"PARATUM COR MEUM" - MY HEART IS FIRMLY FIXED, O GOD!

Seattle, WA January 5, 2011                                                                                                                 These are the opening words to the 108th Psalm. "My heart is firmly fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and make melody....I will confess you among the peoples, O Lord; I will sing praises to you among the nations.For your chesed (loving-kindness) is greater than the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds. Exalt yourself above the heavens, O God, and your glory over all the earth. So that those who are dear to you may be delivered, save with your right hand and answer me." David's words in the Psalms have been precious to all believers who are facing great difficulties and life-threatening situations. They resound with such a passionate honesty that it is easy to identify with them when we are in need. At times, the author comes close to being overwhelmed with vindictiveness and "spite", but given Davids' circumstances, you can't blame him too much. In some ways it is refreshing and more authentic to hear him speak what most of us only hide in our inner thoughts. David's plea for justice against his enemies is one thing we feel comfortable with. However, he goes further and actually describes the punishment he wants God to inflict: "When he is judged, let him be found guilty, and let his appeal be in vain. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife become a widow. Let his children be waifs and beggars; let them be driven from the ruins of their homes. Let the creditor seize everything he has; let strangers plunder his gains. Let there be no one to show him kindness, and none to pity his fatherless children. Let his descendants be destroyed, and his name be blotted out in the next generation. Ps. 109:6-12. I hope and pray that no one is praying that prayer with me in mind today.

The "chesed" or "loving-kindness" of the Lord merits some reflection. "Chesed" is as close as you can get to the concept of "agape", "perfect love", in the New Testament. God's "loving-kindness" is what keeps God from simply giving up on humanity in general, and the People of Israel, or the Church, in particular. If you seriously reflect upon the overwhelming suffering and evil that plagues this planet, you couldn't blame a Righteous God for just wiping all of us off the face of the universe. Chesed is what restrains the wrath and justice of God. It holds the covenant promises God has made as evidence in the Celestial Courtroom and tips the balance from anger to mercy. Chesed is what the Apostle Paul relied upon when he wrote his hymn of "agape" love in ICor. 13. Replace chesed for love in all those affirmations and you can get a good idea how deep and important this word is to the Biblical narrative. In spite of all the reasons that the Lord should cast us off and be done with us, chesed binds us together in the heart of God with cords that can never be broken. Chesed reveals itself in God and in us as faithfulness. Lamentations 3 graphically describes the anguish and suffering of Jeremiah. His words resound with despair. In verses 15-20 we read: "He has filled me with bitter herbs and sated me with gall. (Old Testament Ursidiol) He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust. I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say, "My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord." I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me." These verses could easily be called the Lament of Cancer Patients. We can identify with all of it; medication upon medications that often taste like bitter herbs and in my case, is a black bear gall. Our teeth, gums, skin and intestinal tract all begin to break down prematurely. One feels trampled by the constant war with insurance companies and the overwhelming financial and emotional drain. Sleep and peace seem like a mirage of a former age, not so much from anxiety or lack of faith, but as a direct side-effect of the drugs and treatments you receive. Most of your hopes and plans for the future, professional as well as financial, seem like an impossible and mocking reminder of what life used to be like. There are days when your soul is so downcast that you are tempted to just give up and give in; hoping you die as quickly and painlessly as possible.

It is at this point that Jeremiah and most of us in the Cancer Community keep reading and continue on to verses 20-23. "I well remember them, and .... yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord's chesed we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; GREAT IS GOD'S FAITHFULNESS." There is a wonderful chorus we sing: "Thy "chesed" loving-kindness is better that life!" To be in the face of our greatest need and encounter the "chesed" of a merciful God transforms our lives and gives us "shalom". God's peace isn't necessarily absence from worry or anxiety, but a profound sense of being whole in Christ no matter how much your body, life or situation seems to be falling apart. God doesn't just glue us back together again like Humpety-Dumpety. God takes the broken pieces of who we used to be and transforms us into the image of Christ so that God might be glorified whether in life or in death. Tomorrow I begin the 5 day chemo and radiation pre-conditioning that leads up to my stem-cell transplant on 1/11/11, next Tuesday. I am counting on the "CHESED" of God to take the broken pieces of my old body and self and transform them into the vessel God intends for my life that will reflect Jesus Christ much better than I have ever done in the past. Keep all of us in your prayers, please and thank you. -Robin

