As I was driving to yoga tonight, there seemed to be a lot of traffic at the corner of La Paz and Marguerite Parkway.  Whatever could it be, I wondered?  Then I remembered a few tweets about a Tea Party and an essay (with which I happen to agree) about the "Huh?" response I'm having to the whole concept of the nationwide "rebellion" against higher taxes.

In his op-ed piece in today's LA Times, Marc Cooper asks the important question up front:  "What, exactly, are the protesters protesting? The marginal tax rate rising 3% for millionaires?"  I would like to up the ante and ask where all this anger was when Bush was busily cutting taxes on millionaires (and billionaires), cutting programs for the lowest paid workers among our citizenry and building up the biggest deficit in history?

I understand in California (especially in Orange County) that there is the frustration of actual taxes going up (vehicle taxes, for example)...but again, my question is what are these folks protesting?  That ballot box budgeting (which they've consistently voted for in the past 10 years) ties the legislature's hands and makes it impossible to balance our budget due to "required spending?"

Yeah, we're a wreck economically but we (or the majority of we) are the ones who voted for this system.  Maybe we should recall ourselves instead of our governors.

Then there was the very amusing (and right on the button) piece by Jon Stewart on the Barackaphobia going on over at Fox "News" and generally throughout the right wing these days.  I know it will slow down my page's loading, but it's worth it to let you just click below and enjoy.

(Or if you're of the opposite political pole, perhaps it will provide you with a sense of how I felt watching the last 8 years.)

So...yeah...what Cooper and Stewart said.  This "Tea Party" belongs to the Mad Hatter's realm...not on the corner of La Paz and Marguerite.

Isn't it funny how we keep relearning the same lessons over and over in our lives?  In my case, I have a very strong penchant for seeing life in either/or, all or nothing terms.

This trait has stood me in good stead when I've needed to compete or to excel at some task or objective.  Yet in this brave new world of cancer, I find it serves me less well than what I'm calling "the third way."

As an example, I woke up on Sunday feeling (as I now recognize I do on most post-chemo Sundays) rather grumpy.  What was bothering me, I wondered.  Why was my soul inhabited by a foul, cranky, three-year-old?

I journaled for a bit and it occurred to me that I have been telling myself all through this chemo process that I am allowed Thursday afternoon through Saturday night as my "VLE" days.  By Sunday, I should be back to "normal."

So I asked Dan, and he confirmed, that by and far Sundays were my worst emotional days.  As he put it, "You want it to be done and it's not."  Upon further reflection, I realized that there's also a bit of all or nothing thinking in the mix.  Either I'm 100% on Sunday or the day is a loss.  I have failed.  Hence the three-year old.

What a weight off my shoulders when I realized that this is an artificial, self-made goal.  There is no guidebook for chemo weeks that says, "If you're not feeling 100% on Sunday, you've failed at chemo and you're going to get a "C" in chemo."

So I relaxed, passed an extremely pleasant and low-key day with Dan.  Lesson learned, right?  I can check the box and move on?

Not quite.  I woke up on Monday and really wanted to be done with cancer entirely.  I've learned my lesson.  The tumors can just go away now and I can go back to "real life."

What is real life?  Well, in my mind, I had decided that real life included travel (to Machu Picchu for my 50th), finishing and publishing my novel, playing golf, helping folks out who need a bit of caretaking, enjoying a good chardonnay most evenings.  You know.  Regular life.

And I was pretty cranky about the idea that I don't get to have that now because of cancer.  So my wonderful therapist Anne and I discussed times in life where my expectations have not been met due to shifting realities.  We talked about being able to hold onto dreams without giving them deadlines.  We talked about being able to say "someday" instead of "on this date."

And somewhere during the conversation it clicked that I was learning, AGAIN, the same lesson from Sunday.  It's not either I get my old life back or nothing.  The truth is that I'm on this chemo path for a while.  In the meantime, I'm living my life.  My real life.  Because sometimes life throws you a whammy and bam, you're on a different path than you planned on taking.

And that path...well, the view from here is pretty awesome most days.  And the hike is far more challenging than climbing Machu Picchu will be, I suspect.

So I've decided that this process of growth, where I keep learning the same thing over and over is a type of meditation--where one returns daily to the same topic (say compassion or the third way) and plumbs it again for new insight.

Pretty good work for a nondescript Tuesday, I'd say!

I mentioned last week that through the synchronicity which often happens as I'm reading through various articles and surfing the internet, there was a confluence of a web-ad called "A Gathering Storm" and an article in Newsweek on Religion called "The End of Christian America."

In the article, author Jon Meacham makes reference to the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey which found that "the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent."  Moreover, much of the shift has occurred in parts of America not associated with liberalism per se...the Northeast for example, has been a bastion for religious institutions, yet the article points out that it "has emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified."

