Open-heart surgery is eXtreme medicine. It’s like extreme sports except you aren’t fit when you start. And you don’t soar with exhilaration at first success. When you wake up alive, you feel like absolute crap. You are confused, and not sure the journey was worth it. You wonder, “This is why I consented to the battering?”
Of course it’s tricky, because your post-surgical condition isn’t the actual destination — health is. But in your confused state, you can’t really reason about that. The therapies are invasive and painful and they don’t inspire hope. And you are not in control.
You can’t move much, so you need help and a great deal of soothing. Ice on your forehead, sponge on your tongue, massage on your feet, hands on your hands. You can only hope that someone loves you as deeply as most people love their helpless babies. You hope they find their way to your side.
You need heavy sedation at first, so as not to stress your heart when it is still so fragile, so wounded. As the drugs leave your system, you may experience liminal moments on the way to consciousness. Perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that generally live just below the surface may come forward. “The people here…they are strange, cold…I am going to die…ginger ale, club soda, never again.”
I have a repertoire of responses for people in these kinds of moments, but I can’t access them when I’m with my own mother. Psychology and theology fly out the window. Only physical expressions of love seem to make sense.
The day before Mom’s surgery we spoke on the phone. A Catholic chaplain had come to visit her. She didn’t like the words he used when he prayed for her. So she asked me “If this religion is bunk, and that religion is bunk, what does that leave us?” I answered, even though I knew she was asking a rhetorical question. “God,” I said, “It leaves us God.” And then she said, “Well, I don’t believe.”
When I said, “It leaves us God,” I knew what I meant. Symbols aren’t God. Rituals aren’t God. Words aren’t God. Theologies aren’t God. And — forgive me for being edgy, but I have just been at the edge – most of what we think they point to isn’t God either.
It’s been a tough few weeks. And I am drawn into my mother’s despair. More and more I am thinking that the symbols of religious traditions are not “it.” From a certain perspective, they are completely beside the point. They are like shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave, strange and cold. In Plato’s allegory, prisoners of the cave hold prize contests to see who knows the most about these representations, which are mere shadows of sculptures of real things.
Can I try to say what the reality of God is? Perhaps: inner work done by real people at the real edges of life. Fears that blow us right to those edges. Love offered at the edge, without explanation and without eloquence.
At that edge, God is not some extra thing but is simply a miracle that holds us. But the word “miracle” isn’t right. Neither “force” nor “entity” would be right either. Words aren’t working well for me right now; I would do better if I could dip a sponge-on-a-stick into a cup of ice water and bring relief to someone’s lips.
About ten years ago, I was deep into a philosophical project of tying theories to concrete experiences. In the light of certain experiences, I taught, theories make sense. When I feel my mind soaring because I am pushing at the boundaries of my understanding, God seems to be “that being greater than which no being can be conceived,” as Anselm of Canterbury says. When I feel held in my pain by the love of family and friends, I encounter God as lover, as Franz Rosenzweig says God was revealed on Mount Sinai. When all my training flies from my mind, and I join my mother in a liminal space, nothing makes sense at all except being together. That’s all there is left for God to be.
No, I’m not ready to junk all my words and symbols, not ready to declare defeat as a rabbi, or uselessness as a philosopher. On the other hand, I don’t know who am I trying to reassure with this statement. Potential readers who judge my commitment to Judaism? The younger academic in me who won prizes for teaching and writing philosophy? The child in me who stands at the edge of Mom’s bed and looks to her for a foundation, even when she is so weak?
There’s more to observe, more to untangle. More dimensions of the soul to explore. More foundations and more abysses. More prayers to offer for healing and clarity.
Mom, may you pass the swallow test and enjoy some ginger ale.
Image: http://kelleck.deviantart.com/
Laura, thank you for the nakedness of your feelings. I’m hoping that, as you support your Mom in so many ways, you’ll be able to allow others to support you…. To help re-connect you to your grounding, To invite you to place gentleness on your heart. To remind you that your Presence will shelter your Mom as she moves through the next, and the next, and the next.
b’shalom, Lynn
Lynn, thank you for these beautiful words. And for the opportunity to look at your website and read about the healing work you do.
Laura, your words are so moving and honest. I hope that you too feel some comforted by writing.
Thank you, Jenny and Abby.
Laura, what a moving post. You are so incredibly honest–I can only imagine how small this situation makes you feel and how big things such as religion and theory just get lost. Thank you for making me both think and have such a heavy heart. Wishes for healing and rest.
Abby
Beautiful, honest and painful post. Thank you for sharing. Refuah shlemah to your mother, you and the family. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
Words often fail, not because they are inadequate to the task but because we are. The ability and readiness to experience of the numinous is rare for most of us, so words can’t get us there if the pump isn’t primed (to use a metaphor).
Sometimes action is needed. Sometimes we need to wash our bowls, as Joshu teaches us. Sometimes we need political action, as Marx argued against Hegel. Sometimes we need ice on our foreheads.
Thank you for your teaching.
Jared
What a beautiful post, Laura. G!d Is neither noun nor verb to me, G!d is an abbreviation — Good Orderly Direction. It doesn’t matter where the direction comes from, I suppose, so long as the direction leads one to a sane and whole life.
Oh, holy wow, do I hear you about the repertoire of teachings and expressions flying out the window when you are with your own mother.
Wishing her a refuah shleimah, and wishing you comfort.
Hi Laura,
Please give Ruthie my best. thinking of you all at this time.
Donna
Hi Laura, I do so hope your mother is on the mend by now. I hope the pain is past and the suffering diminished. My friend Gideon once wrote me that we see ourselves from the ‘seamy inside,’ that we see ourselves from the insisde perspective where all our doubts and flaws and faults are plain. Often we do good knowing we’re not pure but are filled with fears and hesitations and heaved emotions and confusion. The good is still good. Someday grace may lessen the inner struggles. In the meantime, we do do the good we can. Whether its more than enough or just enought or not hardly enough is often beyond our control. We suffer our limits. You are right. It does come down to swallow tests and ginger ale. The everyday requires complexity, but thank God that the moments of a lifetime call for only the simplest of acts of love. Your Mom and you are in my thoughts.