Library of Wisdom
Hard-earned lessons from lives shared by choice — every card donated deliberately by its author, with the whole life behind it. The Library is young; it grows one life at a time.
4 cards from 2 lives on faith & doubt.
Faith & doubt · Joy & gratitude
On a godless life, examined
At hospital bedsides, kind people would sometimes hand me their faith the way you'd offer a coat — sure I must be cold without one. I never was, and I want this written down by an actual unbeliever rather than argued about over our heads. I have not needed God to be astonished. I have seen a B cell rearrange its own genome to meet a pathogen it has never encountered, and if that doesn't put you on the floor, the failure isn't in the universe. A secular life is not an unexamined one. Mine was one long act of paying attention. I am told that is also a definition of prayer. Fine. We can share the word.
— Dr. Priya Sharma · Immunologist — thirty-four years at NIH, BethesdaDemonstration
Illness & health · Faith & doubt
On becoming the patient
I spent thirty-four years on the knowledge side of the microscope, and then one biopsy moved me to the other side, and I will report the finding honestly: nothing I knew about lymphoma prepared me for having it, and everything I knew about uncertainty did. Science had trained me to live without final answers — to act well on incomplete data. It turns out that is the entire skill of being seriously ill. The scans come back ambiguous, the odds are ranges, and you must live anyway, Tuesday after Tuesday. If you can hold 'I don't know yet' without letting it become 'I fear the worst,' you have the only equipment that helps.
To someone younger: Learn to act well on incomplete data. Everything serious requires it.
— Dr. Priya Sharma · Immunologist — thirty-four years at NIH, BethesdaDemonstration
Grief & loss · Faith & doubt
What to say at a graveside
I have stood at more gravesides than I can number, and here is the whole of what I know to say there. Say the name. Everyone has gone suddenly afraid of the dead one's name, and the family is starving to hear it out loud. Then say one small true thing you saw the person do — small, mind you; the big things get said by the program. Then hush. Do not explain the death. You don't know, and they know you don't know, and your not-knowing said honest is worth more than your knowing said pretty. And bring the casserole on the thirty-fifth day, not the third. Grief keeps a long tail and short company.
To someone younger: Say the name. One small true thing. Then hush.
— Rev. James E. Caldwell · AME Zion pastor, forty-four years — Richmond, VirginiaDemonstration
Faith & doubt · Grief & loss
The year prayer went silent
Ruth died on a Tuesday in Lent, and for eleven months I preached every Sunday on a God I could not get on the phone. I did not pretend otherwise. I stood up and told my congregation the line was quiet, and I kept dialing in front of them. No seminary taught me what that year did: the people never needed my certainty. They needed to watch a man keep knocking at the door of a silent house. If your prayers have gone quiet, you are not failing at faith. You are in the part of it they don't put on the church sign.
To someone younger: Doubt out loud in front of your people. It gives their doubt somewhere to sit.
— Rev. James E. Caldwell · AME Zion pastor, forty-four years — Richmond, VirginiaDemonstration