Advent Reflections

Both of my Advent reflections for Unfundamentalists are online now; you can read them here.

Open Letter to Representative Mo Brooks

I learned this evening that Representative Mo Brooks has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. What follows is my open letter to him, from one cancer patient to another.

Dear Representative Brooks,

First, I want to wish you all the best. Cancer is an horrific disease that I wish nobody had to endure. I hope and pray that you make a full and prompt recovery from your upcoming surgery, attain ‘No Evidence of Disease’ status, and stay cancer free for many years to come. May all your treatments go smoothly, may your insurance cover every mode of treatment you need, and may you experience minimal complications from this disease so that it disrupts your life as little as possible.

Second—in the spirit of full honesty—I must admit that my first thought upon hearing of your diagnosis was to check that you were in fact the same person who infamously implied that those who “lead good lives” don’t have pre-existing conditions. It seems you are. As such, I hope and pray that your diagnosis helps you understand the experiences of cancer patients across this country.

I’m not here to berate you for past comments nor to ask you for your support of universal healthcare. I simply want to ask you to please, please remember how it feels to get a cancer diagnosis. Remember what it’s like to face the uncertainty of upcoming treatments. Remember that there are millions of people just like you carrying these same leaden worries in the pits of their stomachs—and keep in mind that many of us face added uncertainties and fears about our health insurance and treatment costs as well.

My first two years of cancer treatment each totaled over a million dollars in costs, and while my third year wasn’t quite as intense it still would have been unattainably expensive were I uninsured. Currently my life depends on laws prohibiting annual and lifetime limits for coverage, protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and Medicare funding as much as it does on treatment. I don’t take that lightly and I trust you don’t either.

So I beg you to be mindful of your fellow cancer patients as you consider legislative measures affecting healthcare and those who most need it. Please, first do no harm. And if you want to talk to someone who has been through whatever treatment looms before you, just let me know. I’ve been through every kind of cancer treatment out there these last three years, and I’m happy to share my experiences and tips for eating when you do NOT want to if you might find that helpful.

All the best,

Morgan J Bolt

I Fear for our National Monuments

This weekend I learned that there are plans in the works to significantly reduce a couple of national monuments in Utah. Today those plans were officially announced. Bears Ears is slated to be downsized by about 85%, while Grand Staircase Escalante will shrink to just half of its current size.

I’m mildly optimistic that none of this will hold up in court, but it still worries me. My wife and I were just in Grand Staircase Escalante in October, and we drove right around Bears Ears too. We could see the namesake buttes from the road we were on. It was just a little too remote even for us though—at least given our time constraints and the fact that we had just come off four consecutive nights without running water. And that is precisely one of the main points of these monuments. They’re remote. They’re wild.

Exploring a Slot Canyon

While in Grand Staircase we talked about how it was an absolutely incredible place, somewhere you wish everyone could experience, yet it wouldn’t be what it is were it any more developed or busy. While part of us would have liked the washboarded, unpaved roads there to be smoother, we were mostly glad they weren’t. It made the place more remote. Part of us wished for better maps and trailmarkers, making it easier to explore the various slot canyons. But we appreciated them as hidden treasures that much more. Part of us wished there had been better signage leading us to the dinosaur footprints, but as it was we had more of an adventure looking for them and we were the only ones in sight. That’s part of the allure of such places. They’re places you can get truly alone and disconnected from everything else going on in the world, at least for a couple days.

Places like Grand Staircase Escalante and Bears Ears are also religiously significant for indigenous peoples, and anyone who professes to care about freedom of religion really has to care about this too. As it is, I find it deeply ironic that the party touting itself as a champion of religious freedom is leading the backlash against preserving a religiously significant site like Bears Ears, but that’s really another matter for another writer, I think. I can really only suggest reading something written by native people for a better perspective on this entire matter, and a good starting point might be here or here. My only connection to this is that my wife and I were just there a little over a month ago.

Grand Staircase was probably our favorite place we visited on our entire road trip—and that’s competing with Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. It was silent, it was empty, it was peaceful, and it was utterly beautiful. Reducing it by half is a disturbing precedent to set, and I shudder to think what will become of the place if fossil fuel companies have their way.

I’m Thankful for Church

The following is a modified excerpt from my book “Cancer is Not Evil,” for which I am seeking a publisher now.

Thanksgiving has arrived, and this year I want to take a moment to be thankful for the churches I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of.

I’m thankful for the church I grew up attending, the only church I called home from the day I was born until I left town to go to college. Located in South Bend, Indiana, it was a rather academic church attended by a great many professors and (mostly graduate) students at the University of Notre Dame, Bethel, and Saint Mary’s colleges. This church wasn’t academic in the sense that it was impersonal or that the Christian faith was portrayed as some theoretical or speculative consideration, but it was an extremely intellectually vibrant community, one that I grew up thinking was normal. People like Alvin Plantinga went to my church, and it wasn’t until I was ten or twelve that I realized he was perhaps the preeminent Christian philosopher alive. As a kid, I knew him simply as “Al,” a really nice guy at church who talked to my Sunday School once about rock climbing.

Looking back I see now how such a church environment fostered in me a desire for a greater intellectual understanding of God as well as an appreciation for robust sermons. It is in so many ways because of my church in South Bend that I learned to grow from my doubts and ask the kinds of questions I find fascinating and faith-deepening. As far as I’m concerned you can’t grow up going to church with philosophers and not become keenly interested in the deeper, weirder questions of Christianity. This certainly held true for me at least, and I remain immensely grateful for ways this church fostered in me an abiding love for the intellectual side of Christianity that has saved me from a crisis of faith more than once.

I’m thankful too for the church I went to while in college and the one I attend now, for they have influenced me in important and helpful ways as well. Both in the Anabaptist tradition, these Brethren in Christ and Mennonite churches have helped me grow in my understanding of my citizenship in heaven and how to regard that first and foremost. I’ve never been a part of an overtly nationalistic or patriotic church so I’ve never been especially tempted to regard the United States as God’s chosen country or equate Christianity with patriotism or membership in any particular political party. But I have on occasion visited churches with American flags up front, and I’ve been friends with plenty of people who hold such views so I’m not ignorant about Christian Nationalism either. This emphasis of the Mennonite Church I attend now seems especially relevant today as Christian Nationalism in this country grows ever-stronger. What it means to regard citizenship in heaven above my citizenships in the US and Canada, and what it means to work for God’s kingdom rather than any political entity here on earth has really helped me as I process the current political landscape and the deepening mire we seem to be sinking into right now.

