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    Yes, I know Halloween hasn’t come yet, but stay with me here and hopefully this may make some sense.  October is breast cancer awareness month. Some of you might take advantage of the reduced cost mammograms, attend seminars, run in the Race For The Cure, or have no clue at all.  Unlike holidays, which we sometimes prepare for and celebrate, breast cancer is never welcome.  Breast cancer can occur practically at any age past puberty, although certainly women who have gone through menopause make up the majority of patients.  There will be around 200,000 people (yes, men can have breast cancer, too) diagnosed in 1997 in the United States alone, with cancer of the breast.

     This will be the first Thanksgiving that I will not be sitting next to my grandfather during the evening Thanksgiving meal. I have been very fortunate, as have my children, to have known him. Above all things I learned from him, he exemplified honestly. For that and for him, I am forever grateful. David sings in Psalms to be grateful to God in all things. He is not asking for gratitude for tragedy or grief or injury, but to find something to be thankful for during all of life’s experiences. I am constantly uplifted working with people during their cancer diagnosis and treatment when they find certain benefits from this experience that make their lives better than before. I have commented before that the diagnosis of cancer forever changes one’s perspective on life, and for many, this is a positive change.

    In some parts of the world, the eating of rhesus monkeys is considered a delicacy. In the wild, these creatures are very elusive prey. Hunters, however, have devised an ingenious way of snaring these monkeys using the animals’ natural tendency towards greed and selfishness. The hunter will dig out a small hole in a tree and place a piece of pomegranate inside. Eventually, the monkey will find this, reach inside and try to remove the pomegranate in it. The hunter then saunters calmly up with a club in hand while the monkey frantically twists and turns around the hole, still clasping the ill-fated fruit. The end of the story is obvious. Reading the story though, it is very obvious to us that had the monkey let go of the fruit, he could have escaped.

    I have just spent the last weekend doing something that in these days and times is difficult to do – I did nothing. I woke up without an alarm, took a cup of coffee outside, sat in the sun and read some fiction. I watched the daffodils bloom and observed the first robins of spring. I ate when I got hungry, took a nap, read some more, watched the moon rise, and went to bed. Did I waste the day? No. Maybe middle age is catching up with me. You know middle age – it is when it takes longer to rest than it did to get tired. Or maybe I am taking seriously what someone once told me sarcastically, “Get a life.” I am learning that I could never be the best I can be at my profession if my profession is all I am.

     My first born is having her first born.  My daughter has turned me into a grandfather, and I could not be happier.  Though this grandchild is not due until next summer, I am already filled with anticipation and joy for the coming birth.  I believe life is a gift from God, and that my children came through my wife and I, but they came from God.  With that gift comes the responsibility of imparting some wisdom.  The one thing we cannot have in our youth is wisdom.  You can be young and smart; you can be young and brilliant; but wisdom takes experience and observation.  One of my favorite sayings is paraphrased from Mark Twain, “There are things you learn holding a cat by the tail you cannot learn any other way.”  I could try to describe to you all day long what an orange tastes like, but nothing can replace the experience of trying it for yourself.  Now, obviously, there are certain things that one must learn without h