The Greatest Thing

Image from healthtrition.com

When someone you love is beating breast cancer at an early age, it’s the greatest thing in the world.

That’s happening in our house right now, and I’m quite impressed with the recent advances in cancer treatment and surgery. In fact, they’re mindblowing, especially when you see them up close. Treatment is more preventive, surgery less invasive. Plastic surgery is particularly amazing-- they now do it as part of the surgery to remove the tumor, not months and months later. This helps the survivor to feel like herself; there’s no need to go through months of dysmorphic depression (although post-operative depression is hardly unusual). It will be some time before the survivor will be able to execute a Downward Facing Dog or Tree Pose (she’s under the influence of wonderful narcotics to knock out the post-op pain), but already I’ve seen how her own idiosyncratic spiritual practice is aiding in her recovery.  

What about similar practices for those helping the person recover? I’d call them a must. If you already spend half an hour a day doing yoga and meditation, you definitely don’t want to cut it out. If anything, you might want to consider doubling it, if possible. From the moment you hear the diagnosis, you’ll be under considerable stress right along with the patient; you may not even realize it. You may find yourself lashing out at people for no reason at all; small irritations may become magnified and your responses to them out of proportion. It’s next-to-impossible to recognize the impact your psychological stress is having on you while you’re in the midst of it. That’s why an ongoing meditation practice is so important.

I recommend Thich Nhat Hahn’s book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. In that book, Thay goes into detail on how to manage anger and other storms of strong emotion, all of which are amplified when someone you love receives a life-threatening diagnosis. Let’s face it: that news can make the most habitually serene individual more than a little pissed off at the universe. At the heart of the book’s advice lie the old stand-bys: conscious breathing and making meditation a part of everything you do. When you’re helping somone recover from cancer surgery, you’ll be more useful if you make a point of becoming a veritable meditation machine. Practice medication scheduling and administration meditation (“Breathing in, I prepare today’s medications. Breathing out, I know I can stay on top of administering these meds on time.”); food preparation meditation (“Breathing in, I prepare a nourishing meal for the patient and the rest of the family. Breathing out, I know this food will nourish everyone’s compassion and wellness.”). And so on, covering every aspect of recovery.

Cancer is the plague of our time, but we’re making progress. My dream is to see a vaccine for it across the board in my lifetime, for it to become as curable and manageable as tuberculosis and other once-deadly diseases. If you share that dream, there are two websites you need to visit: http://www.cancer.org/ (The American Cancer Society...leading the way to transform cancer from deadly to preventable) and http://ww5.komen.org/, the website of the Susan G. Komen for the CureⒸ. From that highly useful website:

Nancy G. Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer. In 1982, that promise became Susan G. Komen for the Cure...Today, Susan G. Komen is the boldest community fueling the best science and making the biggest impact against breast cancer. 

Join the fight to make cancer a fully preventable disease, and please don't neglect your practice while you do. We're all more useful to whatever cause we've aligned ourselves with after we've meditated.

Copyright 2013 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved

Ernie and Me

My novel manuscript just cruised past the 20,000-word mark, meaning the first draft is a little more than one-third finished. And the people rejoiced!

Internalizing Hemingway's quote about first drafts ("The first draft of anything is shit") is tremendously liberating. Some days you're inspired; the words flow from your fingers as if by magic. Other days, it's a grueling slog. Those are the days I find comfort in the Hemingway quote and keep on writing. Yeah, whatever I do today will certainly have to be revised about four or five times before it's finished. Yes, what's coming out may indeed appear to be a bunch of crap on this particular day. Stay with it, though, believe in your plot line, characters, and story world, and the finished product will be excellent.

A Universal Human Preoccupation

Quite by accident tonight, I experienced pure sonic perfection. It was late, and I was doing some writing while listening to Pandora.com, when Gratias agimus tibi from Bach’s masterful Mass in B Minor began playing. A lump in the throat, spontaneous rapture. The Mass in B Minor is rightly regarded as Bach’s preminent masterwork, the greatest product of his mature genius. The Gratias agimus tibi section holds a special place in my heart.

