Death and the Maiden

My wife just underwent emergency surgery.

She is fine. It is better. The sickness is cut out in the form of a blocked duct and she is one gall bladder lighter and comfortably recuperating at home.

Over the last year and a bit, I had four surgeries.

I am now cancer free - but for a while there, what with a grapefruit-sized tumor that could very well have been stage three by the time it was found - the future was uncertain at best.

Still - the one thing I had to come to grips with really fast was that I was dying. If I was "lucky" I would survive this, but with no guarantee that I was not on a quicker path to demise then others. The survival rate for colorectal cancers in Canada is only 64% at five years.

And then who knows - my body has been proven to degrade to cancer in one place - odds are small, like 3% chance of a second different cancer... but there are odds.

I don't say all this to get sympathy - but rather to tell you about the aftermath... The plan...

You see, when you realize that death is imminent you do everything you can to avoid it. Thus four surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, cannabis, and a change to a whole food plant-based diet. None of which are easy or pleasant to cope with when you are forced to do them (well - that is a lie - cannabis is pretty easy and pleasant ;) )

But when faced with great odds of death and poor odds of continued survival - change seems necessary and most of the arguments against it go out the window.

There is also that moment when you look back and realize - if I had not smoked for 20 years, if I had not continued to dip my arms shoulder deep in a vat of acetone while working as a fibreglass canoe modeler, if I had not have eaten meat for almost every meal, and so many other horrible choices - This may not be where I find myself now.

Ok - so this is a church blog - and this is the thing - Jesus used Parables to explain reality in an acceptable way so that we had religious and spiritual understanding. And the above is my parable... and what I want you to say is this:

Imagine there is a church that discovers it is dying...

Ahhh..... there's the rub. You see. This is exactly what happens to us as an institution.

There comes a moment when our mortality takes centre stage. There comes a moment when we say, the survival rate at five years is 64% at best. There comes a time when we frantically do everything possible to try and prolong that life expectancy.

And how much easier, how much better would it have been if we either did the things from the beginning - or at least had yearly check-ups where we asked ourselves, how can we be healthier? Where are we declining the most?

There is a clear parallel here and for some reason, human nature is all about pretending it won't happen to us. But it will. Or something else will. But mark my words. If we just pretend everything is okay, one day it won't be.

My church has 5,000 set aside to hire a new minister. For advertising, moving expenses, etc. Now - most of them hope I never leave. But wouldn't it be less stressful to have the means to put on a really good job search should that day ever come?

This is the way we need to start thinking about everything. Aging people are going to stop contributing. Population shifts are occurring. There are a hundred little changes happening year over year and we should be proactively looking at them and adapting.

Which is also - if you want to look at it a different way - what Coca Cola or any successful company does. At some point, someone pointed out that people were getting healthier and so the next year coca cola started selling health drinks, then straight up bottled water - changing year after year to meet a different perceived need.

Time for some serious health checks and product evaluation...