Gravity still hates me -- though I did taunt it a bit

Once a week my massage therapist/acupuncturist massages and needles away my pain and makes my life just a little bit better. The only drawback is that her office is up a long flight of 23 hard wooden stairs. So every week I slowly make my way up the stairs with little rest breaks along the way and carefully make my way down after my session.

Except I wasn't very careful last Wednesday. I quite foolishly decided to attempt going down the stairs with my bum right knee, a cast boot on my left foot, a plastic bag of groceries and my cane in my right hand while holding onto the railing in my left hand. It only took one step for me to completely lose my balance and fall head first down each and every one of those 23 hard wooden stairs.

As I was falling -- you know, after the obligatory SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! -- I remember being amazed at what was happening to me. I mean, I never fall down head first. In all my years of bad balance, I've learned to fall backwards onto my butt or against the wall. I also remember thinking while I fell that I had to finally stop falling at some point. And eventually I did. I landed flat on my back on the concrete floor next to the door.

A woman in the shop next door heard me fall, came over and ordered me not to move. My massage therapist came down and (I think she was the one) called the ambulance. Someone got my mother sitting out in the car waiting for me. "Why hasn't the ambulance gotten here?" she demanded and was answered a moment later by the paramedics arriving.

There was a lot of concern about internal bleeding because I'm on Coumadin, but after being examined by a zillion nurses and doctors and various radiological equipment in one of those blindingly bright trauma rooms in the ER, I had only sustained a broken nose (with a tiny bit of bruising under my right eye), a dislocated/broken right index finger (it makes typing LOADS o' fun!), and lingering vertigo (also great fun on the computer). And, of course, lots of beautiful bruises. Oh and a large scrape under my nose that A. says makes me look like Hitler (though it's close to gone thanks to Neosporin). I totally look like I've been fighting with the bruises on the knuckles of both hands and the broken nose. Or like a domestic violence victim (yes, we've been having fun joking about A. slapping me around -- not that domestic violence is anything to joke about!)

Everyone from the doctors to my family were amazed. A. figures I used up one of my nine lives (I think that makes four left). We can't decide if I was unlucky because I fell or lucky because the damage was so minor. I mean, I wasn't even that sore the next day like I expected to be. Though the vertigo has kept me from moving much -- both because moving aggravates it and because the medicine to treat it makes me very sleepy.

In some ways, the fall has actually been a good thing. It's been a reminder that I'm not as fragile as I sometimes feel. I've also stopped getting that sharp, icky feeling in my sternum that I had been getting lately when I thought of pain. And it seems to have actually relieved some of the chronic pain in my tailbone so that I've been able to lay on my back for the first time in awhile. It's all so very yin and yang, ya know?

And to top it all off, my neck and shoulder, which my massage therapist spent a lot of time working on during my session, felt great the next day. Now that's a good session!

So, yeah, gravity still hates me. But I guess I can't completely blame the laws of physics this time. ::grin::

Free Rice

Saw this on Susan's blog and and now I can't stop playing it.

But it means hungry people are getting food so I'm more than happy to be utterly addicted.

Cross-dressing Gentiles

We were flipping through the channels tonight and stopped on cable access with a guy dressed in a tallit (prayer shawl) and yarmulke. Within a few seconds I announced, "that guy's a Christian, not Jewish." Sure enough after a minute or so they started quoting Bible verses.

Yep, folks, after $130,000 in student loans I can spot a Christian Zionist on cable access in a few seconds. Totally worth it.

"Christians dress up like Jews?" A. asked. Then said it reminded him of stories about women coming home to find their husbands cross-dressing. "Yes, when I got back from the store he was in a prayer shawl. I should have known something was up when he wouldn't eat his bacon anymore."

Interestingly enough, when I went to look up "jewish prayer shawl" in Yahoo search (I was trying to remember the term "tallit"), the top two pages were by Christian Zionists. The second page listed, "Gentiles in Jewish Prayer Shawls," explained the appeal:

In particular, a shawl in a very real sense is symbolic of us PUTTING on the nature and the character of Jesus ON US when we pray and intercede and speak in His name.

Yep. I bet that's totally the reason Jews wear a tallit. They're putting on the nature and character of Jesus.

A half an hour later we were watching the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry's dentist converts to Judaism so that he can tell Jewish jokes.

Seems everybody wants to be Jewish these days.

The Christian house next to the Muslim house

Last Monday the New York Times had a nice little article about Emmanuel III Delly, who the Holy Father named cardinal last month -- the first time an Iraqi has ever been made cardinal in the history of the Church. While the article spent a great deal of time talking about the state of Iraqi Christians, Cardinal Delly himself stated,

“I am not happy when people ask, ‘How is the situation for Christians?’ Those who kill don’t kill only Christians. They kill Muslims as well — the situation is the same for both.”