Meacham discussed the issue with R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  Mohler is concerned that the growing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans indicates the "coming storm" (to borrow a phrase) where America's religious life is no longer the underpinning for America's social order.  Mohler (and I dare say the folks at the "National Organization for Marriage;" meaning the National Organization for Keeping Marriage exclusive to heterosexuals) tend to see these numbers as proof of the unravelling of the fabric of our society.

But as Meacham points out so succinctly, "As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom--not least freedom of conscience."

We are, I believe, at a cross-road when it comes to the intersection of religious freedom and equal civil rights for our gay and lesbian neighbors.  And I think Meacham's point about our unifying principle having more to do with freedom and liberty and less to do with particular faith paradigms is so crucial.

Precisely because we are at this cross-road, organizations like NOM (and religious leaders like Mohler) are in a position where they feel vulnerable and threatened.  In the past, it was easy to assume that everyone shared the same religious tenets; that the power exercised by religious authorities within the public square was not only right but natural.

But we have seen the crumbling of discrimination, in many cases fostered by the church, founder on the rocks of our national dedication to equality, freedom and justice.  We've seen it with slavery, with anti-miscegenation laws, with women's rights and now we are beginning to see the dawn of the day where gay men and women are recognized as full citizens with equal rights.

Unfortunately, the ad by NOM is addressed to the worst instincts of fear.  Actors intone that a storm is gathering, that "gay activists" want to change "my life."  (Which begs the thinking person to ask, "Really?  They want you to be gay?")  They cite a few situations where religious organizations and the State have conflicted over equal rights for gays.  Catholic Charities voluntarily withdrawing from adoption when they couldn't exclude adoptions to gay couples in Massachussets.  A church that received tax exempt status for a recreation area and was subsequently denied tax exemption (which had originally been a state incentive encouraging private charities and religious organizations to allow access to open spaces for the general public) when they refused to allow a lesbian couple to wed there.

And, of course, there are the ubiquitous protests of "They'll teach my kids that gay couples are equal to straight couples."  This argument will be painfully familiar to those who endured the Prop 8 ads last fall.  What I object to the most in this ad is the fear-mongering and the "aw shucks, we're just folks who don't want things to change" tone that puts me uncomfortably in mind of our former President's tactics for keeping us afraid for so very long.

And yet, I think we have solutions available to us that will allow churches and their adherants to maintain their religious freedom while also allowing the State to recognize gays and lesbians as fully equal citizens.  A few weeks ago, I wrote about an article proposing a third way--where religious freedom was protected specifically by law--allowing churches, synagogues and mosques to teach and practice their faith according to their doctrine; not requiring them to marry or even accept as members those who break with their doctrine.  The idea has grown on me.

In this interim, I don't see anything wrong with protecting ACTUAL religious freedom.  But when it comes to matters where the State has primary interest, commerce, education, equal employment and, yes, the right to marry the person you love--I think religious freedom is trumped by our national interest in adherance to our fundamental values of liberty and justice for all.

As Meacham said in his article, "The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life."  I hope he's right and this cross-road leads to calmer, informed and respectful discourse among us all, regardless of our beliefs.

I have always loved Spring.  As a child, I looked forward to the blooming flowers, the softening and warming of the season, the way it presaged summer...just up there, somewhere around the corner.

When I was in my middle teens, I became a Christian and Spring took on a deeper resonance in my life.  It was home to Easter, the holiday where we celebrate Christ's resurrection and God's unbounded grace.

Over the years, I have struggled with faith...or more accurately, I have struggled with the institutions of faith.  Yet Spring and Easter have not lost their hold on my heart even in the deepest of these struggles.

My favorite memory of Easter comes from about 20 years ago.  We were at a friend's house for brunch and there was a gaggle of kids there too, waiting for an Easter egg hunt.  The kids were all lined up and set free to hunt for eggs in the back yard.  They sprang forward with all the energy of Spring in their limbs and the youngest of them realized quickly there was no way he'd ever get to an egg first. 

He opened his mouth and gave the most awesome howl I have ever heard, stopping the other kids just long enough that he could run towards the eggs and have a fighting chance.

Which leads to today's question:  In this season of hope and renewal, what is your inmost being howling for?

Passed a very pleasant morning getting coffee with Dan at Starbucks, checking out a book by a young woman with cancer (Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips) and mulling over the differences (and similarities) between our approaches to this dis-ease and my desire to put together some sort of book or workshop to help people navigate the early waters of a dire diagnosis.

I like that I am learning to relax into these lower energy days.  That I am no longer beating myself up mentally for not "getting stuff done" but am instead recognizing that I can get different stuff done on these days (including naps and rest periods!) and that's just fine.  Better than fine, even.  It's living my life on my own terms instead of the definitions I have either outgrown or been forced to abandon by the necessities of chemo.

I've got some interesting thoughts mulling too over an article in Newsweek about the "decline of Christianity" and a recent ad by a "traditional" marriage advocacy group about the "gathering storm" of the equal marriage rights movement.  I hope to be able to write about that on Monday and then begin my research into the byzantine California propositions (vote coming up soon) for some recommendations by this humble pundit. 

