36. Waiting For the Mysteries.
Our priest is on his way to our home.
I hope you don't mind me writing so often about the Orthodox Christian faith. Forgive me, please. It's just that so little is known about the Eastern Orthodox Church in the West and I feel an uncontrollable compulsion to reveal what I can. I myself knew next to nothing about Eastern Orthodoxy, assuming it was another branch of the Roman Catholic church or some other odd deviant form of Christianity. I was an American Protestant for most of my life after all, and a leader in our former church for many years in one capacity or another. And the USA is for the most part Protestant having been founded by Protestants with a friendly (most of the time) competition between all the denominations. The Roman Catholic church was also there of course but was considered separate due to the effects of the Reformation, and the "competition" is often less than friendly.
This matters because I always wished for unity and lamented the very existence of so many different denominations, and even more, hated the unhealthy migration of people from church to church as one pastor became popular, then was eclipsed in popularity by a different pastor with a newer building and a better "worship" band. And within and between most of these churches, a terrible inconsistency in doctrine, often with a simple majority vote all that is required to sway "official church doctrine" one way or the other.
When I discovered that the Eastern Orthodox Church has been in consistent and common communion without interruption between all the ethnicities involved going back to the disciples of Christ themselves, my ears perked up. Russian, Israeli, Egyptian, Serbian, Persian, American - all Orthodox churches believe and teach in unity both with each other and with the early church.
Uninterrupted. Uncorrupted. No denominations. One Church.
Count me in.
So our priest is on the way over to our home today, a Sunday, because Juli and I have listened to friends and family, and some published guidelines in this Covid-19 era, and stayed home. My immune system is somewhat compromised with my cancer treatments. It's really not bad compared to many, but we are exercising caution for at least a couple of weeks or so.
Fr. Andrew is bringing the Holy Mysteries from today's liturgy so he can administer them to both of us. In fact, we also missed Vespers last night and he came over afterwards to drop off some of the guidelines our church is following and to chat about things. He told us last night that he was perfectly willing to bring the Holy Mysteries to us after the service so we could receive what Christ is sharing, His Body and Blood, without having to be exposed to other people.
Pretty special. The Orthodox Church doesn't try to map out and explain how the bread and wine become body and blood. Anybody can see it is still bread and wine, and it still tastes like bread and wine, so there is no irrational attempt to say that what you taste and see is not actually what you are tasting and seeing. Instead, it is a mystery. Jesus said it was His body and blood, and that it was real food and real drink. So many of his disciples were offended by those words that they simply quit following Him. And if they were simply confused by His explanation, Jesus made no attempt to correct them.
Real food. Real drink.
One person put it this way: "If you can explain how Jesus was both God and Man, then you can explain how the Holy Mysteries are both bread and wine as well as body and blood."
I am beginning to have more experience with hospitals than I ever wanted, but I am certainly thankful for them. The Orthodox Church considers itself a hospital for the spiritually and physically sick. We pray constantly for the sick. And the Holy Mysteries are administered "for the healing of both soul and body." So when our priest offers to come to our home to administer the Holy Mysteries, it is hard for me to put into words what that means to me. It is hard to miss a liturgy in person. But Christ is coming, in the form of His servant Fr. Andrew, and He is coming to share His own Body and Blood for the healing of my body and soul.
No, I don't expect my cancer to dry up and blow away in some magical manner. Christ has determined for now that cancer is needful to me for the development of my soul. I don't hate like I used to. I love people like never before. I've been humbled and I don't want to trade those improvements, and future unknown improvements, for a magical healing. But Christ is beside me and in me and participating in this Great Contest with me. He didn't just die 2000 years ago, show Himself to His disciples before ascending into Heaven, only to never physically participate with us in 2020. The Holy Mysteries are His physical existence, His physical presence, through the power of the Holy Spirit - becoming a part of my own body.
It's more than just "remembering Him."
