Cancer Blog Phase 2

This blog chronicles the first phase of treatment, for Stage IV vaginal adenocarcinoma, from December, 2011.

The second phase, metastases, starting mid-June, 2012, is here:
Crap! I've Got Cancer. The Sequel. 

Actual Chemo

I'll write more detail in the next day or two. It was all right.

P.S. I changed some blog settings so it should be easier to post comments now.

Fear of Owls

Don’t let your throat tighten with fear.
Take sips of breath all day and night. 
Before death closes your mouth.
 -Rumi 

A few days ago my cousin posted a blurry but cool looking photo of an owl he had startled in his backyard one night. The posted responses, except mine, were all along the lines of "Scary!" which surprised and baffled me. Owls are beautiful! What does a human being have to fear from an owl? Nothing. What does an owl have to fear from a human being? Lots. Mike's explanation (of sorts) was that most city or suburban people fear animals, etc., in the country. And that country people fear cities...Anyway another friend told me about her son-in-law who had lung cancer. As he was dying, he would not speak of death, or allow anyone else to speak of it. Fear.

When Julie, Morgan, and I went to Tanzania, I noticed we all had different fears. Morgan was afraid of insects. Jules got very nervous flying. I dove underwater with my snorkel and panicked. Who can really understand someone else's fear? None of it, really, makes any sense.  Sure, some bugs can kill you, people die in plane crashes, and people certainly drown...but there is no activity you can do with a guarantee you'll live through it. It's all irrational and yet...it's real in the body, and must be paid attention to. I am grateful I've had to do this very little (until now.)

I am possibly more afraid than I have ever been in my life. I am afraid of the super toxic chemicals I am voluntarily taking intravenously on Friday. (Various people's anti-chemo sentiments add more confusion.) I'm afraid that this cancer situation won't end up being finite like I keep thinking it will be. 

Do I truly have anything to fear from chemo? Well. Maybe. Probably? I won't know how it is until I do it. As with cancer itself, there are a lot of totally different kinds of chemotherapy. The word is strongly evocative. An image perhaps of Meryl Streep, skeletal in a hospital bed. But overweight people have a cancer advantage, a little known fact. (Actually, not true at all except in the sense that we can lose weight without looking like a living skeleton...) So discomfort/pain and death are the possibilities. Death at this stage very unlikely. Worse things, things I can't even imagine now.  It's all just ideas right now. The reality is not known. It's the idea of an owl...or a rattlesnake.

A retreat is a great place to deal with fear, and everything else. The theme of this retreat was the Heart Sutra, a great love of mine whose subject is reality. What is. Fear. Mental projections. Perfect. Also terrible, because you feel more on retreat, when you pay attention. But that's also what allows it to change.

I led a ritual to Perfect Wisdom (Prajna-paramita) Wednesday night which I really enjoyed. Among many other things, people chose and read relevant teachings, including a flash mob style Rumi poem. Listening to the readings, the whole thing really, was healing for me. I felt my fear leave me...not really leave me, but relax the grip on my heart. Here is what I read (from Osho's commentary on the Heart Sutra)

...you think stones are food and you eat them; then you suffer, then you have a great stomachache. But if it is real food then you don't suffer, then you are satisfied. Suffering is created by ideas that don't go with reality; bliss is created by ideas which go with reality. Bliss is a coherence between you and the truth; suffering is a dichotomy, a division between you and the truth. When you are not moving with truth, you are in hell; when you are moving with truth, you are in heaven - that's all.  

I want to think of chemotherapy as an adventure. An adventure in how things are.

Chemo Appointment & Support Group

On a Pole in Westfield Mall

My new round of chemo starts a week from today: Friday, June 22, 8:45am. It will take 4 or 5 hours. I have to take Zyrtec (Cetirizine) an hour beforehand to reduce chances of an allergic reaction. Padmatara and I will leave the retreat early which is sad for me. Viveka was encouraging us to come back. (The retreat ends Sunday.) I don't know. I'd like to come back for the finish of the retreat, but Jikoji is at least an hour's drive from a doctor...I'll go see Misha after the chemo...

