Ireland, I hope

So, I have this flight to Ireland--Belfast via London--for Sunday, that I hope to be on. I checked the weather there--about 20 degrees cooler than Connecticut over the next week. Glad I did that, add a sweater to the suitcase...or wear it, sweating at Kennedy while taking off my shoes, explaining my c-path machine and mask I sleep with and hoping the walk through doesn't react to the two titanium rods in my arm where I shattered both bones in a car accident back in December of 2007.

But, before I go, I have a stress test tomorrow.

Some symptoms and the death of my wife's 50 something cousin from a heart attack caused me to go to my Doctor. I always go to the doctor when someone has a close call or dies. My visit--though my EKG, whatever that is--was fine caused my Dr to schedule the test before I left and give me a prescription for nitroglycerin which he told me "never to use". When I asked him why he gave me that if I should never use it, he said, "in case never arrives". I'm not real confident right now.

Have I told you before how "extroverted", in the Jungian meaning of the word, I am? I actually don't know 'what I think' about things until I say them outloud and hear them or write them down and read them. I drive introverts crazy. They, it seems, actually 'think' about things without having to say them out loud or write them down and read them. God bless them and their ability to do that. An introvert would never 'blog' about their stress test, though I suspect that from time to time even introverts need such an examination. (I don't know, I just imagine....)

So, just before departing for Ireland to lead a workshop I've been leading for years and have outlasted most of the other leaders to become something like a senior leader who's going to Ireland to lead it and train people to lead it so they won't need me and I'll have no excuse to go to Ireland (what sense does that make?) I'm face to face with my mortality.

I had a stress test several years ago because some people I knew had to have heart stuff done and I worried, since my whole world is 'outside' myself, that I might need heart stuff done too. It was fine, but since I had no symtoms other than friends who had heart stuff, there's no reason it shouldn't have been.

As a priest, by the way, I am always face to face with mortality. Priests and funeral directors (which is what morticians want to be called) come face to face with mortality all the time. I like almost all funeral directors, I really do. They share with me the constant face to face with mortality thing.

But Ireland is so green, so lush and the people are so much like me. I want to go this time and another and another again. I'd like to find a place in Ireland where I could go, not only with my wife, but with my children and just stay awhile. When I hear Celtic music, my foot starts going up and down and I hear a tune only my soul could know. My family never talked about 'where we came from' but I know, just from hearing the music and seeing the lushness and drinking the beer that my roots are there. It's in the DNA.

So, pray with me that the stress test won't send me to some hospital to have some heart thing done and I can go to Ireland on Sunday.

(I'm thinking nitroglycerin might be a handy thing to have around. I'll research it on the WEB, but maybe it will be a cheap high....That's my 1968 self talking, pay no attention....I won't be dropping it into Irish beer....Chill out....)

If I can I'll write on this silly blog from Ireland. I'm not taking a computer but I bet they have some there....