On my last installment of "As The World Turns", oh wait, that's not what this is but sometimes it feels that way.  My head tends to spin, my mind isn't always in focus, and I'm trying to figure out which way I should turn, and try not to get distracted from my goal of making it "home" which is found with Surrendering for me so I can survive the Climb.  So where was I?....oh yeah the last installment of The Power of Surrender Series in which I "bravely" share with you how my world Turns....and has turned including when I didn't have the Courage, Strength, or even the Power to get out of bed in the morning.  Towards the end of my last entry I alluded to something going on in the World, in particular my former World in the City of Fountains.  Yep, that same City that just concluded hosting a Series of Events.  Just like life for each of us, our Series of Events in our World and like the World Series oftentimes filled with "Moments" that are Turning Points each with The Power to bring as much joy and pleasure as sadness and doom.  For those of you who have every played or been around the great game of baseball you know that by their nature baseball players, amateur and professional alike, when faced with doubt, fear, and potential doom are a very Superstitious lot.  As simple evidence I offer that banality of rally caps, a symbol of Hope, that even the impossible is possible and a distraction of the growing feeling of doom being felt from within by the person under the silly cap.  The thinking being that with some kind of change, perhaps as a group we can climb out of whatever hole we are in and overcome our doubts and fears.  Although a great one, baseball is just a game, life is life.  The picture above is one of a mountain near Apache Junction, AZ, the name of the mountain?  Superstition Mountain.  What better "image" on the "Morning After" when my Kansas City Royals came up "just short" of being "The Winner" after twenty-nine years of failed rally caps and deep in the cellar only feeling Grateful the long, painful, losing season was finally over and sharing their guilt and shame for not just a moment but months of searching for perhaps a winning tradition that might provide more productive superstitions to climb from the bottom to the top of the Mountain.  And as I watched this final game of this Series of events, a culmination of an all but miraculous run for both a team and a city to reach the top of the mountain using any and all Superstitions available,  I was grateful that I had risen above such nonsense. I was both glad and grateful that I was not silly enough to do something that had nothing to do with winning or losing, nor that could in any way shape, form, or control the outcome.  I was grateful that I wasn't silly or superstitious and sitting in my "Arizona" room and watching in HD with some dumb rally cap on and that I was letting Destiny unfold without my help and I was grateful for a very good reason.  I had no need for the cap, I was wearing my Royal's t-shirt that everytime I wore it they won and I knew it worked because the "shirt" had the Power to overcome anything and I was certainly NOT Superstitious....and in my denial as in so many times in my life, I watched the tying run in the bottom of the ninth with two out die on third base ninety feet from HOME!!...and once I took off the stupid shirt that didn't work like it was supposed to, I was grateful for the bigger picture and how much fun these guys in blue were to watch, dirty superstitious caps and all, and knew in their loss they and their City were winners.  I was also grateful that FINALLY listening to the announcers and their overdone, non-stop, rather annoying "praise" of the Giants pitcher was also over.  He was great and he deserved the win, but seriously did I hear them say they saw him walking on the water in the fountains in the outfield?  Baseball is a grand old game and I thoroughly enjoy it, but in the end it is just a game, and there are other ways to get HOME....which gets me to thinking....which I often do.

Of how I wrote in the first book, The Power of Surrender, in my Series about denial in which I likened how deep my denial was to the unraveling of a baseball when you knock the cover off the ball and in that chapter I also expressed how much I enjoy the game and how it is a microcosm of life when you focus on "Just A Moment" or two as it unravels.  What I didn't write about is how in my denial as a child that I was "good enough" is how despite the fact in most things and especially athletics I was above average in most.  However, I seemed to always be wearing and invisible rally cap and if/when I was winning, and I loved to win I often felt like I was not supposed to win.  Someone else was better, I was not good enough.  If I did win I felt guilty.  In fact, sometimes this feeling was so strong there were times when in track for example as I was in the lead I could feel myself begin to hold back and I had no Power over it whatsoever.  I had no idea what these "moments" were about or where they came from.  Back then I didn't understand that the same things that held me back and caused me to feel powerless, were defective assets and the same things that were inside and always there that could provide me the Power to carry things out....willingly.  But I fought it, resented it, and most of the time did not know how to feel grateful for the gifts I did have at any given moment but as I am remembering these feelings of doubts and fears for which I became superstitious and never grateful I remembered one time when I was ten years old and something happened and in the end I not only felt grateful....it was awesome but just like last night "my team" lost which gets me to thinking which I often do.

One morning I woke up just like any other morning and as I went to put my feet on the floor I fell.  I couln't get up.  I couldn't have climbed any mountain, no matter how many superstitions I tried, nor could I have even walked up the steps of a dugout and certainly not walk on water no matter how well I might be able to throw a baseball.  I laid at the side of my bed, helpless and powerless.  Different from when my heart stopped working many years later, but unable to stand and I was scared.  I screamed for help and tried to crawl with my hands out of my room, my legs weren't working and I could not get up.  I remember my mom and my sister freaking out, it was weird, how does a perfectly healthy normal ten year old kid go to bed one night and wake up and can't walk the next morning?  My dad, as usual, was gone.  I don't remember details, nor exactly how I got dresssed or carried to the doc.  What I do remember is one word that scared me more than any of the feelings I was having.  The word was:  Polio.  Yes, I am that old, in fact rumor has it that I was actually present for at least the entire construction of one of the Pyramids in Egypt, you know next to that long river called - DeNile.  In those days great progress was being made, much like my recovery, towards eradicating this crippling and life threatening disease but it was "still hanging" out and not just at the ballpark.  That morning for more than "Just A Moment" there was fear, worry, and concern that I had Polio and no rally cap in the world could have changed the outcome of that game had I been chosen to play.  Today I am grateful I was not called upon to play on that team, but I also learned that day and for several after to be grateful for some of the simplest things in life that we all too often take for granted.  This was not God's will for my life that day, it was His will that I experience what I did but not permanently and I was diagnosed with a bruised hip bone severe enough I could not walk.  How did I bruise it?  No one knew then nor do I know now, there was no visible bruise and I have no idea what I did and whatever it was I did not feel it at the time.  So poor, little me, was told by the doc that I had to stay off of my feet with no walking for two weeks.  Bedrest!!  Now that sucked, or did it?  Turns out even at ten there were silver linings in life and this "moment" was no exception.  It was October, it was World Series time and in those days they did not play at night nor during prime time.  They played during the day - DURING SCHOOL!!  Yeah baby, score one for the kid that can't walk...for "Just A Moment" or for two weeks.  This was way cool and I didn't know what it felt like then to feel grateful but does it get any better?  My friends were jealous, and just for those days I was cool, until the homework showed up....UGH!!  Oh yeah and the best part?  Like last night my favorite team was playing but they were not of KC Royalty, it was a bunch of Damn Yankees and they were led by my favorite player - Mickey Mantle.  What did you expect, my name is Mick.  So there I was watching my team and knew they would win and just like last night, they lost.  They didn't just lose they lost to the Milwaukee Braves??  Really?  So despite all of my own hidden fears that prevented me from winning - most of the time - the Yankees losing was just too much and I retired at the ripe old age of ten from being a Yankee fan and three weeks later I was walking and running again fully recovered from my powerlessness and the Yankees and out in the back yard doing what I needed to do....Play Football!!  Which gets me to thinking which I often do

That I read something this morning which for me was a great reminder.  It was written in the book that has Courage that is part of the mountains, rally caps, doubts, and fears experienced by the people who have what I wanted and still do.  What was written was that there can come, even at the darkest of moments, at times of powerlessness, of long endured frustration "Just A Moment" that I, or you, or anybody can come to understand that through Gratitude we can feel Grateful for anything.  Even for a disease, whether it be alcoholism in a person that affects a family or a temporary condition that prevents walking, standing or even breathing.  When and if we can get to this point, even if it is for "Just A Moment" we can appreciate all the mountains no matter how supersitious we think we may need to be, appreciate the journey that triumphs over whether we win or lose and the need to win loses its importance.  What becomes more important is that once we "get there" although it may be difficult to sustain, we know how it feels and it becomes more important to maintain the desire to at least maintain, hopefuly get there again and again, for to do so is serene as we realize had I not been where I was I would not be where I am....in baseball there is always next year and in life there is always tomorrow and at this moment it is a little after three in the afternoon and maybe I can stop and THINK for a minute and realize I can choose right now how I want to live the rest of my MOMENTS....it is a choice and it helps even if I can't get up in the morning.  Besides rally caps are fun, but they don't really work - do they?  Turn the page for The Power of Surrender