Did many things (by my standards) today. Drove out to the Excelsior with Padmatara to go for a walk in McLaren Park with Karen Z. Then met Bill at Que Tal, and went to the monthly Kaiser support group which I haven't been to in a few months. Saw Tong briefly there. Then came back to Bartlett and met Viveka, then drove down to Julie's.

The support group was really good. Other than the emotional level of things, it's great to get advice and tips...from people who actually say useful things. Here are some highlights, or anyway what I remember:

• There were these really tasty-looking cookies. Shortbread with chocolate. I asked myself, This is San Francisco, don't these people know they shouldn't eat sugar? (I thought I might go mad with craving them, but I didn't.) I asked who in the group did not eat refined sugar, and almost everyone raised their hands, including the two social workers. And I noticed that no one had eaten the cookies. 

• 

  McLaren Park

  Two women told me about the Women's Resource Center and also UCSF where you get free wigs and they help you pick one and they style it for you, etc....I might check it out, though I can't imagine wearing a wig, I am so hot all the time. 
• A new book by Rebecca Katz who wrote The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen. The new one is One Bite At A Time.
• Chemotherapy with Carbo and Taxol: After you first get it, you're sort of drugged up so you feel OK. Then the crash of the white blood cells and you feel bad. Then the last week is sort of OK. So this seems to be the cycle. 
• Eileen, who I remembered liking from last time, is leaving the group soon to go to UCSF (hence the cookies). She has some kind of dire lymphoma and does a lot of traveling, said she likes traveling and wants to enjoy the time she has left. She suggested that one can plan travel especially during during the last week of chemo (though you may have to cancel it), especially if it's to Hawaii where there is a Kaiser. Several people had gone to Hawaii on vacation because Kaiser is there. 

Did I write this already? I'm starting to wonder about repeating myself here. I know that I have explained the 'incurable' bone thing more than once. I'm so aware today of how much the word chemotherapy packs of punch, just as a word. Will the reality hit as hard as the word suggests? I doubt it. Maybe I will check in on that later. 

Ordinarily I would edit this more. But I need to go to sleep. 

Cancer Cures + I Stopped Eating Sugar, Again

Whole grains, that's what I need
[Women's Building]

I've started drinking my fresh fruit/ organic whey protein shakes again - this morning with rasberries - which makes me feel better all day. I did have biscuits with my breakfast with the homies yesterday at the Pork Store (the name says it all) which are all refined flour... But I made hummus yesterday... working on it! 


I'm liking the online Cancer Survivor's Network. Though many of the stories are horrible, the people are very encouraging, and it is lived experience rather than data. Found this book on there this morning. The "Tips for Recovery" look good: Outsmart Your Cancer.

I do not believe anyone who claims they can cure cancer. I don't doubt that by doing unusual things - and against all odds - some people completely recover. But I think it is very difficult to identify the exact reason for the recovery. And even if it were possible to say exactly why, one person's solution isn't necessarily another's.

All the 'cures' I have read about rely exclusively on anecdotal evidence, but fail to mention, well, death. So all these miracle treatments with a 100% success rate for each of the hundreds of kinds of cancer have simply been crushed by the FDA? I might have confidence in alternatives if there were real studies, real data. Which reminds me of something Jack Donaghy says on 30 Rock: “There are many kinds of intelligence. Practical, emotional. And then there’s, uh, actual intelligence, which is what I’m talking about.” (I love that show!)

Anyway, knee-jerk reactions from the different poles of medicine seem to kick both ways. It's confusing to go to a healer who is against chemotherapy in some way. The acupuncturist I went to before my diagnosis seemed to think chemo is more likely to kill you than anything else. That's one thing that's so great about Misha Cohen. She really understands what Western doctors do for people with cancer and how to support that process while minimizing harm.

