God

A Quaker's prayer, at start of Meeting:

I am here to focus on God's presence in me.

I am here to focus on my presence in God.

I am here to listen for God's voice in the silence.

A Quaker's doubts:

Will it make any difference? Is this just something I do for an hour on First Day and for 10 minutes each other day of the week? Does it cross over into the rest of my life? Will it make any difference when I grade script analysis papers this afternoon? Will it make any difference when I lie in my pod in the gantry, when the proton beam enters my body?

A Quaker's assurance:

Proton treatment is a useful analogy for God's presence in me, my presence in God.

The proton beam, as part of God's creation, is a manifestation of God. When it enters my body, I am completely oblivious to it. I don't feel it, see it, hear it, taste it, or smell it. Were it not for the whirring and beeping of the machinery that accompanies the beam but is not the beam, I wouldn't know anything was happening. If I were stone deaf—as certainly one or two of the 14,000 men who have undergone this treatment have been—I'd have no awareness of the treatment in progress. The proton beam is an analogy for God in me—maybe not just an analogy, maybe very God in me—and I'm unaware of its presence.

As I lie in my pod, I am surrounded by other, more palpable manifestations of God—in time, in space, in substance, in relationship. I'm part of over a century of investigation into particle physics, over a century of science and technology. I'm in the bowels of an institution with the mission To Make Man Whole. All around me, in every direction I look, I see the paraphernalia of technology. As I listen I hear the radio playing in the background, the voices of the technicians as they go about their duties, the wheel spinning, the indicators chirping. And the people—animate manifestations of God—some now dead who first discovered protons a hundred years ago and developed them into tools, some now living but retired, like Dr. Slater who created Loma Linda's proton treatment program, those thousands who have been through the program as patients, my doctors and nurse, these technicians who at this moment are in the room attending to me. I am surrounded by God like I'm surrounded by the air I breathe. Usually I never think about it. But it's there. The manifest presence of God.

Will it make any difference—this hopefully healing presence of God in me, this hopefully healing presence of myself in God? I believe it will. I have the evidence of those 14,000 predecessors. I have the books and articles I've read about the technology and its results. I have the stories I hear from fellow patients on a daily basis. It is enough.

Will my attempt to focus on God's presence in me and mine in God and my attempt to listen to God's voice in the silence—will these have any impact on my grading of script analysis papers? Enlightened by my proton treatments, I have to believe they will.