Amy Durfee West’s Blog
“Throw your heart over the bars and your body will follow.”

Both of my parents were unattached or anxiously attached. I think I know why, based on what I know about their childhoods. My younger sister is also severely attachment disordered. Because of a lucky combination of birth order and gender (my mother wanted me, and wanted a girl), genetics (I have a naturally sunny disposition and a strong constitution), and some key people who served as lifelines for me at critical times, I was less affected by it than my parents or siblings. But I spent most of my life harboring an unconscious fear of abandonment and trying to rescue abandoned babies. The embryonic true selves of people who lived behind false selves called to me, and I was irresistibly drawn to them. The only time it worked (although it took over 20 years) was when I rescued an actual abandoned baby. All the other projects failed.

“It begins with a blessing, but it ends with a curse, making life easy but making it worse. . . . Why, why, why are we sleeping?” Those song lyrics have been stuck in my head for almost forty years, beginning when the man who was to become my first husband said them to me, then played me the song. It’s an apt description of addiction. The addict finds something that fills a hole, that seems to make life better. Some addictive behaviors are highly valued in our culture, and most are at least tolerated or trivialized. The workaholic’s dedication is held up as a model for others. The anorexic, bulimic, or exercise addict is admired, at least for awhile. Such discipline! Such a thin, lovely body! The alcoholic “loosens up” after a drink or two and becomes more garrulous, gregarious, and charming. The codependent is such a “good” wife and “good” mother, never thinking of herself, sacrificing, working her fingers to the bone, living for her family. Such loyalty! On top of that, of course, is the high: the endorphin rush from exercise, the altered brain chemistry from starvation, the alcohol or drug “buzz,” or the adrenaline rush of careening from personal crisis to personal crisis.

Reactive Attachment Disorder (“RAD”) is a childhood diagnosis. It is defined in the DSM as “markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts, beginning before age 5 years, as evidenced by either (1) or (2): (1) persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions, as manifested by excessively inhibited, hypervigilant, or highly ambivalent and contradictory responses (e.g., the child may respond to caregivers with a mixture of approach, avoidance, and resistance to comforting, or may exhibit frozen watchfulness), (2) diffuse attachments as manifest by indiscriminate sociability with marked inability to exhibit appropriate selective attachments (e.g., excessive familiarity with relative strangers or lack of selectivity in choice of attachment figures).” These children often have other diagnoses, such as bipolar disorder, ADHD, or conduct disorder.

RAD kids grow up to be RAD adults. People with RAD fall along a continuum. On one end are people who appear to function pretty well but are “intense” or “difficult.” On the other are psychopaths and sociopaths. These people can be very charming and attractive. To strangers and casual acquaintances they seem to have it all together. They are exciting, glamorous, romantic, often very appealing. There may be a hint of melancholy or hard luck stories. It often seems like all they need is love. That’s true, but love from outside themselves will never heal the holes inside. They will never get better unless and until they figure out that they are the common denominator in all their failed relationships, and that they are causing their own misery. This is very, very unlikely to happen, largely because there is an unlimited supply of codependents who will follow the right script for keeping everything hidden and unchanged. Their frames for categorizing their feelings and experiences always deflect the responsibility onto others, making it impossible for them to see themselves.

Most RAD adults will form emotional bonds with adult partners and friends. At first the relationships will seem quite satisfactory and secure. But, after the “honeymoon” is over, the RAD will begin to be very uncomfortable and unhappy. You’re pretty sure you haven’t changed, so this is quite confusing. The RAD person’s hidden inner child takes over and begins controlling the relationship. You will feel instinctively that something is amiss, but you will be unable to stop or redirect the process once it starts. RAD people are afraid to love and unable to trust. They have never known true love or trust. They hide this in the early stages of a friendship or romantic relationship, but they can’t keep it up. Their fear has many of the characteristics of other phobias, notably claustrophobia. They will express this fear as rage or withdrawal, or they may alternate between those two poles. Addictive behaviors may increase. Cross addictions may appear. They do and say irrational, disturbing, often abusive things. You are both in for a very bumpy ride.

Once the process starts, anything you do will make matters worse. Try to be more attentive and loving, and it will be interpreted as engulfment, triggering more fear. Defend yourself from verbal attacks, and it will feed the RAD person’s belief that you are the one with the problem, which will engender more criticism and rejection. Take issue with the behavior, or ask for changed behavior, and you will be accused of nagging, or of being overly critical or picky. Try to rise above it and not react, and your RAD partner will interpret your behavior as uncaring, and will feel rejected.

Like everyone else, RADs want to love and be loved, but for them their attempts to have intimate relationships cause severe distress. When these behaviors and attitudes appear the RAD person is experiencing, reacting to, and blaming the partner for the intense fear and despair that were laid down in her or his infancy and early childhood. What the RAD person really seeks is freedom from the pain that is caused by loving and being loved.

You can’t provide that. The only thing you can do about it is not take it personally, take care of yourself, stand your ground, and let go of outcomes. It is an opportunity to learn true humility, to learn to love yourself, and to learn to love another person unconditionally. You have no control over the other person. You cannot make it turn out well. No one can force anyone to love or to trust.

However, only if you love and trust yourself, take care of yourself, and protect yourself and the rest of the family from abuse AND find ways to stay and not reject him or her will your your partner or friend have any chance of eventually learning to do the same. You can’t change your partner, but you can change how you see the situation. You can’t change your partner, but you can stop doing the dance. You can change how you respond. In fact, you don’t even have to change your behavior, if you just change your own attitude. If you accept that your behavior is a choice that you freely make; it is not something your partner “makes” you do, and you could choose otherwise, then that one change will have a profound difference in how you feel about it, and in how the RAD responds. That alone can disrupt the pattern enough to bring change. In the process you will learn valuable relationship skills and build emotional maturity and competence. Do not stick around, though, if there’s physical danger, and do not do it so you can “win” the control battle. Do not do it out of a sense of martyrdom or in order to feed your own inner drama queen.

