Considering Courage

Courage November 25 2009


I think of all the times I’ve pulled back from the edge,

Afraid to suffer, afraid to lack, afraid to die –

All the times I’ve wakened in the night in terror,

Worrying over ills that might await me in the dark.

That’s my native way to be within this earthly realm --

A small, trembling mollusk wanting only safety in its shell.

No bravado here! No tempting fate or risking life or limb.

I’ve never even managed to jump off the pool’s edge into

Water deeper than my head – a fear so primal that it’s paralyzing.



Yet when tuned in to spirit, aware of love around me,

Feeling universal awe and knowing that I am of God,

My mollusk mind melts away – lets go –

Opens into trust that the way I see before me is the Truth,

That every move I make is cushioned and supported –

That my good is all around me, awaiting my acceptance eagerly.

As life’s challenge spreads before me, I can jump in easily,

And flow in bliss wherever it may lead.

I’m a buoyant spirit, and the water has no bottom and no sides.

I choose to study staying in the spirit mind.



Reflections:

Courage comes up all the time. But it doesn’t mean a lack of fear. It means opening to Trust.

I think of all the times you were courageous, my Love. When you decided to be a doctor, you trusted that it would happen -- that if you followed your heart’s desire, you could do it, despite a lack of funds for medical school, despite your disability, despite being Jewish and a woman, at a time when strict quotas often kept both from attending medical school. You were accepted to Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia, although they extracted a pledge from you that because of your paralyzed hand you would never actually practice medicine. You performed brilliantly during your first year.

This was in the early 1950s, during the McCarthy Era. You were asked to resign at the end of that year because they had discovered you were gay. At the time, there were no rules of confidentiality for psychotherapists. You had had an affair with a fellow student, who had then told the school’s psychologist. The psychologist passed the information along to the Dean, who called you into her office. “How many others were involved in this?” she asked, as she told you that you were dismissed. For the rest of your life, you were proud of having stood up for ethics and confidentiality and replied, not “I don’t know,” but “I can’t tell you that.”

You were courageous again in continuing to follow your calling, enrolling in medical school, in French, at the Universite de Lausanne in Switzerland. You had excelled in high school French, and you relied on that to allow you to continue your studies. At that time, it was fairly common for Americans aspiring to become physicians but not accepted at American medical schools to apply instead to Lausanne. Generally, though, you didn’t hang out with the other Americans, and chose instead to participate in study groups with native French speakers. You were well regarded there. Your teachers respected your need to devise original methods for physical diagnosis, surgery, and delivering babies, using just one hand. They even helped you to perfect the methods you invented. You were justifiably proud of your success with all of these basic medical tasks.

At King’s County Hospital, back in Brooklyn, where you completed your internship, you delivered many babies, and were delighted at the number of Hispanic girls in Brooklyn who had been named “Elena” after the young one-handed doctor who had delivered them and whose courage had inspired the parents.

Most of all, I am awed when I think of your courage while we were together. A lifelong New Yorker, you willingly moved to Berkeley with me, so that we would have the room to practice together, sharing patients. When your cancer recurrence was diagnosed, you stepped outside of the medical paradigm in which you’d been steeped all your life, allowing me, with the help of mentors, to treat you using homeopathic protocols that held out the hope of a longer, more successful restraint on the cancer’s progress. When Avery was born, and then Julian, you, who had never had children, stepped wholeheartedly into the unfamiliar role of grandparent, and starred in your grandchildren’s lives as “Nanny El.” You pioneered with me the role of “spouse,” as, without the benefit of being able to marry, we figured out ways to join our finances, our households, and our selves as one, in a deeply committed relationship that many found inspiring. When Massachusetts laws changed to allow marriages for out of state same sex couples, you arranged for oxygen machines and medical support so we could, finally, legally marry, just weeks before your death. And as you neared the end of your life, you committed yourself to learning to transcend fear, anger, loss, and pain through Buddhist awareness and meditation. You approached death through increasing enlightenment, providing a beautiful example of a soul purifying day by day, like gold repeatedly refined, through the crucible of physical pain and emotional forgiveness.

Courage – trust that what seems right will work beautifully, leading us to follow the vision that fills our heart. It requires attending to our inner awareness, ignoring false fears and seductive illusions that are only physical and material. What a gift to have known and loved someone who lived this courageously! This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for that wonderful, transforming experience.