Cancer Journal # 70 Feb 27
If you read the comments to my most recent blog, you read that Jan Carroll and Anastasia both expressed approval for my scheduling acupuncture and thanks for the wide range of various health care providers in our area. And they are right. I'm fortunate to be able to get all the various kinds of high quality treatment that I do. But there's something that makes me a little uneasy about it too.
Let me tell you a story. There was a liberal antiwar Republican Congressman from California 50+ years ago named Pete McCloskey. Back then liberal Republicans were rare but not the impossibility they are today. He ran as an antiwar Presidential primary candidate in 1972 against incumbent Richard Nixon, getting nearly 20% of the vote in the New Hampshire Primary. Things went downhill from there. Politicians who get the presidential candidate disease never ever get over it. His interest continued through 1988 when the TV evangelist, Pat Robertson ran for President in the Republican primaries. He was neither liberal nor antiwar.
Pete McCloskey really didn't like Pat Robertson. They were political opposites but there was more to it. McCloskey had been a combat Marine in Korea, receiving a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. He knew that war was hell. Pat Robertson was also a Marine at the time on the same troop transport ship headed to Korea as McCloskey. However, he was taken off the ship in Japan and given safe duty, serving as the "liquor officer" for the officer's clubs where he made sure all the clubs were fully stocked with liquor. Robertson's father was a US Senator and McCloskey thought it was his father's influence that had kept him out of harm's way. McCloskey told of being on the deck of the ship as it was steaming away from Japan and seeing Pat Robertson on the dock, looking up at the soldiers with that very unpleasant, smirky grin that Pat Robertson has. McCloskey took it as reveling in the privilege that was keeping him out combat. "Keep your heads down, you poor suckers!"
McCloskey found it unbecoming that with that personal history, Pat Robertson should, in later years express enthusiasm for using our military might to advance our foreign policy objectives. He suspected that it was a kind of compensation for his being able to be placed in safe duty during the Korean War. He also didn't think that Pat Robertson should have called himself a combat Marine and he said so in public letter to Congress. Robertson initiated a libel suit against McCloskey but later withdrew it and was obliged to pay McCloskey's court costs. It also pretty well ended Pat Robertson's run for the presidency in 1988.
What's all this got to do with me? A little bit. I have enough discretionary income to be able to pay out of pocket for treatments not covered by insurance and aren't cheap to help me lick cancer. Heck, my very comprehensive health insurance permits treatment not available to many cancer treatments. If that doesn't make me like Pat Robertson in the story I just told, then maybe his cousin. Prosperity, a marker for privilege, is helping me to stay out of harm's way. Not a real pleasant thought. At least I don't look on less privileged cancer patients with Pat Robertson's smirky grin.
I believe I understand what you are saying... and it relates a little to something I posted on FB today, about feeling guilt when one's circumstances seem "better" than those of others...
ReplyDeleteSo... Pat Robertson was doing something unethical. You are not doing something unethical.
You help a lot of people. Maybe God has you in the "privileged" place you are at this time because God wanted you to have treatments available so that you could continue to help other people. Or as a thank-you for helping so many people. Or, maybe God just has you in this situation because God felt like it... and there is no "owing" God for that, or trying to balance it out with any additional deeds...
Maybe feeling gratitude, instead of guilt, for Grace freely given, is something God might like you to experience?
I certainly don't know.
But you are for sure nothing like Pat Robertson.
I, too, often feel guilty for the many treatments I am able to receive, while so many of my friends struggle to obtain physical or mental health care. It doesn't seem fair.
But I know that when I am in my best place because of treatments, I am then better able to help my friends - to support them, to help them find what they need, to be available to listen when they can't afford counseling, so... it's sort of like paying it forward, maybe?
I think you and I are similar in the way we think about things... a lot, and deeply...
That you raise the question evidences your empathy. Beyond that, I second what Stasia said so well!
ReplyDeleteThank both you, Anastasia, and you, Jan for your support and good wishes. Anastasia, you are surely right that I should be looking at this as a demonstration of God's grace. I think I had not given a proper amount of credit to that and I thank you for bringing that out.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention cancer and cancer treatment as an opportunity to help others in the same situation. I have written out and intend to post tomorrow the story of a cancer patient receiving Vitamin C infusion for whom things have not gone well. I prayed with her last week and that did go well. I hesitate to tell such stories because it has the appearance of creating an "Isn't Charlie wonderful" file. For one thing, that's unseemly and for another, it just isn't true! I take inventory of myself and there just isn't much wonderful Charlie going on there. I'm not saying there's all sorts of bad stuff but more just not much that's particularly good. I'm not going modest here; that's the honest results of what I find when I do that inventory.
In the story I will be telling, I do ask this lady if I can pray for her. That's sort of nervy in a way I suppose could seem virtuous. I don't see it like that. For one thing, I find it really fun--where's the virtue in that? When it goes well, there's no credit to me. That's God extending his Grace to whoever I pray for. For reasons that mystify me, that's pretty apt to happen when I pray for someone. Believe me, I'd like to believe that it's because God thinks I'm really good but that just isn't what's going on. I know it isn't that. I've thought of grace as a roulette wheel. There's just no knowing where it will land. Should a roulette winner think they won because they were really good? We'd find that winner badly deluded. Same thing with me.