There is some reason you find this kind of person appealing. Figure that out, and heal the weak spots inside yourself. Is it a smoke screen for your own fear and insecurity? When you were growing up did you have an attachment figure (mother, father, main caregiver) who was like this? Do you have attachment issues of your own? Did you grow up with a problem drinker or addict? Do you have PTSD? Find a therapist who specializes in attachment, or join Al-Anon, or both. Spiritual practices, such as yoga, meditation, or centering prayer, can also help.

Here is a list of characteristics of adults with Reactive Attachment Disorder. No one has all of them, and the healthiest people have a few, at least once in awhile. Look for patterns of avoidant or ambivalent personal relationships, dishonesty, and lack of authenticity. If you keep getting into relationships with addicts, chances are you’ll see items in this list that also apply to you:

1)                  Poor peer relationships/few friends

2)                  Internal chaos externalizes in messy house, losing things, disorganization

3)                  Won’t ask for what he or she wants

4)                  Compulsive self-reliance

5)                  Passive withdrawal

6)                  Lack of empathy

7)                  Neglectful

8)                  Life drama—consistent theme

9)                  Hypersensitive to perceived rejection by others

10)              Victim mentality

11)              Superficially charming to strangers

12)              Smart person acting dumb

13)              Helpless

14)              Black and white thinking

15)              Excessive need for control

16)              Resents structure imposed by others: oppositional, noncompliant

17)              Words and actions don’t match—talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk

18)              Poor to zero follow-through, leaves things unfinished

19)              Fear of abandonment—excessively clingy

20)              Fear of engulfment—aloof, distant

21)              Poor limit-setting with kids and/or pets

22)              Temper tantrums

23)              Crazy lying

24)              Excuses

25)              No object permanence—out of sight out of mind

26)              Ego centered as opposed to other centered

27)              Judgmental, critical, self-righteous

28)              Little or no remorse or “odd” expressions of remorse

29)              Appears much younger when scared or angry

30)              PTSD

31)              Excitement junkie—got to have a “fix”

32)              Unreliable, “forgetful”

33)               Binge eating or drinking; sugar addict; abnormal eating habits

34)              Unaware or disrespectful of others’ personal space

35)              Excessive chatter or excessively quiet; no modulation

36)              Secretive

37)              Scripted interactions with attachment figures

38)              Narcissistic

39)              Very sensitive to change

40)              Crazy-making

41)              Doesn’t call self or others by personal name

42)              Phony: pontificates, repeats self, tells the same stories over and over, for years at a time

43)              Yo-yo behavior—come here; no, go away, “push-pull”

44)              Poor eye contact except when angry

Preaching is part of the “work of the people,” the liturgy. It is an event in time. The sermon event is not simply what the preacher says, but how he or she speaks, looks, sounds, moves, pauses, and modulates his or her voice. Technique matters, but it can’t make up for insufficient preparation, or superficial thinking. The preacher’s attention to sermon preparation and sermon delivery serves the whole congregation. The sermon is particular to the specific congregation—that part of the body of Christ that congregates in that specific place, and what is said and how it is said must relate to the situation at hand. But it must also speak to and for all God’s people and advance the missio Dei.

I think sermons have to be biblical. They have to be about God. And they have to achieve St. Augustine’s objectives of teaching, delighting and persuading. But what should they teach, and how should they delight and persuade? They should teach about the Bible and the Gospel. They should model how one wrestles with the text, interrogates the modern situation, and names God’s action in the world and in human lives. The sermon articulates the Word in concert with, and as part of, the worship service. Christian worship forms Christian consciousness, faith, language and worldview.

Sermons should teach that, unlike some kinds of scripture, the Christian Bible is unabashedly human-handled, ambiguous, troubling, challenging and layered; that it is inspired by God and tells how God keeps inviting humans to be in a loving, covenant relationship with God and with one another. That God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, even on our best days, but that God wants us to understand the message and to believe that the law is for our good, not harm. That the Bible is worth studying, contemplating, discussing, and arguing about. It’s even worth memorizing. But that it originated in an ancient, patriarchal Bronze-age culture whose languages, customs, worldview, scientific understanding and politics were radically different from ours. There’s no such thing as biblical literalism, because language does not exist apart from culture and experience. The preacher has to translate and interpret, and must do that prayerfully and responsibly.

All communication is translation to some extent. I make assumptions when I speak and when I listen. My hearer or conversation partner does too. The roots of human communication are preverbal, prehistoric, precognitive. We constantly scan our environment and interpret, categorize, respond, or tune out. Learning is a communal activity. So is delight. So is persuasion. Narrative is how we think and communicate. The only question is whether we’ll do it with integrity or do it lazily, sloppily, thoughtlessly and superficially.

The sermon should preach Jesus, the best example we have of what God is like, and that if we listen to what he said, and pay attention to what he did, it all only makes sense if he was the Son of God, as his friends thought. Jesus told us God loves us and wants us to love each other, even our enemies. This is a God we did not make up, because we’re not like that. God wants us to release the captives, forgive debts, consider the lilies of the field, and pray in private. We don’t do any of that. But Advent keeps coming and we keep being reminded that evil, greed, sickness, death, hunger, poverty and inhumanity will not have the last word. Christmas will come, and unto us is born this day a savior. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. This is either true, or we are idiots to keep saying it. But if it isn’t true then there’s no reason to hope, and we can’t live without hope. Besides, everywhere we look we see hope blooming if we look closely enough. We see life asserting itself. We see love winning. God is making all things new.

