Rainbows and Prayers

"Lord, I want to know your ways more and more... This is my cry; give me an endless love and thirst for you... That is my cry to you forever, Amen.       Yours only, Rebecca Holmes"                  

-Diary excerpt dated March 18, 1993  (I was 11 years old)

Last week during his nightly prayers Theo asked God to send him a rainbow, preferably soon.

I thought to myself, "Good thing we live in Hawaii!" and promptly informed him that he would be seeing a rainbow sometime during the weekend.  I was sure of it.

On Saturday while driving to Costco, we saw it, slightly foggy and indistinct, but as we rode along the colors became increasingly bright, almost sharp, and ten minutes later it was a full-fledged rainbow stretching across the sky complete with a double.  Yup, there were two of them. 

Theo was ecstatic.  I was happy his prayer was answered.  Theo thanked God and Vincent for sending him the rainbow(s) and then informed us that when he goes to heaven he's going to make it rain for a long while.  Great.  Double great.  

These days Theo seems to be talking a lot about when he gets sick and dies and goes to heaven like his brother.  I've had "rational" conversations with him where I informed him of the low probability of death for a child his age.  We talked about statistics, how most kids in our country don't get cancer.  At other times I've tried different approaches - we've discussed how it is to miss someone you love, how it hurts to wait to see them, but today when he brought up the topic of his death yet AGAIN, I felt like having a fit.  I don't like having conversations with our 4 year old son about his OWN death.  I don't EVER want to think about it, EVER!  I hope I'm long gone before he kicks the can.  So today, when Theo brought up the topic of dying, I felt like having a very angry talk where I would inform him - yes, instruct him - that he was NOT going to die anytime soon, much less get SICK and die, that I was simply NOT going to allow it.  Because I can control things like that, dag nabit! 

Only I can't.  Obviously.  And that stinks.   

Perhaps at the end of my story I'll be able to look back and see how all along my life was an exercise in surrender - the surrender of control, ambition, treasure.  And how with each surrendering, each large and small death, I was brought nearer to the heart of God, the one who lost (and then gained!) it all.

That would be an answer to one of my earliest prayers.  

Downward Mobility

When my son Vincent was diagnosed with liver cancer back in June 2010, my primary goal was to keep life as 'normal' as possible.  I wanted only to get through his treatment and forget it ever happened.  After all, terrible things like childhood cancer don't happen to our family.

Yes, I was experiencing massive amounts of denial.

As we spent week after week in the hospital, I frequently noticed posters advertising the start of a new support group for parents of children with cancer.  Though I initially resisted the thought of hanging out with "the cancer people," our family was thrust into a group of precious individuals well-acquainted with grief, disappointment, and tragedy.  Since attending our first group meeting last year, we have participated whenever possible.  This year alone, two families from the group have watched their children die.  One passed away just a few days ago.

Belonging to a grief-filled community means abandoning the luxury of ignoring life's inherent risks and dangers.  It means admitting fragility and powerlessness over tragic events that shape our brief lives on this planet.  Before Vincent's diagnosis, I belonged to a privileged slice of society whose main worry for their little children concerned where to send them to school and whether or not to vaccinate.  Our family was well on its way to achieving comfortable American middle-classdom.  I held a stable position in church leadership, my husband was completing graduate school, and we were enjoying the development of our two young sons.

One year later, here I am with no job, one less child, and discouraging prospects for the immediate future.  I'm currently a stay-at-home mom to my fragile four-year-old, bartering music lessons for discounted preschool and holding garage sales to pay utility bills.  Much has been lost.

And yet, there remains unlikely connectedness and community in the midst of pain.  We are not the only grieving family.  We recently stayed six weeks in the Philippines where loss and death are all around, homelessness and starvation just a typhoon away.  In a world rife with suffering, our afflictions bring us closer to the life of deep awareness and trust.  Who has time to chase after a bigger house or nicer car when your child is intubated at death's door?  When someone you love passes away, it doesn't matter which name brand you're wearing or what kind of status bag hangs on your shoulder.

For me, participation in a pain-scarred community means living authentically, surviving on faith.  It means caring more about time spent with others than money earned for myself.  Vincent's illness changed my life, not just because he died, but because we are now part of a global community of people who live tremulously. I can no longer presume security and entitlement.  I'm starting to surrender my demands for control, opening my heart to a more simple way of life.  This last year has seen our family begin the path of downward mobility.  Each loss brings a greater appreciation for life's fragile beauty.

I'm reminded of Jesus, our servant king, who willingly chose a humble path marked by sorrow. Scripture says he emptied himself of the glories of heaven in exchange for the poverty and vulnerability of human flesh.  "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head..." He left behind a joyous relationship with his Father to be part of a flawed human family.  He gave up the wealth of heaven to eek out a living as a carpenter, losing celestial perfection for the brokenness of human society—quite an exchange!  He died a criminal's death in order to become the world's greatest hope for peace and reconciliation.  In choosing the downward path at an inestimable cost to himself, he fully identified as one of us, a wounded brother.

Our hospital's Childhood Cancer Connection support group has been a tremendous gift this past year.  I never thought I'd want to be part of a community formed in the shadow of sickness and death.  Ironically, the group continues to enrich me with a greater reverence for life, anchoring me in a context of shared experience, reminding me of what matters most.

There is still a long way to go on this downward path.  I struggle with entitlement, bitterness and anger.  I want more and more things, believing I deserve them for having lost my child.  I often forget how the call to follow Christ is a call to pick up my cross. The smaller and emptier we are, the more space remains to be filled with God's Spirit.  Even though the abundant life is marked with sorrow, it's also punctuated by divine joy.  As John the Baptist once said, "He must increase, and I must decrease."

Costly

I've been in the Philippines now for less than 48 hours, and already I've seen beautiful sunsets, bustling shopping centers, half-starved begging children and cardboard-shack houses.  My parents' Bible School is on a gorgeous compound nestled against a low-income neighborhood.  To get to their place, we drive on a winding road weaving between open sewers and little kids playing without shoes.  It's been a while since I've seen poverty like this.  We have desperately poor people in the United States too - there are huge amounts of American children considered to be going hungry every year, but that's simply no comparison to what it is like in more developing countries.

As we were loading our luggage into the car at the Philippine airport, we were accosted by a sweet little boy about the size of Theo.  I would estimate he was probably around 6-7 years old, perhaps even older.  His breastbones were jutting out of his too-large shirt, and as he held out his hand, he asked us for food. Not for money, but for food.  He looked hungry.  Really hungry.

I got out Theo's puffed rice cereal from the plane and gave it to the boy. When Theo saw this happening, he started crying because HE wanted to eat the cereal.  And then the boy asked for more.  A local guard noticed the commotion and came to gently shoo the child away, and as we got into the car I tried to get Theo to stop crying as I explained why we gave his cereal away. I told Theo how I could buy or make him food when he was hungry, but some kids don't have any food because their parents don't have money to buy any, or the kids simply don't have any parents at all.  Upon hearing this, Theo cried harder, wanting to buy more food and give it to all the hungry kids.

But first he wanted his cereal back.

I think sometimes we're all a bit like Theo.  We want to help when we see people who are hungry or in need of medicine or shelter, but we also don't want to have to give up what we already have.  We're more than happy to buy lunch for someone who needs it, but who wants to give up the lunch they've been planning on eating themselves?  We're fine with donating money when we have a little surplus in our budget, but what about when it's something we've been counting on personally using?  We're a bit more reluctant.  That kind of giving often costs us more than we're willing to part with.

One of the things I love so much about the Christian story is that God is shown throughout human history to be a generous giver.  He doesn't just give us a small minutiae out of his surplus.  Instead, God gives us his all.  He offers us His wounds for our healing, His death for our resurrection, His life for our life.  And when we finally come home after a lifetime in a faraway land, He kills the fatted calf he's been saving to throw us a party. That's some kind of God.

I'm logging off now to buy some cereal and snacks.  A LOT of them.

Icons

For Mother's Day my wonderful hubby hung up a bunch of pictures of our family, all blown up into different sizes and placed in various white frames in our living room.  It looks beautiful.

Up until now we've not had any family photos framed, much less hung up.  For some reason we're not picture people.  Our house still looks nice, (so I think!) and filled with carefully collected items from around the world.  Nothing is very valuable, but it's all worth a lot to me - carved lion bookends from Africa, a painting from Myanmar, bedspreads from Singapore, vintage signs, plates from South America, crocheted animals from Australia.

