A Reflection on Sickness and "Religious" Friends

Last summer I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a debilitating cancer of the blood. That did not keep me from praying, reflecting, and writing. One of the reflections I wrote is the following essay, which I composed mentally as I lay in bed at the Queens Hospital Center in New York. ---

Job, the biblical paragon of the afflicted man, had “religious” friends. They were well-meaning and well-intentioned friends. When they visited him amid his travails, they offered him badly-needed advice, telling him what was wrong with him and how he needed to be a better person than he was. In the process, they forgot that what their friend needed was love and a listening heart, a heart willing to go through the pain with

their suffering friend, without necessarily offering a “spiritual” solution.

Lying in bed at the Queens Hospital Center (from June 10 thru June 18^th), with the “CRAB” symptoms typically associated with multiple myeloma – i.e., Calcium level abnormally elevated; Renal failure; Anemia; Bone lesions -  I was visited by some “religious” friends. Like Job’s friends, they were well-meaning and well-intentioned. Above all, they were quite sincerely and deeply spiritual. There I was in bed – with the obligatory I.V. bag, the myriad pin-pricks on my arms from endless blood-letting for “lab works,” and all the trappings and accoutrements of one doing battle with a vicious enemy. Looking at me there in bed inside the isolation room, one of these friends told me to go on a spiritual retreat with monks, all expenses paid, somewhere in California. Another enthused about the prayer group she belonged to, where Jesus danced with one of the members who, without fail, had a special private vision of the Lord every Thursday evening. She was recruiting me, of course. To do spiritual “battle.”

These friends may in fact be holier than yours truly – although I must leave that determination to God. But when they tried to provide the “God answer” to my bodily pain, I was not sure if their “God answer” was really God’s answer. As they were leaving the isolation room, I looked at them and I thought they were walking on clouds, cherubic wings trailing them piously like a train. The wedding of religious fervor and sincere “God talk” explains why, imho, many religious people, for all their good intentions and sincerity, become victims of their own success.  As for me, I’m simply grateful that the God I believe in is the One who has the wisdom, love, and humor to walk with me and to love me with all my pains, my woundedness, my brokenness – without having to throw Her/His spiritual weight at me by quoting Her/Himself and the Holy Bible.

(Queens Hospital Center, Friday, 28 June 2013)