Welcome to the Gathering Room podcast, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

Today, the gathering room is about my neck.

And in the cloud of unknowing, the medieval work by an unknown mystic, it talks about the soul's

naked intent toward God. And I will call it the soul's naked intent toward God, because my neck

is apparently trying to send me to God. I have had a crick in my neck for, I don't know,

four months. Please don't start trying to fix it right now

because I didn't, that's not why I said it. I believe. And I know things to do to fix it,

but basically I can do this and I can do this. You may have had a situation like this before.

It's very uncomfortable.

And after a few months, I got tired of it and I went to a massage therapist.

And I flaying myself down on the massage table and the massage therapist started working on me and she's really good.

And she started like working on my neck. And she said, so relaxing the neck. She said very softly. And I'm like, I am relaxing my neck. She's like,

so just see if you can relax that neck. And I was like, I'm really, I'm doing everything. I can relax.

She said, could you just relax your neck? I'm trying.

Like, that is the most relaxed my neck ever gets these days. And after a while, she just went into a

sort of shocked silence and poked it for a while. It helped a lot. But my point is, I thought I was

relaxing and I wasn't. So I'm sort of in this space where I know I can't

relax my neck. And I watched the Winter Olympics in that state. And I don't know if anybody

else saw Alyssa Lou's brilliant gold medal winning performance. Actually, I hadn't even

watched anything that day. And for some reason, it was like late at night. I actually hadn't even watched anything that day.

And for some reason, it was like late at night. I was going to sleep. And I thought,

you know what? I'm going to check the headlines. And it said, Alyssa Leo takes the gold.

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