(Friends: Feel free to share this story with anyone who would find it of benefit.
Rev. Lowell)
Too Small fo
r Anything but Love
Speaking at Trinity Institute, San Francisco, on February 7, 1981, William Sloane Coffin, Jr., declared: “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.” Great words.
With as much love as I can muster, I want to share the truth about my illness.
During the summer of 1992, I began experiencing heavy rectal bleeding. After being passed from one physician to the next and subjected to ever more obtrusive and uncomfortable procedures, I was scheduled for a colonoscopy.
Colonoscopy involves the insertion of a long, tubelike scope well into the intestinal tract from the anus up. Since it is very painful it is usually performed under anesthesia. I went under quickly and woke up in what seemed like seconds to find a grim faced gastroenterologist, Immanuel Friedman, M.D, standing over me. What I thought he said was, “It’s a tumor.” The anesthesia and/or my own optimism edited out the word, “malignant.”
I understood that this was serious business and asked what would be done. I felt neither panic nor self-pity. It was as if I had just been told that my automobile needed a new carburetor. My attitude toward the forthcoming surgery was exactly what it would have been toward my automobile mechanic: “OK. Let’s get it done. Let’s make the repairs so that I can be on my way again.”
In a few hours, the lab report on the biopsy of the tumor confirmed Dr. Friedman’s conclusion. I was schedule for surgery a few days later.
I had just begun a new radio series. Not even one broadcast was “in the can.” I spent the next two days writing scripts so that I could record them before the surgery. I went to the studio and recorded four 15-minute programs on Saturday. Then I preached my usual Sunday sermon and attended a distressful afternoon long workshop at church on our usual workshop topic: “What’s wrong with this congregation?” The perception that I was the congregation’s problem was not voiced. Not this time.
The surgery went well. A fist-sized tumor was removed. My bowel was resectioned. The lab report was not as encouraging as I could have wanted. Four lymph nodes had been removed with the tumor. The cancer was present in one. If it had spread there, the possibility existed it had spread elsewhere throughout my lymphatic system.
In a few days, I was sent home with instructions to take it easy for six weeks and then gradually to return to my normal activities. A minister friend of mine who I asked on the spur of the moment to fill in for me turned out to be a pulpit disaster. It was reported to me that he was emptying the church. Fearing an irreversible problem if I stayed away too long, I returned 3 weeks after the surgery. Much too early to be sufficiently recuperated. And much too late to do anything about the gap that had widened between the congregation and its pastor.
I also went back to my fledgling radio ministry. On November 22, I told my audience that I had undergone major surgery for colon cancer. “A few days ago”, I added, “I began an extended course of chemotherapy as the physicians and I attempted to destroy the remaining cancer cells in my body.”
I was scheduled for “the standard treatment,” 52 intravenous doses of a powerful toxin called 5 -Fluorouracil (“5FU” as in “FU cancer!” - my mantra when the awful stuff flowed into my veins) and oral doses every other week of a compound named Levamisol. Since Levamisol was first used as a sheep wormer, I would refer to the two drugs as rat poison and sheep dip, respectively.
The treatment began with huge intravenous doses daily of 5FU for 4 days. The jabbing after a good vein and the nausea and general flulike discomfort were unpleasant but not too bad at the time. Then the following week, I suffered the agonies of the damned. My entire system went into revolt. My mouth and throat filled with ugly and painful lesions. My skin burned and itched, strange wartlike growth and dots of pigment floated to the surface on my hands, arms, sides, chest, neck, and face. My blood seemed to boil - my temperature hit a record 110 degrees for hours at a time and then returned to normal. The nausea and the other flulike symptoms intensified. I had never felt so sick in my life.
And that very week the pressure began. One powerful member of the church, the major donor, phoned me, wrote me, and came to my house to demand my resignation. “The church needs chemotherapy from you,” he insisted. I told him repeatedly, to no apparent effect, that I was simply too sick to make any major decision. He stopped badgering me but manipulated behind the scenes like a ward politician lining up his voters. His efforts were duly reported to me. There are no secrets in a small church.
When I began to tell my friends about the cancer that had taken up residence in my colon, I was as little prepared for their reactions as I was for my own.
