Neology

Exo-Genesis

I have no Greek and limited Latin so I don’t actually know what that means, but I am hoping it means Exo – exterior, like exoskeleton, and genesis, like in the beginning.  That’s my intention, anyway, and if it doesn’t really mean that, and means something bigger or wilder, like some Astronomy thing, forgive me and please just imagine for the duration of this essay that it means what I think it means.

In the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Jacob is trying to cross a stream and fights an angel and ends up with a broken hip and a limp all his life. It is from this episode of his life that he re-named Israel, loosely translated, “he who wrestles with God.”

This is one of my favorite stories for a lot of reasons.  Firstly, what must his friends have said when he told them this story?  There was no one there to witness, he just arrived at the next location with a limp and when they said, “What did you do, Jacob, fall down a well?”  In my mind he says, with high dudgeon, “No, I wrestled with an angel of God and he busted up my hip.  And you can call me Israel.”  Laughter ensues. 

So, God made Jacob a laughing stock, at least among his less faithful friends. (This actually gives me a little hope as all the leaders of my government during my lifetime have ended up laughingstocks.) Further, He marked Jacob, the father of the Tribes of Israel, as less than perfect.  Why? Because the imperfect are not only welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven but can be leaders there.  (This evokes an image of FDR for me, I confess.)

And what was the angel trying to do?  Was he trying to keep Jacob from fulfilling his destiny?  Was he holding Jacob back?  Or was he just delaying Jacob until the time was exactly right for him to make the necessary journey.  In any case, the battle was necessary and the change to Jacob instrumental to his transformation in the father of the Tribes.

A friend has pointed out to me that I have no essay about my experience of cancer.  I dislike talking about it, not because I am embarrassed by it but because it always elicits sympathy and love that I do no deserve. I like to say that I had McCancer, a “Cancer Lite.”  My experience does not compare to the suffering and destruction of Cancer in the lives of others.

People who know I am a cancer survivor have pointed to having cancer as the likely moment when my re-conversation began.  The fact is, though, it wasn’t.  It would be easier, simpler to explain if it were: “Oh, I had cancer and found God.” But it wouldn’t be true.  The truth is even simpler and easier than that, but we’ll get there.

Before I was diagnosed, I was the typical American girl: overweight and hating my body.  I was miserable in my own skin and almost obsessed with meeting the societal norms of appearance.  Whatever else I did that had value or was beautiful was eclipsed by my low self esteem. I think this is the mindset of a shockingly large percentage of American women in our time.  We are not so much vain, as that would imply pride in our appearance, as we are self destructive in our attempt to conform to surreal physical norms. We hate ourselves and hurt ourselves and we overlook what is most important for what is most transient.  For my part, my physical appearance dominated my mind to the exclusion of almost all else, certainly the hygiene of my soul. 

So, here it is, and I assure you this is very much the whole story. I was diagnosed with cancer on a Friday.  Monday I made an appointment for the mastectomy.  A week later I was under the knife and then next day I came home.  The object of the exercise for me was to present a safe and healthy front for my children. They needed to see their mother was well and fine, that nothing would change and there was nothing to fear.  Until that time I had rarely had more than a bad stomach flu and even then all it amounted to in their lives was a “Blues Clues Day” or time with Auntie Julia.  I was determined that cancer recovery would be no more or less than that for them.  Luckily, I did not need chemotherapy – that might have thrown a wrench in things.  I was on my feet in a few days, drain out, formal wear on and at the annual fundraiser for our favorite community center within ten days.  Done and done, right? 

The first difference that cancer made in my life, therefore, was philosophical.  I would have said “pragmatic” at the time.  I focused on my family, on looking strong for my kids, on being upright for the nosey neighbors, on being amusing on the phone to my Dad.  Tribe first, that was my credo.  And a good one it is, too.

The second phase, however, when the spotlight moved away and summer descended on me, was very different indeed.  I receded into myself.  I descended from the heights of selflessness into the depths of my mortal body.  I was ugly and scarred, off kilter and awkward.  I never lifted my eyes from my own reflection. I lived as entirely in my body as I had previously lived out of it.  Even a second surgery to “balance” my body was insufficient to silence the critical whisperings in my head.  That work would take years, literally, to do.

Now, four years distant, I am happier.  I am happier than I was when I knew parts of my body were trying to kill me.  I am happier than I was most of my adult life before I was diagnosed with cancer.  But I am scarred, there is no doubt.  The day after Mother’s Day, 2004, I resigned the most tangible outward sign of my maternity.  This gesture of rending separation is one that can only be truly understood by a woman who has nursed her child. And there is a significant transition required to adapt to a body that will never be found to be beautiful in the traditional sense.  No amount of healthy diet or exercise will bring me even remotely close to the standard of American beauty.  While I love my body and I am grateful for my health and for all that I learned in the experience, I still have to ask, “Why am I scarred?”

