GRACE

It has been a very long while since I last posted! So much has happened - it has been a monumental year. There were terrible awful horrible moments when cancer struck my father and then it struck me...but there has also been great moments of joy and adventure when our family set out for Europe to discover our roots and I went from a cancer patient to a cancer survivor. Somewhere in all of it is a really good story. 

The best place to begin is with one word, GRACE.   I am not a regular church goer but I am an Episcopalian. When I heard the news that I first had cancer and death was at my side I turned to God for comfort without hesitating. Then when I heard the news my cancer was operable and that it had not spread - all I could think of was "Thank you!"  I just felt so so so grateful to God for giving me more time to be with those I love and for being there for all of us.  Each day as time goes on.. I am trying to live a GRACE-FULL  life.   This is not always easy during chemotherapy on the days when I am not feeling so great.  In those moments I have to look back and remember death to call back the joy.  It is with this great irony that death brings new life to me. 

I used to think this poem by e.e. cummings, somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond - was about love between two lovers but now I think it is about something else. a dance between me. life. death. and God.
 

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers, 
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and 
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines 
the snow carefully everywhere descending:

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals 
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture 
compels me with the color of its countries, 
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens: only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands