Doubt Inside My Doubt
This essay is reprinted here from O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine, where it appeared in May 2008.
My mother is fond of telling me I’m over-thinking it, “it” being anything from organic mulch for my flowerbeds to booster seats for my daughters so you can imagine how she feels about my religious ambivalence. While it’s not quite true to say she was 30 with three kids before she met someone who wasn’t Catholic, it’s close enough. Perhaps as a consequence, she is not a woman who has frittered away her days critiquing her religion. Instead, she prays, mostly for her children, who she so hoped would inherit her bulletproof faith but who are more likely to drive away with her navy blue Buick and a leftover case of Chardonnay she bought at a discount over the state line in Delaware. Both my parents shudder over our discerning, noncommittal generation that has something to say about everything but nowhere to go on Sunday mornings.
I envy my parents’ orientation. Supplication, I’ve often thought, must be easier on the body than TUMS and Ambien. How contenting it must be to believe that someday everyone you love will be in one place and will stay there forever. Who wouldn’t want that? But for all of its obvious appeal, I rarely go to church and have only read a few chapters of the Bible. (I got stuck five chapters into Genesis when Adam was said to have lived for five hundred and thirty years.) But even as roll my eyes, I’m not ready to toss out both bath water and baby. There is doubt in my doubt.
And from my earliest days as a mother, I have known that someday, say when the girls start elementary school, I’d be expected to take questions from the audience, so to speak.
Then, in the fall of 2004, well before either of my daughters asked me about God, both my father and I were diagnosed with late-stage cancer. I was 36, and the seven-centimeter tumor behind my nipple was technically my second cancer. (In my mid-twenties, I’d had a melanoma as big as a pencil eraser removed from my calf, leaving a little divot and a long scar that remind me to use sun block and stay in the shade at midday.) My dad was 74, and the scattered tumors around his bladder marked round three for him. And as alarming and unsettling as this was, I did not fall to my knees and petition the God of my childhood.
The day my doctor called with the diagnosis, I hung up the phone, looked over the heads of my kids and mouthed to my husband, “It’s cancer.” Then, after a long hug, a cold Corona, and a cigarette (I had squirreled away a half-smoked pack after a party the year before and for reasons I can’t explain, I couldn’t wait to suck up a Merit Ultra Light that afternoon), we went to the computer and starting searching for information on “invasive ductal carcinoma.” My father got his diagnosis in person; after thanking the doctor and scheduling a slew of tests, he and my mother slid into the Buick and drove down to St. Coleman’s, their favorite little church, for noon mass. They gave it to God; we gave it to Google.
Over the course of a year, my dad and I both got better and, especially in his case, people said it was miraculous. At the very least, it was unexpected. Perhaps even unexplainable, though not to Mom, who summed it up in a word: prayer. “People around the world were praying for your father,” she explained (“around the world” referring primarily to a high school friend of mine who lived in Moscow and had always been particularly fond of my dad).)
I had both always prayed and never prayed, which is to say that I often found myself in bed at the end of a day saying to no one in particular, “Thank you for this good man beside me and those girls in the other room.” But had I beseeched God to make me well? Had I begged God for my father’s life? I had not. Among other things, I didn’t want to be—to borrow from sixth-grade parlance—a user, a phony who thought she could get what she wanted by conveniently nuzzling up to someone she usually snubbed.
After my dad recovered, I talked to an old friend about my parents’ confidence in prayer and their belief that God had intervened. Rather than praise the inexplicable glory of God, my friend thought we should acknowledge and exalt the devotion and ingenuity of man. Or, as she put it: It just bugs me how people want to give all the credit away, as if we were all just useless sinners who didn’t know how to take care of ourselves or each other. In other words, maybe it wasn’t prayer that made my dad better—maybe it was the scope with tiny scissors that removed nine moldy tumors from my dad’s bladder without his even having to check in to the OR. Or all that chemo. Or the meticulous doctor who managed his case with such vigil. I liked my friend’s take on things: up with people and their hard work and cool inventions.
But I kept going thinking back to my father’s initial prognosis. The urologist to whom I attributed my dad’s stunning recovery had told us to "brace for the worst." Ten months later, when he declared my father a healthy man, that same doctor said he couldn’t explain “how on earth” my dad was disease-free. So could I really give all the credit to a doctor who shrugged his shoulders and said it was "anybody’s guess" how my dad survived?
