Letter to friends by Peter Menkin
My major life event has begun: Aortic Valve Replacement or AVR
Read on friend...
Today is September 23, 2016, Friday
LET US BEGIN TO TALK OF THIS INTRODUCTION TO ANOTHER NEW JOURNEY.
I will be on the Cardio unit at Kaiser Geary San Francisco having been admitted October 17, 2016 for preparation for heart surgery October 20, 2016. My heart valve is failing ongoing,. This is causing me trouble, and that means shortness of breath and chest pains. You may know me as that guy who carries Nitro with him, and uses it nearly daily. You've seen the scene in movies. That is old movies. I'm that handsome older character. How do I look so good and healthy as that actor who is a Star in any of those movies, I don't know. Life is full of mysteries.
This Youtube is a great one. It is titled,
Cardiovascular Surgeon in Jackson, Miss. Performs Aortic Valve Replacment,
Uploaded on Apr 27, 2011
Baptist
Cardiovascular Surgeon Stewart Horsley, MD in Jackson, Miss., performed
a valve replacement procedure at Baptist Medical Center.
Aortic valve replacement is a cardiac surgery procedure in which a patient's failing aortic valve is replaced with an alternate healthy valve. The aortic valve can be affected by a range of diseases; the valve can either become leaky (aortic insufficiency / regurgitation) or partially blocked (aortic stenosis). Aortic valve replacement is open heart surgery.
For more information on valve surgery at Baptist Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., visit
http://www.mbhs.org/med_serv/heart/he...
Aortic valve replacement is a cardiac surgery procedure in which a patient's failing aortic valve is replaced with an alternate healthy valve. The aortic valve can be affected by a range of diseases; the valve can either become leaky (aortic insufficiency / regurgitation) or partially blocked (aortic stenosis). Aortic valve replacement is open heart surgery.
For more information on valve surgery at Baptist Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., visit
http://www.mbhs.org/med_serv/heart/he...
Let me share an excerpt of an email-letter I sent to a friend. It contains more than you ever wanted to know. All typo strokes and other errors, including spelling errors, are mine. I probably wrote and sent this as email-letter to other friends at about 3 a.m. in the morning. Here is that excerpt from my copy
sent to Delia Robinson who works at Church of England Newspaper, London. I said she may show others this excerpt, or tell my other friends at the paper of my upcoming surgery. This included the editor of the paper, and its website, Colin Blakely. She has always been kind to me in my relations to her: |
| Peter Menkin, circa 2015 |
My reason to write you is to
let you know I will undergo what some call Open Heart surgery to replace a
valve October 20, 2016. What follows is a quote from an email-letter to another
friend. Please share this email-letter to you with my news with others at the
paper that I know. Thank you for your prayers.
I need to tell you I go into
the hospital at Kaiser Geary San Francisco October 17, 2016 in preparation for
Open Heart Surgery at the same San Francisco Hospital October 20, 2016.
A valve needs to be replaced.
This is vital to my health. I’ll probably leave the hospital, assuming all goes
well in hospital recovery post operation, eight days later. My primary home
recovery will be over in about 20 days. My wife, Linda will stay with me during
this time, and won’t go to work. They will pay her since she has this benefit
to take care of her husband after an
operation of this kind. I’ll also have an
home health nurse.
 |
| Peter & Linda -- Lovers |
By the American Holiday
Thanksgiving, I’ll be ready to celebrate with my wife, and probably family. All
will be well. I thank God that the Cardiac specialists identified my heart
condition, and are acting promptly to resolve this condition, its many
problems, just about immediately. I returned just this Sunday past from the
Geary San Francisco Hospital where I first met my Cardiac Surgeon Dr. Cain, and
where John McNulty, M.D. performed his wizardry to go in through an artery in
my right groin to take pictures along the way through arteries to see what might
be wrong. No third Stent was needed in Dr. McNulty’s opinion. An ultrasound
proved without a doubt with its images, what Dr. John McNulty thought true, as did
Dr. Cain, a new valve needed to be provided: It is to be a cow valve.
My surgeon for Aortic Valve
Replacement or AVR is Dr. Cain,
and I will be on the Cardio floor. One gets a room of ones own.
and I will be on the Cardio floor. One gets a room of ones own.
SFO-HOSPITAL
2425 GEARY BLVD
.
SAN FRANCISCO CA 94115-3358
MENKIN,PETER A
 |
| Hopeful: I wait for 2nd Stent... |
I probably will not come to
the phone so easily. You’ll probably reach a nurse on the floor for Cardiac
Patients. You can ask after me.
Be sure to pray for me, and
pray for the Surgeon and his team…for God to help him in his work, and guide
him in the skill of his hands, and that work of his wonderful Nurses and
medical people.
Thank God for his Call as a
Doctor and Heart Surgeon. We all pray for Dr. Cain, and of course for me, Peter
Menkin as patient..
Yours sincerely,
Peter Menkin
Mill Valley, California 94941
THIS IS THE WORK AGAIN.
I will work with this new Journey as a Benedictine, and Brother of the Camaldoli in the world. You know my relationship is in its 18th year with The Hermitage in Big Sur, California. Soon I will sign a contract with Xlibris for a book of 44 pages that will be about 8 1/2 inches square. This oversized paperback will have this normative number of color illustrations. I am choosing photographs as illustrations, as many as 25 of them. They will accompany this text of the poem as it appeared in Church of England Newspaper, London. Here is that poem:
THE JOURNEY AS IT TRANSFORMS US IN OUR LORD THROUGH PRAYER.
