"It's Magic"

I had a breast cancer patient, Julie.  She experienced life in a deep and reflective way with a seemingly inborn positive outlook—characterizing herself as spiritual not religious.  She described her husband as a good, solid and loving man.  “And what matters most to him in life?” I asked.  “Money,” she said a bit too quickly, because with a flash in her eye, she seemed to want to backtrack, as if she’d betrayed him in letting that slip out… needing to underscore how good he was.  “It sounds like maybe he just doesn’t get the magic of life,” I said. “That’s it!” she said… “He doesn’t get the magic!”  I think we both knew exactly what we meant, but would be hard pressed to find the words to articulate it any more precisely than that.

Two or three careers ago, I was a professional dancer.  One of my last jobs was touring with the late magician Doug Henning in the spring and summer of 1979—maybe some of you remember him—the old Vaudeville staple of magician but shot through the lens of sugar-coated hippy culture, sequins and rainbows.  Doug was passionate about his work and viewed it through a spiritual lens.  He was a devotee of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and a student of TM.  For Doug, the state of wonder was sacred, and he saw his work… though as fake as snake oil… as a doorway to that sacred state.  And the experience of wonder was something genuine.  For the audience anyway.

My mom turned 82 last February and like Julie is a very reflective soul.  As the end of life draws nearer for her she finds herself wanting answers for all of life’s big questions with greater urgency.  All of the “Why’s”-- capital W.  On her birthday we took the most lovely walk on the bluffs overlooking the wetlands of Morro Bay where she lives,  chewing on those questions and our desire to “know.”  It occurred to me, “Mom, maybe in this life, this go around we can only be in the audience.  Maybe there’s a magician, maybe there isn’t, maybe it’s magic, maybe it isn’t.”  But for me anyway, and for my mom, as it seemed for Julie too… the experience of wonder is very real.  And just maybe, it’s even enough.

As UU’s we tend to put a lot of store in rationality—concrete thoughts, principles, concrete actions… not a lot of focus on the ineffable in life, on the wonder.  Though I imagine so many of us are animated by that wonder—by the magic-- even if the word itself makes us uneasy or doesn’t seem to fit.  So what is it?

One of my patients, Carlene takes an art therapy class.  One week the instruction was simply to “draw a map.”  So Carlene drew a map of cancer… there was the land of Diagnosis, of Sorrow, of Chemotherapy… all of it.  So I thought what might a map of wonder look like—of magic?  I came up with three lands. (Now this is deeply personal, anything but scholarly and certainly incomplete.  But the more I reflect, it kind of works for me.)  The three lands on my map include: Synchronicity; Scale; and Vulnerability.

Synchronicity.  I have a colleague Sharon who has studied for years under a rabbi who posits the idea: Perhaps our entire life’s journey, purpose—our mission, may be fulfilled and realized in one 5 minute encounter or conversation.  At first I dismissed the notion, probably because on one hand it is so deflating, given all the energy I expend on what I deem as SO important.  But then I reflect on so many synchronicities in my own life and in the lives of my patients… momentary synchronicities that seem to be “game changers” and it gives me pause.

So many patients over the years have told tales of having been misdiagnosed elsewhere, told perhaps that hospice was the only option, and yet through a chance conversation with a friend, an email from a distant relative led them to UCLA and hope of more life… and they found it!

A little over a year ago I introduced myself to a newly diagnosed lymphoma patient in the clinic, Carl.  Carl was there with his wife Donna, and their granddaughter.  The tension between the three was palpable… a long and complicated history of resentments, betrayals and hurt feelings.  Of the three, Donna seemed to be wound particularly tight.  As a chaplain, it was hard to know where to put my attention, as each seemed trapped in their own world of misery.  I listened.  I did my best.  And I offered a prayer.  It was my one and only visit with them.  Well over a year later, Donna called the Center and asked to speak to me.  Honestly I didn’t remember who she was.  I returned the call and Donna wanted to thank me for “changing her life.”  She told me that their lives had been transformed—that Carl was doing great, that their marriage had never been better—that she felt liberated at last from years of resentment.  “And it all started that day in the clinic when we met you.  And that beautiful prayer you said for us.  I was truly ready to jump out of my skin that day.  I was ready to walk out of that clinic and never come back.  I prayed to God for help, for someone to talk to.  Within five minutes you walked up and introduced yourself!”  Hmm.

