Someone recently asked me this. I wasn’t ready to respond immediately with anything intelligible.
But I can now offer a few reflections.
First, I’m still somewhat in shock that I actually had a heart attack and now sport four stents and take daily heart medicine.
I am fit. I’ve eaten responsibly. No breads. Nothing fried. Few added sugars. No red meat. I maintain 145 lbs. I bicycle almost daily and completed a vigorous 6-day, 250-mile bike tour the day before my heart attack. How and why did this happen to me?
Such questions linger in spite of cardiologists in NYC and Indy telling me it was 100% genetic. Still puzzled, I live the question without necessarily having to have a resolution.
Second, I am more tuned in to my body’s functions and signals. I pay attention to core body aches, pains, and changes. Since I thought a heart attack was just indigestion, I am now alert to every minor blip. I am also working to let each one go and move on. “Noted,” I say to myself, “Now let it go.”
I also think about body parts and systems interacting and about what I can do to help it all continue to function well together as I age. If we are, in fact, “fearfully and wonderfully made,” why should I not cooperate with and promote that in every conscious, actionable way as long as I am able?
Third, I think more about the fragility and preciousness of life and about aging in relationship to loved ones, neighbors, community and legacy.
“Nothing promotes growth like the prospect of a deadline,” M. Scott Peck, MD, used to say. My heart attack brought the prospect of death near. Successful heart catheterizations and stents offer the prospect of time for resolutions, reconciliations, development, psychic growth, adventures, and breakthroughs.
I don’t know how much time I have—and neither do you! But this awakening event is helping me start to let go of trivialities and smallness and reach for things that matter most to me and to life.
Fourth, I have intensified my thinking about “eternity.” Contrary to what was pounded into me in church as a child and young adult, I do not obsess about where I will “spend eternity.” Heaven, hell, whatever happens at death, today is what matters—and the people I’m given to know, interact with and impact here and now.
You likely know I am a seminary-educated (M.Div., D.Min.), evangelically-oriented minister (not to be mistaken for the blasphemy of political Evangelicalism). Still, heaven, to me, is acting responsibly now in creative stewardship of all I’ve been given—recognizing humanness, cultivating relationships, being a wounded healer, challenging systemic injustices, offering who I am and what I have. In contrast, hell is just serving myself and quelling my fears at others’ expense.
If heaven and hell are a time and places, so be it. But today, here, now, these people and life-challenging situations (to borrow from Tolstoy)—with these life and the future hang in the balance.
With gratitude for good health prospects going forward and aware of life’s fragility and preciousness, the challenge of being a good neighbor draws me forward.