The first friend I told came to my office and suggested that I should immediately resign as pastor of this church. In her view, my job had made me sick. She advised me to fill my mind with positive thoughts and that if I did, the cancer would go away.
Our church secretary, a charismatic Christian, took me to a faith healer, who was conducting services at her church. He “cast out” my cancer and pronounced me cured.
I am convinced to this day that these two well-meaning individuals could have killed me!
Some friends, to whom I had been close, simply disappeared from my life. Others were caring and solicitous but, I have subsequently learned, many had written me off in their hearts as terminal.
My wife and I attended an adult group dinner at the First Presbyterian Church in San Mateo. The speaker was a well-regarded seminary president and sometime Christian comedian and his topic was “The Healing Power of Humor.” As we entered the social hall, casserole in hand, I spotted Tom, a longtime acquaintance of ours. We had attended church in Foster City with his family for many years before my call to the Little Brown Church. We had not seen one another for five years.
Tom was engaged in conversation with another man. I stepped up beside him and tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned toward me, a look of confusion spread across his face. I thought he was having difficulty recognizing me. All at once, he blurted out, “Lowell! Didn’t you used to be dead—or something?”
The family circle closed tight around me. My wife, children, mother-in-law, and others were there for me every step of the way.
Many of the church folk were wonderful. Betty, a widow in her seventies, drove me about on errands. Several ladies brought casseroles (once three arrived at the same time!). Expression of sympathy, well wishing, and prayers flooded in--as did demands from my moderator that I meet with him and other leaders of the church to explore the church’s problem (me, of course) in the hope I would give in to the inevitable and resign. These frequent meetings were usually deliberately scheduled on my chemotherapy and sermon preparation days.
I wondered if I could survive the cancer. I was less sure I could survive the moderator. Sometimes I thought my friend was right. Perhaps my job had made me sick.
In my moments of silent reflection, I was busy blaming myself. If only I hadn’t been so reactive, so overly concerned, so easily upset, I would never have caused my insides to start eating themselves.
When I was in the hospital, two friends gave me a special gift--several audiotapes by Bernie S. Siegel. As most of the world knows, Doctor Siegel practices surgery in New Haven and teaches at Yale University. He is best known for his book, Love, Medicine and Miracles
When I first listened to some parts of Siegel’s tapes, I felt I was responsible not only for my illness but also for healing it. This made me angry and in my head I had some lengthy arguments with Doctor Siegel. As I continued to listen, the tapes helped me gain a sense of perspective, to realize I was sick because I was sick and I might or might not recover. And even if I did, the recovery would only be temporary. During the midst of the pain-filled chemo and the uncertainty at the church, I did not expect to live another year. In some ways, I did not want to. As I considered the possibilities, death seemed the best alternative. I would not have to suffer either the loss of my abilities and faculties as had cancer patients I had tried to console as their pastor nor would I have to worry any longer whether or not I was loved and accepted by my parishioner.
The Siegel tapes helped me to decide that I really wanted to survive. I don’t think that my desire determined the outcome but it certainly changed my attitude.
I said to myself, “Sooner or later, I am going to die. I am opting for later. I will do everything in my power to use the healing energy available to me—medicine, faith, and, above all, love. In other words, if I live to be 54 or 154, I have renewed my determination to be as alive as I can be, to be as loving, as willing to be loved, as honest in the expression of who I am as I am capable of being,”
And I asked myself, “Why did I get sick?” Let me give you the simple explanations. First, I have a genetic predisposition to cancer. Cancer runs in my family.
Second, I am a very intense person. If I had been delivering newspapers instead of sermons for the past three years, I probably would have overfunctioned, overdone, overworried, etc. That kind of stress can kill and I had better learn to cope with it. We all had better learn to cope with it.
Third, we live in a cancer-prone world. We live in the midst of a carcinogenic epidemic. Our polluted air, water, and food are many times more cancer-causing today than they were a generation ago.
Beyond these simple explanations, I cannot go. God sends rain to fall on the just and the unjust. If you’re afraid of getting wet, carry an umbrella. If you don’t want to get rained on at all, move to a desert. If you want a guaranteed cancer-free existence, don’t live at all. Life is risky. Life offers no security. And life is carcinogenic. That’s all there is to it.
