A Blessing From Friends

Yesterday, good family friends, Sharon and Dick, cooked us a lovely meal of spaghetti, garlic bread, and a nice garden salad. I even had some yummy berry sherbet for desert. My neurologist suggested I take in more than my usual amount of calories as I just had a major brain surgery.

What a blessing it was for us to have friends cook us a nice meal. My Mother was exhausted yesterday and it was wonderful to have a nice relaxing evening with friends, a good meal, no dishes to clean up and lots of laughing.

I am blessed to be reestablishing contacts with friends and family. It is funny how the passage of time is merely an illusion but friendships are for real. Many of us feel odd contacting a friend after an extensive lapse of time between phone calls, letters, or electronic conversation. I have found that we all feel a little odd but it is very easy to pick up where we left off on a positive note with a friend.

Today I did a decent yoga practice. I did not do any headstands because a section of my skull was removed much like one would cut out a section of counter top for a new sink. I did do a few shoulder stands and a couple of remarkably nice manifestations of upward facing bow pose. I forget the Sanskrit for upward facing bow pose but the Sanskrit probably means something like unconditional love, eternal bliss, or surrender to the ultimate consciousness (God). OK, the Sanskrit is Urdhva Dhanurasana I.

One of my very good, yoga teachers, T*, often reminds us Anusara Yoga students to, "Honor your edge.". I honored my edge not only for my skull but for the knee operation that Dr. Henry Houdini Voltaire Goodknife performed on my left knee on November 1, 2007. I appear to be enjoying good results from Dr. Goodknife's ACL revision and post medial corner repair. Basically, Dr. Goodknife shimmed up my knee like you would put a new starter motor in a 1968, Pontiac GTO. Because of headaches and vomitting, November was a lost month for me in many ways including physical therapy (PT) for my left knee. I am able to walk at a slow pace. I do a kind of yogic walking where I use the breath to keep me light and float me along on my journey. I am not making this stuff up as the breathing stuff works for me.

I'm sorting through bills and finances today that I have not been able to look at because of the thinking involved and stress that led to headaches in the month of November and before. Things are looking pretty good and I am telling my creditors, mostly health care providers and hospitals that I am committed to living long enough to pay my obligations. I am very grateful for their efforts to keep me healthy, save my life, and I feel very strongly that I should compensate them for their loving, caring, skillful, efforts. St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon, McKenzie Willamette Hospital in Springfield, Oregon, and Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, Oregon ROCK!!!!!

It is time for lunch but I want to leave you a quote from one of my favorite teachers, Yoda. "Do or do not. There is no try.", Yoda said this to Luke after Luke failed to levitate his X-Wing Fighter out of the "Swamp of Eternal Muck" in the "Empire Strikes Back". I get great peace from this quote. There is no trying to love someone, someplace, or something. It easy to love so just love it and experience the bliss of unconditional love.

Peace and Love,
Jack