I Don't Know What to Call this... Must It Have a Title if I Wish to Speak?

Really and truly I have some much more lighthearted things lined up to write about, but this has been streaming around in my head for a few days, and on the ride home from Hayfork today, it just sort of finally gelled.


I know that it may seem like a fine line to some, the emotional place I’m walking these days. I think of my present state of mind as grace and acceptance. Others like to call it denial or delusion. As much as anyone, I would like to have answers to most of the questions that burn in my head lately—why am I sick? Why me? Why now? I cannot get my friend Heather out of my mind, thinking of how in 2007, she lost her two year-old daughter Rebekah to a long struggle with cancer. Why?

At no other time in my life, do I think I could have continued functioning in any practical manner without obsessing over all the question marks.

A few months back, when I began dealing with my health issues, I had a strange memory that I have been clinging to lately, like a precious gift. I think of this seemingly insignificant event almost daily, seeing the careful seed that was planted then, bearing fruit that is sustaining me now.

Back in the spring of 1995, I was at a Board of Supervisors’ meeting in Quincy, CA. That season had brought a lot of nervousness and unrest to our region and our nation. It was the time that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred. I lost a friend and mentor in that event. It was in that same time that the Unabomber struck at the California Forestry Association and killed its president, Gil Murray. Even strangers Gil had never met lost a friend as he opened a mail bomb in his office.

As the Plumas County Board of Supervisors commenced their meeting that day, Supervisor Bill Coates gave the ritual invocation that started every meeting. I’ve been to hundreds of meetings where the prayers, whether due to nervousness, politics, a busy agenda, or other unknowns, seem to come out full of pomp and pretense.

In the time I knew Bill, one of the things I truly appreciated about him was that he had that kind of comfortable relationship with his god that was illustrated in prayers that came out warm, intimate, and sincere. He didn’t throw up a bunch of words to the heavens and hope they’d stick. His prayers were those of a man who knows the God he serves. That day, Bill prayed, “God, I ask that you help us all find peace, even in the face of not having answers to the questions that burn in our hearts and in our minds.”

Back then, they were words that brought comfort in a time of grief and stress. Lately for me, they have been words that have challenged me to prove that I can be a good steward of the grace and peace and faith that I am finding in such superfluity.

I don’t think it matters where one’s spiritual compass exists—whether you believe in a Christian god, a karmic universe, the Golden Rule, or guide your life by the list of ingredients on a box of Cap’n Crunch—at some point in time, we are all faced with dilemmas in life that we cannot control, cannot answer, or cannot sometimes even fathom. We all have to find ways to accept the things we cannot change, preferably with enough grace and courage to propel us forward to better things and as better beings.

Most of my life I have not been one to let things lay. If it’s broken, I want to fix it. If it’s unjust, I want to seek justice. If it’s wrong, I want to make it right. I want to seek information, formulate a strategy, and implement a plan. It’s not easy to be still, listen, and wait. I’ve never given those tools the merit or respect they deserve until now.

I’m learning a lot about grace and patience these days. I don’t need to know why anything around me is the way it is in order to be who and what I’m called to be. I don’t need to know how things are going to turn out in order to make the most of the gifts I’m given in this present day.