The Prognosis

One night, shortly before Lent, I awoke in a cold sweat. Staring into the silent darkness of my bedroom, the memory of my doctor’s words lingered hauntingly around me like the cold fingers of a nocturnal apparition: “You are dying of throat cancer. You only have six weeks. If I were you, I would start to get my affairs in order.” Gasping, my hands reached to my throat, only to realize there was in fact no tennis-ball sized lump protruding from my neck. Thank God, it was just a dream, I thought, shrugging the eeriness of it all off as I settled back into bed.

~*~

A few days later, I sat down for breakfast with my roommate, both of us checking our email before heading off to work. As I bit into a piece of grilled tofu with mustard (why I was eating this for breakfast, I don't know. I had been craving it.), a message popped into my inbox with foreign accolades. It was from a secretary of a rare books library in Germany, one to which I had applied for funding to support my dissertation research. Assuming it was yet another email with yet another random question about my application materials ("Why hasn't your institution sent us your transcript  yet?"), I opened the email with a sigh.

"Um... Jenna?" I called my roommate over to my computer.

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm going to Germany," I told her, both of us staring at each other.

"Seriously? When?"

I skimmed the email again, trying to make sense of it all. I had gotten so many denial letters in German the last two years, that I was having difficulty understanding the vocabulary of acceptance.

"A little over six weeks," I said. "April 15th."

In the days following the throat cancer dream, I received three more similar acceptance letters, the research funding piling on top of itself in an unnerving fashion--like a cup about to overflow with water. After two years of rejection letters, the one acceptance letter would have sufficed. But no, life had to go and bring me FOUR acceptance letters in a very short period of time. Life had to go and give me not four months of research funding abroad, but nearly two years. Just when I had grown content with the prospect of possibly never finishing my dissertation, just when I had started growing hopeful at other prospects, Life had to go and turn my life on a dime.

~*~

“It is kind of amazing when real time lines up with sacred time, whatever ‘sacred time’ is,” my friend Rebecca, a law student with an M. Div. from Yale, commented. She is Anglican; I am Eastern Orthodox. What we don't have in common, we tease each other about--I tease her about Henry VIII, she teases me about crossing myself backwards. This all prevents us from putting more faith in our respective churches, which are still comprised of humans, rather than in God Who is merciful and mysterious. (But on the scale of frail humanity, I'd rather cross myself backwards than... well... never mind. Hi Rebecca!)

We had been discussing the coming weeks, and my upcoming departure from Germany.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“I mean, you found out about the first fellowship for your research funding in Germany right before Lent started for you, in the Orthodox Church,”[1] she said. “And you’re leaving the states the morning after Easter, right?”

“Well, yeah…” I nodded. 

“So, that’s a perfect six weeks. You’re getting ready for the Resurrection and Germany at the same time. A season of waiting, of preparing oneself,” she smiled. “That's a gift from God, Cole. Perfect timing.”

~*~

And so, the six weeks of Lent found me swept up in the sacred discipline of “preparing oneself,” as Rebecca said, or “putting my affairs in order” as my doctor suggested in the dream. Suddenly, had to think about a lot all at once. Who would take care of my car, and did it need an oil change? What about my apartment? Taxes? Insurance? Bank accounts?

And those were just the easy items on my to do list. Further down the list, I had to start making the rounds and saying goodbye to people, to my apartment, to my church, to the last four-and-a-half years I had spent learning how to make a home in Cincinnati, OH. This is a place with a lot of big memories for me. I had started my graduate work here. I ran my first marathon here. I learned to teach here. I bought my first car here. I explored Christianity more here than ever before, ultimately joining the eastern Orthodox Church. I learned Latin and Middle High German here. There had been a lot of joys here, but there had also been a lot of heavy griefs I had learned to bear in this city. I think we form an attachment to places wherein we grieve, possibly even more than to places that remind us only of joy.

I had hated it here at first. In the midst of that animosity, however, it had transformed into something of a home. Even though it was likely I’d be back on and off, this city would never again be quite the home base that it had been these last handful of years.

Suddenly, Lent did not seem long enough; not spiritually, not logistically, not emotionally. I have always loved Lent, even before I observed it I loved the idea of an entire season dedicated to waiting. (This is surprising, considering I am or was one of the most impatient people I know for much of my life. Perhaps these last few years of observing Lent has begun to tame this excess in me, Lord willing.) It is the most beautiful season in the eastern Church, such that we call it not just Lent, but “Great” Lent. It is, according to Fr. Alexander Schmemann, a time of bright sadness—sadness over sin and brokenness, but also joy over the resurrection.  It is a school of remembrance of who we truly are as individuals, as a church, and as humanity. I had never felt more bright and sad at the same time than this Lent.

How to soak all of this up into the core of one’s being in six weeks? It is impossible. But this year, Lent seemed especially not long enough. I suppose, however, that is perhaps not the point. Perhaps the point is to realize that no matter how much time one spends waiting and preparing for anything in life, one finds oneself ultimately unprepared. If a medium-term relocation across the ocean caught me unawares, it’s only natural that the raw reality of God’s intervention in this world on behalf of mankind will always catch one off guard too.

~*~

      “I think we are all just in a very weird phase of life,” my friend Wes told me, offering a general conclusion to our discussion of where we’re at in our respective careers, where our friends are at, who’s married and who’s not, and why, and whether my life will change much with the whole Germany thing.

              

  I thought for a few moments as we walked through the hilltop park near my apartment, watching two squirrels scurry across the road in the crisp, spring morning sun. I thought about Lent, and waiting, and preparing. I thought about what we historians call continuity and discontinuity—the tension between that which changes over time and that which remains the same. And I thought about Wes’ observation.

                

“I think life is just a weird phase of eternity,” I replied to him after a while. “I mean, if you really think about it.”

                

“Indeed,” he laughed.

               

Indeed.

---

[1] Lent in the Eastern Orthodox Church is on a slightly different time table than in western churches that observe the season, such as the Catholic or Lutheran churches. First, we calculate the date of Easter (or “Pascha” as we call it) according to customs of the ancient church, which was expressed in Holy writ at the Council of Nicaea in 325, whereas the western Church over the years has developed a slightly different system for calculating Easter. Neither do we count the week preceding Easter (i.e. Holy Week) as part of Lent. These, along with several other customs that differ in the Eastern Church, make for a slightly longer and offset fasting season in the Eastern Church.