I’m also thankful for what these churches have taught me about living simply and what it means to balance living differently because of my faith without becoming irrelevant or absurd to the rest of the world. At these churches I’ve found that it’s not about visibly denying yourself the luxuries, comforts, and ways of the world in an effort to be set apart from it, as some insist. But neither is it about dismissing that idea altogether as many do and living no differently—except perhaps on Sunday morning—than anyone else. Living a simple, Christlike life isn’t about merely doing the opposite of whatever might be considered secular for the sake of holiness, but neither does it shrug off nor disregard the idea that following Jesus requires living in profoundly different ways from those who don’t. It isn’t about making a show of driving a cheaper car than you could afford or publicly boycotting this movie or that singer, but it isn’t embracing every facet of our deeply unhealthy consumer-driven capitalist society either.

Instead, it is the idea that we should try to live a life that runs counter to our materialistic culture in ways that don’t necessarily look different on the outside but feel different on the inside. It might mean making do with less, and it might mean buying ourselves the very best we can afford. It depends on the circumstances and the reasons we hold in our hearts for doing so. It means not judging others for the way we perceive their life choices and asking others to extend the same grace to us. It is only in the last few years that I feel I truly understand what it means to follow Christ with regards to the way I interact with the broader culture I’m a part of, and it’s a lesson that feels especially relevant as we approach Christmas, the most secularized and commercialized of the Christian holy days.

Finally, I’m thankful for criticism and critiques of Christianity and The Church as well. There’s plenty going around right now, and I implore you to check out #EmptyThePews or #ChurchToo if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Under these hashtags you’ll find harrowing reads, stories that need to be told so we can properly confront the issues pervading American Christianity today. So much dirt has been swept under the rugs in our churches that we’re finally tripping on the lumps, and it’s an ugly, necessary process that I’m glad is taking place.

I guess I’m really just thankful for The Church, that weird, wonderful, profoundly flawed community that, like us all, is worth saving, even and especially when it seems irredeemable.

Roy Moore is Just a Reboot

Everything about this Roy Moore situation is unsurprising. This already happened when the Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging about committing sexual assault came out and millions said “gosh darn that’s disturbing if true” and then elected the man President of the United States. The same principle is still at work today, and while it’s manifesting itself to increasingly disturbing extents, it isn’t anything novel. It’s just a sad reboot of a terrible original.

So when I hear someone say that Mary was a teenager while Joseph was probably in his 30s, and they were parents to Jesus so what Roy Moore did might not be all that bad, it isn’t shocking. When I see someone on twitter write that a pedophile is still better than any democrat, I check that it’s a real person but it doesn’t surprise me when it turns out they are. This is the world today. Actually, this is the world as it’s always been, laid bare for all to see.

Part of me misses last year when everyone at least pretended to be morally opposed to sexual assault. But most of me considers this part of a necessary growing process. We’re better off realizing that some people will justify or willfully ignore literally anything for the sake of political power.

We’re also better off now that many people can no longer pretend their homophobia and opposition to marriage equality has anything to do with sexual morality. We’re better off now that fewer people can act like their opposition to trans people using the correct bathroom has anything to do with protecting children from sexual assault. People still will, of course, but they have no pretense of a platform anymore.

Yes, it’s extremely disturbing that so many people are defending Roy Moore. But it really isn’t anything new, and it’ll leave us better off in the long run. Take heart.

Concerning Thoughts and Prayers

I really, truly hate that the subject of ‘thoughts and prayers’ gains relevance so frequently. Those words have become part of a bleak ritual in America, a liturgical cycle of sorts. Monthly or weekly another batch of lives are taken by largely-preventable instances of gun violence, and monthly or weekly we hold vigils by candlelight, use hashtags of yet another town’s name followed by the word ‘strong,’ and pause for a moment of silence at sporting events. And then we move on, until the next round.

Always in this ritual thoughts and prayers are offered to the survivors, those who must forever live haunted by memories of horrific violence and loved ones senselessly lost. And every time, thoughts and prayers are offered as a rote response unaccompanied by any meaningful actions. It reminds me of James 2:16 and it breaks my heart.

It reminds me of my own cancer as well. My cancer won’t disappear because people are mindful of my disease. My tumors won’t shrink with prayer alone, should I choose to forgo treatment. Please do remember me and pray for me, but also understand that I have needed every kind of treatment available to keep my disease minimized, including treatments still being tested. Understand that I’d much rather be treated by an atheist willing to try some surgery or new drug than a Christian who offers prayer as the only course of treatment. And if you’re in a position to influence our laws and regulations, think and pray about the actions you can take to reduce gun violence. Think and pray about what you might do for those who will otherwise be victims of tomorrow’s shooting.

NaNoWriMo Plans

It's November, or National Novel Writing Month. For the first time ever I'm going to participate! At least, I'm going to publicly state my writing goals and post updates and hope that keeps me on track. So, I'm hoping to get the second book in the Legacy of Rythka series done by the end of the month! Well, a first draft, that is. I have about 37,000 words to go, plus a decent amount of rewriting for the first half of the book which I already have done. I'll also work some on The Sundering of Rythka and Other Tales, a history of the world of Rythka in a similar style to Tolkien's Silmarillion.  I plan to post daily updates of my word count on my twitter, and I'll update regularly here too.

Road Trip! Part 2/?

After Custer State Park, our next stop was Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Called Bear's Lodge or Bear's Tipi by local indigenous people groups this was I think the most interesting and one-of-a-kind geological feature of our trip. The rain stopped and the lowest clouds departed right as we arrived at Devil's Tower, so we were able to see it clearly,which we appreciated.


Next came Yellowstone, perhaps the best stop on our whole trip. Just outside the park's east entrance we saw a picture-perfect moose feeding in a pond, and for a brief moment that I managed to capture on camera, it was joined by its calf. The next few days in the park brought us up close to more bison and elk than we could count. The elk--which were still riled up for the fall rut--were especially neat, bugling often and in general being more active than the bison. We did get to drive in the midst of a couple different bison herds as they ran along the road, so it's not like they were boring or anything, but we just enjoyed the elk more, for whatever reason.

