It is a they said, she said lawsuit of family against family as the children of Darrell Wayne Perry, a Nashville songwriter with credits that include Tim McGraw's Not a Moment Too Soon; Lorrie Morgan's What Part of No; Toby Keith's A Woman's Touch, I Only Miss You, and Every Promise I Ever Made; accuse their evangelical preaching aunt Darlene Bishop, and sister to the deceased, of causing the death of Perry by promising to cure him with prayer after his throat cancer diagnosis in 2003.

Perry's children say Bishop claimed she was cured of cancer through prayer and promised to cure her brother in the same way. According to news reporting, in her book Your Life Follows Your Words, Bishop wrote that faith and prayer cured her of her cancer and her brother Perry of his cancer. In a deposition, she is said to have admitted she was never diagnosed with cancer by a physician, even though she believed she had the disease.

After Perry's death from cancer, Bishop became the executor to his estate. According to the children, Bishop has not given them any of their inheritance, estimated at $750,000 dollars. The children are suing their aunt for wrongful death, clergy malpractice and fraud. Bishop denies all allegations.

The level of grief and the depth of sadness felt when losing a family member to cancer is without measure. You would think that nothing worse could possibly happen. This turn of events following the cancer diagnosis and death of Perry, however it turns out, and wherever the truth is to be found, has reached a new depth in an abyss of empty darkness.

Evangelical preacher Darlene Bishop believes prayer can cure cancer. She wrote a book about it, and she convinced her brother to abandon conventional cancer treatment so he could fully pursue the power of prayer. Sadly, his pursuits were unsuccessful and he died 18 months ago from throat cancer. Now Bishop is in the midst of a multi-faceted legal battle with family members who claim she did her brother wrong. Maybe she did.

Perhaps prayer alone can't cure cancer, but a new study does indicate prayer can be of great benefit to some people following a cancer diagnosis.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin looked at transcripts from 97 breast cancer patients active in an on-line support group. They found patients who wrote more religious words -- like prayer, worship, faith, and holy -- had less negative emotions than other patients. They also had higher levels of overall well-being.

This study, also revealing prayer has the same effect regardless of specific religious practices, lends support to research showing cancer patients with positive purpose in their lives fare better through their journeys than those floundering in negativity.

There is something to be said for the power of prayer. On the morning the lump in my breast was removed, a friend rallied more than 80 friends from our local MOMS Club to say a prayer for me -- at the exact time I was wheeled into an operating room. I know nothing of the prayer they said for me, but I do know I emerged from surgery with my breast intact and with the knowledge that my cancer had not spread to my lymph nodes.

I don't know for sure what role prayer played in my good fortune -- but I don't discount that it is in some way responsible for the fact that I am alive today.

But there are other obvious factors responsible for my survival -- like chemotherapy, radiation, physical therapy, targeted drug therapy, and counseling. So I don't think prayer alone saved me. I think it took a balance of varied forces to save my life -- a balance one Ohio man was not able to achieve.

The children of Darrell Perry are filing suit against their aunt, Darlene Bishop -- Perry's sister and an evangelical preacher -- who claims both she and Perry were cured of cancer through prayer.

Perry was not cured and died a year and a half ago from throat cancer. And Bishop now reveals she was never diagnosed with breast cancer -- like she claimed at one time -- but was merely worried she may have had the disease. Yet the message in her book Your Life Follows Your Words speaks loud and clear in its message -- that prayer can cure cancer.

Perry's children says their aunt is lying and exploiting their father for her own financial gain. They have filed two suits -- one accusing her of mismanaging and misusing Perry's estate and the other alleging wrongful death for convincing Perry to pray rather than seek medical help.

Lance Armstrong has a commercial airing in which he stares into the camera and says, "Remember me cancer? You made me who I am today." Jane Younce, who writes a community column for The Noblesville Ledger, has shared some of the lessons she has learned as an ovarian cancer survivor.

As she reflects on the last year, and looks forward to the new one, Younce writes:

• I've learned in the last year that bald is beautiful and people love you with or without hair.
• I've learned that my illness brought out so many friends I didn't even know I had.
• I've learned that there are no "do-overs" in life, so you should make the most of every day.
• I've learned that my best friends don't have to say a word about my illness; they just have to be there and hold your hand through the tough times.
• I've learned that real love, not the stuff you see in movies or on soap operas, is my husband telling me I look beautiful while I am bald and vomiting.
• I've learned how to make a hospital gown glamorous.
• But the most important thing I learned in 2006, is that prayer changes everything!
• Remember me, cancer? My friends kicked your butt with prayer.
  

