Thankful Thursday: Kanswer still sucks

This morning, my husband and I were talking about the results of the election - as were most of the people in this country. I said, "This is the second consecutive presidential election in which we have been forced to rethink who we are and how we will live." He said, "What happened last time?" Four years ago on election day, I was diagnosed with breast kanswer (this is how i spell the name of the "c" word. Back then I wondered about the answer that that disease was going to bring into my life). We celebrated President Obama's second term on the same day that my life was turned upside down. The mammogram and biopsy I endured before getting the diagnosis were followed by tests. Scans. Appointments. Protocol decisions. More tests. More scans. More difficult decisions. And all that before a single step was taken to get the kanswer out of my body.

Mine was a fast growing kanswer, so the decision was made to do chemotherapy first, then surgery, a double mastectomy, and fortunately I didn't have to undergo radiation because of the surgical decision I made. During the arduous weeks of chemo and the difficult weeks following surgery, I remember thinking that the kanswer itself hadn't bothered me. I didn't know I had kanswer. I wasn't in any pain, nor did I feel any other discomfort. It was the treatment that nearly killed me. Things got progressively and profoundly worse before they got better. I cried and complained. I worried and prayed. And now, four years have passed and I feel healthier than I have ever felt in all my 50 years of life. But in order to get to this place, I had to be told what my problem was. I had to admit that, even though I thought I was eating well and exercising enough and taking decent supplements, something was dreadfully wrong in my body, something that could kill me. I had to get the diagnosis, accept it, and treat the problem. And that was gonna suck. Kanswer sucks, and so does the treatment. But if I wanted to get rid of the kanswer, I had to do something. Something drastic.

This past Tuesday, our nation revealed that it has a slow growing, long term, malignant kanswer. We've had it since the first days of this nation. Since before we became a nation. We have lived in fear, acted from a place of supremacy, and been harbingers of hatred since day one. I know that not everyone has felt that way. Not everyone has lived that way. But there has been a kanswerous undercurrent of hatred that has run through our nation's veins throughout its entire history.

This recent election has served as our national MRI, our bone scan, our EKG, and our blood test. Our heart is damaged. Our bones are brittle and porous. It's in our lymph nodes. It's in our gastro intestinal tract. It's in our lungs. It's in our brain. Our entire body, our entire nation is in need of major work. Healing work. Restorative work. Reconciliatory work. But first we've gotta name what's ailing us. We have to accept the diagnosis.

There have been many biopsies down through the years. Small samples taken out of larger contexts - samples of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and lots of other isms oozing out from under a very thin layer of gentleness and kindness that has covered them for decades. People have been pulled out of their cars and homes and places of work and schools - and insulted, assaulted, lynched, beaten, shot, dragged behind cars, and in many other ways humiliated, hurt, and murdered. That layer of goodness was pulled back this week. It's still there, for sure. More people voted for her than for him. Protests against the outcome of the election have already begun.

But the results are in - we are sick. We are dreadfully sick.
The USA has stage 3B kanswer - not stage 4 just yet.
I don't think it's terminal. At least, I hope it's not.
But things look pretty bad right now.
Are we ready to start treatment?

Many people, many black and brown people, have been talking about this disease for decades. For centuries, really. Most of them have been told they were being alarmist, over sensitive, and exaggerating. We were essentially being told that we were and we are hypochondriacs. Looking for trouble where it didn't exist. After all, we elected a black man to be our president, twice. Well, look at us now. People are already being verbally attacked, threatened, made to feel unsafe in the country we were born in. Swastikas have already appeared. On college campuses, in high schools and middle schools and elementary schools, students of color, immigrant students are being bullied and harassed in public.

It's happening, people. The kanswer is growing. More rapidly now.

Beneath the facade of "political correctness," the demands for basic human kindness, decency, and respect that many have criticized for years now, there is a deep, gangrenous infection. Rottenness. Hatred. Fear and loathing. Mostly fear - being manifest as anger and hate. So much hate. So much fear. The illusion that many have lived under, the illusion that our nation is not so bad, that we are beyond racism, that we are beyond the ravages of Jim Crow laws and institutional bias and systemic oppression, that illusion has been shattered this week.

