I have to admit it. I usually force myself to watch both the Republican and Democratic National Convention every 4 years. I mean I’m a US citizen! I should! I should as engaged as I possibly can. And usually I am. I grew up in a household where politics were an everyday conversation. I grew up watching my dad watch the Democratic National Convention way into the night just to see if a South Dakota kid, George McGovern, would finally win it! But this year...I have to force myself. Why?
Because I am so tired of the hate! Because politics isn’t just a 4 year thing anymore or a 2 year thing...but an everyday barrage of hatred that, with the help of 24 hour news channels and all the social media outlets, is just being opened up and just poured out over all of us. It has become a cancer that has infected all of us. A giant can of SPAM (sorry Spam lovers) opened every day and force fed into all of society. And let me tell you this. “Mom, I don’t care how long I have to sit at the dining room table! I’m not eating it!” Of course, the problem is, that we can’t NOT eat it. It’s everywhere!
So how do we respond to all this hatred? What can we do to change the narrative?
Today I choose to share a writing from one of my favorite books: NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER, I AM WHOLE. A book by Robert McFarland. This excerpt has give hope and courage to many who have found themselves facing cancer every morning. Maybe it can help us as well!
Have a great day folks.
Your friend and pastor, trying to learn to say that word...you know the one I mean...all the time, Brook
“CANCER! THERE. I DID IT.
Some folks are actually afraid of the word itself, aren’t they? Have you noticed? They refer to your “trouble,” or your “disease,” or your “struggle.” They just can’t bring themselves to say CANCER.
I understand how they feel. I’m more than a little bit afraid of CANCER myself. That’s why I say it every time I get the chance. CANCER.
People are afraid to speak that word because they know that words have power. Tell a child often enough that he’s stupid, and he’ll believe it. Tell her that she’s bright, and she’ll believe that, too.
My friend Jim McKnight once asked me why our children turned out so well. I can’t understand why he seemed surprised that my kids weren’t odd. I told him that it was simple: We just gave them everything they wanted and bragged on them all the time. (Our children tell a somewhat different version.) I firmly believe there will be enough people in life who will cut your children down that they don’t need it from their parents, too. Brag on them; those words have power.
I know of a church on a university campus that was having trouble keeping its grass alive. The students were cutting across the churchyard on their way to class and wearing a huge path in it. They put up a sign that said “Keep off the grass.” It did no good at all. Then, however, they changed the sign to “Let it live.” The students used the sidewalk. The right word is a lever that can move the world.
When I was little, my mother taught me a little epigram to use against the neighborhood bullies: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It would have worked better if the bullies hadn’t used sticks and stones as well as words. They certainly knew how to use words, though, and those hurt more than the sticks and stones. It’s infuriating to be called “yellow” by three boys who are twice as big as you are. You know that they are the true cowards because they have to gang together and pick on someone smaller. As a child, however, you can’t even find the right words so you can tell them that. You just run away.
CBS news reporter Bob Simon was a prisoner of the Iraqis for several weeks in 1991, during the first Persian Gulf War. He said that the words were worse than the beatings. “After a while,” he said, “you realize that a beating, although unpleasant and painful, will come to a stop. The terror they put into you with words, however, goes on and on.”
Sticks and stones can break your bones, but the words of terror break your spirit.
The terror of that word, CANCER, can go on and on if we don’t say it. Saying it puts it into the light and takes away so much of its power.
Sure, I’m still afraid. I could say CANCER all day long, and I’d keep on being scared. But when you speak it right out loud, CANCER isn’t very strong. It has strength only in the dark. It can break my body. There may even be times when it will break my spirit. But I know that CANCER is weak. It can’t break LOVE. There’s no way CANCER can take me away from the love of my wife and my children and grandchildren and my family and my friends and God.
Now that I have cancer, I say that word all the time. You know the one I mean: LOVE
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