As some of you may know, the Chordoma Foundation is a recently-created charity whose goal is somewhat similar to the Ford Foundation.   Both were created to give something away -- Ford (who owes its existence to murderous treatment of workers) now provides money to assorted worthwhile projects.  Chordoma Foundation needs money given to it, so it can destroy the reason for its birth.

When millions are in the midst of war, starvation, torture, and when our world aches all over -- my feelings are mixed about a foundation seeking a cure for a relative handful, even when the person I love more than anything is in that handful.

To whom do we give our resources?  Can we triage love?

I don't know.

Candace

cancer patriotism

Four years ago, after the last presidential election, I met a friend for lunch, our first sit-down conversation in a couple of years.  Catching up, she spoke about her separation from her husband, his faults, her suffering.  I heard all of this before.  And because Rich was just recovering from his first surgery,  I wasn't, perhaps, as empathic as I could have been.

"It's all because of Bush," I said, jumping into the monologue.  "Rich's cancer.  Your marriage."

Thoroughly apolitical, she looked at me as if my head were on backwards.

"You're joking," she said.

"Well, a little..."

This wasn't the place or person, and I wasn't sure what more I could have said.

But I've been thinking about this.  A lot, recently.

And I wasn't referring to politics reflected in a confused and cracked health care system (my proximate concern) and economic struggles (a cause of her marital conflict).

It's that, little fish that we are, we all swim in the same big ocean.  And I'm getting scared of what's floating by.

I'm scared of anger, arrogance, greed, delusion.

In other words: Patriotism scares the shit out of me.

Except that patriotism has another definition.

Barack Obama calls it "empathy."  This fits nicely with the Dalai Lama's suggestion for true peace:  "I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends."

Marshmallow-headed liberalism?

No -- a solution.  That even the most "patriotic" and "conservative" have enacted, over and over. Our heads spin backwards trying to keep track who we should love (or at least make a favored trading partner) and who we should kill.  Russia?  In my lifetime, an enemy who became a friend and is now an acquaintance. China?  Ditto.  Similar reversals between the United States and Germany, Japan, Vietnam...you get the idea.

The current Republican team, in office and seeking office, doesn't get that their view of patriotism is a cancer, not any different from that snuggled in Rich's spine except that Rich's treatment is more painful and uncertain of success.  

Cancers don't realize that their neighboring cells -- enemies! -- are really their friends.  Cancer wins when their enemies/friends lose. 

Then, everyone dies.

I don't understand, but I can't despair.

Candace

"Yoga is life."  

So said my teacher last week, and while layers of meaning can be unwrapped, our discussion focused on what should be obvious.

Each session begins slowly, then accelerates as we move forward, back, twist, in and out of pain and fear and blocks -- ouch! -- and realize at some point "I can do this!" and "life is so good" and end with deep rest.

A typical day, isn't it?  Start slowly, pick up speed, bend in ways usual and new, say ouch once, twice, many times; then end in a place we have never been before.

And this happens every day, but illness is an excellent magnifying glass.  I have no doubt that there is life after death.  It's today.

Candace