My Friend Ellen

Rev. Ellen Grace O'Brian and I at a Kriya Yoga Meditation Retreat in Georgia, in early August. Ellen is my spiritual mentor and the dear friend mentioned in the entry below. Besides reminding me that I am not my body, Ellen invited me to let go of the thought, that I have to admit I have held since 1998, that this cancer will eventually kill me. I left Georgia inspired to examine this self-fulfilling prophecy, revive my tired meditation practice, and to live more mindfully.

Me and Roy Eugene Davis, founder of the Center of Spiritual Awareness in Lakemont, Georgia. Roy is the only living disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, who brought Kriya Yoga to the United States in 1920.

This I Believe

("This I Believe" is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States and Canada. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow. I recently participated in a program at my church where we read essays from the website and wrote our own. Here is mine.)

I am NOT my body. I do believe this, but forget frequently. As a 10 year “cancer patient,” it is too easy, too seductive, to identify myself with my body, to over focus on the cancer.

For many years after my first diagnosis and treatment, I was conscious that I didn’t want to identify myself as a “cancer survivor.” I tried “cancer thriver,” but there it is again. All about cancer. I didn’t want it to define me, to limit me. I didn’t tell people casually. Somehow I knew that that identity would distract me from my relationships, my essence as spirit, from my spiritual journey, my quest for self and God realization.

A dozen years ago, I went on a Vision Quest in Death Valley with ten other women. With our packs on our backs and a jug of water in each hand, we stepped, one by one, into a circle of stones and stood to receive a blessing from the leaders and the other questers. When we stepped out of the circle, we were reminded that we are pure spirit. I breathed in the blessing and headed down the road to find my “place of power,” where I would string my tarp between a Joshua Tree and a creosote bush and live for the next three days, drinking only water. My body was strong. I didn’t know cancer yet. Alone in the middle of the desert, it was easy to meld into my surroundings, dwell ethereally, in that soul place.

Now, it’s not so easy. When I settled down in a new location, after years as a vagabond, and found a new church and new friends, I initially told no one. When the cancer recurred, again and then again, I gradually shared with my new friends. I see the look of concern in my friend’s eyes as they support me through more treatment. I am grateful for their compassion, but I hope they can look past my flawed body and consider me as soul, as spirit, which will live on even when this body ultimately fails.

When I recurred two years ago, a dear friend called me one night to relate that a mutual friend, a healer to us both, told her that she was having some physical problems with her aging body. In a flash of insight, this amazing healer recognized her identification with her body, and pulled her focus from her health problems, which then disappeared. My friend called me to tell me that story and remind me that I, too, am NOT my body, and encouraged me to resist over-identifying with the cancer within.

The next morning, I opened the daily message from my spiritual center in California. It read,
“Consider the possibility that you have desired and been given the body that is exactly right for your soul’s journey in this lifetime, the vehicle that will take you where you need to go, providing the essential life experiences along the way that contribute to Self-realization.”

That’s so good. That I can believe. That I must believe, especially now. I have just had a week of bone, CT, and PET scans, and a biopsy of my sternum, where a bone lesion has appeared, the first. Later this week, I begin a new drug protocol, and pray that it will work better than the last. You can help me with the praying part.

I know I am NOT my body and am only inhabiting it in this lifetime. But, dear God, please remind me often.

Jacob and Grandma go to the Grand Canyon

Jacob, my 11-year-old grandson, and I fly to Phoenix bright and early one Saturday morning in June to attend an Intergenerational Elder Hostel. Our trip has been delayed for 3 weeks because Jacob broke his arm earlier in the spring. The cast is off, now but he still has to be careful. We travel to Phoenix a day early so that we can go to Sun City to visit Dorothy McGregor, my mother’s first cousin. Dorothy is the closest thing to a mother to me since my own mother died in 1975. She is 97, turning 98 in September, and still as alert, charming, and loving as ever. I flew to Phoenix two years ago to say goodbye to her—she was in the hospital and not expected to survive. (See poem about her in the archives) Now, after rehab and assisted living, this amazing woman is back living alone in her own home, with help only a couple of times a week. She is nearly blind from diabetes, but gets around fine with a walker, and even feeds us a dinner of cold chicken and potato salad. Jacob is very excited about seeing her. “I’ve never met anyone so old,” he says. She absolutely charms Jacob, and he her. He agrees that she is totally cool. He wants to go back the next day to see her again, but we need to leave for Flagstaff.