And some oncologists are not sensitive to whether they may be creating a situation in which the medicine creates more suffering than it alleviates. Alternative treatments are not going to leave you disabled...The idea of 'complementary' medicine seems more useful than 'alternative', in that you hopefully get the best of both worlds without totally relying entire on either.

Chemo Info

This morning I remembered that I had posted a question about Carbo and Taxol (the proposed chemotherapy drugs) on the Cancer Survivor's Network/Gynecological Cancers bulletin board. One woman replied that she had gotten brain damage from these drugs. Also some people wrote about intensely painful bones. And I looked up some stuff about SSDI. One thing was that people under 50 are rarely granted it. Overall, a depressing morning. I did call a disability lawyer & got an appointment. Too late for this round I guess, but if it gets denied, I may use her for an appeal. Susan Chen, the social worker at Geary Street, says most applications for SSDI are denied.

Lisa Kee, Padmatara, and Dawn came with me to meet Dr. Tavakoli today. It was great to have them there, and recording it was very helpful too. Here are some things we talked about:

First question was: Dr. Patel was emphatic about cancer in the bones being incurable. Why did it go away?

Gynecological cancers in the bone generally are not curable, unlike, for example, metastatic testicular cancer, which is very sensitive to chemo (90% survival rate.) Twenty-five percent of gynecological cancer patients (I think this means advanced stage) don't make it to five years, and that's often with continuous treatment. The cancer could still be in the bone, but it's not detectable now. With serial images every six months you would have more information.

Second question: Why is it important that I have 'vaginal cancer metastasized to the lungs' rather than 'lung cancer'?

Treatment is based on cancer of origin. Because of this, as before, there isn't great data about how well this chemo will work with vaginal adenocarcinoma. Have to just see how it goes. Carbo and Taxol are also used to treat lung and ovarian cancers.

Oncology waiting room

Chemotherapy will be every three weeks (last time was weekly.) After three cycles, at around 11 weeks, get a PET scan to see how it's going. If cancer is not responding, will need to change drugs. If after six cycles, or 18 weeks, the cancer is still there, might take a one month break and start on different drugs.

Side effects: First week is fatigue, might have nausea but shouldn't actually vomit. Can use percocet or marijuana. (Wow, someone finally mentioned marijuana!) About ten days out, immune system at its nadir, so important not to be around sick people. If you get a (neutropenic*) fever - 100.4 two hours apart, have to go to an emergency room.  Suggest doing infusion early in the week so that doctors will be around if something comes up. (Also, don't drink Kombocha tea, or live cultures. And don't take antioxidants during chemotherapy.) He said a road trip would be ok as long as you always know where the hospitals are, and you get out and walk every few hours to prevent blood clots. (Veins are a passive system apparently, they only work when your legs are moving...)

So, I've decided not to go to Montana. If something happened during my first round of the chemo, I would be far, far away from my doctors. I don't want to risk it. However, I will go to the retreat June 16-24. Chemo will follow, but I don't have the appointment yet.

As for thesecondopinion.org, I'm going to consult with the director, a medical oncologist. He will then decide if I would also benefit from waiting to see a full panel in July.

P.S. Turns out the cement graffiti outside our door featured on the left was written by none other than Lisa Kee!

*Neutropenia is an abnormally low level of neutrophils in the blood. Neutrophils are white blood cells (WBCs) produced in the bone marrow that ingest bacteria. [http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/]

Healing & Choices

The wares at Ross Dress for Less

After a few weeks of feeling very happy and energetic, the energy seems to have gone away...

When I was thinking about jobs and things the other day, it occurred to me that my job now is to stay alive. Which means to take care of myself, which I haven't been putting as much energy into lately.

Had two healing sessions today. One was some restorative yoga with Dayamudra. She sets you up lying on the floor with various body parts propped up here and there for about 15 minutes. And over the time you get a very tangible feeling of certain body parts releasing tension. It felt great. The other was a session with Alan which is kind of hard to summarize. I think I will write about that in a separate post.