I know that many people who voted for the president-elect didn't do so with malice in their hearts. They genuinely want a change in the way things are done in Washington. They want to see new blood and new ideas and cling to new hope that someone with no connection to big government will somehow be different and do different things. I get that. I do. But along with voting and hoping for change (sounds oddly familiar...) they voted to open the door for all the -isms that so many had fought to extinguish to come back out into the open. Those who have worked and continue to work unrelentingly hard to bring justice and freedom to those who are oppressed and living in fear knew that the hatred was still there, that intolerance was still real, and that there was still far too much kanswerous bitterness in our midst. It was just slightly muted, buried in a very shallow grave. As a result of this election, that mutant and barely dormant virus has been reinvigorated in the bloodstream of our nation, and it is running down our streets and boulevards already.

So I sit here wondering: are we ready yet to name what ails us?
The many things that ail us? Are we? All of us?
Are we already too afraid to speak up and tell the truth?
I confess to being nervous about hitting "publish" on this blog post for fear of angry reprisal, hateful rhetoric, and threats of violence.

Are we ready to endure the painful work of healing that is necessary?
The chemotherapy that must hit every cell of our bodies,
every faith community, every town, every city, every village, and every suburb,
every club, every place of employment.
The chemotherapy of honesty about our complicity and our silence,
the chemotherapy of confessing our participation in systems of oppression,
the chemotherapy of being vulnerable enough to hear what others have to say about the disease that has racked our body politic, our churches, and our communities for ages,
the chemotherapy of listening to the stories and pain and fears of those whose opinions we don't agree with, even them. Especially them. Whoever that "them" might be,
This is gonna hurt. We are not going to want to finish the treatment.
We are going to writhe and we are going to suffer. All of us. Together. And alone.

There will need to be surgery too. Probably radical surgery.
Bilateral surgery - both sides, all sides - need to cut off some stuff that is rotten and toxic.
Our empty promises. Our no longer veiled threats of violence.
Our dismissal of and disdain for those we consider to be our enemies.
Gotta cut it off, cut it down, cut it out.
All of us. Each of us.

I remember when I was first diagnosed and made the decision to do chemotherapy, I read many articles and blog posts about not doing chemo. About eating really well for an intense period of time. About doing lots and lots of enemas. And drinking strange concoctions. I was told to go through the healing process naturally. I was told to go to health food stores and get information about the right supplements and potions. I was told to have more faith. To go to other countries for treatment. I was told to just do a lumpectomy. And all those people meant well. I know they did. But for me, I knew chemo was my choice. I knew that a double mastectomy was my choice. I knew that I didn't have enough faith or patience to eat five pounds of kale and drink two gallons of fresh pressed juice every day with the expectation that my kanswer would be beaten that way. I just didn't.

And today, I feel the same. Healing what ails this nation is going to take more than sitting together and drinking green juice. More than good, hearty heapings of hope and good will. It's gonna take a whole lot of people standing up and speaking up, speaking out against what they hear and what they see happening. It's gonna take the political will to defy any and all attempts to deport millions of people who live here peacefully while working hard to provide for themselves and their loved ones. Any and all attempts to intimidate anyone because of who they are and how they have been created. This kanswer isn't gonna go away if we ignore it or downplay its seriousness. It's just gonna keep on growing.

On November 6, 2012, my life changed completely. In every way. On every level.
And I live with that change, I see the results of that change every day.
No more dreadlocs. No more breasts. No more uterus.
Scars across my chest. Scars on my lower abdomen.
Regular check ups with an oncologist.
Regular visits with a holistic chiropractor.
And none of that is gonna go away any time soon.
These scars are here to stay.

On November 8, 2016, the life of this nation changed completely.
We will live with this change for the rest of our life as a nation.
We are already facing pain. We are already seeing the suffering of too many.
Today my brother had a longtime friend, a white friend, try to explain to him why
"Make Am*rica White Again" isn't racist.
There will be scars. Forever.
There will be painful reminders of this kanswer for the rest of the life of this nation.

Today is Thursday, so it's supposed to be Thankful Thursday on this blog.
I'm not feeling too thankful at the moment - at least not related to this election.
Except for this piece of good news - the disease in our system has been exposed.
Also many people I know and don't know are already at work.
Already making plans for the hard work that is going to have to be done for us to unite what has never been fully united before.
Already reaching across aisles and over walls and past boundaries.
I will walk with friends on November 15th, talking and planning and hoping and praying and commiserating too.
And I will keep loving my family, weeping with my friends, being humbled by the wisdom of younger travelers on the journey, and I will try, desperately try to learn to love my enemies too. How perfect is the timing that the Bible passage I have to translate from Greek into English this week for my New Testament class in seminary speaks to the need to love my enemies. Seriously, God?


Kanswer still sucks.
But we can't treat it if we don't acknowledge it.
This week, we are being forced to acknowledge it.
But are we yet ready to treat it?