I love the idea of this hour to myself before tom gets up and the day gets going.  It's my time to read dharma, journal, and meditate, sometimes (like now) to take my journaling into my blog.  It is a time of being quiet with myself, not to train my mind as we do in meditation, but to stay with my bare morning thoughts and sometimes dreams and go to their deep place.  Maybe this activity is also a spiritual practice or a form of meditation.  I have done it so long I can't imagine life without this quiet moment to be with myself and the rising morning.

I heard from OSU pre-transplant at 5:30 yestdrday, at last, when I had given up hope of hearing because they close at 4:00.  We are on for the surgery.  The small problem with antibodies in my blood is seen as a false positive.

Though I knew I was scurrying around anxiously and not getting things done, I was amazed at the tension that let go in me.  I could feel my heart soften and expand.  It felt like every cell in my body was contracted and afraid.  The fear was that the surgery be cancelled and Laura not qualify as a donor for me, and that knocked down my idea of the future like a pleasantly lit corridor, the future we’ve been preparing for.  I would have been back to no donor, and needing to find one, and feeling sick and tired.  That was not okay with me.

It was hard for me to feel it was okay to be so anxious.  What a vision I have of myself as unflappable, like some older women I have known and admired - and maybe some people really are that calm and still inside, perhaps by nature.  Daniel Terragno once said to me with a sigh, "Everyone wants to be someone."  Calm and clear, accepting uncertainty and unwanted change.  Does the koan apply here? - The real Buddha is not made of wood, metal, or clay to fit an ideal, but is found in the inner precincts of the house - this glorious mess.
[image:  a bit of my home altar.  I am fascinated by shadows.]