When we climb up into the pulpit and pray, “Holy Spirit come,” we’d better be ready to experience the presence of God. People come to church for a lot of reasons, but ultimately that’s the only one that makes sense. Otherwise they’d just go to the mall, or to a self-help seminar. The preacher’s job is to prepare the way for divine encounter, for herself and her congregation.

She says there are only two prayers:
“Thank you, thank you, thank you”
And “help me, help me, help me.”
The psalmist says help comes from God,
But God works through people.

When I close my eyes and summon them
I see the God-bearers in my life
And feel their love,
God’s love
enveloping me,
enlivening me,
sustaining me,
sustaining the world.

They have names and faces and stories of their own
But for me they’re also the face, voice, hands of God.
The grandmother who always had time for me,
who always made me feel capable and worthy.
The babies I conceived and birthed and suckled
whose warm little bodies once curled against me,
trusting me completely.
The little girl with the broken, battered spirit
who didn’t trust me at all
sent by the God with whom all things really are possible.
The lover who showed up at such an inconvenient time
and showed me
how to be fully present,
how to love with nothing held back,
and then how to let go but never stop loving.

Loving, letting go.
Cherishing, learning, being present.
Treasuring, remembering, reminding.
Opening my hands, my arms, my heart;
Surrendering control
Then learning there’s no need for it.

Help? It’s already here
I already know what I need to know.
“It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright”
is God’s answer to prayer.

April 11, 2012

Three times in the space of a week I’ve found myself explaining that Stage IV breast cancer is incurable and the median survival time after diagnosis is about three years. I expect to have ongoing relationships with all three of the people with whom I had those conversations. I hope we’ll keep  having conversations about all kinds of topics, not just my medical status. But one of the reasons I tell this to friends is I don’t want them to be surprised later if (or maybe I should say when) I die from this.

Knowing someone with Stage IV cancer might help you confront your own mortality and give you an incentive to seek some sort of meaning or transcendence or renewal. Heaven knows it’s done that for me, not just because of my diagnosis but also because I have joined that club no one wants to join, the fellowship of cancer “survivors.”  I have an in-person support group just for people with Stage IV breast cancer, and I belong to an online support group. Since I joined the in-person group last year one of the members has died, and others have been hospitalized or had to work through treatment changes, cancer progression, and the physical disabilities that both the cancer itself and the treatments generate. Several of the online group members have died too, and one has entered hospice. Mortality is always before me.

Unless I tell you, or remind you, you’re apt to be unaware that I am walking around with a time bomb in my body. I feel and look fine. So far I have no physical impairments from the cancer or the treatment, other than a perpetually runny nose and brittle, flaky fingernails. (It’s not exactly an impairment, but my hair is very curly now too. They tell me that often happens after chemo, and it will go back to normal eventually.) So here I am, looking like got a perm, and otherwise showing no signs of the ordeal of last spring and summer, or of my new reality. I do my school work. I go to church. I talk to friends. I do all the same chores I always used to do. I have not gotten neater or more organized or less prone to procrastination. I haven’t quit biting off more than I can chew. I don’t appear to have changed.

The difference is in my attitude. I am much more mindful. I engage my senses, my imagination, and my feelings much more deeply now, no matter what I’m doing. I apply myself with much more fervor to whatever I’m doing. I am more grateful, more prayerful and much less temperamental than I used to be. I experience a childlike sense of wonder more often.

But it’s not all good. My new perspective on life has caused misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Since my diagnosis I have said and done things that were selfish and self-indulgent. I have failed to consider how what I do and say might affect others. I truly regret my moments of selfish jerkiness, and I want to do better. I’m trying to find a balance, and I have an acute sense that I may not have much time to get this all sorted out. That can make me seem standoffish. Or, more accurately, that is making me disengage at times.

I suppose someone else in my situation might become more clingy and needy, instead of more aloof. But if you know me, you can understand why I’m going in the opposite direction. What I really want to do in whatever time I have left is learn to love deeply but hold onto others lightly. I want to have intense, interesting conversations that I’m not monopolizing. I want to learn to listen sensitively and kindly. I want to share the ways I think God is working in my life and using me, but without being intrusive or crass. And I want to keep learning to live mindfully and fully, as a person-in-community with all the people who matter to me. I know I’m a living reminder of how fragile and fleeting life is. I hope I am also a reminder that every day is a new beginning, a new chance to be loving and kind and aware.

I sent this email to a friend this morning:

It’s Good Friday. I could be in church from noon to three, but I don’t think I’ll do that. Nevertheless, it will be a solemn, prayerful day for me.

The best, most perfect human being who ever lived–God Incarnate–was judged, condemned and killed by people who just didn’t get it. He said to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He told Peter to put away the sword.

He said we are to love God and love neighbor–and everyone is our neighbor. Everyone. Everyone belongs to him, is precious to him. He said those of us who claim to follow him are the light of the world.

Stupidity, arrogance, insecurity, greed, “law and order” killed him. But they (we, operating from purely human values and understanding) didn’t have the last word. The last word is Love. The last word is forgiveness. The last word is that light is stronger than darkness, goodness is stronger than evil. Life is stronger than death.

When I sing the Good Friday hymns I always cry. But it comforts me too. God is in the suffering. Jesus knew love and loss. Jesus knew about family, friendship, festivals, the joy of life as an embodied, finite creature. He knew pain, betrayal, loneliness. He was abandoned. But he is here. He will never leave.

