As many of you are aware, my grandson has been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. This is really the first time in my life that I’ve really had my butt kicked by the universe. Lovers cancer was not a problem as we both knew in our hearts she would recover. Her back surgery wasn’t a problem because it ended a lot of pain. Her knee replacement enabled her to go back to having a productive life. My open chest surgery was only temporarily inconvenient as I knew I would have a full recovery. Having my feet and toes rebuilt meant that by undergoing temporary pain I would have no long lasting pain. Same for my other four surgeries as they were all to solve temporary problems. Lover is just now encountering some problems that may not have such a good outcome but she is still able to function without much of a reduction in her quality of life. My grandson’s problem is one that will get progressively worse until an early death unless they come up with some kind of cure. I do understand that they are making good strides in that direction but whether or not they can be tested and marketed in a timely fashion is yet to be seen. So I now have a new perspective on life and the value of it. None of our medical problems have had a lasting negative effect and I am struggling in trying to get my mind headed in the direction of acceptance. It does not appear to be as difficult now as it will be in the future because he can still walk and be relatively active which is probably not going to be the case in a year or two. So I have to learn to live in the moment with him and not let my fears the future get in the way of sharing joy in the here and now. My level of general acceptance of things I cannot control used to be incredibly low and is now at a quite comfortable level. So there is hope that I’ll be able to get around this roadblock and be able to be there for my grandson and kids without them picking up underlying tension. I get to practice unconditional love when I go back to Washington for a week or so.

Lover is going in to have her heart checked on Wednesday and I am hoping that a stent or two is all she’ll need. I’ll let you know on Wednesday.

Keep the faith

David

 It feels strange to blog again. Not too many years ago it was a daily function, part of my lifestyle, a way to share with many different people and a way to address one of my favorite 12-step sayings which is “you’re only as sick as the secrets you keep”and I didn’t keep many secrets. The people who followed my blogs knew my personal feelings and not my public persona. I certainly think the change in Xanga when it allied with Facebook was not a positive change. With the exception of two beautiful and dear Xanga buddies and some friends and family not much meaningful happens for me on Facebook. I never cared much for pretend games and am  not a competitive person. I know what it’s like to experience life on a real farm and I can guarantee you it’s nothing like Farmville. If my written interactions don’t elicit feelings and heart level contact I am not sure it is worth my while. That is probably why I find Facebook dull and uninteresting with the exception of the C and C duo. I do miss the love and support of Xanga but I don’t know if I can recapture the specialness of sharing. I looked at my subscriptions list and only six of the 50 or so names on it have blogged in the past six months. So I will let my feelings be my feelings, sit with them, and they will either translate to starting to blog again or go back into hibernation where I where I can revisit these ideas and six months or so. This really means that I don’t want to give up blogging and I really don’t know if the change is in Xanga or in me. I guess it really doesn’t make any difference.

Keep the faith

David

 Greetings to Creatures in Xangaland. My mood and general countenance is employed by some evil entity that chose to bless my grandson with muscular dystrophy. I am discovering that this is not an easy thing to get around and that it’s difficult because things have always been easy for me to get around. The death of my parents, the death of three close friends in six months, five surgeries for myself, four surgeries for lover, breast cancer in lover, and lung and breast cancer in my sister were not that difficult to get around because that faze of the journey completed and they were ready for the next phase of the journey. Roux, however, has a much more difficult journey because it will take many years of decreasing physical function before he will be free to continue his journey. The very difficult thing about being a mother of a child with muscular dystrophy is that you have to be a caretaker for your beloved child through a painful journey. The very difficult thing about being a grandparent of a child with muscular dystrophy is that you have to watch the child cope with his journey the best way he knows how and you also have to watch your daughter and son-in-law share his pain and live with their own pain. That is definitely the downside. The up side, such as it is, is that I realize how many people love and support me and it brings to light that love for my grandson and daughter and son-in-law is incredibly important, because without all of the love and understanding I have received I wouldn’t make it. You guys are wonderful and every one of you is a beautiful soul.

Keep the faith,

david

I have a lot on my mind these days so I am going to blog on xanga  for a while.  somewhere between this post only and every day for the rest of my life.  Due to the nature of my newly created angst I am going to post in the proctected mode.  Most of the people who are reading this are already on the protected list but if you are not and dont see an additional post soon, let me know and I will add you to the list.

keep the faith

david

I ask myself the question “why do I blog for a while and then go away?”I really don’t know the answer to that question because I’ve been doing it for years but never intentionally. I can get into an intellectual conversation with myself about why and fill the page with somewhat well thought out words. When I do that I never get a definitive answer so I’ve actually quit doing that. I wonder if this anonymous quotation has anything to do with who I have become.

“A sense of relatedness to another person is an essential requirement of individual growth. The relationship must be one in which each person is regarded as an individual with resources for his or her own self development. Self-growth sometimes involves an internal struggle between dependency needs and strivings for autonomy, but the individual eventually feels free to face him or herself if he or she is in a relationship where their human capacity is recognized and cherished  and where he or she is accepted and loved. Then she or he are able to develop their own quantum in life, to become more and more individualized, self determining, and spontaneous.

                                             anonymous

I would love to blog every day but I doubt if that will ever happen so I’ve just decided to accept who I is and how I am and love me anyway.

