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Gil's Post-Op Update (posted June 22nd, 2009)
(The text version of Gil's audio is below)
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Hello, I’m Gil Bailie, the president of the Cornerstone Forum, reporting – somewhat belatedly – on a major surgery I underwent a little less than two weeks ago.
First let me say how touched I have been by all the kind messages I have received. Thank you so much for your concern and you thoughtfulness.
My report is belated because my son Hunt and his wife Yuni came out from California and my daughter Aña and her husband Mike came up as well, and for several days my usually quiet little cottage here in rural Massachusetts was filled with laughter, music, and the smell of good food – sufficient reason I figured for setting aside other matters – including sending along an update on my surgery.
As anticipated, however, the operation was a complete success. Even though the 2 centimeter spot removed from my left lung was cancerous, it was a fairly rare form of lung cancer, the only one we non-smokers are ever likely to get – one that is slow-growing, unlikely to metastasize, and surgically curable. The surgeon and the post-operative pathology report concurred: all clear, case closed.
In my earlier message, I joked around about the operation being the surgical equivalent of being hit by a truck, and how it promised to be character-building experience. Talk is cheap, and in due course I was obliged to put my moaning where my mouth was and endure several episodes of pretty intense pain. Believing, as I do, in vicarious suffering, I am assuming that these trials accrued to the physical or moral benefit of someone somewhere, for a quick post-op assessment of my spiritual condition is a sobering as ever. I did, however, have occasion to confirm the validity of Henri de Lubac’s observation that “he who suffers well hasn’t suffered yet.” So I suppose that’s something at least.
In any case, I’ll be a little stiff from the surgery for a few weeks, but except for that I am returning slowly to work, preparing a short paper for the Colloquium on Violence and Religion conference in London next month and working on both the form and the content of the Cornerstone Forum 2009-2010 program beginning in the fall.
Due to financial constraints, next year’s program will rely less on airline travel and more on audio and video technologies and other internet related forms of communication and interaction. It’s a little too early to predict what ensemble of available tools we will using and precisely what form our educational efforts will take. If you have thoughts on any of these matters, we would very much like to hear from you.
The Forum’s email address is: forum@cornerstone-forum.org and our toll-free phone number: 866-506-5451.
Thank you again for your friendship, your prayers, your support and all the messages of encouragement you sent my way.
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Listen to Gil describe how he plans to spend his vacation (posted June 6th, 2009):
(The text version of Gil's audio is below)
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Hello, I'm Gil Bailie, president of the Cornerstone Forum, as most of you know, speaking with you from my little cottage in New England, with a report on how I will be spending most of my summer.
For someone who hasn't had a real vacation in many years, and who is overdue for a cross or two, I'm in luck. Beginning Tuesday, June 9th, I will enjoy as best I can a week-long holiday at the luxurious, spa-like St. Vincent Hospital in charming downtown Worcester, Massachusetts, attended round-the-clock by a courteous and competent staff. All in all, the experience promises to be – what's the word I'm looking for? – “breathtaking” – breathtaking, that is, because I will come home with a slightly smaller left lung, which sounds a lot worse than it really is. For, not only are my doctor friends and my surgeon confident of benign results and a full recovery, but tests indicate what I have long suspected, namely, that breathing is one of the things that I'm really quite good at. And so I’m told that, once I pull my post-operative self together, the reduction in lung capacity will be negligible. The only activity that may be ruled out is the Tour de France. By a happy coincidence, I had already decided not to enter the Tour de France this year anyway.
So a word to those who have suffered through my long-winded lectures: don't get your hopes up for shorter-winded ones.
But don’t go be putting your violins away or dropping me from your prayer list, either, for, however lacking in medical high drama the operation is, it is apparently the surgical equivalent of being hit by a very large truck at very high speeds. And the only thing likely to keep me from eventually feeling sorry for myself is knowing that my friends doing it for me.
Assuming I can cram the predicted 6-week recovery period into 4 weeks, I'll attend the Colloquium on Violence and Religion conference in London in July.
In any case, by mid-July I will turn my attention again to the Cornerstone Forum program for 2009-2010. The contours of the program are still being determined, and if you have any thoughts about that or anything else, we would like to hear from you. You can leave a message for me on the East Coast and Randy Coleman-Riese, the Forum’s executive director, on the West Coast by calling our toll-free number: 866-506-5451.
While we aren’t yet sure about the form next year’s program will take, however, we do have a title: Easter in the Meantime, and a subtitle: Faith in the Crossfire. As you may have guessed both the word "meantime" and the word "crossfire" have double implications.
The next few weeks will be a bit of a “meantime” for me, but – with a little help from the anesthesiologist – I’ll nap through the most gruesome part of it. I'm assured, however, that there will be several weeks of the kind of aggravation that has been known to improve one’s character and perhaps even make one a better Christian. On both counts, I’m hoping for the best, for opportunities like this don't come round very often. Given my belief in the redemptive power of suffering, perhaps I can write off the expenses on next year’s taxes as professional research. I’ll have to have one of my lawyer friends look into that for me.
Meanwhile, pray if you will that my little ordeal will transform some of my residual mediocrity into something more becoming, and something more useful to the Cornerstone Forum. For as Randy is forever reminding me: “We have work to do,” and indeed we do, now more than ever. For our civilization is abandoning its moral and religious foundations – the true source of its cultural significance – at the very moment that we are entering the most perilous period in human history, and now under leadership that remains, in my opinion, almost willfully blind to the paramount moral and cultural issues of our time. And so, yes, we have work to do: And we would have neither the will nor the heart nor the means to do it were it not for your friendship, your support, your prayers, and your many kindnesses, for all of which I am deeply and genuinely grateful.
If, as John Updike said, there are some secrets that are hidden from health, I've been too healthy all my life to have had access to these secrets. Perhaps in the next few days and weeks I'll stumble upon one or two of them. If so, the terms of my vocation are such that I will do my best to translate them into the vernacular of health and pass them along.
Thank you again for your friendship and your prayers. I look forward to when we next see one another face to face.
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