I'm beginning the 4th round of drugs in this trial. I still get nauseated a little every day. Every 8 weeks I have gone in for a bone scan and a CT scan to see if the cancer is spreading. It is not. The other component to the tests is of course the PSA monitor and I'm pleased to report that after hitting 0.2 after one cycle, from the next cycle to the one measured last week my PSA monitor has been "undetectable."
Whenever I experience fear, usually in my bed alone with my thoughts, I try to think of one word: "submit." Submit to the kindness of God in His guidance of soul and body. Long life. Short life. Submit. Your will be done, not mine.
When I was waiting in the waiting room last week for my turn on the CT scanner, an old man was wheeled in by his wife. They had driven 5 hours to get to the hospital only to have some mixups to deal with in scheduling. I wanted to give him my spot even though I'd already been waiting over 3 hours, but I had radioactive dye in my bones that required I get done with the CT scan quickly and get back over to the bone scan department while the dye was still effective.
We chatted and found many things in common. He has prostate cancer, and has spent years in the auto repair business. He had felt a pain in his back when lifting a tire and went to a doctor who ordered an MRI. The MRI revealed hints of the cancer and then began a race against time that he is losing. His PSA was in the 1000's and treatments have so far failed to be effective. He had been checking his PSA annually with no remarkable elevation prior to this! Falling down for no apparent reason became the reason for his use of a wheelchair. He's on a drug trial now in the hopes of finding a way to get it under control. I thought, this has to be awfully hard on a man in his late 70s or early 80s. When we got around to comparing ages, he told me he is 66. Only 6 years older than I am! And he was diagnosed 2 1/2 years ago. The exact same time I was diagnosed. I was reminded again how well I am doing compared to others.
A father came into the room with a little boy and a football. The boy was maybe 6 or so and they rolled the football back and forth and occasionally risked a toss. Cute kid - smiling a lot and playing with his dad. Which one needed the CT scan? It was the little boy.
A main hallway is just outside the waiting room and motorized beds are guided back and forth as I wait and watch. A woman is in one of the beds and clutched tightly against her breast is a toddler. Again, I don't know if the woman is the patient, or the toddler. I pray.
God is so merciful. I appreciate the time I have been given. Juli and I laugh and talk and count each moment precious. Without cancer, I don't think those moments would be quite so deep or quite as sweet. We celebrated 40 years of marriage two Sundays ago. We went to a cabin in the mountains and just unplugged. We wanted snow but it was 74 degrees! It reminded us of our honeymoon in 1980 at Diamond Lake, Oregon. Snow country. But it was a dry year and snow was hard to find. We enjoyed every minute, listening to audiobooks and sitting on the porch listening to the wind in the tops of the trees with Mt Lassen in the near distance. Beautiful.
Fr Andrew is here. The Holy Mysteries have arrived.
I hope you don't mind me writing so often about the Orthodox Christian faith. Forgive me, please. It's just that so little is known about the Eastern Orthodox Church in the West and I feel an uncontrollable compulsion to reveal what I can. I myself knew next to nothing about Eastern Orthodoxy, assuming it was another branch of the Roman Catholic church or some other odd deviant form of Christianity. I was an American Protestant for most of my life after all, and a leader in our former church for many years in one capacity or another. And the USA is for the most part Protestant having been founded by Protestants with a friendly (most of the time) competition between all the denominations. The Roman Catholic church was also there of course but was considered separate due to the effects of the Reformation, and the "competition" is often less than friendly.
This matters because I always wished for unity and lamented the very existence of so many different denominations, and even more, hated the unhealthy migration of people from church to church as one pastor became popular, then was eclipsed in popularity by a different pastor with a newer building and a better "worship" band. And within and between most of these churches, a terrible inconsistency in doctrine, often with a simple majority vote all that is required to sway "official church doctrine" one way or the other.
When I discovered that the Eastern Orthodox Church has been in consistent and common communion without interruption between all the ethnicities involved going back to the disciples of Christ themselves, my ears perked up. Russian, Israeli, Egyptian, Serbian, Persian, American - all Orthodox churches believe and teach in unity both with each other and with the early church.
Uninterrupted. Uncorrupted. No denominations. One Church.
