Bridge Over Troubled Waters

The mother of Baan's classmate whose older sister happens to be a classmate too at HIC, was recently diagnosed with cancer. Hear this: the medication costs 20 grand/day and will run for a year. Jesus of Nazareth, good Lord! My math falters.

In T. Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," a national tragedy befalls on Lima, Peru in 1714 when the said bridge collapsed, claiming the lives of 5 individuals. A Franciscan from northern Italy by the name of Brother Juniper, in a state of beleaguered grace, set out to make sense of this woeful event. Was it a sheer act of God? What was the common denominator among the 5 victims? Why were they chosen? Was it some sort of natural selection?

The bridge was built by the Incas in the 1600s at the time when brazen bidding practices were still unheard of. It was not of inferior quality and was in fact, a national landmark. Was the accident orchestrated by God? And why on that fateful day in July?

Every person who wanted me to imbibe their optimistic thoughts regarding my own battle with cancer were unanimous in declaring God's deliberate hand in my situation. They all enthused, "it's God's blessing." I try to carry this with me as I give formal and informal testimonials of this blessing disguised in tragedy.

Wilder employs a more accusatory tone, evoking agnostic insight, "to the gods, we are like flies boys kill on a summer day...that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed by the finger of God.'" (p.7)

This goes beyond simple faith, a faith demanding total submission, an absolute surrender of the value of human action, even free will. Who in his right mind would choose to be stricken with cancer? What God in His right frame of mind would brush His finger on ugly cancer cells and give them to His children?

When I was at the hospital, the Wise One shared V. Woolf's insightful description of illness -"how astonishing when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed." Indeed. You travel without roadmaps, for long stretches with no end in sight. Your senses are twice alive - life, all of a sudden, becomes more urgent and yet time, becomes irrelevant. The tic-tac changes, an hour is a day, a week is a month and no one except you, keeps pace - the reckoning of one's mortality renders both freedom and repression.

There is solitude amidst the neighbor's loud radio, loudly thinking that this may be your last chance to hear that overplayed pop song but silently wishing you can endure all of these just to stay a litle longer on this planet. There are legitimate reasons to die but there are more excuses to live.

Yes, Virginia. You gain perspective. You find reaons to be grateful. You learn humility and grace of Hemingway's definition. You sanctify love and love what isn't beautiful and safe.

This is what I pray for my classmate's mother - sanctify love. Wilder's final sentence grips it firmly, "there is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." (p117)

Ai, gugma. So ancient but never out of fashion.