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

posted by Amy on Jun 16

I recently attended an open AA meeting where one of the members referred to non-alcoholics as “Earth People.” I think that’s brilliant, and I’m going to steal it to refer to people who grew up in stable, loving homes and have mostly positive memories of their childhoods. Earth People were cherished for their true selves as they were growing up. They have always known who they are and where they belong. Their parents respected each other and modeled lifelong love and commitment for their children. Lucky Earth People.

I have a friend who thinks the reason I’m so driven to figure out relationships, human nature, parenting, and how to heal wounded souls is because I had a rough childhood. This friend thinks that the reason she, herself, is not so driven is that she had it pretty good growing up. I do not have an opinion on that question.

But I just signed up for eHarmony, an internet introduction service, and it’s bringing back some memories of the last time I did that, about six or seven years ago. One of the canned questions that new “matches” can send to one another is along the lines of, “What was your parents’ relationship like?” I think that’s a good question, but it’s also kind of unfair. A better question would be, “What did you learn from your parents’ relationship?” We can, after all, learn from negative examples.

Not everyone who was abused as a child grows up to be a child abuser. They don’t even all grow up to be unhappy, divorced, never-married, or any other attribute that might indicate their lives were ruined by their early years. There are many factors in play, including whether there were “enlightened witnesses” in the child’s life, and whether other people provided corrective emotional experiences. For that matter, not all Earth People grow up happy. Happiness is an elusive concept. I took a whole course in “Happiness and Virtue” last fall, and I still don’t have a handle on it.

In an important interview in my ordination process I was asked about my two divorces. Did I think I was prone to entering into dysfunctional relationships? Again, a fair question, given that pastors need to be quite solid emotionally, and should be moral exemplars for their congregations. I pointed out that it was just the two marriages, and that I had learned important things about myself and had experienced a great deal of growth and healing as part of recovering from the divorces.

I am who I am because of all my experiences with all the important people in my life. I wish I could have stayed in some relationships that are over now, but I don’t wish those relationships had never happened. I think I’m an alright person. I know I’m not perfect, and I know I have faults and weaknesses. But I have strengths and virtues too.

I am the daughter of an alcoholic. That affected me in significant ways, but it did not doom me to a life of alcoholism or other dysfunctions. My mother was quite volatile and often violent, but I am not abusive. I am, instead, very soft-hearted, sensitive, and compassionate. I don’t always know what the right thing to do is, but I always try to do the right thing.

Hopefully, I’ll meet someone who has enough confidence in his ability to judge human nature that he will give me the benefit of the doubt.  I’m actually less concerned about that than I am about my side of it. I try not to judge people by their backgrounds, or their families, but backgrounds and families are important sources of information about how someone’s character and values were formed. I attract addicts like moths to a flame, and I find them intriguing and charming. (Oftentimes they are, actually, at least at first.) I think I’ve figured out how I get “hooked,” and how to avoid that. I also think I’ve gotten to the point where I’m enough like an Earth Person to be able to have a special love relationship with one. I hope so.

Wish me luck.

posted by Amy on Jun 14

Last Wednesday I flew to Denver. Thursday evening we picked up a Chrysler Town & Country. It turned out that two people who had planned to come couldn’t make it, leaving only five for the trip, but the minivan was the perfect road trip vehicle for that size group. We were able to fold down 1/3 of the far-back seat and put an ice chest there. Then whoever sat in back had the job of “Supply Sargent,” passing out beverages and snacks.

The youngest member of the group had an 11 pm indoor soccer game to play before we could leave Thursday night. (They lost, but they did score one goal). We hit the road at about 12:30, with Soccer Man driving. The minivan had a DVD player with fold-down screens like in a bus or airplane. During the day Friday we watched Blazing Saddles, Robin Hood; Men in Tights and Airplane.

We drove straight through to Rohnert Park, CA, stopping only for gas and bathroom breaks. We had oranges and granola bars for breakfast, and gas station coffee. We made sandwiches at another refueling stop, and ate them in the gas station parking lot. The distance is about 1500 miles, and we made it in 21 hours. Of the five people on the trip, only one had not been available to pick up the car and become an authorized driver. The sun was still up when we arrived, and we had a decent amount of time to sleep Friday night.

Another family member flew from Austin to Berkeley earlier in the week. She has a friend who’s studying at the GTU, and who scored an impressive and enviable internship at Glide United Methodist Church in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, and she s spent a couple of days with her. Perhaps I’ll invite the GTU  friend to write a guest post about Glide. But I digress.

The missing family member called me at 6 am Saturday because we had not yet formulated a plan to get her to the picnic. I know nothing about the Bay Area, but Google told me I could get there and back in 110 minutes, so I told her I’d come get her. After a couple of cups of the free (awful) motel coffee I hit the road.

The minivan had Sirius radio. While I was driving and reading the directions I had written down I decided to turn on the radio. More or less unthinkingly, I hit “70s Radio.” One forgettable song ended, and then “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas came on. As I was singing along with the chorus I burst into tears.

