The Dancing Onion

You can have fun on YouTube trying various versions of this wonderful song.  It comes to us so poignantly from the terrible heritage of slavery in this not-so-nice country.  And to imagine how slaves must have felt singing this in church, in the fields if they were allowed, feeling a resting place in God.

Our little one-act plays are always trivial in the light of history.  But not to us.  I am dancing this afternoon because the followup urine test showed clean!  Healed!  And within an hour the home health nurse was here to take out the PICC that was installed 13 days ago in a long tiring hungry stupid (ran out of adjectives) day at the hospital.  The infection wasn't that painful, but the depression that comes with it was.  And the antibiotic made food taste bad.  It got us grimly talking with the doctors (again) about getting my old kidneys removed.

So now I have asked the universe to give me a week of no new health events.  Just let me get over the shingles, let me get off the oxycodone without too much pain, please let me not fall, or Tom, or Cassie get in a wreck . . . you know, just a nice ordinary week with only 83 problems.  There you are, craving.

But it's hopeful all around.  I drove twice this week, including on the freeway - first time in six months.  And I concluded the weekly massages on my lymphedemic arm.  It is now back to the size it was before I broke my arm.  Another graduation.  And tomorrow I'm getting a haircut. You won't know me.

You can think about this act, "lay my burden down," in other contexts.  It is our practice in meditation to simply be here with no burden other than the present moment.  Practice being here.  No big sack of the past or the future or unfulfilled desires.  This is where you are safe, because you are safe right now as you read this, I am safe as I write this. Getting rid of all those burdens is not the work of a moment, more like peeling an onion down to its core.  I have been attracted to the onion on my kitchen windowsill, which thinks it is spring, and is dancing in its translucent skirt.