That’s my contribution to the discourse for today. But on the subject of forgiveness, David R. Henson makes the very important point that it wasn’t Jesus who forgave the people who killed him. He asked God to do that. Noticing this allows us to avoid turning a radical belief in the power of God to right every wrong and heal every wound into a heartless and inhumane insistence that human beings must always offer their own forgiveness. I think he’s right.

When I told my friend Janell that I was taking a class in evangelism, she said, “That’s a dirty word.” I said that I know it can seem that way, but it doesn’t have to be.

Janell and I were both brought up in the Methodist church. Although Methodism began as an evangelical movement, and swept through both England and the U.S. like wildfire, the suburban Methodist church of my childhood (and the rural church of hers) had become insular and static. Church was just something everybody did on Sundays.

For most of my life I associated “Evangelical” with those guys with pouffy hair on television claiming they could solve all your problems if you bought a holy hankie. Evangelism sounded like proselytizing, and that seemed impolite at best, disrespectful and even colonialist at worst.

These days, it seems that most Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants just quietly go about their business without feeling any urgency about Christian witness. But many of us have been watching our congregations shrinking. We worry about how to meet the budget. Catholics pray that young men will be called to the priesthood. United Methodists study “vital congregations” and talk about “metrics” and “accountability.” After several generations of taking for granted that things would just keep chugging along (and having that happen until birth rates started falling and the culture became more and more diverse and secular), organized religion now seems to be following a business model, complete with mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, “right-sizing,” and marketing strategies.

Here in the East, I’ve seen numerous United Methodist congregations of thirty or forty people meeting in sanctuaries that can seat 500 or more. I’ve seen little country churches (like the UCC church to which my friend Janell belongs) that are barely hanging on with a small core group of regular members but with not quite enough people to have a regular adult Sunday school class or a youth group. They see new people come and then go, and they don’t usually know why. We all have great ideas for showing the love of God to our neighbors, but we just don’t seem to have the resources to pull that off. We think it would be great if our congregations could grow–just a little bit.

But do we want people to join our churches because we can’t pay the light bill unless they do? Or do we have good news for them from God?

A lot of churches claim to cherish visitors, but fail to make them feel welcome. Maybe it’s hard for a newcomer to figure out what to do and when. Maybe the ritual seems alien (or silly, or annoying, or too loud, or too stuffy.) Maybe the “fellowship time” consists of little closed circles of people who know each other, with no one bothering to engage the newcomers.

It can seem as if pastors are really just trying to separate people from their money, and although they say it’s so they can do “God’s work,” it appears to have more to do with buying new carpet than saving either souls or bodies. A lot of churches concentrate on the entertainment value of their services, to the exclusion of anything that sets them apart from other options for Sunday morning.

What if I told you that, to me, Christianity is not about assent to certain truth claims but about a way of life as a member of God’s family? What if I told you that I’ve seen God work anyway, in some surprising ways, even (or maybe especially) with the congregations that seem to be most dysfunctional and off-track?

What if I admitted that I have no idea whether going to church is part of God’s plan for your life? I’m not that smart, or prescient. But I can tell you I didn’t think I needed or wanted it either. I didn’t even think I believed in God, but somehow God drew me in anyway. Slowly but inexorably everything changed after that: my self-understanding, my story, my mission in life.

It didn’t solve all my problems, by any means. In fact it completely messed up my life. I couldn’t keep serving only my own needs and desires. Well, I could, but I noticed how unsatisfying that was, what a dead end it was, and how bad I was at making things up as I went along.

I learned that it really is necessary to give up one’s life in order to find it. How does that sound to you? I really can’t explain it. You just have to come and see.

I always want to know what you think, but it’s especially urgent this time because I need your feedback for a class project. Say whatever comes to mind about evangelism, or answer some or all of these questions:  If you do not belong to a faith community, what would it take for you to visit one once? To come back a second time?

If you have no intention of ever darkening the door of a Christian church, can you tell me why? Is Jesus the problem, or is it Christians? Have you been abused, shamed, betrayed? Do you think it’s just silly superstition?

You can comment here on the blog by registering. Or if you are a Facebook friend or have my phone number or email address, please use any or all of those channels.

A little over a year ago I began to notice some breast changes. There was a small, flaky lesion on my nipple. Then I began to have some discomfort which I blamed on the underwire of my bra. I actually threw away one bra, thinking it was the cause of the pain. Then I noticed that the left breast was slightly larger than the right breast. That scared me, and I wrote about it in my journal, but it took awhile to pick up the phone and make an appointment. There was no lump.

By the time I got into a doctor’s office I had decided the flakiness might be eczema. I get it on the palms of my hands, so I know what it looks like. In fact, the PA gave me a referral to a dermatologist, who told me that was what it was and gave me medicine that cleared it up in a few days. But she also said I should go in for a diagnostic mammogram, and I scheduled that for April 5. That is a three-step process, involving a set of pictures with the regular paddles, another one with smaller paddles and more compression, and ultrasound. They found a “mass” in the left breast, one lymph node in my left armpit that the radiologist said was “a little too fat,” and calcifications in the right breast. They scheduled me for biopsies two days later.

The radiologist (the same one who had done the ultrasound) was now calling the “mass” a “tumor,” and told me I’d be getting surgery. I asked how big it was and she said “about one inch.” At that point I knew it was cancer. I was numb. It seemed unreal. I had to wait a week before I could go sit down across from my primary care doctor at BU Student Health and hear the words “invasive ductal carcinoma” and “atypical dysplasia.” The one “fat” lymph node also had cancer cells in it.

