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Decaffeinating Life
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2015/03 - March
I didn’t really want a cup of coffee. I don’t drink it anymore. Yet, at 7:00 this morning I was at Mickey D’s window ordering a senior decaf.
An hour later I discovered I was in a Divine Choreography. Coffee got me in the car. The car radio was turned on and tuned into NPR. NPR was broadcasting “On Being.” “On Being,” featured Rep. John Lewis. John Lewis was one of the principal passive activists in the Selma March.
The Selma March. Well, what has that got to do with this white, middle class, Baby Boomer, 50 years after Bloody Sunday?
Everything, I discovered. Absolutely everything.
Last year, I had a cancer scare. Lately I have been obsessing over a doctor who should have ordered more tests when he saw evidence of a tumor and called it a varicose vein more than a year before the tumor was finally diagnosed. I hadn’t forgiven him. The anger was snowballing on its way to an emotional avalanche.
What’s the last thing a recovering cancer patient needs?
Stress. I had to let go. I tried prayer. To pray for forgiveness is more than reciting words; the plea has to be genuine. I hate to admit it, but in the middle of my prayers, visions of a screaming, suffocating doctor enveloped in a man-eating varicose vein kept creeping in.
Then John Lewis spoke.
At the very core of the Selma March was Love and Forgiveness. To love and forgive people who meant to not only make your life a living hell, but to kill you was Gandhi-esque. In fact, the marchers had weekly meetings in Nashville long before the sit-ins and protests were staged to study great spiritual leaders’ and philosophers’ methods of peaceful change. At the core of all of it was love and forgiveness. Only the protestors who mastered forgiveness went on the marches.
As Representative Lewis said, “Better to be a pilot light than a firecracker.” A pilot light endures. A firecracker explodes and is gone.
He also said, “When you pray, move your feet.” I am adding that to my prayer ritual. Move my feet. Move my heart. Maybe move mountains.
Lewis added, “Make good trouble… do all you can while you occupy this space.” I know the Universe gave me this lesson at a time I needed it most. I sobbed for an hour as I listened to the broadcast. I trust my tears.
And for those who might be raising one eyebrow and then the other I will share this final image. As I pulled out of the parking lot where I stopped to observe the sunrise and listen to Lewis, I looked up in the sky. There was an exquisite rainbow spreading across my pathway home.
