Merry Christmas every one!

Seven weeks and one day since surgery.  The past 10 days have been ones of noticeable healing and decrease of pain.  Each day I notice some significant occurrence or movement that hurts far less than those grueling three weeks after surgery.

For those of us from the west or who derive from a western Christian experience, Christmas is a holiday of celebration, giving and family.  Certainly, the giving aspect has become dominate outside of faith circles, but I am not exploring the area of crass mercantilism.  Among people who hold onto remnants of tradition, the history Christmas lies in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth some two thousand years ago.  Yet the heart of Christmas lies in something far more transcendent.  The spirit of Christmas lies in the hope for eternal healing.  This hope transcends western experience.

Since starting this blog, its been visited several thousand times, with nearly thirty percent of visits from outside the U.S.  So, many of the visitors have lived outside a western experience.  I offer to all of us that when I search out the heart of this holiday, it remains something far more significant, more ethereal, more transcendent than gifting, receiving, and family gatherings.  Christmas represents our search for meaning; a meaning that includes rising above the depravity of pain and suffering.

The pain in my back and upper chest reminds me of the surgery and the days of suffering afterward.  As the scar begins to fade and the pain abates, my suffering from the events seven weeks ago will become a fading memory.  Throughout this experience, I have reflected on people I know who suffer far more than me due to man's depravity.  Boys who have been forcibly conscripted into horrible wars before puberty, girls raped due to ethnic violence, children born into an environment of dirty water and dysentery, and starvation only to name a few.

Christmas represents the eternal hope that this experience is a comedy; that in spite of all man's depravity, this thing we call life all ends well; that Shakespeare and Dickens got it right.  "God bless us every one! said Tiny Tim, last of all."

Yawn

Six weeks and one day (November 5) after open heart surgery, I yawned relatively pain free for the first time.  I haven't blogged in the last several weeks working to catch up.  This evening while watching a Fleetwood Mac concert on TV and talking with Tucker about the holiday dance he attended, I yawned deeply and realized that the chest pain has begun to lessen significantly.

Anne and I traveled to New York for business, to visit family and to attend the Charity Water Ball (www.charitywater.org) last Monday.  Anne, a group of friends, and I gave a well for my 50th birthday.  The well will soon be dug in a community of the greatest need in one of the poorest areas of our world.  We moved slowly through the airports and Anne did the heavy lifting.  Though most of my energy has returned and all of the wounds are healing well, the movement of travel left me quite sore each evening.   Yawning, coughing and even laughing deeply were all quite painful.  So, to yawn this evening and feel little to no pain was quite nice.