A merciful soul painting over graffiti on our street

Folks in the chapter this morning suggested bringing a recorder to the meeting with Dr. Tavakoli on Wednesday which is a good idea. Padmatara and possibly Julie and/or Lisa Kee will come with. Also need to talk to Dr. T. about Disability, and the Second Opinion folks, who I got this note from today. I have to choose an option...

• Our director has approved you to be seen in a tumor panel for a complete review, would likely be in July (7/20 or 7/27 depending on the schedule of the docs needed -we'd need specialist - gyn oncologist).
• He has also approved you for a phone consult with himself after you see your Medical Oncologist on Wednesday and get your first opinion/treatment plan to discuss your chemo options.

What to do? I wrote back asking what the advantage of a panel might be after chemo has already started...

My Mother Would Be a Falconress

by Robert Duncan
from poets.org

My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my little hood with many bells
jangling when I'd turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress,
and she sends me as far as her will goes.
She lets me ride to the end of her curb
where I fall back in anguish.
I dread that she will cast me away,
for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission.

She would bring down the little birds.
And I would bring down the little birds.
When will she let me bring down the little birds,
pierced from their flight with their necks broken,
their heads like flowers limp from the stem?

I tread my mother's wrist and would draw blood.
Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded.
I have gone back into my hooded silence,
talking to myself and dropping off to sleep.

For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me,
sewn round with bells, jangling when I move.
She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist.
She uses a barb that brings me to cower.
She sends me abroad to try my wings
and I come back to her. I would bring down
the little birds to her
I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly.

I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood,
and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying.
She draws a limit to my flight.
Never beyond my sight, she says.
She trains me to fetch and to limit myself in fetching.
She rewards me with meat for my dinner.
But I must never eat what she sends me to bring her.

Yet it would have been beautiful, if she would have carried me,
always, in a little hood with the bells ringing,
at her wrist, and her riding
to the great falcon hunt, and me
flying up to the curb of my heart from her heart
to bring down the skylark from the blue to her feet,
straining, and then released for the flight.

My mother would be a falconress,
and I her gerfalcon raised at her will,
from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own
pride, as if her pride
knew no limits, as if her mind
sought in me flight beyond the horizon.

Ah, but high, high in the air I flew.
And far, far beyond the curb of her will,
were the blue hills where the falcons nest.
And then I saw west to the dying sun--
it seemd my human soul went down in flames.

I tore at her wrist, at the hold she had for me,
until the blood ran hot and I heard her cry out,
far, far beyond the curb of her will

to horizons of stars beyond the ringing hills of the world where
   the falcons nest
I saw, and I tore at her wrist with my savage beak.
I flew, as if sight flew from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight,
sent from my striking loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist,
striking out from the blood to be free of her.

My mother would be a falconress,
and even now, years after this,
when the wounds I left her had surely heald,
and the woman is dead,
her fierce eyes closed, and if her heart
were broken, it is stilld

I would be a falcon and go free.
I tread her wrist and wear the hood,
talking to myself, and would draw blood.

A Third Opinion & More For Kafka

A Mural at Balmy Alley

Various people have suggested I get a second opinion, again. Apparently the only organization in the U.S. that provides this service (a medical panel) for cancer patients for FREE is in San Francisco - thesecondopinion.org. So I faxed off some forms to them on Friday...

Social Security sent me a stack of stuff to fill out, work history for the last 10 jobs, which goes back a long time. Also the summary from my interview had a bunch of stuff that was wrong. Not sure what matters. Might be starting to reach the limits of my capacity for paperwork.  Next week I will see if Renee the social worker can help.

Got my blood test results back. Cholesterol is high*. I don't suppose that is the worst of my problems. Vitamin D and B12 are fine. Don't really understand most of the rest of it (alkaline phosphatase, ALT, AST, bilirubin, creatinine, RDW/RBC, hematocrit, neutrophils...), but will forward to Misha.