Part of growing up is living with the disturbing and complicating fact that people—even the very smartest people—are sometimes wrong. It was only a generation ago when new mothers smoked cigarettes on the maternity ward while nurses fed the infants nice big bottles of formula, to say nothing of wee Pluto, once required learning for all students of a certain age. Every day, things get grayer and grayer where they used to be neatly partitioned into black and white. Notions that are considered dubious now will, in a just decade or two, become widely accepted. Or vice versa: what is standard practice now will be eschewed, like how no one puts plastic in the microwave anymore. So might we eventually say, “Can you believe that people used to doubt the power of prayer?”
In fact, the federal government has underwritten elaborate and expensive studies asking this very question. Online, I read through a pile of 2002 research that showed a measurable, therapeutic benefit to prayer. People who prayed and were prayed for had higher recovery rates. Sure, the link can be explained away: prayer, like any type of quiet meditation, is relaxing, and relaxation has proven physiological benefits. But a click away from those reports is collated surveys of surgeons and oncologists—a huge majority of whom pray for their patients. Scientists praying. So it’s not just my unguarded, gullible parents. If doctors can get to belief, might I?
If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us—and all of our lives—to be meaningful. But small. I’d be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts. I’d love to laugh at this life from a distance. As it is, I relish the fact that I am one of six billion people the way my mother revels in Pavarotti’s recording of the Ave Maria. Being one in six billion means my life can’t possibly matter to anyone but me and my little flock and that means almost everything on my mind, all my mistakes and failures and anxieties, is utterly inconsequential. When I forget my place, things begin to matter too much and I find it hard to get a good, deep breath. When that happens, I close my eyes and imagine flying over houses, lifting off the roofs and seeing all the people whose lives are happening concurrently with mine—arguing, dying, cooking, begging, hugging, losing, building, stealing, suffering and laughing, people learning that their adult son shows signs of schizophrenia or their mother is bankrupt, brothers playing air hockey in the basement after a fight, couples listening to music on the sofa, holding each others feet. Each of us a little bitty fish in an inconceivably large pond, swimming in circles, nothing to do but enjoy the water.
But maybe that’s a foolishly incomplete picture. Maybe there’s something between and around and inside of all six billion of us and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn’t that be outrageous? And beautiful?
Enter faith, the tallest order, the tightest nut, the humbling of yourself before purposes you don’t—and cannot ever—comprehend. Let’s face it; believing that there is a God who might get involved in your life—your tiny little life—defies all reason. In fact, it’s beyond anti-intellectual. It’s downright foolish. But then there’s the confounding, cuts-both-ways quote from Voltaire, the great French thinker who criticized the church while still seeing evidence for a supreme, eternal being everywhere he looked: who said, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd.”
So, I let my parents share their faith with our children. When we visit Philadelphia where my parents live, I let them take our daughters to church. At night, my mom gets the girls on their knees and shows them how to cross themselves and position their hands and bow their heads. It is a lovely sight, and I would never discourage it. But when we get back to California where we live, the girls are loaded with new ideas and the kinds of questions I always knew were coming.
Claire, who is a senior in preschool recently asked what lights are made of. After I gave her my best answer, something sketchy about filaments and electricity and Thomas Edison, she said, “In church, they said Jesus is a light.” Georgia, a first-grader, reprimanded me for saying ‘Oh my God.’ “God is a bad word,” she said. To which I heard myself say, “Oh no, honey. God is not a bad word. God is a very good word.” Both girls have asked if they could be the Holy Ghost for Halloween.
Regardless of where I am on the spectrum from atheism to theism, I’d rather my girls be grounded in something, even something that seems too good (or too damn crazy) to be true. So when the girls ask me about God, I say that people believe all kinds of things and no one really knows, including me, but that I hope for God. Then I tell them what my husband recently told me with tears in his eyes. I say being with them is the most spiritual experience of my life—the highest high, the deepest yes, the most staggering gift—and that gift must have come from somewhere.
And what to say about all the little gifts, the everyday stuff like a good cantaloupe or the rebate check coming just in time or a great public school teacher? For that, I’ve taken to saying grace with the girls. We all hold hands while I talk about our friends, our family, our health. Then my husband, generally prompted by my raised eyebrow, says a prayer for the people we know who are having trouble. The girls mostly tolerate it (sometimes adding a thank you for a popsicle or a playdate) and look forward to saying Amen, after which we do the family wave, as if the home team just scored. It feels good, saying grace. Not only because gratitude is a pleasant emotion but also because it is a step in the direction of my childhood, where grace was offered regularly (if quickly) and faith was less ambiguous.
