I have been meaning to write more on my experiences of walking through cancer (between November 2009 and August 2010), and just haven’t much, yet. I am going to start offering some reflections on that in the days and months to come. [my next CT scan is scheduled for this February 28th between 1:15pm (pst) and 3:30pm, please pray for me and my wife that day—pray it is still all good!]In the mean time, I just came across a reflection (thanks to a friend on Facebook, Daniel Imburgia) offered by Kerry Eagen, over at CNN’s beliefnet, on her experiences as a hospice chaplain amongst cancer patients. She articulates something about the depths of theology that is very important to consider; the primary thing that stands out about her own reflection is the role that love plays as the formative aspect of what it means to be human and spiritual. I think the only thing that provides for a lack in Eagen’s thoughts is the disproportion she gives to what she seems to consider academic or theoretical theology—indeed, that is part of the point of her reflection as you will see. We pick up her reflection mid-stream; she has just been rebuffed by her Harvard Divinity school prof for not having anything substantial to offer dying cancer patients; that is other than her presence and her ear. She writes:

My body went numb with shame.  At the time I thought that maybe, if I was a better chaplain, I would know how to talk to people about big spiritual questions.  Maybe if dying people met with a good, experienced chaplain they would talk about God, I thought.

Today, 13 years later, I am a hospice chaplain.  I visit people who are dying – in their homes, in hospitals, in nursing homes.   And if you were to ask me the same question – What do people who are sick and dying talk about with the chaplain?  – I, without hesitation or uncertainty, would give you the same answer. Mostly, they talk about their families: about their mothers and fathers, their sons and daughters.

They talk about the love they felt, and the love they gave.  Often they talk about love they did not receive, or the love they did not know how to offer, the love they withheld, or maybe never felt for the ones they should have loved unconditionally.

They talk about how they learned what love is, and what it is not.    And sometimes, when they are actively dying, fluid gurgling in their throats, they reach their hands out to things I cannot see and they call out to their parents:  Mama, Daddy, Mother.

What I did not understand when I was a student then, and what I would explain to that professor now, is that people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God.  That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.  That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence.

We don’t live our lives in our heads, in theology and theories.  We live our lives in our families:  the families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through the people we choose as friends.

This is where we create our lives, this is where we find meaning, this is where our purpose becomes clear.

Family is where we first experience love and where we first give it.  It’s probably the first place we’ve been hurt by someone we love, and hopefully the place we learn that love can overcome even the most painful rejection.

This crucible of love is where we start to ask those big spiritual questions, and ultimately where they end.

I have seen such expressions of love:  A husband gently washing his wife’s face with a cool washcloth, cupping the back of her bald head in his hand to get to the nape of her neck, because she is too weak to lift it from the pillow. A daughter spooning pudding into the mouth of her mother, a woman who has not recognized her for years.

A wife arranging the pillow under the head of her husband’s no-longer-breathing body as she helps the undertaker lift him onto the waiting stretcher.

We don’t learn the meaning of our lives by discussing it.  It’s not to be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues or mosques.  It’s discovered through these actions of love.

If God is love, and we believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love. The first, and usually the last, classroom of love is the family.

Sometimes that love is not only imperfect, it seems to be missing entirely.  Monstrous things can happen in families.  Too often, more often than I want to believe possible, patients tell me what it feels like when the person you love beats you or rapes you.  They tell me what it feels like to know that you are utterly unwanted by your parents.  They tell me what it feels like to be the target of someone’s rage.   They tell me what it feels like to know that you abandoned your children, or that your drinking destroyed your family, or that you failed to care for those who needed you.

Even in these cases, I am amazed at the strength of the human soul.  People who did not know love in their families know that they should have been loved.  They somehow know what was missing, and what they deserved as children and adults.

When the love is imperfect, or a family is destructive, something else can be learned:  forgiveness.  The spiritual work of being human is learning how to love and how to forgive.

We don’t have to use words of theology to talk about God; people who are close to death almost never do. We should learn from those who are dying that the best way to teach our children about God is by loving each other wholly and forgiving each other fully – just as each of us longs to be loved and forgiven by our mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. (see full article here)

I remember talking to cancer patients, as I was a fellow cancer patient, when we were receiving chemo next to each other at the clinic. What always surprised me is how most of these folks didn’t want to talk about Jesus; they comforted themselves with other things (they tried!). I understand Kerry’s points, and they are real. But ultimately, talking about family and relationships are not reconciling with God in Christ. There is certainly an integrity to humanity, but without the humanity of Christ as the humanity of these dying patients; there is really nothing noble about any of this. Death is a horrifically ugly thing, and while we don’t need to use language like perichoresis or an/enhypostatic etc. when we are talking to our dying friends and loved ones. We definitely ought to make it a point to bring up Jesus. Jesus talked about theological things, even when he was on the cross; remember his conversation with one of the thieves who was crucified next to Him? He told him that today the believing thief would be with him in paradise. If we really believe in the demonstrated love of Christ at the cross, as the most noble aspect of what it means to be human; then we will make it an absolute point to bring this up, especially when someone is gurgling in their throats with fluids. Their families aren’t going to ‘save’ them, Jesus will though!