My spiritual director who I mentioned here is an Episcopalian.  Her house is crammed full of icons, religious art, sculptures, paintings, and crosses.  I love walking into her living room and immediately feeling connected to something larger than myself, something deeper than my personal style and tastes. Most of the paintings in her house are Byzantine icons.  The paintings themselves are rather bare, almost ugly by some standards, yet symbolically speak of deep spiritual truths. Through looking at them I find myself connecting to the other largely unseen world of the spirit.

I have other friends as well who have lovely pictures of Jesus hung on their walls. My favorite is our Aunty Mary's "Laughing Jesus," beautifully sketched in pencil and charcoal.  I helped her move a few months ago, and as she picked up the picture she said, "Let's bring Jesus!"  I knew I liked this lady.

In these past few months I've become rather dissatisfied with what our house looks like inside.  It doesn't need another paint color on the walls or different furniture.  Instead, what it needs are a few windows to the spirit.  I would like at least a few items around the house to help remind me of what's really important, to draw me into the deeper life, the life of the spirit within. I could really use some art (even homemade!) that invites me to see past the clutter of my life to the Life that speaks everlasting.  The life of God.  I used to think "religious art" was cheesy.  Now I know better.  I need it.

I need to see pictures of Jesus our shepherd, reminding me of the qualities of God's care.  I want to see Jesus laughing, reminding me of his humanity.  I need to see Jesus on the cross where I am struck by his sacrifice, Jesus as a baby held by Mary, where I find his vulnerability... I want to see pictures of the empty tomb, of Mary Magdelene, of the Emmaus Road.

On Monday afternoon, Dan, Theo and I are leaving for a six-week trip to visit the Philippines, the place where  I grew up.  We'll be staying at my parents' place, and I'll still be blogging for the duration of the trip.  I'm excited.  I hope to accomplish several things while we're there.  One is to make sure Theo has a great time.  Another is to not go crazy shopping.  The last one is to make it a priority to "look" more.  To try to gaze at stuff that calls me deeper - whether it be a rock, a picture of Jesus, a flower, or the starry night sky.  To see.  To allow my inner self be called home.  And to follow the invitation.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Mystery (The Problem of Pain)

Because I'm a person of faith, people often ask me if I'm mad at God. Couldn't he have done something to stop Vincent from dying? As Christians, we believe that among God's many attributes are both absolute power and absolute goodness.

The question of how God's love and power relate to each other is one that all theologians and sufferers have wrestled with over the millennia.  If God is good AND powerful, why doesn't he stop horrible events from happening?  Why are there child soldiers, rape, famine, cancer?  Why do kids die?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do bad things happen at all?

Some people think that God, although powerful in nature, sort of ties his hands behind his back by giving us humans free will.  At the end of human history God's powerful enough to win the war against evil (using us, his followers) as we break powers of darkness and evil and incarnate God's power and love to our broken world.  He can be prevailed upon through prayer to change events, but only if the powers of darkness are broken first.  He's absolute goodness, only wanting us to thrive and be full of good things.  He weeps with us when we encounter evil, when we are wounded from the fault of others' free will choices.  From this perspective, it would never be his will to let Vincent die.

Critics of this view say it compromises God's omnipotence (power) in a manner inconsistent with the biblical description.  He can't be a truly all-powerful God if he's wringing his hands over situations he cannot at this moment change without our help.  God ceases to be God if his hands are in any way tied.

Proponents of this next view remind us of our utter sinfulness as humans.  As completely flawed beings who first introduced sin to the world, we deserve whatever the perfect God metes out to us.  We deserve nothing from him, although through his son Jesus we've recieved everything we really need, promise of redemption, the sure hope of eternal life.  God is completely powerful over all world events, he presides over everything that occurs, and though not evil himself, allows evil to exist for a time being for reasons we do not understand.  His goodness is always complete, even when we cannot see it.  From this perspective, it could have been his will to let Vincent die.  (This is usually the point where the discussion veers toward further theological splicing between God's prescriptive will and his decretive will... but I don't want to go there.)

Critics of this view say that God seems to be a cosmic meany.  He's able to change horrible events, able to eliminate all evil, but instead allows it to exist.  (Of course, these views can be nuanced much better than I've stated.  I'm sure I've left many important details out of each one, but then again, I'm much better at ranting then reporting.)

So, the argument goes, either God is completely powerful (and not fully good), or he's completely good (and not fully powerful.)  In the face of deep suffering, it's difficult to believe that God can be both simultaneously. 