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE October, 1971

Getting back from Barcelona without something frightening occurring was a great relief. It was time to register for classes in the Faculte de Lettres, Universite Aix-Marseille, along with 20,000 other French and foreign students from all over the French speaking world. We had the luxury of taking classes from any department we wanted, but we had to pick things that would fulfill graduation requirements back in the USA. I took a Litt class with Regina dealing with 19th Century Romanticism. I took a Modern Chinese History course with Betsy of which I will speak later. I included a "Solfege", or music theory class and attended a French Grammar Course and a History of the Myth of Napoleon following his death. It was a full schedule, but unlike undergraduate classes in American Universities, it was more like graduate school. You were responsible for mastering all of the material over the course of the entire Scholastic Year. There might be a major paper or thesis turned in during the school year, but you could count on a 6-8 hour comprehensive exam at the end of the year that determined if you passed or failed. Everything in the professional world was based on your standing from your grades at the Universite. You were competing against your fellow classmates for everything. Acceptance into their form of graduate school, placement in the civil service of the Federal Government, or jobs in the private sector, just to mention a few. The stress on the students was tangible and to relieve that tension, they would declare that everyone and the institution was "en greve". That meant that you showed up for class and found chains padlocking all entrances. "Strike" meant no one could go back to school until the student leaders decided we could. "La Manif", or public demonstration was a daily event in the middle of town and American students avoided them like the plague. If we were arrested during one of them we would have been deported immediately. You have to remember that the French judicial system is just the opposite of the American/British system of law. In France, and the state of Louisiana, for that matter, you are presumed guilty if you are accused of a crime and you have to prove your innocence. We carried our Carte D'Identite and Visa de Sejour constantly. Anyone could be stopped and taken in for interrogation at any time for no probable cause. Never take our legal system for granted!

Grading was based on a twenty point scale. If you received 9/20 you passed the class. If you received 10-11/20 you did well. If you got 12-13/20 you were exceptional. It was unheard of for students to get anything over 13/20 and Professors took great pride in their absolute tyranny in determining academic life and death. In my Modern Chinese History course, my Professor was a unique man. He had a Dutch name from his father and his mother was Chinese. He was the incarnation of the brilliant, yet totally absent-minded professor. He had taught for over 25 years in the same Faculte. China, in 1971, was going through the height of the Cultural Revolution and was essentially a closed nation. Foreigners and foreign ideas and material objects were despised and destroyed. The way M. Kykendahl obtained his knowledge of contemporary Chinese Events was to read Publications from Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore and anything else he could get his hands upon. I don't know how many languages he could read or speak, but he lectured in French and wrote notes in Chinese script on the blackboard. He wore and had probably worn, the same black suit his entire teaching career and he reeked of the most powerful body odor I have ever encountered. He was so passionate about finding and disseminating knowledge about China that he just didn't notice or care about his personal appearance. If you like the smell of a Middle School Locker Room, you would have loved to spend two hours a week with M. Kykendahl. He assigned a "thesis" paper for our entire grade and so I stopped by to see if he wanted me to write it in French or in English. I didn't have a French typewriter, but I had access to an English one. He didn't care one way or another, but suggested it would have more depth in my native tongue. It was the only assignment I wrote in English the entire year.

Having had two brothers serve in Viet Nam in the 1960s, I had some obvious interest in that War and it was unclear how and when the USA would ever get out of that mess in 1971. I was neither a radical peace nor war activist, but I had seen the personal cost to individuals and their families from a personal point of view. I relied on Barbara Tugman's writings of World War Two and General Stillwell, in particular. The title of my Thesis was: "America's Tragic Mistakes in China, 1936-1948." Essentially, I was trying to show that the experience and attitudes we had adopted in dealing with the factions led by Mao Tse Tung and Chaing Kai Chek blinded us from making political and strategic military decisions when it came to Viet Nam in the early 1960s. It ended up being over 20 pages long and I hoped it would get me at least a passing 9/20. Otherwise, I wouldn't get any academic credit for enduring the locker room ambiance. A week or so after turning in my Thesis, M. Kykendahl asked Betsy and myself to step into his office following class. I thought he was going to break the bad news to us in private that we had failed his class. He gave Betsy her paper and she got a 10/20 and she was relieved. Then he began this formal speech about his academic history over the years. In all his years of teaching, he had given one French student a 18/20 for exceptional work, but that this was the first time in his career that he would be giving a Foreign student a 18/20. He handed it to me and I just about fainted from relief and disbelief. Betsy wasn't that pleased about the whole thing, but you have to remember she was from Iowa and they don't like to come in second best in anything. I thanked God for helping me do so well and, amazingly, I still have that Thesis in my office at the church and even know how to find it. I think P. Kykendahl was totally shocked that a young American student could look at Viet Nam and our own Foreign Policy with somewhat of an open mind and connect our past behavior with current policies.

The first 1/2 of the year sped by and I had to make some life-changing decisions about my fiancee, Kriss, back in the Yakima Valley. The Christmas Break would determine much of the rest of my story and life.