Submitted by Diane Garrow

I spent three days with Tim and Shirley O'Gorman this week, filling them in on the success of the auction and telling them how much they are loved and respected in the Morgan community. Much of that three days was also spent helping Shirley to do both her job and Tim's job, training and caring for their clients' horses, and getting ready to go to the Grand National next week. At this time Tim is totally disabled. He sleeps a lot. He continues to lose weight and has started to lose his hair. The chemo is kicking his butt, but hopefully it's doing the same thing to the tumor. And I have to believe that Tim is tougher than the cancer is.

My experience with the benefit auction for Tim O’ impressed me with the power of the Internet due to the interconnectedness that it provides. The success of the auction is the perfect example of how in just one week, using the Internet as a tool, a small idea turned into a major fund-raiser. Once I had tallied the results of the auction, I started to hope that this was an omen of how Tim will respond to treatment. Now my hope and goal is even bigger. Since the auction I have started reading the new Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol. This book introduced me to the concept of Noetic Science, and in an author’s note, states that this science is real. Noetic science studies the power of the mind, specifically the power of our collective consciousness. This can be described as the "power of prayer" or as "mind over matter." 

I was raised in the Catholic tradition and then trained as a scientist and physician. I do not believe in a God who micromanages and decides our fate. I believe that humans have a free will that we exercise in our own self-interest. (My self-interest is that I want Tim O'Gorman to continue to train my horses for as long as I continue to own horses.) I have never made the leap of faith necessary to belief in either a benevolent, or a vengeful, God. I am a skeptic and have to "see it to believe it." However, I also believe that there is much in our world that we do not yet possess the tools or the science to understand. I have heard about the power of prayer and how miraculous cures have occurred as the result of prayer groups praying for people they don’t even know. I have no experience with such things. Therefore I do not believe. But I so want to believe that it is possible. I want to believe that together, the Morgan community and all of our individual connections to the larger world can be harnessed to affect the course of Tim’s disease such that he will recover from lung cancer and live a long and productive life. I want noetic science to be a tool that we can use for Tim's benefit, in much the same way that we used the Internet.

I want to ask everyone in the Morgan community to ask everyone they know to either pray for Tim’s recovery or to wish for him to "Get Well," as often as possible. I would like to have him named on every prayer list in existence. If you don’t pray, simply wish for him to get well. What we did with the auction makes me hopeful that we will be successful.