carry water, chop wood

It feels like a cliché to talk of illness as being a powerful healing force these days. Yet some people are outraged by such an idea – how can one welcome, to teach us, suffering and even perhaps terminal debilitation? Yet, it strikes me as odd that when illness appears, we do our utmost to relieve or avoid the symptoms while not addressing the cause. Surely the swelling and discomfort of a twisted ankle should tell us: rest up, and above all, DO NOT go back on the football pitch! Annual bouts of bronchitis or shortness of breath as we struggle up School Hill cajoles us to give up smoking.

We ignore such signs at our peril – as we age, one thing leads to another and the illnesses become chronic or develop in to That Which will Kill Us. We create stories, particularly victim stories, around 'our' particular illnesses that we unconsciously choose as our life companions. Yet, everything, especially illness, is a communication, and it's possible to turn back the clocks and unravel illness, just by listening to it. More than that, it can point us in the direction to a healing and wholeness that goes way beyond the body, even, according to som, to our ancestors.

When I discovered I had cancer I was particularly dismayed that I was once again launching on a heroic journey. I'd been struggling with the tyranny of this particular self-chosen role and balked at the label of 'brave'. I'd recovered from two dramatic illnesses in the past – a disastrous sterilisation that I finally got reversed two years later, and thereby recovered from, and rheumatoid arthritis that I self-healed naturally, against medical advice. I decided that cancer was not going to be a heroic fight over who gets the upper hand – rather, this time, I'd take a sabbatical year from my self-chosen front line and take more of a line of gentle and deepening enquiry, and being more receptive to guidance. And it is, dare I say, working, Inshallah.

The challenge now is to choose different beliefs. As I let go of responsibility I'm becoming more playful. As I release resentment I'm having moments of great happiness. Is it possible to truly change? Could life really be as simple as carry water, chop wood?

imaginary chips with everything

I'm becoming aware of the connection between a healthy appetite and the will to live. My dad stopped eating a few weeks ago when he was at death's door. This is one of the 'old ways' of dying: refusing to eat, not from conscious choice in most cases but from a more instinctive, animal, sense that life, the life force, is coming to an end. Hospitals increasingly acknowledge the need for a dignified death and don't feed patients intravenously at this point. My dad's recovering now, partly through the attentive care of my mother, who has been spoonfeeding him all his meals, adding in fresh vegetables and his favourite ice cream brought in a thermos from home.

Something I've noticed while undergoing chemotherapy is that the chemicals have induced a strange loss of appetite, causing me to go off the fresh, organic, raw foods I had been treating myself with so joyfully for a few months. More problematic: even thinking about certain foods has me feeling queasy. I'm the main cook of our large family's (and droppers-by) main meal. The way I cook, I now realize, is to imagine the meal as though we're eating it and work backwards - so I'm handicapped before I even start. Walking to town to buy provisions for our meal yesterday all I could usefully conjure up in my mind was pizzas, cheese on toast, chocolate mousse - hardly recipes for people with cancer, let alone a healthy life.

And losing appetite has caused this zest for life to wax and wane lately with the three-weekly cycle of chemical treatment. I'm watching it curiously, kindly, learning to nurture myself through the troughs. I'm lucky to have plenty of love and other resources to help me through – I wonder how others, less fortunate, cope with this double-edged treatment, the cure that could as easily kill.

There's some upsides though. I've discovered that my imagination still has a lusty appetite, even if it isn't for things green. Last week while waiting for a friend at the local (chamomile tea the order of the day) I managed to munch my way through the entire menu – in my mind. Roast beef with all the trimmings – aaah. Pizza with chips - mmm. Sandwiches filled with all manner of cheeses, meats and pickles. Washed down with a couple of pints of Harveys. I could get used to this!

father time

My dad is an amazing man – the epitomy of a self-made, post-war American citizen: bright, capable, confident and adventurous. He grew up in Queens, New York, when his apartment building backed on to fields; he won scholarships to the best universities and later sold weapons systems overseas as a businessman and travelled the world regularly while revelling in its rich pickings. And this very appetite without boundary or reference to the whole – he is an aetheist - is also his great flaw. Like so many of his generation, he was bigoted and could be mentally overbearing towards people who did not agree with him. He sometimes reduced me, even as an adult, to tears. Which later turned to anger; you could never win an argument with Dad, and my friend Cat used to refer to him as God.

