the holy ordinary

I read this blog post from the NY Times today. It's called "In Cancer, a Deeper Faith." The piece reflects on precisely what the title suggests in light of this particular religious season, Passover and Easter. Dana Jennings, who is battling a very aggressive form of Prostate Cancer, has been writing for about the last year about the journey and process that cancer brings. Today he writes about how faith, which became a part of his life four years before his diagnosis, has helped him see his experience. He writes,

I have spent the past year in the dark ark of cancer, and there is no question that I have become a new man. I’ve been granted a wisdom that only arrives at the rugged confluence of middle age and mortality. And I know, soul deep, that I have not been cut open, radiated, and tried physically and spiritually so that I can merely survive, become a cancer wraith. Since my diagnosis — after shaking off the initial shock — I have kept asking myself, in the context of my belief: What can this cancer teach me?

The most surprising thing I’ve learned is that cancer can be turned toward blessing. Through the simple fact of me telling my cancer stories on this blog, many of you readers, in turn, have told your own stories. And that mutual sharing of our tales has changed my life for the good. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Life is not meaningful … unless it is serving an end beyond itself, unless it is of value to someone else."

The thing I like is his courage and honesty. His faith allows to see his reality clearly and yet hope for something beyond it.