After a quick stop at Trader Joe’s where I intend to stock up on unsulphered dried California apricots, (which they don’t have!!) we spend a comfortable night alone at the home of my cousins, Sharon and Steve Marsh, who are traveling, and generously offer their home to us. In the morning, we drive to Sedona to see the incredible red rock. He takes a bunch of pictures—each rock looks better than the last. I want to have lunch at Tlaquepaque at a special Mexican Restaurant, but Jacob is not thrilled at the idea of an outdoor mall. elegant though it is, and talks me into buying him a smoothie.

Several hours later, we are entering Flagstaff and accidentally get on a freeway that i under construction. It takes us an hour to get to an exit, get out of the mess, and come back into Flagstaff, maybe a ten-mile trip. Then we find the airport to return the rental car and wait forever for a cab to take us to the hotel. I’m feeling exhausted and a little cranky. We check in with our hostel leader, I take a little rest, and we join our new group for dinner at the wonderful Coco’s, just across the parking lot—the first of several suspicious salad bars.

There are 15 kids and 19 grandparents in the program. The girls, of course, become fast friends the fist evening, There is a very cool bunch of 11 and 12-year-old boys who gradually find each other and get along great, getting sillier every day. Jacob puts his ipod away that first night and doesn’t see it again until Friday. No time for TV, no computer, and no ipod or game boy, an amazing sacrifice for Jacob. We are so busy he doesn’t even notice. By the time we get back to our room each night we both collapse into our beds.

DAY 1
Vans depart at 7:45am for Northern Arizona University and a Challenge Course. The highlight of the Challenge Course is climbing a 40 ft. telephone pole, walking (or scooting) across a beam to a platform, and leaping off the platform attached to a zip line which runs off into the woods. Jacob is first in line for the climbing, and has not a moment of hesitation. At the top, he straddles the beam and easily scoots across to the platform, with only a few “ouches” as splinters push through his pants. He has a little regret that he hadn’t walked it, as some of the kids do.






This Grandma is the ONLY one to participate in this exercise, although a couple of the Grandpas do, I don’t want to walk the beam, but there is another telephone pole, a quite difficult climb actually, directly up to the platform and I don’t want to miss the zip line experience. I am exhausted and lightheaded by the time I get to the top.



In the afternoon we visit the Flagstaff Arboretum, a wonderful private facility, watch a raptor program featuring a Harris's Hawk, an 8-week-old Sacer Falcon (below), a Crested Caracara (an AZ bird) and a Barn Owl.


The kids go off into the brush with a teacher to learn survival skills and build a shelter, and I find a bench in a shelter and stretch out with my head on my backpack, and snooze. Some days it’s really hard to find a place and a time to rest.

This evening, a “bug guy” comes over from the University, with boxes and terrariums filled with bugs of various types. He walks through the room with cockroaches crawling all over his arms. Jacob is fascinated. I decide this is a “Grandma optional” program and go to my room and take a shower.

DAY 2
The bus leaves at 7:30 for the Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell and the entrance to the Colorado River, a 3 hour trip. Jacob decides that he wants to sit in the very back of the bus, in the corner next to the bathroom. I decline to join him for several obvious reasons. It is bouncy back there, you can’t see out both sides of the bus, and I know it will begin to smell when people start using the bathroom. But when Jacob gets an idea in his head like that, he is not to be dissuaded. I wish him well and return to a seat in the middle of the bus.

On the way to the dam, we stop at a trail to Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River, where we hike down and up about a mile to the lookout point.


Flagstaff, at 7000 feet, in a heat wave, was pretty comfortable, but we are lower now, and it is just plain hot! I wet my bandana, drape it over my head, and put my hat on top of it, a trick I learned last year on my 8-day Grand Canyon raft trip. Jacob is reluctant to do anything the other boys aren’t doing, but the heat convinces him to follow suit.

At the dam, we explore the visitor’s center, eat lunch, then take a special bus through a tunnel which runs across and under the dam to the river, where our motorized rafts are waiting. This is a high security operation and we are allowed only to carry water and a wallet through the tunnel. Our other stuff travels by truck and meets us at the bottom.