If I had to answer, what was the single intersection on my life’s map that led me out of the design field (career number 2) into chaplaincy, it too came down to one person, one conversation.  I was delivering meals to homebound people with AIDS in 1992 for Project Angel Food.  Cassandra Christensen came into our prayer circle as we blessed the meals we were about to deliver and read the names of the young men who had died the night before.  Cassandra didn’t  believe that so many men should be dying alone and was looking for volunteers to sign-up for a 2-hour shift, round the clock, to go sit with our clients for whom death was near and who were alone.  I had this horrifying feeling, “Don’t make me do this!” but I knew I HAD to do this.  It changed my life and my world.  And ultimately planted the seeds that led me to chaplaincy.

Many years later I was having a talk with Margo, one of our most powerful GLIDE speakers.  I’d always known Margo to be an atheist, and then during a GLIDE engagement she was talking about her “spiritual life.”  Later I asked her, “What’s up with that Margo?  I thought you were an atheist.”  “Well when I worked at that AIDS services agency, this woman Cassandra Christenson came and gave us an in-service.  I shared with her that I don’t believe in God and she said… ‘Oh of course you do!  You believe in grandmothers don’t you?’”   I thought that was so lovely!  And that one sentence changed Margo’s life… and I mean CHANGED her life.

Years later I bumped into Cassandra at the UCLA hospital cafeteria and told her about the amazing coincidence with Margo and what a powerful impact she’d made in her life as she had in mine.  A little befuddled, “You believe in grandmothers?” she repeated incredulously.  “That doesn’t sound like me.  It doesn’t even make sense!”  It did to Margo.

And there are synchronicities that are not just the momentary game changer but a portal to wonder, even a glimpse of perhaps the mystical.  I had such an experience a few years ago.  Over thirty years ago when I was dancing, I was touring the US and internationally with a musical artist who had three back-up singers—one of whom, Jenny, had a blind husband.  I’d never met the husband but I remember being struck by that reality for her.  I was very friendly with another of the singers, Sarah—but as with life and show business, shortly after the tour, Sarah and I lost touch.  Thirty years later I was at a concert at the Music Center.  I came out of the men’s room, and on his way in was a blind man.  Somehow I knew intuitively this was Jenny’s husband.  I helped him through the two doors and asked if he’d like me to wait, and I would see him out to the lobby.  Very appreciative, he accepted.  I asked how he enjoyed the concert.  “Oh I loved it!  My wife’s a singer and I’m a musician…”  “Is your wife Jenny by chance?”  “Wow!  Well yes she is! How’d you know that?”  “I don’t know.”

So once back out in the lobby, Jenny and I had a mini-30-year reunion.  I asked if she still saw Sarah.  “Oh God yes!  All the time!”  “Would you please give her my card and ask her to call me?”  So a few days later, Sarah called me and asked what I was doing these days.  “Well you’ll never believe this Sarah, but I’m a hospital chaplain!”  “Oh, well my sister really needs a chaplain.  She’s on the 10th floor at UCLA.”  That was my floor!  In fact I’d already introduced myself to her the week before and she declined any support!  Now I had an entrée into her room—“I’m Sarah’s friend.”  Quite a coincidence, huh?

It actually strains the limits of my rational mind to accept that it’s all merely a random coincidence.  Paradoxically, something beyond anything I can conceive of rationally, makes more sense to me as an explanation. In any event, those disparate pieces falling together over the span of 30 years leaves me with a sense of wonder and magic.

The second land on my map of wonder... the land of Scale.  Particularly in American culture, there is so much emphasis on growth—becoming bigger, more powerful, making a bigger difference… being, doing and having more.  It’s inescapable, even within the circles of those who would shun capitalist ideals of success.  We want to be DOING more for the environment, for peace, for justice.  Yet in my own world, those glimpses of magic have been revealed not when I’m enlarged, but when I am diminished or disappear all together. 

