Imagine (and it might be stretch!) a mother over 65 whose health has been deteriorating for several months. Finally after a series of tests, a medical team assessed her situation and decided there were two possible treatment options that presented some therapeutic hope. Neither option was a guarantee and either could prove life-threatening. As well, the two choices were mutually exclusive. Pursue the one and the other was no longer possible.
The team presented their findings to the woman and her twin daughters, her only close relatives. Both daughters cared deeply for their mother, though they were quite different in personality and in most of their personal priorities and perspectives. Over time in their adult lives they had grown apart, pursued different careers and developed dissimilar preferences for life’s pursuits. Most of their recent contact had been with regard to supporting their mother as her health failed.
After the medical team had made their presentation and answered questions, they left the family to discuss and decide which treatment, if either, to pursue. As the daughters began to talk with their mother, it became evident that not only did each daughter prefer a different choice, but each felt very strongly about her preference and was highly negative about the other possible treatment.
After some preliminary consideration, the discussion became more intense as each daughter made the case for her preferred option. Both used a similar approach—she would emphasize the reasons for opting for her choice and list the reasons for rejecting the other treatment option. For the two children it seemed a black and white issue with no grey.
The mother felt beleaguered. She knew her children cared for her. She knew they often disagreed. And she knew that her health would not improve by doing nothing and she also knew that neither treatment might prove effective in restoring her health. And now the two people closest to her were becoming increasingly intransigent and animated, as each tried to persuade her to side with her choice.
Each of the daughters also felt highly distressed. Here was her much loved mother in serious difficulty and her sister wanted to pursue a risky procedure with no guarantee of success and wouldn’t listen to clear facts that undermined that choice! It was hard to hear her mom’s plea, “Please girls, let’s try to keep this conversation civil!” Each daughter really believed that to give in would only lead to her mother’s more rapid demise. It is difficult, even when your mom asks, to be polite and passionate in a situation like that, especially when you already have been long questioning your sister’s life priorities.
And the mother wondered in the silent stalemate that encompassed the room, “If I decide to go with the one option will I end up losing a daughter even if I regain my health? And will she lose her sister?”
As you ponder the above conflict, what do you think should happen next? What could now occur that would allow for the family to pursue a treatment choice that might alleviate the mother’s failing health and also maintain some wholeness in family dynamics? What is needed for such a possibility to take place?
Now try to write an ending that you consider a best – case (or a most likely case) possibility.
The above story doesn’t fit congruently with the current debate before the church and I believe the calls for polite conversation in various pieces in the Record are wise. Nonetheless, while maybe not as pronounced as in the scenario above, there are widely divergent perceptions (hermeneutics) among us (and I’m sure more than just two). There are also some extremely strong feelings that the very viability of our denomination will be reduced if the position of the “other side” is affirmed. So what needs to happen so that the best decision can be made and perhaps wholeness and health remain possible within the PCC? Maybe the first two steps are to acknowledge that it is a challenge to be passionate and polite at the same time, especially in serious disputes that go deep into our spiritual centre, but also to recognize that even those who hold almost opposite viewpoints “love their mother.” Whether or not we find ourselves in a best – case scenario when all is said and done, we might start with those two steps.
