2007-01-28

When I awoke I found that the chest pain I had experienced yesterday was still there, so I stayed home from church and rested all day. I spoke with Dr. A about this and she feels it is not a heart event but yet another instance of rheumatoid inflammation, this time occurring somewhere within the small joints in the chest, where various bones hook into the ribs. She also feels a nerve has been pinched, as I have left-arm symptoms of pain and tingling and it hurts to use that arm. She prescribed an extra dose of prednisone today and tomorrow, and agreed that I should rest until it lifts and also that I should call her tomorrow with an update.

I received Steve T’s e-mailed assurance that he would be glad to offer a presentation of his book on the Ra archetypes of the mind, A Fool’s Phenomenology! This is great news, as his agreement is the final piece of the preparations for the Archetypes Gathering which needed to be confirmed. Gary and I went through some nitty-gritty details on food preparation and we feel all set now for the gathering horde.

I enjoyed my day of leisure, napping, working the Sunday puzzles and reading. Jim and I enjoyed lunch and stretching and then a slow and healing whirlpool and bath before the 4 PM public meeting – a silent meditation today. Carmen T and Romi V shared that sweet time with us and then Romi and Carmen offered the Love Tea and we conversed while Jim went to a block party down the street.

Romi soon left Carmen and me to talk together in order to work on my laptop. He successfully installed a new keyboard, which I am thankfully using now to type up this journal entry. The new keyboard seems to have helped my other problem with this laptop, which was that when I boot the computer, no desktop icons or start button show up and I have to reboot. Yesterday this happened three times before I got in to my computer, so Romi has saved the day for me! Kudos to the Ro-Man!

Jim and I will treat him to a good meal at the restaurant of his choosing as our official and “out-there” thank you, but we are grateful for Romi every day, as we also are for Gary, Ian and all of those volunteers who do wonderful labors of love for us every day.

Carmen reports that she has now finished entering all my poems in a digital database so I can eventually edit them and put them up on line! Her only remaining work on that very substantial project is to regularize the format for the poems.

So we talked about what I would like for her to tackle next. She has her eye on the formidable project of regularizing the format on the manuscript of my writings during the 23 years as head of Calvary’s Intercessory Prayer Group. I sent out a little newsletter along with my prayer lists and Dianne S went through two years ago now and collected together all of my prayers, poems and essays from those years of writing. However the format is a mess in that collection, and so Carmen would like to work on that, not just to be of help but also to read what I have written.

I agreed that this would be great to do, but asked her if she would consider doing a smaller project first. Papa’s Archive has suffered in the move from various parts of my bedroom, back when space was at an absolute premium under the press of five volunteers living with us, to my upstairs office. Media drawers stretch along under the front window bank of my bower office. The drawers have gotten mixed, and I have further mixed up their contents by going through the tapes to be sure I have listened to each and every one. So Carmen will tackle that straightening-up project for me next. It will be so good to have that valuable archive of living history and Papa’s teachings in order again.

Gary and I offered the Gaia Meditation together at 9 PM, shortly after Romi and Carmen left to enjoy a late supper together at The Grape Leaf, Romi’s very favorite restaurant. Is owner is Syrian and they do know how to make delicious food!

Afterward the meditation, with me offering the ending prayer, Jim came home, startled to find he had been gone three hours. Now that’s the mark of a good party! We toddled upstairs for our bedtime snuggle with the kitties before saying good night around midnight.