Bowl of cherries closeup

Seeing Tavakoli on Weds. Don't know if I will bring someone with me or go on my own. My questions:

1. Chemo plan
2. If cancer in bones is incurable, how come mine was cured? Is it a miracle...or just something that happens sometimes?
3. What about this gravel-like thing on my cheek and on my left shin? Need a dermatologist but he will have an opinion.

In general I have been slack on the healthy food and taking all the teas and supplements, etc. It all feels like too much work. And I have massive sugar craving! Strangely though, knowing I'm going to feel like shit very soon, I've been feeling great lately on all levels...

*
                  Your result  Standard range
Cholesterol 273             < 239
Triglyceride 97             < 199
HDL             64              > 45
LDL calculated
                   190              < 129 -

Acronyms, Books, Travel

A lady walking by wanted to take our picture
in front of this heart, even though my hair
looked like this

I spent the last few days walking around San Francisco having a great time with my old pal Jeff. Though we haven't seen each other hardly at all since we were teenagers, he is one of the few people on earth with whom I can totally relax.

Re chemo, I've been trying to schedule some stuff as usual, especially a weeklong retreat at Jikoji and a drive to Montana with Kathy, visiting some folks on the way. Turns out I won't know if I'm on three-week cycles or what, or when the chemo appointments will be, or if I can be away for more than a week...until I meet with Dr. Tavakoli next week, June 13.

My interview the other day at the Social Security Administration, in which the reincarnation of Franz Kafka would have felt perfectly at home, was OK. It was mostly about info gathering. Navigating these strange skies, one must know one's acronyms: SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) and SSI (Supplemental Security Income) and SDI (State Disability Insurance.) The first one is what I am applying for. I have an IRA (from the days when I was a technical writer and such a thing was possible), and I have money in the bank at the moment, which might disqualify me. (Postscript: apparently it's not related to income.)

I've been tripping lately on the fact that I've pretty much been happier since I got diagnosed with cancer (that is, much of the time.) Then I came across some Stephen Levine books. Found Healing Into Life & Death at Julie's, then found A Year to Live on our shelf. He works with people who are dying, and the way he writes about it is beautiful.

One of many Mission murals

Like so many of us, Levine at first thought of those who live as 'healed' and successful, whereas those that died failed to heal, but this view changed for him over time. He broadened his definition of healing. He says

"...each unique path led to a common goal...a deeper seeing of life, a deeper participation. Some took the work of deep investigation and the cultivation of such qualities as loving kindness and mercy as a lost child might, an open path through the woods...

"For years our work...has been an encouragement to open fully to this moment in which all of life is expressed, that the optimum preparation for death is the wholehearted opening to life..." (Healing Into Life & Death, p. 2)

Emergency Room

Some of the monkey art at Rudy's

I had three new experiences a few days ago:

1. Visit to emergency room.
2. Barfing with others present.
3. Dilaudid (hydromorphone)

Tong took me out to a real porker's breakfast at "Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe" in Emeryville. It was a great place (challah french toast!) except that my poached eggs weren't cooked well...Two hours later I started getting cramps in my upper abdomen, below my heart, which kept getting worse. Then I started throwing up, which I expected to relieve the pain, at least temporarily, but did not. I tried being mindful of the pain, which was very interesting. It definitely changed the sensation, but I couldn't do it for long. It's hard to relax with something that is trying very tensely to eject itself from your body. Or probably any kind of intense pain takes a lot of training to stay with. 

I had put on an Estradiol patch on my shin that morning. (Misha had suggested it for menopausal symptoms and osteoporosis.) We looked up side effects. I seemed to have all of the following:

cramps; flushing; nausea; reduced tolerance to carbohydrates; stomach bloating and upset; 

I removed the patch at about 4pm I think. By about 6, after procrastinating some as I was dreading getting in a car, Tong took me, shaking, to the Kaiser emergency room in Oakland, which was pretty quiet. Nurse Jackie wasn't there. 

