Month: January 2020

It is palpable sometimes, the energy around us. We can enter a place or space and feel something good, or its opposite. This isn’t contrived; there are ways to measure the “feel” of the environment around us, techniques that are scientifically valid to objectify the vibe that is in the air. Living things emit radiation. They absorb it too. We all travel inside and through spheres of electromagnetic waves.

I have become accustomed to seeing myself as a recipient within life’s force fields. Walk into a room, sense its welcome (or lack thereof), and make the appropriate adjustments. Shields are necessary in some places – defensive energy postures that protect. Other spaces afford more safety. The wall of wariness constructed around me need not be so thick when I move within such zones of acceptance.

A recent change in jobs has reminded me that there is a certain selfishness to this pattern of setting responsiveness. It is rather one-sided. Adjusting my level of engagement to situations in a way that only brings positive to positive places and people may shelter me from negativity but does little to enhance the world around me. When like only leans into like, things become more compartmentalized. Each time I withdraw, everything around me becomes more separated, individuated. The more I excel at raising my energy shell, the further I learn to isolate.

A walk in the forest yesterday helped me remember how important it is to give. It is easy to take; there is great safety, at least in the short-term, from inhaling the best from people around me. Who though is recharging those energy givers from whom I am nourished? It is the rare person who can maintain a steadfast posture of positivity amidst the cacophony of callousness that can bombard our senses. Everyone needs an opportunity to thrive. Positive energy – what many refer to as good “chi” – is meant to be shared.

It is fitting that the ponderosa pines reminded me of chi on the first day of Chinese New Year. Nature holds such restorative potential. It needs our protection if we are to continue to receive its benefits for centuries to come. It is critical that I, as one person, restore my own commitment to the cycle of chi in the world.

That’s why I’ve decided to adopt the acronym of c.h.i. for the next cycle of the suns (and moons). And here’s what the pines whispered to me yesterday when I wondered what each letter might stand for:

C – for compassion, caring, and a collaborate commitment to the common good.

H – for honesty, humor, humility, and – above all else – heart.

I – for integrity, intellectual engagement, and inspiration.

At a time when the world feels besieged by ugliness, at the beginning of a cultural and spiritual new year when the headlines pulse over infectious epidemics, at a moment in history when a growing number of people fret over freedoms and physical survival – I personally need something simple to hold onto, something that feels safe while being stimulating, something that reminds me that my life is not just about me but is also about you.

There is a beautiful rhythm to the movement from the Common good, through Heart, with the arrival at Inspiration, a flow the leads with ease and without effort back to compassion and a collaborative purpose. The beginning, middle, and end are connected. There is no beginning, middle, and end to the cycle. There is only continuance.

Chi is meant to be shared. We are meant to be bound with each other.

I was talking with a friend the other day about miracles. Also a physician, he briefly described some incredible stories that have been documented regarding people who have inexplicably recovered from advanced illnesses. Disseminated cancers. Progressive neurologic diseases. Conditions that most clinicians would recognize as offering little hope for long-term improvement. Nonetheless, illnesses from which people had – to the medical profession’s surprise – completely healed.

“Spontaneous remissions,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Real miracles.”

The conversation stuck with me. In my medical career, I have personally seen some amazing things. Sometimes those things have involved dramatic healing responses. Sometimes they have related to clinical instincts and therapeutic actions. All have been unexpected. Each was stunning.

Were they miracles?

Another friend was recently in the emergency room for a problem that required surgery. He was stable but his health, in general, was fragile. Although the procedure he needed was relatively minor, the general anesthesia that would permit the procedure to be done was a major concern for his family. How would his system respond? My friend was not worried. He placed his trust in the surgeon and his faith in a power greater than the surgeon’s. He was calm. He only requested that the Catholic priest visit before the procedure. The priest did and had everyone gather around the man in the hospital bed. People held hands. A simple prayer was said, together. Minutes later a test result was reported to the surgeon that changed the original diagnosis. Surgery was not needed. My friend could be treated without anesthesia.

A miracle?

We use the word in different ways. There is the “Miracle on 34th Street”, a story replayed during the Christmas holidays. There is the “Miracle on Ice”, a tale about the 1980 Olympic gold medal run of the U.S. hockey team. And then there are so-called “medical miracles”, people who beat the odds and get better in the face of remarkable circumstances. The power of our collective spirit is impressive. Astounding things happen when we cheer, support, and implore for each other.

