CANCER, CAMUS AND COFFEE GROUPS
By Dick Farenhorst

It seems nowadays whenever there is a local or community crisis that a professional team of skilled workers gets parachuted in to deal with it. Professional therapists, like other professional crisis workers have a unique set of skills and knowledge, which can facilitate healing in communities and with individuals. At the same time, professionals have unintentionally given a message to natural support systems and caregivers that's along the lines of, "oh you really need special training to do this", and in the process instead of empowering, have disempowered churches, communities and small groups from assisting people going through crisis, from being God's instruments of comfort.

As I write this article, I'm in the process of leading a cancer support group. Now as the leader I can bring important information as well as facilitate healing imagery exercises in a support group. However, for a certainty, I know, that the most meaningful experience in the group will be the encounters, the acceptance, yes the love that group members have for one another as they share this common scary foe, not my expertise.

Cancer telescopes in hot glowing fashion the major existential themes of life: freedom, isolation, meaninglessness (more fearful than any unknown) and death (Yalom, 1980).
In contrast to existentialists, Christian cancer patients can have deep reassurances regarding these life ultimacies. For example, they'll know that, fundamentally, they are not alone in this world; that control rests with the One who won't allow even one hair to fall without His will. At the same time these existential challenges can't be glossed over or spiritualized away. We too feel little control in our cancer fight; we often feel alone in our struggle and ask where is the meaning in all this suffering.

Concerns of death, for Christian cancer survivors and non-Christian alike, are often at the forefront, but mostly there is an attempt by all, to try very hard to push these fears away. Aspects of freedom, or the lack of it, are experienced in the lack of control of whether to take a particular kind of chemotherapy if one is to survive, the timing of surgeries, the disfiguration to one's body.

A Christian cancer support group or the natural Christian friendships that the cancer patient has or extended family groupings, can be potentially so very healing in reducing the isolation, the feeling of, "I'm really in this all by myself", or "I'm really ultimately all alone in the world."

Victor Frankl, an existential psychiatrist, recounts how his World War II concentration camp experiences, led him to observe that the central distinguishing characteristic that differentiated those who survived from those who didn't in the camp, was that survivors had someone or something to live for - a sense of meaning and purpose. However, even if the Christian is very firmly securely grounded in their ultimate sense of meaning, it still is a challenge to find sense of purpose in their suffering.

For cancer patients, the support group is a safe environment to bring out many of these deepest concerns. Other topics which elaborate also on these central themes include using precious time well. Perhaps for many it becomes a time to have more clarity or to review one's life's values and goals. Also, having peace with our (new) body image. Finally, integrating this whole new scary experience with our faith, is a challenge and may ultimately bring about no real answers, but, nevertheless, hopefully a sense of peace with the mystery of God.

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