Apophatic Prayer: A
Transcription (2000)
Invited
by God into
a
wordless kind
of
prayer–Cataphatic is opening
 |
| Father Michael--Camaldolese Monk |
and
believing
the
images of entering
into
the wonder of the scene.
The
same one invites us
into
the apophatic spirituality.
Desert,
stripping, pain, addiction.
loneliness.
(Aloneness.)
Desert
spirituality will be deeper,
and
this is one.
Invitation
to an all
new
spirituality. This is the
monk’s.
Birth
at forty.
Forty
to eighty.
Eighty
to one-hundred twenty.
Moses
was offering deliverance.
Settles
into what is
the
symbolic period
of 40 years~into
the future.
After
40 years he was learned to,
as a
child,
look at
this strange sight,
“Why
the bush is not burning.”
 |
| Audio Book cover--Bob McCoy reads |
at 80
years of age of age.
This is
a life as a child.
In the
Hebrew: ~ I must go across and look.
This is
a leaving of where
he was
on a life
with
the sheep
and
have a look
at
something
new.
He must
leave this security
of the
plain to be
confronted
with the mystery.
How far
the Lord wanted Abraham
to go
as did Peter
in his
early morning
as he
waited for Christ. As did
Martha
when she organized Christ,
or the
Spirit.
Martha
learns
something
when Lazaraz
dies.
God
knows when we are
in the
desert when he calls
in the
desert when he calls,
“Where
is Moses.”
It is
in the Holy Fire
of God
when we
take off our shoes,
as did
Moses.
We do
it
alone,
in
solitude.
The
very thing is the presence
of God
waiting
for us.
I have
heard the suffering
of my
people. (Father Michael.)
God
liberates Moses,
who in
his
brokenness
discovers his identity,
and in his~finds
his mission.
Contemplation
(from male spirituality):trust
in the
insecurity of the painful
victory
by putting on the
of
Christ. “Mercy.”
reads an Oblate, “instead of sacrifice.
“went to the desert.”
Moses meets God
in the inner Desert
and leads those in slavery
outside.
reads an Oblate, “instead of sacrifice.
“went to the desert.”
Moses meets God
in the inner Desert
and leads those in slavery
outside.
There
are two deserts:
The invitation, the inside us
that is the other/Merton calls this
the great self within that is
the God within us. (The ineffable
now of truth.) Entailing
the creator,
The invitation, the inside us
that is the other/Merton calls this
the great self within that is
the God within us. (The ineffable
now of truth.) Entailing
the creator,
we are
in failure invited
into another truth,
the abandonment into the word.
For the Oblate (for me),
getting up early,
into another truth,
the abandonment into the word.
For the Oblate (for me),
getting up early,
God
very seldom comes as a
gentle invitation.
It comes as an assault on our invitation.
gentle invitation.
It comes as an assault on our invitation.
The
Gospel only
makes sense
to the poor,
(the weakness of the poverty
of our humanity.)
makes sense
to the poor,
(the weakness of the poverty
of our humanity.)
We are
all struggling with the ideal
of our body, of a woman
all struggling with the ideal
of our body, of a woman
and of
a man.
The
Little Book notates
poverty of spirit– a Little Book:
New look at spirituality,
new look at being human,
new look at who God is.
poverty of spirit– a Little Book:
New look at spirituality,
new look at being human,
new look at who God is.
The
Little Book notates entering into
the dying and stripping
–stripped with everything and just being
left with the now.
A cup of wine becomes sacred.
A desert allows us
the dying and stripping
–stripped with everything and just being
left with the now.
A cup of wine becomes sacred.
A desert allows us
to find
a meaning (a place)
in the sacred.
Cup of wine
in the sacred.
Cup of wine
a
desert allows
burning bush
yes.
This flow is within us
and other people. There
is surrender here.
There is surrender there.
burning bush
yes.
This flow is within us
and other people. There
is surrender here.
There is surrender there.
Without
doing.
and not going against
the nature of things
we have to go
where we are fed by Christ.
God takes Moses
into the heart of God.
and not going against
the nature of things
we have to go
where we are fed by Christ.
God takes Moses
into the heart of God.
(Words
& thoughts by Father Michael, OSB Cam;
poem & transcription by Peter Menkin Obl Cam OSB.)
This version of Apophatic Prayer appeared in Church of England Newspaper, London and was written by Peter Menkin...Colin Blakely, Editor.
poem & transcription by Peter Menkin Obl Cam OSB.)
This version of Apophatic Prayer appeared in Church of England Newspaper, London and was written by Peter Menkin...Colin Blakely, Editor.
I am cramming a lot of videos into this posting. At the horrible precipice of creating a visual hodgepodge of stuff, here are two videos that are short and to the point. You, reader, will get the idea right off the bat...as my Mother expressed the matter so simply and well. These two videos comprise the last word of this posting.
I was moved to share this man's journey, if only a small slice of his life's experience with his expression of newness. I pray to do as well as he
THIS BLOG ENTRY BY PETER MENKIN IS AT ITS END..
September 23, 2016