For now, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’m just another person pulsing with thankfulness, wondering what will happen next. Someday—despite all medications and all prayers—people in our lives will get sick and will not get better. They will die. Georgia and Claire will ask me where they went and I’ll probably be wondering the same thing. Have they gone to a paradise, a separate plane of existence where God holds them in palm of his hand? Are they internalized in the people who are left behind? Do they become part of the earth and therefore, an endless part of the cycle of life?
If you asked my dad, he’d assure you that heaven exists and boy are you gonna love it. Just like if you asked him why I got better, he’d say something about how God wants me to be here. I tell him I got better because there was an antidote, namely four chemotherapies, each an impressive creation of man. But that just makes him laugh, shake his head and flash his big knowing smile. “Aw Lovey,” he says, “don’t you see? What do you think makes a man spend his days trying to cure cancer?”
My mother is fond of telling me I’m over-thinking it, “it” being anything from organic mulch for my flowerbeds to booster seats for my daughters so you can imagine how she feels about my religious ambivalence. While it’s not quite true to say she was 30 with three kids before she met someone who wasn’t Catholic, it’s close enough. Perhaps as a consequence, she is not a woman who has frittered away her days critiquing her religion. Instead, she prays, mostly for her children, who she so hoped would inherit her bulletproof faith but who are more likely to drive away with her navy blue Buick and a leftover case of Chardonnay she bought at a discount over the state line in Delaware. Both my parents shudder over our discerning, noncommittal generation that has something to say about everything but nowhere to go on Sunday mornings.
I envy my parents’ orientation. Supplication, I’ve often thought, must be easier on the body than TUMS and Ambien. How contenting it must be to believe that someday everyone you love will be in one place and will stay there forever. Who wouldn’t want that? But for all of its obvious appeal, I rarely go to church and have only read a few chapters of the Bible. (I got stuck five chapters into Genesis when Adam was said to have lived for five hundred and thirty years.) But even as roll my eyes, I’m not ready to toss out both bath water and baby. There is doubt in my doubt.
And from my earliest days as a mother, I have known that someday, say when the girls start elementary school, I’d be expected to take questions from the audience, so to speak. Then, in the fall of 2004, well before either of my daughters asked me about God, both my father and I were diagnosed with late-stage cancer. I was 36, and the seven-centimeter tumor behind my nipple was technically my second cancer. (In my mid-twenties, I’d had a melanoma as big as a pencil eraser removed from my calf, leaving a little divot and a long scar that remind me to use sun block and stay in the shade at midday.) My dad was 74, and the scattered tumors around his bladder marked round three for him. And as alarming and unsettling as this was, I did not fall to my knees and petition the God of my childhood.
The day my doctor called with the diagnosis, I hung up the phone, looked over the heads of my kids and mouthed to my husband, “It’s cancer.” Then, after a long hug, a cold Corona, and a cigarette (I had squirreled away a half-smoked pack after a party the year before and for reasons I can’t explain, I couldn’t wait to suck up a Merit Ultra Light that afternoon), we went to the computer and starting searching for information on “invasive ductal carcinoma.” My father got his diagnosis in person; after thanking the doctor and scheduling a slew of tests, he and my mother slid into the Buick and drove down to St. Coleman’s, their favorite little church, for noon mass. They gave it to God; we gave it to Google.
Over the course of a year, my dad and I both got better and, especially in his case, people said it was miraculous. At the very least, it was unexpected. Perhaps even unexplainable, though not to Mom, who summed it up in a word: prayer. “People around the world were praying for your father,” she explained (“around the world” referring primarily to a high school friend of mine who lived in Moscow and had always been particularly fond of my dad).)
I had both always prayed and never prayed, which is to say that I often found myself in bed at the end of a day saying to no one in particular, “Thank you for this good man beside me and those girls in the other room.” But had I beseeched God to make me well? Had I begged God for my father’s life? I had not. Among other things, I didn’t want to be—to borrow from sixth-grade parlance—a user, a phony who thought she could get what she wanted by conveniently nuzzling up to someone she usually snubbed.
After my dad recovered, I talked to an old friend about my parents’ confidence in prayer and their belief that God had intervened. Rather than praise the inexplicable glory of God, my friend thought we should acknowledge and exalt the devotion and ingenuity of man. Or, as she put it: It just bugs me how people want to give all the credit away, as if we were all just useless sinners who didn’t know how to take care of ourselves or each other. In other words, maybe it wasn’t prayer that made my dad better—maybe it was the scope with tiny scissors that removed nine moldy tumors from my dad’s bladder without his even having to check in to the OR. Or all that chemo. Or the meticulous doctor who managed his case with such vigil. I liked my friend’s take on things: up with people and their hard work and cool inventions.
