Monthly Archives: May 2016

Books

Giving Cancer the Middle Finger

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I’m excited to read the new book from Nora McInerny Purmort, It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool Too). You may have seen the headlines about her: she married her husband after his brain cancer diagnosis and they decided to have a child even though he was dying.

A book about cancer and death? Oh joy, right?

Yeah, Nora is freaking hilarious. I saw her speak a few months back and the whole place was laughing to tears. She’s one of these incredible people who can make us laugh in the face of cancer and death.

Sometimes we need to give cancer the ol’ middle finger.

The Pioneer Press has a great profile of Nora, and I just loved this section:

Grieving widow books are thriving, many offering some version of “God gave me strength and made me a better person.” Not Nora Purmort.

“I hate that sh–. I didn’t want to write that book,” she says. “I don’t think things happen for a reason, and it’s not nice to say this is God’s plan.”

Amen.

Society

Can We Have a Little Compassion?

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I shared this article on Facebook last week, but I think it’s important enough that I’m going to share it again:

There’s a lot of freaking out happening right now over gender issues. I think much of it comes down to misunderstanding. Transgender is a weird issue and a lot of us don’t understand it.

If we say that we love people, then we need to try to understand it and have some compassion. That article is a start.

Because you may not know it yet, but you probably know a transgender person. I didn’t know anyone personally—until today. We need to listen. We need to [try to] understand. We need some compassion.

And we’re going to ask dumb questions or say offensive things. And we’ll need grace.

I came across this passage in the book I’m reading right now, Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick. The main character, Pat, has some kind of mental health issues and he just read the very depressing The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Pat asks his therapist why kids in school should have to read it:

“Life is hard, Pat, and children have to be told how hard life is.”

“Why?”

“So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one’s head.”

Some of us have life easier than others (another way to describe privilege). And so before we judge people based on that or apply our theology or political ideology to it, I think we need to have some compassion.

What other response should we have to hurting people?