They admitted me immediately to my first emergency room that wasn't on television.  First thing they do is see if they can rule out the worst case scenarios. For me that was an inflamed gall bladder or a heart attack. They drew blood and gave me a blue plastic barf bag, some Zofran (anti-nausea), and hooked me up to an IV. Before I got wheeled to a private room I had occasion to use the blue bag. There were people around. What was the alternative? I could barely move. I thought about actors acting barfing and how difficult that must be, to make a retching sound that seems to originate deep in your soul.

The pain was really rather amazing. I told myself that once I wasn't in pain anymore, I would really appreciate it. This is the second time I have asked for pain medication in my life. (The first was after a few weeks of radiation.) They don't exactly flow freely with the narcotics, do they? You have to ask, which makes me worry that they think I'm a junky just there to get drugs. Different people ask you to use the 'rate your pain 1-10' scale. I said 7 and 6. First they gave me Percocet (oxycodone), which did almost nothing other than making the room seem sort of weird. After I pressed the red button and asked for more, they gave me Dilaudid which was awesome! It reduced the pain by about 1/3, but the thing is, you're so relaxed, you don't care about it anymore. The pain is not eliminated, it just stops being important!

Photo by Tong Ginn

At about 9pm, they said they could discharge me, but I was concerned that I'd just go home and start retching in pain again as soon as the drugs wore off. They gave me a drink and crackers to try and then they sort of disappeared. (I think things got really busy.) After an EKG because my pulse was so low (got down to 46), I was released at around 11pm, my pain at a '2'... 

I think what I had was a combination of food poisoning and side effects from the Estadiol, plus maybe a troubled gall bladder. The doctor suggested I not use the Estradiol anymore until I can talk to my doctor, which sounded excellent to me.

When I woke up this morning, I felt fine, no cramps anyway. I've felt very happy, tired and kind of emptied out somehow...but very  much appreciating not being in pain. 

A Little More Info

On my walk home from Soc. Sec. office around the corner.
Bet you've never seen a graffitied mattress before...

During my interview at Social Security this morning, Dr. Shaia called. It was rushed and I wasn't able to look at my list of questions, but here is the info I was able to get:

• I am likely to get two drugs for chemotherapy: Carboplatin and Taxol in 21-day cycles. 
• Suggested not waiting too long to start, but that a road trip should be fine. Will have to figure out the timing on that...
• First 4 to 5 days after infusion main thing will be fatigue. Days 7-10 are high risk of infection.  By second round, hair loss will start. (I mean it this time.)
• Will start with 6-8 treatments and re-assess mid-way with a PET scan to see how it's working. Six cycles (18 weeks) is the minimum, but could be much longer. 

P.S. I went to the emergency room yesterday. Will write more about that later!

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." Rumi

Santana Row in San Jose
Photo by Julie Bennett

At least this time I tried to act like my plans were tentative. I wanted to go to Mexico and do a 6-week intensive Spanish course before the Order convention. A summer MBSR course. Teach a series at sangha night on Love and Death...

A few days ago I asked Dr. Littel if he would be willing to do some backup for Tavakoli, since he has been away so much and my post-PET phone appointment was with someone I had never met. So about an hour before the scheduled phone appointment today, Dr. Littel called me to talk about the results of the PET scan. First thing he said was, it is not good news.

I did eventually ask about the cancer in my pelvis. He said that it is all (vaginal wall, bladder wall, bones) completely gone. I remember Dr. Nag saying he could get rid of the tumor, but that it was the other stuff he was worried about...

There are 8-10 small metastatic tumors in my lungs. These were spotted on the CT scan two months ago, but were too small to evaluate. They have grown, and apparently lit up the PET scan. By the way, this isn't called lung cancer, or even secondary lung cancer. It's "primary vaginal cancer with metastasis in the lungs".

I won't know for about 10 days, until Dr. T. gets back, what this means exactly, but chemotherapy for several months seems certain. I have an appointment with him on Weds, June 13, 1:45pm.