Carry on my wayward son/There’ll be peace when you are done/Lay your weary head to rest/Don’t you cry no more

Oh, God. Yes. Finally. I had not yet cried for Ross. I wasn’t bawling hard enough to have to pull over, but there they were, the tears that I needed to shed. For losing him so many years ago when he chose not to have anything to do with me, never answering my letters, never so much as sending me a birthday card. For not having had an adult relationship with him. For his untimely death two weeks before his 61st birthday. For his kids, my niece and nephew, who I barely knew. For all the stories he could have told and didn’t. For the best friend I had as I was growing up, who knew everything about our childhood and who was an ally and confidant. For the love that I know he had deep inside for our parents and grandparents, for his sisters and brother, for his son and daughter. For the wasted talent and broken dreams.

We went to Costco for party food, beverages, and flowers, then headed to our reserved picnic area at Lake Sonoma. It took two tries to find the exact spot. As we were unloading the food and beverages I heard a voice behind me say, “Need some help with that?” It was my cousin Charles, who I had not seen in many, many years. He had ridden his Harley up from Atascadero (about 300 miles) and camped there the night before.

The picnic was great. My nephew brought his older son and his girlfriend. My niece brought fresh oysters, which her brother cooked on the grill. He also grilled chicken, and it was perfect. There was plenty of food, and we just kept eating and talking. The Millennials spent time talking, retrieving lost Frisbee golf discs, and then playing Frisbee golf.

Some of us spoke. I told everyone I had brought them together for selfish reasons, because people mourn in community. I talked a bit about my brother, and I told the story of the 70s song that so perfectly captured Ross–his love of music, especially rock & roll with guitar, and his waywardness.

There was a lot of pain, and it didn’t all get resolved. I didn’t expect it to. The picnic area was nowhere near the lake, but it was nice. It was hot–triple digits–but a steady breeze kept the air moving and we had shade. I showed a slide show of semi-random family pictures, some designed to show how Ross had influenced his nieces and nephews without even trying.My mother’s 81-year old cousin, who is impossibly spry (he bicycles and folk dances regularly, and has kept his boyish figure), took my ten year old great nephew under his wing and kept him busy and happy.

I passed out some cuttings of a philodendron I’ve had since 1976, the year my mother died. It is a scion of a plant she had in her house in North Boulder. She had it by the fireplace, and its long, strong vines and dinner plate sized leaves extended up one side of the fireplace, across the huge chimney, and down the other side. It’s nowhere near that impressive anymore, but maybe someone else will do better.

We stayed from noon until almost 8, the time the park closed. We arranged to meet the next morning for brunch, which was excellent. Most of us went out together Saturday night–my two nieces and I to a wine bar in Santa Rosa, the younger men to who-knows-where. At the brunch I read a poem my sister had written for the occasion. I had meant to do that Saturday, but forgot. It was a really good poem, and prophetic. A blessing and benediction.

After brunch Sunday we posed for group pictures and pledged to stay in touch. The Denver group headed back to Denver, with stops to see the beach and tour the Jelly Belly Factory. Ross’s daughter took me and her cousin back to her apartment, where my friend who lives on a houseboat in Vallejo picked me up. The cousin spent the night (I think) and then headed back to Austin the next day.

I arrived back in Boston on Thursday, eight days after setting out.

Brian Doyle says, “Without stories we are mammals with weapons.” I had been apprehensive about the gathering. Would people talk? Would they like each other? Would they think it was worth it? There were many stories told, including alternate versions of the same event. My brother, it turns out, was a liar.

I wanted to reclaim Ross for the McElheny/Gagos/Redfield diaspora. I wanted to make a point about the finitude of all of us. The next big family gathering could well be another wake/funeral/memorial service. It probably will. For all his many faults and failings, Ross wanted to be a good dad, and he did a better job than our father did. Little by little, a generation at a time, a family’s story can change for the better. And if you take crazy road trips and spend two or three days in close quarters, you just might get to know each other better and grow in love, affection, and respect.

posted by Amy on Jun 3

I just got back from a trip to Ireland. When I landed at Shannon Airport on May 18 I noticed they were promoting something called The Gathering Ireland 2013. It’s a year-long celebration of the Irish, framed as outreach to the 70 million people worldwide who are of Irish heritage.

I first encountered the term “Irish Diaspora” in a book I saw on the sale rack at a bookstore. The author said that there are certain traits and characteristics of Irish people that persist down through generations, even with no contact with the Old Country. I saw people in Ireland who looked just like people I know back home. And I could pass for Irish, at least until I open my mouth. At one pub a woman who was sharing our table as we listened to a father and son play and sing told me she thought I was the boy’s mother. In addition to physical types, well-known Irish characteristics, especially musicality and “the gift of gab,” appear in the Irish diaspora worldwide.

That kind of relatedness is even stronger in families. When my uncle Bob died I went to Austin for the memorial service. Afterwards my aunt (my father’s sister), her sons, and I went out for a drink. As we were laughing and talking, the youngest one said, “You fit right into this family.” I reminded him that I was family.

Most people choose spouses who are like the people who raised them. The habits of mind, mannerisms, gestures, attitudes and values of siblings are all shaped in the same nature/nurture nexus. So their children will have a great deal in common with their first cousins, whether they ever knew each other or not. About 14 years ago I took my son Ben to California for the wedding of my brother’s stepdaughter Lisa. Ben enjoyed hanging out with his cousins, and found they had much in common.

When I found out Ross was seriously ill I contacted as many family members as I had email addresses for, and asked them to reach out to him. I also asked them to pass the information on to others, and to give me email addresses and mailing addresses for the people whose information I didn’t have. Then when I found out he had died I decided we’d do some kind of memorial gathering on June 8. I sent everyone a “save the date” email on April 27, and asked them let others know about the gathering.

