LOSING THE ANESTHESIA

Rev. Dr. Kate A. Winters, May 29, 2023

Last week durng a follow-up visit to my surgeon, I asked the physician’s assistant if she knew how long it would be before my concentration would return. My richest reading and writing period, a few hours before dawn, had become no different than any other time – I would simply stare at a page, at a candle, at the light as it rose behind the trees. I could see, but could feel and comprehend nothing. She said that one thing heart patients don’t realize is how long anesthesia remains in their system. It enters every cell and it takes a while to become fully aware and operational again.

At the time, I heard her words, but did not fully digest them. But then this morning I was staring at the leaves on a birch tree shimmering with the breeze in our yard. They were dancing to some inaudible melody. I was transfixed as the movement of the birch spread to a nearby maple, and then a bird, far too away for me to surely identify, flew to the top of the cedar and sang with all her might. My heart began to sing as all this unfolded before me.

The anesthesia is wearing off. These miracle drugs that keep us from experiencing the pain of our bodies’ wounds, also keep us from being fully aware of the life dancing around us, limiting us to our stare, but not allowing us an encounter. It is encounter in life that brings us alive and fosters meaning. An encounter, a meeting with something more, something beyond ourselves, brings the colors back into life and makes us hungry for more. It restores us to the relational matrix of all being.

After the bird sang, I think it was actually a robin, I went to search my shelves for a book I remember reading a few years ago, and, miracle of miracles, I found it. It is entitled Presence and Encounter: The Sacramental Possibilities of Everyday Life by David Benner, Ph.D. On the first page of the preface, I found what I was looking for: “Without presence, nothing is meaningful. But in the luminous glow of presene, all of life becomes saturated with significance.” (p.viii) Dr. Benner defines presence a few pages later as “the awakening that calls us into an engagement with some aspect of the present moment. Presence makes us feel alive, or perhaps better, it lets us know that we are alive. It demands that we notice, and in so doing, the distance between whatever we notice and us is suddenly reduced.” (p.2)

I quote Benner at length because it was he who first gave me words to name what I think is our primary calling – to “dwell in presence,” thus the name of my blog. And now he helps me to understand what I have been going through since my heart was stopped an started again. I had literally been cut off from my sense of presence. And now, I am working, or waiting, to get it back. The bird at the top of the cedar made the happy announcement that I am ready to engage again.

As yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, I have only the Spirit who animated the birch, the maple, and the robin, to thank.