ANSWERED
PRAYERS
How Breast Cancer Helped an Atheist Find God
My
spiritual journey really began when my atheist father was dying of cancer. Dad, who was extremely intelligent – he was
a scientist and self-taught computer maven – but emotionally a bit retarded, loved to bait people, particularly religious
people (the more devout, the better). So Dad, all wan and tuckered out like some old dog panting in the sun, says, “God
has forsaken me." He utters this soap opera sentiment triumphantly and mockingly, with a bit of sly curiosity as to my reaction.
Raised
an atheist, I’d never laid eyes on a Bible, nor attended church except once when a neighbor re-kindled my mother’s
agnosticism with visions of my tender soul burning in hell and convinced her to let me attend church one Sunday. I must’ve
evinced some interest in going back because sometime thereafter, Dad dropped me off at the door of a church picked at random,
apparently so he’d be off the hook if I did indeed burn in hell. I was about ten and I sat alone in the pew, not knowing
what to do and feeling that everyone was staring at me. (They probably were). I felt so alienated by the whole experience
that my burgeoning spirituality was completely extinguished. (Could Dad have been that Machiavellian?) When we moved to the
buckle of the Bible belt, I suffered through school prayer and the inevitable Southern nice-to-meet-you-what-church-do-you-attend
introductions. After escaping to Manhattan,
I led a dissipated life by most standards, although I felt quite the liberated woman. I remained steadfast in my cynicism
about God and the people who believed in him until, in my mid-thirties, I quit trying to fill my God-sized hole with alcohol,
and became open to the idea of a Higher Power.
"Maybe
you have forsaken him," I tentatively reply to my bed-ridden father.
My
budding spiritual awareness is no match for Dad, a card-carrying atheist presumably enflamed by the priest tried to feel him
up when he was nine years old. "That's a crock of shit!" He closes in for the kill, savoring this moment in an almost orgasmic
fashion. "First of all, there is no God. But if there were, it would be a She, because only a woman could fuck things up this
badly."
Dad
went to his grave, at least outwardly, an atheist, and I went on to have three breast cancer diagnoses. Unaccountably,
illogically, the closer to death I got, the more I believed in God and I thanked Him for this “growth” opportunity
(amusing myself with the pun), since it provided the impetus for my novel, Boob, A
Story of Sex, Cancer & Stupidity. As Fénelon wrote in the seventeenth century, “I am amazed at the power that
comes to us through suffering; we are worth nothing without the cross. Of course, I tremble and agonize while it lasts, and
all my words about the beneficial effects of suffering vanish under the torture. But when it is all over, I look back on the
experience with deep appreciation, and am ashamed that I bore it with so much bitterness.”
Before
cancer, my relationship with God was dodgy -- trying to ignore Dad’s cynical voice in my head while attempting to pray
was like having a whispered conversation with the TV blaring – and unsatisfyingly cerebral as I self-consciously prayed
for God to help me feel His presence. I finally resorted to the ploy of “acting as if” I believed in God, which
conjured images of Jimmy Stewart and his friend, Harvey, the six foot rabbit.
When
I received my first cancer diagnosis -- Stage II – I’d already made most of the diet and exercise changes that
people make after they're diagnosed, so something else was required of me, something
spiritual in nature. Cancer occurs when the immune system fails to destroy cancer cells (present in everyone's body) and stress
depresses the immune system. I decided what most effectively relieved stress for me was a belief in God. I did yoga and qigong,
prayed and meditated, but after the doctors pronounced me “cured,” I lost the sense of urgency that had previously
propelled me.
Five
years after my first cancer diagnosis, Mom gave me twelve red roses to celebrate my victory. Seven months later, while slogging
through my journals in search of material to use in my novel (an unexpectedly painful process since I could perceive and feel
things I wasn’t able to while in dog-paddle survivor mode), I found a lump in my right breast.
