Saturday, October 23, 2010

Recognizing Love

Feeling clear enough to have a second cup of caffeine and think about blogging.  Yesterday I went off the Percocet and just on Tylenol.  Some healing in the night - this morning I have not felt the need for the Tylenol (you have to monitor it - too much hurts your liver).  Maybe it was from Nancy van Deusen's lentil soup - she appeared on my doorstep with it yesterday morning, an angel in a gray hoodie.  She was so happy to be doing this for me, giving me the best she's got, her own homemade soup. 

I have had something else beyond price from all this - I have learned to recognize love when it comes my way.  This has followed directly on Laura's gift of her kidney - I think I wrote about that here back then - it seemed the universe opened up a golden track, that there was this benevolence, this giving, even this taking care of me, a friendly universe instead of the sad threats I experienced in childhood, like so many children of broken people.  I have begun just seeing and feeling the love that is in front of me.  I feel it as healing in the center of my body.

Tom came into my study a while back to tell me I coughed a lot in the night, and he is concerned about me breathing deeply and exercising my lungs.  I have a little machine for that, a spirometer I think it is.  But also, in the hospital I was walking 10 minutes or more at a time around the halls, and I'm not doing that here.  As I listened to him I felt the love and caring that this came from.  How astonishing - to have a husband like this.  I have to dress, put shoes on, and do some walking meditation around the house.  If the sun comes out, I might walk outside for a few minutes.

I think a lot about the oxymoron:  a Zen Blog.  The Way is beyond words - so what is it I do here?  A kind of art form, I guess, like stacking stones at a crossroads.  A kind of appreciation.  Also, I try to just present myself and say, Well, this is Zen too. It's not about preaching anything.  It is very ordinary.  I am convalescing.  That sounds like a journey from A to B, from surgery to Being Well Again.  But there is no end point to this particular journey - no assurance, we're done now.  Actually, my experience is that whenever you reach one of those, it's highly disappointing.  Remember graduation?
(image:  Rainbow sunrise at Grailville)

1 comment:

  1. I love that the homemade lentil soup can now substitute for the Percocett. There are many ways to deal with pain and kindness, caring and feeling calm (not anxious) are truly medicinal.

    A new kidney...what a wonderful gift. Convalesce well.

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