Where do I stand? Part of me would like to think that what happened to Vincent was a terrible injustice caused by living in a messed up world.  God would like to have stopped it,  only wanting goodness and wholeness in our lives, but his hands were tied.  But I don't really believe that.  I do believe that Vincent's death was a terrible injustice.  But I believe that God didn't stop it for some reason(s) unknown to me at this time.  I believe he is powerful enough to do it, but for some reason he didn't.

I would like Vincent's death to have as much meaning as possible.  If it was just a random event that occurred, how meaningful is that?  It's like winning the crappiest lottery ever.  Even though I don't believe God specifically ordered in his perfect will for Vincent to get cancer and die, I believe that he did foresee it and let it happen anyway to us.  I believe he could have stopped it, and yet he didn't.

Over the years I've grown to accept this fact:   our world is pretty awful.  It's in the process of being fixed and redeemed, and one day all suffering will cease, and our earth will be renewed.  Until then all sorts of bad stuff happens, largely a result of what we do to each other.  Large corporations want more money, take shortcuts, pollute the water and people get cancer.  We want more power and oil so we go to war.  Kids get killed.  Women get raped, the environment gets exploited, stuff gets stolen, we die, awful, awful evil happens and gets thrown our way.  It's the way of this world.

Now where does God fit into this?  Well, I believe that whatever transpires in our life, whatever events in life we go through, they have to pass through God's hands first.  He doesn't cause them, but he makes sure that whatever they are, they are something that we are able to triumph over, if not in this life, than the next.  He makes sure we get justice, if not now, than later.  And in the meantime, all the awful things that happen that would try to destroy us, he can transform into scars of beauty, into something useful for helping someone else's pain.  God is very economical.  He doesn't waste our pain, our wounds.  If we let him, he as the ultimate alchemist transforms our tragedies into something beautiful, useful, something that brings him glory.

I've always known that God does not keep us "safe".  That's not his ultimate goal.  And from the viewpoint of eternity, what does being "safe" really mean?  Are you safe if you have a comfortable home now, happy relationships, a good bank account, and yet who you truly are deep inside is conflicted, without peace?  Are you "safe" if you've never been deeply hurt or in a debilitating accident, but your inner soul is isolated from the one Reality that can offer transcendent living, real hope?

The apostle Paul in Colossians 3 says this:

"...For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God."

My Real life, who I truly am and am becoming, my real beauty, my real strength is all hidden with Christ up there in heaven.  It's kept truly safe with God and with Vincent who is one of my greatest treasures.  It's out of reach for now, but it's part of a greater Reality that I cannot see, a Reality that goes far and beyond what think is "real".

I watched Toy Story III just a few weeks before Vincent died and it gave me a useful analogy to describe the way I feel about his death.  In the movie, Mrs. Potato Head loses one of her eyes somewhere in Andy's house.  She can't find it, and after different events transpire, she, along with all the other toys, wind up in this horrible daycare where they are mistreated and are trying to escape.  They need to know what is happening back at home, and Mrs. Potato Head is able to channel her vision through her hidden eye, the one back at home, to see what is happening and to be connected to what was going on there.  She didn't have that eye physically with her, so she was blocking out what she could see right in front of her face, and instead, "seeing" with her missing eye.

I have to use my "missing" eye, the one that is hidden in God, to see the greater Reality there in heaven as opposed to just what is in front of me at this moment.

My spiritual director lent me her copy of Susan Howatch's book "Glamorous Powers."  Here the main character, Jon, an Anglo-Catholic ex-monk, is comforting his wife after their baby son Gerald has just died.

"...Look at the world from yet another angle.  Look at it as an idea in the mind of God, a brilliant dynamic idea which we ourselves can't fully grasp except that its dynamism ties us to the change we can't escape.  But beyond the idea, beyond the mind of God, is God himself, the unchanging perfection of ultimate Reality.  In other worlds, this cage we live in, this prison of time and space isn't ultimately real. Gerald may have slipped out of the cage ahead of us, but that doesn't mean he's ceased to exist.  As part of the ultimate reality his existence is reflected back into the world of time and space in the form of absolute values, the values which can never die, and the value in which we can most clearly see him reflected is love..."

I will see Vincent again.  But right now I have to use my other eye to see the ultimate Reality beyond this prison of time and space.  And until I see Vincent again with both my eyes, I'm going to try and reflect his life, and the life of God who is the ultimate Reality, back into this world.