The geysers, mud pots, and hot springs are cool too of course. We were more interested in wildlife so we only did a couple short hikes at the various geyser basins, though we did get to visit all the main highlights. I enjoyed seeing all the geothermal features in much colder weather, with far more steam than you get in the summertime. Grand Prismatic Springs was all but invisible, shrouded in its own steam. At times it washed over us in pleasant, warm waves, a stark contrast to the rest of our time there, which scarcely creeped above freezing temperatures. The forest of Fellwood in Rythka is set in a caldera, and while we were in Yellowstone I figured out a couple scenes that will take place later in the Legacy of Rythka series that will incorporate geothermal features.

Two main highlights stand out from Yellowstone--eagles and wolves. Our first evening in the park I spotted two eagles swooping low over the Yellowstone River, and then noticed they were harassing a duck in the middle of the water. After several unsuccessful attempts to catch the duck, which dove under the surface with every low pass from the eagles, the pair of predators eventually caught the duck and carried it off to eat elsewhere. Having never personally seen a bald eagle catch anything before, and given that they largely eat fish, this was a pretty spectacular sequence of events, especially for a raptor enthusiast like myself.

The wolves were a little less impressive, being perhaps a mile off on a snowbank of blinding white with a heat shimmer distorting the view through the binoculars, but two different people confirmed that the specs in the distance were in fact wolves. Like, real live wild wolves.

More later...

Road Trip! An Update, Part 1/?

We've had much less consistent internet access than anticipated, and I've greatly enjoyed being disconnected from the rest of the world, but I apologize nonetheless for the lack of posts here lately. On the whole this has been a wonderful trip and a great time for Christina and I to be away from hospitals and all that cancer involves. We're in the Denver area now and won't be home for about a week or so yet but we also won't be in any remote areas from here on out so this seems like a good time to catch people up in where we've been and what we've done.

The first couple days were pretty straightforward, driving through the Midwest to get to our first destination. We made the requisite stops at Culver's of course, and we went for a brief hike in a state park in the Wisconsin Dells, but there's not a lot else to report, other than we discovered our dog has grown considerably since we last stayed in a tent with him, and we realized we needed to upgrade to a bigger one. Oh, and we forgot several items of clothing we had been counting on, as well as our folding camp chairs. It was a bit of a comedy of errors at first. But at least it was a comedy!

Soon we reached our first national park, Badlands in South Dakota. I'd been there several years ago and the place helped inspire the Ramshead Plains region of Rythka, so it was especially great to experience the unique area again and imagine new ways to discribe it in my writing. More than one prominent character will spend time in the Ramshead Plains in the Legacy of Rythka series, and multiple Verten hideouts exist in the narrow ravines there, but I'll say no more so I don't spoil anything. One change I did notice was the explosion in the prairie dog population. Over a mile of the scenic drive we did there bordered a single prairie dog colony, and it seemed they'd become somewhat of a nuisance within the park..

After a stop at Wall Drug for free ice water, we headed on to the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore was busy and not as pretty as the rest of the region, so we didn't spend long there. We really enjoyed Custer State Park though, camping for a night before the snow moved into the area. On the Needles Highway we saw some mountain goats in the distance perched somehow on a cliff face, along with our first bison in a meadow.

I'm writing this on my phone so I'll edit this later to catch typos and add pictures when I have a chance to get out the laptop, but I wanted to get a start on recounting our trip here. A huge thank you to everyone who donated to us so we were able to enjoy his much-needed time on the road together.

More updates later....

Road Trip!

I seem to be staying free of side-effects from the clinical trial I started last week, so we’re going to make the most of this break from chemo and take a road trip! We’ll be spending time in Yellowstone and Arches national parks for sure, and we’ll see what else time, energy, and weather permits—the “plan” is to also see Badlands National Park and Mt Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Park. Maybe more, maybe less. I’ll post here every so often with updates of what we’re doing. We leave Wednesday!

Not Another Attempted ACA Repeal...

Apparently there's another Affordable Care Act repeal in the works, one that will send premiums for cancer like mine to somewhere north of $140,000 a year.

If that's doing justice, loving mercy, and having compassion for the sick and needy per Matthew 25, I want nothing to do with such things.

My Cancer Didn't Happen for a Reason

I recently wrote a post entitled "My Cancer Didn't Happen for a Reason" for the Patheos Unfundamentalist Christian blog. You can read it here.

Amoral Disasters

Humans seem to almost universally ask “why?” in the face of disasters. When wildfires, earthquakes, and hurricanes strike, especially all in the same week, explanations and scapegoating grow rampant. People of all sorts blame one factor or another for such events, and all too often these analyses ascribe morals—or a perceived lack thereof—as the driving forces behind them. I think that’s ridiculous.

Let me back up here first. It’s fine to ask why a particular disaster occurred and examine the reasons behind it. Sometimes there are pretty clear causes for disasters, or at least factors that contribute to the severity of their effects on people.

Sometimes a wildfire is started by a person, intentionally or accidentally. That’s worth knowing and learning from so we can more effectively work to prevent such occurrences in the future. Sometimes an earthquake brings far greater destruction than it would in another area, due to substandard building codes and materials available. That’s worth considering as we rebuild with an eye for mitigating future destruction. Sometimes flooding is made worse by poor planning and overdevelopment of low-lying swampland. That’s worth examining as we reconstruct after a hurricane, or perhaps choose not to in some areas.

After all, when most of us ask why a particular terrible event transpired, we don’t actually want to know the reason for it as much as we want to know what to do about it. We want to know if there’s any action we can take to prevent or minimize future iterations of such disasters. And that’s wise. We need to take seriously the anthropogenic factors like climate change and insufficient emergency preparedness measures that make natural disasters worse. We would be foolish not to.

At the same time though it strikes me as extremely unwise to ascribe moral causes to natural disasters or anything else that is part of the natural, dynamic systems at play in this world. When we look for sources of the events that bring suffering into our lives, too often we hear that everything happens for a reason, that God has some greater purpose for allowing or even causing painful events to unfold. I believe such thinking is utterly false.

Natural events like wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, or cancer simply define the extremes of different dynamic systems working in God’s world. We could argue about whether or not they are a result of sin in general corrupting the systems God created, throwing them out of balance and allowing for greater extremes than God originally intended, but that’s incidental to my point here. Either way, hurricanes are a part of the ever-changing weather systems currently at work on this planet. Either way, cancer is just an extreme manifestation of DNA mutation and cell division, both of which are good and necessary for adaptation, growth, and healing. To say that any natural process somehow responds to the morality of the people they affect is patently absurd.

