Dear Readers, I have been in the throes of putting a manuscript together. I couldn’t come up with the right title and that was driving me crazy. I knew I hadn’t found the exact one. But last night it came to me. I won’t say what it is quite yet, but it is exactly right. I asked Swami Z what to call it. As some of you know, he is a fictional character that gives me full access to my heart. You may wonder how a piece of fiction can help me. Well, we are all fictional characters playing our roles on the stage of life.

I haven’t been posting many updates lately and probably no one cares. For those of you who do, I am still here...just working behind the scenes.

I write an essay from time to time or upload an MP3 I have recorded. Here is a brand-spanking new one called The Noisy Mind on Audio 2010 . If you can donate, please do so. Thank you for your presence in my life.

Love, Vicki

Just uploaded Inside Outside on Audio 2010 . I thought I better get a new MP3 up before I forgot how to make them. I hope you will give it a listen. It’s brief, as always. But brief doesn’t mean it’s without depth.

I may have to scrap the blog....most people are visiting my website instead.

It's address is Nurturing the Now .

Blogging is a funny thing. Some like it and some don't. Since my homepage has been up and running for so long, I thought a blog might be an interesting addition, but.....we shall see.

I was waiting to go to the dentist and just idling around the house. I went over to the bookcase and pulled out a book at random, which was Jonathan Livingston Seagull. An index card fell out of the book. In Bob’s shaky writing was printed these words: "By His stripes we are healed."

Another sign that he is with me as I try and polish my manuscript about our journey together. I am not sure how to interpret that Bible passage. To me, it is saying that by my husband’s sufferings, I am healed. For he surely went through devastation after devastation and bore them all with great dignity. All of his ribs broken from the cancer, all of his bone marrow infiltrated by it, he finally bled to death one drop at a time. In hospice, his nose bled for days until finally his heart stopped. There had been months of transfusions of blood and packed platelets to keep him alive, but finally the doctor said it was time to quit. He didn’t want to go; he wanted to stay as my protector. He asked me if I would ask the doctor to sign him out of hospice and put him back into the hospital.

“Yes, I can do that, if that is what Bob wants,” he said. But Bob died before that happened.

Five years later, an old index card falls out of an inspirational book. I sit and hold it in my hand. I read a bit from the book. “The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan said. “There is no other.”

A friend had recommended that I get the book and read it to Bob as he was making his transition. He was never that interested; I suppose he was too weak to pay much attention. So it has been in the bookcase all these years. I have gotten rid of hundreds of spiritual books, but that is one that has remained. And I am so glad.