Last summer, I wrote that one of my cats had decided to join me when I did the morning sun prayer at the window. Over the next few months, as my bonded pair matured, the other one replaced her at the window. On most days, she will run from wherever she is in the apartment to the cat perch at the window where I do the heliacal prayer. She will sit on the cat tree and look out while I give her pets, my other hand in a prayer gesture. I think it originally started as a flex directed at her sister, but now that the pecking order has settled down, she has continued to value being with me during the prayer.
The heliacal prayer was the first prayer I was able to restart post-surgery, as I’m supposed to be walking. The second thing I did was to light the recycled temple incense and ask for my space to be purified by the smoke. A few days ago, I restarted a small prayer at my main shrine, but it has been very simple so far to ensure that I am pacing myself. I have enough energy now to do many household tasks as long as they don’t require bending or lifting anything meaningful. Once Day 6 hit, recovery started to go faster, even though I tire easily, probably because my body is happy to no longer have a giant grapefruit pressing on my spine. My current dramatic problem is that one of my cats got poop on the litter mat, and I’m devising a mental strategy for how I’m going to reach it to clean it up because I am not using my grabby claw for that.
During the first week of my surgery recovery, I listened to Cristina Moon’s Three Years on the Great Mountain: A Memoir of Zen and Fearlessness. I had decided several months ago that I was done with doing a comparative look at Buddhism, but I had retained that book on my TBR because it was a memoir, and I was looking for something contemporary that had a Simplicius-on-Epictetus vibe and which exhorted the reader (ah, um, listener) to cultivate self-discipline. The author herself had read the book, which is something I prefer when available. It was a good listen. I also read through the November section of A Year of Pagan Prayer by Barbara Nolan and a few sections of Proclus’ Ten Problems Concerning Providence. I also watched this interesting PBS story about social media and divisiveness.
The time change on Sunday was very welcome for me, as I prefer winter light in the mornings — I wouldn’t see the sun at all at work if we stayed in Daylight Savings Time permanently, as I work in a basement. It always gets to the point at the end of October when the light is rising so late that it puts significant pressure on my morning routine. I try not to eat or drink anything until after I can do the prayer, when I break my fast with tea. This year, the final week was less significant because those were the hardest days of surgery recovery.
The sunrise this morning was beautiful, with layers of red and gold. Everything outside is parched from the drought we have been having. Much of New England is under extreme threat of forest and brush fires, so there are burn bans. Maybe Zeus will open forth the rain later this month — A Year of Pagan Prayer included so many prayers for him in November, just after all of the ones for Samhain and for Isis. May the ground be nourished, and gently.
KALLISTI 