Wednesday morning I’m going to fly to Denver. On Thursday I’m renting a minivan, and six other people will join me in a road trip to Sonoma County. Saturday we’re going to spend the day at a lake, eating, talking, playing near the water, and whatever else happens. Honestly I’m a little nervous about it. This is what I said about it in a group email that I sent on June 1:

While I intend it to be primarily for fun, fellowship, and creating new, happy memories and new bonds among living family members, it’s also meant to be a send-off for Ross. He loved music, the outdoors, cookouts, joking and laughing, and water. I want to have some kind of ceremony at the lakeshore after dark, perhaps with luminaria, candles, or just flashlights. I still like the idea of a Viking ship model to which we can set fire, but I’m not sure where I’ll get one before I leave Boston Wednesday morning. Origami cranes and other animals might be nice. Paper airplanes. Or a little temporary mausoleum made of sand, to which we each add a special rock. Please bring something that reflects your love for our family—a poem, a story, or some kind of talisman, or just love in general—love of life, or appreciation for the gift of life.

As usual, I asked that recipients forward the email. This time I named specific people to whom I wanted it sent. I ended the email by saying, “I know you might be thinking this is just too awkward. You’ve never met most of the people on the distribution list, let alone the ones I named in the preceding paragraph. Relax. You’d be amazed how much we have in common just because we are related. It’ll be a blast. We’ll be talking about it for years.”

The next morning I woke up to an email from Aunt Harriet, my mother’s eldest sister, that said:

Howdy Amy,

If I didn’t “know better”, I’d say this shindig is designed, in part, to assuage guilty consciences. But – I’d never say it!

Ken’s comment: Under NO circumstances would he attend an event of this nature, for an unknown relative. His opinion pretty much reflects mine. Which must mean we raised him properly.

(You’ll get some preaching practice – which probably is good.)

Oh yes, be sure to avoid salmonella poisoning.

(You have my permission to read the above contribution, should you wish to do so.)

Have “fun . . . “

I’ll snail mail your letter and this response to Laura, who’ll be upset that I voiced my rude opinion.

hg

(Ken is her son, the eldest of my generation on the Gagos side, and Laura is the third-eldest sister, who was always one of my favorite aunts, and with whom I communicate frequently.)

That’s Harriet for you. When I told her (in a group email) that I had been diagnosed with cancer she responded, not with sympathy or compassion or interest about my treatment or prognosis, but with the observation that I was sure to get chemobrain and the doctors wouldn’t warn me about that.

My mother told me Harriet had always walked on the other side of the street from her parents and three sisters. She was the most Armenian-looking of the four sisters, short and swarthy with a prominent, hooked nose. Mom once told me that she (Mom) had finally come to understand that Harriet had a massive inferiority complex. Mom might have been trying to help me understand my own sister, but it was also a partial explanation for why she and Harriet had a strained, distant relationship.

Here’s how I answered Harriet’s email:

Dear Aunt Harriet,

You and Ross have a lot in common; both keeping yourselves aloof from the rest of the family. I’ve seen you a total of twice in my 59 years on this planet. I’ve seen your son once. The first time I saw you it was just your head poking out your front door, chatting with my mom while we were in California visiting relatives. You didn’t come over to the car to greet us, or invite us in after our long trip. Maybe you and he share some kind of mutant family-despising gene.

Tell me more. Why do you suppose anyone would have a guilty conscience about Ross? And what makes you think I’m going to preach?

You and your well-brought-up offspring have fun too, Auntie.

Love,
Amy

I don’t blame Harriet for being the way she is. She can’t help it. As another cherished aunt often says, people like Harriet are “more to be pitied than scorned.” But she’s wrong about Ross being unknown. He’s permanently a member of the “McElheny/Gagos Family Diaspora,” and he’s known and loved. Maybe she’s the one with the guilty conscience.

It does not appear to have crossed her mind that my own health status is a powerful motivator here. I am living on borrowed time. (We all are, of course. Cancer just makes it harder for me to forget that fact.) Right now I have the energy and strength to organize a gathering of this nature, so I’m doing it. I want to spread as much love and light as I can before I die. I want to meet my niece and nephew, and hug them and laugh with them. I want to do all I can to get the Millennials in our family together.

A family is an ongoing story, with a past, a present, and a future. Even if there has been abuse, rage, bitterness, abandonment and dysfunction in the past, the story can begin to be more about love and hope and solidarity. There’s no need to deny anything, or sugarcoat, or erase anything that happened in the past. It just needs to be put in context. Ross belongs to us, despite his attempts to leave and his wife’s attempts to keep him to herself. And just as a human being’s character changes over time, getting worse or better depending on the choices that are made and the habits that are formed or broken, the character of a family can change too. All we have to do is choose life.

posted by Amy on May 14

This is inspired by the comments on cancer support sites, and in other places. When someone dies they say she “got her wings” and “there’s a new angel in heaven.” When someone shares that she is struggling they say to “stay strong” and “stay positive.” When someone asks, “Why me?” there’s usually no response, though sometimes supposedly religious people point out how unfair it is that good people suffer when so many bad people seem to do well.

