{"id":504,"date":"2015-02-06T19:41:41","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T19:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/?p=504"},"modified":"2015-02-06T20:51:33","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T20:51:33","slug":"the-little-old-lady-prayer-shawl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/?p=504","title":{"rendered":"The Little Old Lady Prayer Shawl"},"content":{"rendered":"

I keep my hospital room at, what I assume to be, an atypically frigid temperature for a cancer patient. My thermostat is set at 68 degrees despite the fact that I have the hair and immune system of a naked mole rat with prenatal AIDS.<\/p>\n

\"NAKED<\/a>
NAKED MOLE RAT<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I just run hot. Liana calls me \u201cthe rotisserie\u201d and goes through efforts to deal with the\u00a0oppressive heat output from my overactive body furnace…and she grew up in the tropics!<\/p>\n

Since getting lit\u00a0with the cancers I’ve had some issues with body heat regulation. My temperature usually hovers around 96\u00a0degrees these days. I\u2019m like a cold blooded leukemia lizard, but I still keep my room chilly because warm air doesn’t feel fresh<\/em> to me. Combine that unfresh feeling with the already germy nature of hospital air and you’ve got me riding co-pilot alongside Howard Hughes in a hypochondriac tailspin of the Spruce Goose.<\/p>\n

I realized I was feeling a slight chill the other day and was about to go through the hassle of standing up from my desk, unplugging my IV from the wall, wheeling the damn thing around over my chords so I could reach something to put over my shoulders. This is a big production and is way more annoying that it sounds, trust me, my life is tethered swimming:<\/p>\n

\"tethered\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Right as I was mustering up my limited energy\u00a0begin the process, an RN\u00a0pops in with a package for me. It was a J-Crew box with a return address from my hometown of Oneida, NY. My day was immediately brightened as I noticed that the sender had written \u201cJason\u2019s Crew\u201d on the box in a delightfully cute expression of hometown solidarity<\/p>\n

.\"IMG_1223\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What happened next was one of the most serendipitously surreal experiences of my life. I opened the box to find a hand crocheted shawl that was delivered to me in my EXACT MOMENT OF NEED. I spared no moment between pulling it out of the box and wrapping it around my shoulders and I was instantly warmed from the inside out.<\/p>\n

\"HAND<\/a>
HAND MADE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It turns out that a group of little old ladies from the church I attended in my youth made me a \u201cprayer shawl\u201d out of the kindness of their blessed little old lady hearts. I’m picturing a group of adorable Betty Whites sitting in a circle in the church rec room with their needles sitting in a circle and working\u00a0all at once. They are thinking nothing but kind sincere thoughts about me and putting every ounce of energy and love they have into this creative prayer for me. It may literally be the sweetest fucking thing that anybody has ever done for me…and all in the name\u00a0of altruistic Christian faith.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>: The remainder of this\u00a0article contains a very real, frank and honest discussion about\u00a0religion that some may find controversial. Please know it is my last intention to offend or disrespect anybody for anything they believe, yet I am still going take the gloves off and treat the subject matter with as much intellectual integrity as important topics deserve.\u00a0When I\u00a0think of \u00a0concepts\/institutions such as religion I consider them no different than the concept of \u201cmath\u201d or \u201cphilosophy\u201d or even some garbage popular TV show on CBS.\u00a0They are ideas that deserve and require\u00a0open thought and honest discourse.\u00a0Though the concept of religion carries a far heavier emotional weight than most topics, it is\u00a0still just\u00a0an\u00a0intellectual\u00a0construct\u00a0of our minds that\u00a0deserves our most honest and open\u00a0exchange\u00a0of thoughts and ideas. Also I haven’t eaten all day upon writing this, so please take it easy on me if my empty tummy expresses itself with\u00a0cynicism. I don’t mean it,\u00a0honest!<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

My relationship with\u00a0The First Presbyterian Church of Oneida\u00a0was never\u00a0deep, it was basically non-existent. I went to Sunday school and Easter service but was otherwise raised secularly. The church, and thus Christianity, was not something that was ever of any importance in my life. The last time I was there was almost exactly a year ago to eulogize my father and before that I couldn’t even tell you how long it had been since I even thought about the church. Hell, I even slipped a swear word into the eulogy as an immature rebellion of the fact that I was even addressing a Christian congregation! I felt uncomfortable, and slightly resentful, with the fact that I was publicly saying goodbye to my father in a way that made no personal sense to me.<\/p>\n

My view of organized religion\u00a0is that of a modern\u00a0existential liberal intellectual. I don\u2019t believe in God, I think institutionalized religion is more of a harm than a blessing on society and I have actively spoken out against the very idea of faith in an undefinable\u00a0higher power (please understand that these are just my personal thoughts and I would never dream of judging somebody who disagrees with me. I love it when people disagree with me and welcome it. There is no hate in me for religion or God, these are just my views and I respect them as much as I respect ideas to the contrary. I love that you love God, please continue to do so and know that I nothing but respect for you for doing so, \u00a0but it\u2019s just not my thing.)\u00a0Choose Your Own Adventure<\/strong>: How many more disclaimers would you like there to be in this sweet blog? Scroll to page 4 or 8 depending on your current level of intellectual\u00a0adventurousness!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reality is subjective (sorry for the absolute statement, but we have to start somewhere). Institutionalized religion\u2019s purpose is to define objectivity to reality, which is a semantic and literal impossibility due to the fact that objectivity cannot be perceived by a subjectivity. To believe that one specific reality is objectively true without the ability to perceive anything other than a filtered version of existence through the lense of your own subjectivity (and far worse, the subjectivity of others) is intellectually counterproductive and an arrogance based on ignorance. To suggest that true morality can only exist beyond the construction of the human intellect is to do a great disservice to us as a society and our consciousness. I won’t argue that some people truly need the guidance of a morality that is assigned to them, and there is nothing wrong with this at all. As I have mentioned before, relinquishing control<\/a> can be the most personally liberating thing you can do for yourself and I have nothing but respect for those who chose to do so in this school of thought. As the designer of my own subjective view of reality though, I will forever take a more proactive, personalized and present approach when it comes to my relationship with faith and morality.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

But these little old ladies and everybody else from the church that played a part in this gorgeous gesture totally de-grinched my heart in a way that I\u00a0never imagined\u00a0religion could. I felt it it. My \u201csoul\u201d was lifted and I felt the power of faith that BILLIONS of people on this planet feel. I finally understood<\/em>\u00a0why people are drawn to it and I’m absolutely going to have a much more open mind from now on.\u00a0It is totally up to me to decide how open and accepting I am of other people and their beliefs\u2026 and believe me when I say that those little old ladies opened me up to the beauty and power of the concept of their God in a profound way that will never leave my soul. May their God bless them for challenging my cynicism by performing the most basic function of their existence as Christians: They accepted and comforted me with their prayers of love. Please continue to send them my way, and I\u2019ll continue to send you mine.The prayers I have received since my diagnosis make more sense to me now and I can honestly say that I have found true meaning in them. Thank you all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep my hospital room at, what I assume to be, an atypically frigid temperature for a cancer patient. My thermostat is set at 68 degrees despite the fact that I have the hair and immune system of a naked mole rat with prenatal AIDS. I just run hot. Liana calls me \u201cthe rotisserie\u201d and … Continue reading The Little Old Lady Prayer Shawl<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canecdotes","category-the-narrative"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HxlD-88","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526,"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cancertrolling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}