Keep the faith

david

I ended my blog yesterday, with the comment that someday I may grow up. I don’t really know how I’m doing in that regard but today I’m trying to decide which would be better for me, a jeep or a hearing aid. So the question is, am I making progress? (I have not purchased a jeep yet?)

Quotation to ponder:

Power is the strength and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another. It is being able to place a circle of power at your own speed and not take power from someone else’s circle.     

      Agness Whistling Elk

I have enjoyed a multitude of 12-step wisdom over the past 31 years. And no matter what organization you belong to the first step is always. 1. Realized I was powerless over (fill in the blank) and my life had become unmanageable. The word powerless when used in a 12-step program is very interesting. What is sometimes difficult to understand is that it is used in conjunction with the word over. In this context powerlessness refers to trying to control something outside of ourselves.

The only time I have trouble with my power is when I try to use it to control people, places and things. When I use my power to seek spiritual guidance or to improve the quality of my life and accept that most external things are outside of my control, I live a peaceful and wonderful life. When I think someone or something should change to make me happy my misery intensifies incredibly.

This means that I have everything I need to be happy and that I don’t need to borrow or try to take somebody else’s power.

Peace brothers and sisters

keep the faith

david

If you are in the mood to ponder something, here is some food for thought.

Self- importance is our greatest enemy.

Think about it–what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men.

Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.

                                                                                                             Carlos Castanada

This is such a simple concept that you would thank an intelligent person such as myself could grasp it easily. This simply is not true because, for some reason or another, I find it easy to ignore. Case in point. I talked with T-Mobile on the telephone yesterday and solidified in my mind that this is not a user friendly organization. Of course, I solidify that in my mind every time I talk to them. I called them to update my credit card for my easy pay program and was told that they could not do that over the telephone because of some regulation from the Federal Communications Commission. She then proceeded to give me a list of options and I proceeded to tell her that she was complicating a simple problem and I was curious as to whether they trained her to be user unfriendly. The bottom line is that I was offended and still am. How dare them ask me to go online and change the card myself. All this after waiting 23 minutes and 30 seconds to talk to them during which I was disconnected three times.

Oh well!!! Maybe I’ll grow up someday.

Peace brothers and sisters

David

Rollo May was one of my favorite people to read and talk about in the 60s. Here is one of my favorite quotations by Rollo May.

If you do not express your own original ideas,

if you do not listen to your own being,

you will have betrayed yourself.

It is Sunday evening almost bedtime and I am sitting here trying to think about something to write and amnot coming up with a whole lot.

I was thinking as I typed that quotation that I am basically stuck in the 60s. For me, the 60s was not characterized by doing drugs or promiscuous sex but by the works of Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and the wave of philosophers such as Maslow, May, Carl Rogers, Eric Fromm and  many writers of Oriental philosophy.   I thrived on personal growth workshops and spiritual study. I loved living in a  growth center in Kentucky. I still enjoy doing those things today although they are not nearly as available as they used to be. That is the time of my life that I will always treasure and pray daily that it will return but  it never will. So I will stay stuck in the 60s until I die and then I will die with a smile on my face.

Peace brothers and sisters

david

In case you didn’t know, March 14 is Einsteins birthday.

Quotations to ponder.

God enters by a private door into every individual.—– Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Change in Consciousness.

I find it fascinating that a whole country can change a portion of its consciousness very radically. Case in point! In the late 18 hundreds one of the most hated ethnic groups in America was the Irish. They seemed to draw more anger and irritation than either the Chinese immigrants or the blacks. I read the want ads from several Chicago newspapers in the late 1800s and I was particularly interested in the want ads because 90% of them had their job description and in the corner of that description where the letters  NINA. These letters stood for “no Irish need apply”. If a travel agent had offered a package to see Ireland I would imagine that they would be boycotted and soon be out of business. 100 years later it appears that our whole country is in love with Ireland. It is an incredibly popular vacation place their music through the years has become an American favorite, Celtic philosophy has been reborn and is practiced by many. A country whose people we once hated is now a country whose people we embrace. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our consciousness could change with all ethnic groups. I doubt that this will ever happen but I am a dreamer.

Love is the answer to the problems of the universe and the words making love, contrary to popular belief, have little to do with penises and vaginas.

Be patient with me because I am in the midst of a spiritual awakening.

Peace brothers and sisters

david

Quote for the day.

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out to another is to risk involvement.

To express feeling is to risk your own true self.

To place ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk being loved in return.

To live is to risk dying.

To hope is to risk despair.

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest

hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who asks nothing, does nothing,–has

nothing–is nothing.

They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they

cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.

Change by their attitudes they are slaves.

They have forfeited their freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.

                                 Anonymous

Our beautiful spring weather was short-lived as it is now 39°F and raining lightly. This did not, however, stop the daver from planting his first barrel of pansies at the office. Soon, my dirt filled, stark looking barrels will be bursting with color. And I will be enjoying the onset of flower season. I love to listen to Rosanne Cash sing ballads. Before he died, Johnny Cash hand wrote a list of the hundred greatest songs ever written. Roseanne recorded an album singing songs from that list and this hillbilly treasures that album. Her voice is like velvet and this is not whiny country western music. But then I also like whiny country western music.

Wow! This is my third day in a row to blog.

Keep the faith

David