No, Virginia, people don’t turn into angels when they die. Angels as depicted in the Bible are a separate class of being. We don’t even know what they look like, despite all the artists’ conceptions showing human forms with wings. Read Isaiah 6 for an interesting description of seraphs, another class of heavenly being. All we know is that angels are messengers from God and they must be scary. The first words out of their mouths are always, “Don’t be afraid.” I personally like the idea of God sending somebody scary to tell me not to be afraid. Maybe cancer is that kind of messenger.

The idea that God rewards good people and punishes bad people, and that if you are suffering you must have done something to deserve it, is reflected in the Bible, but the book of Job refutes it. Job’s friends try to get him to repent so God will quit punishing him, but Job insists he did nothing wrong. I once heard a sermon on Job that said it meant God gave the Adversary permission to hurt Job, so nothing bad happens unless God allows it. That made me cringe. Some people find that idea comforting, but I don’t. I believe God is always with us in whatever befalls us, but I do not believe that God is the author of evil, nor do I believe in a dualistic universe involving forces of light and forces of darkness battling one another.

God is also not like Amazon.com. Prayer is not a matter of saying the right words in the right way so God will fill your order for you. I do believe in intercessory prayer, and no, I can’t explain why, or what good I think it does, apart from this: when people tell me they are praying for me, I feel loved and remembered, and that’s good. When I pray for others, it’s the same thing. It’s not knocking on heaven’s door. It’s not nagging God to give us the result we want. Millions of children die every year in this world, never having had any kind of life at all. Pray for them (or, better yet, pray for the wisdom and will and strength to do something concrete about that situation.) I’ve had a great life, and the road ahead looks amazing, even if it ends up being shorter than I expected. Don’t ask God to “save” me. Nobody’s life is ever “saved.” We might be cured of a disease or fixed up after an accident, but in the end, we are all going to die.

St. Paul offered the idea of strength in weakness. You don’t see enough of that in popular theological reflections. Jesus said he could have brought down an army of angels to defeat the Roman Empire and prevent his own execution (by the most shameful, disgraceful, painful, humiliating method the Romans ever devised, signalling that he was a “bandit,” perhaps what we would now call a “terrorist”) but he chose not to do that. He submitted to death on the cross. He suffered, died and was buried, and then he rose from the dead. Christians believe that death does not have the last word, that God is bringing about a “new heaven and a new earth” which, in some way we do not fully comprehend, all creation will live to see.

Sometimes it’s not “strong” to deny that you’re dying. Sometimes it’s just bullheaded, arrogant and narcissistic. What makes you so special that you don’t think you should die? My brother essentially cursed his son and daughter not long before he died. He drove them away with an act of gratuitously selfish, destructive meddling in something that was none of his business. Maybe he thought that would do some kind of good. Maybe he thought he’d have time to make amends. Maybe he lived to regret it, and to realize the damage he had done, not just then but in a lifetime of, at best, “mixed” parental behavior. I think it’s better for all of us to realize that we can’t cheat death. It’s a good starting point for the choices we make.

When you know, really, really know, that you are mortal, it changes you. It inspires you to take stock. If I were dying tomorrow, or next week, or a month from now, would I be doing this? What would matter to me? Who would I call to say, “I love you?” What could I just let go of, saying to myself or to anyone within earshot, “Never mind.” In that sense, death is a gift. I think most of us would be selfish, lazy, irresponsible jerks without it.

Everything dies. Bruce Springsteen is a much better theologian than 90% of what I read on cancer boards: “Everything dies, Baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back. Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City.”

You play the cards you’re dealt. You do the best you can. You will die sooner or later. But God will never abandon you. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. That’s what I try to convey when I post on cancer support websites. God is love. Love is stronger than death.

posted by Amy on May 13

When I found out my brother Ross had metastatic lymphoma I sent him some guided imagery CDs that I got in 2011 when my cancer was first diagnosed. He belonged to a “Science of Mind” church (now known as “United Centers for Spiritual Living”), so I thought he’d be receptive to them. He told me he loaded them onto his iPod and listened to them twice a day.

I found them very helpful for managing my fear and anxiety and helping me sleep more soundly. The narrator has you imagine a beloved, beautiful place. You are surrounded by loving helpers. You visualize your immune system surrounding and engulfing the cancer, clearing away the dead cancer cells and making room for new, healthy cells. The music, the sound of her voice, and the relaxation produce a profound sense of inner peace.

Each CD ended with a series of affirmations. The final two affirmations are, “More and more, I know that I can heal myself and live, or I can heal myself and die. My wholeness does not depend on my physical condition” and “More and more, I know that I am held in the hands of God and I am perfectly, utterly safe.” Although the guided imagery is not specifically religious, what I, as a Christian, heard was, “Death is not the end. God is here.” I did, indeed, feel perfectly, utterly safe. I also realized that I am God’s beloved child no matter what my physical or mental capacity. My value, my worth, is intrinsic. Sickness and death happen, but they do not define my life or its meaning.

I don’t know how Ross heard it. I hope it helped him find peace, and to die without fear. We are all finite, fragile beings. No one gets out alive. Stage IV lymphoma kills almost everyone who gets it. Ross had an especially aggressive form that did its work in just a few months.

