Lloyd sat with his head on the bed in his wife's hospital room. Sunlight came through the windows and warmed his back. She was asleep and her heart monitor beeped in the background. He felt his phone buzz. Lloyd stood up and answered, "Hi Pastor. Yes, I'm sorry to harp on it again, but I just wanted point out that some of us on the committee don't really agree with the direction of your sermon series... I mean Tom and a couple others seem to be leaning to my side." Lloyd glanced up and noticed the hospital's Chaplain leaning against the doorframe with arms crossed, looking at him. Lloyd scrunched his eyebrows and looked away as he continued, "Yes, but they don't really understand the demographic we've been trying to cater to. They like to hear positive things about themselves, not criticisms of wealth-- yes, I know, but we aren't going to survive as a church unless we get some people of that socioeconomic strata... Perhaps then you need to push for it a little more in your sermons... Okay. Next Saturday before the brunch seems fine. Just think about it. Okay. Bye."
The chaplain uncrossed his arms and walked slowly toward Lloyd's wife. He was a pudgy 65-year old Mexican man with one arm missing (it looked like from military service perhaps) and a rainbow stole over his flannel shirt. Tattered strips of denim dragged from the bottom hems of his jeans.
Lloyd put his phone away and stood at her bed across from him. Lloyd had met him when Lloyd had come back in after a similar call to one of the elders yesterday. He had found this man in their room, praying for Maria.
"Hello, Chaplain."
"Hello, my friend." The chaplain's eyes stayed on the woman's pale face. "How's Maria doing today?"
"Oh, I don't know.” Lloyd glared at the dirty fabric mask drooping around his neck.. “You've seen more of this than me." Lloyd's tone was flat. "How do you think she's doing?"
The Chaplain glanced up at him and then back down at Maria. "You know, the thing about cancer is that it was good cells that decided to do things their own way, because they think they have a better way. But instead of doing anything useful, it just kills the whole body." He looked back up at Lloyd with tired eyes.
Lloyd crossed one arm and put his other fist up to his mouth as if pretending to ponder it. He said, "Hmm, I wonder if that's how evolution found better ways of doing things."
The chaplain looked up at him and nodded. Then he looked down at Maria's face as he slowly and articulately said, "Perhaps there are better ways of doing things sometimes." He watched her face contort slightly in pain. "But it's a little sad thinking of the good creatures it killed along the way. Creatures that were minding their business, just daily doing their best."
Lloyd noticed Maria's wincing face too and quickly knelt beside her, squeezing her hand. He spoke tenderly, "Oh, hunny, I'm here. Don't give up. We're here for you."
After a minute or so of silence, the chaplain spoke again. "Can I share with you what I think the difference is between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of this earth?"
Lloyd was silent. The chaplain looked over and met Lloyd's patronizing gaze. "It's okay. I'll tell you. Until that day when all of us are united under the head of Christ, it's like we are in a hospital bed, fighting against our own body. When God's kingdom finally comes, all of our wills fall into lock step with God's plan, then our body will get up and do the work it was really meant to do in this transformed world, and perhaps it’s made to do something even bigger in the spiritual universe."
Lloyd took a deep, frustrated breath.
The chaplain continued, looking at Maria, "Do you know how a doctor told me, one time, that we recognize cancer?"
Lloyd started to turn his head back to Maria, but his eyes held onto the man's face like angry anchors.
"It is whatever is causing the body to have to fight. It's where all the body's attention has to go. All the heat. All the blood. Stopping the body's own civil war sucks up all the body's energy it would otherwise use to do what it is called to do."
The chaplain looked back down at Maria. He said, "It really hurts to watch it destroy the body." He looked back up at Lloyd. "Doesn't it."
Lloyd looked to Maria's face, steaming in anger.
"I'll let you two be.” Said the chaplain. “Love has the incredible power to heal some cancers." The chaplain slowly rose, whispered a prayer for Maria and shuffled out.
A few minutes later a nurse came in, checking her watch and then looking at Maria's IV. She noticed Lloyd glaring at Maria and was startled, "Oh, Mr. Glenson, are you okay?"
"Yes." He glared at Maria. "You should fire that chaplain though. He’s done the opposite of bring peace in here."
"Oh, uh… chaplain?"
Lloyd looked up at her. "That man in the flannel with the rainbow..." He motioned with his hands up and down from shoulder to knees.
"Oh, Henry? He's not our chaplain. I thought you all had bonded over fighting cancer."
"What do you mean?" Lloyd looked up at her, eyes scrunched.
"He has been here almost every day for the past couple months because he knows like three people undergoing similar treatments as your wife. And he came just as often for another two folks last year."
"Wait, for like, for his... wife-- or partner? Or brother or something?"
"No, no. It's actually a crazy story. I talked to him one day." She glanced toward the door. "I think I can tell you this. "Apparently he used to pastor a church. Thus the drapey thing." She motioned the shoulder-to-waste stole. "But they had some big divisions in the church, he told me, and these folks all happened to be among those who had left to start their new church."
"Did the churches survive?"
"I'm not exactly... sure." She scraped her brain with her eyes. "But the way he talked with those patients, it seemed they had both been through a lot. But what I was going to tell you was that he was the pastor at a church on a military base where they had stored a lot of Agent Orange. You know the stuff they used in Vietnam that caused all sorts of cancer. And there was something about them starting the new church in a building they later found out used to house the Agent Orange! Thus all the people he knows with cancer."
"And he came back to be help the people that left him?"
"Yeah! It's crazy, right?!" The nurse said as she lifted her hands and eyebrows in amazement. The nurse finished checking and changing Maria's tubes and bags and started taking off her blue gloves. "Anyay," she said. "All that to say, he has been through a lot of church stuff, and a lot of cancer stuff. Not sure what those two have in common, but if they do, he'd be the specialist." She looked down at Maria. "She looks like she's holding steady. I'm guessing she'll probably wake up in a minute or two. I'll be back in about an hour." The nurse smiled a somber smile and nodded as she turned and left.
Lloyd lowered his head onto Maria's bed again. He took a deep breath and found Maria's hand with his. He whispered toward the floor, "God, please speak to me." He lifted his head as he breathed in deeply. He looked at Maria's pained face. His soul's wrestling match played itself out on his face. "God, what should I do?"
Maria opened her eyes, saw his face, and said with a groggy smile, "Please don't look like you're in so much pain. I'm the only one with cancer here."
“Oh, gosh. I’m sorry hunny. It’s just…” They shared a smile, and she drifted off to sleep again.
He nodded and whispered. "I love you, so much. I’d do anything to keep your body alive. But I think I might be a cancer to Christ’s body right now. And I have forgotten to love it.”
Raw Spoon, February 25, 2025
Comments