Hoping
it was all a mistake -- silly goose, panicking over some fatty tissue – I was devastated when the doctor confirmed this
second lump. “I just can’t go through this again,” I said. “I don't have the strength.” As I
walked home, fearing death while simultaneously entertaining the idea of throwing myself in front of a cab, the sky darkened
and I thought, I guess I'm not such a good person after all. The spiritual work I've
done has all been in vain. I've barely scratched the surface -- like those bone-wielding apes in 2001 -- of my monolithic ego. I'm hopeless and I'm going to die a slow and agonizing death.
I
dreaded returning to my surgeon and hearing her utter the mastectomy verdict yet again. A friend said, “The last time
this happened you didn’t have the strength to deal with it right away. You cried first. And then you got strong.”
I prayed over and over that God's will be done. What was God's will? Was it for
me to be an example to others, as my friend who courageously died of ovarian cancer was? Or was this just another spiritual
goose?
I
realized the first time I’d battled cancer, I’d white-knuckled it. I’d believed if I just read enough, did
enough, changed enough, I could impact the outcome. And it appeared I had. Now I saw how ultimately powerless I was over cancer,
and that the only way I could truly overcome it was to get out of the way so I could avail myself of God’s love and
wisdom.
I
called a spiritual friend to talk about death who said, “Your daughter is in God's hands. If you die, she’ll be
taken care of. And you’ll be re-united. It may feel like a long time to you now, but in the hereafter it's a blink of
an eye.”
“You
know, just before I got this diagnosis, I had the greatest equanimity about death, and now I’m terrified.”
“Let
me read you a quote from The Urantia Book: ‘Even if I cannot do this there
lives in me one who can and will do it, a part of the Father-Absolute of the universe of universes.’ Pray for the removal
of fear, for peace. God may not be able to grant your every request, but the one thing he will grant immediately and unconditionally
is peace of mind. This is how the cosmos evolves -- every time someone squarely faces a problem and calls on God's help.”
I
decided to begin yet another cancer makeover entailing heavy-duty God contact, severe dietary cutbacks, and plenty of service
to others to take my mind off of me, me, me. The God stuff helped. On the days, usually toward the late afternoon, when I
fell into despair, I put my pedal to the metal and roared down the divine highway. Within a couple of hours, the mood lifted
and I could resume functioning.
Sister
Maurice said, “God will give us what we ask -- our daily bread -- but it's just enough for today. We have to live today
to its fullest and begin again the next day.”
“I
just keep thinking I don't want to die. I want to live to be one hundred and four.”
“When
we die it means our work here is done.”
“But
I don't feel my work is done, not with my daughter only three, and my book unpublished. But hey, God's will is stronger than
mine when it comes to death.”
Or
was it? I tried to winnow out my negative victim complacent thoughts -- was there a part of me that wanted to die, that wanted
to be cut up, tortured with chemo? Like a person who has decided on suicide, I contemplated how everyone would miss me when
I was gone, their sorrow at my memorial, the glowing tributes. And yet, I thought,
I'd really rather publish my books, give readings, and receive the accolades prehumously.
More will be revealed. I'm not dying today.
Dr.
Andrew Weill wrote in his book, Spontaneous Healing, of the liver's ability to
regenerate up to eighty percent of its own lost tissue in a matter of hours, and cited another doctor's theory that humans
have the mechanisms in place to regenerate amputated limbs in the same manner as salamanders. He asked, "Is mind the highest
expression of genetic information encoded in DNA or a manifestation of a field of consciousness underlying matter, including
DNA?" causing me to wonder if the women who claimed to increase their breast size through meditation were on to something
big. Why couldn't I control my thoughts so they were all helpful, positive, empowering thoughts? My mind was one of those
grassy hills that concealed a mountain of garbage, so truly, my only hope was a bulldozer driven by God.