Somehow in his last few weeks Ross found time to be despicable and mean-spirited. He did something deliberately intended to harm his son, and he angrily dismissed his daughter when she tried to talk to him about it. That may be why his wife concealed the fact of his death–to punish them and “get back” at them. That is not how dying people usually act. They want to mend fences. They want their families with them. They want to say goodbye. They want to give and get forgiveness.

I think Ross must not have known he was dying. He told everyone he planned to get well. His daughter told me she didn’t know how sick he was. I know how stubborn and single-minded he was. Obviously, life and death are not entirely a matter of will and desire. Unfortunately, his church appears to teach that they are.

My younger brother also belongs to a Center for Spiritual Living. Over the years I’ve attended services there. They had great music, and often-inspirational messages. Their teachings are in the “New Thought” tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Norman Vincent Peale, a Christian, propounded many of the same ideas. Many “New Age” philosophies also subscribe to the core idea that we create our own reality. It seemed to me that the logical extension of this idea is to blame people for any misfortune that befalls them. Supposedly you can have a perfect, immortal life by training your thoughts. “Practitioners” stand in front of the room and say they can give you that. Yet I saw overweight, or divorced, or otherwise “imperfect” Practitioners.

Science of Mind teaches that people bring about their own fates. You’re sick because you willed it. You die because you want to die.

This is horrifying and cruel. And in cancerland it is ubiquitous. I belong to an online support group for people with my subtype of breast cancer. In the two years I’ve been on it several long-time and much-loved members have died. They get to the place where treatment is not working. The cancer begins to overwhelm them. They post about that, and I’m glad they do, because we are a community and I am committed to accompanying other members of the community until we are parted by death. But there are people on the board who keep offering little pathetic magical talismans, saying, “Take this herb,” or “follow this diet” or “get this supplement.” It’s snake oil. It’s magical thinking. And I think it’s a form of whistling in the graveyard–if you don’t die, then there’s hope for me. Underneath is an implication that you’ve failed if you are unable to get well. I think that’s horrible.

Modern medicine is not always effective against cancer. But nothing else has been proven to be effective at all. I try to take care of myself, but that’s so I’ll have the best possible life in the here and now. I do it so my mind and body will work as well as possible, to the end that I make the most of whatever time I have left to live. But I hope and pray that when I get to the end of the line I will have a good death–lucid, peaceful, beautiful, and bathed in love. There’s a story–apocryphal I hope–of a woman who got chemo on the day she died. I don’t want to be that person.

What possible good does it do to put the burden of not dying of cancer on someone who’s going to die of something, someday?  What is wrong with people? Why should we be afraid of death? Even for the non-religious, it can be a deeply spiritual, meaningful event. Life outside the womb starts with that first breath in. It ends with that last breath out. Denying that reality makes no sense to me.

posted by Amy on May 12

April, 2013 was one tough, cruel month for me. While good things happened, it was mostly horrendous. It’s hard to rank the calamities in order of severity, so I’ll just do it chronologically.

The month began with unexpectedly bad news about my health. I was in a drug study that required me to get a CT scan every 8 weeks. For two scans in a row, an area in the lower lobe of my left lung had increased in size. The radiologist who read my March 11 scan described this as “overall progression of disease.” My oncologist said that could be a matter of interpretation. I felt he was overreaching. I had never had it confirmed that I have lung metastases, even though the first scan in April, 2011 showed some suspicious nodules. I asked for a biopsy, and my oncologist agreed. At first the request was denied, because whoever made that decision didn’t think it looked like cancer. Then the tumor board approved it.

I got a lung biopsy, and on April 5 it was confirmed that I do have breast cancer cells in my lungs. It was a shock, and it really threw me for a loop. Studying was out of the question. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I went back to the drawing board–thinking about what really matters, assessing whether I am making the best use of the time I have left, and dealing with the whole business of telling people, talking to them about it, and so on.

All I wanted to do was knit dishcloths:

In the midst of that my sister, who lives in Denver, and who is disabled by mental illness and MS, went to the hospital because she couldn't walk very well. It might have been an MS flareup, or it might have been fueled by a spike in her general level of anxiety. Probably both. Before I could stop them they gave her steroids to treat the MS. Steroids invariably trigger psychosis in her, and she embarked on a cycle of mania and depression. When she's manic she obsesses about things. When she's depressed she becomes convinced that she has committed unforgivable offenses against God and humanity and will burn in hell. When she's not manic or depressed she gets along fairly well, and doesn't need me much. When she's psychotic that changes, and I worry about what she might do to harm herself.

She decided it was time to move to assisted living. I had been reluctant to see her give up her independence, but she lives in a condo on the third floor of a funky old cinder block building . The condo association can't collect enough dues from all the low-income owners to pay all its bills, so they decided to take the elevator out of service as of the end of the year. Clearly something had to be done. An opening came up in a pretty decent place in the same general part of town as her condo. I agreed she should do it. And I decided I'd better go to Denver to help with the move. I bought a ticket to leave Boston April 19.

I'm her guardian and conservator, so I had to be the one to sign all the paperwork. I faxed it to the assisted living place on Monday, April 15. The woman called me and said she was glad to have received it, because my sister had called the previous Friday to cancel. I said, "Well, there are reasons she needs a guardian."

