Having slept soundly, dreamt deeply of various things forgotten already, though the slight indigestion reminds me, yet again, to beware of too much dessert before bed. That's Life School for you, the lessons keep repeating as long as the causes of problems are not addressed! Of course, waking surely occurred of which this old blogger was quite confident, having integrated this current crisis into awareness that, whilst bodily death is not feared, somehow the time is not now. Checking the functioning of the body/mind hosting the soul, no pain or suffering is found whatsoever, and frankly the main concern is allowing the outpouring of love from friends and family in case of a return of the little egoic self, previously kept safely in its place! Cognition operates, sight, sound, smell and mobility, albeit limited by the current clogging of the upper respiratory tubes, enable reading, writing, thinking, not thinking, cooking and pretty much everything, even climbing the stairs slowly. If you wanted a Winter Retreat, you could surely do worse, and the visits of kind friends with food and love, to a Retreat House well equipped with Library and other essentials are special. The long planned downstairs toilet and shower may have been helpful, but there you go, maybe the slow walking upstairs helps the recovery, who knows?
Today is for family, not a topic much considered frankly, over the years, though digging deeply into the psyche in order to "know thyself" better revealed plenty of material with which to work, notably on Camino. Such activity may appear solipsistic but as psychologists like Jung point out, if we don't address the shadow side of our self we can't know who we truly are .... All this is in the blog, so do read back if you're at all interested dear reader, meanwhile family arrive for lunch, the two daughters who despite their errant Father and the divorce from their quite capable Mother, turned out well rounded young women now in their early thirties, taking the time from busy lives to visit their old Dad. More on this after the visit, but suffice to say that despite a large extended family, this neglectful old blogger only focused on these two, and the sisters' birthdays and Christmases mostly, the nieces and nephews hardly at all. Elder brother died young in Australia.However, as far as I know, we never actually fell out, which is an achievement of sorts, if you look around and talk to friends about their own family constellations.
Now the daughters have departed, after working like Trojans cleaning the place up and still having plenty of time to discuss Life and its meanings. Such wonderful children now young women, still good friends despite their different paths ... of course it's natural for a Father to dote on his daughters, so dote I do, who wouldn't be grateful for such loyal, lovely girls in his dotage after all?
Now they've departed it's time to crack on and light the fire the elder daughter laid, and think about the evening meal made with good ingredients brought by the girls, and as for philosophy or politics neither have any intention of accepting jabs in arms, which is reassuring indeed.
Tomorrow? Who knows who might drop in or no-one ? The Retreat House is clean and tidy, well stocked with food and firewood and other essentials, and most of all the memories of a lovely day on a sunny day in Stanhope ...
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