was 20 years and 10 research physicians.

“I feel pretty good about the treatment I’m getting, thanks,” I replied—politely.

He parried, “These supplements—”

“I’m not looking for alternative treatments at this point,” I interrupted. “I don’t want to be rude but I’m going to hang up now.” And then I did.

I’ve been wondering about my reaction. Why was I so bugged about a guy calling who—at least in his mind—could save my life? How was it so different than me offering to help Jeremiah fix his foosball table—other than the (hopefully) obvious differences between my head and a foosball table?

I don’t know this man and he doesn’t know me. He spoke as though we might have met. A lot of telephone solicitors seem to be my pals. I guess these supplements work on all cancers because he would have no way of knowing the rare form of sarcoma that “went forth and multiplied” on my left temple. Heck, I can’t remember the 12-syllable name!

I was bugged about a stranger launching, uninvited, into our home and a conversation about something as deeply personal as my cancer. I was bugged that he assumed a familiarity that would warrant an uninvited and uninformed call. Where did he get my home number? Where was he calling from? I was bugged that by implication he dismissed my treatment choices and physicians. I was bugged because I can imagine other folks, more desperate and frightened than I feel, being preyed upon by unethical purveyors of “miracle” cures.

O.K. I’m ranting. I know. I’ll stop. I’ve put my story out there. I get some unusual, and often well-meaning, offers of help.

I suppose the call bugged me for the same reason that certain evangelical door-knockers bug me. They don’t know me, or try to, but make all kinds of assumptions about who I am, my current state of eternal damnation, and what I need to be “saved.”

I want to tell people about Jesus and to talk together about the Holy Mysteries. I believe there is healing and life in Christ—for many he is a “miracle cure”! If I believe that it is a story that could save someone’s life, save the world—and I do—I will have to keep finding ways to tell it. I can see how important are listening, mutual respect, humility, my own vulnerability, relationship, and honesty when I do.

Notes from the Valley 19: Mountaintops and Valleys, January 22, 2008

A med student did the initial examination for Dr. O’Sullivan, the specialist. She summarized when he arrived by saying, among other things, that “This patient is unremarkable…” That’s a “good news” in a doctor’s office—I think.

Nothing showed on the chest X-ray or the MRI.

Dr. O’Sullivan looked me over, then crossed his fingers, sucked air through his teeth, and said, "I think—you can't, well…for sure…especially in these cases—but I think I've got it." It was kind of cute and pretty darn good news to get from one’s oncologist. He and the surgeon have been faithful and creative in tackling my cancer. And there is added pleasure in the fact that their names are Drs. “Gilbert and (O’)Sullivan”! Maybe some day they will pen “The Pirates of Princess Margaret” together.

I am beginning to feel less frail. Some physical frustrations and my own little energy crisis persist. But the glowing coals of my vitality are being fanned to life. My playful and mischievous self is picking itself up off the floor. I’m beginning to feel less like a bunch of bones in a flesh-bag. Strengths are returning.

In keeping with my desire to listen to what of value my individual body might be saying to our corporate body, I hasten to add that many of our congregations are experiencing renewed energy, vitality, and hope. Remarkable things are happening.

It feels important, though, not to leave the gifts of the valley of shadows behind. Frailty and vulnerability brought with it tenderness and an easy access to my inner life. Because I had to, I moved more slowly, with greater intention and awareness. Priorities were clear. I couldn’t waste precious energy on things that weren’t priorities. The blessing of each day was a very present reality. Gratitude flowed in me naturally. With returning strength, it seems important to continue to attend to persisting places of weakness. Otherwise, I might forget their blessing.

Perhaps, as congregations and as a church we are beginning to experience a new kind of healing. Maybe some of us are enjoying a renewed playful mischievousness in our common life. If that is true—and I am crossing my fingers and sucking air through my teeth on this—to be whole, we will need to remember that places of woundedness are often neglected gateways to grace.

Even writing this now, from a place of returning strength, there is part of me that wants to say, “Enough, already, with the frailty and weakness stuff.” Yet I know that these too are pathways of blessing. We encounter the Christ not only on the sunny mountaintop, but in the valley of shadows.

Notes from the Valley 20: “All Better,” February 6, 2008

I am healing like a little boy who wants to grow taller. It seems as though I will never grow, but if I mark my height with a pencil on the kitchen door frame, in a month or two I can see that I really am recovering. I’ve done some skiing, gone for a run. If I miss my nap one day, I don’t feel sick the next. If I stop to measure I can see that am getting “taller.”

Our journey with the Spirit is a bit like that. We wonder, with Van Morrison, when we will ever learn to live in God? But if we look back over our lives we may discover that we are indeed learning to live in God.

At the same time, sometimes in the same instance, I realize that there is also still an impatient little boy, within. We want to be “all grown up” in God. We want what hurts to be “all better.”

Lately, I’ve been having some conversations that go like this…

Someone asks me, “So you’re feeling better, now?”

“Yes, I’m coming along,” I respond. “It’s a bit slower than I would like, but coming.”

“But you’re better, right.” Now more statement than question.

“I’m sure getting there.”

Increasingly insistent: “Everything is fine then, now I mean. You look great!”

“Thanks and I am feeling better, not everything is—”

“But overall,” I detect a note of pleading, “you’re back to work, all better, feeling good.”

“Overall. Mostly, my energy levels are not quite—”

“But you’re fine now.”

“Sure.”

“That’s great to hear.”

I don’t know what drives it. Hoping the best for me? Discomfort with fragility and brokenness—especially in a leader? A desperate request for evidence that the thousands of prayers flags fluttered on my behalf “worked”? Maybe it speaks of our difficulty, as a church in acknowledging “the brokenness, pain, and fear we carry” as our “A Call to Purpose” put it. Somewhere in the exchange is a notion that there is a destination of “all better” and we are impatient to arrive there.

I wonder if there really is an “all better.” I accept “not-all-better-ness” has a place in my own and our communal wholeness. Superficially, my body will never be the same—scars will remain, hair will not return, and my vision seems to be permanently compromised. The sort of stuff we all deal with sooner or later.

I am indeed healing. Part of that healing is to hold in gentle love the imperfections and woundedness that persist. These are often the pathways God follows into our heart. When we are as empty as a Tibetan beggar’s bowl, God’s Spirit enters, fills us.

The Christ longs for union with us. Our ideas about “all-better-ness” get in the way. Through my own small experience of illness I am learning to truly love and welcome the, at times unlovely, Christ. This Christ is not the Uberman of triumph and victory but the one who shares the cosmic cross for the world.

During Lent we turn our hearts toward those places that are not “all better” in our lives, not “all better” in our families, not “all better” in our world. Perhaps it will help to see them as places where we might learn more fully to live in God.