But it is unpredictable. Not everything we wish, hope, and yearn for happens. We are often deeply disappointed and saddened. Despite humble foundations, our most heartfelt entreaties and appeals do not guarantee results. Spontaneous healings from “untreatable” cancers are not so common.

I don’t pretend to fully understand prayer as an engagement distinct from hope. I know they are different; prayer includes a petition to a higher power while hope may be aspirational without being inspired. Still, there is sometimes a fine line between them, especially when the being to whom the intention is focused is not necessarily tangible, physically palpable. Do I have to aim the beseechments of my soul at God, Allah, Buddha, or another concept of the supreme being for them to have a higher likelihood of being heard?

And why should I assume that God, her or himself, does not pray?

It is wrong, I understand, to anthropomorphize the divine. And yet that is how I experience the greater good, the universal positive, the prime moving force of life in the cosmos: through forms. Through others. The world in which we live is not perfect. It may have begun from such a state, or it may be arcing towards such a state, but it appears, from my finite perspective, to pulse at present far from perfection. So if there is a wisdom, a current, a source of eternal love that is somehow engaged with me, with you, and with us – why should it not be capable of engaging in prayer for us? We have freedom of choice; the world does not appear to be deterministic. So why wouldn’t a higher power – God – not want to pray for us and the choices that we make? We have a history of making bad decisions. We need all the help we can get to keep from making too many more.

I am likely spinning within a tumble of poorly formed ideas. And perhaps I am using words such as prayer in a slipshod manner. It reassures me, however, to think that a spiritual consciousness which exists before, during, and after us is somehow able and interested in expressing love for us through even the simplest of prayers. My parents are gone from this life. They continue (I hope) in some form in the next. If I can pray for them, if I can pray to them, and if they might be in turn be able to pray for me, is it such a leap of logic – or faith – to wonder if the spiritual collective of the divine might not, in some marvelous and interconnected way, pray for each other? Is it wrong to wonder if the divine itself might not pray? Could the divine even be unbounded by and through prayer?

I have no doubt that miracles occur. In fact, I think that they may happen more frequently than we recognize. Some are fantastically substantial, such as a sudden healing from serious illness. Others are marvelously missable, such as a decision to do something during a daily routine that leads to an unexpected positive encounter or occurrence. All offer stunning insight into the interconnected nature of life, love, and our capacity to care. All are, from the restricted vantage of science and human understanding, wonderfully unexplainable.

I pray that prayer is infinite.

If you are like me, you may enjoy reading certain books and stories more than once. In my garage, there are a stack of books that I’ve saved over the years, all flung onto shelves with the intent of a second or third reading. Some are superb examples of insight and authorship. Others came along during seminal times in my life. The first type I treasure because I know there are literary gems and secrets to be found via an additional perusal. The second group simply remind me of who I was, where I was, and perhaps what I was when I read them.

Last week, I reread a story that really fit neither category. It was a detective story, set in England following the first world war. The tale was part of a series about a young man who manages to solve murders despite his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. It is easy reading. And the detective always finds the guilty party.

But here was a twist: I couldn’t remember who had done it. When I began the book, I assumed that the plot would come rushing back, that I would quickly recall the key characters, and that I would certainly remember the murderer’s identify from the start. I was wrong. I had no idea who was responsible for the unfortunate tragedy described in the book’s initial chapter. And I had no great excuse for not doing so – the book had been published within the past few years.

Yikes! Either I had first read this novel while sleepwalking or my memory lapse was perhaps a sign of something that I’d prefer not to consider. How could I have forgotten how the story ends? Was this a foreshadowing of further cognitive loss to come? Once I decided not to worry about it too much – it was, after all, just the plot line of a mystery novel – the reading re-ride was fun. In fact, it sharpened my attention to the story’s details. I wanted to spot the hidden clues, not so much to identify the culprit, more to awaken the napping neurons in my memory banks that were withholding that information about the culprit from me. Some part of me knew how this novel ended. I waited (with some anticipation if I’m honest) for my slothful side to rouse itself from its slumber and tell me.

We are drawn to stories, aren’t we, especially ones with complex twists and turns. We long to be captivated by uncertainty. But we still want to know how things turn out. In a novel, on the movie screen, even in the yarns we spin for each other, there is always some sort of unveiling, a reveal. Something happens. Someone steps forward. The story resolves.

