Christian Viewpoint: Cancer battle reveals a gateway to love
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“I think I have for all these years possibly been denying myself the greatest love I could have had.”
Claire Gilbert’s Miles to go Before I Sleep is a wonderful book, writes JOHN DEMPSTER.
It describes, in the form of letters shared with her family and friends, the author’s diagnosis with myeloma, a cancer of the blood, and her subsequent treatment.
Myeloma is incurable, but can be held in abeyance by chemotherapy and an excruciatingly painful stem cell transplant.
Director of the Westminster Abbey Institute, Gilbert has a zest for life, an insatiable curiosity and the ability to truly “see” and describe things vividly.
She has always believed in God, worshipped God, but has never felt the need to call out to God for help.
When, in the desolation of her diagnosis, she prays “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief,” she begins to grasp the immensity of the love she has been excluding by her self-sufficiency.
Through the anguish and agony of treatment she realises that, for her, pain can be a gateway to love.
Three things particularly came alive for me as I read this book.
One of the words Claire Gilbert uses as a mantra in the personal meditations she finds so healing is “Maranatha,” meaning “Come Lord Jesus.”
Because of my early Christian conditioning, I associated this word with a fearful Apocalyptic vision of the coming of Christ at the end of time to judge the world.
But it was redeemed for me by Gilbert’s use of it as a personal invitation to Jesus.
“Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus, be with me!”
I was touched by her partner Sean’s gentle observation when she was resolving to “seek the kingdom,” to put God first.
Sean assures her that as she goes through the treatment, on bad days “seeking the kingdom” means caring for, being kind to herself.
How true!
How reassuring to know that putting God first can sometimes involve turning from our preoccupations and letting God rest and nourish us.
I was moved above all by Claire Gilbert’s reference to a famous old vision likening the whole universe to a hazelnut held in God’s hand. I knew of this, but I’d never understood how a hazelnut equated to the cosmos. But the point, I learned from Gilbert, is that the hazelnut is held safe. God holds the universe in the palm of God’s hands, in the deep security of love.
And I thought about how I might, though seeing it dimly, be denying myself something of the greatest love: by fear associated with words from the past; by the pressure to be busy; by misunderstanding the visions we are given.
No longer, I tell myself, and repeat in my heart “Maranatha.”