But I kept going thinking back to my father’s initial prognosis. The urologist to whom I attributed my dad’s stunning recovery had told us to "brace for the worst." Ten months later, when he declared my father a healthy man, that same doctor said he couldn’t explain “how on earth” my dad was disease-free. So could I really give all the credit to a doctor who shrugged his shoulders and said it was "anybody’s guess" how my dad survived?
Part of growing up is living with the disturbing and complicating fact that people—even the very smartest people—are sometimes wrong. It was only a generation ago when new mothers smoked cigarettes on the maternity ward while nurses fed the infants nice big bottles of formula, to say nothing of wee Pluto, once required learning for all students of a certain age. Every day, things get grayer and grayer where they used to be neatly partitioned into black and white. Notions that are considered dubious now will, in a just decade or two, become widely accepted. Or vice versa: what is standard practice now will be eschewed, like how no one puts plastic in the microwave anymore. So might we eventually say, “Can you believe that people used to doubt the power of prayer?”
In fact, the federal government has underwritten elaborate and expensive studies asking this very question. Online, I read through a pile of 2002 research that showed a measurable, therapeutic benefit to prayer. People who prayed and were prayed for had higher recovery rates. Sure, the link can be explained away: prayer, like any type of quiet meditation, is relaxing, and relaxation has proven physiological benefits. But a click away from those reports is collated surveys of surgeons and oncologists—a huge majority of whom pray for their patients. Scientists praying. So it’s not just my unguarded, gullible parents. If doctors can get to belief, might I?
If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us—and all of our lives—to be meaningful. But small. I’d be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts. I’d love to laugh at this life from a distance. As it is, I relish the fact that I am one of six billion people the way my mother revels in Pavarotti’s recording of the Ave Maria. Being one in six billion means my life can’t possibly matter to anyone but me and my little flock and that means almost everything on my mind, all my mistakes and failures and anxieties, is utterly inconsequential. When I forget my place, things begin to matter too much and I find it hard to get a good, deep breath. When that happens, I close my eyes and imagine flying over houses, lifting off the roofs and seeing all the people whose lives are happening concurrently with mine—arguing, dying, cooking, begging, hugging, losing, building, stealing, suffering and laughing, people learning that their adult son shows signs of schizophrenia or their mother is bankrupt, brothers playing air hockey in the basement after a fight, couples listening to music on the sofa, holding each others feet. Each of us a little bitty fish in an inconceivably large pond, swimming in circles, nothing to do but enjoy the water.
But maybe that’s a foolishly incomplete picture. Maybe there’s something between and around and inside of all six billion of us and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn’t that be outrageous? And beautiful?
Enter faith, the tallest order, the tightest nut, the humbling of yourself before purposes you don’t—and cannot ever—comprehend. Let’s face it; believing that there is a God who might get involved in your life—your tiny little life—defies all reason. In fact, it’s beyond anti-intellectual. It’s downright foolish. But then there’s the confounding, cuts-both-ways quote from Voltaire, the great French thinker who criticized the church while still seeing evidence for a supreme, eternal being everywhere he looked: who said, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd.”
So, I let my parents share their faith with our children. When we visit Philadelphia where my parents live, I let them take our daughters to church. At night, my mom gets the girls on their knees and shows them how to cross themselves and position their hands and bow their heads. It is a lovely sight, and I would never discourage it. But when we get back to California where we live, the girls are loaded with new ideas and the kinds of questions I always knew were coming.
Claire, who is a senior in preschool recently asked what lights are made of. After I gave her my best answer, something sketchy about filaments and electricity and Thomas Edison, she said, “In church, they said Jesus is a light.” Georgia, a first-grader, reprimanded me for saying ‘Oh my God.’ “God is a bad word,” she said. To which I heard myself say, “Oh no, honey. God is not a bad word. God is a very good word.” Both girls have asked if they could be the Holy Ghost for Halloween.
Regardless of where I am on the spectrum from atheism to theism, I’d rather my girls be grounded in something, even something that seems too good (or too damn crazy) to be true. So when the girls ask me about God, I say that people believe all kinds of things and no one really knows, including me, but that I hope for God. Then I tell them what my husband recently told me with tears in his eyes. I say being with them is the most spiritual experience of my life—the highest high, the deepest yes, the most staggering gift—and that gift must have come from somewhere.