My dad’s 83 now. He’s got Alzheimers and doesn’t recognize me any more, even though he hugs me and is unusually tender. He nearly died last week; he fell over, breaking his hip and ending up in hospital with double pneumonia. During this time, I had the uncomfortable realisation that my feelings of ambivalence towards him were actually deep-seated resentment: powerless anger left unexpressed. I was resentful that he didn’t acknowledge me for who I am, and for not having ideals. I realised that this resentment is a mirror of the resentment I feel towards mankind as a whole, particularly our leaders. They - I believe - through overbearing greed, are plundering the bounty of creation, our Eden, taking life to the brink, including the least powerful human beings who are already suffering and dying as a result.

And when I say mankind, of course I mean me, my thoughts projected out. Cancer, according to Louise Hay, springs from deep resentment. According to her and many other contemporary healers, illness is caused by our own beliefs, which are simply a thought repeated over and over. That’s not to say I blame myself or even my father; rather, identifying and taking responsibility for the cause empowers me to seek the route towards healing.

And so the real work begins – at home. As I sat next to my father in hospital on Saturday, holding his hand, I asked, from the depths of my heart, to be relieved of this deep, destructive resentment towards humanity and my father, to see him as the completely innocent man he really is.

breaching the peace

I arrived home on Monday to find Dirk literally dancing a jig of unholy glee in the kitchen. He’d received a letter from Kent Police withdrawing the charges made against him at his arrest at the Climate Camp last August. He’d been arrested (see Meridian news video here) for obstruction because he refused to be stopped and searched, along with every other camper, on his way in and out of the camp, his point being that the police couldn’t possibly suspect him of being a terrorist, which was the law that police invoked to justify the searches. He was then arrested, held for eight hours on his own and then turfed out in a midnight thunderstorm to make his way home to Lewes, since he’d been banned from returning to the camp near the Kingsnorth power station.

Dirk had decided to represent himself at the court hearing in a fortnight since we couldn’t afford a solicitor yet felt it was important to hold out for justice. Our neighbour and friend Jonathon, who is a High Court barrister, helped Dirk prepare a case. Jonathon pointed out that not only had Dirk not breached the peace but that the police had breached his peace in going about his business, and had no right to search him, let alone arrest him.

As part of the preparation for the court case, Dirk had obtained several witness statements and character references, and had written to the police asking them to provide eight police officers as witnesses, along with their notebooks. Several other people arrested for contesting the stop and searches have been let off, we now hear.

Because it was a fiasco. Norman Baker, our MP, visited the Climate Camp and narrowly missed being pepper-sprayed by a very aggressive police presence. He wrote to the head of Kent Police complaining about their intimidation tactics and also researched a claim that 80 injuries had been sustained by the police during the week of the climate camp. What were the injuries, asked Norman? Bee stings and headaches.

Dave Morris (of McLibel fame) who, with Dirk, contested the police’s right to stop and search, has since called for a Judicial Review into the police presence at the peaceful Climate Camp. One of the things I love about the attitude of climate activists is that they use ingenuity and intelligence in creating magnificent, self-managed and playful events such as the Climate Camp, but that there is also a high level of knowledge of legal rights and support. I have been brought up to believe that one of the mainstays of a democracy is the right to question authorities peacefully, and not be harassed by a police force in doing so. That belief was vindicated this week.

honour the protesters

Although I’ve given up reading and watching the news for the time being I was tempted to read about the announcement of the third runway at Heathrow last week. Partly because my two oldest daughters have been protesting against it, dressing up as suffragettes, flashmobbing with T shirts, dancing the conga in Terminal 1 and so on, bless them. I’m especially fascinated by Geoff Hoon, transport minister. How can this intelligent man use such weak arguments that are clearly against the climate targets that Britain has fought so hard to pioneer? He does seem keen to engage in a discussion about the matter, however, and in an interview in the Guardian, made the point that since people want increasingly to take cheap flights, the government should provide more runway capacity. He is right, in a way, although such free market behaviour is also one of the problems. And though it’s great that the rich and famous such as Emma Thompson are adding their weight to the debate, as Geoff Hoon points out, if they continue to fly with abandon, as the wealthy do nowadays, this only adds to the sense of confusion, cynicism, despair and lack of empowerment from ordinary people.