My doctor was very sympathetic. She told me she had been through it herself, and had had a bilateral mastectomy. You can’t help it. Someone tells you that, and you glance down at her chest. She had breasts, or appeared to. She said, “You have a fight ahead of you” and gave me a card for the BU “behavioral health” department. She also gave me a pamphlet about taking a leave of absence from school.

Somehow my mind had made room for other possibilities, though I could not imagine what they might be. Yes, it was cancer. Cancer. That was April 19. I had my first meeting with the breast cancer “team” at my hospital a few days later. Getting a diagnosis was surprisingly unhelpful. So was meeting the “team.” There would be more tests to complete the “staging,” then chemo, surgery, and maybe radiation. I got a book and a folder full of pamphlets. I was barely processing what I heard.

After a breast MRI and CT scan I was called in again in early May, this time to meet just with the breast surgeon. She said the bone scan was clear, but there were a “couple” of spots on my liver and lungs. They’d need to biopsy the liver, and if that was benign or inconclusive then they’d biopsy my lungs. She tried to talk me out of taking a trip out of town that she had previously said I could take. The liver biopsy was scheduled for May 17, after I got back.

The radiologist who did the liver biopsy said the lesions had shrunk. He even asked me if I had started being treated. He said the target was so small he wasn’t sure he had gotten a good sample. That made me feel a lot better. Surely it couldn’t be cancer if it was healing on its own.

A week later I called to get the results. My oncologist asked me if I could come in the next day to talk about it. I was in DC for my daughter Lily’s graduation from Georgetown, so no, I couldn’t be there the next day, but I could be there in two days. I asked her to tell me what the test showed. She hesitated, then said there were cancer cells in my liver, but that the cancer would be “very manageable.” Another shock. Stage IV. All I knew about Stage IV was from a drawing in the book the hospital had given me. It said breast cancer can spread anywhere, but especially to the bones, brain, liver and lungs. It showed the outline of a woman with ugly black blobs in those areas.

When I met with the oncologist she told me my cancer was HER-2 positive, and that there’s a medication called Herceptin that uses a monoclonal antibody that can help my body fight the disease. Then she talked about various other drugs we could use along with the Herceptin. I opted for Taxol, a harsh but potentially effective cytotoxin. I figured it was my best chance to knock the cancer back. She told me we’d be trying for “permanent remission, normal lifespan.” I liked the sound of that. She said I’d do twelve weeks of Taxol and Herceptin every week, then get just Herceptin every three weeks until it had been a year.

I just saw my oncologist last Wednesday. She left it up to me to decide when to get another scan. My cancer doesn’t put out tumor markers, so scans are the only sure way to monitor my progress. I said I’ll wait until May. She examined me and said everything looks good. I knew that. I feel fine. I have plenty of energy. My brain is working fine. I am sleeping well. My vital signs are good. I have no complaints.

As I was leaving I said, “If I didn’t know better I’d swear I was in perfect health.” She said, “You might be in perfect health.”

I know this: my wholeness goes beyond my physical condition. My life is meaningful, good and full no matter how many more years I get to live. Healing in the sense of peace, acceptance, and feeling held securely in God’s hands does not depend on my being disease-free. There is freedom in that. It is a strange freedom, but quite real. No one wants to die, but we all will. I know more now than I did a year ago about the likely path my last years will take, though I don’t know when that phase will start. Apparently I have knocked the cancer back. It could even be permanent, though it’s too soon to tell. So cancer rides around on my shoulder. Like all the other demons I’ve faced down, I’m trying to make friends with it and find out what it has to teach me. Anything you put energy into opposing directly can end up owning you. It can deprive you of the joy of living without laying a finger on you. Rehearsing all the possible outcomes or recollecting past trauma can be a kind of living death. I don’t want that.

Last Friday I learned that I have been accepted into the ThD program at Boston University School of Theology. I am waiting to hear from two other programs, though I’m pretty sure this is the offer I will accept. I’m going to study social ethics. If I do the ThD through the seminary I will minor in evangelism. I want to teach pastors, social workers, teachers and others who work in under-resourced neighborhoods how to be change agents.

As you probably know, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation (SGK) recently decided to quit providing grants to Planned Parenthood to help women obtain clinical breast exams and mammograms. Then there was a huge backlash. Then they may have reversed the decision and restored Planned Parenthood’s eligibility to apply for future grants. (At any rate, they redefined the applicable criterion for disqualification so that it doesn’t include “political” investigations, which was the reason they gave for the decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood.) Then Karen Handel, the vocal opponent of abortion and declared enemy of Planned Parenthood, who was hired by SGK last spring, resigned. She insisted she had nothing to do with the decision. She also blamed Planned Parenthood for manufacturing the outrage.

A lot of the outrage had to do with losing the illusion that SGK was, as Andrea Mitchell put it, “bipartisan.” We like to think that since all women (and even a few men) are at risk of getting breast cancer, this is one issue no one disagrees about. Everyone wants a cure. We’re all on the same page. Right?

I don’t think so. When I look at this situation, I see a pervasive war on women, especially poor women. Behind that is a patriarchal attitude towards women–as not fully human or fully rational, as not responsible, and as not serving any purpose other than as defined by a Bronze Age culture that elevated a male diety above all other gods and devised a system of laws and mores intended to control women’s sexuality. They did that so men would be sure that only their biological offspring inherited their property. Women and children were property themselves, and so had no inherent rights in the family wealth. In cultures where women are truly valued (and there are some), people aren’t as hung up about sex, contraception, abortion, and divorce as that one was (and is).