And what to say about all the little gifts, the everyday stuff like a good cantaloupe or the rebate check coming just in time or a great public school teacher? For that, I’ve taken to saying grace with the girls. We all hold hands while I talk about our friends, our family, our health. Then my husband, generally prompted by my raised eyebrow, says a prayer for the people we know who are having trouble. The girls mostly tolerate it (sometimes adding a thank you for a popsicle or a playdate) and look forward to saying Amen, after which we do the family wave, as if the home team just scored. It feels good, saying grace. Not only because gratitude is a pleasant emotion but also because it is a step in the direction of my childhood, where grace was offered regularly (if quickly) and faith was less ambiguous.
For now, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’m just another person pulsing with thankfulness, wondering what will happen next. Someday—despite all medications and all prayers—people in our lives will get sick and will not get better. They will die. Georgia and Claire will ask me where they went and I’ll probably be wondering the same thing. Have they gone to a paradise, a separate plane of existence where God holds them in palm of his hand? Are they internalized in the people who are left behind? Do they become part of the earth and therefore, an endless part of the cycle of life?
If you asked my dad, he’d assure you that heaven exists and boy are you gonna love it. Just like if you asked him why I got better, he’d say something about how God wants me to be here. I tell him I got better because there was an antidote, namely four chemotherapies, each an impressive creation of man. But that just makes him laugh, shake his head and flash his big knowing smile. “Aw Lovey,” he says, “don’t you see? What do you think makes a man spend his days trying to cure cancer?”
posted by Kelly Corrigan at 1:17 PM
18 Comments:
Beautiful article! I just finished The Middle Place a couple of days ago. I read it at my friend Courtney's request. Thank you for writing such a beautiful book.
I brought it up on the playground, and all the mommies were talking about it last week. The ones who had already read it loved it. The ones who had not were going to rush off and buy it.
: )
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing beautiful, poignant articles Kelly. I am teary-eyed as I type this - you are an incredibly gifted writer and I always look forward to reading your articles!
thanks for sharing this one kelly. it hit home. I'm the one whose daughter recently announced in her Catholic school class, "I don't believe in Jesus." OKay...
I passed your article on!
Another great one Kelly! I enjoyed it and will resist the urge to give all my standard responses when the questions of doubt arise. I've learned to let others proceed on their journey unless I'm curretly in charge of raising them! But I will say this, a quote repeated to me by my pastor recently in regard to events described in the bible that seem highly unlikely to human minds - "Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't true." I love that! To see the bible as what it truly is - a blueprint for theology and living a life based on God's word, but definitely not a history lesson. Well, more than I intended to say but just a jumping off place really!
I just finished reading The Middle Place yesterday...I enjoyed it so much I finished it in two days. I'm a little older than you, but can releate to so many of the things you talked about. Thank you, Thank you for keeping your journals all those years and sharing them with us!
Kelly, another fantastic take on your take on faith.... you offer up such a thoughtful voice for those of us "struggling" (not necessarily in a negative way) to raise our kids to respect their grandparents' faith and adopt their parents' revised version.... my boys, 3 and 4, are beginning to ask these questions, and I am always trying to answer with fact, logic, whatever wikipedia says... But boy do I have the same nagging voice that tells me to also offer them the theological side of things (what grandma and grandpa believe)! I loved your grace suggestion.. have wondered how to broach that one... I think I'll try it!
Laurel from SC
Kelly, another fantastic take on your take on faith.... you offer up such a thoughtful voice for those of us "struggling" (not necessarily in a negative way) to raise our kids to respect their grandparents' faith and adopt their parents' revised version.... my boys, 3 and 4, are beginning to ask these questions, and I am always trying to answer with fact, logic, whatever wikipedia says... But boy do I have the same nagging voice that tells me to also offer them the theological side of things (what grandma and grandpa believe)! I loved your grace suggestion.. have wondered how to broach that one... I think I'll try it!
Laurel from SC
hi kelly -
I really enjoyed this piece - I think because it is not all neatly tied up with a bow. When you mentioned at the reading in Sausalito that you were writing a piece on faith, I wondered how it's even possible to draw real and final conclusions on the subject. So, I'm glad that you didn't. I think just the questions and the discussion matter more than any conclusion - it's too big and vast and unknowable.
