Blog Action Day--the Power of We

Once again it is Blog Action Day and this year the theme is "The Power of We". Blog Action Day was started to bring awareness each year to one particular problem or factor of society. Thousands of bloggers in over one hundred countries are contemplating what this might mean--the power of WE.

The power of WE provides a lot of meat for though. Pardon the redundancy, but the power of we is a powerful concept, as we working together can accomplish things one person cannot. We is a team--a team not for competition for individual glory but to accomplish some feat, some influence, some improvement in the world or in some small bit of the world.

As I thought of what I might write about for Blog Action Day--the Power of We--a lot of images and events moved through my mind. I remembered an image from a presentation seen when visiting India a number of years ago. Symbolically, a bird caught in a net could not do anything but flounder, but if its mates each took a corner of the net and lifted it, the trapped bird could escape. If people work together they can escape the entrapment of poverty or other social stresses and move to freedom.

Quilt tops ready to go to volunteer long arm quilters to finish.
Two on the bottom shelf were made at a recent quilt retreat we had.

I thought, too, of the American Heros Quilts group--started by one woman who determined that soldiers returning to our local military hospital with serious war injuries should be greeted with a handmade quilt. As the war continued, one woman could not accoplish this, and the power of we--quilters, across the country--joined in. More than 11,000 quilts have been made and given, by this group, and even more by others working in the same kind of effort--Quilts of Valor, and Home of the Brave quilts, Australian quilters creating Australian Hero Quilts for their men and women. We have done much that a single "I" could never have done.

I have participated in conferences and events which could never have happened without the power of we putting together everything from sign-ups to signs, snacks to banquets, one on one messages to huge presentations. Nothing that one could do, but a team!

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Baut the power of WE is very personal right now.

But the past year and a half has brought me into the sphere of another kind of team. With my husband's diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma a year and a half ago, we have been part of a team in search of the best and most successful treatment results. I must say, these medical teams work sometimes almost seamlessly to make everything come together.

Researchers at "The Hutch" dedicate their work
and their leisure to a cure.

Panoramic denatl xrays.

We are part of a team, some of whom we never see. Let's start with who is part of this particular "WE".   The patient--my dear husband of 45 years, and myself. His primary care doctor, the doctors and nurses at the hospitals he has been at. His oncologist, his nephrologist, his cardiologist, his opthamologist, the team of nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians, schedulers, volunteers, psychologists, at North Star Lodge cancer care center in Yakima. The team of doctors, nurses, social workers, schedulers, nutritionists, receptionists, technicians, lab workers, blood drawers, at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, the researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the University of Washington Medical Center. The drivers of the shuttle which takes us between the two.
The team of prayer warriors at home and everywhere who are in support of this endeavor. Our family.

WE will conquer this.

Today is the day of decision. We hope that with our meeting with the power of WE this morning we will know the next steps in moving toward the best of a cure.

Without the WE, it would not be possible. The power of WE.