Liturgy, Bone
Marrow, and the Body and Blood of our Savior
Sunday, March 6, 2005
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
11 am, Saint Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, Washington
Today our routine begins very much as it has for the
last two days: rise an hour before we are to be at the clinic;
bathe, dress, eat breakfast. After a quick meal, Janice begins her
morning’s litany by taking the first round of 30+ pills she must
digest over the next 12 hours.
Then, we
lock the apartment door behind us, one of 70 such doors behind
which live families battling cancer. We push the elevator’s “down”
button and emerge at the Pete Gross House basement parking. As we
have often done, we drive the four blocks or so to the Seattle
Cancer Center, park in one of the garage spaces designed for
compact cars yet filled with pickup trucks and SUV’s. Cancer is
not our only challenge.
Janice, Craig (our dear friend who
has flown in from Denver to be with us during chemo), and I file
into the small cell of a room, room #12, for round three of Fludarabine,
the chemo which dulls Janice’s white blood count, making it less
likely to attack the donor’s bone marrow. We’re all very aware
that this is the final round of chemo before her Tuesday bone
marrow transplant.
She climbs onto the hospital bed, Craig and I sit in the two
chairs available (one straight-back and one recliner) and a
doctor’s stool remains empty. There is room for little more. Jim
(our nurse for the day), comes in and asks how she feels.
“Have you experienced any
nausea?”
“No,” Janice replies.
“Dizziness?”
“No.”
“Here’s your Zofran
(pill number 16 in the last hour; this one to prevent nausea
during and after the chemo drip).
Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thank you.”
Jim (nurse, not husband) hitches
Janice to her saline drip and when the bag of Fludarabine arrives
from the lab, attaches the chemo to the saline for a 30-minute
infusion. Janice has gotten as good as a lab technician at
whipping out the three feeding lines of her Hickman port. She’s
swiftly hooked up and I’m realizing how thoroughly I admire this
woman’s readiness to roll with all that comes her way.
Five minutes into treatment Janice
looks at me and says, “Well, the Zofran has hit.” I watch her
eyelids grow heavy and her body relax. We all watch the food
channel on a TV suspended from the wall while slowly, silently,
chemicals drip, drip, drip into my dear wife’s vein.
When she is finished, we rush the
groggy woman up Denny Street, hoping this clear, crisp Seattle
morning will wake her enough to participate in the 11:00 service
at St. Mark’s Cathedral, located on the slope of Capitol Hill,
standing watch over the Emerald City and Lake Union. For you not
familiar with Seattle, the Cathedral is a well-recognized
landmark.
St. Mark’s is a strangely beautiful building; from a distance, the
large square structure seems regal and spectacular. Up close I was
surprised by what appears to be, well, unfinished walls cast in
concrete. At some point of its construction, a facade of layered
red brick was added to the entrance, but only there. The north and
south sides of the tall concrete box are relieved by two arched
windows on each wall, but these are not typical
“Cathedral” windows.
They are tall, wide and industrial. They look more like they were
salvaged from a nineteen-forty’s factory than the stain glass one
might expect in a religious landmark.
By the time we arrive, we are running late, much to my chagrin.
I hate missing the opening hymn and processional of the
Episcopal worship service. I swing through the circular drive and
drop off Janice and Craig so they can find seats while I fight the
frustration of having to park a few blocks away and run back to
the church. Once I do enter, I hurry through the low ceiling
narthex and step into the sanctuary.
Wow.
Everything in me stops. I am overwhelmed as I step out from under
the cramped nine-foot ceiling of the narthex into the expansive
50-foot canopy of the sanctuary formed of heavy wooden beams. The
interior walls repeat the unfinished texture of the building’s
exterior, except here they are covered with old, worn, chipped and
mildewed paint. Here, those institutional windows have the same
unadorned appearance; only, something is different, very
different. Those massive, multi-pained windows become paths to the
sky, cascading the most incredible infusion of light I can
remember.
“This is the
message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you,
that God is Light,
and in Him is no darkness at all.”
Janice, Craig and I had just left
the limited confines of a hospital cell with all its dark
realities, filled with the machines of treatment, icons of finite
hope and human limitations. Now we have entered a room which, by
its vastness alone, shouts the power and presence of our infinite
Creator.
Amazingly enough, the
“bigness” of the room
does not translate into
“coldness,” for the light which enveloped the room took
the form of the very arms of God.
“The people who
walked in darkness
have seen a great light:
Those who lived in a land of deep darkness-
On them light has shined.”
“Blessed be the God of our salvation”
“Who bears our burdens and
forgives our sins.”