Behind the abortion debate, behind the desire to get rid of Planned Parenthood, behind the recent flap about requiring religious hospitals and universities to follow the same rules about providing contraception as everyone else has to follow, behind “welfare to work” that simply ended welfare and dropped people off a cliff, behind the controversy over same-sex marriage and/or adoption, behind the “Quiver full” movement and the ethic of female submission to men–in church, in bed, and in society–is a fundamental value judgment. The purpose and function of womankind is reproductive, because it’s the one thing woman can do that man can’t. Therefore the purpose and function of every woman is solely for making babies for a man to whom she is married. That’s what marriage is about; that’s what society is for.

To that Bronze Age set of assumptions about women as property–first of their fathers and then of their husbands–we have added neoliberal individualist consumerist culture. In a way, capitalism is an extension of those early assumptions about property. Property has been sacralized. Our economic system doesn’t serve us; we serve it because we worship Mammon. Ethics get subsumed under a “rights” analysis with money at its core. People with money are good. Poor people are, therefore, “less than.” People think they created their own property and the rest of society has no claim on it. In its extreme form, in our country, health care is done for a profit, and is connected to people’s jobs. It’s a privilege afforded only to people with jobs that include benefits. It’s not a right.

The result, among other things, is that organizations like SGK have turned a public health issue into “cause marketing.” Nancy Brinker promised her sister, who died of breast cancer, that she would find a cure. She founded SGK in honor of her sister and with the intent of making good on that promise. The organization has done a huge amount of good, and I am grateful. I’m not here to demonize SGK, but to point out that it has become a PR firm for its corporate sponsors. They’ve confused the means for the end. Their stated purpose is to cure breast cancer, but they’ve gotten in bed with the cancer industrial complex and they’ve started trading on misery and rebranding it as “hope” and triumph. Slapping a pink Komen logo on a product makes it sell because it makes people think they’re doing something. That has become SGK’s true mission–making more money.

An individualist, consumerist paradigm permeates the effort on both sides of it. People who want to “help” and people who need “help” are, equally, volunteers. People volunteer to walk, run, sleep over, etc. “for the cure.” They buy stuff with pink ribbons on it, and think they’re supporting efforts to find a cure. SGK has actually trademarked the phrase “for the cure” and has spent up to one million dollars on lawsuits against other groups that use it. But SGK allocates the bulk of its income to “education,” and what it tells people is to get screened so they won’t die. Never mind the fact that there are serious questions about whether screening has anything to do with the modest drop in the death rate from breast cancer that we’ve seen recently. Also never mind that the notion that breast cancer is something that starts small, invariably gets more dangerous over time, and can be cured if found early enough is also untrue.

The result of using cause marketing to attempt to solve the public health crisis that breast cancer represents is that the public has been seriously misled and the 40,000 people who die from breast cancer every year in this country have been erased from national consciousness, or blamed for their own deaths.  Women think they are much more likely to get breast cancer than they really are, and they think that if they get it, they are very likely to be cured if it’s caught “in time.” SGK tells them it’s entirely up to them how this will turn out. There’s a focus on “risk factors” such as having babies and breast feeding them (or not), having a family history of the disease, and so on. In fact, most people who get breast cancer have no controllable risk factors OR family history.  The single biggest risk factor for getting breast cancer is being a woman in an industrialized country.

It comes down to ideology in this way: Liberals have, however imperfectly, a notion of the common good and of justice for all. I look at our abortion rate, and I completely agree that it is appalling. But instead of seeing solely individual moral failure I see it as a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional society that creates oppressive structures and then blames people for being caught in them.

Conservatives see only personal agency. They think it’s a matter of individual “choice.” When poor women end up with unwanted pregnancies it’s their own damn fault. If they don’t want or can’t support a  baby they shouldn’t be having sex. The most extreme expression of this view even punishes the victims of rape and incest for getting pregnant by saying they should be forced to go through with it.

We see this exaggeration of personal agency in “abstinence only” sex education. Never mind that a battered woman might find it safer to have unprotected sex than to say no to her drunk, abusive husband or boyfriend. Never mind that our culture has so sexualized women that girls are raised with the unrelenting message that their only value is as sex objects. Never mind that people still think “boys will be boys” and are inclined to excuse all manner of sexual violence on those grounds. We also see it in the lack of public funding for day care, in the paucity of affordable prenatal care, in the willingness to cut food assistance for poor people, and in the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits public funds from being used for abortion.

The idea that a woman owns her own body is threatening. The idea that, like a man, a woman might find sex pleasurable or fulfilling in its own right is also threatening. And the burden of this displeasure falls disproportionately on the poor. Rich women can get health care. They can afford contraception. They will always be able to go someplace safe and hygienic if they ever need an abortion. But the poor don’t have any economic power, so we can punish them with impunity.

The religious right thinks Planned Parenthood is nothing but an abortion “business.” They want to kill it off, and they don’t actually care about the damage that will do to the people who rely on it for their primary health care. For that matter, from comments I’ve seen from the right, they don’t even believe Planned Parenthood does provide health care.  And, despite a small amount of funding for community health initiatives, SGK has the values and mores of the rich Republicans who serve on its board. Their individualist, “free market” approach to fund raising and funds allocation made it inevitable that they would eventually express their class’s animus against Planned Parenthood and the poor women it serves. It’s in their DNA.

They do not promote health care for all. They do not do anything about the gross disparity of breast cancer outcomes traceable to the race and social class of the people who get it. They take money from businesses that pollute. They sell a perfume called “Promise Me” that is formulated with known carcinogens. And only around 20% of the money they bring in actually goes to research. When you look closely at Komen’s message of hope, triumph, choice and individual responsibility, you can easily understand why.

