Dear folks,
 
Ever since Bill McKibben announced the 3-week wave of civil disobedience at the White House to stop the Tar Sands pipeline from Canada to Texas, I had planned to take part on August 29, in an interfaith aspect that The Shalom Center and I helped initiate.

But for medical reasons, I can’t be there. I’ll explain below. 

But first, a plea: The 3-week wave will end on Saturday, September 3. That day will include both nonviolent civil disobedience (expecting arrests) and a legal vigil/ demonstration with speakers, etc.

My plea: Please come to the White House at noon on September 3. Already the Tar Sands protest has shown (hundreds of arrests, about 50 a day, day after day) that there is both good sense and deep passion about healing our planet, among many Americans. We need to culminate this clarity with a powerful close.

I have my own qualms about doing this on Shabbat, but after brooding I have come to this: Vigils, prayers, and nonviolence are the nearest cousins to Shabbat  --  “praying with our legs,” as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said. And we are calling for America to pause from frantic Doing/ Making/ Producing/ Exploiting (the Tar Sands Pipeline) to make a moment of reflection, of calm, of rest.

Wistfully, I imagine dozens of Jews bringing a Torah Scroll  to the White House that morning and  celebrating this  Shabbat with prayers and songs and chants – and our legs.

Now: Why can’t I go this coming Monday, August 29, as I had hoped and planned and intended?

In July, after months of a persistent sore throat, I was diagnosed with a Stage 1 very localized cancer right next to my larynx. So I began a six-week regimen, to end September 30 (making for a slightly weird Rosh Hashanah!)  The doctors all assure me that there is a 95% likelihood that these treatments will solve the problem.

The regimen includes radiation aimed at the trouble spot in my throat, six treatments a week (one very early a.m. each workday plus an extra on Friday afternoon) – plus once a week, a chemo treatment with a very cancer-targeting chemical called Erbitux.
 
The radiation takes fifteen minutes. They have fit me for a strong and rigid plastic face mask to hold my head in the right position for the rays to reach the right spot. It has a number of holes to see and breathe through. I lie quiet for 15 minutes, listen to classical music or Sinatra, and that’s it. My daily moment of Shabbat.  Not bad.

The hard part: My radiation oncologist says, sternly, that it would be dangerous to interrupt this rhythm for even a day. So that’s why I am not going to Washington on Monday.
 
Since September 3, Saturday, is NOT a day I would be getting treatments anyway, I feel more free to go, if I am not by then exhausted from the continuing treatments.

The once-a-week chemo is through IV infusion, takes two hours plus an hour of observation to make sure there are no untoward effects. 
 
I have also begun doing acupuncture, to keep my immune system vigorous.
 
Shabbat keeps coming into this story in strange ways: One way of thinking about cancer is that it is made up of cells that refuse to pause, to rest, to make Shabbat. Our society’s mania for Doing/ Making/ Speeding/ Never-Pausing is the society-wide equivalent of cancer, of refusing to make Shabbat. That is why I feel called so strongly to join in this call for a decision to refrain from Speeding-Up our poisoning of the Earth and each other.

Meanwhile – the doctors say I should expect by the fifth week to be feeling more easily tired, and that my voice may hoarsen.  So if my own voice for peace, for healing, for the Earth is less clear for the next month or so, let me implore you – all of you, our Members and Readers – to lift your own voices all the louder.
 
I welcome your prayers, thoughts, blessings, and especially, if you like messages of laughter --  by email & USPS mail, NOT by phone calls, please. AND – please forgive me if I don’t respond individually, but husband my strength and my voice.  

 With blessings of love & shalom, salaam, healing --
 Arthur