It’s true that human actions can influence the effects of events like wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, and even cancer. How and where we build or the amount of carcinogens we expose ourselves to can certainly impact these things and reduce or exacerbate the suffering they can cause. But at the same time, no amount of preparedness can entirely eliminate the possibility that these things will still cause human suffering. Natural processes are by definition beyond human control. They don’t respond to our actions. They just happen, and our morals have nothing to do with them.

Appreciate your Hunger

I want to share a pet peeve of mine with you.

Throughout my cancer treatment, I’ve struggled to eat enough and I’ve lost a good deal of weight. Eating is a constant battle; rarely do I feel better after eating than I do beforehand, and I just don’t ever feel hungry like I used to. If I had my way, I’d easily go all day without eating and hardly realize it.

More than once, people have expressed to me that they wish they had this problem. People have told me they wish they could lose weight like I can, they wish they weren’t hungry like I’m not, or they wish they could have my lack of appetite.

Every time, I want to look them in the eye and say flatly “no, you really don’t.”

It’s not that big of a deal, and if you’ve said this to me or to people in situations like mine, don’t worry about it. Sure, it’s annoying, but I know you mean well. But please, do try to be grateful if your good health allows you to eat, to want to eat, and yes, to gain weight. 

Sermon on Suffering and the Book of Job

This past Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at my church in Corning. I chose the subject of hardships and suffering, examining the story of Job and my own experience with cancer in my discussion. To listen you'll have to click the link below, because I'm not tech-savvy enough to get the audio file uploaded here.

Listen Here

Still Waiting for Scan Results...

I’m still waiting for the results of my PET/CT scans that I had last Thursday. That’s OK, I guess. I haven’t thought about that much at all. I’m trying to focus on other things, like go-karting with one of my friends from college this weekend, preaching yesterday, and writing a lot. I don’t know what my scan results will show, but it’ll likely be more of the same: nothing extremely conclusive, nothing great, and some suspicious spots, I assume. But I’m not going to worry about that until we know for sure. Right now, I’m just taking it one day, or hour, at a time.

White Supremacy is a Cancer

White Supremacy is a cancer. That’s not a metaphor I use lightly or flippantly. In fact, I’ve argued more than once against other people using cancer as a metaphor for something they despise. I have cancer, after all, and a really bad cancer at that. I know what cancer is, what it isn’t, and what it involves. I’m much too familiar with cancer’s effects on the human body and I know too-well how difficult cancer can be to purge from one’s system. I don’t say this from a platform of ignorance about cancer or a desire to provoke a reaction. I’m just calling it as I see it. White supremacy is a cancer.

           

            I first felt my cancer—large lumps in my belly—several months before I actually went to a hospital for a diagnosis. I ignored the signals my body sent me saying something was amiss. I told myself it couldn’t be anything too serious, it couldn’t really be something bad like cancer. Not in my 23-year-old body. Eventually the distress signals became unignorable though. Long after I should have done something, I finally went to a hospital, got diagnosed with a terrible cancer, and started the process of grueling treatments. It’s been almost three years now, and I’m still in treatment. I may always be.

            And that as I understand it is how white supremacy has existed in this country, during my lifetime at least. So many of us have ignored the voices of people of color saying it is a real, serious issue. We’ve turned deaf ears to the signals saying something is amiss. We’ve told ourselves that white supremacy can’t still be a problem, not in this country. “That’s not us” we tell ourselves, as if that could make it so. Lately white supremacy has become impossible to ignore though. Long after we all should have listened and done something, we’re finally waking up to the harsh reality of who we are. We are a country with a terrible cancer, a malignant ideology that leaves no room for the diversity of humanity. We need treatment. Urgently.

            Now, I’m a pacifist. I believe in nonviolent, loving solutions to problems of violence and hate. I believe none are beyond God’s redemptive powers. And I do believe that applies even in situations like this. Yes, white supremacy is a cancer. It is irreconcilably evil. But the people who have been duped into such horrific ideologies are not. They must be confronted and corrected wherever they harangue and spout their deplorable ideals and they must be stopped from causing further harm, but they themselves are not cancer. Just as I’m getting every available treatment to kill my cancer while working to keep myself as healthy as possible through it all, we have to fight white supremacy with everything we have while working to rebuke and ultimately reconcile the people promoting it.

            Curing this country of white supremacy will be neither swift nor easy. My cancer has required years of chemotherapy, over a dozen surgical procedures, multiple rounds of radiation, and participation in a clinical trial. It isn’t a pleasant process and it’s left me with numerous scars. I fear the same will be true of the process to rid the world of white supremacy. But I also hold fierce hope that it can be achieved just as I hope, against all odds, that I will one day be cancer-free.

Personal Responsibility is Selfishness

“Personal responsibility” is a phrase I hear all too often. Typically it’s used as a coded phrase for selfishness, a lack of empathy, and ignoring the fact that being part of society requires acknowledging our shared responsibilities towards one another. As I see it, personal responsibility is unpatriotic and un-Christian, at least when taken to the extremes it so commonly is these days.

Now, personal responsibility doesn’t sound so bad on the surface. And it isn’t. Taking responsibility for your own actions and life choices is a necessary part of being an adult human being. Failure to do so often amounts to laziness and immaturity, two traits I know intimately. It’s important I acknowledge that before I go railing against personal responsibility. Personal responsibility isn’t exactly a terrible ideal devoid of any redeeming qualities. Rather, personal responsibility is important. It’s something I often don’t take seriously enough. But it’s also a cheap façade trying to hide dismantling Medicaid and protections for people with pre-existing conditions behind something more palatable. It’s the source informing a lot of misguided and malicious ideas about how society should work and how we should treat one another.

With regards to healthcare, “personal responsibility” seems to mean a complete disregard for others and a focus solely on oneself or one’s family. I’ve been told my own cancer treatment isn’t worth it, that it’s too expensive and unfairly burdens other people. I’ve been chastised online for daring to say that I should be able to have health insurance, since insurance companies covering expensive treatments like what I need for my cancer means other people might have to spend a little more on their own coverage. As if that isn’t the basic principle of how insurance works. Someone just last week told me they find it “hard to even relate” to my fear of losing my life-saving coverage, because they are spending too much on health insurance. As if spending too much money is remotely comparable to losing access to the treatment keeping your chronic cancer managed. I’ve been told I should have planned better, been more responsible, and saved more money before I got cancer. As if anyone can plan for a cancer like mine.