Midway on our raft trip we stop to swim (in the -50º water), use the $10,000 port-a-potties, and hike up to some Native American petrographs. There are about ten rafts pulled up here. I spot Jacob and his buddies running down the beach with a young man, another guide, carrying a bucket of water in swift pursuit. The boys run around some bushes and down the edge of the river. Their pursuer stands quietly by the bushes, bucket of water in hand, waiting for the boys to come back around the bend. Jacob is the first to show his face and takes the bucket of water full force in the face. He tells me that they had put some sand on the guide’s raft as he was washing it, which provoked this amusing chase.

The cliffs and geologic layers are breathtaking, and as we approach Lee’s Ferry, the landscape levels off, and we climb out of our rafts and board our bus back to Flagstaff.


On the way home, we stop at the historic Cameron Trading Post for a dinner of their famous tacos on Indian flatbread. The kids spend their extra time and money looking for souvenirs. Jacob becomes interested in the great variety of Hot Sauces, and he selects two bottles, “Spontaneous Combustion” and “Sauce from Hell,” which has an enticing picture of the Devil on fire, for which he spends $14 plus tax of my money. He is so excited about these “souvenirs” and when he gets home, he bottles his own sauce, adding Volcano Sauce and crushed red pepper, and labels it “The Gut Burner.” No one, including him, can even taste it. He is an interesting child.

DAY 3
A light day, thank goodness We go to a terrific interactive “geology of the canyon” lecture at the University. The teacher gives each of the kids a clump of colored clay and some plastic plants and animals, and assigns them a particular layer off the canyon. They create their layer, using the plastic figures to create fossils appropriate to that layer, and then she stacks them all together to create the layers of the canyon. She takes a big knife and cuts through the stack bit by bit, exposing traces of fossil, replicating the cutting of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. A great 6th grade science project, I think.


We have a free afternoon, and at lunch, another family volunteers to take Jacob with them to flagstaff Ski Bowl for a ride up and down the lift, 12,000 ft. and really cold. I nap.

We have an evening of music with Joanna, our talented leader. She plays the guitar and we sing along. Some of us teach her “Cruising Down the River,” which we had been singing on the raft trip. I downloaded the words and music on the hotel computer for her, and a few of us Grandmas performed it.

DAY 4
A big day and early again. Our bus leaves at 7:30 am for Williams, AZ, where we watch a silly Wild West show and then climb aboard the train to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Musicians go from car to car, as do the kids, having a great time. We have about 3 1/3 hours to explore the South Rim.


Most of the kids and a few adults start hiking down the Bright Angel Trail.

I’m browsing in a gallery and miss their return up the path, and when I catch up with Jacob eating ice cream at the lodge, he is very annoyed with me. I think he thought I was lost. Before we leave, we watch a Hopi Native dance show, performed by young men in full costume.

On the tired train trip back, another musician attempts, unsuccessfully, to engage our enthusiasm. We perk up when the conductor announces with feigned alarm that there are robbers on horseback beside the train, shooting at us.

They soon board and come through the cars wielding huge six shooters. Jacob is sitting with his little gang and they persist in being particularly silly, and asking each robber, and then the sheriff who is chasing the robbers through the cars if they have any “moist toilettes,” The cowboys don’t exactly get the joke, and don’t know quite how to respond, as the boys fall all over each other cracking up at their extreme wittiness.

DAY 5
Jacob and I have to get our bags packed and on the bus by 7:30, thankfully for the last time. We go to Walnut Canyon National Monument and the amazing well-preserved cliff dwellings of the Sinagua Indians. The heat wave catches up with us and we hike down to the cliffs and back up in the extreme heat.


When the bus drops us off back at the hotel at 11:30, a waiting cab takes us to the Amtrak Station where we catch a shuttle to the Phoenix Airport.

Jacob hasn’t had his ipod all week, so he is engaged and quiet in the back of the van. The shuttle driver is an interesting spiritual sort, so we have a great conversation all the way back to Phoenix. We have 1 1/2 hours to catch our flight, which is a tight schedule. But our flight is delayed, and then our flight from Dallas is delayed, so we don’t get back to Little Rock until about 11pm, full of bad airport food. Jacob is a trooper through all of this. It was a terrific trip.

Next year it’s Emily’s turn—she will be 10 by then. Go to www.ElderHostel.com and check out the intergenerational programs.