Losing all my hair from chemotherapy treatment did give me a new perspective to all the times I groused about having a bad hair day, and I gained the wisdom to realize beauty was never physical. I knew I was loved, but never as much or so much, as after my cancer diagnosis. Unfortunately, I never learned how to make a hospital gown look anything but unflattering. Prayer can indeed carry us through the darkest moments in life.

Cancer does change us, in ways we could not have anticipated or predicted ahead of time. Some times it reminds us what is important, other times it helps up to clarify the need to follow dreams we put aside for a better more opportune time. We realize there is no better time than now. If you are a cancer survivor, what would you add to the list of Remember me cancer? You made me who I am today.

After diagnosing Freddy Fender with lung cancer, the doctors told him there is nothing they can do for him. At the beginning of the year, he went in for an operation to remove the upper left lobe of his lung due to a fungal infection when the surgeons found two large tumors. A PET scan revealed nine smaller tumors in his pleura - membranes covering the lungs and lining the chest cavity.

Grammy award-winning musician Fender, known for Hispanic/pop, country western and blues, became famous for hits like Before The Next Teardrop Falls, You'll Lose A Good Thing, and Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.

According to his bio, in 1960, Wasted Days and Wasted Nights proved to be prophetic. Fender and his bass player were arrested and sent to prison for possession of two marijuana cigarettes. Three years later, Fender went to New Orleans, where he spent the next five years developing his talent in rhythm & blues and Cajun funk.

Fender had a role in Robert Redford's film the Milagro Beanfield War and you can hear his voice in national radio and television campaigns for McDonald's and Miller Lite.

Caller-Times Cassandra Hinojosa quotes Fender in her news article as saying, "I feel very comfortable in my life. I'm one year away from 70 and I've had a good run. I really believe I'm OK. In my mind and in my heart, I feel OK. I cannot complain that I haven't lived long enough, but I'd like to live longer."

In September, with his wife Vangie Huerta at his side, he will visit the Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Southwestern Regional Medical Center to consider available treatments.

David Letterman recently introduced Fender to his Late Show audience as "one of the greatest voices in all of music."

Take it one day at a time.
Get a good cry one time.
Find someone to talk to, not talk to you.
Watch, listen to everything funny.
It ain't over.
Pray. -- Tips from the Trenches

Flying Colors is a community support center of The Memphis Cancer Foundation. If you live in the Memphis area, it sounds like an excellent place to visit and meet others facing cancer and surviving cancer who can help you learn techniques to regain control emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

They provide a lending library, one-on-one counseling and activities. However, if you don't live close enough to visit in person, the Flying Colors website offers a variety of information for cancer patients.

You can read Affirmations, add your name to the Chain of Hope, send e-Cards, meditate on the Mindless Meditations, join the Society for Silly Survivors, read Tips from the Trenches and survivors sharing poetry and stories. There's much more in wonderful content but this gives you an idea of what to expect when you visit the Flying Colors website. I got lost in there for a time. It's nicely done.

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott announced that the government has contributed a $10 million dollar grant towards the new Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre at Melbourne's Austin Hospital. Olivia Newton-John, a breast cancer survivor, believes in the need for a wellness center where cancer patients can find support, connect with other cancer patients, practice tai chi, do yoga, or receive a massage.

"Whatever spiritual belief you have, the mind has a very important role in healing. So if it is meditation, if it is prayer, if it is chanting -- whatever you believe -- as long as it is something you feel strongly about that can keep you in a positive spirit," Newton-John said.

The estimated cost for the new center is $50 million dollars in total. Olivia Newton-John has contributed $2 million dollars to the building fund, and can now add another $10 million dollars from the government grant. Olivia states that the total funds raised to date is about $25 million dollars, and she hopes work can begin in building the new center as early as 2008.

In the meantime, another project that reflects Olivia Newton-John's mind-body perspective on healing is the Gaia Retreat & Spa, located in Byron Bay near Bangalow, with its own sustainable organic vegetable and herb garden, orchard, and rainforest regeneration program. The Gaia Retreat & Spa describes itself as a place guests can renew, refresh, and restore mind, body and soul.

