Hypertension

Sneaky bastard, with your deadly scythe

sweeping closer, closer

closer to my feet

and now to my heart

I'm not ready to drop nor die

not ready to call you Sis

but being ready like St. Paul

insist I've got tasks to climb

Life suppressor

calm down and relocate

I'm 'round for the battle

to bring you under control

cut your numbers

thwart your pressure to win

I'm uncorked

will bounce beyond your best

will unwind

and fly on the wings of life

I'll whip you

but why have I squelched myself

gagged the voice of my heart

that it screams this illness out? 

*I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

-Albert Einstein

*You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other peoples's sufferings and not your own.

-Flannery O'Connor

Thoughts of Alan Jones:

-Remembering is an important part of the process of growth.  We often get caught on the treadmill of repeated acts.  Every confessors knows the agony of people who are tormented by a "besetting sin." The treadmill of repetition can only be stopped by a process of remembering, which is often painful. From the point of view of the believer, memory plays another important role in the work of healing. We are not only urged to remember our own past, but to enter contemplatively into a corporate memory that guards healing stories of salvation.

-Our own history, has in some way, wounded us.  Our neuroses spring from hurts we received as children.  Salvation history (which, for the believer, is heard in the Bible and the Liturgy) provides the antidote for those hidden early hurts that continue to wield great influence over us in adult life.