The Healing Circle. Dr. Robert MD Rutledge
will be a spiritual lesson as their hearts will keep opening with compassion.
Jan has lost her creativity. Kathy has had to accept the possibility of dying to facilitate her amazing recovery. Julian is dealing with the cancer by himself. Velma is surprised by her outburst of tears, having held onto the pain for so long—for her son’s lymphoma diagnosis five years ago and for her husband’s recent brain tumor. Theresa is cured of a lung cancer the doctors said was terminal ten years before. Her journey was “a wonderful experience”.
Remarkably, for all the pain, suffering, and tears in the room, so many people keep saying how struck they are by the strength and courage they hear in each others’ stories. The circle is generating a powerful feeling of love.
Anne passed the first time around, so she is the last person to speak. Her ovarian cancer came at a stressful time in her life. “I was single, lost my job in a mass layoff, and was about to start my own business when I was diagnosed.” Her voice is weak with exasperation. “That was the last straw because I wasn’t able to do anything, much less look after myself! I was told, ‘We need six more months of your life to give you chemotherapy.’ I wasn’t sure how I would support myself… much less find the strength I needed.
“For my whole life I was someone who looked after other people. I was strong for people. But now I need to care for myself. I need to rebuild my confidence and my life.
“I focus on the word ‘retreat’ for this weekend because it takes me away from all the responsibilities I have. I am so grateful to have this time here with you.”
After everyone has spoken, I reassure them that the whole weekend will not be as intense as this opening exercise. I encourage them to stay with whatever emotions have come up, listening to so many stories at once.
“Sharing and listening to stories can touch you in many ways. Stories can be inspiring and they can also bring up many different emotions; there is great value in welcoming them all. When you allow yourself to feel sadness, grief and pain, you stretch your heart, opening more space to appreciate the preciousness of life and the joy of living.”
Chapter 5
Andrew: Opening the Door to a New Life
Andrew was lying on the stretcher outside the operating room, overcome with a profound and inexplicable sense of peace and an inner feeling that everything was going to be fine. It made no sense. At 58, his life as a successful business consultant, newspaper columnist, husband and father had been completely shattered. The operating room nurse interrupted his reflections to confirm his identity. “What’s your date of birth?” she asked.
“March 5, 1948,” Andrew responded but he added in his own mind that he was also born a second time, just two weeks ago, on Christmas Eve, when he suddenly fell ill. His cancer diagnosis arrived as “a present wrapped in barbed wire”. Velma, his loving wife of thirty years, woke up to a violent shaking in the bed. (He joked later, “Not the type of shaking you want to have on your bed.”)
Andrew was trapped in a grand mal seizure; he was shaking uncontrollably, gritting his teeth, eyes staring deep into nowhere. Velma called the paramedics. The seizure continued in the ambulance, into the emergency room, shaking the life out of his body. Forty-five minutes later he was sedated. His CAT scan showed a tumor the size of a tangerine in the front of his brain, but the doctors couldn’t be sure if it was malignant. Surgery would follow in two weeks.
As his nurse wheeled him into the operating suite, Andrew was still aching from the seizure that ripped his muscles, yet he felt an incredible sense of peace that defied any sense of reasonableness given what was to come. Dr. Bernstein, a renowned neurosurgeon, was about to drill out a large piece of bone, cut through the normal brain tissue, and carefully dissect out as much of this tumor as possible—all while Andrew was awake.
This ‘awake-craniotomy’, done as a three-hour day-surgery procedure, is used to minimize effects on the normal brain. But even with the cutting-edge technology, Andrew and Velma had been told that he may come out of surgery with his emotions flattened, expressing no joy or sorrow, or so irritable and lacking in insight that he’d blow up uncontrollably— or his mental function may be so compromised he’d ‘wake up like a vegetable.’ Regardless Andrew relaxed into the table, enveloped in a peace that passed all the understanding that he’d ever known.
Andrew’s thoughts were drawn to his 96-year-old mother-in-law. A decade earlier, when Andrew’s sense of humour had exceeded her tolerance, she suggested that he should have his brain examined. Now, lying on the stretcher, Andrew mused that “With an elementary school education, she knew the diagnosis long before the ‘doctor-guy’ with the long list of letters behind his name and fifteen years in university.”
Andrew also contemplated his mother-in-law’s initial reaction to hearing that he had a brain tumor. “Andrew, you have not been listening to God.” He later wrote, “This was quite a remarkable insight which blurted out of her mouth automatically. Perhaps it was a blinding glimpse of the obvious to her; however, to me, that insightful chord struck deep. It was one that I listened to and that still lingers in my mind—often during my daily meditations.”
Andrew was willing to peer deeply into any situation, listen to every comment, and investigate it with an open heart and mind. Instead of being angry at his mother-in-law for a thoughtless comment, he thought about what he could learn from her way of thinking.
The surgeon started his saw. It made a terrible grinding sound like a powerful coffee blender. It took Andrew over a year before he was able to go into a coffee shop for fear of this terrible sound.
With his fingers deep in Andrew’s brain, the neurosurgeon asked Andrew if he was seeing anything unusual, trying to assess whether Andrew’s brain was being irritated by the manipulation. Suddenly, Andrew was pulled upwards and inwards all at once. He saw a beautiful purple/violet flame, an image that mysteriously appeared twice during the operation. He was no longer just in the 21st century; he stretched himself back in time more than two thousand years. The songs of wisdom passed down for generations echoed in his head: “Ezekiel saw a fire a-burning, way in the middle of the air … a fire within a circle of fire a-burning…”
His visions of a spiritual light reminded Andrew of his father-in-law, Arthur. As a young man, Arthur emigrated from Britain, farmed in Northern Ontario, and then served in World War II. Called to the ministry on his return, he brought his wife and three young daughters to Montreal, where he attended McGill University’s School of Divinity.
Arthur and his family were dirt poor but happy and thriving until he suddenly contracted meningitis and fell into a deep coma. His fellow divinity students organized an around-the-clock prayer vigil, praying to God to save this inspirational young man. Dr. Wilder Penfield, the pioneering neurosurgeon who first performed awake-craniotomies, the same procedure that Andrew was undergoing, was called in to try to save Arthur’s life. Penfield watched as Arthur’s body shrivelled, and two weeks later suggested that the family gather to say their last goodbyes.
Meanwhile, Arthur felt angels pulling him to heaven. He felt himself going through a tunnel with a brilliant array of colors that are not seen in this physical world. He felt such a profound sense of peace that he was sorry he had to return to this world. But he understood his time had not come and his work was not done.
The next morning Arthur was sitting up at his bedside eating breakfast. Dr. Penfield was dumfounded and called it a miracle. Arthur went on to serve others in the ministry for 47 years and had an enormous impact on many people. He had a deep love of nature, the earth, the planets, and the stars. He truly wondered about the magnitude of the sun, the sky, and how the universe came together. To him it was more than just idle chatter.
The same forces that hold the stars together and allow the grass to grow were working in Andrew’s body as he was wheeled to the recovery room, then in the car ride home later that same evening.
Andrew believes he thought about his father-in-law on the operating table because he was expecting a miracle as had happened to Arthur. His belief that his brain