Virtually innumerable composers have set that text--it’s from the second part of the Mass (the Gloria), which has been set both as parts of complete masses and and stand-alone works since the Medieval era. Yet, in my view,  no one before or after J.S. Bach ever supplied those words with such a gloriously perfect musical setting. Bach’s soaring melodies, his magical interweaving of choral and orchestral parts, the sense the listener gets of constant ascendancy, express splendidly the magnificence of the text: “Gratias agimus tib propter magnam gloriam tuam (“We give you thanks for your great glory”).

There are many times when we sit down deliberately to listen to our favorite music. Occasionally, however, that music comes to us unexpectedly, like the surprise visit of a dear friend. This was certainly one of those times for me. A far as I can tell, Bach’s genius lies well beyond anyone’s ability to express in words. This is to be expected: as Heinrich Heine trenchantly put it, “Where words leave off, music begins.”

I was trained as a classical guitarist, and had the pleasure of learning to play several transcriptions of Bach’s works for solo lute, violin and cello. One of the truly striking aspects of Bach’s music is that it works extraordinarily well in transcription. There are many great composers whose works have been successfully transcribed: the orchestration of Mussorsky’s solo piano work Pictures at an Exhibition is an excellent example. But Bach’s music seems to have a uniquely elastic quality to it. Pieces written for harpsichord or violin sound just as excellent--or more so--on the guitar, organ works have been successfully adapted to brass ensemble format, and there are beautiful orchestral versions of pieces originally written for choir. Never do any of these works lose any of their piquancy, their unique perfection, as they move from medium to medium. Never have I heard a Bach transcription and said, “Ugh! Loved the original, but this just doesn’t work!” What is it about his music that makes it so infinitely malleable? Is it somehow quantifiable?

I’m delighted to have had this chance encounter in the dead of night with Herr Bach. I know that most people have music that provides profoundly moving spiritual experiences for them. Music as an art form is unique and powerful, a universal human preoccupation. Along with fine art and literature, it’s part of what defines us as human beings.

Best regards,


William


Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved

Progress on...

In the Veiled Realm

A Novel

My new novel manuscript crossed the 17,000-word mark today. I have a long way to go (shooting for between 50,000 and 60,000 words). Writing every day--even when inspiration comes hard--is definitely central to the task of remaining thoroughly engaged with your story-world.

Two gems from Walter Mosley:

"Writing is a serious enterprise that takes a certain amount of constancy and rigor."

"Plot is the structure of revelation."

An Official State Religion...Are They Serious?

In her current "This Week in God" segment, Rachel Maddow notes that 34% of Americans now favor establishing Christianity as the official religion of the the United States. One wonders whether these individuals have read any of the history of this country at all. If they had, they would understand that the country's founding was very much about establishing a republic that guaranteed freedom of conscience for all citizens.

To accomplish this, the framers of the U.S. Constitution wrote the First Amendment, which comprises both an Establishment Clause and a Free Exercise Clause. The Establishment Clause reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." and the Free Exercise Clause, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Thus the government is prohibited from  interfering with anyone's free exercise of the religion of their choice; more to the point at hand, it may not establish an official state religion.

To propose that Congress make Christianity--or any other faith--the state religion of the United States is to negate the nation's founding principles. Those who suggest that we do so would do well to consider what remarkable benefits this experiment in freedom of conscience for all has yielded for so long. The USA is a country in which Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists and Humanists can live side by side and worship (or not worship) according to the dictates of their individual consciences. The loss of that freedom would be a grievous one.


Copyright 2013 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved

The Healing Presence, Part Three

For Humans and other Animals

I took one of my cats to the vet yesterday. I would frankly be amazed were I ever to find a healing professional as thoroughly kind and caring as she for my wife and myself.

