Advent Letter 2021<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For my global community: For my local BC community: For my Brain Cancer Community: <\/p>\n Yeah. Me too.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This year I resonate deeply with the season of Advent. Advent is all about waiting. It is the season of waiting for Jesus\u2019 arrival. It\u2019s not a pretty time as our society\u2019s packages and sparkles and bows would have you believe. It is a gritty time where we must practice the \u201cDiscipline of Hope\u201d (1) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a theologian who returned to Germany, from the United States, to help Jews escape the holocaust. He was imprisoned (and later executed) for his resistance. While in prison he wrote:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCelebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot\u2026.For the greatest, most profound tenderest things in the world, we must wait. It happens not here in a storm but according to the divine laws of sprouting, growing, and becoming.\u201d (2)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Yet this difficult waiting does not mean we stop celebrating. As Bonhoeffer describes in this letter to his family:<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe can and should also, celebrate Christmas despite the ruins around us\u2026We must do all this, even more intensively because we do not know how much longer we have.\u201d (2)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Though life is brutal and our longevity is questionable, we celebrate in the moments we\u2019ve been given. Kate Bowler puts it this way: \u201cAdvent is a state of being.\u201d (3)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sit here for a little while and the inspiration of these words will likely evaporate, at least they did for me, leaving these thoughts: <\/span>Thanks for the inspiration, Cheryl. It\u2019s lovely and heart-warming, but inspiration only goes so far. Waiting is still hard. So, what does this mean, PRACTICALLY?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n I think I might have an answer!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Surrender.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n (Who wants to surrender in our capitalist culture?<\/span><\/i> Hang on with me. Don\u2019t let the word Surrender scare you off.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This summer the word \u201cSurrender\u201d came up three times within three months in three different places. Clearly God\/the Universe wanted me to listen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I first encountered<\/span> Surrender<\/span><\/i> when I met with my Spiritual Director, Lorie. She introduced me to a welcoming prayer practice (4): the best anxiety-combatting tool I\u2019ve encountered. It is grounded in neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality (5). Welcoming, the practice \u201cmanual\u201d describes, is a \u201cLetting Go\u201d; saying \u201cyes\u201d to the Divine\u2019s presence within you. \u201c\u2018Welcoming\u2019 [is] really surrendering,” author Mary Dyer describes, “but Westerners have such an aversion to the concept of surrender, we have to couch it in the words, \u2018letting go\u2019”.\u00a0 Participants are asked to recite: \u201cI let go of my desire for security, affection, control and embrace this moment as it is .\u201d (6)<\/span><\/p>\n I looked at my Spiritual Director suspiciously and retorted, \u201cBut we <\/span>need<\/span><\/i> security! We <\/span>need <\/span><\/i>affection!\u201d (I had already learned that control was merely an illusion).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOh, yes!\u201d She replied with a loving smile, \u201cWe need them, but we already have them. The Divine has already given them to us, we just have to welcome them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAh!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Maybe I was (very) slowly beginning to see what she was saying.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0In the guide one of the authors, Mary Dyer, writes:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cSurrender is one piece [of the practice]. But it\u2019s really about radical and invincible trust – that the Yes we are saying [to the Divine\u2019s presence within us] is heard and received and we\u2019re being <\/span>loved to life<\/b>. It\u2019s walking in trust that the Divine Indwelling is present and living in every cell of your being, and loving you to life, It\u2019s this gift you are opening to – and it\u2019s already there.\u201d (emphasis mine)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n During our first session at the family camp we attended this past August, the speaker discussed- you guessed it -surrender. I smiled as I heard her describe that surrender is trust, a letting go of self-dependence. \u201cSurrender,\u201d she said, \u201cso what you have left is trust.