Note From a Wayfarer

On Crossing Between Two Kingdoms Under the Love

“What is a question you asked that changed your life? Reflect on a pivotal moment in your life when a single question sparked a profound shift in your perspective or trajectory… How did its answer shape the course of your life?” (Drew McGee via Suleika Jaouad)

The experience of transformation from fear to gratitude at seventeen changed my life. It came through praying the serenity prayer—living my existential question—and being encouraged in a crucial moment with the bases loaded and two outs in a tie game in the last inning against our arch rival Scarsdale. As I left the on-deck circle and walked fearfully to the plate my friend Kevin grabbed my shoulders and looked me directly in the eye. He breathed out, “You can do it!”

As I stepped to the plate I grabbed the silver cross around my neck and prayed the serenity prayer. The pitcher Albert Fagnoni looked down at me with scorn; he had already struck me out three times. He threw a hard fastball. I watched as the baseball sped to the plate looking to my eye like a giant grapefruit. I swung the bat hard; the ball shot like a cannon ball up the middle.

I got a hit!!

After this the balance shifted. I no longer fearing striking out (and my own passion), but looked forward each day to living with an edge. I began hitting the ball not where I thought it should be pitched, but where it was pitched. I began living my real life— daring to audaciously and humbly trust that God’s grace, “can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.” Some call this letting go of fear and despair and receiving the priceless gift of serenity, claiming the courage to be and to love fiercely. Theologically speaking, it involves turning towards the Light: receiving the Spirit of Christ in you, the hope of glory!

It has manifold applications. But it is a bridge of transformation we must cross each day. As Shane Claiborne writes in A Liturgy For Ordinary Radicals:

This involves living and praying our questions: “Loving God, you fill all things with a fullness and hope that we can never comprehend. Thank you for leading us into a time where more of reality is being unveiled for us all to see. We pray that you will take away our natural temptation for cynicism, denial, fear and despair. Help us have the courage to awaken to greater truth, greater humility, and greater care for one another. May we place our hope in what matters and what lasts, trusting in your eternal presence and love.” (Richard Rohr)

For the last two years I have enjoyed writing these weekly narratives of Travels With Charlie. Thank you dear friends for reading these poor reflections, near and far. I hope to press on in this project with intellectual passion and good cheer. As my friend Carl Georges would say, “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Yet as Susan Sontag wrote, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”(Illness as Metaphor)

Later this week I’ll be living the serenity prayer once again, with friends like Suleika Jaouad, David Moriah, and Jeff Brown, crossing in-between two kingdoms, hitting the ball where it is pitched by going in for surgery at MSK. I am thankful for an excellent surgeon, nurses, and medical team. For the gift of life and breathe in the Beloved Physician—through these circling years—for the transforming promise of the gospel.

And I am filled with gratitude for encouragement to heal from a beautiful family and community—for my gracious wife, Karen, and daughters, Mikaella and Olivia, for feisty friends who hang in there amidst my flaws, for the great cloud of witnesses—including wayfarers, known and unknown…

We are each rare gifts, unique witnesses of radical love and joy for one another and the poor. May we encourage and strengthen each other through this hard season on earth, living our questions and singing our songs with existential truth and intellectual passion— salt not saccharine— going under the Love.

The best is yet to be.

Now go in confidence that God hears your prayers and mine, the prayers we sing and speak, the prayers wrapped in our sighs too deep for words. Discover the healing hidden in secret truths over which you have despaired. So God grant you a cheerful and a faithful heart, fresh courage, and the love to make it all worthwhile. And may the blessing of God dawn on you even in the darkest hours that ever come: the peace of God be with you today and even forever. Amen. (Coleman Brown)