Statements like these just highlight for me how so many people thoroughly fail to understand serious health issues and how unexpectedly they can arise. They make clear how little empathy so many people feel as well, and how content so many people are to disregard those whose life experiences run contrary to their preconceived notions. For me, these kinds of ill-informed to blatantly malevolent statements reveal “personal responsibility” for what it is: a lame excuse to justify selfishly ignoring others.

Such selfishness and disregard for others is far from patriotic. This might not be especially relevant if not for the fact that many of the people who said the things I mention two paragraphs above have “patriot” in their twitter bio or feature the American Flag in their profile picture. I guess some of us have vastly different ideas of what it means to be patriotic. I think it’s patriotic to happily pay a little more in taxes or health insurance if it means our country spends a little more on making society better and covering people who most need medical care. I think it’s more patriotic to want to inconvenience ourselves for the sake of the greater good than it is to post patriotic pictures of flags and bald eagles online and set off fireworks annually. I think it’s patriotic to ask what we can do for our country and our fellow citizens, not what we can do for ourselves. Personal responsibility, as it connotes today, leaves little room for patriotism.

Personal Responsibility is also egregiously un-Christian, which wouldn’t matter to the national conversation if it weren’t so often Christians, often citing their idea of Christian values, who support “personal responsibility” and “personal freedom” as guiding principles for everything from gun regulations to healthcare policy. I can’t find anywhere in Jesus’ teachings that suggest emphasizing personal responsibility as much as we do today. In fact, as I see things, it’s Christian to disregard personal responsibility. Not that Christians are called to be irresponsible, but we are implored not to worry about taking care of ourselves so much and instead focus on serving and caring for others. The Good Samaritan didn’t cross over to the other side of the road to better take care of himself, after all. Neither should we.

Where is our Empathy?

This is our ongoing healthcare debate in a nutshell, folks.

On one side we have patients who need continued protections from pre-existing condition discrimination and lifetime or annual limits for our coverage. On the other, we have extreme stinginess and selfishness that says people like me aren't worth treating, aren't worth the monetary cost, and aren't worth burden we place on society.

People with health conditions like mine are extraordinarily expensive to try to keep alive. From the perspective of strict utilitarianism or social Darwinism it doesn't make sense to save lives no matter the financial cost. But if we as a country claim that all people are equal, or if we who are Christians believe everyone bears the image of God and is equally worthy of love, we must reject such thinking. I find it odd that many of the people who support a social Darwinian approach to healthcare also view Charles Darwin as an evil, Satan-inspired figure, his ideas an attack on God. I've long rejected such notions, but now I see they hold a kernel of truth. When concepts like survival of the fittest are misunderstood and taken as prescriptions for human society, not as descriptions of the mechanisms at play in the natural world, that is indeed an attack on God and God's children.

That's how I see our current healthcare debate. We can attack those people who've had the misfortune of experience health issues at some point, or we can continue to protect and care for them while working to improve our healthcare system for everyone. We can decide people like me aren't worth covering and treating if it means everyone else pays a little more, or we can recognize that to be a part of society means to accept our shared responsibilities towards one another. That this is even up for debate right now makes me wonder when we lost our empathy, if ever we had any.

Book Update

I’m getting really excited about my book on faith and cancer. It’ll either be really good or really bad; I’m not quite sure which yet. Recently I’ve found a few publishers that want a whole manuscript, not just the first couple chapters, a formal proposal, and an outline of the rest as used to be the case, so I’ve been working on finishing up the rest of the book. I should be done with it as best as I can be without other people reading it by about the end of the week, so I’ll be looking for some beta readers soon. If reading it and giving me feedback interests you, just let me know! I have a few people lined up already but could certainly use a couple more.

This book will be part memoir, part musings on theological issues relevant to my experiences with cancer. I’ll retell my treatment history of the last two-and-a-half years, hopefully without being too dull or downbeat, while exploring ideas like why suffering happens, what prayer means, and how The Church can—and cannot—support and help people in situations like mine.  If that sounds interesting to you and you have some time in the next month or so to read and critique, just let me know and I can add you to my list of Beta readers. If that sounds interesting but you don’t have time, stay tuned in the coming months (hopefully!) for information about publication. And if this doesn’t sound interesting to you, just ignore everything I’m saying here!

Forgiveness

I need to forgive the people who actively support and are working to pass the GOP healthcare bill. Lately I’ve seen a slew of hatred aimed at the people behind the bill, not just the bill itself, and I’m afraid I’m quite guilty of this as well. As horrific as this proposed legislation is, as devastating as it will be for people like me, it isn’t worth adding more hatred to the world. Not hatred directed at the individual people responsible for this bill, at least. I need to forgive the people behind this bill, even as I believe they need to be held accountable for the millions of lives it will harm should it pass into law. It’s hard to know what that really looks like though.

How can I forgive people for something they believe is right for them to do? How can I personally forgive those behind this bill while continuing to make clear it is an immoral attack on people like me? Our society tends to frame forgiveness as a three-step process: person A apologizes, Person B accepts that apology, and finally Person B bestows forgiveness, ending the matter. Forgiveness is most-often taught as a response to an apology, not something offered freely and especially not given to those who feel no remorse. Forgiveness is usually thought of as the end of the matter too. ‘Forgive and forget,’ we say. And that just doesn’t apply here, at all. It’s just not how forgiveness works in this—and actually all—situations.

In the situation of this so-called “healthcare” bill, many legislators are working diligently to pass it into law, making deals to win over those on the fence about voting yes. Many people believe they are doing the right thing and would doubtless do it again if they got the chance. I don’t expect anyone working on this bill to apologize for it after it goes into effect and kicks people out of elder care facilities or cuts off treatment for children with disabilities who are on Medicaid. Or kills people like me with cancer who easily surpass lifetime and annual limits for their insurance coverage. Here, as in actually every other situation, forgiveness must be freely offered. I haven’t begun to do that, and I need to.

Forgiveness, as I see it, is not a favor given only in return for a sincere apology. It is a conscious choice to not hold a person’s actions against them, whether or not they apologize or even recognize a need to offer an apology. It is essentially waiving our right to use another’s actions as leverage against them or as an excuse to retaliate. It doesn’t mean everything will go back to the way it was. It doesn’t mean you have to forget what the other person did. But it does mean you cannot hate them for their actions, no matter how much you might hate their actions. Now, I don’t know how exactly to waive my right to hold this bill against people, to forgive them for their role in passing it while never accepting it and working to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. But I have some ideas of where to start.