As a Christian who believes that our concept of God and morality not only can but must change, and that the culturally-bound parts of the Bible can be distinguished from the universal truths about God, humanity, and holiness, and that, as John Wesley said, there is no holiness without social holiness, I am deeply disturbed by this war on women. The way any society treats its most vulnerable members is a perfect litmus test for the validity of its values. On that basis, our society is horrendously immoral. “Pink Ribbon” culture profits from the misery, suffering and death of people who have cancer and absolves society of all responsibility for their suffering. People are treated as means to an idolatrous end–money and power. It doesn’t have to be that way, and it is  a huge embarrassment to me that the Christian Right is implicated in this scandal.

Some of the ideas for this post came from other authors. I commend them to you if you want to know more. You can find them HERE, HERE , HERE and HERE.

Last May I took three psychological tests, and on December 21 I met with a psychologist in Denver to complete the evaluation process. She had the results from the three tests, plus reference letters from three people I had chosen.

Last Friday the psychologist read me her report over the phone, and gave me an opportunity to comment or offer corrections. She had paid close attention to what I told her in the two-hour session in her office, and she accurately reported feedback I had given her at the time. I took notes while she read me the report, and I offered one point of clarification and one (perhaps slightly defensive) comment.

She told me the tests were “valid,” meaning, I suppose, that I didn’t appear to be hiding anything or trying to outsmart the test. However, she said my answers showed me to be “somewhat defensive and reluctant to admit to common problems.” I have a “tendency to minimize negative affect.” She also said I am too naive and trusting. She did say that these results might relate to my style of test taking, but she didn’t elaborate on what she meant by that.

In the report she said I “glossed over” my early history but answered her questions about it. That’s true and, at the risk of sounding defensive, I think that shows that I am not naive or excessively trusting. This woman held my future career in her hands, but she was a complete stranger. I had no intention of telling her any more than she needed to know, and my strategy was to demonstrate by the way I talked about myself that I am honest, emotionally mature, solidly grounded, and realistic. She found me to be “guarded,” while the tests seem to indicate the exact opposite.

I had talked about how the challenges of parenting helped me learn and grow, but the five children I raised only rated one sentence in the report, and she didn’t ask me about my relationships with them, or about how they are doing. They are mature, responsible, stable people. They meet challenges with a sense of calm and inner strength (something she said about me), and they are appropriately close to one another and to their parents. They have empathy and compassion. They are ethical, honest, hard working and well socialized. They love each other.

I want to comment on my supposed reluctance to admit to common problems. Last summer I read Erich Fromm’s book The Sane Society. In it he challenges the idea that we can always assess someone’s psychological health by how well he or she adapts to the dominant culture and exhibits traits common in it. Society as a whole may be sick. It may be founded on invalid assumptions. It may value the wrong things. I don’t know which “common problems” I am “reluctant” to admit that I have, but another explanation is that I simply don’t have them.

I used to. I used to be a bundle of resentments, anger, self-absorption and anxiety. I used to worry all the time. I was perfectionistic and controlling. Despite my best efforts to hold onto everything I have lost jobs, husbands, friends. I have tried to do the right thing and ended up making messes. I have been misunderstood. I have misjudged people. I have “over-shared” in the naive belief that by being honest about myself others could also learn to examine their own dark sides and find their own ways into the light. I have tried to rescue people. I have done too much of the work in personal relationships, and have been bitterly disappointed in the results. I have spent countless hours analyzing others’ faults and shortcomings, and agonizing about why they are the way they are. I have manipulated people. I have failed countless times at countless fool’s errands and hopeless quests, and each failure was devastating.

I came through all of that, by the grace of God, to a place of acceptance and contentment. It’s not that I don’t become worried, angry, scared, lonely, bored, or depressed. I do. I just don’t let those feelings rob me of the joy of living. As a matter of fact I feel those feelings far more intensely than before. I let them come up, I recognize them for what they are, and I let them go, the way we’re taught to handle wandering thoughts that come up while we meditate.

I’ve learned that feelings are not dangerous or bad. Danger and damage come from poor choices about how to handle feelings. People aren’t bad either, but some are trustworthy and others are not. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and I am open minded and forgiving. Nobody’s perfect. But I am also quite vigilant, though in a quiet, unobtrusive way. If I find someone to be lacking in integrity I choose to steer clear from then on. I do it quietly and with dignity. There’s no need to make a scene. There’s nothing to be gained from that and, besides, it’s disrespectful. But I do whatever I need to do to protect myself and my loved ones.

I have had numerous psychological assessments since I entered seminary in 2008. I haven’t really learned anything new about myself from them, but they are an interesting exercise in relating to psychologists. Like pastors they are in a helping profession. (The first assessment exercise was with a pastor who is also a psychologist.)We share some of the same personality traits and styles of relating to people. We also have similar insecurities and shortcomings.

The Denver doctor’s assignment was to determine whether I have any emotional or personal issues that might affect my work as an ordained minister, and to make recommendations for further personal growth. I have every intention of continuing to grow as a person and as a spiritual being. That is what I feel called to do, to strengthen my relationship with God and to trust God to guide me and provide for me. Her recommendations came down to doing the things I had told her I wanted to do–strengthen personal relationships, work on ministerial skills, and learn to be an effective pastor. I think I “passed.” I’m not happy to have personal details about my life and my past being reported to the church, but there’s no way to avoid that. At least it’s over now.