Jacob fought in hand to hand combat with an angel and came out of it crippled.  Why? It’s not likely he was ever going to forget the angel.  God did not need to give him a limp to keep it fresh in his mind.   Rather, I think, God gave Jacob an outward sign of his transformation so that other people would know, would ask and would not doubt his story.  When people said to Jacob, “What is up with you and your wives (and your concubines) and your sons?”  Jacob doubtless told the story of the angel. And when people laughed at him, he might very well have said, “And I have the limp to prove it.” 

After he was resurrected, Jesus showed his scars to the Twelve.  Jesus didn’t need the scars to remind him of his sacrifice.  I imagine the experience of crucifixion stays with you.  It was the Twelve who needed more evidence, even if they had enough faith in the beginning to believe without it.  John Dominic Crossan points out that Jesus died publicly but resurrected privately.  The transition, the miracle, is the private part. The suffering, crucifixion, wrestling, illness, that is the public part.  The outward sign is flaw or diminishment.  The inward sign is the miracle.

I don’t know if I got cancer to stop me on the journey I was taking, to redirect my steps or to delay my progress until the time was right.  All I know is that I was altered, just as so many others are changed by God, and marked forever as a new person.  Re-born, if you have to have it that way.  Re-made, in any case.  What I got out of it was my own personal outward sign of the Genesis within.

 

Exo-Genisis II : Logo-Genesis

I am also making up this word. It may or may not mean, in Greek or Latin or neither, the birth or origin of a name.  My name. Please try to use it three times this week and have it included on your child’s spelling list.

So when did it happen if it wasn’t when I had cancer, or when my Dad died or when I broke my foot?  I’ll tell you because I know.  It happened when I changed my name.

In that story of Jacob above, Jacob is transformed by God and given a new name that means “Wrestle with God.”  Abram’s name is changed to Abraham, meaning “father of many generations.”  Sarai’s name was changed to Sarah meaning “woman of high rank.” Even Saul’s began to be called Paul when he was touched by God. 

On the way to church every Sunday I tell my daughter a joke in the car.  One of them, a particularly bad one, is about a naughty boy who, in the punch line believes his name is “No Johnny” because that is what he has been called.  But is he called naughty because he is naughty or is he naughty because that is what he is called?

I was born with the name Mary.  It’s a Grand Olde Name, as you know, and one steeped in tradition both in my family and in my faith tradition.  My mother’s name was Mary, as was her mother.  My favorite Aunt was named Mary and Mary Poppins was practically perfect in every way.  Some of my favorite Marys are Mary Tudor, Mary Shelley, Mary Bennett, Mary Alcott, Mary Hartmann, Mary Richards, and Mary Anne on Gilligan’s Island.  Mary Robinson was the President of Ireland, did you know?  That’s practically me, for goodness sake! Marys have been painted and immortalized in prose and poetry. Marys are routinely the subject of songs, old and new.  “Mary”, therefore, while I have never used it as a word for myself, was a very wonderful appellation to be able to lay claim to.

But I was never called Mary, except by telemarketers.  I was called “Shay”, a nickname for my middle name, Forsha (if you’re from Lexington, MO, you’re gasping at the historical significance.  If you’re from anywhere else, you’re skimming.).  Shay is not a name I shared with anyone else growing up.  In fact, Shay has no gender, it has no obvious spelling, no racial or ethnic association. Spelled differently it might mean “tea” in some languages.  Tea is not a very good name. Coffee would be better, champagne even better than that.  Shay is, in fact, something someone (whose name we won’t use in this sentence) made up to get around the condescension of friends and neighbors when they found she’d named her daughter after herself. 

So while Mary was my name without my actually being called it, Shay was what I was called without it actually being a name. 

And then came the Patriot Act.  It turns out that you can’t use a nickname your whole life and expect people to think you’re normal. If you have a name and are called something else, you are suspect and you can’t get a mortgage or a passport.  You have an alias, you are unreliable and bear closer scrutiny.  Keep in mind, my friends, that the Patriot Act was thought up by two guys called Dick and Don.

So, after years of explaining and cajoling at car rentals and Canadian border patrols, I was forced to legally change my name from Mary, like “Mary makes your heart so light!” to Shay, “you know, like the stadium only not really because I spell it differently.”  (If I seem to harp on the songs about Mary it might be because my husband is a composer and while George M. Cohen had no Marys in his family but immortalized the name, my husband has had a Shay at the center of his life for two decades and writes songs entitled, I want to Live with the Animals.  But I digress.)

It was a hazard to change my name legally.  We had to wait in lines and publish things.  I had to explain to my Dad that the name he and my late mother chose for me had become a liability.  I had to explain to my children why I had to change it to “Shay” instead of “Meta Knight” or “Kookla.”  And I had to go to court and wait for the lawyers, the “real” cases to play out.  Luckily for me, I brought two of my kids and their loudest toys.  The bailiff by the door took the nod from the judge to mean that I should be moved up the queue.  I guess they did not like our choruses of “Ring-ring ring-ring ring-ring ring-ring Banana-phone.” 