Forgiveness for this bill means I won’t let myself hate any of the people responsible for it, as a start. Be they voters who supported candidates calling for an ACA repeal or the legislators themselves who are working on it and whipping up votes, I must not let myself fall into hatred for any human being. They might be the closest thing I have to enemies, but even (and especially) so I must love them and pray for them. I have not and am not, so I will start there. Forgiveness for the terrible wrong of this bill also means that I will not let it affect how I interact with people who do support it. It means I must never let my words or tone become harsher because of this bill. It means I must not answer in-kind when I get into arguments over this legislation and instead seek always to simply state my case for opposing the bill, rather than descend into personal attacks. It means, in short, that I must treat all people with equal dignity as image-bearers of God, whether or not I agree with their politics—or really, if they agree with mine.

But forgiveness in this context doesn’t mean I will ever accept this bill or stop fighting it. It doesn't mean that if I die due to this legislation I don't still want my death held up as an example of why this law is terrible. It doesn’t mean that I won’t voice my opposition to the policies of the people who champion this bill and hope for or even work towards their losing reelection so they are no longer in a position to pass further, more damaging laws like this one. After all, forgiving a bully or an abuser doesn’t mean you have to spend time with them again, especially if they make no moves towards contrition and repentance. Forgiveness for this bill also doesn't mean I will stop fighting against this horrendous legislation any way I can while seeking to continually improve our healthcare system so it truly works for everyone, as I believe should be our goal. Simply stated, it doesn’t mean I’ll forgive and forget. I will forgive, but I will still remember—with fierce sadness instead of bitter anger, though.

So, to any and all who support the healthcare bill being worked on by the Republican Party right now, I forgive you. I love you. And please, please reconsider.

Next Post Delayed a Day

I was hoping to write this week’s blog post today so that I could still post it tomorrow, but it just didn’t happen. I have a start, but it’ll take some work before it’s worth posting. Tomorrow I’m going to Six Flags with my sister since my abdominal drain is finally out and I’m doing better and I need to do something fun. So I won’t be able to finish this week’s post until Tuesday. I’ll be sure to get to it then though; don’t worry!

The Church Should Care for the Sick. So Should the Government.

Here's a truly bizarre statement that I’ve seen and heard too many times already and doubtless will too many times again: “The Church should care for the sick, NOT the Government!” First, this idea ignores the realities of what it takes to care for the sick in this day and age. It also presents a clearly false dichotomy about the roles of church and government that nobody I know actually believes; not when applied to other issues, at least.

I’ll start by making a minor concession and agreeing with the first premise in this statement. Yes, the church should and must care for the sick. Jesus makes clear in Matthew 25 that those who provide food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, hospitality to the stranger, clothing to the naked, care to the sick, and companionship to the imprisoned are considered righteous in God’s eyes. The parable of the Good Samaritan too proclaims that it is good and right to care for others, perhaps especially when it is inconvenient and costs us our time, money, or even our own safety. So yes. The Church needs to care for the sick. But it isn’t. And it can’t. Not on its own, at least.

Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m criticizing The Church too harshly here. Numerous churches—from the one I grew up in for eighteen years to ones attended by friends of friends—have sent us care packages, cards, and yes, money. In many ways The Church has gone above and beyond in supporting me and my wife through my ongoing cancer treatments. We have been visited and hosted by people from church. I could not and would never expect or ask for more support than we’ve already received. From special offerings collected to generous individuals who continue to give to us, we have been helped immensely by the generosity of more churches than I can keep track of.

Yet the fact remains that none of this comes remotely close to covering the costs of my medical treatments. It never could, really. That’s why I have insurance. That’s why I NEED insurance. Insurance that, thanks to current government regulations, can’t be cut off for annual and lifetime limits that I would easily surpass. No church I’ve ever been part of has an extra million dollars per year in its budget for the medical bills of just one member or regular attendee. That’s how much my cancer treatment has averaged these last two-and-a-half years though. If caring for the sick were solely the responsibility of The Church, people like me with rare and expensive medical conditions would bankrupt churches and end up without access to life-saving treatments. The Church can and must tend to the sick, but it cannot pay for everyone’s medical care on its own.

Even if medical care we far cheaper or a lot more rich people donated copious amounts to The Church and The Church could somehow pay for everyone’s medical bills, that would still be no reason why our government should not also play some role in our healthcare system. The idea that it’s The Church’s job and therefore not the government’s would still be a false dichotomy. If The Church should do something—if something is noble and just—why should the government then necessarily avoid such things? The only possible answer to this question is that we must have separation of Church and State, yet that doesn’t really apply here. Certainly, no religion should unduly influence our government. But that doesn’t mean that a government’s duties to its citizens—such as providing for the right to life and therefore healthcare—should be abandoned just because members of a religion also believe in that duty and want to help in that area.

I don’t think anyone really believes this false dichotomy anyways though. Certainly I don’t know anyone who applies this principle consistently. It strikes me as very odd that many of the same people who say the government should get out of healthcare because The Church should care for the sick also want—for religious reasons—the government deciding who can marry whom based on something as trivial as the physical characteristics of their bodies. It is wildly inconsistent to vote for elected officials who promise to bring “Christian” principles to our government while saying the government shouldn’t do something the church is supposed to do.

I think when it comes down to it many Christians are simply embarrassed that our government is doing a better job than The Church at systematically providing food for the hungry and giving the sick a way to receive the healthcare they need. Really, we should be embarrassed by this. I know I am. I do next to nothing to contribute to these areas myself, and I wish I and The Church were better examples of Christ’s love. Sure, my current health makes that difficult, but that’s really just a tepid excuse. I didn’t exactly volunteer all that much before I got cancer, after all. We The Church can and must do better. But if Christian opposition to government involvement in caring for the sick does in fact stem from embarrassment, that’s about the most petty attitude I’ve ever encountered.

So how should the church care for the sick while recognizing the government’s role in healthcare? First, we must recognize there are in fact many ways of caring for the sick that the government cannot take care of. The Church can provide community that the government cannot. The Church can provide spiritual care that the government cannot. The Church can be a source of comfort and strength extending far beyond financial support—though it can and should work to improve its care in that area too. But The Church simply cannot provide comprehensive medical coverage for everyone. In light of that, we The Church should support and encourage our government to work towards healthcare policies that protect the sick and ensure they are cared for, even as we work together to care holistically for those facing illness.