It was nice to hear him say that. I mean, I know I have a tendency to respond the same way as the cardinal. It pains me to know what's happening to Iraqi Christians. But it pains me to see what's happening to ALL Iraqis.

It reminds me of how a year and a half ago Reps. Crowley and McCaul began passing around a resolution in Congress that would address the plight of Palestinian Christians. Except they were suddenly inundated with protests from Palestinian Christians as the resolution blamed the Palestinian Authority for the deterioration of the Christian community in Palestine, when, in fact, according to Churches for Middle East Peace, Palestinian Christians overwhelmingly blamed the occupation, and particularly the Wall that is snaking through areas heavily populated by Christians, for prompting them to move away from their historic homeland. Within a couple of months, Crowley and McCaul withdrew their resolution when it became clear that not even the people who it was supposed to "help" wanted such help.

About the same time that Crowley and McCaul were tabling their motion, Ryan Beiler wrote a post on Jim Wallis's blog stating that "American Christians should listen to Arab Christians." The timing was impeccable, and the statement completely correct. And not just listen to one Arab Christian, but the Arab Church. What are the pastors, priests, nuns, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and patriarchs saying? A great deal if anyone cares to listen.

I think it's normal that we Christians are going to be worried about the people "like us" in the Middle East. But I don't recall where Jesus ever said we should only worry about other Christians. Indeed I recall him saying something about loving our neighbor as ourself and when a snide scribe tried to get our Lord to give him some wiggle room, Jesus promptly found the most unpalatable example of who a neighbor is for the scribe. We must be worried about what happens to Muslims. It should break our hearts just as much that more than 4 million Iraqis -- Christians, Shia and Sunnis -- have lost their homes and possibly as many as 2 million have lost their lives.

Because at the end of the day, Iraqi Christians are worried about people like them -- their Muslim neighbors who celebrated Christmas and Easter with them just as they celebrated Muslim feast days. As Cardinal Delly says:

“Christians and Muslims have lived together here for 1,400 years. We have much in common; in Iraq, the Christian house is next to the Muslim house.”

Pascha in the autumn

I think I finally figured out what was making me so sleepy: Vitamin B complex. So, I've started taking it at night and this morning I woke up actually feeling better than I did when I went to sleep.

Indeed, it's been one of those glorious fall days where there's not a cloud in the azure sky and the sun shining through the yellow leaves makes them glow like gold. Makes the whole world glow like gold. When I pulled up the blinds in the kitchen, I actually found myself wanting to say my morning prayers for the first time in a long time. And I did.

Then I decided to listen to a CD of the Divine Liturgy. So I turned the stereo on, which was still set to the radio, which, on cue, was playing "Beautiful day" by U2. And, you know, I had to listen to it and sing along.

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case

Suddenly I burst into tears. It's been so long since I've felt halfway human! It felt so good to feel good again! Like resurrection, except in the wrong season.

After listening to the Divine Liturgy (and it was listening as the CD is set to a different tune than the two I'm familiar with), I listened and chanted along to the Paraklesis, a hymn the Orthodox chant during times of illness and suffering, as well as during the two weeks leading up to the Feast of the Dormition. The priest's wife at the Orthodox parish I used to attend many years ago taped it for me, little knowing how much it would become a soundtrack for my life. Eventually I bought the CD, and one of these days I'll have the whole thing memorized. My dream is to be well enough some day to chant the service at my parish on the Feast of the Dormition.

At any rate, there's a line in the Paraklesis that goes "ill am I in body, ill am I also in my soul," and the last few years it's certainly felt like that. I don't know if it's never being able to go to Divine Liturgy (since two years ago in July) or only rarely (since August) to the Catholic community up the street that probably reflects better my political and theologically leanings if not my liturgical needs. Or maybe my godfather Talal is correct when he half-jokingly states that my life is like perpetual Lent as I rarely get to eat anything good anymore (what I wouldn't give for some cheese and ice cream right now!). Maybe it's perpetual Lent in a spiritual sense as well.

But today was a moment of Grace. Just like during Lent a few years back, I found myself again longing for the Divine. Longing to remove whatever has been blocking my connection to the Heavens. And relieved to finally be feeling that oh so familiar hunger again.

It was a beautiful day
Don't let it get away

Just as the Paschal season gives way to Ordinary Time in the Catholic calendar, so the feeling of physical resurrection gave way to illness again. At first I started thinking up stuff to do with my extra strength. Go for a walk? Go to the Mass up the street? All the years of having this illness have taught me well, and I took it easy. The outdoors will still be there if I continue to feel well (and my ankle/foot heal). Mass will still be there next Sunday.

But I hope Grace remains.