Hope's ability to heal

I write to you from one of America’s brightest Southern’s cities–Atlanta. Not only is it literally “bright” here--the sun promises to shine all week at levels that will fulfill our Vitamin D requirement in under 15 minutes--it is bright in terms of its fabulous and varied food scene and its great preachers. (Fred Craddock, Tom Long and Barbara Brown Taylor call Georgia home.) I'm at the premier preaching conference, Festival of Homiletics, this year at Peachtree Road UMC, with 1,200 other clergy from the U.S and Canada. We've enjoyed incredible preaching and teaching from Peter Gomes (Harvard), Barbara Lundblad (Union NY), James Forbes (Riverside in NYC), Bishop Will Willimon (Alabama area) and internationally known preacher Grace Imathiu, who currently serves in Wisconsin but was raised in Kenya. And there are a couple of new names like Adam Hamilton (Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City) and Gary Charles (Central Presbyterian in Atlanta).

Today we heard from Frank Anthony Thomas, the Senior Servant of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis Tennessee. He reminded us that the legacy of the Black church is a testament of hope. Then he spoke about the importance of hope in sustaining us through the struggles of life. To illustrate his point, he reviewed Dr. Jerome Groopman's new book, "The Anatomy of Hope: How People Pervail in the Face of Illness". An experimental biologist, Groopman uses research and medical case studies in an inspiring and profoundly enlightening exploration of how hope can change the course of illness. Thomas summarized his points this way:

1. Hope can change the course of a malady and help patients overcome.
2. Hope has proved as important as any medication or any procedure done. Thomas suggested that this means we should all find out what our doctors know about hope in order to address an illness.
3. Through the author's personal experience of overcoming debilitating pain after back surgery, he confirms healing properties of hope.
4. The medical community must integrate hope into treatment by understanding the biology of hope.

He spent 30 minutes on more detail but I got from it that hope can save---maybe not cure--but save.

NotherFrog and I received lots of advice from the Boston doctors last Friday about how to live through the treatment and how to minimize the chances of recurrence. Much of this advice I've been stressing out trying to enact while not stressing out, since one of the doctors said stress was the worst possible thing to aggravate cancer cells. I have discovered that while I do not fear death, both because it's a smaller possibility in my case and because Jesus has assured me I have no need to fear it, I do fear living with cancer--debilitated by treatment, bothered by side effects, or restricted from living the full life I had envisioned.

Thomas' remarks reminded me that my core religious beliefs about the future of this world being in God's hands not only applied to my final outcome but to my ability to deal with the diagnosis in the meantime. And so I will endeavor to hope that my treatment will not overwhelm me. That with the community of support surrounding me, I will be resislent in the face of whatever comes. Such hope will not only sustain me, but now, according to the medical research, it will modulate the stress hormone, cortisol, increasing my body's ability to heal. Cool.