And then it was done.  I was not a person who bore the name of a great queen, a great leader, a great writer, a great composure, a great painter or even the world’s most famous mother.  I had a name that sounded like a lubricant (shae butter) or a rebellion, thank you very much. 

But having a new name meant giving it a new meaning.  And that is where the Ah-ha moment comes in. What did it mean to be Shay?  I had been Shay all my life but always defined it as “Not Mary” or, in darker moments, “Not Alice.”   I had always self defined in the negative but with a new name a license to make its definition my own, I was free to define it in the positive.  What is a Shay?

Healthy.  Active. Mother of Nosy Children.  Corgi owner.  Friend of Dust Bunnies.  Tall, brunette, amputee, liberal, humorous, ironic… But is your name, you’re new name, your “transition to” name, the one that describes you as you are?  Abraham was not a father when he was renamed, he became a father.  Sarah was way not a princess, she was transformed.  Jacob was a lot of really unpleasant things before he became the Father of The Nations of God. Perhaps my favorite is Saul of Tarsus.  His name really was Paul all along, just in another language.  The language of the people he grew up with he was Saul, it the language of his chosen identity, he was Paul.  Its all in perspective. He was Saul until the culture confined him, and then Paul, where the culture defined him. 

So the question is not what is a Shay, but what is it that a Shay should aspire to be?  What do I want more than anything to be true of me?  Sarah means "princess" and has come to mean "mother of Tribes." When people use my name what word is it that I want them to be saying?  If anyone gives my name to someone else (please don’t, what a horrible appellation, really) what would it mean they wanted for their child?

I had always known there was a God, despite the message promulgated in my home growing up.  I knew, I absolutely never questioned the Divine.  But I had questioned the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. Why, though?  Why had I questioned it? There were an awful lot of people, really smart and really thoughtful people who believed Jesus was divine.  There were lots of people whom I knew, respected, liked, adored, who never let the question enter into their heads.

One of my most favorite games in the world is The Worst Case Scenario game.  What if, what is the worst case scenario, if Jesus of Nazareth was not divine?  Well, then he was nuts. No one could go around saying the things he said and not be put away.  Unless it was the truth.  No one could say they forgave the sins they did not know of people they didn’t know on behalf of people they also did not know. Unless in saying it, they could make it real. No one would lay hands on people and say they were healed if they were not. No one could do all this and say they were humble, unless they were, in fact humble.  And divine.  So, Worst Case, he’s the Son of God, he came and created with all humanity a contract of law, natural law – like the law of gravity – predicated on justice and love.  Not power and wealth, but justice and love.  And in the end, it is all going to be all right.

Not too shabby.

But what if he isn’t?  What if Jesus of Nazareth was just like the Buddha, Mohammed and Mozart? He was a Master on Earth, able to do the miraculous.  Does that change, God?  Nope.  Because God wants us all in. He wants us to touch the Divine in our lifetimes and He sends us people who will bring us closer to the Divine in theirs.  Mozart has certainly transported as many people as any other Master I could imagine. My buddy John Dominic Crossan likes to say that faith is like falling in love.  You love the person you love absolutely.  It is impossible to imagine loving anyone else.  “Why can’t everyone see that this person is THE person to love?”  Except, Buddhists believe that about their leader as well.  (Here on the North Shore we occasionally have people who are persuaded by this kind of enthusiasm to believe that they also should be in love with the person you are in love with.  In the non spiritual application, it is not conversion but scandal, we don’t call it “faith” we call it the Sherman Avenue Shuffle.  And it happens a great deal more than conversion. Digressing, again!)

Jesus said he was a Messiah.  That changes things.  Or does it?  Here’s the kicker.  I don’t know.  But when I let go and let myself believe, let myself ask inside my heart and be answered from within as well, I know only what I know about my own conviction.  My friend John called it “unclenching.”  I know longer fight against believing. And when I do, when I let myself believe in the divinity of Jesus, everything relaxes in me.  Everything I had once struggled against, falls into place beside me.  Everything that seemed discordant and unruly is aligned.  In short, it feels right to believe and not right to doubt. 

I don’t know Greek or much Latin.  I have a very second rate education and despite the inestimable efforts of Mary Sugar, I only remember some of my catechism.  I really do not know.  Because I cannot know.  Because I am only me and God is God and Jesus is very likely Jesus and C.S. Lewis, who seems a very smart man, was utterly convinced.  I can never be sure and on the Last Day I may be wholly wrong and be very, very sorry to have been so stupid. This will be the last but certainly not the first or only time I have been wholly wrong and very sorry.  I imagine if that day comes, I will have it mastered.

There is a tradition in the Bible of people being renamed when they are touched by God.: Abram and Sarai, Jacob and Saul, to name a few.  I may no longer be able to claim the name of the Virgin Mother, or even my own mother.  But I have my own name and a lifetime to determine what that name describes. 

So here is our last new word for today, children:


Shay: pronounced Shay (duh!) origin: Modern English, meaning: striving for humility.