After
finding a third lump above my collar bone a year later (which earned me a Stage IV diagnosis), I accidentally scalded my chest
which served as a reminder how often I used physical pain as a stand-in for emotional pain. There were big chunks of my childhood
I couldn’t remember, and evidence pointing to sexual abuse, but would knowing the exact details alleviate the pain?
I had tried that with my first diagnosis. Knew every detail of my pathology report and what it signified. Knew all the statistics.
By the third one (like the third child of whom there are no baby pictures), I didn’t even read the pathology report.
Even so, I felt I wouldn’t be cured until I unraveled the mystery of what my body was harboring.
My
qigong instructor showed the class some exercises that would reverse the effects of aging.
“Yeah,
but will they make you live longer?” I asked.
The
instructor, a Chinese man, looked at me in surprise. “That is not important,” he said. “What matters is
how you live each day.”
Hmmph, I sniffed to myself. That’s easy
for you to say. You don’t have a life- challenging disease.
But
his viewpoint was confirmed in Harriet and Malcolm Beinfield’s thought-provoking paper, “Revisiting Accepted Wisdom
in the Management of Breast Cancer,” whose last paragraph stated, “Buddhists claim that life is an evolutionary
exercise in learning lessons dressed in suffering. One antidote to suffering is glad acceptance -- not wishing for things
to be other than they are. This entails transcendence of future-oriented desires and instead focuses on experiencing each
moment as bliss: exquisitely full, complete, sufficient. The emphasis shifts to the quality rather than the duration of life
-- more on living better, and less on living longer. Some studies suggest that women who exhibit optimistic determination
fare better than do those who are either helpless and hopeless, or those who are anxiously preoccupied. Hope can mean tenaciously
affirming that life makes sense while encountering the universality of our inevitable death. The best we can do is live well
each day, paradoxically accepting what is as we strive valiantly to change.”
At
some point during the repeated viewings of the first plane hitting the World Trade
Center during the 2001 terrorist attack, I thought, “I wish I’d been
on that plane.” Even though I’d been cancer-free for a number of years, there was something appealing
about sudden death, and the cessation of all my doubts and fears that would bring. Pretty pitiful, huh? To want to die rather
than live with the fear of dying.
That’s
what it’s like to get a cancer diagnosis. You’re walking along and it’s a peerless day -- clear blue skies,
temps in the seventies. The last thing on your mind is the thought of attack. Then BAM! The planes collide, the buildings
collapse and nothing will ever be the same. You can’t ever really enjoy a peerless day again, because every time you
hear a plane it might be a terrorist. Every time you get a headache it might be cancer.
How
do you live a life without a future? That’s the conundrum of cancer. You have to be willing to die, to live. If you’re
all stressed out and fearful that you might get another diagnosis, all that stress and fear make you more susceptible to getting
another diagnosis. If you have faith that God will take care of you, you might still die, but at least you won’t be
all stressed out and fearful. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every
day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.”
INEVITABILITIES (from The Urantia Book)
The uncertainties
of life and the vicissitudes of existence do not in any manner contradict the concept of the universal sovereignty of God.
All evolutionary creature life is beset by certain inevitabilites. Consider the
following:
1. Is courage -- strength of character -- desirable?
Then must man be reared in an environment which necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.
2. Is altruism -- service of one’s fellows
-- desirable? Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.
3. Is hope -- the grandeur of trust -- desirable?
Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.
4. Is faith -- the supreme assertion of human
thought -- desirable? Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than
it can believe.
5. Is the love of truth and the willingness
to go wherever it leads desirable? Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible.
6. Is idealism -- the approaching concept of
the divine -- desirable? Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative
of the irrepressible reach for better things.
7. Is loyalty -- devotion to highest duty --
desirable? Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion. The valor of devotion to duty consists
in the implied danger of default.
8. Is unselfishness -- the spirit of self-forgetfulness
-- desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and
honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-will to forsake. Man could never lay saving
hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.
9. Is pleasure -- the satisfaction of happiness
-- desirable? Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present
experiential possibilities.
