"We were on this walk of grace, all of us together."

Larissa Kaye Batten (llbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.  

"Glenn! It’s so good to see you. We didn’t know if you were going to make it this week," I cried as Glenn and Susan entered the church parlor and found two seats side by side.

As he huffed and puffed, Glenn mumbled a few words. "The doctors said I shouldn’t be here. Susan didn’t want me to come, but here I am. I really wanted to be here."

I couldn’t help but stare at his bald head, his swollen face, his misty eyes. He wore his cap shoved fairly low down on his face; maybe it was too much trouble to pull it back up to its right position.

His breathing stayed labored.

I looked at Susan. She smiled and rolled her eyes back a bit. "I drove," she explained.

"Thank God," the rest of us said.

Glenn wasn’t the only person with cancer in the room. We were all there because we were caregivers, survivors, widowers, or people with cancer. I was grateful to be just a support person. I joined the group when three relatives by marriage and a close friend were all diagnosed with cancer within 6 months of each other. It was devastating and overwhelming, and I realized I could not make it alone. So I called around and was directed to I Can Cope.

I continued to stare at Glenn. He was a miracle in my eyes. He had already lived past the doctors’ predictions. Not yet 50, struck with a vicious lung cancer perhaps caused by fighting in Vietnam or the Gulf War, Glenn was fighting his greatest battle yet. He was fighting the doctors, fighting the repercussions of the chemotherapy, fighting statistics, and fighting the very cancer cells themselves.

"Don’t mind me," Glenn slurred. "I’m not drunk. He spoke very slowly. He sounded drunk. He was slumped over to the side; any effort would have been too great. "My blood pressure is so low I shouldn’t be here."

"Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?" we wondered.

Not Glenn. I think most people in his condition would have been dying. Most would have been hospitalized with their families gathered around. Maybe a priest would have been there, too.

Not Glenn. Glenn wouldn’t even use a wheelchair. Nor would Glenn stay silent.

Glenn talked – or slurred – a whole bunch that night at the I Can Cope cancer support group. Yes, Glenn could cope. Obviously, Susan could, too.

Was I inspired? Actually, I was awestruck. I could not believe he had been standing. I couldn’t believe he could even sit. But he was there, talking and all.

We went around the room in our usual inconsistent fashion. We had no format. We had no particular topic or direction. Someone spoke. Another one spoke. A caregiver asked a question. A person with cancer answered. Someone else talked. We laughed. We laughed a lot. We almost always laughed a lot. We talked about politics or anything at all.

The tie that bound us was that we had all been affected by cancer in one way or another.

For some, cancer was the least of their concerns. Irv, one of my favorites for his awesome sense of humor, has had two forms of cancer and Parkinson’s.

"The Parkinson’s is the worst," he had told us more than once. Then he would crack his next joke. Or he would wait for someone to set up a joke opportunity for him.

"My husband Dan was on national television," I told the group one night. "He was at a football game. I couldn’t have cared less until I found out he was on television, waving and saying, ‘Hi honey.’"

"Who told you he was waving to you?" Irv said with his never-ending deadpan humor.

We all laughed that night, just like we often did on Tuesdays between 5:30 and 6:30.

Most weeks of the group blend into the next with the exception of one night. The night I witnessed the Grace Walk will always stand out to me above all the other nights we spent together.

Glenn barely made it into the room that night, and we were convinced he would not make it out without the help of us all.

Irv, with his Parkinson’s, needed some help, too.

So the group of us, not more than 10 in all, left that night with the determination to help in whatever way we could.

Irv held onto his wife on one side. I took his other arm.

Glenn hung onto his wife’s arm, but that night was a night he could have used a bunch of extra help – if not a wheelchair. Another woman grabbed onto his other arm.

Together, slowly, so very slowly, we exited the church parlor and made our way down the corridors of the church toward the parking lot.

Although the walk might have seemed endless to someone as impatient as I can be, I do not remember feeling like I was on an interminable walk. I remember feeling blessed with each and every step we took.

Nobody rushed, in fact. We all walked slowly, as though nobody would win by getting to the finish line. Or, more accurately, nobody would win without the others. We all somehow knew, without anyone saying it aloud, that the Grace Walk was a gift to us all. And where one of us might have rushed ahead and reached the finish line, it wouldn’t count without the grace of us uniting as one. We were in this together, and we would not go forward alone. We each belonged to each other.

As we continued our Grace Walk, we saw that a church worker needed to come down the corridor from the other direction to get to where he needed to go.

I have never seen someone waiting look as patient as he did. He saw the pack of us coming, and he did not move. He simply held a door for us and waited with what I can only call grace. He did not know us. He did not know who we were. He simply saw all of us linked together, some linked by arms and all of us by spirit. And he waited, and he waited.

I only knew that I really was in no rush. I had somewhere to go, but it didn’t matter in the scheme of things. We were on this walk of grace, all of us together. It was taking forever, but it was taking no time at all.

Somehow, intuitively I suppose, I knew that I would never forget this experience. So I knew to appreciate it in the midst of it, rather than look back and regret what my un-consciousness might have missed.

Glenn huffed and puffed along. He was deeply out of breath, and he walked like a drunk. He leaned on his supports, though.

Irv stayed stuck for a while, then for whatever reason was able to move along.

The patience among the group was astounding to me.

It was like we were suspended in time – like we were in the midst of a spiritual experience, and nowhere else was more important than this moment in time. All of the moments and minutes added up did not matter. We were suspended in a single moment, a single experience of grace – not as separate individuals, but, even consciously, as a combined one. The one, I believe, we were always meant to be.

The church worker continued to wait, and somehow, by some miracle, we exited our suspension in time and walked out into the parking lot. I call it a miracle because I believe each one of us was given that night to take with us.

We changed arms and positions, and made sure each person got to his or her car safely.

Little did I know when I was overwhelmed by so many people I knew having cancer that I would come to this night. Little did I know God had sent me an invitation to the Grace Walk.

Little did I know the Grace Walk isn’t a single moment in time, but an invitation to live a certain way.

The Grace Walk isn’t confined to one night in a cancer support group. The Grace Walk isn’t restricted to two men who had trouble walking, nor to the women who linked arms with them to help them along. Nor is it limited to those who stood around in patience and support.

The Grace Walk is about life. We are either conscious of it or we are not.

I have believed for a long while now that God created more than one person because we were meant to be together.

But in my lifetime, I have witnessed more dissension, more division, more separation, more conflict than I ever could have imagined possible.

What amazes me, though, is how God has extended his invitation to us all along.

He has invited us to join as one.

He has invited us to be one.

In fact, I believe he created us as one.

The book A Course in Miracles teaches that the human ego manifests an illusion of separation.

What, then, truly binds us together?

The night I bore witness to the Grace Walk, I realized the answer. What binds us together is the acceptance of what God has given us all along: the grace of walking together.

May we all remember The Grace Walk.

May we choose to walk as one.

Amen.

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