There are five questions Siegel advises cancer patients to ask themselves and I have been wrestling with each of them. I think they are about how to live and, thus, relevant to all of us, whether we are facing a life-threatening illness or not. Siegel’s questions:
1. Are you willing to live to be 100?
2. What happened in the year or two before your illness?
3. Why do you need your illness and what benefits do you derive from the illness?
4. What does your illness mean to you?
5. Describe your illness and what you are experiencing?
As I share some of my thoughts on these questions, please remember: You may think I am talking about my illness, colon cancer, but I am not. I am talking about life. I am talking about pain. I am talking about courage. So let me read Siegel’s questions again, and this time, when you hear the word “illness,” insert your crisis, your challenge, your secret fear.
Let me share my answers.
1. Are you willing to live to be 100?
That is a real challenge. Am I willing to expose myself to reverses and illness and loss of physical and mental powers? Am I willing to have the phone ring again and again over the years with the news that beloved friends, perhaps my own children, perhaps my own wife, are in trouble or pain or that they have left my life forever.
It would be so much easier to be the first to go, to be spared the sorrow and the loss. But then I remember I have never wanted for loved ones—for those who needed my love and those who loved me. So I intend to thrive on loving and let living take care of itself.
I am willing to tell the truth, to live the truth, and I am willing to love and be loved—and if that doesn’t make living to be 100 worthwhile, nothing will.
2. What happened in the year or two before your illness?
I lost weight. I exercised regularly. I got myself into the best physical shape of my whole life. I ate the right foods and avoided the wrong ones. And I got sick.
I worked on my spiritual growth. I learned to stop taking everything personally. I stopped blaming myself when others blamed me—and I stopped blaming them. I recovered my sense of humor and perspective. I was not too proud to say, “I’m sorry.”
I took my job as a spiritual leader seriously—but not too seriously. I preached the Gospel, counseled members of the congregation and strangers from the community. Wherever there was a need in our church family, I was there as fast as I could be. And I got sick.
Overall, I learned to meet the needs of others and my own needs in positive ways.
And I got sick.
3. Why do you need your illness and what benefits do you derive from the illness?
I don’t need this illness. I don’t want this illness. I will do whatever I can to rid myself of it. Yet, I must admit I am deriving tremendous good from it. And I am not just talking about, the cards, the flowers, and the expressions of concern. I am talking about the permission I have given myself to be vulnerable. So I am not Superman or Superminister. I need help. I want help. I flourish when helped.
Above all, I have learned through my time of illness that I am a maple leaf. From spring to summer, expect me to attain a distinctive shape. In the autumn you can expect me to turn beautiful colors. I cannot pretend to be an oak leaf to make others happy.
4. What does your illness mean to you?
You know what a lot of us do when we are ill? We get depressed and declare ourselves failures—something we learned to do years earlier in childhood.
Illness is not evidence of sin or lack of faith or being the wrong kind of person or not being good enough.
I am sick because I am sick. My illness is not failure. If I choose to accept the grace of God surrounding, permeating, energizing me right now, this illness can be my greatest success.
5. Describe your illness and what you are experiencing?
I have a little talk with my cancer now and then. It goes like this:
Cancer, what are you? A living thing with no principle of self-regulation--no self-control. You just do what you do because you feel like doing it. You care nothing for the consequences. You are a living thing that thrives at the expense of healthy tissues. Cancer, I understand you well. I know people just like you. At times, I have been just like you.
Cancer, there is not enough room in this town for both of us. So I will do whatever I can do, use whatever spiritual and medical energy there is available to me, to keep you from growing, to keep you from feeding on what is good and healthy, to keep you from getting away with your desire to have what you want whenever you want it.
And so I fight with all the resources available to me—with special gratitude for the prayers of my friends. For I know, to quote Bill Coffin again: “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”
The Big Five
Country star Tim McGraw, today’s most popular male singer, had just lost his father, celebrated big league pitcher, Tug McGraw. Tim had cared for his ailing father, from whom he had once been long estranged, during the older man’s last days. Ironically, Tim had recorded a most appropriate song, “Live Like You Were Dying.” The song tells of a conversation with man who learns he is dying.