Not so, however, in every day life. Despite an abundance of drama, there is plenty of unresolved intrigue. Events cannot always be explained. And the primary questions, the big ones, the how-in-the-world-did-the-world-first-begin and where-in-the-world-do-I-fit-in queries, well, those plot lines don’t have easy formulaic or fashionably snug finales. We just don’t know, for sure, the story on the other side of some life climaxes. And we won’t know – until we ourselves experience such other sides.

The seasons of our calendar provide reliably consistent narratives. As do the texts of our religious traditions and heritages. We don’t forget how those stories end. We know the tales and plot points. Some of us can even recite the words of the readings, poems, and songs by heart. It can be reassuring to form the messages with our mouths. We often do so without needing to think about what we are doing.

Sadly, that is where someone like me can get lost. While there is safety in many of the memorized tidings, there can be disconnection between the part of me murmuring without conscious attention and the side trying to find new ways to be awake. I don’t want to be on auto-pilot. I don’t want to be someone who is only interested in discovering how things end up. I need to focus more on the steps and details of the journey. Nonetheless, I can get stuck in the recordings, like a needle in a scratch of an old vinyl LP. I can forget to nudge myself forward.

Surprisingly, that is what I learned from the second reading of the detective story. When I let go of worry about how the story ended, I was able to slow down and notice how it unfolded. I was also reminded that I can do the same thing each day in other, even all aspects of my life. With a bit of breath, the same sense of discovery and freshness is available within everything I read, do, say, touch, and hear.

Have I heard the same seasonal tales and prayers hundreds of times? Without doubt. Have I listened, truly paid sufficient attention, to find something new inside just one part of them each time they are recited? Not enough.

My ego and intellect were reassured: I did remember who had “dunnit”, before the British mystery novel ended. More importantly, my spirit and soul were refreshed: they reminded the rest of me that speed in life isn’t what the journey is about. Participation matters.

The following essay was written by guest contributor, Sophia C. This is her college application essay, which she graciously agreed to share here.

It was the morning of my annual ballet exam. I had been doing the exams for fourteen years. Sitting quietly, trying not to listen to the muted music coming from the exam room next door, my stomach felt as if millions of tiny butterflies wanted to take flight. This year’s exam was different. I felt more pressure than ever before because it was a repeat test from the previous year. That had been a difficult time, one in which I had struggled with ongoing health problems requiring multiple hospitalizations and challenging medical treatments. Unfortunately, I had failed last year’s exam – by one point. Although I was told that coming so close to passing during such a difficult year was a success in itself, it did not feel that way. I had considered quitting the dance program.

Which I almost did. Some friends stopped dancing when they did not pass. Continuing in the program meant that I would no longer be dancing with them and would have to repeat the curriculum with younger girls. I would also have to retake the same exam the following year. This year. 

Deciding to continue, and to ready myself to retake the exam twelve months later, wasn’t easy. There was the social consequence, the embarrassment. And there was the personal consequence, the feeling of failure. However, the decision before me was pretty clear: I either redid the curriculum, the year, and the exam – or I just gave up. Giving up was frankly not a serious option. I was too determined to not let my illness get the best of me and take over the things I cared about. I simply needed to get over my pride. I also needed to stay behind while the rest of my class moved on. And I needed to work hard throughout the year, perfecting the dances to the best of my ability, working through my illnesses in the process, and slowly improving.

Now here I was, one year later, about to take the same exam that I had already failed. It seemed like there was more pressure this time; if I failed again it would be a win for the chronic illness monsters. My experience with chronic medical conditions had taught me that those demons can be destructive, if I let them. I was determined not to do that. Still, when my time for testing came, I entered the exam space with a heart ready to leap from my chest, legs that felt like jelly, and a wobbling confidence.

Then something wonderful happened: I remembered that I loved dancing. As the exam progressed, I was filled with a sense of peace. Releasing to the well-rehearsed movements, memories of past failures and pain were washed away by an awareness of achievement, of perseverance through challenge. My failure the prior year had taught me the importance of living my values. I will not give up on myself, even when circumstances seem impossible. 

That’s when I learned the most important lesson of all. It didn’t matter if I passed or failed. All that mattered was that I continued, that I finished what I had begun. That is a lesson that I can carry with me for the rest of my life. Failures will happen. It’s what I do in the face of failure that really matters.