PCUSA

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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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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Unbind Her and Let Her Go!

4 Comments / Lent, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines, The Missional Church / By /

The evening after my lung surgery I was tethered to my bed. No, I wasn’t handcuffed to the bedframe, but I might as well have been. There were nine different ties holding me down: automatic leg compressors wrapped around my calves, a surgical drain from my side, a catheter, a blood-pressure cuff, five leads adhered to my torso for the EKG and respiration counter, an IV in each hand, another PICC line, and an oxygen thingy stuck in my nose. These various input and output devices gave medical staff signals as to my wellbeing and access for treatment. Through them

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Fading Glory

9 Comments / It All Started in the Garden, Leadership and Spirituality, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Two weeks ago today I had my last chemotherapy infusion for Round 3. By all accounts, my recovery from its negative effects has been unusually quick and thorough, much more so than Round 2. I am hiking at least two miles a day now to build up my strength and to regain cardio-pulmonary endurance for surgery March 3. God has been very good to squash any queasiness or sleepiness I had in previous rounds, and it is nice to say life is getting back to normal. The drugs continue to create an extremely inhospitable environment for the Beast in my

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From This Life to the Next

6 Comments / Death & Dying, It All Started in the Garden, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Theological Reflection / By /

Yesterday’s post relied heavily on Tom Wright’s formulation of what happens when we die. In an attempt to gather all the data, he has come to the tentative conclusion (not having been there himself) that our entry into eternal life happens in stages, and that “eternity” itself—existence outside the parameters of time—actually doesn’t start until Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. In other words, life after death involves waiting. Mind you, one is waiting in a “good place,” paradise, but the culmination of God’s cosmic history is still in the making. This period of waiting

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The Law of Love in Missional Endeavor

2 Comments / Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, The Missional Church / By /

After two good weeks of being on my own between chemotherapy rounds— lonesome for the stimulation of daily conversation with care-giving friends—yesterday at the start of Round 3 my day was full of interesting dialogue. I find myself “rehearsing” my blog topics and get the most interesting feedback!  We’ve been talking about a missional mindset and its implications for evangelism and outreach at the personal level. My last two posts (here and here) explored our mission field of the religiously allergic and our own reticence to take risks in order to convey the gospel to them. Today, I would like

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Nothing, and Everything, to Lose

4 Comments / Leadership and Spirituality, PCUSA, Spiritual Disciplines, The Missional Church / By /

In my last post, I observed that the religiously allergic around us need a winsome witness to the gospel and that we must enter into the sort of discipleship practices that will help us give it. Perhaps my readers have had a chance to think about their own resistance to this calling, and in order to do that thoroughly it is wise to count the cost and face it head-on. When we do so, the cost loses its deterrent power over us and puts us into a position to see the mighty hand of God at work in and through

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Suppressed Immunities

Leave a Comment / Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, Teaching, The Missional Church, Uncategorized / By /

As my blood counts sink lower, my immunity to “normal” disease and viruses diminishes. Yesterday’s trip to the nurse practitioner for my periodic check-up assessed my vulnerability, which turns out not to be too bad yet. The numbers of white blood cells and hemoglobin are going down, suggesting caution, but this is normal and par for the course. It shows the chemotherapy is doing its job. The advice was, Go ahead to the Aquarium because it is not packed with people and is a wide-open space. But now would be the time to avoid packed-like-sardines scenarios (I translate that to

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Ninth Day of Christmas: A Sign Seals Covenant

3 Comments / Christmas, Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith, Lent, Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Personal, Theological Reflection / By /

When I found out it was lung cancer that was making me sick, a friend from church wrote a sweet note saying, “Welcome to the club nobody wants to join.” In the ensuing days and weeks, others who have traveled this road have come to my attention, sharing from their experiences and welcoming me into a community of people with survivor instincts. Their words of advice and comfort have been particularly meaningful to me. I have also discovered in this process that milestones must be celebrated with some kind of ritual, just for fun, yes, but to mark progress and

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Serendipity

Leave a Comment / Lung Cancer, PCUSA, Peace Unity & Purity, Personal, Theological Reflection / By /

Yesterday, I contemplated the collateral damage that accompanies treatment for cancer, those negative consequences of an action meant to do good. Today, to look on the bright side, we are invited to think about serendipity: the finding of valuable or agreeable things not sought for. A very famous case of serendipity was when the 3M Company, formulating a new adhesive and encountering one failure after another, discovered the compound that became the temporary glue behind the Post-It Note. That discovery was a serendipity! Chemotherapy has had some surprising side-benefits: the steroid given to amp up the anti-nausea medicine has relieved

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