He said: I was in my early forties
with a lot of life before me
when a moment came that stopped me on a dime
and I spent most of the next days
looking at the x-rays
Talking bout the options
and talking bout sweet time.
The ill-fated man’s choice?
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named BluManchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying
. . . .
… I was finally the husband
that most the time I wasn't
and I became a friend a friend would like to have
and all the sudden going fishin’
wasn't such an imposition
and I went three times that year I lost my dad
well, I finally read the good book
and I took a good long hard look
at what I'd do if I could do it all again
In sum, the man had learned the blessings of living fully while he still had the choice, of accepting each new day as a gift.
Twelve years ago as I struggled with cancer, I was told that I had two years to live. Once I had made a decision that I wanted to live, I then asked myself, “What 5 things would I like to do during the next two years--even if those years would prove to be my last?” I was inspired by a story I had heard about the late Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 1934, according to the tale, ninety-three-year-old Holmes was in the hospital slowly succumbing to a fatal illness. He was visited by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who found the old retired jurist at work with a book, a pencil, and a pad. “What are you doing?” the president asked.
“I’m learning classical Greek,” Holmes replied.
“Why are you doing that?” said the president.
“So I can read Plato’s Republic in the original.”
But at your age, why are you doing that?” asked the President
“So that I can improve my mind and because I’ve always wanted to,” responded Holmes.
Now what possible use could a dying ninety-three-year-old have with classical Greek? Holmes obviously knew the joy of learning, a joy as great as any.
So if a crusty geriatric could occupy his dying days do something he had always wanted to do, why couldn’t I do the same? I began by making up a list of the five things I had always wanted to do.
Item 1:1 had always wanted to visit the Sistine Chapel to see Michelangelo’s ceiling paintings. So just after my fifty-fourth birthday, my wife and I flew to Rome, spent a few days with friends who had been posted there by IBM, and got in the long, long line wending its way through the Vatican Museum (the world’s largest garage sale of objects d’art), and made our way to the chapel and its almost completely restored ceilings. I had wanted to do this ever since my dad had brought home a copy of Life magazine with a photo feature on the paintings when I was about ten-years-old.
Item 2:1 had never been to the Holy Land. So right after Rome, we flew to Tel Aviv and began a twelve-day bus tour with a small group of fellow pilgrims.
Item 3:1 love to sing but recognize that I do not sing well. So I found a voice coach and began training. I am still a “not ready for prime time” voice but I love my lessons and love singing my heart out.
A decade ago, my wife and I debuted as chorus members in an all-Mozart concert to be performed by a local Presbyterian Church. I was a little minnow in a big pond (50 singers plus orchestra) and I loved it!
Item 4: When I was a teenager, I had been a radio actor in Chicago. I regret that I did not pursue this interest. So I signed up as a student at a well known acting school in San Francisco, took two courses of scene study., I also enrolled in courses in improvisation and on-stage movement at two other San Francisco schools.
Item 5: I have always wished I could speak a language other than English. Before leaving for Israel , I spent several hours relearning conversational Hebrew. However, in Israel my efforts to converse were thwarted by Israelis who responded to me in English with “Oh, you’re practicing your conversational Hebrew!” I think I’ll try Spanish next time. I’ll get lots of practice in California!
I know there was a sixth item on my want list but I got so involved in the first five I have forgotten it! And that was the point. I had successfully displaced the pain--psychic as well as physical. And I had learned many lessons from each of my new pursuits. Anyway, that’s the way I felt as my 14 -month course of chemotherapy came to end. Unfortunately, my battle with cancer had not ended. Routine follow-up CT scans revealed a second, unrelated malignancy—kidney cancer. My right kidney was surgically removed and at this time I was weak, unemployed, and burdened with the prognosis that I had about two years to live.
