In my attempt to get up and walk, do a couple minimal leg-strengthening exercises, yesterday I dared saute some pieces of chicken breasts that I purchased at Costco (warehouse store) many months ago. I'd taken my 7-house walk, then began the process of cooking the chicken pieces.
The painfully tedious process I'm detailing here, assists the grasping of various points of "the silence of solitude" as well as of silent solitude of suffering. A hermit is in solitude and its silence more often than the mind registers as such.
I begin now to share (not even the fullness of exacting details) my kitchen effort last evening. You readers and I know of such temporal matters; we cook (and do much more than cook) in complexity without giving it a thought and without suffering greatly the effects. (Bare with or skim through the prep details.)
The skillet heats under swoosh sound of turning on range gas flame, coconut oil container opened and a spoonful dropped in hot skillet. Chicken breast pieces are removed from package that has been slit open with knife. on Paper toweling absorbs the slimy wetness on chicken pieces (from the packaging); it is advised these days to not rinse raw chicken due to increase chance of food bacteria.
The detailed steps continue, of my little attempt at cooking something beyond piece-meal eating of this or that, brought back to bed as I cannot endure yet added pain sitting causes. Place chicken in now-hot pan. (On way into house from the very limited walk, I broke off some Thai Basil and pulled a couple thin leeks from pots in front that the neighbor children have kindly kept watered for me. That adds to the cooking effort--just that little additional movement.) Rinse at sink and then snip the herbs and leeks into the frying pan.
Because standing in one place spikes the pain so much, I decided to fill the tiny container I've been using to attempt watering some of the pots outside, figuring it is walking exercise, in and out and onto patio or drive. The weight of water in the container is 3/4 gallon, so approximately 6 or so lbs. In between the watering efforts, I'd turn the chicken pieces.
Have mercy on me, Lord! This process continued for 20-30 minutes because I decided, once the chicken was cooked and pieces on a plate, I decided to snip some fresh spinach (removed bag from fridge) and add it to some water I'd put in the skillet, utilizing the herb-chicken flavors remaining. I then reached into the fridge for some bottled sesame marinade Costco had on sale before this surgery phase of life. (I've not been able to eat chicken or such, without sauces, for some time--too hard to get down the esophagus, not doubt age-related development. Same with potatoes/sweet potatoes, and I presume would be the case with other lean, dense meats. I avoid eating meat but had to include it in my diet a few years ago after being vegetarian for years.)
With increasing disorientation from too-high of pain level from the standing for this quasi-meal attempt, I got myself back down on the bed to eat, after cutting the chicken into small bites and placing the sauteed spinach/sauce over it. Was sickened from pain; the food became symbol of suffering of which I'm sure the chicken when alive felt all the more. I thanked God for sustenance.
I got up twice after that, for a total of 6 times in the entire Sunday. I had trouble falling asleep due to my mega-effort with the chicken. In the early morning, I had a dream that repeated itself, verbatum and image-wise. The Lord had the Holy Spirit speaking to me and showing me as if a cross section of the ocean between sky and ocean floor.
On the ocean floor was a ship in ruination--wrecked, in heaps of pieces of ship timbers and metal parts. I was being told that is my body, lying there on the bottom of very deep, ocean waters. Up above the water line, I was shown the sky. I was being told that over half my life has been like this--the body the sunken wreck of ship, and the other aspects of my life and being like the air above the endless vista of nothing but sea.
There was more told me of which I have trouble recalling specific words. Even after the dream first played out in my slumbering body, mind, heart, and soul, I could not remember; thus the Lord had the dream repeat itself in exactitude.
Following the repeat, I awoke in grinding pain. I struggled then to recall the details--particularly the more soul-explicit words told me--in the repeated, twin dreams. But all I could recall and even now, are the images and what was told me of the body as sunken wreck of a ship on ocean floor and of, especially the soul, being as air above the line marking separation of otherwise vast and empty, sea and sky.
I've been bed-ridden today other than two bathroom trips, one with painful walk to kitchen for quickly made coffee (simple Keurig coffee maker a luxurious but most practical purchase when I moved in to Solus Deus Hermitage), and second effort up for bathroom and another painful walk to kitchen to exchanged thawed water bottles for frozen (ice pump need) and to endure standing yet more to heat up more cut-but-already-sauteed chicken that I removed from refrigerator container.
Then back to bed to consume it--to which I'd added some almond drink, salsa, grated cheese so the chicken could be more easily swallowed.
Yes, I had to increase meds early morning to counter the greatly increased pain. It took an hour to get a grip on the pain of my major effort in cooking something other than an egg or oatmeal, packaged soup base, or high-protein pancake from a purchased mix to which I add an egg and buttermilk.
I pondered the repeated dream and the voice's words of explanation. I pondered what I could not recall not once but twice, of the voice's message. However, I figured the Lord knew I could not remember, and perhaps that was not only within His knowing but what He willed of the identical dreams. What I do not recall of voice's explanation, I ponder all the more as emphasis in a spiritual meaning:
There is far more to me who God created, wills, and loves. There is far more to the vast and seemingly empty expanses of ocean above my body's broken ship "bones" on floor all the way up through the vast and seemingly empty expanses of air above the ocean's surface--up into the skies and heavens as far as one can see and even then some.
All but the shipwrecked timbers and metals deep down on the floor of the temporal ocean, is what God has of me that is endures eternally. All the sea and skies above that decaying shipwreck is my mind, heart, and soul.
If I make a vegetable soup, dear readers, it is going to be done in segments: cut a vegetable when up one time, then another the next time, and so forth, until all can be dumped in a pot with some boxed broth of the higher protein type I am blessed to be able to purchase. Simmer while back on the bed's glorious icy pad. Consume one bowl and refrigerate remaining to eat as leftovers for several days. No more over-doing with the bottomed out, drained, decaying, sunken-ship body.
I'm yet going to carefully get up and physically move the body around, do the minimal leg strengthening exercises, go for little walks within and without the hermitage. In faith and hope-in-God, I will persevere in this bodily process--akin to in the repeated dream to the effort in being taken down, down through the waters into the grave depths of what tangible remains on bottom of the sea.
My physical body might continue incrementally to heal and some pain subside, to improve in mobility and stamina, over weeks and months. That might be, probably to whatever extent will be.
However, all in, am I: for the vast expanses of mind, heart, and soul to rejoice and accept, to explore the no-need-for-body praise of God in the silence of solitude, in the glory of love of God in Himself!
This day's wee-simple portion of His Living Word--this Eucharist--greets, feeds, uplifts the eternal, expansive, God-created part of me:
"Thus says the LORD of hosts:
Lo, I will rescue my people from the land of the rising sun,
and from the land of the setting sun.
I will bring them back to dwell within Jerusalem.
They shall be my people, and I will be their God,
with faithfulness and justice."
~ Zechariah 8:6-8
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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