Just-born goat at Morgan's school
Photo by Julie Bennett

Before ringing off I told Dr. Littel that I had repressed hope during treatment, but this time I had had hope...but I suppose that was good in any case because it meant in the interim I was in a much better mood!

The last thing he said was that if he ever found himself in my situation, he hoped he could respond with the same poise that I have.

Is the chemo going to, even after it's over, leave me feeling even older? Disabled? I will see if I can talk to Dr. Shaia (medical oncologist subbing for Dr. T.) and get some indication of what's in store...I must go on the summer retreat, and I would really like to go with my sisters to Montana after that.

I have an appointment Monday to complete my SSDI application.

A few positives:

• The disease has moved away from my nether region!
• While chemotherapy isn't something to look forward to, at least it doesn't involve radiation/burning. As Julie pointed out, no more shitting razor blades!
• My lungs are not in any pain, in fact I've mostly been feeling great the last few weeks. 
• My body responded very well to treatment last time, so it seems likely that it will do so again... 

"God has seen you struggling with something. God says it’s over."

The Buddha gets a Brazilian high-five 

Title came from part of a timely email forwarded today by my cousin Sandy.

I've been listening to the excellent Mary Karr (in Lit) work through her struggles with the idea of God and praying while trying to stop drinking. And the other night I saw Betty again. She's the lovely 91 year old Irish lady who prays constantly. (This time I was asking her about the farm she grew up on near Belfast, and, for some reason, how to make buttermilk. I didn't really know what it was, nor did I know I didn't know. So FYI for those of similar ignorant suburban origin, it's the liquid left after you churn butter!)

Who is God? God is a What, but we humans like familiar shapes. We like for things to be alive, or at least we used to. Materialism has changed that for a lot of us.

God has no personality or gender. Or only in the broadest most metaphorical sense, God's character is the character of the earth and sky.

And another

Part of human engagement with God involves projecting not only our vision, but our habits of judgment and intolerance. I remember hearing once that the word God is related to the word good. How could Good have rules, and hate those who break them? The intolerance, the violence, it does not come from outside - from God, or the Devil. It comes from these facets of us. Devotion to God, devotion to any good, should help ween us from these destructive impulses.

Who knew that I would ever profess to know anything about God, having been an atheist my entire life? Buddhism has helped me understand God, though it is not my 'way'. I do not pray but meditation and perhaps especially chanting or more devotional practice are related to prayer in some way. I have always been able to see in some people who have a great deal of faith in God, that there is something good there, it's not necessarily just a big childish delusion as I might have thought in more arrogant and intolerant times of my life. It's hard, it must be said, not to be arrogant and judgmental toward the arrogant and judgmental!

Christianity seems to spawn a huge spectrum of acceptance/ compassion and violence/ intolerance. But this is also just a spectrum of human impulse. The Buddha's teaching, practically speaking, shows us how to resolve the confusion that drives it all.

Lisa on the Zen Center roof,
with solar panels and skyline

I've been feeling so happy. I visited Lisa Kee who lives at Zen Center now and had lunch there. (Not to mention some kind of caramelized macaroon at Ritual Coffee in Hayes Valley. Mmmm.) I sat in our Center giving people their veg boxes, made $67 selling stuff outside and chatting with people wandering by, then taught the drop-in introduction to meditation class.

Talked to two Brazilian personal trainers for an hour afterwards, which I never do! The guy, who was doing all the talking since the woman didn't speak any English, said that I "transmit light". He had a very poetic way of speaking, possibly to do with vocabulary limitations, but some stuff came through. They had a lot of questions, and I loved them. Not surprisingly, now I really want to go to Brazil. I've had this kind of experience several times. You're trying to communicate with someone, and you have to keep it down to severe basics, but then you feel...love.

Later today, I get the news that will have such a huge impact on my life. In a way, I have gotten used to waiting, and have been mostly so optimistic and happy...