Count me in.
So our priest is on the way over to our home today, a Sunday, because Juli and I have listened to friends and family, and some published guidelines in this Covid-19 era, and stayed home. My immune system is somewhat compromised with my cancer treatments. It's really not bad compared to many, but we are exercising caution for at least a couple of weeks or so.
Fr. Andrew is bringing the Holy Mysteries from today's liturgy so he can administer them to both of us. In fact, we also missed Vespers last night and he came over afterwards to drop off some of the guidelines our church is following and to chat about things. He told us last night that he was perfectly willing to bring the Holy Mysteries to us after the service so we could receive what Christ is sharing, His Body and Blood, without having to be exposed to other people.
 |
| I receive the Holy Gifts from Fr. Andrew |
Real food. Real drink.
One person put it this way: "If you can explain how Jesus was both God and Man, then you can explain how the Holy Mysteries are both bread and wine as well as body and blood."
I am beginning to have more experience with hospitals than I ever wanted, but I am certainly thankful for them. The Orthodox Church considers itself a hospital for the spiritually and physically sick. We pray constantly for the sick. And the Holy Mysteries are administered "for the healing of both soul and body." So when our priest offers to come to our home to administer the Holy Mysteries, it is hard for me to put into words what that means to me. It is hard to miss a liturgy in person. But Christ is coming, in the form of His servant Fr. Andrew, and He is coming to share His own Body and Blood for the healing of my body and soul.
 |
| Juli receives the Holy Gifts |
It's more than just "remembering Him."
I'm beginning the 4th round of drugs in this trial. I still get nauseated a little every day. Every 8 weeks I have gone in for a bone scan and a CT scan to see if the cancer is spreading. It is not. The other component to the tests is of course the PSA monitor and I'm pleased to report that after hitting 0.2 after one cycle, from the next cycle to the one measured last week my PSA monitor has been "undetectable."
Whenever I experience fear, usually in my bed alone with my thoughts, I try to think of one word: "submit." Submit to the kindness of God in His guidance of soul and body. Long life. Short life. Submit. Your will be done, not mine.
 |
| Bonus! A homiletic encore over coffee! |
We chatted and found many things in common. He has prostate cancer, and has spent years in the auto repair business. He had felt a pain in his back when lifting a tire and went to a doctor who ordered an MRI. The MRI revealed hints of the cancer and then began a race against time that he is losing. His PSA was in the 1000's and treatments have so far failed to be effective. He had been checking his PSA annually with no remarkable elevation prior to this! Falling down for no apparent reason became the reason for his use of a wheelchair. He's on a drug trial now in the hopes of finding a way to get it under control. I thought, this has to be awfully hard on a man in his late 70s or early 80s. When we got around to comparing ages, he told me he is 66. Only 6 years older than I am! And he was diagnosed 2 1/2 years ago. The exact same time I was diagnosed. I was reminded again how well I am doing compared to others.
A father came into the room with a little boy and a football. The boy was maybe 6 or so and they rolled the football back and forth and occasionally risked a toss. Cute kid - smiling a lot and playing with his dad. Which one needed the CT scan? It was the little boy.
A main hallway is just outside the waiting room and motorized beds are guided back and forth as I wait and watch. A woman is in one of the beds and clutched tightly against her breast is a toddler. Again, I don't know if the woman is the patient, or the toddler. I pray.
God is so merciful. I appreciate the time I have been given. Juli and I laugh and talk and count each moment precious. Without cancer, I don't think those moments would be quite so deep or quite as sweet. We celebrated 40 years of marriage two Sundays ago. We went to a cabin in the mountains and just unplugged. We wanted snow but it was 74 degrees! It reminded us of our honeymoon in 1980 at Diamond Lake, Oregon. Snow country. But it was a dry year and snow was hard to find. We enjoyed every minute, listening to audiobooks and sitting on the porch listening to the wind in the tops of the trees with Mt Lassen in the near distance. Beautiful.
Fr Andrew is here. The Holy Mysteries have arrived.
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