I was in Denver from April 19 to April 23. My son Jesse, a family friend, the friend's son, and my cousin Russ all helped. Nancy was in a rehab center, her second since the initial hospitalization. We loaded her furniture into the truck and drove it to the new place. The bedroom furniture fit OK, but most of the living room furniture was far too bulky for the new living/dining area. She has a motorized scooter that was going to have to be stored in her apartment too. It just wasn't going to work. The neighbor across the hall got the love seat, and we stuck his old couch in the rented truck and dropped it off at Goodwill.

We went to Ikea Saturday and bought new furniture, including narrow wall shelves and a laptop desk to replace her giant oak office desk and hutch, a file cabinet, a little shelf/counter unit for the kitchenette, closet inserts to make her bedroom closet more usable, and a sweet little glass and metal bistro table and two chairs to replace her big old table and chairs. It was all delivered Sunday afternoon, and Jesse and I started assembling it. I stayed until almost 10. Jesse spent the night, working until early the next morning.

Our goal was to have it looking like home by the time Nancy arrived on Monday morning. We met that goal. I repotted and pruned her plants. We put some of her pictures on the new shelving unit we bought. After she got there we kept working. One of her dressers had been water damaged and was moldy. With all the new storage space we were able to get rid of it, making more room in the bedroom.

Jesse made another run to return some things and get other items we had decided she needed. He got a flat screen TV, a bracket to mount it on the wall, and a wall-mounted entertainment center. He also got some "floating" shelves. We put her collection of angels and saints on one of them. There were still some things left to do by the time we left Monday night, but it was mostly done, and done well. I felt really good about what we had been able to accomplish.

On April 18, the day before I left for Denver, I found out that my older brother Ross had died on April 13 and had been cremated April 16, all without my sister-in-law telling me or anyone else related to Ross, including his son and daughter, her stepchildren. He had lymphoma metastasized to his liver. It came on fast and initially responded to treatment, but then he didn’t make it.

Earlier in the year my niece had let me know Ross was sick, and I had reached out to him for the umpteenth time. This time he responded. We had a phone conversation and several email exchanges. I sent him some guided imagery CDs. I knitted him a prayer shawl and sent a couple of articles about cancer, dying, the meaning of life and all that. In the last email I got from him he said he felt blessed, and he appreciated my expressions of care and concern.

I published a funeral notice and began planning a family gathering in Ross's honor/memory. I also sent his wife a condolence card and, later, a really fine little book called How to Survive the Loss of a Love. I don’t hate her. I don’t have the energy, and life is literally too short. I know she is in pain, and I'm sorry about that.

I am still working through my feelings about Ross. The family event will help. We grieve, and heal, in community. Last night I learned that a cherished member of my online breast cancer community died in late April. I knew she probably would, but when I read about it I started crying. Maybe some of those tears were for Ross.

This all gave me some reason to regret taking five classes this semester, but the school and all my teachers have been wonderful. My BU primary care provider wrote to support giving me as many incompletes as I needed. I actually managed to finish the work for the class I was taking at Boston College. I also finished the "doctoral colloquium," a one-credit-hour course that's graded on a pass/fail basis. I have varying amounts of work to do for the other three classes. I'll get it done.

I don't know how to guard against being knocked down again by negative cancer news. Maybe there is no way.

posted by Amy on May 8

In June, 2007 I went to Washington DC for a “Pentecost Conference” put on by Sojourners. The conference included plenary sessions, breakout sessions, and lobbying training. It included a day of visiting elected officials to advocate for state-funded children’s health insurance, Farm Bill reform, and comprehensive immigration reform. President Bush had made taking on the messy, ugly immigration system in the U.S. one of his top domestic priorities, and the bill’s failure to surmount a cloture vote in the Senate was a bitter disappointment to him and to the many groups who had hoped to get it passed. (The NYT report of that defeat is here, including the fascinating detail the Mitch McConnell voted to end the debate.)

Jim Wallis, the head of Sojourners, describes himself as an evangelical and has famously said that “God is not a Republican or a Democrat.” He often points out that all the major social change movements in the U.S. have started in the churches. Sojourners organized “Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” to educate and mobilize “Christian organizations, churches, and leaders from across the theological and political spectrum to advocate for comprehensive U.S. immigration reform and compassionate immigration policies at the state level. Our coalition work is driven by common moral and theological principles that compel us to love, care for, and seek justice for all of God’s people, including the visitors and foreigners among us.” In 2007 CCIR published a booklet entitled, “Welcoming the Stranger.” (pdf)  At the Pentecost Conference, speakers and presenters explicitly linked worker justice, civil rights, and immigrant justice issues.

In 2013, immigration reform is back in the news. On April 14, the New York Times ran a story by Julia Preston stating that evangelicals were getting involved in the push for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to legal status and eventual citizenship, having, according to Preston, mostly sat out the previous effort. The article traced the current involvement of evangelicals to the formation in 2011 of a coalition called Evangelical Immigration Table.” Preston says,

Evangelical leaders, seeing the opportunity to expand their influence on a social issue beyond abortion and same sex marriage, have broadly united this year behind a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally. They are conducting an ambitious push to sway Congress, including ad campaigns on Christian radio stations in five states, meetings with lawmakers and a challenge to churchgoers to pray every day for 40 days using Bible passages that speak of welcoming the stranger.

The article implies that evangelical support for immigration is largely opportunistic, given the growth of Latino/Latina Protestant churches. But then it talks about the personal experiences of evangelicals who have church friends or neighbors who happen to be undocumented immigrants. It quotes one church member as saying, “Once you’ve walked with someone and put a face and family behind the immigration issue, it very much personalizes it,” he said. “You do find yourself with a lot of compassion.”