Diana Dyer was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer, when she was six months old. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34. She was diagnosed with a second breast cancer ten years after the first. Each cancer was treated by conventional medicine and included combinations of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But because her cancer kept returning, Diana realized that for her, something other then treatment was necessary to sustain her through a long life. So she considered a healthy recipe for living -- a blend of traditional medicine and alternative methods too -- and she implemented a holistic approach to healing into her personal world. She has not had a recurrence since 1995 -- and she credits this to the changes she's made in her life. She has tipped the scales in her favor, she believes, and she shares her approach with others who want to begin a journey toward recovery and healing after cancer.

How do you measure the ethereal? In an earlier post, I quoted Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, who I believe summed it up best when he stated, "The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion."

It doesn't seem to keep those intent on attempting to measuring the immeasurable and attempting to prove in physical world scientific terms that spirituality can play a powerful role in health and healing. Of course it can. Spirituality is a path to profound healing for those who are spiritual in nature. But it does not exclude healing from those who do not follow a spiritual path. The truest power rests in the power of belief itself on an internal landscape of the mind and body.

The John Templeton Foundation announced it is funding a new study at Michigan State University exploring the role spirituality plays in the recovery from breast cancer. I think that it will not matter the results of the study -- if it is positive it will reaffirm what the spiritual believe to be true and challenged by those who do not put much weight in the spiritual dimension of being. If it does not reveal a significant link between spirituality and healing, then the reverse dismissive rejection of the findings will be made.

Do I believe in the power of spirituality to heal? Yes. Do I believe it gives me an advantage to healing over those who do not share my beliefs? No. There are many paths leading to the same destination. The wisdom would be in acknowledging all paths as real and powerful. If we did that, we wouldn't need a study sure to bring nothing but more controversial debate with little possibility in the blending of hearts and minds between spirituality and science. 

The life I touch for good will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt. -- Frederick Buechner

I cannot name them by name or hold the image of their faces in my mind, because I do not know their names and I have not seen their faces. I do carry each of them in my grateful heart for every morning that I wake again. The research renegades and rebels of convention, the pioneers of radical thought and original perspective exploring unmapped microscopic territories, and the altruistic money movers and policy makers. Most of all, I am indebted in ways I may never be able to repay, to the women who volunteered for clinical trials and experimental treatments that may or may not have helped them live longer, but led to the current treatments that help me to live longer.

The number of lives who have touched my life are counted the same as the number of stars in the clear night sky, and I, in turn, now do what I can to touch the lives of others, others that will never know me by name or hold the image of my face in their mind, as part of the continuum and connection of the healing and the healed.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. -- Shakespeare.

For Sonia, Alicia, Gloria, Maria -- women of deep religious faith who made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City -- the visit was miraculous. Blanca Crovetto-Avancena arranged the Pasos de Esperanza, or Steps of Hope ten-mile walk the women took to the basilica. She runs the weekly San Francisco East Bay Spanish-speaking women's emotional and social support group for Latina women living with cancer. Crovetto-Avancena said the visit has lifted the spirits of these women trying to survive cancer and given each of them a remarkable sense of renewed hope.

In the feature article, Latina women 'cured' on pilgrimage, Crovetto-Avancena said that "while Americans organize fundraisers with walk-a-thons and marathons, those types of events are not part of the Latin American culture. But praying to the Virgin Mary at the place where she is said to have appeared in Mexico holds great significance."

Knowing this, she came up with the idea of arranging the pilgrimage as a way for Latinas to raise money for the support group that would also provide personal spiritual benefit for the women. All four women have reported great improvement in the way they feel. Sonia said, "Right now, nothing hurts. I don't feel that aching anymore that I felt when I left." Alicia said, "I feel cured spiritually, mentally and physically." To read more about the trip, go here.

Last week, I posted on the power behind the power of prayer regarding a study basically suggesting that prayer does not help people heal, and to make matters worse, prayer seems to inadvertently act with evil-eye power, making those prayed for suffer more difficult recovery than their counterparts who were not prayed for at all. But if prayer can have a negative affect on the health of someone prayed for, then it must have the power to heal too. Yes? Yes. As Nietzsche once pointed out, good and bad cannot, and do not, travel separately, as each is merely a side to a two-sided coin. So if the study is suggesting prayer does not have any power to heal, it cancels out its conclusions by suggesting that prayer does have the power to harm. All this study provides is a reference for those who believe there is nothing beyond life but what we experience in a skin-and-bones existence, much the same as a religious text is used by those to support their take on ultimate truth. You would think we could learn to agree to disagree, because, dare I suggest, each of us is partly right and none of us owns the exclusive rights to reality and truth. But then again, what good is that perspective when it comes to pissing contests or the impassioned discourse that fuels the religious and scientifically political punditry.

