When my former wife and I were both stricken with cancer, the months became a labyrinth. In May of ’87, Ann was diagnosed as having cervical cancer in situ. This led to her having a conization in June and a hysterectomy that August. While she was healing, I had a mysterious lump forming on my head, which turned out to be growing underneath the skull as well. It grew to the size of half a grapefruit. And so, mere days after her surgery, I entered the hospital, moving through a gauntlet of tests, including an open biopsy, which diagnosed this strange lesion as a lymphoma lodged between my brain and skull. It was eating through the bone.

During this time, I was unable to find my bearings, had no sense of center, and was unsure about everything. But in the center of my terror, there was a small voice stirring, emanating, and building from under all my trouble. It didn’t speak in words, and I was unaccustomed to listening for it or to it. I know now it came from the core of all life and all time and began to assert itself through the bottom of my personality, the way sunlight passes through a crack in a barn. This was my first feeling of the touchstone of grace that would grow and lessen my terror over time.

As I struggled between my fear of procedures and surgeries and my attempts to listen for that touchstone of grace growing inside me, I began to be visited in dream by the great Chinese poet Tu Fu, a loving, authentic spirit from the Tang Dynasty who spoke plainly about the pains and wonders of living. This was my first experience of forces we could call guides. No one can prove their existence. But as fish can feel the current move them along, we can feel the current of life move us along. During times of suffering, we’re invited to listen more deeply for the current of life, no matter how it appears. It may come as a memory of your beloved grandmother long gone or in the voice of a Chinese poet from the 700s. When suffering, we’re challenged to accept help however it appears.

By October, after months of desperation, and prayer, and visualization, and the appearance of guides, and fighting with and against doctors, the tumor—both below the skull and above—vanished, avoiding major brain surgery, whole-head radiation, and spinal chemotherapy.

The doctors could not explain it, and our friends and family helped us limp back to life, a struggle in itself, which we were shaping strongly until a year later, in November of ’88, a spot on my eighth rib began to grow. We were crushed.