sometimes a colorful journey

I love imagining what visual will emerge as a theme du jour or even as a momentary mood.... and here is this astounding artwork by my friend Alison Sheriffs Brown in Scotland. To quote her husband Tony, "This is a piece of Ali's textile art. She was inspired by the book, "The Time Travellers Wife." The photo does not do justice. It is beautiful and sold on the first day of showing it." I am drawn in by its beauty and churning uncertainties as well as by the love of my friends I hope to visit sometime this next year when the cancer cells have been beaten back by some medical miracle method or another.

I don't write in here every day. Most of you know that. I would bore myself to tears. Facebook gets the heads up one-liners if you're into that. Otherwise.... I must say that the Consolidation portion of our show is a lighter version than the full blown Induction of last October. Still, the daily chemo takes its toll. The drugs take their toll. But the blessings come in and give a squiggley do-si-do to my heart, from Eleanor & Bobbe bringing pastry, latté and a Russian Orthodox icon with beautiful wooden bracelet, to the cards now gracing my walls again, to my neighbor Michael coming by with mail and oh those never ending medical bills, from Stacey's girlfriend jaunts..... I will leave some of you out here, pleading slovenly chemo brain.... but you are not far from my heart. I am so not alone. A Christian Harmony music camp I did this summer "on a whim" now has a YouTube link where they dedicated Wondrous Love to me. I wept. I sent it on. 

My priest Fr. Christopher brought the Blessed Sacrament to me. I felt immensely resistant to receive while in the previous hospitalization. Now I hunger: "This is my Body; take, eat, and do this in remembrance of me." The Holy Spirit is my healing medicine regardless of this body's twists and turns. This doesn't mean I am always a poster child for unwavering chipper praise. But without my walk with the Risen Lord..... what a helluva slog this would be. And sometimes it is.

There are times when I feel my father and my little brother visiting me. Little David died in 1967; my father in 1988. "Where ARE YOU!" I sometime wail inside. We're here, I can sense softly. 

And so the little textile boat tumbles and tosses on the seas. Today the chemo ends and we see where my weakened counts will journey. Will I be sprung by New Year's? One day at a time, we'll wait and see. I'll write when I can. Come and visit - the views of the Berkeley Hills are lovely.