In a Slate article, The Deity in the Data by William Saletan, the author asserts that the researchers of the study, many media outlets and clerics are shrugging off the study findings because the findings did not go the way most expected, or wanted. The study "cannot address a large number of religious questions, such as whether God exists, whether God answers intercessory prayers, or whether prayers from one religious group work in the same way as prayers from other groups." To that, Saletan says bull. He presents some interesting, and entertaining, perspectives of his own. I do not think anyone is shrugging. As I see it, the power of prayer was not the real focus of the study, but whether or not God can be proven as real. Quite a task, and an unneeded one. Those who believe in the power of their God, believe in the power of their prayers. For those who do not believe, there is nothing to prove, is there? It is my guess that the researchers might not have received the same level of funding by stating the obvious hypothesis.

In the New York Times, the headline reads, Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer, and of course, as with so many study results regarding the measurement of the immeasurable, all it reveals is more ambiguity. According to the researchers, this study was going to be the study that ended the contentious debate between those who believe you can measure, in scientific terms, the power of prayer to heal, and those skeptics who believe you simply cannot measure spirituality by the laws of the physical world. The results of this study suggest prayer has no power to heal. But, I can quote an equal number of respected studies that show prayer does have the power to heal. In addition, I can illuminate a central flaw in the study, just from reading the press on it. The flaw begins in defining healing and the true power of prayer.

The participants in the study who were asked to pray, were told they could pray in any way that suited them, but they were to include in the prayer, for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications. Basically, prayer is not an exercise where Santa shows up and leaves all the presents you asked for under the tree. This predisposes the belief there is some central magical figure granting requests. Or, equally as misdirected, that we are all little Harry Potters, with the power to alter the course of an event by chanting a certain phrase. There are all kinds of healing. There is physical healing. There is emotional healing. There is healing of the mind. There is spiritual healing. Which means, at the start of this study, the researchers were on a course doomed to failure, if the results were based on specific wish granting of a single wish.

I think Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, sums it up best when he states, "The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion." Research into the power of prayer will be a waste of time and money until there is a paradigm shift in physical world thinking to the spiritual world. Both are real, and both are intertwined, but both are separate, with a power all their own.

I came across a story aired on WWAY Newschannel 3 about Monika Tippins, a woman battling a second round of breast cancer who found comfort and peace at a Buddhist Temple in North Carolina. Tippins is not a Buddhist, but she has, with her daughter, been visiting the temple, and feels that the practice of meditation, and adopting some of the philosophical beliefs and perspectives Buddhism is based on, has helped them survive difficult times.

There is research to validate that spiritual practices provide health benefit for cancer survivors. University of California researchers report finding that faith, the use of prayer or meditation, and religion, provide protective health benefits for cancer survivors. Studies are consistently adding to a growing collection of emerging literature on the beneficial impact of faith and spirituality on health.

Buddhism is a world religion and philosophy based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. Originating in India, Buddhism gradually spread throughout Asia to Central Asia, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Southeast Asia, as well as the East Asian countries of China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan. There are a number of versions or sects of Buddhism generally teaching paths to Nirvana, enlightenment or bliss; the Four Noble Truths, recognizing existence and source of suffering; and the Eight Fold Path, correct understanding, behavior and meditation.

I remember when our baby was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect I was at first stunned. I went home and cried and then got on my computer and sent out emails to every address I had asking friends and family to send their prayers for our sweet baby. My request was for prayers in any form: the traditional kneeling with hands clasped kind, songs of joy, hula dances, positive thoughts, just about anything as long as it sent good energy his way. And work it did. Those peaceful efforts, coupled with the skills of a fabulous surgical team, helped our wee babe grow into the terrorist toddler he is today. Now when I get an email  asking for prayers, I always take a moment to meditate and send my positive energy to those in need. Tonight I found a sight  where anybody can post their needs. The requests run the entire spectrum of needs ranging from  drug addicted loved ones to cancer patients to heart attack victims. Please visit the FIN Prayer Chain to help those in need of a few thoughts of love and healing.