Hi Kelly! I read your article when it was in O and just read it again. You are truly gifted and I am thankful for your thoughtful article. I think my faith experience growing up was very formal. It was the South and you went to church. None of it translated into my real life. In my 20's I was encouraged that Jesus was a gift I had to take. I reached out for Him in that way and it really did change my life. I still doubt. I heard Andy Stanley, a well known pastor say he doubted. And yet at the same time, I feel confident that there is something to the world and it's ingedients that I can't see. I take great comfort in feeling that through Jesus dying I am a forever child of God. It seems a crazy plan of God's but one I am thankful for. God bless you in your search and journey.
hi
Kelly,
I really enjoyed your blog, I found you out on YouTube from a link sent to me from one of my own pigeons. Thanks for your insightful writing, and I will definitely read your book.
I love your dad and mom already just from the trailer. I was also blessed by parents that make me laugh and cry and I thank God for being placed in my family.
I will pray for you to find the depth of your faith. You probably found and understood with simple faith, Jesus, God the Son, at church as a child and now you are trying to understand why He still beckons you to come closer.
One way to get to know God better is through His word, but I'm not quite sure why he put Genesis at the beginning of the book. I don't think that the Bible was written as a cover to cover novel, but more like a reference book. Maybe Genesis at the beginning is just to give us a test of perserverance. One thing I love is using the internet sites to allow us to jump around in the Bible. Try going to biblegateway.com and do a keyword search. It's very similar to searching in the public library online sites for a book. So, search on joy, and read all the Bible verses that contain that word. Or try to search on fear and see what wisdom is in the word of God.
As you search on the words you are interested in, you will get to know His character and maybe He will become much more real to you. After all, He really doesn't talk out loud to us anymore, He gave us His Son and His word and had it written for us, so He can speak to us through it.
Therefore you can see what the authors wrote about Him. You will enjoy it as one writer to another. Each author of the Bible has a different style of writing, so it is very interesting. I will follow the accounts of your faith walk with much interest and look forward to blogging with your other friends here!
Kelly,
I think you and I have similar ideas about faith. I come from a family of three Protestant pastors but I don't believe in the Christian God. I believe in an overall force of good that lives within us and in the world - the human spirit, rather than the Holy Spirit.
As I was growing up, I learned religion limited our access to God and faith. And worse, I learned that religion could be used for pure evil. But that doesn't stop me saying prayers with my three and five-year-old kids at bedtime or talking about God to them when they ask. I just tell them I think God is a beautiful idea, but I just don't know for sure whether he's real or not.
I have late-stage cancer and I should be terrified of death, but I'm not. I don't believe in heaven and hell, or any kind of an afterlife and I find that very reassuring. All the life and love I've ever wanted and will ever want is already here on Earth.
Your post mentioned studies from 2002 showing the therapeutic effects of prayer. A more recent study in 2006 showed "intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery... The study also found that patients who KNEW they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse." That study was of heart surgery, rather than cancer patients, but the same idea. Click HERE for the press release about that study.
Thank you, Kelly, for talking about such personal topics to strangers. You have an openness that suggests you have quite a lot of faith in humanity and in yourself. Your father might say that's a gift from God.
As I read "Doubt Inside My Doubt" I was struck with gratitude for my strong Catholic faith. I'm so blessed! I am absolutely sure there is a God. I am absolutely sure that going to Mass, praying, offering my gifts, surrendering my will is what I need to do to fulfill my purpose. I don't need proof but it is all around me.
I'm also absolutely sure that doubt is a good thing. Your concerns make me think. They make me more sure. Thank you for sharing your gift of doubt.
Today is Sunday and I will go to Mass. I will be given all the grace I need to fulfill my purpose for this day.
My Answer to Doubt (from my own blog, www.susanllipson.blogspot.com):
Nothing exists by itself in the natural world; everything is part of a greater whole, an unwritten, unspoken Covenant of Being. Isolation is an artificial state contrived to work against the interconnectedness of Nature. Even actions, as Newton proved, have equal and opposite reactions, and never occur without interconnection. The rock is part of the crumbled mountain, or former grains from a sandy beach, now solidified as stone. The lone wolf is still part of the pack, and part of his environmental system. The seed, via photosynthesis, is connected to the oxygen that sustains us, as well as the chemicals that break down our bodies when we die. The suicide bomber is connected to a community and to his victims, despite his attempt to sever that connection. The atom is part of a larger cell, and part of the universe. Humans are all part of each other’s existence, and the existence of every being, sentient or not, with whom we share this planet. Natural laws show us that a common thread always connects disparate things in this universe. Again, nothing exists by itself, and no one can deny this unavoidable connectedness between all things.