Podcast Interview

I had the opportunity to guest on another podcast last week, and the episode is up now! If you don't mind a little swearing, listen to our conversation at the link below:

http://wisdomofabeardedman.libsyn.com/

Healthcare Is a Human Right

If I don’t have the right to healthcare, I lose my right to life. It’s that simple.

Alright, I know this issue is a little more complicated than that, but that’s what it all boils down to. I depend on healthcare to stay alive. I need healthcare just to have a fighting chance at living a little longer, actually. If I lose access to healthcare, I won’t have a chance. Period. I don’t have much of a chance as it is, but at least if I have guaranteed access to reasonably affordable health care my situation isn’t completely without hope. Healthcare is, for me and millions like me, inseparably tied with life. They are one and the same right.

Yet this is, somehow, a controversial statement. Millions of people—and a majority of our current lawmakers—seem to think that healthcare is not a right. It isn’t explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights, after all. I’ve seen someone write that we don’t have the right to other people’s money, so we don’t have the right to healthcare; we just have to take responsibility for ourselves and pay for our own healthcare. I’ve heard arguments that food and shelter are necessary for life, yet the government doesn’t provide those for all its citizens. Why should healthcare be different? I won’t pretend to know all the reasons people think healthcare isn’t a basic human right, and I am sure there are other arguments out there against it. But these seem to be some of the most common arguments, so I’ll respond to them below. If you know of any other reason people oppose the right to healthcare, please let me know!

First, the constitution. No, it doesn’t say healthcare is a right. Healthcare as we know it today didn’t really exist when the constitution was written, and practices like slavery were originally allowed by the constitution, so perhaps we should stop revering it quite so much and update it as needed a little more, but that’s another issue. The United Nations though, which we’re part of when last I checked, in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that:

“everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Gender-exclusive language aside, this pretty clearly lists health care as a basic human right, no matter the circumstances in someone’s life. Perhaps we should honor that, as a member of the UN.

Next comes the single-most prevalent argument against the right to healthcare: personal responsibility. Or, as I like to call it, selfishness. It is, simply put, the idea that we should all just take care of ourselves. Well, that would be great if that were possible. Personally I’d love to work and make enough money that I could pay for my own medical costs. Who wouldn’t want to be a millionaire, after all. I’m not exaggerating, by the way; my medicals bills have averaged about a million dollars a year. Without laws that prevent me from being discriminated against by health insurance companies, I’d have been on the hook for that—if I was even able to get that care at all. Now, most people touting personal responsibility don’t want to abolish the concept of health insurance. They just want everyone to be responsible for paying for their own insurance.

And that sounds reasonable, at first. Before I got cancer I was working towards that goal, but neither of my part-time jobs offered benefits. So I simply stayed on my parent’s insurance, since I was 23. Here’s the irony though: if I had been a “good, responsible, self-sufficient American adult” I’d have been on my own health insurance when I got diagnosed, and I would be in a much worse position now because of it. Since I haven’t been able to work due to my ongoing treatment, I would have lost that insurance when I had to quit my jobs. I don’t know what I would have done next. I guess I would probably have gotten my own insurance through the state exchange without being denied for my brand new pre-existing condition, which makes two ways Obamacare would have saved my life in that scenario. At any rate, it would have added another layer of difficulty to what is already an almost-impossible situation. I have a super rare cancer that will probably kill, me, after all. I don’t need another thing to worry about.

Last, I need to respond to the idea that food and housing aren’t provided by the government, so healthcare shouldn’t be either. First, this is just factually incorrect. Our government provides food and housing assistance for those who need it, just as Medicaid provides healthcare assistance for those who need it. If you think the government shouldn’t play a role in assisting its most marginalized citizens then that’s another argument for another time. But the fact is we already do have programs in place to assist those in need with these basic components of their right to life. Second, whether or not the government should cover the cost of health care for all its citizens is irrelevant to whether or not we have the right to healthcare.

We have laws and government agencies that ensure our food and housing meet certain standards. The FDA works to make sure companies don’t sell foods contaminated with E Coli, for example, and our housing codes make sure that building materials don’t contain poisons like lead or formaldehyde. These are fairly basic consumer protection measures, designed to keep us from being taken advantage of by profit-driven companies. This same principle applies to our healthcare laws, for now. The Affordable Care Act prevents insurance companies from selling ridiculously cheap plans that provide no meaningful benefits. Obamacare keeps people like me—whose health issues make them unprofitable to insure—from being discriminated against. It means I can’t be taken advantage of just because I happened to get cancer. I can’t be charged more or denied coverage just because I have health issues. These are fairly basic consumer protection measures. And they’re under attack.

The right to healthcare doesn’t necessitate taxpayer-funded universal health coverage through the government. It doesn’t have to be socialized medicine. But at the very least it has to include consumer protection measures that keep the people whose lives depend on health care from being discriminated against. It has to prevent companies from selling cheap plans that cover basically nothing, just as we have laws preventing companies from selling cheap cars that don’t meet safety standards. Whatever we think about the proper roles of a free market or government involvement, we must recognize that the right to life is intimately intertwined with the need for affordable health care for all people. We need common-sense consumer protection laws, whatever form our healthcare system takes. The AHCA being worked on by a handful of senators right now is a brazen assault on such protective measures. It is, simply put, an attack on the Right to Life itself.

Podcast Interview

I did an interview on a podcast last week and the episode is up now. You can find it here:

https://jeromedanner.net/2017/06/09/episode-41-morgan-bolt-mboltauthor-interview-discussing-pain-and-suffering-as-a-christian/

The AHCA is Not Pro-Life

If you support the American Health Care Act, you’ll have a very hard time convincing me you’re actually pro-life. There is nothing pro-life about stripping away our health care laws and leaving the poorest and sickest among us at the mercy of profit-driven insurance companies. Many people who most need health insurance—people just like me—are simply not profitable to fully insure. We need laws and regulations to protect us from attempts to make a profit off us, like annual and lifetime caps for insurance coverage, being charged more because we have health issues, or being denied coverage for our expensive medical conditions. The AHCA guts protective measures like these, prioritizing profit over people. It’s anything but pro-life.

But sadly that’s not exactly surprising. The “pro-life” movement has long focused only on a single issue while ignoring a host of other threats to human life. Worse, many who claim to champion pro-life policies support atrocities like war and capital punishment, not to mention the AHCA and other attacks on our healthcare system that work against their stated goals. That irony and hypocrisy is not lost on those outside conservative Christianity, and it’s part of why increasingly many people are leaving the church and believe it does more harm than good. It breaks my heart to see the church viewed this way, even more so because it is a reasonably fair view.

