Dying To Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing, by Anita Moorjani. Hay House, 2012.

   This is an autobiographical story of Anita Moorjani in her journey from cancer, to near death, to true spiritual and physical healing. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer wrote the Foreword, saying  that Anita came into his life through a series of Divinely orchestrated coincidences. Dyer calls her story a big unconditional love story.
   An advancing cancer came into the life of Anita Moorjani and brought  her to death's door, inside the house of death itself, way beyond the doorway and the entrance hall. Previously she had lived a happy life, had married Danny, and the two were thinking of adopting a child when the illness struck with tremendous force. For four years, she underwent a series of painful  treatments to no avail. Her belief in God, the creator of all good, was nearly shattered as she asked the old question, "Why me, God?" No answer came.
   In the hospital, which was thought be the place where she would soon lose her battle, Anita lay in a coma, surrounded by loved ones and a medical team anticipating her death. But Anita was given the opportunity to return to her cancer-ridden body, defying all odds, and experience tremendous healing. She was allowed to return from near death to report to the world what life on the other side looks like and feels like.
   Dyer calls this a love story that hopefully will give the readers a renewed sense of "who you are, why you are here, and how you can transcend any fear and self-rejection that defines one's life." Anita believes that God healed her that she might share her story, insert new meaning into the blessedness of her own life, and come to know first hand "that with God all things are possible." Dyer's prayer is that Anita's words may become an instrument of removing any and all disease from your body, your relationships, your country, and our world. " "Healing and heaven on earth are yours for the loving."

St. John of the Cross (1541-91): December 14

   John is a saint because his life was a heroic effort to live up to his name: "of the Cross." The folly of the cross came to full realization in time. "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8:34b) is the story of John's life. The Paschal Mystery--through death to life--strongly marks John as reformer, mystic-poet and theologian-priest.
   Ordained a Carmelite priest at 25 (1567), John met Teresa of Jesus (Avila--October 15) and like her vowed himself to the primitive Rule of the Carmelites. As partner with Teresa and in his own right, John engaged in the work of reform, and came to experience the price of reform: increasing opposition, misunderstanding, persecution, imprisonment. He came to know the cross acutely--to experience the dying of Jesus--as he sat month after month in his dark, damp, narrow cell with only his God!
   Yet, the paradox! In this dying of imprisonment John came to life, uttering poetry. In the darkness of the dungeon, John's spirit came into the Light. There are many mystics, many poets; John is unique as mystic-poet, expressing in his prison-cross the ecstasy of mystical union with God in the  Spiritual Canticle.
   But as agony leads to ecstasy, so John had his Ascent to Mt. Carmel , as he named it in his prose masterpiece. As man-Christian-Carmelite, he experienced in himself this purifying ascent; as spiritual director, he sensed it in others; as psychologist-theologian, he described and analyzed it in his prose writings. His prose works are outstanding in underscoring the cost of discipleship, the path of union with God: rigorous discipline, abandonment, purification. Uniquely and strongly John underlines the gospel paradox: The cross leads to resurrection, agony to ecstasy, darkness to light, abandonment to possession, denial to self to union with God. If you want to save your life, you must lose it. John is truly "of the Cross." He died at 49-a life short, but full.