Re-Feeding--Days 1 and 2

Saint Angela Merici of Lombardy, Italy

Yesterday (January 27) was the Feast Day of Saint Angela Merici according to the Catholic calendar. She was born in 1474 and died in 1540 at the age of 66. At the age of ten, she was orphaned and sent to live with her uncle who provided her with a loving and religiously devout home. In her teens, she became a tertiary of Saint Francis. Her uncle died when she was twenty and so she returned to her paternal home.

Saint Angela was appalled by the lack of religious education available to young girls and she felt called to address this need. She converted her home into a school of religious instruction and invited all of the young girls of her community to come and learn the basic teachings of Christ. In 1535, she started the order of Ursulines with twelve unmarried young women. Once the community received episcopal approbation, the movement was taken up with great enthusiasm and quickly spread throughout Italy, Germany, and France. It was the first teaching order of women established in the Church, and to the present date has adhered strictly to the work of its original mission.

Saint Angela's "Rule" for her community was recently rediscovered after being lost for almost 400 years.

Mary-Cabrini Durkin dialogues with Saint Angela in her new book Angela Merici's Journey of the Heart. Each section combines explanation of and reflection on the Rule. Durkin states, "Angela speaks often about the heart...the vessel of love. The love she talks of is her own experience, and ours, of Jesus as the One who reaches into the heart's core. He sees our truth. He touches it lovingly with the touch of God, and we become more alive."

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Day 1 (January 27): My weight was 89.6, my blood pressure was 103/76, my pulse was 80, and my temperature was 97.7. I woke up hungry this morning!!! Yippy...Yaaaaaa...Yahooo... I didn't wait for the doctor to come and check on me this morning before ording a celery juice from the kitchen and I was already drinking it by the time he got to me. My blood work came back this morning and simple confirmed what I already knew: my body had completed whatever it needed to do for this fast. My liver enzymes were both back in the normal range. It is so gratifying to be able to see the body's signals supported by the laboratory tests. Dr. Klapper is very pleased and had a big smile on his face. I drank a total of four 16 ounce celery juices over the course of the day. It took about an hour to drink each one, taken in small sips and held in my mouth for a while to mix it with saliva. I also ate quite a few steamed vegies, including zucchini, green beans, asparagus, cauliflower, English peas. I found the peas to be so sweet that it was almost too much. The zucchini tastes really sweet to me also. I also had some raw lettuce and cherry tomatoes in the evening. I ate about every 2 hours, with juices in between. I was hungry pretty much all day. I ate no fruit because it did not call out to me and I did not want to put any sugar into my body right now. I had the kitchen bring me raw vegies and I steam them in my apartment when I want them. They let the patients self regulate their food intake here (with suggested guidelines), and they were a bit concerned with how much food I was eating. But I always waited to eat until I got hungry before I ate again. I remember reading in Dr. Jack Goldstein's book Triumph Over Disease that he was so hungry after his 6 week fast that Dr. Gross could not keep enough food in the house for him and was always sending someone out to get more. I felt good all day.

Day 2 (January 28): My weight was 92.4 (a gain of almost 3 lbs!), my blood pressure was 90/60, my pulse was 76, my temperature was 97.6. I had five 16 ounce celery juices over the course of the day. I ate quite a few steamed vegies, including green beans, zucchini, broccoli, and cauliflower. I ate raw lettuce and cherry tomatoes 3 different times. Again, I ate about every two hours, with juice in between. I had my first bowel movement this morning and it was completely effortless; it seemed as if all the vegies I ate yesterday just fell right out of me. I had two more bowel movements later in the day. I was surprised that they did not smell especially bad. I felt good all day.

Now that I have some energy, I have started to go through the large selection of DVD's they offer in their lending library here. Today, I watched two outstanding documentaries by Mike Anderson. The first is called Eating and the second is called Healing Cancer from the Inside Out. Eating discusses the health and environmental problems created by eating a diet centered around animal products and then presents the overwhelming evidence about the health and environment benefits of eating a plant-based diet. Healing Cancer from the Inside Out discusses the politics of Big Money that supports the Cancer Industry and the Animal Production Industry and then presents the overwhelming evidence about the complete ineffectiveness of conventional cancer treatments and the incredible healing success that many cancer patients experience after adopting a plant-based diet. I plan to by multiple copies of both of these documentaries to loan out to all my friends. If you are interested in learning more, go to Mike Anderson's website: Rave Diet.

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Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives it's ease
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

William Blake, English Poet (1757-1827)