That’s why we need to rethink what it means to be pro-life. Not just to fix the perception of the church, but to bring consistency to the term and to actually work as agents of God’s love in protecting the inherent value of human life. We need to redefine “pro-life” so it means more than a narrow-minded focus on a single issue. “Pro-life” needs to mean a commitment to protecting and supporting lives wherever they are threatened, no matter what those lives might look like or what they might have done. By contrast, the AHCA implies that only some lives are worth protecting, by virtue of their financial or health status, and others are not. It sends the message that the poor, the sick, and the marginalized are not worth caring for. And that’s about as anti-life as a healthcare policy can be.

The AHCA and Christian principles

Last week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its assessment of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and it wasn’t good. Not for anyone who ever has needed or ever will need healthcare, at least. The effects this proposal would have are truly horrifying to me, and it defies all my efforts to understand how anyone could support such a piece of legislation. So, if you believe that the AHCA is good for America, please, I welcome your comments and feedback. I earnestly would love to engage this topic in a respectful discussion and gain some understanding about the reasons people support it. Because when I look at the effects it will likely have I see only a multitude of reasons to oppose this bill.

An estimated 23 million people will become uninsured if the AHCA gets implemented. More insidiously, many people who think they have health insurance could find that their insurance doesn’t actually cover anything meaningful or expensive, as the AHCA would allow states to choose to lighten regulations requiring insurance policies to cover essential benefits. Similarly, states could also choose to allow insurance providers to charge more—often exorbitant amounts—to people with pre-existing conditions. You know, people like me who have required medical treatment in the past and as such are likely to need more in the future. I think what breaks my heart the most though are the cuts to Medicaid that will result in an estimated 14 million more uninsured people through reduced enrollment. That’s 14 million of the most financially vulnerable people in this country who will be without health insurance as a result of the AHCA. That’s 14 million people who might be just like me, with major health issues preventing them from working, forcing them to rely on Medicaid, the last healthcare-related safety net our government offers. Finally, adding insult to injury—on top of the wide range of regulatory and funding cuts that will negatively impact all but the healthy and wealthy in this country—the AHCA includes tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

The blatant prioritization of money over human lives represented by the AHCA sickens me to my core. First, as an American citizen, I find the AHCA repugnant. A government should protect its own citizens, especially its citizens whose health or finances make them vulnerable. Second, as a Christian I find the AHCA morally reprehensible. Christ calls us to care for the “least of these,” like the poor, the sick, and the marginalized. The AHCA by contrast harms people who happen to have health issues, face poverty, or both. Now, I believe a Government that provides freedom of religion shouldn’t govern by the principles of any one religion, so it should be somewhat irrelevant that the AHCA stands contrary to Christian principles. But it isn’t.

Most of the legislators who sponsored and voted for the AHCA profess to be Christians, and many of them even cited their ideas of Christian principles as reasons to support this bill. Dangerous theology like an unhealthy emphasis on personal responsibility—a cheap euphemism for selfishness and ignoring our shared responsibility to care for the marginalized—contributed a great deal to the passing of the AHCA. So did the appalling idea that people who, in the words of Representative Mo Brooks, “lead good lives” don’t get health issues. I wrote an entire blog post about “leading good lives” here, so I won’t cover that any more now, but it’s important to address the role Christianity has played in the passing of what, by my assessment, is a very unchristian bill. To see Christianity so entwined with a bill that will harm so many tarnishes the very name of Christ. And for that reason, more than any other, the AHCA outrages me.

Refocusing, and a New Post Tomorrow

Now that I’ll be posting weekly here as well as every other week on Patreon, it’s time to organize my writing a little more. So, I’ll be using this blog to focus on my thoughts pertaining to cancer, Christianity, healthcare, and their intersection. Any posts about other subjects, like Christianity as it pertains to issues aside from health and cancer, will get posted on my Patreon page. I’ll have a new blog post up here tomorrow, so be sure to look for that, but in the meanwhile you can find a post I wrote today about Memorial Day which you can find here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/memorial-day-11442595

A Way to Support my Writing

            After about a month of deliberation I at last decided to launch a Patreon page for myself. In short, it provides an easy way for anyone who enjoys my writing to support it financially in return for access to more of my writing. Should you choose to become one of my patrons, you will get exclusive access to weekly single-paragraph blog posts, a monthly full-length blog post, as well as regular updates on my writing projects and ongoing cancer treatment. If this sounds interesting you can find my Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MorganBolt. There’s also a link on the right side of this page; just click on “support my writing.” If this doesn’t sound particularly interesting to you, don’t worry. I’ll still post here regularly and this blog will always be available for your reading enjoyment. Please, do not feel pressured into becoming one of my patrons or feel obligated to do so even if you don’t much care for my writing. I just want to make everyone aware that you have the option of finding more of my writing in another place. Thank you!

Ascites, Eating, and Major Manuscript Changes

            Well, my estimate from last week was a little off. Thursday’s paracentesis procedure yielded 2.5 liters of fluid, a sizable step up from the “just under one liter” I had predicted earlier. The important point though is it’s gone, and hopefully won’t come back. Hopefully. So far I feel alright; any fluid that is accumulating hasn’t reached the point where it makes me extremely uncomfortable. I’ll take it. On the whole I’m doing alright. I still struggle to catch my breath, but I’m eating more and more normally and getting a little stronger, I think. It's a strange thing that simply being able to eat a semi-reasonable amount of food again is such a source of happiness, but such is life! It’s slow progress, but at least it’s progress. I can lie down flat with my legs straight, I can eat enough to not lose weight, and I’m able to do more and more every day now.

            After too-long of a break I’m diving back into my writing projects again, now that I finally feel up to it. Chief among my works in progress is a book on faith and cancer, and currently my main goal is is to reorganize a good chunk of the draft I have. The most helpful part of taking a month or two off from writing a book is the fresh perspective you gain on it. I realize now that a couple chapters are a bit redundant, while I omitted a few topics I decided I want to explore. As such there’s a good amount of copying, pasting, deleting, and rewriting to do even before I get to adding the new content I have yet to write. It’s certainly not the easiest book to write, but I’m quite excited about what it is becoming. Part a retelling of my entire cancer treatment and part an exploration through the lens of cancer of timely and significant theological issues, it’ll be—in my biased opinion—a captivating, thought-provoking read. But I’ll let you judge that for yourself, someday…