Bronchitis

This blog has been pretty quite for a few weeks. There are two reasons for this:

1. I’ve been fighting recurring fevers since June 17^th, which has turned out to be caused by a bad case of bronchitis.

2. In between fevers, when I feel some energy, I’ve focused all my writing creativity on finishing my history papers. I finished those July 11^th and now have one more ten pager to do for Pastoral Theology. That one will be easier since the topic is my illness and how people have responded to it and me. It’s more of a theological reflection than an academic research paper. It will help me to do some integration of what I’ve been through this year.

I’m not going to give all the gory details of what I’ve been through the past weeks, except to say I hope the 103.1 fever I had Monday night was high enough to kill the bronchitis bug. The fever has gone down since then and stayed down so far. I know I need to stay quiet, drink liquids and get lots of rest. I think one problem has been I try to start being more active too soon. Now I’ve been reasonable – I’d wait 3 to 5 day after my last fever to increase me activity, but the fever returned every time. So this time it will be at least 10 days, which is when I’ll have a follow up visit with my internist and go by her recommendation.

During my times of convalescence I've had a chance to read a great book, Maggie Ross's Seasons of Death and Life A Wilderness Memoir. It's a good book to read under a tree or by a lake, one of those books you read when you just want to relax. Yet it has great spiritual substance. Maggie is an Anglican solitary, which means she lives a life of prayer alone somewhere. She also has a blog at ravenwilderness.blogspot.com . From time to time she will give great commentary on events in the Episcopal Church. In the archive section for January, 2006 she has published A Rite for Contemplative Eucharist. It is well worth reading through.

Lord willing and the creek don't rise and my health continues to improve, Teresa and I will be coming to Boise the first part of August. We will first go to McCall for St. Michael's family camp, then be in Boise until the 11^th. I do think that if I mind my P’s and Q’s and not over do, I’ll be OK. Teresa and I do so want to see family and friends. Berkeley is nice, but I do miss Idaho.