Wow!!!

Wow, it is amazing how much a human being such as me can enjoy a weekend getaway. Jacki and I rode with two dear friends for 9 hours to another friend's property/home at 9600 feet elevation outside Telluride. Each year the nearby recovery community holds a "campvention' there - about 120 recovering drug addicts with from 35 yrs to one day clean. God's handiwork is so readily apparent in that setting - tall aspens so thick it is tough to see through. Deer, turkey, a bear and a grouse - all seen on the dirt road to the event. Consider the miracle of those 120 who, if life was fair, would be dead. Instead we were loving to each other and appreciating the setting. "On Higher Ground", a wonderfully appropriate name for the annual event.

The last day, Sunday, at 8am all 4 of us participated in a guided meditation walk to a stunning panoramic outlook - so much holding on tight with our fellows and tears shed when it ended. Seldom have I felt the presence of what I call God more deeply than those moments. A peak experience!

It is personally reassuring knowing and feeling a great sense of that same Creator also watching over me and guiding my journey through cancer. The doctors have said it is a slowly terminal version of cancer cell. To me, in my many good moments, I know it provides the hurdle that God, partly in the form of your love and prayers, is guiding me over.

I have recently watched several movies that I had already viewed more than once: Dances With Wolves; Pay it Forward; Gladiator; Saving Private Ryan and Platoon. My tears flowed much more than any previous viewing. It is the human relationships that touch me so deeply. The closeness, joy, separation and loss and new beginnings. At the end of Saving Private Ryan, years after the war, he asks at the grave of one of those who saved him, "Have I been a good Man?" My war was active addiction. I have survived it as of today for 5695 days. And most of that time I have been a very good man and I plan to make good use of my days to come. Thank you my Creator, and my fellow children for this journey. Let's enjoy it to the fullest!
Bill