The dialogue between the Presider and
the congregation interrupts my visual epiphany. I find Janice and
Craig and join them in the center section.
“God be with you.”
“And also with you.”
At that moment I am reminded once again,
that yes, He is with us…He has been with us…and will continue to
be with us through the medical procedures of this week, procedures
which could very well mean life itself.
I am also reminded that like this building, we each have a story
only partially told. Why these seemingly unfinished Cathedral
walls, why this old paint, where did these amazing windows come
from? What is the story?
I reflect on what it means to me to sit in a room of strangers yet
fellow members of the body of Christ,
our family, members who are not aware of Janice, the unknown woman
sitting in the pew with short curly hair, what she is going
through, what the last year has met to the two of us. At that
moment I become acutely aware that each person here carries their
own story, their own burden, and the presence of God meets each of
us at our own level of need.
“Holy, Holy,
Holy Lord,
God of power and might
Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might,
Heaven and earth are full, full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest, hosanna in the highest.
Blest is the one who comes
In the Name of the Lord,
Hosanna in the highest, hosanna in the highest”
My thoughts fly to the words,
Liturgy, borrowed bone marrow, the body and blood of our Savior,
and the vulnerable body of my beloved wife:
“…Sanctify us
also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament,
and serve you in unity, constancy and peace.”
It’s a mix, isn’t it? The ordinary
and the extraordinary; my running from a car to church and, come
Tuesday, an anonymous courier running donated cells across the
country for our sake. Liturgy, bone marrow, Jesus, Janice.
Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us;
Therefore let us keep the feast
The Presider and congregation
interact, drawing me back into the service,
Liturgy, bone marrow, Jesus and Janice…the thoughts of my mind
today.
Tuesday, March 8,
2005
Day Zero, Bone marrow transplant
4 pm, University of Washing Hospital, Seattle, Washington
Twenty-four hours past the time Janice was
originally scheduled for transplant, the bone marrow stem cells
arrived in her room. Wednesday. 4:42 p.m. I watched as nurses
mater-of-factly did what they’ve done many times before and their
calm flew in the face of my heart’s extraordinary beating. How
could so crucial an act be received without fanfare? The
Transplant we have prepared for, prayed for, and waited for was
happening. The nurse hitched her up and I shuffled back and forth
in nervous exhaustion at the reality of it all.
It’s a no-brainer to say that we see
life every day, everywhere, in fact so abundantly that we rarely
pay attention to the wonder of it all. But as the marrow started
slipping from the bag and mixing with the saline solution ahead of
it, as the blood was diluted, Janice and I were given the
privilege of seeing Life,
the very stuff of
life, thousands of
individual stem cells swimming down the clear plastic tube into
Janice’s body.
When I explained this to Barb Pine over the phone (with tears
running down my face) her immediate response to my description of
the transfusion was that the process was, in and of itself, the
ultimate act of worship, and it truly was; our Creator has
provided the means for us to share in those things which bring
hope, healing and actual life to one another. I could only think
of Romans 12:1 (and I paraphrase for memory since it is 4 a.m. and
I am typing in the dark), “I beg you brothers and sisters, by
God’s mercy, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” We watched a
living sacrifice slip into Janice’s body and we prayed her body
will receive the invasion of such goodness.
Now, in the early hours of this dark
and hopeful morning,
my baby rests. She suffered a severe headache earlier and was
brutally nauseous after taking the pile of pills required nearly
every time she blinks, but morphine and sleep have eased her pain.
Now, we wait. We wait to see if the stem cells graft, we wait to
see if she is spared graft-verses-host-disease,
and ultimately, we wait to see if the donor’s bone marrow
overtakes Janice’s own, recognizes any remains malignant plasma
cells as foreign invaders and kills them. We wait.
I write as a new day dawns. After sleeping for the second night in
a row on a hard, hospital recliner, I scratch at a scruffy beard
and try smoothing my crumpled clothes. I’m wishing Janice’s
sufferings were so minor. But, I write on a day named “First;” the
first of new hope. Last night when the nurses brought in the cells
they wished Janice a New
Happy Birthday. We have marked it on our calendars and in our
hearts and minds: March 9th, the day on which we believe healing
begins.
Almighty and everliving God
we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food
of the most precious Body and Blood
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ;
and for assuring us in these holy mysteries
that we are living members of the Body of your Son,
and heirs of your eternal kingdom.
And now, Father, send us out
to do the work you have given us to do,
to love and serve you
as faithful
witnesses of Christ our Lord.
To Him, to You, and to the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory, now and for every. Amen
