2006-11-01

All Souls Day! How I love this holy day! I am in love with the idea of sainthood anyway. It is what we all are. The more you say, who me? – the more I insist. Sainthood is only an acceptance of who we are. For we are sacred people! The “I” of all of us is the consciousness of unconditional love. And as the Psalmist says so well, “Where true love and charity abide, God Himself is there.”

After Morning Offering, I did just a few minutes’ work in the upstairs office recording calls and entering calendar information – we have a couple of repairmen coming – and then Pam arrived, even before Jim was gone for the morning. Jim was braving the rain, which was still falling in good British style – never mind that this is Kentucky and interested citizens want to know who stole our Indian Summer – and headed out to work well wrapped in layers of clothing and a bandana around his neck for warmth.

Pam and I had an excellent morning, polishing off Jim’s Lawn Service statements for the month of October and breezing through JLS and L/L Research books before lunch. Pam will be just fine. Her difficulty lay only in the different “look” of QuickBooks 2005, compared to the QB 1999 version she has used for seven years at other jobs. I also had a fiendishly hard time, there for a minute, when we first got the ’05 QB here, for the exact same reason – it looks different. Fortunately for us all, it works the same. As Pam got each new appearance figured out and began to know what clicks did what functions, she was orienting better by the minute.

Jim came by for lunch, courtesy of all the filthy weather, and we had a lovely tiffin and stretching before he bundled up for a really good afternoon’s work, as the rain had finally stopped for a bit. In the end, he was all caught up for the week, undoubtedly the one and only lawn service in this area who can say that about this week’s work.

Pam and I worked with the household books and finished about 3:00 PM. All was in order with the exception of those things we already know need Pat S’s help. He will be here from our tax accountant’s office next Wednesday to sit down with Pam, solve our existing glitches and bring Pam up to speed in various ways known only to CPAs with technical expertise. I will be so very thrilled to have our accounts in order again.

I had calling still to do for St. Luke’s, inviting all the members R through Z to a reception this Sunday, at which, I discovered, Fr. Joe has promised I shall be, with bells and CDs on. These days calling is not so difficult as it used to be in the days of people actually answering their telephones. For the most part you can leave messages. However every calling experience is an adventure, filled with the discovery of human suffering. “I am old, and I cannot hear. Please do not call me.” I received several of those responses, shouting my prayers and hopes for their well-being as I apologized for bothering them.

We are reading what Tolle says about the pain body in Morning Offering these days, and the concept seemed so very useful and informative to me as I felt the energies of these older people. For the most part there is real anger and frustration involved rather than a serene acceptance of limitation. It was my absolute pleasure to spend a bit of time after the spate of calling, just sitting and holding these people whose names I had noted in loving attention. Sweet, sweet souls under the pain. Interestingly enough, as I finished that meditation time, I found myself lifted up as well.

I needed to get my bath early, and Jim read my mind, coming in from the last of his duties in time to share a bath with me before time for Wednesday mass and supper at St. Luke’s. I went – one time only - in order to sell CDs and sold three at the supper. That segued directly into choir practice, which went long tonight as we have the celebration not only of Father Joe’s four-year anniversary this Sunday but also All Saints’ music, that being a big hewp-tee-dew, as my Uncle Bill used to say. Bill was married to a woman of Norwegian descent, which he always called Scandihoovian. He loved the lingo her family produced and hewp-tee-dew was one of their idioms and I smile, remembering him and his wonderful wit, as I use the term. At all Saints, one remembers one’s dead, and his name was on my lips at the service, as were all my family older than me. I am now the matriarch of our family clan. Imagine that!

I returned home most happy to relax into the Gaia Meditation, a good conversation with Gary and Jim, and then parting ways, with Gary going down to read in his room and Mick and I coming upstairs to snuggle with the kitties before lights out at 11 PM.