Good weather
My dog’s company
An appreciation of even the so-called smallest of blessings: a hug, a smile, a simple expression of caring and support
Being able to give as well as receive
Making new friends and reaching out
The pleasure which comes from reading all manner of books and learning new words, phrases, and expressions
Maintaining strongly-held principles, values, beliefs while simultaneously remaining intellectually and emotionally open
Not fearing the future in terms of health and illness, but emphasizing the day which is at hand when the sun rises
Tag Archives: Sam I. Gellens
What Matters Now is: by Sam I. Gellens
Filed under Writing
On Support and Gratitude by Sam I. Gellens
Gifts? Gifts? No, nothing concrete, but I am grateful for the lovely dog I have, a Welsh Corgi named Cash. Cash and I are joined at the hip and she does not like my being removed from her presence. I talk to her sometimes about what I’m feeling and I’m sure she both understands and represents a caring soul from another time who has passed on and decided to inhabit Cash’s bodily form. Could it be my mother’s Aunt Sophie, who took care of her when my mother was orphaned at seven, but ended her own life in such desolate circumstances? I feel badly when I miss an opportunity to brush Cash’s wonderfully soft and thick coat twice a day. Ditto for playtime. But I know she understands. She listens and is patient and is so sweet-natured. She is possessed of a precious soul and I’m so glad she’s mine. Could her coming to me more than a year ago have been basheret (“fated”)? Indeed, she is a gift.
Filed under Writing
“The Wound is the Place Where the Light Enters You” (Rumi) by Sam I. Gellens
I bear neither physical wounds nor scars from cancer to this point…but, I can’t predict what the future will bring. Will the lung cancer return in six months’ time? Will my doctors be able to get the prostate cancer under control? Has Rumi’s lustrous mystical light indeed entered me? If so, how? How will I know? Right now, it does not feel as if that light has either entered me or provided a shining beacon to lead me to a place of peace and mindfulness and insight and wisdom and acceptance. I feel consumed by worry, uncertainty, aging and fear of being alone too much of the time.
I go to work each day not only because I feel needed there, do a very good job at what I do and am legitimized by my efforts. I go to work because I am not alone there, there are colleagues about and students, young, healthy students to advise who, unlike me, have their whole lives before them. They make me feel momentarily young again and that I can make a difference in their world, and I marvel at their youthful vigor and energy. I feel pursued by cancer, consumed by its presence, the possibility that it will ravage me further and possibly put an end to me.
Rumi is speaking of a divine light which will suffuse our being and make us rise above the mundane cares of this world, even illness and how it wears us down. I wonder if he knew cancer. Did he know people who had it? If one follows the Sufi mystical path of Rumi, is there indeed transcendence, perhaps even triumph over illness and all of the other afflictions of human life, and is it then that the light enters you? When does one know? To live with cancer and not know, well that is a form of torture one must bear…
Filed under Writing