This Body Is a Soft Boat

Healing body and mind - healing community and world

I am just now back home and so grateful for healing and continuing to live this life.

Two days ago, I had a heart ablation to stop episodes of rapid, irregular heart rhythm which I have had off and on for over thirty years. The first episode was in Berlin while being exhausted from a trans-Atlantic flight and anxious about speaking in an international conference on local governance.

Until recently medications have helped control this condition, but it became time to opt for an intervention requiring anesthesia. It was difficult to take this risk, but I decided to do so now at eighty-one rather than when I might be even older, so that I can focus on caring for others.

The procedure was successful! I was overwhelmed with all of the caring medical staff who helped me and with whom I spoke. I often asked them how they got into this caring profession which led to fascinating conversations. Three of the staff I met were from Jamaica which led to great conversations about a country where I have lived.

The two nights in the hospital were challenging with little sleep and concerns about low blood pressure, weakness, and difficulties in walking. But today, the staff gave me their thumbs up for being discharged to return home to relax and continue with physical therapy for balance and gait.

Some of the highlights of my hospital stay included visits by my precious wife, deep conversations with my caring son, finally getting a good nights sleep, enjoying the hospital meals, getting my blood pressure back up, and being discharged to return home to wife, dog, cat, and neighbors.

I now have two or three months of full recovery and of learning how successful the procedure was. I will continue writing, publishing, and working with neighbors and colleagues to create compassionate community in Swannanoa and Buncombe County, NC, and to care for country and world.

I am feeling an even deeper commitment to practicing mindfulness and compassionate relationships and actions. I am letting go of anxiety and fear about our national crisis and embodying a deep hope of creating a compassionate country and world, community by community, and person by person.

Thanks to so many friends, neighbors, and family members who sent well wishes before and during the procedure. Deep gratitude to my creative, brilliant wife for her love and for creating a beautiful song (click to hear) that I listened to often before and after the procedure. It begins with French horns as I requested:

This body just a soft boat; it has carried me from oceans onto oceans, onto earth beyond the hills. Tonight, I rest on quiet water. Whales of love around me. Stars a field around me. Moon rests in the water. I rest in the water. My body is a soft boat.

Before the procedure, she also gave me the powerful gift of seeing my body healed by the light of bodhisattva energy during the procedure.

Deep gratitude to my son for his visits and our conversations about life and death, leadership and care, authenticity and acceptance.

Gratitude to the Mission Heart Center of Mission Hospital in Asheville, NC, and to the many skillful people who have dedicated their lives to care for others. One staff member said that she has worked in the medical profession for thirty-four years since she was nineteen.

Gratitude for thoughtful notes from our granddaughter and calls from our daughter-in-law. Gratitude for texts from a neighbor who had been a doctor and who apologized that hospital staff interrupt patients’ sleep throughout the night. Gratitude to my electro-physiologist for his skillful work.

Now, I recommit to use my energy to heal our broken, suffering world, troubled by rapid, irregular rhythms. May we embody and create a world of peace, happiness, understanding, and compassion. May we rest on quiet water.

May it be so.