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She gave us a few minutes at the end of our session for meditation. In the quiet I remembered the early days of my brain cancer diagnosis and the chaos of my treatment regimen for myself and my family. During those days I thought often of the bible story where Jesus walks on water. It\u2019s the dead of night and Jesus\u2019 buddies are in a boat in the middle of the sea when a storm crops up. They’re in trouble. Jesus walks – atop the water- towards the boat to ease their fears, but the men freak out thinking Jesus is a ghost. Peter, clearly cocky, shouts (my paraphrase), \u201cJesus, man, if it’s really you ask me to come onto the water with you.\u201d Jesus does and Peter thinks it’s pretty cool when he doesn\u2019t sink. That is until he starts to realize how big the storm around him is and he begins plummeting into the waves. (7)\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I thought of this story alot those days because I was sinking, drowning, barely keeping my head above the disastrous waves of terminal brain cancer and trying to mother my three very young children in this storm. <\/span>If only I keep my eye on the Divine,<\/span><\/i> I thought, <\/span>I won\u2019t drown<\/span><\/i>. My head was barely above water. (When Avril Lavign released Head Above Water in 2019 I played it endlessly on repeat; Avril understood).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now at Camp Oshkidee during my meditation time I had an image pop into my mind\u2019s eye. It was an image of nearly drowning which, subsequent to surrender, morphed into walking on top of those waves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Surrender is about trust,\u00a0 just like Peter needed to trust Jesus\u2019 track record of doing the miraculous. I need to trust in God\/ the Divine within me (9). I need to trust in myself – my body, my mind, my intuition. I need to trust in my breath to sustain me. I need to trust that the Universe is conspiring in my favor.(8)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Just as drowning prevention courses teach the importance of resisting the instinct to thrash and fight in order to survive (you must be calm in order to float) so too, surrender is about resisting the urge to fight for control.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hearing the concept of surrender twice in quick succession was noteworthy. Hearing it a third time out of my oncologist\u2019s mouth left me wide-eyed, ears fully open.<\/span><\/p>\n My oncologist is a brilliant, soft-spoken man. He doesn\u2019t usually have much to say to me beyond disclosing my test results – unless he\u2019s asked a question, then knowledge and wisdom pours out of him. I now come prepared to my oncologist appointments with a question or two. This particular day I asked, \u201cWhat are your thoughts about the interplay between the immune system and positive thinking and visualization?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHmmm,\u201d He smiled contemplatively before intricately describing, citing pertinent research, how the mind and the body are meshed. How the pituitary and the thalamus and hormones and imbalances affect the immune system. (I appreciated him talking to me like a peer, but most of it was beyond what I could remember from my physiology classes).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAncient wisdom knows this.\u201d He stated.<\/span><\/p>\n I smiled and nodded trying to remember as much of what he was saying as possible. He continued, \u201cThe state of accepting the moment as it is, is the key. This is surrender. It\u2019s not about giving up, like most people think, but of releasing. And this is what positively impacts our epigenetics and therefore our immune systems.\u201d \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n I was gobsmacked. Surrender would boost my immune system?! My immune system that needs to be on guard to surveil for unruly cancer cells? Surrender was\u2026 <\/p>\n Advent and surrender are all about gritty hope and trust when circumstances are unfavorable. To close, I will share the most impactful quote I have read since beginning my brain cancer journey. James Stockdale, who spent eight years as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam, says:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end- which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.\u201d (11)\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Stockdale\u2019s words are about keeping your eyes wide open, all the while: Believing. Hoping. Waiting.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Maybe <\/span>this <\/span><\/i>is the magic of Advent.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wishing you love and grace for your journey this Advent season.<\/span><\/p>\n xo <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes:<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Anyone done with waiting for Covid to stop interfering (or worse) with your life?<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Anyone done with waiting for the multiple atmospheric rivers to stop and for the flood waters to subside?<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>Anyone done with the mind game of waiting for MRI results?<\/span><\/p>\nAdvent<\/b><\/h2>\n
Surrender Encounter 1 (of 3)<\/b><\/h2>\n
Surrender Encounter 2 (of 3)<\/b><\/h2>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Surrender Encounter 3 (of 3)<\/b><\/h2>\n
\na<\/em> power move<\/em>!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nClosing remarks<\/b><\/h2>\n
\n<\/span>Cheryl<\/span><\/p>\n