So, what is the common thread that connects everything? I ask atheists to identify this supreme Connector. They will, of course, try to find some scientific explanation, something that does not in any way acknowledge religious beliefs—despite the fact that many of the world’s most brilliant scientists acknowledged that their answers ended with that very question. But no one can deny the existence of this mysterious unifying thread, whatever they choose to call it. Both simple and brilliant minds have identified it as “God,” or some alternate name related to this intangible entity. Thus, without any better name, I assert that GOD is the thread that connects you to me, and us to everything. And even the atheist, who denies that which connects him to his world, will learn this truth someday, when his brain expires and mere thinking gives way to understanding—the soul’s domain.
Kelly, as one writer to another, and one person who understands cancer's ripple effects among family and friends, I commend you for making a mark on this planet. I wish you many years of health to continue spreading goodness. I hope you'll come to San Diego some day soon so I can meet you. May God bless you and your family!
Dear Kelly,
I can totally empathize with your doubts about religion and faith. My mother's "faith" made me crazy, because she was of the "sit and wait for God to take care of it" school, and she often stated "It was God's will." when anything happened or didn't happen in her life due to her inaction. It took me a very long time to get past that, and past the pretty Sunday School Jesus. But eventually I did.
Do I believe in God? Yes! Do I believe organized religion has all the answers? Emphatically no! God, and only God, will judge if we lived according to his will. But I do know s/he is out there and in me. And every once in awhile, s/he reveals herself in a powerful way, like the following:
"Nearly 20 years ago, God placed a broken, love-starved child in my life in the person of a friend of my daughter's. He had gifted me with an indomitable belief in the worth of each and every child and their right to unconditional love and respect. I didn't know this child was injured; I only knew she was a child and a friend of my daughter's.
"Over the years, she has become an unofficial member of our family and a daughter of my heart. A few years back, she told us her relationship with her parents was less than perfect and that she looked to us as the parents she wished she had. We have always tried to be there for her, as we would for any child. Within the past month, the seeds of love we had planted over the years burst into brilliant blossom, and I'm still reeling from the grace, wonder, and power of God's hand in her life and mine.
"I am drawn to two passages from Psalm 139: "When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (v. 15b-16) and, "If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast." (v. 9-10)
"When God first placed this child, now a young woman, in my life, I was not at a place in my faith walk where I could trust God to provide just exactly the kind and amount of care she needed, so I was unaware of her painful relationship with her parents, particularly her mother. Had I known, I would have raced in to try to "fix" it -- and probably done a great deal of harm. For 20 years, the Holy Spirit worked through me to literally save this child's life. In her own words (Note: "Moomah" and "Doodah" are family nicknames Christine gave to me and Bob many, many years ago, and they are special terms of endearment):
When I look back at my life and I see the confusion and anger, I wonder how it came to be that I didn’t turn into some church-burner or some drug-addicted whore on the street or dead. The answer has always come back to me that the reason I am where I am today is you, and Doodah and Christine as well. I just don’t see how I could have come this far in life without your direct and indirect influences. Admittedly I have had my fears that maybe I was forcing myself on you guys, worming my way into your family. And I have had times when I’ve debating telling you all that happened as I was growing up. It’s never been that I haven’t trusted you to share those things, but rather I didn’t want you to think about them, I didn’t want you to feel any guilt over not seeing what was going on (and you shouldn’t).
And
Moomah, through the lessons that you and Doodah directly and indirectly by teaching them to Christine (who passed them along to me), you have helped me so much. I understand the difference between right and wrong. I care about substance in people. I have a desire to work hard and to be a good person, and I understand how that is something I must continually strive for. I see that not all Christians are hypocrites, and I have a respect for all religions that teach respect and love for living creatures. I have a love of learning. And in general, despite the bad things that happen in life and in this world, I’m happy and I can still the good parts of humanity. Thank you for treating me as a daughter and for loving me."
By the way, because our love and belief in her intrinsic worth gave her the self-confidence she needed to succeed, she recently completed a PhD in Microbiology and has gone off to work on a Post-Doc with a member of the National Science Foundation who came looking for her! She is brilliant and always has been. We just affirmed her worth.
In God's time, I have come to know the details of my other daughter's suffering, and we have cried, and prayed. I have rocked her gently in my arms, and we have talked about forgiveness and letting go. I will continue to be there for her for as long as she needs me, and beyond, because she truly is a gift of God's grace to me.
