HELLO!

“The inevitability of death is what makes us love life” Dianne Rayson

Geoff Woodcroft, the former Anglican bishop of Ruperts Land, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2024 and retired a few months later. He recently published this testimony called “Gratitude.”

My final chemotherapy will mark the anniversary of my very first treatment. How does one mark such an anniversary? Although the treatments are rough, the answer to the above question seems quite easy, Gratitude, and this is how I mark the anniversary. I am grateful for all who have treated, comforted, challenged, empowered and listened to me, particularly my wife, my family and friends, and the many people I have met because I have cancer. This posture of gratitude has gone beyond words of thanksgiving and gratefulness toward embracing every day and giving reverence and time to as much as I can take in. It’s not about me; it’s about the staggering beauty in life. There have always been opportunities to really see beauty, and now I understand better what it means to choose that. Every day is a gift. All this living, even in the midst of suffering and great struggle is a gift. All this beauty needs all of creation to be that beautiful. All my choices can be about choosing to embrace the entirety of astounding beauty, and a posture of gratitude through this last year has made it possible to choose wisely. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas wrote: “To learn to be God’s creature, to accept the gift, is to learn to be at home in God’s world. Just as we seek to make a guest feel “at home” in our home, so God seeks to have us feel “at home” by providing us with the opportunity to appropriate the gift in the terms it was given – that is, gratuitously.” I wish you holy beauty.

Gratitude is not an easy virtue to maintain. What comes naturally in our culture are words like "mine," and "I earned it and deserve it." In their book Resident Aliens authors Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon tell us, “Our problem as humans is not that we are full of desire, aflame with unfulfillment. Our problem is that we long for that which is unfulfilling. We attempt to be content with that which can never satisfy…what we want is power and status. Alas, we find that no matter what we have acquired, there is always someone we envy.” We have a hole in our hearts, and we throw everything under the sun at it – money, power, status, you name it. Nothing can fill it except…Being thankful for the gift that is life, for its promise of relationship, for its purpose of love, for the unconditional offering of Creation’s beauty and presence, for opportunity each day to love, to be loved, to know love, is what fills that hole.

Peace, Kevin

PS If you don’t feel gratitude all the time, you are not alone. If you don’t feel gratitude at this moment, you are not alone. If you never feel gratitude, you may want to address this with someone with more training than me. I don’t always feel grateful, and there is no shame in that (this is my pet peeve with those who insist we must always be positive). To be human is to feel a variety of emotions, sometimes grateful, sometimes not. A reminder, Jesus as he appears to us in the Gospels, is not always positive or grateful. But gratitude is a lasting gift, one I would recommend and witness to with others. I pray you experience it too.