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News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
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September 2005
Catherine Edward
Catherine Edward, the author of The Brow of Dawn: One Woman’s Journey With MS, spoke with Dion Oxford. Oxford, who also lives with Multiple Sclerosis, found Edward’s book both challenging and encouraging as it moves beyond coping with a disease to living life to the full.
Catherine Edward: I hope that it will be a book for anybody who has any kind of challenge. I didn’t exactly write it to be a book about MS. My Catherine Edward, with son Eric (left) and husband Michael. neurologist, Dr. Jock Murray, challenged me to write it as he felt I had a unique point of view that needed to be shared. What emerged was a book about life. In a larger sense, it was a book about facing a challenge in the context of knowing how love works. I hope it ended up being less a book about a disease and more a book about living a life.
DO: It was clear in the book that you didn’t like the name Multiple Sclerosis so you renamed it the Magnificent Splendour. Why? Catherine: Well what a moniker: Multiple Sclerosis! You have to admit it sounds terrible. And I was convinced that this was going to teach me something that was going to be quite excellent. And it probably would be magnificent in terms of my own growth in grace. So I renamed it the Magnificent Splendour for myself. The rest of the world can call it whatever they want.
DO: You refer a lot to the kind of therapy that nature provides, but when you were in your darkest times emotionally, you wrote a lot less about nature and a lot more about relationships. Catherine: Well we draw strength from the people who have had the greatest impact on us, people who love us regardless of anything like MS, who understand what we ‘be’, not what we ‘do’. Being is such a critical thing and we’re in such a doing culture. “What do you do?” is the first thing we ever get asked by someone. Nobody ever asks what we “be”. MS cannot change that I be somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, somebody’s grandmother, somebody’s friend. So, of course, I suppose I magnetically find myself finding the strength I need in the darkest moments from the people who bring me the greatest joy. My pillar has been my husband Michael. He is my guide in faith, my teacher of love, a happy spirit, and a great adventurer and I don’t know what I would do without him.
DO: How has your faith been affected by your life with MS? Catherine: Well, of course, the bedrock is one’s faith. I don’t know how people survive a big challenge without a faith. To know that one is precious in the eyes of God no matter what condition one is in is a very real comfort. To be able to access sources of grace through prayer and sacrament is critical to one’s ability to move on and accept the next level of challenge. And to celebrate the fact that we are precious irrespective of our faults. All of us are so pathetic and are weak sinners yet are blessed, without deserving redemption, by a Saviour who loves us.
This is the absolute reality so we’ve got nothing to fear. Have I got anything to fear about MS? What’s the worse thing that can happen? I don’t know. I end up in a wheelchair; I lose my ability to speak; whatever.... Will this separate me from the love of God? I don’t think so.
DO: Do you use specific prayers or readings or other spiritual disciplines to help you along the way? Catherine: I love the Book of Common Prayer. There’s a prayer in there for everything. I’m constantly astounded by the way the Psalms seem to have been picked out for me each day.
DO: Has your faith community provided you much support along the way? Catherine: My parish is like an extension of my family and it feels like a family just enveloping one in the love of God. I count on them deeply for my state of being. It’s a wonderful and holy place to be. It’s an extraordinary blessing and one that I am acutely aware of. I know there are many people who do not have this connection and this has to be remedied. My hope is that we grow in spreading the gospel so that we can provide real community to support and connect people.
DO: You wrote that the disease has taken your physical health but in the midst of that you have found your soul. What did you mean? Catherine: It has to do with having contemplation forced upon me. In our world we aren’t given time for contemplation. Things are moving too fast. There’s too much busyness. But when you’re stopped - and I’ve had times when I couldn’t walk or talk very well or see well - you suddenly realize that the whole business of contemplation requires quiet. And if you want to connect to the inner workings of your soul, you can’t have noise. So I’m quiet. I can’t move. There’s no one around all day. I can’t answer the phone. I can’t see so very well, so I can’t read - so I have to think. What an unexpected gift! You never know when you’ll get a surprise gift, do you?
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Copyright The Anglican Planet © 2005 |