Well, I'm back from surgery, happy to be so, grateful for modern medicine, thankful for a good recovery.  As the surgeon promised, I was able to put full weight on my leg the day of the operation, and was walking, with a walker, the next day.  Now I'm down to a cane, and soon will no longer need it, either.  I look forward to hiking and biking again.

     Being in the hospital a couple of days, I met a number of interesting people.  We had many good discussions, talks about little things, talks about more weighty things.  As I chatted, I thought often of an observation made in a lecture I heard a couple of months before.  Talking about our human ability to think, create, and develop ideas, the speaker asked why our ideas matter.  Why does what we think matter?  For if our ideas matter, she continued, we matter, too.
     It was a profound point.  Whether we know it or not, when we insist that our ideas matter, we are affirming the worth of who we are.  On the other hand, we are doing so within the compass of who we think we are:  how do we know?
     Our bones break, our bones heal, and we move on.  And we believe we matter.
     Ah, humanity.  Apart from an integrating transcendence, a divine intrusion into the present moment, humanity is the most disturbing of mysteries:  how do we know we are anything, anything at all?