This evening Dianne was taken by ambulance to the ER, then to ICU. Pneumonia, on top of everything else. Problem is, we get so used to her feeling weak and sick that I sometimes don't pay attention when something really urgent happens. She lay down for a nap and when she woke I went to help her out of bed and we struggled for twenty minutes trying to get her into the wheel chair. Not too unusual. But today she was so weak that I was doing all the work and I wasn't strong enough. She ended up on the floor which is not something we can deal with alone. The neighbors are used to running over a couple times a year to lift her into her chair. But this time she was pale and unresponsive, lips and fingertips were blue, so I called 911. By the time they got here (five minutes over slick roads!) Dianne was semi-alert and unwilling to go to the hospital. "It costs so much." But she had no idea how unresponsive she had been a few minutes earlier. I said it might be a good idea to make sure she was o.k. She is tougher than she looks. the stats on her look really bad, but she is much healthier than the numbers indicate. The pulmonologist wanted to put her on a ventilator! Thank goodness she reniged. She is going to be o.k.; just another backward step to make the next step forward more interesting and rewarding. But this sort of thing really makes me feel helpless and incompetent and scared. Unless we are lucky enough to go together, someday I will probably lose her. But by this time Friday, things will be back to normal and she will have benefitted from a couple days of good professional medical care.

1) Tao te Ching (Thw Way and its Virtue) attributed to Lao Tzu. It changed my life, its my Bible. Its cool! It's detachment, it's compassion, its spirituality without being religious or dogmatic. I can read it how I want and not feel like I am twisting its meaning.

2) The Cloud of Unknowimg, written by anonymous 14th(?) century Christian Monk. Classic neo-plationist Christian mystical description of the "nowhere path" teaches me I can love the ---- without knowing anything about it or even believing anything about it.

3) The Gospel according to Jesus, bu Stephen Mitchell. An effort to imagine what Jesus really said and did as opposed to what his supporters and critics thought he said and did.

4) I can't stop at three. Slaughterhouse Five. If I ever suffer from Post-traumatic stress disorder, I want Billy Pilgrim's version of it! This book introduced me to Kurt Vonnegut, for which I will always be grateful.

The three worst? Boy, I don't know. There are many I didn't finish. I don't deliberately read books I don't like, unless they were required for a course. The last book I didn't finish was Ecological Imperialism. Weeds make such lousy villians. Also Jean Auel's Valley of the Horses. Probably not a bad book, but such a let down after Clan of the Cave Bear that I could barely stand it. And the third runner up? Maybe one by James Burke whose title I blissfully forgot, Twin Paths or something like that; after Connections and The Day the Universe Changed (both marvelous) it was a real downer, a mess, incoherent trivia!

Ramakrishna: Is there anyone in the universe

Why does this thrill me so? I have no idea. I feel that if I could understand this poem, I coI could understand. No, that's not true, I will never understand. I feel that if I coul;d love this poem, I could love. No, that's not true either, for any poem is just words strung together. Any way, I want to keep it somewhere where I can get at it again.

Ram Tzu (Wayne Liquorman): You think of the Path

Or, into the ocean.

I have wanted to post the following for over a year, but have also been very reluctant to do so. ( So here goes, for better or worse )

I can' make my "cut" function function, so I will make this personal information a comment to my own post.( Read more... )

At the bottom of the sea,
so deprived of light that life cannot be,
life is.

Two days ago, I expressed a prayerlike hope for the success of contemplatives . Since then the community has added three new members (11.5%!). Not exactly what I asked for, but hey! At least one of them had read my post, so that probably didn't hurt. At leat two more of my other lj friends would be great assets to that community. You know who you are. love, peace and thanksgiving. Bob