But for now?  More couch time with a good book.  Looking forward to a brief visit with Mom and her friend, Lilliane (on their way up to see an opera) and watching golf/cross stitching this afternoon while Dan gets out and plays some golf.

Who knows...maybe even a walk since the sun has decided to poke its head out of the clouds!

It's a lovely overcast day here in Southern Orange County...just perfect for VLE days.  Although I must confess that I felt/am feeling far fewer side effects than usual.  My taste buds stayed with me through yesterday (a record) and my neuropathy seems to be less this week than it has been before.

One of the many wonders of a wander through chemo is that you can never tell from one week to the next what your body will be doing.  Sort of like riding Space Mountain in the dark.  Which way are we going now?

Best to relax and let the ride take you.  (And visualize, and feed your soul, and live the moment you're in.)

Today, that's going to look like this for me:

Reading a bit.
Writing a few cards.
Watching the Masters this afternoon.
Napping.
Letting Dan feed me!
Injecting myself with medicine that will encourage my bones to grow blood cells quickly.

Grow scrubbing bubbles!  Thanks for checking in...I'll see if tomorrow holds enough energy for a bit more substantive blog.

 

Went shopping with Dad and Sally this morning for various necessities, including some foam balls for David.  We couldn't find those, so I ordered online this afternoon.

Had a great chat with my sister-in-law, Cindy and later a surprise chat with my former hair-dresser in Santa Clarita and all around goddess, Farida!  She's going to be down our way soon...sadly we will be out of town.  But it's always nice when people try to hook up.  We'll do so eventually.

Now I am going to head down to the couch to rest up for tonight's yoga session from 6 to 7:30.  Had a great sleep last night and am looking forward to being d/c's tomorrow and then getting my injections so I can boost those white blood cells and kick some more cancer butt (butt cancer?) during the non-chemo week using the White Blood Cells/scrubbing bubbles that are our body's first natural line of defense against cancer.

Ciao for now, peeps.

Played 18 holes of golf at our club this morning with two girlfriends--one of them, Tina, and I have played often together.  April and I played once before, I think.

At any rate, I was telling them at one point about my progress with chemo treatments, the importance of attitude and the critical importance of the cancer patient understanding that she (or he) is the centerpost of her (or his) care.  They were both quite encouraging on the concept of my speaking to various cancer support groups and/or writing a book about this experience.  I've made a small start on the book...and am noodling the ideas surrounding an effective group working session.

The title of the book/workshop/idea is, as you may have guessed, Golf on Monday, Chemo on Tuesday.  It conveys the idea that life doesn't stop with a cancer diagnosis (no matter how severe and scary).  In fact, sometimes a better, more conscious, way of life starts with a cancer diagnosis.

Today on the course, we saw a number of birds...including a momma duck with about 12 little ducklings swimming in tight formation behind her. I posted an 8 on that hole (two water balls) but didn't care a whit.  Those ducklings made that hole for me.

(Note to self and fellow golfers though:  Just because you know how Tiger Woods would do it, doesn't mean you can execute the shot.)

Another thing making my day?  My old college friend, Bob Higgins, is part of a band called Reckless Red.  They do some fun alt-country, alt-rock songs and you can listen and download them for free here.  Check it out.

I infuse tomorrow and then have fanny-pack chemo on board until Thursday.  I'm itching to get going this week.  Feel like the cancer cells have been resting up and I want to hit 'em hard.  Prayers and good wishes appreciated.  See you on the flip side, if not sooner.

Realizing with a bit of chagrin that I have yet to respond to last Sunday's comments, I nonetheless (isn't nonetheless a great word?) have a question for this Sunday--for you to ponder, evaluate, get back to me on, take a stand, make a statement.

Roosevelt said during the Great Depression that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  He said that while people were being blown off their land by dust storms, while bread lines stretched around corners, while Rome (essentially) burned and was remade.

It's my belief that we are in a similar situation now.  That what's making this deeper and worse than the average recession has at least as much to do with fear as it does with "reality" in the stock market or the car manufacturers.

Which leads to the Sunday question:  What part do you feel fear is playing in our current situation? 

A few Sundays back, the Sunday Question was about the distinction of compassion.  I've been dabbling a bit in meditation recently and started where the Dalai Lama suggests one starts meditation...by concentrating on compassion.  Last night, during my meditation, a thought came to me about compassion.  I recorded it on the flyleaf of a book and recaptured it in my journal this morning.

Compassion is a meeting of the self in the other (and of the other in the self).  The meeting is without envy or pity and each participant leaves the encounter enriched by witnessing (and being witness to) a shared humanity.

I think I'm onto something here...and while it sounds very Eastern in thought, I believe it's exactly the way Christ encountered individuals (at least as it's recorded in the Bible).  He was present.  He got it.  He spoke the truth of the situation, regardless of the other person's "ears to hear."

Just some food for thought on a Friday afternoon.

By the way, the flower above is a bromeliad in bloom.  It was given to me by my friend, Katy, a month or so ago.  Isn't it gorgeous?