What Linus van Pelt Taught Me About Truth
On the day I found out I have cancer, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" aired on CBS.
It was December 16, 2008. I was in a hospital in Washington, D.C., having been admitted the day before for a pain in my abdomen. It's almost three years later, and after six months of chemotherapy and a year of maintenance treatment with a new drug, I'm doing fine. I believe that one of the things that was crucial to my recovery is that I never became a Professional Cancer Patient and Spokesperson for the Annual Mark Judge Cancer Awareness Run and Hike to Help Eradicate This Terrible Disease. I always agreed with the philosophy of the late great comic Robin Harris - "hey, gotta go, gotta go." Fortunately I have the most treatable form of the illness.
My reluctance to do cancer kitsch also allows me to pan the new cancer movie 50/50 without ever seeing it. The film, which opens September 30, stars Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's about a strong, handsome young man named Adam who gets diagnosed with a tumor and given a 50/50 chance to live. Ironically -- and this is only judging buy the trailer -- 50/50 seems to be an unserious movie.
Oh, there are shots of Adam freaking out alone in his car and struggling with a therapist. There are also scenes that are supposed to be funny -- Adam trying to use his cancer to pick up girls, Seth Rogen using the kid of pleading childish sarcasm that is a trademark of his generation -- "Everyone gets cancer, right? I mean, Lance Armstrong keeps getting it!"
What one senses will be missing in 50/50 is what is missing in the larger culture -- a genuine confrontation with death, which involves wrestling with questions that have become too big for Hollywood.
About a year before my cancer was diagnosed, I developed an obsession with the film Diary of a Country Priest. The 1951 masterpiece by Robert Bresson tells the story of a young priest who is assigned to Ambricourt, a small French village. The place is filled with hostile, mocking people. The priest, played by Claud Laydu, is also very ill. He is having trouble eating, and the recurring pain in his stomach drives him into the church in the middle of the night to pray. It turns out he has stomach cancer. and his chances are considerably less than 50/50.
Even months before my own diagnosis, my soul was telling me something was amiss, and it attached itself to this remarkable film. It is a film suffused with beauty and that avoids cheap sentimentality.
As the priest gets sicker and sicker, he finds it more and more impossible to pray. Yet he holds fast to the truth. In one of the most famous scenes in film history, the "Countess Scene," he counsels a woman whose grief and resentment have driven her away from God. "I fear my death less than yours," he tells her. When she rebukes him, berating him for daring to suggest that her anger may somehow separate her from God, he stands up to her.
Love is not some simple feeling, he says. It has it's own laws, like everything in God's universe. And we can't just change them. She replies that "God is the master of love." He corrects her: God is not the master of love. God is love itself.
I understand that 50/50 the movie is supposed to be a black comedy, and that it may not be fair to compare it to Diary of a Country Priest. But I suspect that 50/50 will lack basic spiritual power. That's because when one is diagnosed with a potentially life threatening illness, it becomes time to put superficiality and politically correct cowardice aside.
This does not mean putting aside mirth, joy, and even silliness, all of which can be wonderful acknowledgements of the goodness of being and of God. It does mean that calling yourself "spiritual but not religious" and falling back on the kind of glib Generation Y irony that the young stars of 50/50 trade in is a cheap and unworthy form of defense.
That stuff doesn't cut it anymore when facing the end of life (or at least the end of this life on earth).
Suddenly the great religions, with their majestic, uncompromising power, their frontal directness about death, don't seem so atavistic. Their teachings about the absolutely vital importance on how we live our lives, how we treat others, and our willingness to stand up for what's right without shame, their claims to represent Truth, suddenly demand attention. With a cancer diagnosis the mind doesn't go to Dr. Phil; it turns to Calvary. Somehow I don't think there will be room for the cross in 50/50.
It's a sign of the awful cowardice and Christophobia in post-Christian western culture that the first two people that offered me genuine comfort, aside from my family and loved ones, in the hours after my diagnosis in December 2008 were not therapists, modern movies or TV gurus, but a priest, Richard John Neuhaus, and a cartoon character, Linus van Pelt from Peanuts.
In my reversion to Catholicism in the 1990s Richard Neuhaus, the priest and founder and editor of First Things magazine, was crucial. During my conversion I fell in love with Fr. Neuhaus, with his brilliant mix of wit and joyful orthodoxy. Neuhaus had survived cancer once and written a great book about it, 2002‘s As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning. He and I had become email friends -- although I did have the honor of lunching with him once -- but in the winter of 2008 he had stopped responding to my emails.
I later found out that Neuhaus' cancer had returned in late 2008. He would die January 8, 2009, when I started my recovery. Fr. Benedict Groeschel, another well known priest and friend of Fr. Richard, went to see Neuhaus in the hospital and asked Neuhaus how he was doing. Groeschel himself had almost died once after being hit by a car, and Fr. Richard replied: "Benedict, you and I have both been dead once. We're not afraid of it the second time around."
Although I would never get to speak to Neuhaus again after my diagnosis, his writings became source of strength. He told the truth about our lives, and in the end that's all I wanted to hear.
This is why the first time I wept about what had happened to me was on the night of December 16, 2008. I was in my hospital room, having just been told I have lymphoma. I was by myself watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Then came the sublime climax of the show, when Linus tells Charlie Brown "the real meaning of Christmas":
"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.' And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'"
That's when I lost it. And when I felt joy for the first time in days. I doubt 50/50 will attempt that level of Truth.