This extraordinary physician carries herself with quiet dignity, grace, and great compassion. It is clear that her presence in the world of the healing arts is what might be genuinely called a calling, a true vocation. Pepe Miguel, the cat in question, is a nervous individual who has difficulty having strangers in the house or leaving the house in the carrier; in fact, he has often managed to evade me entirely. Several times I have had to call the vet to explain that he simply could not be found. How is it that this animal can be so well-attuned to my mental and emotional state that he is able to intuit that I’ve come looking for him to take him to the vet? His carrier “lives” in the same room where he spends most of his time (my office, on a heated bed), so it’s not as if he is reacting to the sudden appearance of the dread object. He’s reacting to something undefined in my manner and carriage when I come looking for him. Amazing. The one and only time he growled at me was long before I’d made a habit of keeping the carrier in his room, and he heard/smelled/sensed me coming with it. He hid in the closet under clothes, which I’m sure he assumed was a thoroughly safe hiding place. I happened to find him, but only after exhausting every other possibility. He was not a happy cat that day.

This time, as always, he wailed the entire time we drove to the vet’s office. I petted him through the carrier and made comforting noises the whole time. He is definitely never happy about going to the vet, despite my best efforts to assuage his anxiety.

But once the doctor entered the office and I opened the carrier, things began to change. At first, of course, he came out with all the cooperation with which he went in—that is to say, he hugged the carrier with all four paws and resisted with all his strength. But once I’d managed to get him on the table, his doctor began talking soothingly to him, petting him as much as I did. (Pepe lives to be petted and brushed.) She told him how beautiful he was, speaking in calm and quiet tones that nearly hypnotized my feline companion. She had little difficulty examining him; with my help, she even managed to give him the inoculation he needed without incident.

All this led me to think about the healing presence as it applies to all sentient beings: humans and other animals. This woman definitely has it, and that’s why I have no intention of changing veterinarians while Pepe Miguel and his sister Polly Rae are living. Pepe was pronounced to be in excellent health for a geriatric cat, and I was both delighted and saddened at the observation. The two siblings and litter mates turn 15 this year, and I realize I have to adjust to the idea that they will soon come to the end of their life span. My wife and I will grieve deeply when they go; I know this from experience, because we’ve already kept two other cats—animals that were just as much family members as these two—and we had to deal with their passing. I take comfort in the fact that they are not saddled with consciousness of their own mortality. (They have a decided advantage over us humans in this regard!) We love them deeply. While they live, I am so very delighted to have found a doctor of veterinary medicine who exhibits the “healing presence” so admirably as to put my babies at ease when they have to face the inevitably stressful experience of going to the vet’s office.

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

Thinking about Wellness, Ending the Argument

I’ve been thinking a great deal about wellness lately.

It seems elementary that there is a big difference between seeking proactive wellness and preventive self-care and the medical model that predominates in our culture. The latter would seem to be diagnosing things that have gone wrong with the body and mind--after the fact--and prescribing a cure (usually in the form of a pill). Clearly, this is not how natural selection designed our bodies and minds to be whole. It’s prescriptive health care, not natural wellness.

For me, yoga and meditation play key roles in this preventive and proactive approach to natural health. Daily asana practice and mindfulness meditation are superior means of preventing headaches, backaches, and the many other chronic assaults on our wellness we deal with on a regular basis. I can tell the difference between a week when I’ve faithfully adhered to my practice and when I have not: the off weeks are, quite predictably, the times I reach for the Excedrin or Advil bottle.

So why do I so often go without the very things I know are the best prevention against physical and mental suffering? I can’t help but think it’s the power of entropy and habit energy. We establish behavioral patterns based on the immediate payoffs we receive from our behaviors. It takes active thought and foresight to say, “If I do asana practice and sitting meditation every day this week, I’m more likely to feel much better this weekend.” At the time, I’m getting immediate rewards for doing other things: getting manuscripts in ahead of deadline, reading, enjoying music and movies, and countless other things. I have to remind myself to look ahead to rewards further off if I want to keep my practice alive and my body/mind healthy.

One very helpful concept I’ve learned from the Maryland University of Integrative Health is that of “ending the argument with yourself.” List the things you know are good for your long-term health, wellness, and happiness, and simply refuse to have the inner argument about doing them at any given time. This is a great way of establishing new patterns, resisting entropy, and breaking the grip of habit energy.

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved