2007-01-30

The cold snap continues! I awoke still feeling vastly uncomfortable from the chest pain. I had faxed Dr. A. my condition last evening and we discussed what to do next this morning on the telephone. She wished to try some pain-plus-anti-inflammatory pills for relief while the flare-up subsides, so I have yet another pill to enjoy taking!

I felt that it would be best if I focused on non-creative work today, as my mind felt distracted and foggy, so I responded to 37 e-mails throughout the day, emptying my Inbox on Outlook. I caught up with old friends, signed petitions, did some business on L/L Research’s behalf and on Jim’s and my own hook concerning Avalon, and enjoyed a very quiet day snuggling up with my hotpad’s blessed warmth. I have a long one so I can ease both my abdomen and my shoulder.

Gary caught me mid-day with some questions from Terry Hsu, who recently sent us a cop of his Chinese translation of Book IV of The Law of One. His accomplishment is quite impressive, as he has translated Book I through IV now. Gary and I sat down together with Terry’s questions in hand and he took notes as I replied so that he could write Terry with my responses. Gary was hard at work today, all day, at the L/L Research admin helm, emptying that ever-overflowing repository of good energy coming in to L/L.

Jim and I lunched and stretched together before he took what he thought was the last load of firewood up to Avalon, got the DR Bush Mower out and mowed around the area which was Vara’s garden and which was chock full of tire-eating metal before Mick policed the area the other day.

He says things at Avalon are just about back to being tidy and clean, something we have not seen there for a while. As each volunteer left, they simply left behind those items they did not want, and unfortunately none of the volunteers had ever been keen on removing garbage from the farm, so Jim has been taking loads of debris to the Trimble County dump as he cleans up areas.

Jim came back to find, in a telephone message, that he was NOT through at St. Luke’s with that tree. Jim had cut up and hauled away the wood to what he thought was their property line. However, he was mistaken. So he will have more wood cutting to do before this job is done. The very thick old trunk is what remains, so it will be hard work.

After our bath, Jim and I watched Democracy Now which had more footage of the anti-war rally in Washington, DC, which riveted me and made me think about the word, dignity. I think there’s a column there for my UPI writings.

Romi visited in the evening and we watched an episode of House together before the Gaia Meditation. Romi also did some clean-up and back-up on Traveller, my laptop up in this office. Jim and I said good night to Gary and Romi, who were still conversing, and I went to bed early, hoping to give my body the extra rest it needs to get over this very inconvenient flare-up.

2007-01-29

I hugged my hotpad and took it easy today, hoping to rest and heal from this chest pain. I did almost nothing useful in the outer world today. However, I felt very lifted up throughout the day, as I knew this day was a magical day, dedicated to loving and supporting my own body, which is singing a song of fragility right now. Whenever I had a moment of regret for not being outwardly working, I went back to that consciousness of worth and rightness that goes with trusting that what is being given me is just the perfect gift. It’s not what you do, it’s how you BE! That was my work today. I embraced it.

Gary and I conferred about several matters concerning the upcoming Archetypes Gathering. He created the last three parts of the packet we will give the attendees – the title page, the table of contents and the beginnings of a contact page.

Also, Gary is now organized to get the chakra drawings which Valerie drew for our last Homecoming hung along our stairwell wall, a project that has hung fire for some time. I asked Mick what he needed from Gary in order to finish the hanging of the images and he told me – slats or rods to strengthen the tops and bottoms of the frame-boards for these images and hooks for fastening the images to the walls. Gary will work on that during his day-long Wednesday volunteering stint. I am most glad to get that on his roster of things to do. Gary and Jim also both will do some cooking on Wednesday.

I spent some pleasant time today reading an Ed McBain mystery and playing solitaire. I also collected some images for our solar architect from several Home and Garden-type magazines the people at Absolutely Salon gave me last time I was there. I am making a scrapbook of Jim’s and my favorite styles for exterior and interior walls, cabinets, floor treatments and so forth.

Jim went up to Avalon in the very frosty morning with another half-load of erosion control branches, his last, plus a half-load of firewood. He will be hauling firewood only on his next trip. He has really worked hard on this project and I know he’s tickled to see the end of it, as it has been a long one.

He came home for lunch and we stretched together before he braved the deep freeze again in order to cut up the last of that tree into firewood. He now has his trailer all loaded up for a last trip to Avalon. He will take the DR brush mower with him tomorrow and cut down the jungle of tall weeds which grew up in the garden space Vara made two summers ago. After that garden was finished, the volunteers on Avalon apparently used that space for construction, as it was loaded with all manner of construction debris like nails, fence wire, posts and a lot of scrap metal pieces which kept Jim from being able to cut that area all last summer. Winter has killed the growth and now Jim can see to clear the ground.

It was a quiet evening indeed, but we did not nap as we sometimes do, being in a particularly enlivened mood and greatly looking forward to the discussion on the archetypes that is coming up this next weekend. Both Jim and Gary had comments to make after working with the LOO Book IV material today, so we had a very interesting conversation during supper and before offering the Gaia Meditation, and then continuing on through the next hour or so after the meditation.

We said good night to Gary around 10:30 and had our bedtime snuggle before lights out a midnight.

2007-01-28

When I awoke I found that the chest pain I had experienced yesterday was still there, so I stayed home from church and rested all day. I spoke with Dr. A about this and she feels it is not a heart event but yet another instance of rheumatoid inflammation, this time occurring somewhere within the small joints in the chest, where various bones hook into the ribs. She also feels a nerve has been pinched, as I have left-arm symptoms of pain and tingling and it hurts to use that arm. She prescribed an extra dose of prednisone today and tomorrow, and agreed that I should rest until it lifts and also that I should call her tomorrow with an update.

I received Steve T’s e-mailed assurance that he would be glad to offer a presentation of his book on the Ra archetypes of the mind, A Fool’s Phenomenology! This is great news, as his agreement is the final piece of the preparations for the Archetypes Gathering which needed to be confirmed. Gary and I went through some nitty-gritty details on food preparation and we feel all set now for the gathering horde.

I enjoyed my day of leisure, napping, working the Sunday puzzles and reading. Jim and I enjoyed lunch and stretching and then a slow and healing whirlpool and bath before the 4 PM public meeting – a silent meditation today. Carmen T and Romi V shared that sweet time with us and then Romi and Carmen offered the Love Tea and we conversed while Jim went to a block party down the street.

Romi soon left Carmen and me to talk together in order to work on my laptop. He successfully installed a new keyboard, which I am thankfully using now to type up this journal entry. The new keyboard seems to have helped my other problem with this laptop, which was that when I boot the computer, no desktop icons or start button show up and I have to reboot. Yesterday this happened three times before I got in to my computer, so Romi has saved the day for me! Kudos to the Ro-Man!

Jim and I will treat him to a good meal at the restaurant of his choosing as our official and “out-there” thank you, but we are grateful for Romi every day, as we also are for Gary, Ian and all of those volunteers who do wonderful labors of love for us every day.

Carmen reports that she has now finished entering all my poems in a digital database so I can eventually edit them and put them up on line! Her only remaining work on that very substantial project is to regularize the format for the poems.

So we talked about what I would like for her to tackle next. She has her eye on the formidable project of regularizing the format on the manuscript of my writings during the 23 years as head of Calvary’s Intercessory Prayer Group. I sent out a little newsletter along with my prayer lists and Dianne S went through two years ago now and collected together all of my prayers, poems and essays from those years of writing. However the format is a mess in that collection, and so Carmen would like to work on that, not just to be of help but also to read what I have written.

I agreed that this would be great to do, but asked her if she would consider doing a smaller project first. Papa’s Archive has suffered in the move from various parts of my bedroom, back when space was at an absolute premium under the press of five volunteers living with us, to my upstairs office. Media drawers stretch along under the front window bank of my bower office. The drawers have gotten mixed, and I have further mixed up their contents by going through the tapes to be sure I have listened to each and every one. So Carmen will tackle that straightening-up project for me next. It will be so good to have that valuable archive of living history and Papa’s teachings in order again.

Gary and I offered the Gaia Meditation together at 9 PM, shortly after Romi and Carmen left to enjoy a late supper together at The Grape Leaf, Romi’s very favorite restaurant. Is owner is Syrian and they do know how to make delicious food!

Afterward the meditation, with me offering the ending prayer, Jim came home, startled to find he had been gone three hours. Now that’s the mark of a good party! We toddled upstairs for our bedtime snuggle with the kitties before saying good night around midnight.

2007-01-27

Saturdays are always delightful, with some leisure time built in to the day. Today, after Morning Offering, Jim went to Avalon to place the latest limbs from St. Luke's downed tree on our ravine sides to halt erosion along the access road and came back with some fast food for lunch which we enjoyed before stretching.

I spent the morning editing the second part of the third bunch of Aaron/Q;uo channelings. there are nine bunches of channeling sessions, representing the nine weekends we spent together co-channeling. it is good to be 1/3 of the way through that editing.

While Jim went back over to the fallen tree at St. Luke's to do more cutting and start to create firewood, i worked further on the Red Ray portion of Chapter Four of The Choice 101. i am still finding my way, but feel better than i did about the flow.

i was troubled today with chest pain. My heart pills have run out, as it has been a long time since i experienced this type of pain. i shall need to get more nitro pills and see if they make a difference. The pain increases when i try to use my left arm and causes shooting pains to go down my left arm all the way to the little finger, which cannot be a good thing, physically speaking.

It's too bad that this is occurring on the weekend. it is difficult to get things checked out on a weekend. i may rest tomorrow - we are having a silent meditation, so i can really rest up if i skip church. Then if the problem persists, i will seek medical attention on Monday.

Jim was the best of company at bath time and thereafter as we rested and talked about the gathering to come, the arrangements we have made and the things we still need to do. Gary and I also talked t length during the late morning and early afternoon about the upcoming Gathering, and our cirriculum is now set. Gary's done a great job oconsolidating our previous discussion.

Gary pointed out that although i talked with Steve T at the Homecoming last Labor Day about his giving a presentation at the upcoming Archetypes Gatheirng on his wonderful book on the Ra archetypes of the mind, titled A Fool's Phenomenology, I have not confirmed that he will speak. I sent him a heads-up on that by e-mail.

After a late supper and a romantic and riveting tryst with my incredibly and gloriously amorous husband, Jim and I came downstairs to offer the Gaia Meditation and then toddle off to a snuggle with the cats and an erly bedtime, as i was feeling poorly.

2007-01-26

It was a day sparkling with sunshine and frost and after Morning Offering Jim drove up to Avalon to place more branches from the big tree he is dismantling for St. Luke’s along the erosive portion of Avalon’s access road. He also did some housekeeping in Sugar Shack, making up our beds so that we can stay overnight there and stocking the firewood and kindling by the Shack’s wood stove. We are most fortunate that our volunteers worked so hard to shore up Sugar Shack’s foundation, repaint the roof and insulate the walls during their stay there. It is a much improved building for their loving labors.

I went through another ton of snail mail and then settled in to edit an Aaron/Q’uo session, the first of two in the third batch of nine which comprise the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. It was tough to edit because of Aaron’s constant usage of imaginary quotes. Rather than say “You need have no fear that you are separated from your source of comfort,” he will phrase it, “You need have no fear, ‘I am separated from my source of comfort.’ “ The difference when read is slight, but the punctuation is tricky.

As always I was struck by the excellence and magical quality of this material. I have heard several times from Barbara, the channel for Aaron, as she sojourns in South America with John of God, getting psychic surgery on her eye and ears, as well as various other parts of her body which have the need for healing. She was able to hear two claps of thunder this week and is very excited to hear for the first time in many years. I know she will be glad, as well, that this editing is coming along.

Meanwhile, Ian has placed all of the Aaron/Q’uo sessions up on our site, with the caveat that they have not yet been edited by me, where that applies. So people can now use that material, even before we get the printed book ready.

After lunch I worked more with the beginnings of Chapter Four of The Choice 101, changing the first portion around again and then working through the section on the red-ray chakra. I liked what I had done by end of day but will work it through again with a fresh eye once more before calling it finished.

I spent the last half-hour or so of my work day looking for just the right quote on despair. The thing people usually miss about red ray is that it is the seat of our survival instincts. The feeling of despair and hopelessness is a real energy constrictor and is responsible for more blockage in red ray than sexuality by far, in my opinion.

Jim spent the latter portion of his work day back at St. Luke’s, loading the trailer with yet another stack of limbs for use in erosion control along our access road. He says that he is almost ready now to start cutting on the big branches and huge trunk, to take the firewood from this felled tree. It is excellent firewood, since the tree died a natural death some years ago and only was blown down recently in a windstorm. Consequently, the wood is already seasoned and ready to use.

I had been exhausted all day and gratefully sank into slumber after Jim’s and my bath, surfacing to have dinner, share the Gaia Meditation and do some knitting before coming upstairs for a bedtime snuggle with the kitties. We said a most fond good night around midnight.

2007-01-25

The wan sunshine looked so good today as we braved the first real icebox weather of this season. Snow spat past during the morning hours, but did not stick. After Morning Offering Jim went back to St. Luke’s to work on clearing their very large fallen tree while I worked on writing a new Introduction for the Book of Days to replace the one I had made into an Appendix yesterday.

We took some time off in the afternoon in order to enjoy Gary’s Christmas gift, which was a gift certificate to The Cheesecake Factory. We had a leisurely, lovely meal featuring my absolute favorite item from their menu, avocado egg rolls and Jim’s favorite, caramel apple pie a la mode.

Jim then took off for Avalon to haul the limbs he cannot use for firewood up to Avalon, where he is using them for erosions control along our access road. Meanwhile I completed work on the new Introduction, using the suggestions Jim had offered and sending that off to Ian. I believe this now completes my text work on that book.

I settled into my chair to pray and ask for Holly’s help (I call the Holy Spirit Holly) in tackling the large subject of the red-ray energy center, moving on in Chapter Four of The Choice 101, and fell fast asleep. Mick said later that Holly answered my prayers, choosing my deepest desire – rest! That could have been true. I woke up exhausted today. The nap felt wonderful but I regretted that the afternoon work time was lost.

We spent a very quiet evening, enjoying Democracy Now and our evening meal with Gary and then saying good bye to him as he went to his girlfriend’s for the night. After the Gaia Meditation we came upstairs and ended the evening snuggling with the cats.

2007-01-24

Snow was on the ground when we arose and Jim high-tailed it to St. Luke’s to check on the condition of the walkways, but all was clear there. The snow was decorative but light and by noon it had all melted. Still, it was beautiful and I know Romi was happy!

After Morning Offering Gary and I had a planning meeting. It ended up taking the morning as we chewed through some decisions. Firstly, the matter of the remastering had gotten a bit tricky. Gary had listened to the remastering done so far and did not feel there was any change for the better. He suggested retrieving the original tape masters and sending them to two other volunteers interested in having a go at them. We have two voice audios and three music and voice audios which we sell and we are trying to get them into CD form, as most people no longer use the audiocassette medium. I wrote to Rick C and asked him to send the tapes back to us.

Gary and I also talked through some issues regarding the longer-range project of making audio downloads of our work available on our web site. We decided to target these tapes we are now remastering as our first generation of on-site audios, then the original Ra session audios and then, at length, audios of our large archive of sessions. Much still has to be discussed as to factors like the cost per download, protocol for making the audios available and so forth.

Then there was the POD investigation. That stands for “print on demand” and is a way of printing books for which you need only minimum money up front, as you can order as few as 26 books at a time. Ian can go no further with his finalization of A Book of Days until he knows which publisher we have chosen to print it.

On the other hand, we had been waiting for Ian to come to conclusions on the better of the POD printers, as he had said he would do that. It was a bit of a mix-up. I suggested to Gary that we choose our favorites among the American POD companies before we got back to Ian. We selected lulu.com after a thorough discussion.

When I found that lulu.com had quoted us a base price of close to $13.00 as our cost for the book, plus whatever profit we chose to make, of which they would then add 20% to their base price, plus shipping, I realized we could not deliver a book to the reader for under about $22.00. The Canadian POD printer Ian has used before, blitzprint.com, has a much lower price to us per book, but all the shipping costs are higher from Canada by quite a bit, so that option looks expensive to the reader as well, though better for us.

So I suggested we ask Ian to send Brad S at Beechmont Press the present PDF version of the manuscript and get a quote from him for printing 1,000 copies in the old-fashioned way. When we published A Wanderer’s Handbook with them in 2001, they brought the product home for about $11.00 per copy, and that was a much larger book. Of course in the five years since we did that book, prices have gone up, but we shall see just how much.

Lastly, Gary and I discussed adding a “free subscription” button to the llresearch site, so people could subscribe to the UPI article sends, the sends of our Light/Lines newsletter or the Gatherings Newsletter with a click of their mouse. I think it is a good idea. So I wrote descriptions of those three things and sent all that off to Ian with strict instructions not to work on this until it was a convenient time for him. I sometimes overload our faithful WebGuy!

Jim came back from St. Luke’s where he continued to work on cutting up their huge fallen tree, for lunch and we enjoyed stretching together before he took off for Avalon to dump the small branches from it which we cannot use for firewood.

I decided that with everything coming to a head on the finalization of A Book of Days, I had better get some text rewritten as promised, so I spent the afternoon pulling the old Introduction out of the manuscript and reworking it so that it is now an Appendix. It was too scholarly to make a really appropriate Introduction, I thought. By the end of the day, I had rewritten and, I think, improved the text. It felt very good. I introduced topic headings which seemed to make the whole text easier to read and follow and added information.

I shall need to replace the previous Introduction, now an Appendix, with a new Introduction before my work here is done. Hopefully I shall have the time to tackle that tomorrow morning.

After a bath and a good Democracy Now offering various interviewees’ points of view on the State of the Union I attended choir practice. We practiced much new music and I can see that we will have a tasty Lenten program. It is amazing to see the time pass so quickly that we are already practicing for Ash Wednesday! I should not be surprised, as the crocuses and snow drops are blooming and telling me that spring is coming. However they currently have a very cold environment, as wintry weather has come to Kentucky at last.

Jim and I had a date after our late supper and the Gaia Meditation and snuggled with the cats before an early bedtime.

2007-01-23

I felt so much better today! What a blessing to have a clear head again. Yesterday I was very muzzy, and I missed me! Whatever that was, it has departed the fix outbound, thank the Lord.

After Morning Offering Jim tackled the basement corner where we keep paints and tools and bits and pieces for construction and repair. I came upstairs to check through my Inbox and make absolutely sure I had edited all the L/L Research channelings there. I have a vague sense that I have missed at least one, so I wrote Gary to that effect and he shall check for me in his records, as he sends me the raw transcripts.

I was delighted and surprised to find that he had already transcribed the session from Sunday, so I worked on that during the morning and was able to finish editing it before lunch. I sent it off to Ian.

Jim surfaced from his subterranean labors and we had a good lunch and stretching exercise before he headed back to the depths. I used the afternoon to rework the beginning of Chapter Four for, oh, maybe the sixth time, but this time I did not go back behind myself deleting, having found the flow I was seeking. What a blessing when things start to flow and resonate.

I spent a good half hour, however, hunting for an elusive footnote, grinning like a fool when I found it at last. I wanted to use words from a hymn called “Fight the Good Fight” but I was quoting from the second verse, which begins “Run the straight race” and was hunting under that as a first line, which did not work! Finally I sat down with the hymnal and paged through it. I struck lyrics on page 560. Eureka!Gary is working on the curriculum for the Gathering, and I sent him the column which he has not yet seen as it is not due until tomorrow on the archetypes to go with the one he already has. He will include them in the packet.

Gary and I also chatted back and forth about creating an Avalon Journal blog. We have the older entries from that Journal archived on llresearch, but I would like now to resume making entries, as Jim and I visit the land often and plan new things there. Gary was keen on the idea and agreed to create the blog itself as he has the time.

After a most refreshing whirlpool and bath, Jim, Gary and I sat down with Romi, who had come over to visit, for a meeting on the curriculum for the Archetypes Gathering. We talked for a couple of hours and changed things around a good bit. I think it is coming together well. We will have another round of discussion when Gary consolidates the harvest of tonight’s meeting.

In between things, I knitted on the baby blanket and Jim did some juggling while we listened to Bonnie Raitt’s new album – well, new to us! As always I am in love with her sensibility and musicianship, as well as her ability to create a funky, easy atmosphere with that slide guitar. Clever lady! We also enjoyed Amy Goodman’s show this evening, as she interviewed several knowledgeable people concerning the actual state of the war in Iraq. I do wish the administration would tune in and make use of her good information!

We had a delicious supper together before the Gaia Meditation. I offered the closing prayer.

We ended the day fairly early, as snow is predicted and Jim will need to visit St. Luke’s quite early and clear away for the pre-school and staff.

2007-01-22

After a leisurely Morning Offering, with our lingering in bed to celebrate Mick’s off-season, Jim headed up the frosty road to Avalon in a solid, sullen, lowering overcast. Avalon is upriver from Louisville three counties to the northeast, and by the time Mick arrived at the farm, there was snow on the ground, which we missed down south here. He hiked around, walking the land, and staked our personal home’s lot boundaries. Now we are ready to call the surveyors and have the piece surveyed off from the rest of Avalon.

Before he left Anchorage, however, he started cutting up a fallen tree of quite some size at St. Luke’s which they have asked him to remove and he hauled up a large load of branch-ends to start placing over the concrete work he did last week, where the half-mile access road to Avalon was washing.

This technique has worked at other problem places along this road, which crawls down the side of a ravine at the bottom of which, 250 feet down there, runs the feeder creek to Locust Creek. Its lins are simply lovely in the freshets of spring rain, making waterfalls down the rock face of the ravine wall like a wet weather spring makes its creeklet run. The branch-end debris creates a scree of organic material which, over time, becomes good earth, breeding bushes and young trees to hold the soil.

I decided that this was not a creative day for me, as I was feeling seriously under the weather and quite unable to think well. However I truly wished not simply to give up working for the day, so I worked on editing, eventually finishing three channeling transcripts, which I sent to Ian by end of day. I especially enjoyed working on the January 7th transcript – the one we tried, but failed, to broadcast due to unknown glitches.

My only other outwardly useful act was to find two recipes from which Jim and I can choose Gary’s birthday dessert. He loves peanut butter, so I found a peanut butter cake recipe, with chocolate-peanut butter icing, and a peanut-chocolate cream recipe for bar cookies. Both are easily made up, since the cake recipe starts with a mix, which I do NOT scorn; mixes are quite good these days - in terms of taste and texture, of course, not in terms of nutritive value and uses staple ingredients. My favorite recipe website is www.epicurious.com. It contains a quite large database and you can find recipes ranging in difficulty from the very simple to the gourmet. My only gripe is that the formatting is tricky to copy over to my own recipes database.

Gary’s birthday comes up on February 4th. That’s the last day of our workshop, during which we will have the closing channeling and watch the SuperBowl. About half of our attendees will stay for the bash. Gary’s got the material for the attendees’ packets all prepared now and we so look forward to the excellent conversations and also just the joy of seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

Jim was very weary after tramping about in the wintry weather on Avalon and we decided to have a low-energy evening, watching a block of Star Trek Enterprise after seeing Democracy Now. We had missed all of the episodes which they showed, so it was a great evening.

Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now is so valuable. I recommend tuning her in, whether on PBS, NPR or from satellite feeds. Nowhere else can one hear the voice of dissent so clearly. The program last night was upon the media’s role in not reporting the huge story of America’s loss of our middle class. Corporations are paying people less and giving fewer benefits while living costs rise, and these days it takes two people to earn less usable income than one provider did thirty years ago. The quality of our national life is in the toilet. Yet the mass media does not report this story.

I was unable to eat dinner at all, so nourished myself with a glass of “Boost”, a dietary supplement designed not for diets but for old ladies who aren’t eating well, like my young self. I swear by the concoction. My doctor told me one of her patients lived for ten years on nothing but Boost and Ensure – she switched off to get different flavors. Ah, technology! I knitted a bit before our Evening Offering, the Gaia Meditation, with Jim praying at the end, and we ended the day snuggling with the cats.

2007-01-21

Our day began quite early compared to most Sundays, as Mick needed to go to St. Luke’s and spread calcium chloride on the walkways and parking lots before people started showing up for the service.

It was sleeting and the road conditions were marginal so I asked Mick to drive my neighbor, Calvin, and me to church for the service, which was held two hours early, at 9 AM, so that the whole parish could have their annual meeting before lunch. It was unfortunate that the weather was so poor, as about half of the congregation stayed home. The meeting was a good one. This is a happy, productive and spirit-filled parish. I am thankful to be a part of it.

The music we got to sing was delightful today – O Light Divine by Archangelsky and the chorus, There Shall A Star From Jacob Come Forth, from Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah, one of my favorite sacred choral pieces of all time, right on the heels of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, his Christmas Oratorio and Brahms’ and Mozart’s Requiems. Well, I love Bach’s Passions also, but they are long, long pieces with many narrative recitatives, better for a quiet listen during seasons of repentance as a background to contemplation than music to play in happier and less introspective times.

During the meeting, a neighbor told me that our power was out at Camelot, which is to be expected during an ice storm. However the power company had the power on in about two hours, a record fast time. We were most grateful! We had just prepared food for the entire week and would have hated to lose it.

After Mick picked me up from church we had a good meal together, then a bath and then Jim watched the Saints lose to the Bears. I am happy for Chicago, but I had really wanted the Saints to win, as after Hurricane Katrina, and no real progress of clean-up in its aftermath, I truly wished for them to have some good fortune. There was an excellent piece before the game on the lack of progress especially in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans and I give kudos to Terry Bradshaw for making the situation clear to the world. I only wish he had run an 800 number for donations. I imagine he could have raised some serious funds for rehabbing those sad streets the TV showed so well, as that audience was huge.

Oh well. The Saints did make it to the play-offs, and they win on style points. Their uniforms are the most handsome ones around, I think.

Meanwhile I snuggled up to Jim’s side and conked out for a good nap. It turned out that Jim slept through a lot of the game also. We were making up for lost morning sleep and it felt wonderful.

We bathed and then welcomed Carmen and Romi for the meditation meeting at 4 PM. Romi set up for the broadcast of the channeling and I am happy to say that it went well today, as opposed to our last broadcast, which failed to air because of a glitch which Romi never could find. The question was on how polarity works; specifically what effect imperfect action has on pure intentions as to polarity. I look forward to editing the response from the Q’uo group.

We talked a bit about ways to let more people know we are broadcasting, as we are collecting only small listening audiences. We decided that Romi would write a letter for Gary to send to the UPI send group and the Gatherings send group, and Gary would send the letter on to Tim for his Light/Lines send group. I will write Don and Wynn at BBS radio and ask them to shout it out also over their network.

We had Romi’s Love Tea afterwards, with the spinach-artichoke dip which we had baked. Conversation flowed and then dinner was enjoyed by all. We turned the other semi-final play-off on, with the Colts eventually trouncing the New England Patriots. I was not happy with that game’s outcome either, as I have an ancient grudge against the Colts organization. The owner pulled up big rigs in the middle of the night in Baltimore, years ago, and snuck out of town with no announcement, having found a better deal for himself in Indianapolis. It was a shabby move and they are still in disfavor with me! Oh well. I must say it was a good game, one which kept me awake! We talked to Mom during the game, getting that weekly call in.

We offered the Gaia Meditation at 9 PM, with Gary offering the ending prayer and I knitted for a while as the game played out on TV. We ended the day, as always, snuggling with the kitties before saying good night.

2007-01-20

Brilliant sunshine softened the blow of cold today and we all enjoyed the calm before the predicted storm which will hit tomorrow morning, at church time of course. After a Morning Offering and a protracted puzzling time, I went upstairs to work on e-mail while Jim continued his basement clean-up. By lunch time he had completely revamped and moved my gift wrapping supplies, as we had discussed.

Meanwhile
- I answered some editing questions Ian still had about Jo D-P’s channeling.
- I got in touch with a Naturopathic Doctor, Martin Milner, to whom two friends have referred me, saying that his advice had aided a friend of theirs.
- I responded to Monica L’s letter. Now there is a perfect case of good-news-bad-news. She was not at all fond of her job, as it kept her away from people; she spent her time working on the computer. However it paid the bills and gave her financial security. She has been laid off along with over 100 other people. We talked back and forth about options for her next move. Naturally, with her livelihood to find, she is not able to take up the volunteer position of moderator for an L/L Research forum now, so I suggested that both she and the proposed WebGuy for that site, her son, David, stand down on that project for now.
- I talked back and forth with Ian about final changes to the Book of Days. We have agreed that I will move the fairly scholarly material presently in the Introduction to an Appendix and write a much shorter and more user-friendly Introduction in its place. We also decided to leave the daily readings as they are, not changing the formatting to italics on the first and last paragraphs as I had been considering doing. Long story short – it doesn’t work.
- Rick C and I wrote back and forth about the remastering of our audiocassette tape products over to CD. I am not getting a proper handle on this at all! We only have five products of that type and still I am confused. I shall look at poor Rick’s patient letter again tomorrow!

In the afternoon, after a most pleasant lunch with Mick and our stretching exercise routine, we went to the basement where he showed me what he had done. The new wrap center is a tremendous improvement over the previous arrangement and looks so much better! It will be much more handy to wrap presents there, and all my supplies fit well in the new space. Jim found that we had some unused drawer and cabinet space in the laundry section, so now I shall wrap away over in that corner. This cleans out all of the space by the basement’s outside door and things look much tidier. Kudos to Jim!

Feeling down-pin, I gave myself the afternoon off and enjoyed a positive orgy of solitaire, reading and knitting. Jim took his cleaning and tidying routine outside and our yard greatly benefited as he found another garbage bag-full of leaves and much storm debris to clear. I think this is the best our yard has looked in years! We walked around and enjoyed the yard together. I love the way Mick re-created the placement of the statue of St. Francis we have. It is now perfectly snugged into a curve in Jim’s brick walkway.

We got together after our bath for a viewing of “The Devil Wears Prada”, a film about the fashion magazine industry and haute couture itself. I got to see a ton of snazzy outfits and wonderful comic acting from Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. Even Jim enjoyed the film because it had such a good story and good ensemble. He was not that fond of the clothes!

We offered the Gaia Meditation together and then Jim cleaned the kitchen while I pulled out my knitting and did another few rows. I am knitting densely – number eight needles - so the finished blanket will be very warm and snuggly, so it takes quite a few rows to equal an inch. I’ll be knitting for a while on this. Fortunately, the birth date is a half-year away.

We closed up shop and came upstairs for a last snuggle with the kitties quite early. Jim may need to get St. Luke’s sidewalks and steps clear of snow and ice tomorrow morning very early.

We were both awash in gratitude today, for some reason, feeling that these are golden days for us – and feeling lucky to be experiencing them together.

2007-01-19

Chilly was the day today! I hived in while Jim continued his rounds of errands and household clean-up. In the morning he worked to clear the basement area under the stairwell which had gotten no attention for a couple of years. His goal is to have the whole house and grounds spring-cleaned before the end of his off-season. Kudos to householder Mick!

I worked after Morning Offering to edit Jo D-P’s personal session with Q’uo. The transcriber apparently could not understand the tape well, and it was a slow editing job, as I frequently had to guess from context what the Q’uo group actually said. I believe the transcript is faithful in that sense, but it really needs a re-listening somewhere down the road to get all the words.

I liked the material in that session and synchronistically found a little quote within its pages which I can use in my present writing on Chapter Four.

After lunch and our stretching exercise, Jim headed out to pick up some repaired tools and do some work for a customer. I worked on Chapter Four. It is not flowing yet. I did write some new material that stayed! At least, I like it so far. But something is not clicking yet. I shall persevere.

Gary was not able to pick up a shift at Cracker Barrel today as he intended to do, so he spent the day doing the shopping and cooking to prepare food for next week. He and Jim have thought ahead and are making double recipes, so after the Archetypes Gathering the household will have food for that next week. Smart guys! The kitchen smelled wonderful all afternoon.

Gary is very thoughtful. I had asked him to pick up the ingredients for making Melissa T’s wonderful artichoke-spinach dip, a concoction that is baked and tastes heavenly. I had thought to offer it in the evening as we had guests coming. When I went down to make that recipe at the end of my working day, I found that Gary had already made it up! So I got to work an extra half-hour on the Choice 101 book.

After a wonderfully refreshing bath with Mick, I sat for a while, as I have needed to do for the past several months, to recover. I suppose it is the anemia, but after a bath I seem to be in a state of light shock for a while, my pulse rises to 130 or so and my awareness is very dim. I look forward to leaving these symptoms behind. Meanwhile, I rest a bit after my daily ablutions and get my breath back!

Jim and I enjoyed Democracy Now before coming downstairs to greet Carmen. Romi also was slated to join us, but was feeling under the weather, so he cancelled. Gary, Mick, Carmen and I watched a movie, The Great Train Robbery with Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland. It was a beautiful production, with period details both in costume and setting that were amazingly detailed and accurate. It made for a very stylish show and we enjoyed it.

I took up my knitting while we conversed afterwards. The baby blanket now has about three inches to it! We shared a late supper and the Gaia Meditation before saying good night to Carmen and Gary and coming upstairs at 10 PM. Lights-out was early tonight, about 11 PM, as we were both quite weary.

2007-01-18

The weather was still in the deep freeze today and I got out my old warm-up leggings to put on under my skirt in order to feel cozy all day. Jim and I are greatly enjoying a little book of devotions by Evelyn Underhill, Thoughts for Advent, during Morning Offering. We are reading it out of season, but the readings remain fresh and thoughtful.

After the Morning Offering was finished, Jim got a load of materials, such as chicken wire, vinyl panels and guttering, and took it all up to Avalon for adding to our collection of building materials there. He took a sandwich and stayed all day, clearing the garden area near Sugar Shack of a large number of metal pieces of all sorts, from nails and bolts to scraps. Apparently when the volunteers were living there, they cut pieces there and never policed the area afterwards.

Jim says he discovered that they also completely buried with soil an old well which had pretty stone work. Why they covered it over is a mystery to us. Another mystery is a large number of stones which are scattered around the meadow. The purpose for which they were scattered we shall never know. However Jim says he will need to spend a day just clearing the meadow of all sorts of material. He came home at dusk with only a part of his long list of things to do up there accomplished. I see many such trips to Avalon in his immediate future, as he wishes to prepare the place for our visits there and for construction.

Before he left there, he got two beds set up again in Sugar Shack, which for some reason had been stripped of beds in the room with the wood stove. We plan to go up on overnights more and more as time goes on so we need a place to lay our heads. We had been used to visiting at least one day a week in the summer, but ceased those visits while there were volunteers living there. It will be good to be embraced by Avalon’s sweet energy once again.

Meanwhile I spent a long morning editing the three-part series of UPI articles I wrote on Indigo Children for inclusion in UPI’s 2006 sampler volume. It seemed a better choice for showcasing in such a sampler book than “Let Your Lights Appear”, which had won the poll taken of readers and which I had originally sent in for inclusion. The trouble with “Let Your Lights Appear” Is that it is a seasonal piece, written in late Advent, and therefore not as useful for reading out of season. The Indigo Child series is general information and thought, not tied to any season of the year.

I took a late lunch and then came back to the office for work on The Choice 101, which took the rest of the day. I am attempting now to find the best way to discuss red-ray issues. I am not there yet! I did a lot of writing and deleting. Sometimes I am very hard to satisfy.

In and amongst this editing and writing, I talked with Fr. Joe on the telephone. He likes the readings in A Book of Days and will write me a back-cover blurb for it! I am most glad to get this necessary bit of text started, as we are almost ready to publish now. However I have a couple of changes I wish to make if they are feasible.

For one thing, I would like to move my present, scholarly Preface to an Appendix and write a far less imposing Preface for the book to welcome readers. I imagine that will be OK with the book’s producer, our WebGuy, Ian.

My other request may not be feasible, and that is to italicize the somewhat repetitive opening and closing greetings of each reading. It is an artifact of my channeling process that I receive these openings and closings. The thoughts for the day are sandwiched between them. You can see this characteristic format in just about every transcript we have – the opening bit is often almost word for word the same, and the closing farewell is also fairly standard. It seems to me that italicizing the opening and closing greeting paragraph in each day’s reading will focus the eye on the thought for the day itself. However if Ian finds it too burdensome a task, I will forget about it.

A call to FoFo J at St. Luke’s ended my work day. She is in charge of volunteers for helping at the diocesan convention, which St. Luke’s is hosting this year. She said she would definitely put me down for work at the vending table and perhaps at the registration table as well. I am glad to help with this huge enterprise as long as I can sit down! My days of being able to run about and do physical things are behind me.

Jim arrived back home at dusk, ready for a relaxed evening. We bathed and caught Democracy Now before enjoying a romantic tryst and napping a bit. I wonder just how many old married people in their 60s have as much fun, still, as Mick and I do! Not too many, I would guess. The energy exchange is so precious and healing that we both feel very blessed to have this energy between us.

We came down for a good supper and then got into movie mode, as Jim wanted to show Gary the movie, The Ninth Configuration, which was Don Elkins’ second-favorite movie of all time. (His absolute favorite was The Seventh Seal, a Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman.) I pulled out my knitting, as this was my fourth viewing of that film, and got a bit further on the baby blanket for Kori whilst matters of life, spiritual love and religion were explored on screen. The movie is 30 years old now but holds up well to viewing. The eternal questions with which the movie deals make for good pondering.

Afterwards, we sat and talked about some of the issues of the movie with Gary, who was especially interested in details of polarization, and how much of it was intention versus manifestation. The movie turns on this issue, with the anti-hero both slaughtering many, in Viet Nam and also in a bar fight late in the movie, and yet also being the most service-to-others, Christ-like figure imaginable. Was he “good”? “Bad”? It’s hard to say! We came to no solid conclusions.

We said good night to Gary at 11 PM and to each other, after a snuggle with the cats, at midnight.

2007-01-17

The IC woke me early today and was active throughout the day, slowing me down a lot. I kept at the desk work today, spending the morning writing a good long letter to Mom DeWitt, my mother in law from my first marriage. She is now in a nursing home 35 miles away and I have not felt safe driving that far by myself, both because of the bladder spasms and because of the side effect they often have of making me dizzy. So getting off a loving letter to her was first on my correspondence list. Normally I hand-write personal letters. However Mom can barely see because of macular degeneration, so I typed the letter and printed it out at 26-point font size.

I had a screw-up with the printer up here that made me giggle. I did not realize that the printer was not plugged in to my computer’s USB port and kept asking it to work when it could not. I finally figured that out, plugged the printer back in to my computer and the printer took of printing everything. I hastily got into the printer’s program and cancelled the pages that I could, since I had asked the printer to print multiple times.

I wasted about six sheets of paper of what was printed. The reason? The printer was now out of toner and nothing was printing clearly. I finally got that worked out just in time to leave for a lunch meeting with our woman of business, Doris S. It was a most helpful meeting. She went over all our finances and explained how to proceed with acquiring the money to pay these construction costs. I never heard of a “line of credit mortgage” but that’s the way it is usually done.

Unfortunately a really rough spasm caught me while at that meeting and I was rendered far less intelligent than I need to be to work on the book during the remainder of the afternoon, so I dealt with other things when we got home instead.

It turns out, I found as Larry M and I corresponded, that UPI’s web mail is not always getting to its people – a serious glitch. That is why my last two articles were not published. I really need to check to make sure they are up on the UPI site! I generally do not do that. Larry thinks they have it fixed now. Larry published the first article today and will publish the second one next week. I am doing a series on the archetypes – a natural subject about which to think and ponder as we prepare here for the Archetype Gathering in a couple of weeks.

I had decided to change my choice for the UPI 2006 sampler to the three-part series I did on Indigo Children last night, going to sleep. Larry independently wrote and said he thought that series would be my best choice for the sampler, which made me feel validated. Getting that ready to send in will be tomorrow morning’s first piece of work.

Monica L had been going to call this morning about creating a L/L Research forum website but she did not, and wrote to say she would e-mail me before calling. I sent her back suggestions for the best times to call.

I fielded a request from Kathy R to be added to the UPI send list and forwarded that to Gary, who does that “send” each week.

Gary sent me a notice he received which advertises the film for which I was interviewed in June, 2005, in Britain. The web site for it is http://www.timeofthesixthsun.com. It looks like it will be a smashingly good film. I am listed as one of the people interviewed, which is why the ad got sent to Gary. I recommend checking this web site out. The film-maker, a woman doing this project all on her own, is soliciting funds so she can finish the filming.

Lastly, I chatted by e-mail with Ian concerning a new link I asked him to put on the llresearch site for Gina Jones, whose book, Flying Between two Worlds, includes many principles from the Law of One material, which inspired her book. I look forward to reading the book. She says Jim Carrey has optioned a screenplay based on the book, but is not yet satisfied with the screenplay. If Carrey’s production company ends up taking the film on, we shall need to send him some of our new “All Is One” L/L Research tee shirts.

After an early bath I was off to serve at a church tea, a fund-raiser for the Episcopalian-founded orphanage here in Louisville – a worthy cause indeed. There was also a bourbon tasting, which I greatly enjoyed. I was the money girl at the door and collected a handsome sum, over a thousand dollars, during the tea.

I went right from that to choir practice and then from choir practice to a night of jazz at Clifton’s. We love Walker and Kays and catch a set as often as we can. It was a fine evening and we drove home through crystal-clear air, the night stars twinkling away in the cold night. We offered the peace meditation on the way. We arrived home weary and ready to snuggle down with the kitties. We said good night around 11 PM.

2007-01-16

We woke this morning to a deep freeze, with hard frost on the ground and a mailbox so cold I had to pummel it in order to open it to put in the mail I had generated yesterday. Then there was more pounding to free the mailbox’s flag. I came in with cold hands and a very chilly paper to read! And the thought: Romi will be so happy!!

After a good Morning Offering I came upstairs to work on the snail mail again. By lunchtime the mail was sorted. I spent a good half hour at the end of the morning just filing items in the downstairs office that had come in to my Inbox, things Gary was not sure how to handle. The result of a solid morning’s work was a cleared desk. However, a huge pile of now-organized mail awaits my response, plus all the thank-you notes from Christmas are yet to do. Ah well – progress has been made, anyway.

Jim and I had a good lunch and stretched before I plunged back into Chapter Three. I wanted to verify the footnotes before putting the chapter to bed and it is a good thing I did! In the extensive rewriting and shifting about I had done yesterday I had somehow mislaid an entire quotation which I definitely wished to use. This caused me to re-read the whole chapter. I did some re-formatting and replaced the missing quotation.

I believe the chapter is truly finished now! I sent that off to Steve M for his comments and turned to the beginnings of Chapter Four. I got about a page and a half into the narrative on the red-ray energy center.

Meanwhile Jim, my best critic, has now read the semi-final version of the chapter I gave him last night and he really liked it. That’s great news.

At the end of the afternoon I did some e-mail, writing a report to Rick C on our tape-to-CD remastering project. I am chagrined indeed to find that we have mislaid some of his work. Fortunately it is digital, and he can simply make us another copy of what we are missing, but what awful thoughtlessness on my part to have lost that material. I can certainly see how it happened, as my desk was literally awash with all kinds of things during the Christmas holidays. The material that is missing no doubt became a cat toy or fell into my wastebasket.

I read Barbara B’s entries in her South American Journal. She is having a good visit with John of God. She let me know that the entities there, to whom I had sent my photo at her request, were working on me. Of that I was already aware, as I have felt their presence during moments of prayer for several days now.

Barbara’s ears are still deaf, but she has all kinds of physical effects occurring so we shall see what time brings. I believe it entirely possible for miracles to happen, to her, to me and to us all.

I then investigated the UPI situation. Sure enough, for the last two weeks, they have not posted my column. Gary tipped me off to that, as he is responsible for the sends to our reader send list. I wrote them to ask whassup! I need to know in terms of writing tomorrow. I imagine they will tell me to lay off on writing new columns for a couple of weeks while they post what I have already sent them. I do wonder how they lost me two weeks in a row.

Monica L wants to have a telephone chat on the subject of creating an L/L Research forum site, and I wrote to let her know when I would be available tomorrow.

And lastly, I took a moment to write Aaron T, who is volunteering her time transcribing my taped letters from that period where I could not sit up in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Those tapes are rich in material about spiritual seeking since on tape I can ramble on more easily than when I am constrained by the typing process and my slow fingers. Hopefully the material covered in those letters to seekers of that period will be of use to seekers now going on the web site. Aaron was looking for reassurance that she was doing her job well, and truly she is, so it was an easy letter to write!

Then I dashed up to the village of Middletown to get a manicure, as tomorrow I will be serving at a church tea and wished to be more carefully groomed than usual. In years past a weekly manicure was part of my routine and I loved that. When looking for ways to save money a few years ago, I found the routine easy to give up. However for special occasions I do love my “do”. I took along the pearls Morris H gave me this Christmas so we could match the subtle coloration, as I will wear the pearls with my outfit tomorrow evening. It is good to be groomed!

I came home to find Gary in residence and we all had a good supper before Gary headed out to spend time with his girlfriend, Valerie. Gary also gave me my Christmas present, which he had not given me at Christmas because he was not here. It is a gift certificate to The Cheesecake Factory restaurant. I will greatly enjoy treating my dear husband to a special night thanks to Gary!

This was a sleepy-stupid night for me. I gave in to that pervasive state of mind and slept soundly in my Mama chair until the Gaia Meditation. Fortunately I awoke at just the right time! I then read in a Nora Roberts book about magic while Jim juggled and we let some Steve Earle music enliven us with his Revolution Starts Now CD. About 10 PM we went upstairs for our bedtime snuggle with the kitties, saying good night around 11 PM.

2007-01-15

Note it down! I slept through the time allotted for writing this Journal this morning! What a wonderful experience. I was perky when I finally did awaken completely and had a good morning, after Morning Offering, working to investigate the drifts of mail on my desk. I got about halfway through the mass of mail. We received many beautiful Christmas cards quite late this season, and I have now decorated my office with them. It makes me smile to see them. I especially loved Papa’s homemade card.

A good many prisoners send us cards. It is humbling and strengthening as well to realize that for a lot of prisoners, our little newsletters and volunteers’ snail mail letters on L/L Research’s behalf constitute a large part of their support system. We hear about that at Christmas. One incarcerated soul noted that our friendship now goes back 20 years,

After lunch, I worked my way through Chapter Three of The Choice 101 again, looking at the material with a new eye as I know now that I want this to be a chapter unto itself. I found a good deal more to say to introduce the subject of mind and consciousness, with a new quote as well, which added material I think slows down the narrative to the baby step approach where people can really follow. It needed that! I was going too fast, too much in love with the subject to think about where the average person is coming from on that subject.

It is not easy for anyone to think about the mind. Our “science” of psychology gives us various approaches to the subject of the mind which are interesting but they are not good models for spiritual seeking. We do not even have good words for various aspects of mind in our language, except psychological terms which are very limiting.

Yet if people are going to be able to use the information about the chakras in the next chapter, they need to understand the Confederation information about the way their minds work. I was satisfied by the end of the afternoon that the chapter was well completed.

Jim and I bathed and watched Amy Goodman and then visited the local crafts store, picking up some needles and yarn for my use. My matron of honor’s daughter, Kori K-D, is with child and I want to knit a baby blanket for her layette. Jim and I came home and put some good music on the stereo and Jim danced and juggled while I knitted. We love Robbie Robertson’s music for Native Americans and so enjoyed listening to that.

As to knitting – my knit-and-purl muscles were creaky indeed! Talk about feeling sheepish! I cast on OK, after not touching knitting needles for almost 25 years, and then found that I had forgotten how to knit the second row. I had to put the project away.

Jim and I shared supper and the Gaia Meditation with Gary and during the meditation, the secret of continuing to knit came back to me. You turn the knitting around when a row is finished so you are always knitting left needle to right needle. I felt like such a goofball, but most thankful for spirit’s boost!

So I spent the rest of the evening knitting a few first rows of the blanket. It is an interesting yarn, sort of a chenille with slubs of heathered colors mixed in. it is entirely washable and I thought it would feel soft for the baby. The basic color is sort of blue-green, with earth-tone slubs. It is knitting up very pretty

Jim and I had a lovely snuggle with the kitties after we came upstairs and said good night around 11 PM.

2007-01-14

The Sabbath was dripping wet and warm all day, a gray backdrop to an otherwise cheerful day. Jim spent the morning cleaning while I attended a meeting for those helping with an upcoming diocesan convention at St. Luke’s, then went to choir practice and then sang the service.

I dropped by a fast food emporium o the way home and brought back lunch for Jim and me, after which I came upstairs and wrote the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday, something I had been unable to do earlier because of a wonderfully late awakening. I awoke, for the first time in years, after 8:30! Jim called bath time as I finished that, and then it was time for the public meeting.

Carmen had arrived just after lunch to put in some volunteer time on her poetry typing. She is entering my huge lifetime output of poems and songs. It will be great to have that available for future editing. Romi also came a bit early as he had wanted to see what new parts the computer people had sent us for my laptop. The keyboard needs replacement. Nothing had yet arrived. Talking to Gary later in the day, we found that no notice of the order having been received by the vendor had been sent to us. Romi will need to start the process over again. Meanwhile my laptop is doing fairly well, losing the keyboard only once or twice a day, which is better than it was doing for a while last year.

We had a splendid talk around the circle and a silent meditation. I do love group meditations especially when they are silent. Carmen and Romi made the Love tea and we sat and conversed until dinner time. Romi departed before dinner, but Carmen stayed and we enjoyed a good conversation. I also greatly enjoyed the New York Times Sunday puzzle, which Romi had brought me.

After dinner Gary, Carmen and I read for a good while, while Jim watched football. It was good to see the Bearsssss (in honor of Dan Ackroyd’s character on SNL) win. All the games of which I saw part were good ones, an active offense and a tight run. Jim was a happy man!

Gary had gotten a video and Carmen, Gary, Jim and I watched “Word Play” together before offering the Gaia Meditation, with Gary offering the ending prayer. We said good night to Carmen and Gary at 10 PM and snuggled with the kitties until our own lights out at midnight.

2007-01-13

What a gray Saturday we had! It is quite warm, still, but shower after shower dogged the day and I was quite pleased to be indoors, although Jim and I did walk about the yard a bit before it got too wet, just enjoying the fresh new growth. Our daffodils are up about three inches of stem into the new world and the first Lenten rose has bloomed already! Our plants are behaving as if it were about six weeks ahead of the actual date. Global warming has definitely come to Kentucky.

Jim’s new bench is capacious enough for a couple plus their lunch! I enjoyed the way it changes the side yard. Previously, that little bit of our acre was rather down-pin, with a pile of rocks beside the maintenance area for Jim’s mowers. Now it looks spic and span. Jim’s work area is always kept very clean and tidy, so the side yard is much redeemed.

Gary had done a handsome job of getting the questions which Terry H has been sending us in past weeks while working on his translation into Chinese of Book IV into a form from which I could quickly see Terry’s concerns and respond. There were eleven different e-mails involved, each one covering between one and four questions. I reviewed them and then had Gary set me up with a tape recorder so I could answer. It took me until lunch to answer each one. I am no final authority, but am probably a better helper for translation questions than most.

I felt it was a good use of my time, as to have a Chinese translation of The Law of One is an incredible asset. I have always thought that if we could interest an Oriental publisher in TLOO, we would have a much better chance of being read and accepted there than in this part of the world, because in the East there is an almost universal belief in reincarnation. Reincarnation is a staple in the Confederation pantry of concepts describing the spiritual environment and many Westerners cannot accept that. So it is not ever going to be mainstream here.

After lunch Jim and I sat down and had a long and serious talk about plans for Avalon. We decided to embark on the surveying and paperwork needed to subdivide a personal house site for Jim, Garry and me within Avalon, not the one chosen before but a new one. While we have no present plans to re-open community on Avalon, it is well to have the legal underpinnings in place so that if the occasion arises, all will be in order.

With that decided I came upstairs and generated some of my part of the next round of activity in planning our house-to-be, which is a description of the Library in our Avalon house. It was fun to dream a little as I wrote down what I hoped to see in that room. I am probably dreaming too big a dream, as each square foot of space costs money and I envision a quite large Library as being desirable. It would never be used for anything except spiritually oriented purposes like study of our Library materials, private meditations, meditation meetings and Gatherings. We do not have that separate room that holds a specifically sacred space here at Camelot and things get crowded when we gather in any numbers.

I also wrote to our Avalon lawyer, Jeff P, letting him know of Jim’s and my latest talk. He stands ready to help us with the paperwork involved in getting Avalon subdivided.

Then I decided to go with the winner of the poll taken by readers of my UPI articles – I was looking for one “best” column to send in for inclusion in the UPI sampler for 2006. The column that took the most votes was “Let Your Lights Appear”. It was a tough choice for me to make. I was quite tempted to submit the three-part series on Indigo Children, for instance. An a reader had suggested the last in my chakra body series as a personal best for the year, as she felt that I covered a lot of good material well and succinctly. Both of those other suggestions seemed to me to be just about as good. I may even change my mind and send in one or the other of those other choices before the week is out.

Bath time came all too soon! There is something about taking a bath at the end of the work day which creates in me the tendency to go right to sleep afterwards, whereas before I am relatively perky! So in a way I like to bathe late and get as much work done beforehand as I can. But today it was an early bath, as Jim had worn himself out doing chores and was bone-weary. Naturally, we ended up snoozing from then until suppertime.

Gary was home for our meal together, and for the Gaia Meditation, at which I offered the ending prayer. Jim cleaned the kitchen while I finished a Ngaio Marsh mystery novel, and we had our bedtime snuggle, saying good night at midnight.

2007-01-12

This was a good work day! In spite of having a very active IC day which entailed much dashing to the bathroom, I got the work Ian needed done on the Book of Days after Morning Offering. I believe that the text for that entire book is now finished! Ian needs to attend to some details which remain, like the book’s covers. We have a beautiful image from Michele M but are not sure it will work. And the back cover has no reviews. I gave a copy of the manuscript to Fr. Joe to read before Christmas. I need to remind him that it would be handy to have his words about now!

After lunch with Mick and stretching together with him, I worked again on Chapter Three of The Choice. I switched out the first quotation after a lengthy search for a good substitute, as I did not feel the previous choice really hit the mark. This is better!

I believe I am happy with the chapter as it is but will take one more solid look at the text before finalizing it. I am a bit jittery about the chapter because I read it to Mick after our bath and he fell asleep halfway through! He assured me that he was very weary and was falling asleep before I started but somehow it shook my confidence! I don’t want my readers dozing off because of dull prose. Of course the topic of mind and consciousness is not precisely a hot subject for most people!

I took some time to work on my desk clutter again today. I think doing about an hour a day is good there. There is much to do, including Christmas thank yous and responses to many friends’ Christmas notes. Today I sorted through all the Christmas cards to cut out images that I can use in making cards for Dana R. she is in for a siege with the cancer and I would like to generate a series of little cards to make her smile.

I can create home-made cards cheaply and easily by cutting images out of cards I have received, the newspaper and magazines. I have done this sending of cards for other friends going through the last stages of cancer and they have really appreciated that sense of being kept in mind. I even have a name for my cards: Kick Ass Cards. I say, do not go gently into that good night – go out laughing and saying Halleluiah!

It is interesting to note that these friends, now gone on, have all shared with me their feeling of being abandoned by their friends. Many people do not want to deal with their friends after they get cancer. It is almost as though they are afraid it is catching. At any rate, when hospice is involved with a friend, I know it’s time to make some cards for her or him.

Jim, Gary and I enjoyed a quiet party in the evening, celebrating the work week’s end, before Gary went to Valerie’s for a late date. Jim and I always find other work to do on the weekend, but reserve the right to do alternative chores and move the energy around on the weekend. And I believe that for Jim, there is still some football to behold. It is good to lift up from The Schedule and work in some leisure time.

We offered the Gaia Meditation, had a late supper and found our beds around midnight.

2007-01-11

After Morning Offering I pitched into the rather Baroque extravagance of snail mail on my desk. I got things organized, at least, and started on the mail. I gave that an hour and then edited the rest of Will Z’s channeling session before lunch. It was an interesting session as Will had asked a good bit about indigo children and also about the creative process. I really enjoyed the Q’uo’s take on the interaction of consciousness and mind, since that is what I am working with in The Choice right now.

Jim worked further at the Hogue House before joining me for a good lunch and our stretching routine. Then he worked outside to finish his stone project, settling the very large stone upon its pillars to make a generous seat for two or three people in the side yard where they can relax and enjoy the day. Jim has now created nine stone seats at various places throughout our yard where people can sit and enjoy the peace. That is not counting room for about six in the meditation hut and four or so in the arbor.

In addition to creating a handsome garden seat, Jim’s work cleans up the remaining inventory of stone which I have been weeding around for a couple of years. It is good to see the area spiffy!

I spent the afternoon working on Chapter Three. I wrote further on the subject of mind and consciousness, feeling at last as though I am getting into a good flow with this subject. It could well be that this is a chapter unto itself, with the specific chakras treated separately in the next chapter. The material is a bit dense since the topic is consciousness itself. In a book intending to give the reader “the bullet” on the Confederation teachings, however, this material needs to be front and center. I can see it working out well now. I shall leave this chapter short. The next chapter, on the chakras, will be a long one, but much easier to understand and enjoy, once I get the preliminary writing on mind and consciousness done.

At the end of the afternoon I went back through Chapter Three with an editor’s eye, cleaning up loose prose and snugging up my footnotes. It is wonderful what resources are on the internet. I wanted to give credit to the lyrics to Lacey J. Dalton’s “Standin’ Knee-Deep”, a phrase of which I had quoted in the text and, by golly, there it was, smiling up at me after a simple Google search.

