2/17/24

 Saturday, February 17, 2024

In bed at 9, awake around 2:20, onto LZB, unable to sleep w/pain, up at 2:52.  12°, windy, high of 28, wind NW at 16 mph, 11-22/37.  Sunrise at 6:47, sunset at 5:25, 10+37.

Treadmill: pain,   Very bad wrist pain this a.m., bad shoulder, too.  Painful to type.  By 3:30 in the afternoon, the pain is still considerable, and I've done my physical therapy stretches, hoping they will decrease the pain.  So far, no such luck.  My left shoulder has been sending pain signals to me much like the right shoulder did weeks ago; it scares me with thoughts of losing the use of both arms.  Out of commission.  Giving up?

I'm grateful to be in our home, not outdoors, with the 21 mph wind and wind chill of 15°.  

 

Merton, Zen, and Catholicism.  I read the second essay in Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite and understood little of it.  Part of this is because I am uncomfortable with my somatic woes, but mostly it's because he wrote over my head, beyond my grasp.  I could however vaguely sense that he was working toward some accommodation of Zen and Christianity, probably Zen and everything.  He does seem to be accommodating Christianity more with Zen than Zen with Christianity.  In any case, he wrote at a level of abstraction and erudition that was largely beyond me.  I'll keep reading.

Blue Lights.  We watched the last episodes of Season 1 of this exellent cops and robbers show set in Belfast, NI.