But this story is really not about my daughter's best friend and me. It's about trusting God, being open to the direction of the Holy Spirit, and doing for others as Christ would have us do. Many, many times, we never see the fruit of our love and compassion. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continually reach out to those around us. I know that the Holy Spirit used me to save and begin healing this one child, but who knows how many other times he has used me for his purposes. I hope and pray that there have been many, many times when the Spirit used me.
Kelly, I know this is a very long post, but, for me, it is the most compelling proof I have ever received in my 6+ decades of existence that there is a benevolent guiding force that created this universe and that s/he cares about every single hair on my head and about every single individual in the universe.
Looking back, there were so many times when actions we took, both big and small, were life-affirming, love-affirming acts that helped this daughter of my heart grow into the amazing woman she is today.
Look for and appreciate the beauty around you, especially in the people in your life, and never stop reaching out in love to your fellow inhabitants of this big blue marble. Somehow, I think this is a path that will lead you to God.
Kelly,
First of all I love your book. I read it about a year ago and it really touched a lot of things with me. I am a cancer survivor, and my grandfather is a lot like your dad, Greenie. I am a Catholic; I grew up Catholic and rely on my faith for a lot of trials in my life. I have doubts sometimes more than I have certainties, but I know God is always going to be there. My doubts are usually with the hard facts or varying interpretations. I am a college freshman and so it's natural for me to question everything I guess. Even though I share the same beliefs with many of my friends we all have different ways of interpreting them and practicing them. I am more of a private, just talking to God person while some people I know go to rosary get-togethers or talk about their beliefs all the time. I just wanted to pass along something I heard recently relating to a similar situation. This person was also ashamed to go back to her faith just because she was sick. But someone else asked her this question, and I thought it was extremely poignant: Have you ever wondered if your illness is God's way of bringing you back? God's not going to be mad just because you're being selfish... God will just be happy you're talking to Him. I was thinking about how you said in your interview with Borders (how I found your site) that you think illness happens because it brings you closer to other people - maybe you could apply that to your religion? Just a thought... best of luck and I hope you keep writing!
Kelly, thanks so much for your incredible writing! I feel so connected to you, although I am much older, could be your mom :-) I loved The Middle Place. I am from south Jersey (that's almost Philly), was also a diver, and had a parent say, "Keep your expectations low and you will never be disappointed." I am also a survivor and am in a research study right now checking out the impact of our attitudes on our mental and physical health. Your writing helps me keep my "attitudes" in perspective. Keep up the great work.
Dear Ms. Corrigan,
First, let me say I enjoyed your book. You are an excellent writer and pulled me into your world immediately. Your father sounds like quite a guy, and your mother too.
The only thing that saddened me is that of all the wonderful influences Greenie had on you, faith was not one of them. The contrast between his journey with cancer and yours is glaring. Yours was panic driven and fearful. His was one of peace, joy, and trust in God’s sovereignty. This didn’t guarantee him a successful outcome any more than anyone could guarantee you one, but it did allow him to face his illness with a certain peace and joy as he rested in God’s care. In fact, based on your description of him, his joy has always been his gift to all who have the pleasure of coming into contact with him.
I too have been blessed with wonderful parents, and I didn’t always share their faith. I can appreciate your special relationship with your Dad – the person who has always loved you unconditionally, your biggest cheerleader. Unfortunately, I think we are in the minority in that area. From what I’ve seen, most people aren’t lucky enough to enjoy a loving relationship with their parents. Even so, they can still have a Greenie of their own, as we all can. Someone who loves us just because we’re his daughter (or son). My Greenie is God, and I never have to worry about Him leaving.
Like you, I didn’t always share my parents’ faith and had two children on my own before He knocked on my door. I believe God reveals himself to all of us when He thinks we are ready. Faith is a gift. We just need to be open to receive it. Perhaps God used this opportunity to reveal His trustworthiness to you. God uses the oddest things to get our attention. Ron Hall puts it this way in his book, Same Kind of Different as Me:
Sometimes to touch us, God touches someone that’s close to us. This is what opens our eyes to the fact there is a higher power than ourselves, whether we call it God or not.
You parents are a beautiful example of the peace and joy to be found in the arms of God. Christians don’t expect a life without trouble, just comfort in the midst of it.
Thanks for sharing your story and your Mom and Dad with the rest of us.
Joanie B.
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