2006-09-01

The first day of September! Mick always claims that’s the true first day of autumn, and certainly the weather agreed. Our 2006 Homecoming began on a day perfect of its kind. It never reached 80 degrees outside and for Kentucky, the humidity was low. Guests coming from dryer places did not find the humidity so low, being unaccustomed to the southern sauna effect! But it was one superb day.

After Morning Offering Jim set out to mow his lawns and by some miracle he was home and ready to do his weekly maintenance by 2 PM. This enabled him to spend the rest of the afternoon in our yard, blowing the rapidly falling leaves away from the walkways and making everything look its best. I thought to myself, I GET JIM TODAY! It’s always such a treat when he brings Jim’s lawn Service home to the old homestead!

Gary spent a frenetic day picking up Travis at the airport, then coming back to do the final cleaning chores. Travis helped out by vacuuming the house’s carpets. Gary did a quick scrub of the kitchen and other last-minute details, and then he and Travis went to acquire the breakfast, lunch and snack foods for the group’s weekend eating. They came back and stacked both refrigerators to the gills. We are equipped with provender!

Gary had picked up Aaron just after midnight this morning and after she had arisen, she and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon talking. Aaron had quite a few things she wished to share with me, books that had meant a whole lot to her as she was awakening. She had brought copies of them to give to the L/L Research Library. I do not have that stack of books with me, but I recall Krishnamurti’s epic poem with its 23,000 lines, all an ode to the divine Mother, and books by Mary Greaves.

Aaron also gave me a pair of unique shoes. They are equipped with a coil at the heel, so when you step down there is a soft landing. Apparently the heel, in a normal walking stride, hits the floor or pavement with a force about three times that of the body’s weight, because of the momentum of the body in movement enhancing the body’s mass. This spring absorbs about half of that force, thereby giving the heels a nice break. I will try to ascertain the brand and the web site so you can check them out.

Jim is notorious for leaving price tags on purchases of all kinds and so when Aaron and I walked around the yard after lunch, so she could see all the stone gardens and plantings, I took scissors in order to cut the price labels off our new arbor vitae hedge fronting on our southern neighbors’ property, the couple who tossed the addition to our house to within fourteen feet of our property line and then used the remaining space for a crude gravel driveway.

They had taken down our venerable living forsythia hedge, claiming it was over the property line by a couple of inches, in order to float their gravel driveway. So something had to be done to restore our privacy. Otherwise the couple can stand in their new master bedroom suite and look directly into our living room windows.

Gary and Travis headed out to pick up Eccles at the airport and discovered that multiple unfortunate happenings had delayed his flight by two hours. This meant that our nicely planned schedule was tossed into a cocked hat. I thought to myself, oh good! It’s already happening! Spirit is rearranging the weekend so various people can have various conversations. We’re on God’s time now.

And conversations we had! Tom C arrived from Texas and Steve M from Virginia, I believe. Since Aaron hails from Washington state and Travis from New York state, we have both coasts represented. (I could be getting these states wrong – I took in a lot of details today!) Steve T rolled in from Illinois and Janet F came. She is local, as is Romi, who showed up just as Eccles, who hails from Vermont, Travis, who comes from New York and Gary joined us. Jim and I were on hand.

It was a majority and we were two hours late in starting the seminar, so we decided to go ahead and talk around the circle, which we did, with everyone sharing from the heart. Clearly we have a very responsive and joyful group. There was so much affection, support and real joy in the group, it was a beautiful thing. Whenever we have these gatherings, I find this to occur. It really lifts me up, and I think everyone feels that same empowerment, the “birds of a feather” effect where you can really say anything you want and be understood. What a luxury!

Maria R, from the Cincinnati area, arrived with her toddler – our only non-speaking participant, who injects a heart-opening beauty into the mix – just in time to complete the round-robin opening discussion. Then Gary gave his orientation talk, sending us all into gales of laughter as he explained that we must stay on topic this weekend. The first offense would result in being ostracized and for a second offense we would withhold food - or some such pleasant, joking nonsense. This broke any remaining ice and the gales of laughter were most effective at relaxing and unifying the group.

Jo Ellen, our remaining participant, arrived while we were at the Hometown Buffet Restaurant for a good old American comfort food supper, although a comprehensive salad bar and vegetarian entrée options, plus some amazingly robust farm-raised salmon, caught several people’s fancy. There was steak for the same low price, which several carnivores happily devoured. We talked and talked, while Mick waited at home and had his own modest supper from our usual store of prepared food and collected Jo Ellen when she arrived, showing her where she would sleep and bringing her up to speed on our doing so far.

We returned from dinner to meet Jo Ellen and do a late Gaia Meditation, with Romi offering the ending prayer. Gary handed out the colorful and very attractive packets, which contained all my work on the chakras, plus all the LOO quotes, for reference, on each chakra.

Mick and I said good night and went up to spend our late evening with Sedgie and the other kittens and Picky, which had felt quite left out today since the focus was on all these newcomers to the kitty cats’ territory. Chloe especially was quite disoriented and is still not speaking to a soul, including me. Daniel is way more laid back and to Picky this is old hat. He’s been meeting new people virtually every Sunday for nine years

The remainder of the group continued their discussion and I will only find out tomorrow just how sleep deprived everyone is from that conversation!

Jim and I said good night around 11 PM. I thought I would be wound up from all the energy floating around but in the event I dozed off immediately Jim left for his own bed