Limantour Beach, September 24, 2015
Foreward - I wrote this and sent it out to family a few weeks ago. I needed to put it on the blog, and so here it is.
This is Limantour Beach looking north. Behind me to the south are dozens of people who made the one hour drive north from San Francisco to Point Reyes National Seashore, where Limantour Beach is located.
There are only about one hundred people here today, despite the blue sky and crisp, fall weather. Most of them are camped under cheap umbrellas at the mouth of the parking lot; so bizarre when there are literally miles of open airy beach on either side of their little cluster.
Deb and I came to this spirit-swept place with Tom and Karen Hale. After two or three hours talking and eating with them in a wind-sheltered hollow of the dunes, we left them to cat nap on the warm sand as we walked north toward the far away headlands of Tomales Bay, which you can just see at the top of the image.
This is a special beach to Tom and Karen, having spent many hours here through their own journeys. And the stretch in the picture is especially special to me and Debra. Directly at my feet, which are teetering in the unstable sand-and-water combination of a wave’s after wash, is the fading memory of the final “e” in the phrase “Bile Duct Cancer and Scar Tissue.”
I had methodically written the phrase from north to south, my back to the ocean, and the letters placed above where the waves were reaching so that I would not be rushed, and could contemplate the symbolism of my action and the words themselves.
I remember being pleased with the overall appearance of the hand-written letters when I had finished. They were big, maybe a foot tall for the capitals. The curve at the bottom of the “t” was pleasing. And I built the “a” like it’s shown here “a,” with the serif touches and little hat on top. Fancy. Attractive. But temporal.
I positioned my self at the end of the phrase so my gaze took it in from stern to stem looking north, and waited for the waves to mount up and take it away. For me, this would be symbolic of this teacher passing from my life, as I have learned so much from it. And since I am now thoughtfully willing it away.
The waves came and went more times than I anticipated, long enough for me to stop waiting expectantly for the “big one” to come and take away the words.
The elongated pause gave me time to catch up to my expectations and put them at ease. I became present in the moment. I thoughtfully unclasped my hands from behind my back. I allowed my shoulders to relax naturally against the sinews in my neck. I breathed deeply, in through my nose, out through my mouth. My face loosened. My legs and back settled. My toes relaxed in their fight to keep me upright, allowing me to gently sway with the shifting sand and water as they moved under and over my feet.
As all this happened in me, I lifted my eyes up from the letters. I let them be where they were, etched into the sand, beautiful there where I had written them after so long and so much suffering for me and my family and those I love and would never want to hurt. They were above the healing waves. But I knew they would not be forever.
I willed them to be gone. And I trusted the energy of God, the Earth, and my support network—you—to align with my will and thoughts and energy to make a bigger wave.
Maybe that sounds “New Agey” to some of you. I know there is no judgment though. As a matter of opinion, it may indeed be New Age. It is certainly not a way I have looked at my life’s experiences recently, or ever.
For you all, my closest set of kindred people, I can’t begin to articulate in a short letter the depths of the new possibilities I have been uncovering in the past month. But I’ll try because there is “an ask” at the end of this letter to you.
This past month since my back became incapacitated has pushed me into new thinking where I have never gone. To uncover the source of my illness, I have dug deep into my past and present and found long-forgotten boxes upon boxes of stacked hurt and shame from many, many years. These are likely present in all of us. But for me, they showed up in prison walls of self-limiting beliefs.
I carefully sorted through them, felt them again, and forgave. In some cases I forgave my parents. In others I forgave myself. But always I left the hurts behind me, out of my head and where they belong; where they cannot continue to plague my health, physically, mentally, or spiritually.
It has been liberating. It is cleansing foulness, dirt and filth from my body that I never knew I was carrying. I am healing mentally and spiritually, and as a result I am healing physically. How can I not?
Through this process I have opened up to healthy, constructive thoughts and approaches to situations that have always hammered heavily on my weaknesses. A month after beginning this work, I am stronger and more confident, having rid myself of damaging mental overhead that manifested in physical ailments. I am happier and more content than I have been in decades.
This may sound silly to some of us, that I could be healing physically because of mental forgiveness that I am giving to myself and others. And that is okay. It’s not for everyone. Right now, it’s for me. And its effect has been somewhat revolutionary.
The waves thumped beside me as I stood, calm, the letters at my feet, beautiful in the sand of Limantour Beach. Breathing deeply, I thought about the cancer and my scar tissue leaving my body, just as the long-held hurts were leaving it. Each wave was too short to take the phrase away. They lapped at the spaces between the letters but did not erode a single, Wade-formed stroke.
The wind blew diagonally southwestward from the dunes, out across the beach and waves. As it came it dragged angular, dry sand in blurred strokes across the flat, hard packed shore. The sand-tinged wind whipped at my feet, legs, arm and face. It is a sensation all of us share. The sun warmed me, and what hair I have moved with the wind’s energy.
Waves came and went. My eyes stayed high, and I continued to breathe-in my clear mind and its undeniable positive effects on my body.
And then, much more quickly than I was ready for, a wave stacked itself on top of another, purposefully tumbling out of the ocean a little further up the beach than its sisters. As it spilled onto the sand, its energy pushed watery remnants up past my words to run a smoothing hand across them, perfectly taking every stroke and every trace of my hurt and footprints away, back to the indiscernible, endless ocean.
It was erased. No phrase. No footprints.
It is no longer there.
The cancer and the scar tissue have no power over me anymore.
Am I cured? To be honest, I am believing so. There is no benefit to doubting it. And only goodness to believing it.
But the tube remains in my gut and the doctors cannot be sure the cancer is gone yet. We will not abandon conventional medicine, and so I may look and feel terrible some days from treatments. But we are doing our best to render it unnecessary. The best instruments they have can no longer distinguish the bile duct cancer from the scar tissue that surrounds my liver anatomy. Both cancer and scar tissue are milky white in the CT scans and PET scans. If I have cancer, it is hidden within my past injuries. And so the scar tissue must go, just as the cancer has.
I am continuously learning from the experience of having cancer. I have already learned immensely. I have learned from people who have come into my life as a result of it. I have learned from their actions. My family is more deeply connected with our community than ever before. I have new beliefs and philosophies to grow with. I am a better person, and those around me are too.
I have dug deep and released painful memories. They are no longer in me since I have literally thrown them away from me. And if they are no longer in me, then I no longer need the cancer or scar tissue.
When I think of the cancer and scar tissue, I don’t. I think of a healthy bile duct, unmarred by scar tissue so the scans can clearly show it has healed. And just as important, so the doctors can clearly see that my incurable cancer is cured.
And likewise this is what I request from you. No prayers for healing. Instead, thankfulness for it. Prayers now for recovery to full health, quickly, so I get back into my active life.
When you think of me, envision a clean, clear bile duct like the drawing below. All of our thoughts together can stack endless waves on top of others, easily obliterating seemingly indomitable, terminal hurt, just like the “e” that is now only a fading memory.
