I mentioned earlier that, after the terrific scare of the first few days, when it was thought I had a resistant strain of superbug and I agreed mentally to rest (OK, OK, I got it!), the prognoses have been falling ever since.
Now instead of MRSA (resistant to antibiotics) I have MSSA (treatable by them).
And the infection instead of lasting for weeks, is nearly gone. Instead of six weeks of antibiotics, I’m now on two weeks and nearly finished.
So there’s a great deal of stage managing happening behind the scenes.
Not only that but Michael makes it easier for me in other ways. My wife and I were putting my bed together (I was out on a day pass) and we needed a board to finish the job off.
So I went downstairs to the locker room and, sure enough, there were two boards leaning up against the wall in the free area that perfectly fit. Thank you, Michael.
I have to reassure those who’ve asked that St. Paul’s is a world leader in heart medicine. I am in the best possible care at no cost to me, apart from what I pay in taxes.
Add to that that Michael said last reading that I was not going anywhere. There are no slip-ups in my future.
One thing I’m learning here – and I’m learning lots – is the power of music to heal, unify, and inspire.
I’ve watched so many flash mobs and it always seem to be the same. People who are rushing hither and yon stop, listen and laugh together. People from all countries join in those moments; all pretense and coldness are dropped.
Today I found myself listening to John Denver’s Heart to Heart and weeping.
Unlike years ago when I first heard him, I now know that what he describes is exactly the way it is:
Love is everywhere
Always safe, always true
And exactly where it comes from
Is where it’s going to
Your heart to mine
My heart to yours
Talk about opening windows
Talk about opening doors
My heart to yours
Your heart to mine
Love is a light that shines
From heart to heart
When one has felt the kind of love that he’s talking about and experienced it arising from one’s own heart and flowing out to the world, what were simply words before come alive.
One can feel it as it passes through us, up from the heart and out to the world.
Out to everyone in the world – young, old, male, female, white, black, and everywhere in between. It opens windows, opens doors.
I see now that love is a profligate, a total spendthrift. Love doesn’t hoard or ask for payment. It can flow like a tsunami or waft like a feather.
The higher-dimensional love that the galactics and celestials point to as the promised land is, just as Yogananda said, “all-beautiful, all-satisfying, all-thirst quenching, ever-new.” (1)
There’s nothing else on Earth one could point to and say the same of – except love’s other forms as joy, bliss, peace, etc.
Lying here, listening to music, I must look a sight. Some of my neighbors have been in a great deal of pain and I try to be respectful. But behind my drawn curtain, I’m blissfully tapping to the music. (My time will come, I’m sure.)
But the grand experiment will be whether drawing this love up from my heart makes all that easier. My operation is after Wednesday of next week, so we shall see.
Footnotes
(1) Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ. Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979-86, 1, 17.