Lung Cancer

Getting in SHAPE

1 Comment / Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Teaching, The Pastoral Call / By /

This morning I will be meeting my personal trainer at the gym for the first time in over six months. Not with a little fear and trepidation, I will submit to thirty minutes of exercises, addressing each muscle group and testing my capabilities. What I know is this: I am out of shape. Cancer-drug-related weight gain has plagued me since the first of the year, my overall strength has diminished, and stamina is completely redefined by pulmonary limitations at the moment. Yes, it sounds pretty pitiful for one who used to be able to run the paces and maintain a […]

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The Dynamic of Reassigned Duty

2 Comments / Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, The Pastoral Call / By /

In lieu of baseball this winter, my TV pastime while navigating the cancer waters has been Netflix episodes of The West Wing. This exploration of life in the White House’s administrative center is, most of the time, nothing short of riveting for me. I am in the middle of Season 6, which is well into the second term for President Bartlet. His Chief of Staff Leo McGarry has had a massive heart-attack and is out for the count. White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg has replaced him as Chief. The current plot line has CJ making the transition from one

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Retrospective on Normal vs. Transformed Life

Leave a Comment / Kenya & Uganda, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, People, Personal, Theological Reflection, Uncategorized / By /

Alene was my senior year roommate at Stanford, and our friendship has been renewed by visits in the last few years, most recently last summer in Bomet, Kenya, where she and Steve are missionaries. Thankful for the blessing of Internet contact, Facebook, and my Caring Bridge site chronicling medical adventures since my diagnosis, Alene and Steve have been keeping up with Naegeli news from afar. Yesterday I received in the mail a hand-made card from Alene. It touched me very deeply and suggested the entry point for my next series of blogs. On the cover is a rather fanciful elephant—known,

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My Mother, Myself, in an Anxious Climate

4 Comments / Death & Dying, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle / By /

My mother writes in her autobiography that during her college years she began to experience anxiety, fear, and what is known as scrupulosity, a sort of spiritual Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Coming out of a home where the expression of love for her was thin and unconvincing, she was afraid that even God could not love her without serious performance of perfection. At the same time, she was suffering from clinical anxiety and developing phobias. (One notable fear was of going to the dentist, after a disastrous 2.5 hour tooth extraction when she was 20. To her credit, she made sure we

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To Know Christ and the Power of His Resurrection

1 Comment / Death & Dying, Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Theological Reflection, Uncategorized / By /

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” (Philippians 3:10) I decided to wait until after Easter to reflect on my mother’s sudden death, because it just seemed proper to walk through the week of the Passion and Crucifixion of our Lord first. The convincing realization of that remembrance is that Jesus understands our sorrow, our pain, and has fully experienced death itself. What sweet comfort that reality is, and what stupendous hope we have because of his Resurrection that followed! With the knowledge

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Feelings and the Christian Experience

3 Comments / Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle / By /

The Church has just been through the lows and highs and the Christian calendar, walking with Jesus through his passion and death, experiencing the emptiness of Holy Saturday, and the exultation of Easter. People’s reaction to this emotional ride vary from indifference to obsession, but the intensity of the calendar’s events is intended to draw us in to Christ’s experience in order to appreciate all the more what he did for us. My post on Good Friday was an expression of that gratitude. But then there are people who felt almost nothing, though they would have liked to, and it is

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Good Friday Reflection

Leave a Comment / Death & Dying, Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal / By /

As I was sitting in the choir tonight contemplating the Scriptures, the songs, and the choral pieces offered during our Good Friday service, something struck me rather forcefully. All four gospel accounts make note that Jesus remained conscious throughout his crucifixion ordeal. The evidence that he remained alert is that, in each case, he said something right before he died and then “he gave up his spirit” (Matthew 27:50, John 19:30; “breathed his last,” Mark 15:37 and Luke 23:46). Jesus was in agony. He was slowly dying of asphyxiation, caused by the unnatural position of his body hanging by the

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The Seventh Mansion: Union with the Trinity

5 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Romans 8, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle, Uncategorized / By /

When I first read Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle as a seminary student, I got about half-way through it. She was writing about experiences I had never had and using terms I could not comprehend. Her ardor was unimaginable to me, so I put it aside and wrote an honest book report (Help! I have no idea what this woman is talking about!). I have not picked it up since, but am very grateful for Thomas Ashbrook’s unpacking in Mansions of the Heart, upon which this blog series has been based. His accessible tour of the castle and its mansions

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The Sixth Mansion (Part 1): Passionate Love for God

1 Comment / Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle / By /

My husband and I were married two weeks after college graduation and almost four years after meeting. Our courtship had weathered difficulties and challenges, revealing our true characters to each other. Over the years, our love grew through square-dance flirting to solid commitment to passion (yes, in that order, although my husband might have a different view . . .). The process of falling in love involved a deeper knowledge of my beloved, an appreciation of his fine qualities, a willingness to submit my life to his care, and a mysterious chemistry that simply bound us together in intimate communion.

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The Fourth Mansion: Discovering the Love of Jesus

1 Comment / Lent, Lung Cancer, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Progress through the Interior Castle / By /

One of the spiritual accomplishments of this year’s bout with lung cancer has been an exit from the rat race. Actually, that transition has been long in coming, since I left the full-time pastorate at the very end of 2006. Various projects kept me busy and over-stimulated for another five years, but I have been working at home alone in a virtually self-directed manner since then. Last Fall this illness hit and its treatment modulated my pace down to a slow-motion ride through Disneyland’s Space Mountain. This prolonged experience seems to coincide with further spiritual development identified by Teresa of

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