The Fault in Our Stars: Heartbreaking and Beautiful

Perhaps I am the last English-speaking person on the planet to read The Fault in Our Stars, the young adult novel about two teens with cancer who fall in love.  But I am glad I got around to it. This beautiful book will break your heart.

Well, I haven't actually read the novel; I listened to it on my iphone yesterday and today as I drove from Indianapolis back to my home in New Jersey. I had spent the week in Indianapolis, attending a conference called "Teaching Teachers to Teach Kurt Vonnegut."

From A Stage Four Cancer Patient: "Never Have I Felt So Accompanied in My Life"

I have shared by friend Frank Simmonds' journey of pain and faith. He has stage four neuroendocrine cancer. Here is another remarkable video from him, just before he undergoes open-heart surgery at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn tomorrow. Please pray for him, his wife and their two young sons. This Lenten season, Frank is facing the prospect of his own death with a deep gratitude for the life he has been given. We should all do the same.

"We live our life but a minute... like a whisper. Then we come fact to face with an unknown entity called Death..The good thing about me is. I encounter another entity...my faith in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
)

Carrying the Cross of Cancer with a Heart WIde Open

My friend Frank Simmonds continues to share his suffering and his faith in the face of cancer as he "walks toward the Infinite." He shows us how to live suffering with meaning.

One of my favorite comments is: "Where were you when the Universe was created?"

Bearing Witness, Suffering with Gratitude

Frank Simmonds is a friend, a fellow traveler in the ecclesiastical movement I follow called Communion and Liberation. He suffers from advanced-stage neuroendocrine cancer.  He continues to bear witness to the One who called each of us, by name, into being. In the photo above, he carries the cross, leading thousands across the Brooklyn Bridge during a Good Friday procession.

How to Celebrate Christmas Without Hurting Yourself

I mean that mostly figuratively.

My friend Dee is a new grandma, a retired teacher, and an ovarian cancer survivor. She blogs at Women of Teal. She has spent two Christmases in treatment and today offers "Advice from my Christmas past" (Gee, the English teacher in me loves the Dickens' allusion!)  for recovering cancer patients on how to manage the holidays. As I read it, I realized her advice applies also to moms, particularly to the mothers of small children. Boy, how exhausting that time of life can be. So please stop by her blog and leave a comment!

(As an aside, Dee and I met when we were fellow parishioners. We're both in new parishes now; she and her husband moved to a community many towns away and my family decided to switch back to the parish where our sons had been baptized. Funny thing, I know Dee better now via our blogs and facebook than I ever did when we saw each other every week at church!)