Dalton’s work is wonderful. She sent us the CD on which this song is included because a couple of the songs had been inspired by A Wanderer’s Handbook.

Gary joined us after our bath for supper and the Gaia Meditation, at which he offered the closing prayer. Jim and I ended the day with a snuggle around 11 PM.

2007-01-10

Our little household woke to icy winds and frost on the mailbox. It’s about time! I know Romi is doing his happy dance and hoping for snow! After Morning Offering Jim worked to clean the gutters and other leaves away at the Hoge House, which is part of St. Luke’s campus, while I came upstairs and spent the morning writing a follow-up article for UPI on the archetypes. It was a great exercise to follow just one small thread of thought a little way. I chose to focus on sexual roles and images and had a good time thinking and writing.

After I ate one last left-over meal from my delicious steak at The Cheesecake Factory, Jim and I stretched and then Jim worked to build the stone “legs” for a big stone bench he is creating in our side yard. Meanwhile I worked more on Chapter Three. I am getting closer to the flow I want. I am not there yet. Writing about the mind/intellect versus consciousness is tricky. Pop psychology divides the human brain into left-brain, which takes up all of the mental brain functions, and right-brain, which takes up things like artistry, insight and intuition. However I do not believe that is correct. I believe consciousness comes from far beyond our little intellects, whether right- or left-brained.

Gary let me know that we had received a further $200.00 from people in 2006, so I shall let our benefactor know he has a few more funds to match! I had also asked Gary to finish his CD listening for Rick’s re-mastering project and I am sorry to say that Gary seems to have misplaced that material. I shall need to ask Rick to re-send everything.

Jim called bath time while I was still fiddling with this section of Chapter Three, so I laid it away for the night and had a great whirlpool, warming up at last – I had been chilly all day. I attended choir practice while Jim did a host of small chores around the house. We rendezvoused for supper, the Gaia Meditation, with me offering the closing prayer, and then a romantic tryst and a bedtime snuggle with the kitties.

2007-01-09

It will be my teacher, Papa/s, birthday soon, so I spent the early morning writing a letter to put in with his card. I sent him a book yesterday, directly from amazon.com – Isabel Allende’s Ines of My Soul. He shares his Earth Day with Martin Luther King, being in good company there. Papa recently sent word that he is preparing a digital copy of his voluminous letter files for me, so that I can search the letters by key words. This is wonderful news, as Papa’s teaching on the cycles of empire on planet Earth throughout history are far more balanced and complete than my own understanding and I am glad to have his views available for quoting and for reference.

I worked in the morning on the Book of Days text, discovering from Ian’s e-mail in the afternoon that I had not written what Ian had wished. He had suggested I beef up my biography, which I did. However, after a careful writing and triumphant sending off of what I thought was a good, expanded biography, I received a request from Ian to shorten the text. It is a matter of wanting the book’s pages to lie right. I shall have to take that up again on Thursday, as tomorrow, I write my UPI article for the week.

Jim and I shared a delightful lunch and stretching before I came back upstairs to work on Chapter Three of The Choice. I had felt that something was “off” and as I reread what I had written so far on the energy body I saw that I really had not gone into the difference between mind and consciousness. So I spent the afternoon working on an added section. I am still not happy with the flow of the chapter, so will persevere tomorrow afternoon with that.

Amazingly enough, upon collecting the mail from our P O Box we found that we had received another $200.00 from donors who wished to help us with matching funds. The letters were postmarked on New Year’s Eve! It will be my happy task to let our benefactor know that he has more funds to match!

Mick and I had our bath and took a nap before going downstairs to greet Romi, who came for a visit this evening. Both he and Mick wished to see a two-hour episode of House, a drama they both enjoy a lot. It is interesting to me to see the treatment of House’s problem by the teleplay writers. Dr. House is a man who lives in pain, not unlike myself. His coping mechanism has been to take pain pills. I know from experience that when there is sufficient pain, the pain pills go to the pain rather than making you dopey. So his coping mechanism, on the face of it, works.

In the show, he insults a patient who happens to be a cop, and the cop decides to bring House to ruin in order to get revenge for being dissed. In the episode last night, the case against the irascible doctor is dismissed because the judge rightly sees that there is a vendetta on the part of the cop, and that House is a good doctor who is doing his job responsibly.

Of course, the issue of “drug seeking” is front and center in this plot. I used to be nailed with this label, when I was taking pain medication for my rheumatoid disease. It was infuriating to have the same doctors who give you the pain pills then suggesting that you are a drug seeker.

In the end, I decided to learn how to manage my discomfort without heavy pain medication, and I have done so for these last 15 years or so. I chose to do that because the pain medication was destroying my stomach and colon. After having half my colon removed and coming close to death in 1992, I proactively aimed towards getting off pain meds.

It was an internally made decision. Doctors are still very happy, to this day, to give me pain medication and I do have an emergency supply for emergencies. When there is a pain crescendo, nothing but heavy medication can stop that.

But I choose not to use the stuff unless I absolutely must because of the egregious side effects. Nowhere in this fairly long plot development on House did the discussion turn to the devastating side effects of chronic pain med use. They lost a good chance there to inform people.

We interrupted our TV watching to have the Gaia Meditation. Jim offered the closing prayer. We had a good supper before saying good night to Romi at 10 PM and to each other at 11 PM.

2007-01-08

I was up quite early and then managed to sleep again, crowding my wake-up time and running late in getting dressed and writing in this journal. Don’t you prefer to wake up slowly? When I oversleep and have to rush I am cranky!

After Morning Offering I came upstairs and edited while Jim worked in the office downstairs. Gary also worked some in the downstairs office today. Then Jim headed out to do a very fun errand – spending a Christmas gift certificate he had received from a grateful client. He stocked up on some classic rock and roll CDs to listen to on his iPod as he goes about his work.

Meanwhile, Gary and I went out to The Cheesecake Factory for a delightful lunch with Donna N, our visitor at the meditation yesterday. What a pleasure to get to know her a bit better. And what a pleasure, also, to eat that restaurant’s food again so soon. We dived into the avocado egg rolls with great brio. Yum!

In the afternoon I worked on Chapter Three of The Choice. I found a particularly apt quote from Q’uo on red ray and was tickled with that. Writing about the energy body, however, is not coming cleanly yet for me, so I spent the time writing and then deleting. I want to find the right tone in talking about energy blockages and I am not hearing it yet. I shall have another go at it tomorrow.

I spent a good bit of time in meditation and prayer this morning. When the inspiration is not there, I am not one to bull through using logic. I need to feel the back-pressure of inspiration and guidance, and as I persist, it comes. Not always right away! But I shall persevere.

After responding to some personal e-mail I went downstairs to bathe with Mick. Then Gary and Jim and I had a conference about the Archetypes Gathering. We are overbooked, which is not, on the face of it, a good thing, for we will be crowded. And although we agreed earlier that we would avoid having children at this particular gathering, as opposed to the Homecomings in general, we have collected a child, an infant not quite one year old.

I was mightily tempted to say that the couple and their baby needed not to attend this conference. If that couple does not come, we are back down to a full, but not overcrowded, house for the gathering. And there is no baby to disrupt the arcane conversation. However the people are very keen on attending, feeling that the L/L gatherings are their only chance to “go home” and Gary very much wants to accommodate them. Listening to Gary encourage us to give them a chance to come, Jim and I had the same response – that Gary deserves a chance to make some choices and learn for himself whether such apparent generosity actually works. So we said OK. In my case, with a bit of fear and trembling, but I think it is a good decision.

The rest of the evening was a blur for me, as the sleepy-stupids descended and I drifted and dozed in my Mama chair, finished a Ngaio Marsh mystery novel and worked on the New York Times Sunday puzzles, alternately, while Jim watched his alma mater’s Gators cream Ohio State’s Buckeyes in the Championship Bowl. (They are looking for a name for that bowl, and I hereby offer that name.) Sports news was big today anyway in our home town, as U of L’s football Coach Petrino announced that he was wandering off to the pros only one year after signing a 10-year contract with the Cardinals of U of L. Ah, vaunted ambition! Petrino’s salary will go from $25 million per year to $50 million per year. And of course he needs to pay the bills.

Yeah, right. A very logical decision and all for the good of his family. Uh huh.

I offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight. We all said a peaceful and happy good-night around 11 PM.

2007-01-07

The new year is fleeing away! Our first Sunday comes all too soon to suit me, as I love having Jim around Camelot more, doing work for L/L Research and for the home and yard during his all too brief off season.

We had a pleasant and unusual early morning because I was unable to sleep upstairs, wakeful with cramps. I often can catch sleep if I go downstairs and bunk in with Jim, which I did around 5:00 AM, sleeping so soundly that I did not even get the Camelot Journal entry written for yesterday until the afternoon.

After our usual Sunday morning of church and cleaning house – I at church and Jim manning the vacuum – we enjoyed the leftovers from our splendid meal last night for lunch before bathing and then taking a nap. Ah, that was sweet! I felt quite a bit more like myself after that good nap. We woke to find all three kitties curled up all around our feet.

We had a guest from afar for the meeting today, Donna N. It is always such fun to meet new people who have come to the Law of One material and who appreciate it. I was especially glad to meet her because she is a hypnotherapist. Since Larry Allison passed on, I have not had a good person to whom to refer people coming to me with questions about regressive hypnosis. Now I shall be able to recommend her. She will stay in town until tomorrow in order to have a luncheon with Gary and me and also have a further discussion about the thoughts on her mind as she visits here on her sabbatical.

The question for the Q’uo today in the channeling meeting was an interesting one: what difference does our service make if we doubt it or brag to ourselves or others about it? I look forward to editing the transcript and really getting into their answer, which was long and thoughtful. Unfortunately, our broadcast on the internet went bad and the people checking in for the session must have been very disappointed, as were we. The chagrined Romi fiddled and fussed after the meeting, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. He really does not know yet! He said he would work to solve the glitch before our next channeling broadcast.

