More Fully Human

This is one of my favorite pictures -- here I am just a month before my fifth birthday ready to perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  I am sitting on the stoop next door to the apartment building that we lived in then and my beloved father took the picture.   I remember that day with such joy.  I always loved dancing and singing and when I tell myself the clear truth about the ways in which I would choose to spend my days if I could do anything I wanted to, I always say "singing and dancing and playing with fiber".   Interesting that I have never brought those things I love most to the center of my life but I think that may be another story.

Yesterday, Christmas Day 2011, I went to mass at Fr. Jim Hogan's lovely home in Missoula.   It was an intimate, inspiring liturgy.    Fr. Jim has provided me an opportunity to still participate in liturgy - so dear to my heart - now that the changes Rome has made to liturgy have made me unable to practice my faith in a parish church.   It is inspiring to engage in liturgy that calls us to the fullness of life required by true discipleship - by true love of the "way" that Jesus of Nazareth modeled what is possible for all of us, if we will take the journey to be most fully human.   Liturgy that focuses on love and grace and unity.   When Fr. Jim spoke about the call to fullness of life, and to be more fully human, my heart connected me to one of the most painful and joyful conversations of my life.

On May 2, 1996 I sat in my living room on City Island with Alan, the love of my life, and we talked about the diagnosis he received that day -- Stage 4 stomach cancer with liver tumor load and a 3-6 month timeframe for the remainder of his days on earth.   It seemed impossible.   He was vibrant and alive and had gone to the doctor in April because he felt discomfort after he ate.   So we sat and we talked.   I asked him how he felt about dying and he told me that he loved living, and so was sad to think he would die sooner rather than later.   But that being said, he also told me he wasn't afraid to die.   That he had been so fortunate in his life to have work he loved, joy in his days and to have the relationship we shared.   He had told me a few months earlier that I had "redeemed" his life and I was honored, but I remembered being very surprised that a man who held firm to his atheism would use a term like redeemed.

I asked him what I could do to help.   He told me he was not going to undertake radical treatments as the doctors said there was no chance for remission or recovery - only prolonging his life a bit.   I asked him if he would like to take some time to explore what life means in a larger sense than he was willing to engage before.    He said yes, but he didn't know how to do that.   So I told him that I did, and I would be so happy to do it with him.

And so we began.

What transpired in the next three months -- he died 3 months to the day from the diagnosis -- transformed both of us.   I was desolate to be losing him and at the same time so graced to have those three months with him.

Now back to the fully human stuff . . . that night, May 2nd, as we sat together and spoke, he told me he experienced me as a person who did not find anything "invasive" about life . . . .as someone open to everything.   And he admitted to me that he felt at some level that I wasn't really human, given my capacity to life that way.    I remember being very still and quiet, and my response came from me and also from beyond me.  

I told him that I thought we were only now beginning to have any idea what it really means to be human.

So there I was, in a lovely living room in Missoula on December 25, 2011, celebrating an inspiring mass with 20 or so kindred spirits of all ages, and we were talking about the amazing call of Jesus for us to become more fully human.

And I felt such a depth of gratitude for everything in my life - and I decided it was time to start, and be faithful to, writing from my heart every day.

And so here it is - my first of what I hope to be many entries as I devote myself to becoming more fully human!

With love to all

Donna