My Learning Curve since the Last Blog

A seventeen year old classmate of Emily’s had a heart attack after football practice on Wednesday of this week. The fast reaction of the school trainers who did CPR and then defibrillated this child before the town rescue squad arrived saved his life. When the dust settled, I felt chastened by my last blog, recognizing my need to be deeply grateful for the single focused man made healing tools we have that can and do save lives. So grateful thanks to all the amazing human minds that came up with the many tools that saved this child. including the defibrillator. It may just do one thing but it is an enormously wonderful thing it does.

This child’s heart attack shook everyone in our small community. While Sophie Cardew and I planted more bulbs on Thursday afternoon, we talked about this event and also spoke of a childhood friend of Sophie’s who recently died at age nineteen of heart disease. I considered floating out some kind of statistical factoid to comfort Sophie about the remote probability of something going wrong with her young heart or another friend’s young heart. But I realized how little this kind of statistical analysis helps any of us. Unusual things do happen. I can’t know that something like this won’t happen in her life again.

It occurred to me that it might be better to mention to her how well she had coped with some extremely challenging life situations she has already lived through and suggest that while none of us could know what life would throw at us, she could see in her experience of coping well with traumatic loss and difficulties that she would be able to cope with whatever did come her way. I said this and we both felt comforted. We could dig away in the earth, putting in the last of my mammoth bulb order, resting in the truth that though we had not expected what life had given us, we had both negotiated it without turning to self destructive patterns of addictive behavior or by otherwise checking out of the situation. We had stayed present and felt what we felt. By the time we hauled the last load of composted manure to dig into the bulb beds and stuck the last crocus bulb into the well turned soil, we were feeling tired but strong. It was a good moment.

I have been glad to have our new Venus Garden Essence “Don’t Worry- Bee Happy” at my side this week because an event like this child’s heart attack makes it very hard for my mind to understand the whole gestalt of “Don’t Worry- Bee Happy. Out in the gardens, Sophie and I agreed that we never worry about the things that actually happen anyways. So letting go of worry seems sensible. All worry, we could agree, is a big waste of time. But sometimes the Bee Happy thing can feel a bit callous to me. I guess it is a question of really understanding that being happy isn’t some indication that you don’t care about your fellow man. I can send love and pray for this child, his family, and his school community yet it helps no one if I take this as a reason to be unhappy. I am glad to have the Essence there to help me unravel the kind of mind tangles I can get into about this issue.

In any case, this child is mending well, he’s talking coherently while surrounded by loving family and friends, and the hospital is busy with its diagnostic tools, figuring out what happened and how to prevent this from happening again. And have been reminded how every healing modality adds to the light and helps us all.

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