lay me down easy...

A midday pot of Scottish breakfast tea - with milk - hallelujah!  A small bit of

heaven has been restored unto me. Another First World problem to be sure, this prepping for GI tract tests. Neither the end of the creation but hardly one of its delights, the two day modest fast prior to the procedure is inconvenient and just... meh! Whatever. Consuming the dreaded extra strength purgative is no big deal either - these days it tastes tons better than its older cousin - and barely annoys our innards unlike it's vile predecessor. For me, the whole ordeal was truly no big deal except...

... no hot, loose tea brewed to perfection with sweet milk in the morning! Agony. Or should I say, disappointment? Damn it, a man has needs, right? Morning rituals! Time-tested ways of entering the day with a modicum of sanity and glee! That's what I found most upsetting about this time in purgatory: I cherish making a quiet entrance to the day, tentatively greeting creation and my loved ones silently before sipping ambrosia from my flowered ceramic pot. Then, as the haze within slowly burns off, I love finding myself surrounded by flowers, recognizing the precious, trusted face of the one dearest to my heart, and even scratching our mongrel Lucie's ever itchy backside. But without this - the taste as well as the timing - the day felt flat. Bothersome. The rush of caffeine is essential, I know, but so is hearing the roiling water in the kettle, inhaling the malty bouquet of dry tea leaves, prying off the top of my favorite canister emblazoned with Celtic knots and Gaelic colors, to say nothing of entering the day with the one I love in a whisper. All of this and more grounds me in the moment. It lightly leads me into an embodied sense that each day possesses the promise of small but delightful blessings.

All of this came to me while sitting in my hospital gown on a gurney awaiting the anesthesiologist who promised to wheel me away quickly. Quickly must be a relative term in a hospital, yes? Still, I have always been one who prefers to ease into the day rather than spring into it with zeal. Or be forced into the WC by an alarm clock. Morning chemistry classes were so easy to blow off in college. So, too, sung morning prayer. Forget vigils and lauds, I'm more of a terce kind of guy. A free and easy friar who loves being in a candle lit Sanctuary with incense, just not at the crack of dawn. We once drifted into York Minster Cathedral for sung evening prayer. Now that was sacred ground - and the visiting boy's choir added joy upon joy as their English chant circled the Gothic columns and rose towards the heavens. Like the late Kate Wolf used to sing, "Lay me down... easy." (Oh do I still love this song!)

After more forms and questions, the doctor of anesthesia told me the name of his drug of choice adding "It's a good one. Enjoy it." Dude! "You'll be surrounded by good people in a safe place," he quickly added and smiled through his plastic PPE face covering. (A later day Owsley or Ken Kesey I mused to myself?) Then one of the wee people, the actual anesthesia administrator, floated into the room announcing, "We're ready, sweet heart, ok?" "Who am I to interrupt the parade?" I thought and replied, "Let's go." And away we wooshed at a speed I could never have predicted. Her agility and grace inspired confidence and I found I was actually looking forward to the magic she was about to perform. Inserting a weird little tooth guard apparatus with a breathing hole to facilitate the endoscopy came next, then an oxygen mask followed by the words, "This will be nice sweet heart. Breathe deeply." I saw my surgeon suit up. I heard him say, "See you on the other side." And before I could fret about the double meaning of those words... I was waking up 23 minutes later in the recovery room.

On the table beside my bed was a written report of both ends of this adventure - pictures included - so I took the time to read what had just happened to me. Thanks be to God there was nothing cancerous. And while a small polyp had been removed, everything was in order, hardly different from 10 years before. I got the ok to dress. My surgeon came in to talk his report over with me - he is a doctor I really, really like and respect who closed by saying "see you in about three years, ok?" - and then I was in a wheel chair awaiting my ride home. The anesthesiologist was right: I was surrounded by good people AND the drug was pretty damn fine, too.

And then... tea. Terra firma. And whole wheat toast (I have to up my whole grain and high fiber intake.) And a 90 minute nap. My life is blessed. And privileged. And to those whom much has been given, much is required. Not as in noblesse oblige, but more like: this is my new commandment - love one another as I have loved you. As a servant. On your knees washing feet. In solidarity. With tender acts of earthy compassion and real social justice not empty platitudes. 

Letting all of this sink in, I prayed myself into Padraig O'Tuama's "On Being/Poetry Unbound" series: Raymond Antrobus - A Poem About When We're Disbelieved." The actual poem is entitled, "Miami Airport." O'Tuama - an Irish poet, theologian, peace activist and LGBTQA advocate - is the poet/theologian in residence at Krista Tippett's online poetry meditation series. I started listening-in while driving to and from my time in community with L'Arche Ottawa in January of this year. Each segment transformed my Subaru from a warm, safe SUV into a monastery on wheels. When the pandemic shut the border between Canada and the USA down, I quit listening. Now have returned. (Please take the time to listen in to this poem and O'Tuama's insights @ https://onbeing.org/programs/a-poem-about-when-were-disbelieved/ . You won't be sorry.) Halfway into this meditation, Padraig says: 

I think there’s a fundamental human experience about being believed.

And you can track into this by asking groups of people, “When have you been disbelieved?” And then make all the time in the day you have to listen to everything that unfolds from that. And so many people have stories of being disbelieved, of not being an authority in the story of your own life and having to be gently defensive with somebody who was aggressively questioning and finding the way to be ten times more magnanimous to somebody who has absolutely no interest in being kind towards you in the context of their questioning. And I have found it an opening question, with groups of people in group work in the context of conflict, over years, to say, “Can everybody here, as we gather together, tell a story of a time when you were disbelieved?” and then to think, what is the collective wisdom in the room about what that communicates to us.

Today I am so grateful to be alive. I didn't really think I would die today, but the thought crossed my mind more than ten times over the past few nights. So I am grateful to be alive at this moment in history, in this place, among this family, this house, this town, this crazy fucked-up country, this old and modestly healthy body and facing all of the terrifying possibilities and potentials this season holds. We all need a place and a space where, like Kate Wolf sang, we can lay down easy in safety, trust, respect, and even love. Krista and Padraig facilitate this on public radio. My offering happens on Face Book where I discover again and again that my greatest need is also paradoxically my greatest gift. Or as Frederick Buechner said more poetically: The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Time to get cranking on relearning Kate's tune...