In the mid-1980’s I was ensnared in a pretty debilitating depression.  In the spring of 1985 I went alone to Yosemite to do some hiking and perhaps find some inspiration, a sense of renewal.  I cannot put it strongly enough, but the place gave me my life back… 3000 feet of granite on the face of El Capitan, the majesty of Yosemite falls, the blooming dogwoods, the ancient giants of the Mariposa grove… a glimpse of something eternal perhaps.  And a glimpse of my own insignificance.  The healing in that alone.  The experience was so profound, I’ve returned almost every spring since… like a ritual.  Essential to the magic, though is the element of scale—my little body amidst all that inconceivable grandeur.

And yet a few years ago I was flying home from somewhere and I noticed out the plane window… there was Half Dome!  And not even a mention from the pilot.  Stranger still, I felt no stirring of my soul to spy this barely discernible blemish on the Sierra Nevada that is Yosemite.  ”Wait a minute! The place has enough power to save my life, and yet from here it is not worth commenting upon.  A crack in a rock?”  It made me sad.  Does that mean that my awe and my healing was somehow synthetic, manufactured? And therefore not so meaningful?  Is it just a question of scale?  Like some kind of Spiritual Trompe l’oeil?  A trick of the eye?  What if it is?

I suppose then—even if it is a trick… I will choose to move with intention to those places where I can fill myself with such awe, by experiencing my smallness, by disappearing altogether into the grandeur… much like someone who has plunked down money to be knowingly fooled into wonder by a magician like Doug Henning.  That could even be some of the pull of chaplaincy for me… to witness the awesome powerlessness, the groundlessness-- even the inconceivable scale of death.  Life is kind of knowable, death is another matter.

That doorway of inspiration to awe and wonder swings both ways…not only in the direction from the small to the grand, but in the opposite direction—from where we stand toward the even smaller and more inconsequential.  I have countless stories of patients who find such meaning in the most insignificant details of life—almost as if the more inconsequential the detail, the clearer the looking glass into the profound.

Esther has metastatic colon cancer.  She was undergoing intensive chemotherapy in order to shrink the tumors enough to have surgery to resection her colon.  She has a long haul ahead of her.  She was sharing with me how she’d had a kind of meltdown the week before. “The way I cope with such stress, Michael is to go into hyperactive, hyper vigilant cleaning and organizing.  I hit every drawer and cabinet in the house last weekend.  I drove my husband, my kids, even the dogs crazy.  As if the end of the world was upon us, I even drove Frank to Ralphs, some distance from our house, to show him exactly where the specific pink lemonade is that is our son Kyle’s favorite… in case I’m not there to buy it.  They don’t carry it at the Pavilions close to our house, you know.”  We laughed and cried a little at the nuttiness of that, and yet I was so touched and moved.  By the love mostly.  By Frank’s love of Esther… being the good sport to go along to the Ralphs and find the pink lemonade, though in his mind—“We got bigger fish to fry here.”  By Esther’s desire to control whatever details of life she could still control, and the one detail that mattered was that Kyle have his favorite pink lemonade.  That single detail of continuity.  Yes the love.  But also the fumblings of our human journey and our capacity to find meaning in the teeniest of places.

One afternoon, while working on the Palliative Care Team at the Santa Monica-UCLA Hospital, I was paged to come to Marge’s room.  The doctor and nurse practitioner on the team were having that awful conversation with Marge’s adult children in the hall— “Nothing else we can do.”  I approached the tearful huddle and Marge’s son Gary asked me to go talk to his mom in her room while they talked outside.  Well it seemed Marge was in a different TV show all together.  Cheery spirits—a breezy, light-hearted gal in her 70’s.  We had a lovely visit about life, her journey and what wisdom she’d picked up along the way.  After about 30 minutes, Gary and her daughter Susan, came into the room with puffy eyes and brave, feeble smiles.  They sat down and we had such a blessed talk, the four of us—about life and fond memories of childhood and what kind of mom Marge had been. Even some laughter.  Suddenly Marge snapped away from the reverie with some urgency—“Gary!  What time is it?”  “It’s 3:00 Mom. Why?”  “Oprah’s on.”

A little startled myself, I asked Marge if she was a big Oprah fan.  “Oh yes!  I never miss my Oprah!”  “Well would you like to continue our conversation, or would you like us to leave the room so you could watch Oprah.  “Oh I want to watch Oprah!  Thank you Michael!”  And so we left.  Not without some judgment on my part I must admit.  I mean, “Geez, you’re having this tender meaningful conversation with your kids and you want to watch Oprah?”

Marge died a few hours later.  That was the last conversation she would have with her kids.  The more I thought about it, and got my agenda and judgement out of the way, I thought how beautiful,  how perfect and life affirming… really.  It was one thing she could control, one thing that could anchor her back into her life, her routine—normalcy.  One last self-empowering gesture… maybe not a stretch to characterize it even as a sacred ritual. “That’s what I DO everyday at 3.”  I’ll bet even Oprah would be moved to wonder.. don’t you think?

That other realm on my map of wonder is closely linked to matters of scale— the realm of Vulnerability.  So much in our culture would encourage us to avoid vulnerability at all costs—buy insurance, lock your door, don’t share your secrets, be sure of what you know, don’t complain, be self-reliant and keep your emotions to yourself… particularly your weaknesses.  Yet in my life and in the lives of so many patients over the years… the magic lies in just the opposite.  If cancer is anything, it is a doorway into the land of vulnerability… on so many levels and dimensions.

So many patients, proud like the rest of us of our independence and self reliance, struggle with needing the help that cancer demands.  Needing help is one thing, accepting it is another.  Vulnerability.  In my view, that is very nearly at the essence of the spiritual dimension that the cancer journey affords. Through that movement into vulnerability, countless patients have shared with me the overwhelming and surprising outpouring of love that has magically appeared—and often from the unlikeliest of places.  An experience of love, community, of interdependence only possible because of vulnerability.

Louise is a real powerhouse of a person.  A museum director.  The go-to person to get anything done.  “But Michael, the craziest thing. Since I’ve had to come out as a colon cancer patient and acknowledge  that I have to pull back at work, that I need help, dropped the mask… others have felt safe to approach me in ways they never would have before.  Here I have cancer and they feel an opening to share with me the kinds of problems people don’t easily share.  And the thing is, it’s a gift to me… to be able to help, when cancer has left me disempowered.  I can sill help, and help in a way I never really could.”  I’d say that’s a kind of magic.

Like I say, needing help is one thing, accepting it is another.  Ahmad was a proud Lebanese man—husband, father, engineer… with end-stage liver cancer.  Being the good father and husband, he was most distressed about the suffering he was causing his family.  “Sometimes Michael I wonder if it’s even selfish of me to keep on fighting, because of all I put them through.”  His wife and son could only cry in astonishment at those words.  The few things they could do for Ahmad—get up in the night to help him to the bathroom or get his meds, rub his feet-- anything, filled them with gratitude to be able to relieve his suffering in some small way.  They saw these tasks as a blessing—an opportunity to love.  “How could he think we wouldn’t gladly do all we can do to keep him here as long as we can?”

And likewise, there was one thing he thought he still could do to ease their burden, that could help him feel empowered in some small way, still be the husband and father--  make his own funeral arrangements.  His family refused to have that discussion.  Each sat with his gift on his lap, returned, unopened.  Love.  Just trying to get out and express itself.

My mother is a lung cancer survivor, nearly 10 years out.  She had chemo and surgery in the fall of 2001.  That last day of 2001, my sister and I were hiking in the mountains of Idyllwild, reflecting on all the events of the year, and which moments stood out most powerfully for us.  Terry choked up and said, “You know this may sound crazy but I think the highlight of my year was taking care of Mom after her surgery and wiping her behind.”  It doesn’t get much smaller, more intimate, more vulnerable than that.  And the one thing that I imagine for most of us would be the most horrifying, the most humiliating loss of dignity.  Being that dependent.  Yet, it was THE highlight of Terry’s year!  It’s surprising where we can find magic, huh?

Just like my mom, I want answers too.  I’d like to know what it’s all about, why we go through what we go through.  Who doesn’t?  But maybe Doug Henning was on to something.   Because I also know the deep blessing that is wonder—that the goodies in life are found there.  I want magic.  So I guess, I’ll give up my delusions that I know anything at all, or that I’m smart enough to figure it all out… for more of that wonder, that magic.  That love.  After all, now I’ve even got a map!