Learning to Fall

So much falling in this “love in the time of cancer” story: Falling in love, falling apart, falling down in grief, falling down in laughter.

Last week my friend Stephen recommended a book called “Learning to Fall” by Philip Simmons. I got the book from the library and within minutes I was scribbling in the book. That’s always my clue that it’s a book I need to own so I ordered a copy for me and copies for friends too.

Simmons was 35 years old when he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 1993. That disease causes falls so the metaphor became clear at once. But his most eloquent writing is about all the other kinds of falls we take when we face life head on.

This is one of those books that you’ll want to copy out pages to give to friends or pass out at work so just go buy a copy now.

Here is just a taste from page 8 speaking about life problems:

“And here is where we go wrong, for at its deepest level life is not a problem but a mystery…Problems are to be solved, true mysteries are not. At one time or another each of us confronts an experience so powerful, bewildering, joyous, or terrifying that all our efforts to see it as a “problem” are futile. …What does mystery ask of us? Only that we be in its presence, that we fully, consciously, hand ourselves over."

I like this idea of seeing challenges not as problems to be solved but as mysteries to  wonder at. It doesn’t make it easier, and Simmons is clear on that too.

I think this is like the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness depends on certain positive conditions but joy is ever possible even in the hardest, saddest most challenging times.

Celebrate This Day!

Years ago I was a student at Marywood College in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It was then a small women’s school, today it’s a University. I went there as a ‘returning” student. I was “older” in my twenties and I devoured the curriculum. Yes, one of those sit in the front and ask for more assignment types who frustrated the other students but who delighted the faculty. I was hungry to learn. That never went away.

A memorable teacher and class: the nun, Sister Rosemarie, who taught “Marriage and Family” addressed our class frequently on one topic: enjoy this day. She told us that any time you had occasion to celebrate you should. She said—attention on the younger women I think—that there will be so many occasions for tears in your life that any occasion that is good deserves celebration.

That has stayed with me.

As we head into this week with worry over doctor's appointments and sadness for the death of a friend's baby and struggle with so many losses buried in gains of this relationship. I hear Sister Rosemarie saying, “Celebrate!”

Joy

We are writing our wedding invitation. We each write a draft and compare notes. They are almost identical. We both used the word Joy. It is the perfect word and has been from the start. Not happiness, not peace. But it is Joy.