I was deeply, chronically fatigued, a condition that lingers with me in large part to this day. My powers of concentration seemed to have deserted me. I could no longer focus long enough to prepare a sermon, an article, or a book proposal. So I began to collect humorous anecdotes—for my own amusement and for possible inclusion in sermons or other writing project when my former powers were restored—if ever they were. I ransacked my memory, humor books, magazines, relevant computer programs, etc. I collected, wrote or re-wrote, categorized, catalogued, and stored jokes, puns, one-liners, funny definitions, etc. Months went by and my collection grew to over half a million items, then a million, then more than I could count. Perhaps I could not write another book or sermon but one by one, I could certainly re-tell my favorite jokes!
Eventually, ten books of humor, several electronic collections of jokes, and a website would flow from my efforts. One of these, An Encyclopedia of Humor, would be a bestseller!
My what-I-always-wanted-to-do list had shrunk. All I desired now was to be useful and I made a single new resolution: I was not going to tolerate any relationships that were not intimate. I remember telling this to a local Presbyterian minister, a woman, and I probably scared her out of her wits. What "intimate" connotes to me and what it means to others are not necessarily the same. Intimate, of course, can connote “involved in a sexual relationship,” but it also means the following:
Marked by close acquaintance, association, or familiarity;
Having or fostering a warm or friendly atmosphere; especially through smallness and informality;
Having mutual interests or affections; of established friendship;
Innermost or essential;
Thoroughly acquainted with through study or experience.[1]
For one person to be intimate with another means that they have a relationship that is close, dear, near, cherished, warm, friendly, personal, cozy, thorough, devoted, and confidential. It is the opposite of a relationship that is distant, formal, superficial, or indirect.
When I was pastor of a church, I was always advised to act warm, friendly, confident; to play the congregation’s cheerleaders; and, if I were not comfortable in this role, I was advised “to fake ‘til you make it!” However, such play-acting does not yield intimacy. I suppose the need for intimacy has led me to spend much of my time since leaving the ministry with my companion animals.[2] In an e-mail message to me, my friend, Rita Reynolds, the founder of the Animals' Peace Garden, an animal sanctuary located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia says it so well:
And as you describe Intimate, I have to think of the animals here. Warm, kind, giving, attentive.... the other day I looked out the back door and there was Christina, my beloved cow (red and white Hereford) looking at me from her favorite place by the maple tree. Through the glass door, I bowed my head to her in a sign of respect and greeting and told her, quietly, how much I appreciated her presence and how beautiful she was to look upon. I meant every word. She blinked her eyes; still studying me, ever so slightly bowed her head, too, and licked her nose with her tongue. Now, I have learned studying my dogs, especially, that that one gesture seems to be an affirmation: Thank you; Okay; Yes; Fine; Glad to; and sometimes, I believe, "Yes, it's perfect." Her various gestures were so obviously a positive response to my words, I knew she had understood all I had said to her, and was responding from a place of equally respectful love. It was an amazing moment. Now, that's intimacy![3]
When I thought that my life was dribbling away and there were only months before the sand would run to the bottom of the hourglass, I simply lost patience with bull___. (I wonder if my publisher-to-be will let me say this in the book. BTW, it is so unlike me!)
And, to quote Martin Luther, “Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.”
[1] Wordweb, dictionary and thesaurus software.
[2] For an account of my animal experiences, see the two books I have co-authored with cartoonist Ron Rush: Pet Tales (Louisville, KY: Wasteland Press, 2003)andHoof Beats, Hairballs, and Three Dog Nights (Loveland, CO: Alpine Publications, 2004).
[3] Rita tends to, and is lovingly taught by her family of many elderly dogs, cats, donkeys, goats, ducks, chickens, and one cow. For the past 25 years her sanctuary has been home to hundreds of animals. Her primary work has focused on caring for elder animals and hospice care/ conscious dying work with animals. She is the author of Blessing the Bridge: What Animals Teach Us About Death, Dying, and Beyond. She is also the founder and editor of laJoie, The Journal in Appreciation of All Animals.
Responding to my account of my cancers, she states: “I have worked with many animals in my home who have had cancer. Some recovered and went on to die in old age from unrelated things, such as kidney failure. Others, most, have died from the cancer they had. All, to a one, have been courageous, uncomplaining, loving and giving so fully of themselves.”
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