It boils down to a kind of stalemate, where neither the leaders nor the people want to make a stand that says, we have to fly less, we have to consume less. We have to care enough about the rest of the life on the planet to each, willingly, change our lives.

It’s two years since I took a flight pledge and it continues to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Right now, I’d love to be in Cuba, just walking through the streets and absorbing all that is a foreign culture. The warmth, the sounds, the smells, the food, the music. The way people treat each other, the human and plant culture, every tiny, subtle detail. This is food for my being. I can afford it; nobody is stopping me, except a little voice that is just telling me to be one of those people that draws the line.

At his inauguration on Tuesday Barak Obama called on Americans to become less self indulgent. His position was celebrated as being hard won by the Civil Rights movement decades before, where people agitated (mainly peacefully) with passion for equal rights that only seemed obvious and right to them at the time. Although climate protesters these days are being arrested, belittled and ignored, I see a future where the many courageous people who decide to make a stand today for the future of the planet will be celebrated and honoured.

a curious lightness of being

A friend of mine who is recovering from cancer commented recently that the illness tends to bring on enlightenment. It's a funny thing to say, but it does stand to reason. Facing the possibility of premature death tends to throw one's whole life into perspective. ‘Am I ready to die?’ is a question that springs to mind. For a spiritual being, it should be a question we ask ourselves daily anyway.

It's like that conversation I used to have at dinner parties that started: if you had a year to live and had no money or health worries, what would you do? Laurence LeShan poses it in his workbook in Cancer as a Turning Point. He found that even terminally ill cancer patients, when encouraged to find their deep passion and zest for a vocation, often stifled, made remarkable recoveries from cancer, or at least had a more fulfilling end to their life. Personally, I've always just tended to do what I wanted to do in life anyway, so there's not much I regret not doing. But I managed to come up with a short list and plan to add to it over time. MORE OF: laughing, happiness, intimacy, friendship, adventures, food growing, holistic beekeeping, dancing, travel to exotic places (well, that will have to be by freighter). START: reading about Einstein, learning to play the cello. LESS OF: chores. It seems like such a sparse, undemanding list, given the opportunity to have my dreams come true. But it is what it is.

If it is possible to be frog-marched down the road to enlightenment, I suspect it might go something like this. Gratitude: As I wrote last week, whatever time remains appears more intense. Little details seem like tailor-made miracles. Judgement and reactions: So what? Life really might be too short. Even those nasty people who are trashing my planet are, to me now, simply ignorant; let it all go. Bad habits: Stuff that; I want to live my remaining days to the full, not lost in a cloud. Forgiveness: It's physically much easier to say sorry than to bear a grudge. Living in the moment: More than ever, so much of the busy-ness we call life and where we put our energies seems rather a waste of time. I can't even work myself up into a lather about the credit crunch; faced with possible death, both the voice of the news and even the voices in my head seem tedious. What remains are the core values that we all live with; love, truth, hope, happiness, which, like the vegan-esque diet I've been on, contributes to a rather curious lightness of being.

The fierce heat of living

I write from my bed, feverish with the mistletoe injected to help repel the cancer. Mistletoe is the most frequently prescribed therapy in German outpatient cancer clinics; it's said to strengthen the immune system while minimizing the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Our ancestors laced ale with it during winter orgies – hence the provenance of kissing under the mistletoe. My fever started at Park Attwood, the anthroposophical clinic in Worcestershire, where I retreated for a week and was fed fantastic food and given foot compresses, massages and hot water bottles. I'll continue with the injections weekly or so for the next couple of years while I recover. Mistletoe is said to support the 'etheric body' – or life force during chemotherapy, which starts next week.

In between fevers I spent last weekend here in Lewes with my family and felt as happy as I've ever felt in my life. God – and not the devil - is in the details. The slam of the door as the children return home. The toot and parp of Dirk tuning his instruments. The crackle and glow of the fire. The sun moving across the sky and casting its light on the buildings around us. People dropping by, chatting outside in the street, organic carrots fresh out of a nearby field making a rainbow winter salad. It's been said a million times, that facing death makes us truly value what we have. But why stop at cancer? Life itself is terminal. Why not fall into love with ourselves and melt in to that fierce heat of living, right now and at every moment?