Hello, everyone ~

Happy New Year, and apologies for the lack of a mass email last week. As some if not most of you know by now, I had been hospitalized from Wednesday morning until Friday evening. Ruptured L-2 on Wednesday morning; previously ruptured T-3, 4 (between the second week of September and Wednesday morning of last week). While there, x-rays/CT scan/MRI … hiatal hernia/tear in esophagus repaired. Bed rest/liquid diet from Wednesday forward, including now and likely into the New Year … because, the left hip is non-weight bearing (fractured? insulted? by the efforts to exit the hospital bed/get dressed/walk for the first time since the Wednesday morning incident; just the natural progression of osteoporosis? all the above?) 

Measureless thanks to The Family for getting the word out about that little adventure. More thanks to all who texted/emailed offering prayers and/or assistance with anything. I have been sustained by that outpouring of care/caring.

Needless to say, this has created yet another layer of challenges in our household. No two hours in any given day are similar or predictable. Husband has been great to help when possible; dealing “good enough” with the shock of being the one taking care of home chores/cats/wife as well as his own needs. Some moments are tough to get through (for both of us); some rather miraculous moments bring things back to a point of balance.

Meanwhile, my current status remains bed-bound while bones heal as much as is possible. With the anesthesia events finally dissipating, I can again resume reading/writing. Yeah!  My current book of choice is “Finding Beauty in a Broken World”, by Terry Tempest Williams. My holiday “gift” to you is the following excerpts:

– “… the cosmos works by harmony of tensions …

– We create the future through a rearrangement of forms, what we have learned from the past.

 – When you change your life, you also change your ideas.- The degree of our awareness is the degree of our aliveness.

– The gift I have been given has been in the waiting and in the natural passage of time.

– There are long skeins of time when I feel so confused and lost in the broken world of our own making. I don’t know who we have become or what to believe or whom to trust. … Our bodies remember wholeness in the midst of fragmentation.

– [in telling stories] Fear was transformed into comfort, curiosity melted into love, and the silence was no longer uncomfortable.”

Instead of one last neuron-stretching challenge for you in this fading year, I offer you a few quotes that show how others through the ages got their neurons stretched by Life and thus arrived at these profound conclusions below:

“So the unwanting soul 

sees what’s hidden,

and the ever-wanting soul

sees only what it wants.

Mystery of all mysteries 

the door to the hidden.”                               

Tao Te Ching

“The faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting.”           

T.S. Elliott

“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”     

William Coffin
So, that’s the “short” version of what has felt like a very LONG series of painful, difficult challenges/partial recoveries and multiple set-backs/ the sum of 67 years on this Earth. Today is Day 6 of my 68th year of Life — a mere blip in the scheme of things; a mere drop in the ocean of human history; but what is an ocean but countless drops, eh? Each drop is part of the whole. Thanks for being part of mystery/magic.

Let’s keep the waves of  this “ocean Tribe” going!

Here’s hoping our private/collective New Year will unfold with healing/resolution/ peace/love/kindness. Take what is broken, dearly beloved, and make something whole! 

whole: (Latin) healthy, healing, healed; wholesome; holy

Gentle hugs/much love,

Marian