The two themes–that evangelicals are new to the immigration debate and that evangelical views on immigration can be seen in the same political frame as the GOP’s efforts to reach out to minorities–keep cropping up in news coverage of the “Evangelical Day of Prayer and Action for Immigration Reform” on April 17, 2013. The cover story for the April 15 issue of Time magazine featured two hands raised in prayer and the headline, “The Latino Reformation.” The article profiles several Latino charismatic Protestant congregations, including their views on immigration. It says, “Those efforts help explain why white evangelical church leaders are quietly urging Republican lawmakers to get behind comprehensive immigration reform.”  A front page article in the Wall Street Journal on April 8 also described white evangelicals’ support for comprehensive immigration reform as “a dramatic shift” in their thinking on the subject. The Time article and a blog post about it both talk about the huge growth of evangelical Protestant Latinos, as if “welcoming the stranger” is simply a church growth strategy or, as indicated above, a new wedge issue for building political clout.

PBS has a longer memory than Time, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal. In a piece that ran on April 17, 2013, PBS recalled the immigration battles of 2006 and 2007, replayed an interview with a Roman Catholic Bishop in Colorado that it first aired in 2006, and interviewed Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who had worked with the George W. Bush administration on its unsuccessful immigration reform bill. Rodriguez said the reformers had learned from the failure of the previous effort. He is quoted as saying, “We spoke to pastors across the country. We targeted the 24 largest cities in America, met with white Evangelical pastors, African-American pastors, sat down with them and said, ‘This is not a political issue, it is a moral issue.’” He goes on to say in the article, “Our churches are filled with undocumented individuals. . . .We may very well be deporting the future of American Christianity.”

I want to emphasize that, to Christians, immigration is a moral issue, and a theological one. You can easily spend forty days reading and contemplating multiple Bible verses about God’s commandments to extend hospitality and welcome, as well as material sustenance, to the “stranger” or “alien.” A project of the Evangelical Immigration Table called “G92,” standing for the 92 mentions in the Hebrew Bible of ger, meaning alien, drives this point home. The narratives, workshops and videos associated with G92 put a human face on the problem.

I want to close by observing that mainline churches and, with the exception of the PBS piece, the Roman Catholic Church, are conspicuously absent from the reporting on the 2013 immigration reform efforts, even though all faiths believe in justice and the kind of radical hospitality that evangelicals are expressing around immigration. I do not understand why the press has not noticed the role of faith communities other than evangelical Protestants in pushing for immigration reform.

On May 6, 2013 Jim Winkler, the General Secretary of the Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, re-ran a column about immigration reform that he originally published in November, 2007. Among other things, the column addressed the widespread hatred and xenophobia that was being directed at undocumented persons at the time. In 2008, the United Methodist Church passed a formal resolution calling for comprehensive immigration reform and a moral response to immigration issues asking “the United States Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that makes family unity, students being able to get an education at an affordable rate, fair and just treatment of laborers, and a reasonable path towards citizenship a priority.”

Exactly a week before the “Evangelical Day of Prayer and Action for Immigration Reform,” mainline churches and other groups, including the Presbyterian Church (USA), participated a National Day of Action In Support of Immigration Reform including meeting with legislators on Capitol Hill. According to a story in Reuters on April 10, “Tens of thousands of immigrants and activists rallied nationwide Wednesday in a coordinated set of protests aimed at pressing Congress to approve immigration measures that would grant 11 million immigrants living here illegally a path toward citizenship.”

A May 6, 2013 story outlines the position of the United Methodist Church on immigration reform, and the concerns it has about the legislative process. You can read it here. If you read the comments, you might conclude, as I did, that the UMC failed to prepare its members to understand the moral and theological imperatives involved, and the religious reasons for engaging in the political arena.

posted by Amy on May 8

I took a Methodist Doctrine and Polity class at an evangelical Baptist seminary. All persons seeking or considering ordination in the United Methodist Church (UMC) are required to take it, and all class members were United Methodists. One evening in class we were discussing same-sex orientation and relationships. The governing document of the United Methodist Church, its Book of Discipline, states: “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider (sic) this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” On the surface, the class member who said, “I think we can all agree that homosexual behavior is sinful” was on solid ground. But the majority of people in the class said, “No, we don’t agree.”

In 2012 at the quadrennial General Conference of the UMC, a resolution declaring that there is disagreement within the church on the issue of whether or not homosexual behavior is compatible with Christian teaching failed to pass. The very fact that it was proposed certainly validates the truth that there is disagreement on that issue. The fact that it did not pass is a consequence of power politics, not theology.

The question whether the UMC, or any groups within it, can still be considered “evangelical” is a topic for another post. But both the class-level discussion and the church-wide argument about homosexuality show that there is no single “Christian” position on the issue.

Are all evangelicals politically, socially, and theologically conservative? The first seminary I attended describes itself as “theologically conservative and socially progressive.” Some people find that juxtaposition surprising. They shouldn’t. Research shows that evangelicals exhibit all possible combinations of theological, political, and social stances. At that same “theologically conservative” seminary I studied liberation theology, process theology, and Glenn Beck’s bugaboo, “social justice.” The school was the home of “Evangelicals for Social Action,” which is just what its name implies.

