MY REVOLUTION
Another trip around the sun—perhaps the most profound thing one can say about another year on planet earth. Three hundred and sixty five days…and yet I feel I have lived a lifetime.
[There is an important distinction between rotation and revolution. With the first, the Earth spins around itself and the second around the sun.]
There is no question that cancer was not the only thing that happened to me and in me this past year. Yet, like its own self-important little constellation, cancer insisted that my life revolve around it for the past 199 days.
In the beginning I had this conversation with God and the words, "change me, use me," were softly shared. With all certainty that there is a Heaven, I believe I was whispering directly in His ear.
Like any wise student, I poised my pen to take good notes instead of taking in the sweetness of a love that transcends any notion of learning that we can comprehend. Just as in French class, my Teacher was insisting that this class be Full Immersion—
The essence of life itself decrees that to utterly understand something, we must bathe in it. Observation is the cheap thrill.
[As we go about our labor and our leisure, our rising and laying down, the Earth undetectably spins at 1,000 miles per hour.]
I imagine with great humility and tears, an Omniscient Creator who beheld all my futile attempts at sounding out the syllables of His intentions—"Get out of the way and let me show you without words precisely who I Am."
There is no definition for what transpires in us when we dislodge from our humanity and allow the Divine to move in.
We sit and drink our coffee, put on shoes, brush our hair. We engage in the ordinary while the unfathomable carries on.
[There are seasons when we are in a rut but on a cosmic level, we’re not stationary after all. As we contemplate the timing of our next steps the Earth hurtles us through space at precisely just the right speed.]
One day our lives are “normal” and the next day the surgeon is our new best friend. "My son and I took a boat out on Lake Coeur d’Alene once," Dr. Chan, my Oncologist introduces himself and begins. "I was absorbed with what was on the other end of the fishing line when my son shouted, ‘Dad, look up,’ frantically imploring me to take the magnificent scenery in."
Even before the discussion of my surgeries the humanity takes the lead. My first lesson, it occurs to me now, was simply to stop all the striving and look up at Him.
[There is nothing that can quite prepare you for when another human being goes on an exploratory expedition inside the temple you inhabit, in rooms you/yourself will never see.]
Each one of us is a vast and endless planet, as majestic as a star-filled sky, as mystifying as the Universe and as ordinary as breath.
Must we feel the momentum of 67,000 miles an hour to know we are pulled around the sun? "Dr. Chan,” I whisper as I'm going under, "Do what is necessary. I’m simply along for the ride."
Your love is so extravagant it reaches to the heavens, Your faithfulness so astonishing it stretches to the sky. Lord God, be exalted as you soar throughout the heavens. May Your shining glory be shown in the skies. Let it be seen high above all the earth—PASSION TRANSLATION, PSALM 57:10
