Stress and Strain of feeding

Another week has gone by. Now I'm trying to squeeze a visit to the hospital each day. Aunt Mary is improving - sitting up in bed and feeding herself. But she is picky and not eating anywhere enough food. Tonight I asked the nursing station to order 2 puddings preferably chocolate. The trouble is no-one has enough time to note how much food she is actually eating. Half a cup of turnip perhaps a few small pieces of meat, 1 tablespoon of mashed potato some juice, and a pudding is not enough. The trouble is chewing and swallowing demands too much effort for her. But she also has no appetite except for good tasting food. So I had to mix margarine and black pepper with the turnip and she was more willing to eat a little more.

Somehow this applies to all aspects of the human person. Not just physical food. What is spiritual nutrition? There is meditative prayer which is a human actively engaged and which requires effort but as Teresa of Avila points out this requires great effort. I do believe we need to to really cultivate the "be still and know" type of prayer. Contemplative prayer requires active passivity and in many ways it is a receiving. Neuroscience has already noted that when we gain insight our brain chemistry changes and hormones are released. I think we could say that insights gained from sitting with God in contemplative prayer are the spices and flavourings which can encourage us to take care of our nutritional needs more fully.

Health and stress

Willingness implies a surrendering of one’s self-separateness, an entering into, an immersion in the deepest processes of life itself. It is a realization that one already is a part of some ultimate cosmic process and it is a commitment to participation in that process. In contrast, willfulness is the setting of oneself apart from the fundamental essence of life in an attempt to master, direct, control, or otherwise manipulate existence. More simply, willingness is saying yes to the mystery of being alive in each moment. Willfulness is saying no, or perhaps more commonly, ‘yes, but…’ Gerald May

The great stress researcher Hans Selye identified two type of stress good and bad. It was not on the external circumstances rather on our response. I've just finished Gerald May's The Dark Night of the Soul. It is a challenging book written both critically and personally. I could not help but remember that he was a cancer survivor and awaiting a heart transplant which never came. The importance of hope is something in the midst of stress can be trust with some reason or simply with no logical reason.

I'm in the midst of stress as Auntie Mary is back in hospital. I went to her place Sunday afternoon and there was no answer. I got a key to her place a few months ago for exactly this type of situation. Opening the door I had that fear of the unknown what was I going to find? The place was empty but odd! had she gone out? but without her cane or walker? Getting home I found a stack of phone message from all sorts of people and I rushed to Toronto East General to find her lying on a stretcher in the hallway. She's still in emergency 3 days later but at least in a room waiting for a bed upstairs. I'm glad she used her panic button to call for help but it was the third fall in 10 days. What was disturbing was her story of gypsies dancing nearby who woke her up and how beautiful the scene was. Fortunately the doctors think this is a by-product of an infection she is carrying. The stress is daily visiting and determining her future.

But Iris's father has just had a tumor removed from the bowel in a difficult operation. It seems to have gone well but more stress. The stress of not being together has made life difficult. The stress of my own wait for an appointment with an endocrinologist about a growth on one of my adrenal glands. This all adds up but the challenge is in how we respond to crisis and trouble and distress. I'm left with reflections again about the nature of hope as fierce faith in times of difficulty which is also fear's faith in these moment. Gerald May talks of a raw or naked hope in times of darkness when it is difficult to see anything clearly.

In the contemplative tradition the transition from meditation to contemplation is one from willfulness to willingness. This is an important movement as meditation is a personally active action where one applies the will to move oneself towards a state. Thus it is willful. But contemplation is personally passive action where one is willing and open without conditions and in fact freed of attachments to outcomes. Of course this is an ideal but only momentary at best. Yet when we pray in the Lord's Prayer Thy[your] will be done it is exactly this state we are desiring.