Does the Bible condemn homosexual behavior and the “gay lifestyle?” It turns out there’s disagreement among Christians on that point as well. But my classmate’s question would not have settled the matter even if we had agreed with him that homosexual behavior is sinful. St. Paul reminded first century Christians that “all have sinned.” If only perfect people could come to church there would be nobody in the pews. Hold that thought, because it’s not just a foundation for a heteronormative, paternalistic, condescending “hate the sin, love the sinner” approach to LGBTQ relationships.

People who oppose the stark “incompatible with Christian teaching” language in the Discipline rightly point out that the UMC Social Principles are all about individual, social, and political behaviors and structures that are “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The UMC also thinks state-sanctioned lotteries, capital punishment, war, environmental degradation, domestic violence, child abuse, racial discrimination, divorce, and anything that violates any of the Ten Commandments are incompatible with Christian teaching, yet those sins are not singled out.

Do Christians who accept same-sex behavior simply ignore what the Bible says? Some people who identify themselves as Christian do not pass the conservative test of being “Bible believing.” That test, though, has itself morphed over time. In actuality, no one takes the entire Bible to be literally true. The Bible says the earth is square, with an angel standing in each corner. No one believes that. The Bible says the sky is a transparent dome holding up a vast amount of water. No one believes that. There are ways to read the “clobber verses” that respect the biblical witness and make the very important point that any exegesis of any Bible passage must take notice of the historical, social, and textual context for when the passage was written and for the persons reading it now. (One of the best arguments I’ve seen can be found HERE.) The accusation that people “cherry pick” Bible passages to buttress their pre-determined positions can be hurled in both directions, and is unhelpful. However, you will never have the slightest chance of convincing an evangelical that a particular interpretation is Christian unless you can demonstrate that the Bible supports the interpretation.

This post was inspired by Jason Collins, a veteran NBA player, who revealed in an interview in Sports Illustrated that he is gay. The interview appears in the May 6, 2013 issue of SI, but the story broke on May 2. All manner of fallout ensued, but I was most interested in the religious response. In the interview, Collins says his upbringing in the Christian church taught him love, self-respect, and acceptance. Chris Broussard, a sports commentator, was asked his personal opinion about whether you can be an openly gay person and a Christian, and he said no. The backlash to that was not confined to “secular humanists” who don’t respect Broussard’s deeply-held religious convictions. (Predictably, the “embattled Christian” meme kicked into high gear almost immediately. See this, claiming anti-Christian bias, and this, refuting that claim.)There were Christian rebuttals too, and not all of them were “liberal” voices. One of the more interesting responses, which you can read here, asked why Tim Tebow is thought to exemplify Christians in professional sports, but Jason Collins is not. That leads to another whole raft of questions about heterosexual and white stereotypes of Evangelicals, hyper-masculinity in some versions of Christianity, paternalism, and patriarchy, but I digress.

In my research for this post I discovered something amazing: a conservative-in-every-way Christian who makes a thoroughly biblical argument for conservative Christians to support and sanction same-sex, partnered relationships within their churches. In contrast to this post in the Baptist Press, which says that “opposition to homosexual behavior is surely part of the Christian message,” while advising Christians to “avoid overt homophobia” (a stance that falls squarely within the framing of the UMC Discipline), this one entitled “Why I Believe Pastors Should Support Jason Collins” observes that Christians “allow every other form of unchangeable human circumstance to be welcome in our pews,” except for “those who cannot change their sexual orientation and who may not be gifted by God to live a celibate life.”

Briefly in the post, and in more detail in the book Over Coffee, the author, Dave Thompson, says that God’s first moral rule is that “man should not be alone.” (Gen 2:18). He argues that real life involves imperfect humans with less-than-ideal capacities who find themselves in less-than-ideal circumstances. Some people have to work on Sunday, even though the Bible clearly imposes the death penalty for Sabbath-breaking. It is better for divorced people to remarry than to be alone, even though technically the New Testament says their second marriages are adulterous. Life, he says, “is about coupling God’s best intentions for us with our best abilities.” Thompson uses the Bible to sanction same-sex “partnership,” (but not marriage equality) in a manner that just might help conservative Christians reconcile their commitment to biblical faith with their desire to love all their neighbors.

posted by Amy on Apr 28

I use this blog to think through things that are important to me, and to talk about issues in ways that I hope will be helpful to others. A lot of people tell me they read it and appreciate it. But some people have been offended or hurt by the things I said, which is not my intention. I conceal identities and keep personal details to a minimum, but in some cases that has proven to be insufficient.

The solution is to password-protect posts that might be sensitive. I’ll send you the password and explain how it works if you email me a request.

Of course, that will probably also cause problems, but it’s the best I can do.

posted by Amy on Apr 27

I found out a little over a week ago that my brother Ross McElheny had died. I knew he was gravely ill, so that in itself was not a shock. But Eve, his wife of almost 30 years, who has all my contact information and who knows I had been in communication with him about his illness, didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell his son and daughter (her stepchildren). She didn’t tell any McElhenys.

Ross and I had a complicated relationship. But I love him and I miss him.

I have created a webpage for him, courtesy of the folks who do the online guest books for funeral notices. You can contribute content for it. All you have to do is register for the site. I will have approval authority, but I will exercise it loosely. Click here to be taken to the web page.