10/4/23

 Wednesday, October 4, 2023

In bed by 8:30, unable to stay awake, up at 6:06, let Lilly out.  67°, high of 76°, mostly cloudy, AQI=51, wind S at 12 mph, 8-15/27, DPs 58-62.  Sunrise at 6:52, sunset at 6:27, 11+35.

VA PM&R Clinic.  Dr. Chang: Degenerative disc disease, arthritis.  Need an X-ray.  More lidocaine patches on the way plus a brace & emergency muscle relaxer.

Feast of St. Francis.  October 4th is the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi.  I made kind of a big deal of October 4th during my time at the House of Peace which was a ministry of Capuchin Franciscans.   I found a large outdoor statue of Francis which I purchased and placed atop a considerable mound of dirt I also purchased as the base of a shrine.  I had it lit up at night as a beacon of sorts (wrong metaphor) for our impoverished crime-ridden neighborhood.  I like the story of Francis who struck me as the saint who said "screw it" to the mercantile world of his father and to much of the urban world he grew up and existed in.  Of course, today we would consider him a bit of a lunatic, like one of the hundreds of thousands of homeless beggars living outdoors, offending our sense of propriety and perhaps our sense of smell, constituting a public nuisance, but he was one of our earliest hippies, Mr. Counter-cultural.  William Wordsworth wrote romantic poems about Nature while living comfortably in England's Lake District; Francis is said to have stripped himself naked of his father's clothing and mercantile values and walked down the hill from Assisi to what?  A life of poverty, a form of madness, celebrity, rejection and dejection.  Wordsworth: "The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! . . ."

Francis was something of a poet himself, in the form of his prayers, most notably The Canticle of the Sun (Brother Sun, Sister Moon.)  Francis had followers who eventually became the friars of the now multiple Franciscan religious orders.  They eventually rejected Francis as their leader,  when he became too demanding in terms of poverty and discipline.  Some years ago, Geri and I visited the Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna about 200 miles north of Assisi.  It was Francis' hideaway, where he slept in a cave, really a recess on the face of the mountain, now known as Letto di San Francesco, the Bed of St. Francis.  It was at La Verna (a/k/a Alverno) that legend has it Francis "wrestled with the Devil" on the side of the mountain and where Francis was said to 'preach to the birds.'   I'm persuaded that his fight with the Devil was Franci fighting a temptation to commit suicide by leaping off the mountain when his followers rejected his leadership and that it wasn't Francis who preached to the birds, but the birds who preached to Francis.  I'm reminded of his great advice to his followers: "Preach always.  If necessary, use words."  It was there also that Francis supposedly received the stigmata.  About that, one can only speculate, but I think of Francis every October 4th.  I wonder what I would have thought of him if I had been one of the comfortable citizens of Assisi, perhaps a friend of his family.  And I think of him this morning as the birds start arriving at our feeders, wondering what they have to teach us.

Pain, discomfort, sleep, fatigue, and stress.  I was in bed or on the recliner for quite a while last night, after two nights of restless sleep.  Living with daily pain and discomfort and not getting good rest at night results in quite a bit of stress cooped up in my old body and fatigue every day.  If marijuana were legal and readily available in Wisconsin, I would be talking to some doctor, nurse, or therapist about whether it might provide some relief. Also talking to some users about their experiences.  I could drive to Mundelein IL to buy some legally but with all the choices available, what would I buy?  One elderly friend with persistent sleep problems started smoking it in his 70s and his problem went away.  Another in a high-stress profession uses gummies after work to help wind down.   Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan all permit its sale and use; our Republican legislature says no though most Wisconsinites favor some form of legalization.  Yet another grievance the nasty minority who rule our lives.