The title summarizes how I formulated my eating and exercise plan. The touchstone is optimal diet. For me, there’s extra urgency because of the immune system and hormone problems exemplified by my cancer. But before the diagnosis my cholesterol was much higher than it used to be, and my blood sugar as measured over time (Hemoglobin A-1C) was also creeping up. I’ve been interested in diet, fitness and health all my life. Cancer is the immediate issue, but far more women die of heart disease than cancer, and we’re facing an epidemic of diabetes and of a kind of abdominal-fat-focused weight gain and insulin resistance called “Syndrome X.” That may be linked to too much added sugar and simple starches (white flour, white sugar, white rice, white potatoes) and to an unhealthy balance of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fats.

I have concluded that it all comes down to (a) energy management, (b) antioxidants, (c) avoiding inflammation and, possibly, (d) consuming foods and beverages that have anti-cancer properties. Whether (d) is true or not, the advantages of adopting a diet-based “complementary therapy” for cancer are that it’s tasty and it is highly unlikely to be harmful.

For the basic structure I’ve gone back to the food guide in the first part of The New Laurel’s Kitchen, which is based on the best nutrition research available at the time (1986). It says that every day we should eat four servings of whole grain foods and three servings of vegetables, including one “super-vegetable.” To that add one serving of either super-vegetable, legumes, or dairy foods. Round out calorie needs with other whole foods like fruit, eggs, nuts and seeds. A super-vegetable serving is 3/4 cup cooked dark leafy greens, or one cup of edible-pod peas, brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, okra, or bok choy.

Garlic, onion, and celery have anti-cancer properties. Red and orange vegetables are high in antioxidants. Vegetables have several kinds of dietary fiber that aid digestion and elimination while they fill us up and help us feel satisfied. The Mayo Clinic eating plan allows unlimited non-starchy vegetables. Starchy ones like squash, sweet potato and potato count as carbohydrates.

Since I’m not a vegetarian and I’m convinced that we need Omega-3 and vitamin D, I also have fish oil supplements, vitamin D-3 supplements, and fish. I occasionally eat grass fed beef. The serving sizes and the nutrient mix are compatible with the exchanges in the Mayo Clinic “healthy food pyramid.” I made little cards that will fit in my wallet with room to write down what I eat and tally the exchanges. Supposedly it takes three weeks to establish a new habit, and I haven’t been doing it that long yet, but so far, so good.

Fruits, vegetables and whole grains have lots of antioxidants and fiber. Legumes (beans like lentils, split peas, garbanzos, etc.) are also good sources of antioxidants. Antioxidants may help protect against (or fight) cancer. Fibrous foods, even if they are relatively high in carbohydrates, are less likely to cause blood sugar peaks and the attendant insulin spikes and inflammation that may be caused by eating simple sugars and refined starchy foods. And of course the main thing is not to eat more calories than I burn. Since I want to lose weight, I have to eat fewer calories than I burn.

When I became a vegetarian in the early 70′s everyone’s big concern about that was whether I could get enough protein. Then came Diet for a Small Planet, which was based on research into combining plant proteins in ways that would balance amino acid profiles and make complete, usable protein. Individual plant foods do not have all the essential amino acids (amino acids that human bodies can’t make on their own.) Combining rice and beans, corn and beans, wheat and sesame seeds, etc. remedies this deficiency.

Back then they thought you had to consume the right protein combinations together in the same meal. It turns out that if you have a small intestine, and if you’re getting all the essential amino acids over time, your body can do the rest. Amino acids are cut apart and remixed in the small intestine. One glass of milk or a serving of yogurt every day is enough to fill out the missing pieces. So is a small amount of meat or fish. This is true for people who are getting enough calories so that their bodies aren’t burning protein for energy. For people who are restricting calories, it may be wise to get extra protein.

I think probiotics help promote health. I make my own yogurt, and I have some just about every day. Usually that’s in the form of a smoothie made with yogurt, whey protein, egg white and fruit. Probiotics feed on “prebiotics” in the intestine. Prebiotics are fiber, which is abundantly present in the foods I’m eating. Some think that the intestinal environment plays a significant role in the immune system.

The advice on yogurt making in Laurel’s Kitchen is very good, but I’ve modified it a bit. I boil the jars and lids instead of sterilizing them with chlorine. And with every batch I make two quarts of yogurt to eat plus a 6 oz. jar of starter. I keep the starter jar sealed in the refrigerator until it’s time to make the next batch. That reduces exposure to wild yeast, other molds, and wild bacteria. (The starter sat in the fridge unused for four weeks while I was away, and it worked fine the next time I made yogurt.) I also use a little agar (1 tablespoon per batch) and some extra non-instant milk powder (1/2 c. per batch) to help firm it up. The agar has to be softened by simmering it, which I do while I scald the rest of the milk. To keep it warm while it’s culturing, I put the jars in a small ice chest and fill it to the top with warm (just under 120 degrees F.) water. Home made yogurt costs about half as much as store-bought yogurt, and it’s sure to have plenty of live and active yogurt bacteria.

To make “Greek yogurt,” all you have to do is line a colander with clean muslin, dump in the yogurt, and let it drain until what’s left behind is thick enough for you. However I don’t know if the probiotics I want are in the thick part or the watery part, so I don’t do that.

I try to do an hour of walking or some other exercise, such as yoga, every day. A recent New York Times article discusses the drop in metabolism and permanent food cravings that people who lose weight often experience. (There’s a link to the article here.) The article talks about a registry of people who’ve lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year. They exercise a lot, and they constantly monitor their weight and food intake. Weight management for them is a lifelong commitment. There are only about 10,00 people in the registry. Millions of Americans are overweight, and most, if not all, of them have tried more than once to change that.