Dear friends,
I woke this morning at 05:00, anxiety pressing like a muted trumpet note against my chest. In a few hours I would lie inside an MRI machine so my urologist could map what is almost certainly prostate cancer. The diagnosis isn’t confirmed — that comes Tuesday — but with my family history, we’re already planning the biopsy.
Over coffee I told Sajeena I was anxious, even though I know this cancer is usually manageable. I’d been thinking about President Biden’s stage-4 diagnosis: if the president receives world-class medical care, how does it reach stage 4 before anyone knows? She reminded me, patient as ever, “His was an aggressive variant. Yours is uniquely yours — grown by your body from your own mutations.” Whatever this is, she said, it’s mine. Different from Dad’s. Different from my brother Steve’s. Different from anyone’s. “Whatever it is, it is,” she said. “We’ll face it together.”
After lots of hugs I moved into my daily liturgy: breakfast. Sunidhi’s protein shake. Sajeena’s parfait. Eggs for Sudhir. Turkey sandwiches for all three. The kitchen hummed like morning prayer. Then I drove to the hospital, still tasting coffee and worry.
At check-in they handed me a two-inch piece of wood with a key attached, stamped #3. Dressing stall 3. Locker 3. Holy numerology by way of radiology. I changed into the backless gown, retaining my wool socks, clinging stubbornly to dignity. The technician admired them and told me, “Just the socks and your underwear.” I locked away my jeans, my wallet, and, briefly, my sense of control.
Standing there half-naked, I felt suddenly emotional. I thought of Claudia, the wife of my youth, who began her cancer journey nine Octobers ago. Of my father, my grandfather, my eldest brother Steve — each once standing where I stood, waiting to be read by strangers. And I thought of Sajeena, and of the promise I made when we fell in love: at least thirty years together. Guilt flickered — what if I let her down by dying too soon? — and then her refrain returned like a bass line: Whatever it is, it is. We’ll face it together.
I waited alone until the tech summoned me. She apologized: the music system was broken. “It’s super noisy,” she said. I told her I looked forward to some Zen. We chatted while she inserted the IV for contrast. She asked about my glucose monitor, confessed her own metabolic issues, and we discovered we share a genetic quirk: high lipoprotein (a). Two strangers comparing footnotes in the human genome.
Then I was alone in the tunnel.
The noise was astonishing — grinding, beeping, a truck perpetually backing up. I closed my eyes and imagined surf. The pounding became waves, the beeping gulls, the whole cacophony a rhythm section finding its groove. Somewhere between fear and fatigue I slipped into a light nap, awake enough to know the noise yet distant enough to hear it as tone. I thought of Sajeena’s smile, of this morning’s hugs, and felt peace. When the tech finally slid me out, I was almost sad to leave the music.
Now the waiting begins: for the radiologist’s report, for Tuesday’s biopsy that will name this thing my body has birthed — a parasite of my own making.
What the Body Teaches
I’m writing from inside that experience because I know many of you are inside something too. Some machine is mapping your vulnerability — a diagnosis, a marriage, a community, a country.
This year has been one long improvisation in exposure. The counseling that unearthed old shame. The political heartbreak of watching people I love — many who simply voted differently than I did — choose a path I cannot follow. The string of diagnoses that made me fluent in medical Greek. At times I felt betrayed; now I mostly feel bereaved. I’m writing not least to the community that formed me, that I’ve had to distance myself from, that I’m learning to grieve without abandoning. We share a story, yet the song we once played together keeps splintering into competing tempos. Still, I love you. You taught me the hymns. You handed me the first horn.
So I’m learning a quieter solo — one that holds sorrow without bitterness, that invites instead of indicts.
Improvising When Control Is Gone
All year I’ve studied how shame and pride work in the body. In the tunnel, disordered shame whispered you’re broken. Disordered pride wanted to prove I wasn’t afraid. But the groove I found was neither — just staying present, letting both have their say without letting either conduct. Shame can freeze us; pride can make us loud. But when rightly ordered, they become rhythm — shame the rest that gives humility, pride the note that offers courage.
That’s what the MRI taught me. I couldn’t control the noise, but I could choose to listen. I couldn’t fix my body, but I could keep time with grace. Music doesn’t erase dissonance; it finds where dissonance belongs.
Bodies and the Body Politic
My own body isn’t the only one mutating. Our national body is sick, too. I know the parallel is uncomfortable. Maybe obscene. But metaphors aren’t decorative — they’re diagnostic. And in both cases, mutation is internal, grown from our own cells. This sickness isn’t invasion; it’s mutation — cells of resentment grown from our own tissue. We did this. We let fear of vulnerability metastasize into domination and contempt.
Still, bodies can heal. Healing begins with listening. Before surgery or slogan, before fixing or fleeing — listening for the rhythm beneath the noise.
That’s what I’m trying to do: listen for the rhythm of grace in the grind of our politics, our churches, our families. The pulse is faint, but it’s there — every time listening outlasts labeling.
Being With
Incarnational theology means staying in the room. Not fixing, not fleeing, not dominating — simply being with. It’s what Sajeena offered me this morning. It’s what I want to offer you. It’s what I still hope our country can relearn: how to stay in the groove even when the tune changes, even when we don’t like the key.
Sam Wells taught me this language — Being With, Being For, Being There — as a way to understand what incarnation actually looks like in practice. His work has given me vocabulary for what I experienced in that tunnel: the possibility of presence that neither fixes nor abandons. This is what my work on incarnational theology is really about — learning how Christianity can stop dominating and start accompanying. How we can distinguish Christianity from the resentful mutations that weaponize it. The series ahead isn’t just personal reflection; it’s political theology done through the body, through jazz, through the practice of Being With rather than the violence of Being Over.
Finding the Groove
The noise will keep coming — from machines, from headlines, from hearts. But we can stop fighting the rhythm. We can choose to listen differently, to hear the pattern inside the chaos, the grace inside the grind.
Coltrane spent his life teaching people to hear music in noise. I tried to learn his lesson there in the tunnel. When the machine groaned around me, I stopped resisting and started listening. The groove was already there.
Coda
Tuesday brings the biopsy. I don’t know what story it will tell about my cells. But whatever it is, it is. And whatever we’re facing — these diagnoses, these divisions, these dissonant bars of our shared life — we can face them together.
We can listen for the music already playing.
We can find the groove in the grinding.
We can learn again the art of Being With.
With affection from dressing stall #3,
Craig