2006-12-21

After Morning Offering I briefly came upstairs to sort e-mail before leaving for church to make my Advent confession to Fr. Joe. It was a good confession.

Arriving back home I found a recipe for a dip I want to make for those present at the Annual Meeting. Meanwhile Jim was working around the house, getting all things prepared for Christmas, doing errands and working on his lawn service tools.

Gary was working all day on various L/L projects, most especially getting things ready for the L/L Research Annual Meeting. We set a tentative date for that of 12-23 at 7 PM.

After lunch Jim and I stretched and then it was time for an appointment with Gary Watrous, the solar architect who is designing our home on Avalon. We chewed through a lot of issues about which I had not even thought! It was an eye-opening conversation. Watrous asked us to do more drawing, showing him the arrangement of our rooms on all floors. He says that it will help him be sure that he’s including the spaces we want and are used to having.

I had to leave Jim to continue to talk with Gary W because I had an appointment to have my nails cut. I cannot any longer cut my own nails, especially my toenails. It was grand to get myself all trimmed up and neat of nail again.

I came home to discover that Watrous had bent Jim’s ear until 5:30, making the meeting a 3 and ½ hour session. Jim’s ears were ringing from all the discussion! We were almost immediately greeted by Romi and Carmen. Romi had brought mulled wine and kielbasa, a Polish sausage, with dark bread and sharp mustard. Carmen brought a delicious apple pie, and Jim and I added in potato salad and baked beans. Altogether it was a delicious feast. We also offered our Winter Solstice ritual in which we chant

This is the night, the longest night, the longest night of the year!
What shall we give to the night?

Then we call out a pet peeve – say, “Poverty”! We all then yell, “Poverty! BAH!” and we start all over again. When we do this I am surprised that after about fifteen minutes, we run dry of things to give to the dark side. You would think, with all the suffering in the world, we could find more things which trouble us! But each year, it is a short ritual. We added a prayer at the end this year, an invitation to the light to return.

We could not light a bonfire tonight because it had taken to drizzling and by nightfall it was soaking wet outside and chilly with it. We decided to make our atmosphere with candles and stay warm and dry indoors!

After the ritual we relaxed into a most pleasant conversation, offering the Gaia Meditation together, with Jim praying at the end, and eventually saying good night to our guests around 11 PM. Jim and I went upstairs for a final snuggle and sought our beds around midnight.