It was good to welcome Steve F to our meeting. We have not seen him for a year or so at the meetings, but he has been a fan for years.

Romi’s “love tea” was served after the channeling session and we had a good conversation before Tom F left in order to guide Donna back to her hotel on his way home. Carmen and Romi stayed for supper and more conversation. Romi offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation and then Romi and Carmen departed for home. Gary, Jim and I remained in conversation quite late, Mick and I coming upstairs at 11:30 for our final snuggle.

2007-01-06

Saturdays are always most welcome to us workers in the world! The feeling of good and leisure time to spend is as exciting as having money for candy! Jim and I had a leisurely and late Morning Offering and breakfast and then Jim busied himself with the enormous task of taking down what we so recently put up – the Christmas décor. By lunch time, the house was clear of Noel – the tree was down and outside to be picked up, the ornaments lovingly put back into their nests and all the wreaths, candles, crèches, statues of angels and St. Nick were laid away until next winter calls them out again.

In the afternoon, Jim got up on our roof and patiently took down the many strands of Christmas lights with which we had outlined the house. When one outlines the roof features, doors and windows, the place looks like a magical gingerbread house! I felt a bittersweet pang it seeing the cheerful glow doused.

Gary was working on getting the thank you notes to all 51 donors printed out and I signed my name until all was done. We also prepared tax receipts for them all.

After lunch and stretching I came up to work on the final bits of text for the Book of Days, since we now are about ready to go to press. I believe Ian and Gary are engaged in discussion about the relative merits of various Print On Demand presses.

David L had written me some time ago to offer his help with creating an L/L forum site. I spent some time this afternoon talking with him about the hows and wherefores of that. He is a second-generation Law of One reader. His Mom, Monica L, has offered to moderate that forum. I do not want to rush into another version of the www.bring4th.org site. So we are taking this slowly.

I sent Ian a thank you note to post on our home page letting people know how the Matching Funds Campaign had gone. When the matching check comes in, we will have $11044.50 in the L/L coffers with which to pay staff fees. That will take us almost to next August! What an incredible help!

Other e-mail to personal friends and some time at the desk with snail mail rounded out my work day. Jim and I had to hustle through our baths as we had a date to treat Gary and his girlfriend to a nice dinner in order to thank him for all his stellar aid to us both and to L/L Research during the last year. It was a splendid supper! Gary went on to stay the night with Valerie while Jim and I came home, offered the Gaia Meditation together and snuggled in with the cats and football games on the tube until bedtime.

2007-01-05

I am slowly finding a better way to manage my present illness! I’m juiced about that! I have been doing my creative work in the morning hours, as I am predictably sharpest early in the day. This IC condition is most active in the morning, however, so I have lost a lot of creative time lately. This was my second day of working on the book project in the afternoon, when I am freer of symptoms, and I think it is a good improvement in being productive with my time.

After Morning Offering, Jim and I drove his truck and my car to the repair shop, where his truck’s axle and wheel bearings were replaced. My musical ear had detected a problem riding in his truck, and fortunately he listens to me, unlike many husbands and men in general. Sure enough, he was riding for a fall, and it was very good that he got the truck in when he did.

When we came home, I cleared away details in the office for quite some time, filling out warranty forms for Christmas presents, filing the instruction manuals, finding folders for new 2007 records and locating a portable filing unit to hold the 2006 files until we have finished doing tax preparation work. Jim started taking down the decorations, removing all the gay Christmas cards from their perches along our doorways.

I came upstairs before lunch to write a thank you note to send to all the donors in the Matching Funds Campaign. Gary has located all the snail mail addresses and prepared tax receipts. I imagine we will get those letters signed and sent out tomorrow. I also wrote Bill H that we had exceeded our cap of $5,000.00 by $522.25. He wrote back quickly to let us know how pleased he was with the good campaign. He will match all the funds! We are truly blessed with this outpouring of support and I take it as great encouragement to keep the pedal to the metal on this project.

Jim fixed me a wrap sandwich using some of our Christmas ham for lunch. May I digress on the subject of hams? My Mom always swore that the picnic butt – as that cut used to be called – with the bone in, baked slowly, was the best of all hams. We do not indulge in pork very often, but both my brothers adore ham, so we offered it as one of our Christmas meals. Oh my, but that is good stuff! I will enjoy finishing up those leftovers!

I got a call from Sandie S just as Jim and I finished stretching. I am sorry to report that she is leaving town. Darn! I had a new consignment shop to explore with her! Of all my present girlfriends, she is the only one who likes consignment shopping. I swear by it! I love good clothing and have a good deal of it already. By shopping consignment only, I can enjoy getting some really nice new things for very little money. I only spend gift money on clothing. That way, I can enjoy my wardrobe guilt-free.

Sandie will continue to offer her two wonderful e-mags, Planet Light Worker and Children of the New Earth, from her new base in California. And we will continue to be involved together in Jean-Claude K’s new web site project, the Transformation Portal.

And I shall go consignment shopping by myself!

I spent the rest of the day on Chapter Three of the Choice 101 book, working on the concept of love/light and how it enters our energy bodies. It was a good writing session. It ran late because we were interrupted mid-afternoon by a surprise visit from Eric S and his Mom. Eric is Jim’s neighbor from the years he spent in his home-made cabin on Hummingbird Mountain near Lebanon, Kentucky, back in the seventies. Eric still lives in that area.

We had a good visit, but both Mick and I were chafing at the bit, wanting to move on with our own work for the day. Fortunately, we were able to do that, as Jim’s truck was finished and Gary and he went to collect it, while I finished my work on Chapter Three for the day.

After that we enjoyed a quiet evening, with Gary offering the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation. We all sought our beds around 11 PM.

2007-01-04

It was crazy weather today, squally and then sunny, settling at dusk into a soft rain. None of this feels like January in Kentucky. I walked around the yard with Jim before bath time in my sweater and jeans, perfectly comfortable.

After Morning Offering Jim worked in the L/L office downstairs, catching up on his long list of e-mail. I came upstairs determined to do some editing. Before I got the session opened, I fell asleep in my chair. It is tempting to think of such a morning as wasted. However I am quite sure that if my body needs sleep in order to heal, the correct decision is to go to sleep. My work always awaits me when I once again arise.

So after a restorative morning, I enjoyed lunch and stretching with Mick. He went outside to continue his work on our southern boundary. He now has all the bricks re-laid along our winding garden path. He’s also begun preparations to move our little statue of St. Francis so that it does not even come close to the boundary line. Where that statue was, Jim will place one last arbor vitae tree. Then our living hedge will be complete once again. And we can hope that, once the neighbor has no more possible causes for dispute, he will let us alone. Well, I said we could hope! Hoping is good.

I came upstairs and worked on Chapter Three of The Choice in the afternoon. I think I have a good angle of attack on the all-important subject of our energy bodies. I am excited about doing this work! I am also quietly pleased that, feeling as I did today, I was able to work at all. This was a tough day for me physically! I give sincere and heartfelt thanks for indoor plumbing and heating pads.

Along the way today I collected a recipe for our database for Greek Greens. Both Gary and Jim love greens. This recipe is interesting in its use of black olives and tomato paste, along with lots of garlic. It should taste grand! I went through the Christmas cards we have received since Christmas and displayed them. And I made a few calls and filed some papers in the downstairs office.

I also talked with Ian a bit more, throughout the day, about getting the Avalon Journal up in its own blog, the way the Camelot Journal is. It is feasible, but tedious. So I sent Gary the Admin a note asking him if he was willing to take the job on and make the blog, as he did for the Camelot Journal. If he does not want to recapture all the old entries, we can always start the Avalon blog fresh. However I would love to see every entry in place by its date, as I am proud of L/L Research’s recent effort at an expanded community. The entries to the Avalon Journal tell a good deal of its tale.

Mick and I had a good whirlpool and a pleasant evening indeed. There was football for Mick to watch and dozing for me to do, and we were both faithful to our tasks! Jim offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation and we ended the evening snuggling with the cats.

2007-01-03

Frost and brilliant sunshine greeted us this morning. We enjoyed Morning Offering together before Jim headed out to do chores outside and I came upstairs to write the UPI article for this week. I enjoyed mulling over some of the Ra quotes on the archetypes as I prepared for the writing. It is not the most grateful subject for a short and simply written column – which is what I am supposed to write – but I liked the article when I finished it.

Gary sent out a letter to my UPI send group, asking them what their favorite column was this year. So far, with a gratifying number of replies, not one person has chosen the same column. I think this is a good thing, as it means that the columns hit different people as they go through different stages and occasions of life. It does not make it easier to choose one column for inclusion in UPI’s 2006 sampler, however.

Pam, our bookkeeper, was hard at work today, resolving a glitch in our household account which has been there since the beginning of her tenure here. I was thrilled to see that she has now gotten the account balanced and in agreement with the bank! Go Pam!

She and Gary were both working on the final tally for the matching funds campaign. It is a total of about $5500.00. Isn’t that a marvelous outpouring of support? I had thought that it was almost $7000.00 but then discovered that Pam was adding in the first part of the Hay Fund’s matching funds! That won’t work! Gary worked all afternoon on getting the addresses together so we can write everyone who donated a good thank you note along with their tax receipts.

In the afternoon, after a good lunch and stretching with Mick, he went about his work with the boundary issue. The one thing we still have on our boundary with our neighbor to the south is a brick walkway which curves right to the property line as it embraces Jim’s rock work, a mound of stone planted with perennials, to the south. Jim dug all the bricks of the walk up and moved them to the northern, inside curve of the mound. He had not finished re-doing all the brick work when the light failed, but had made great progress.

I worked to complete the e-mail sweep, and finally did get momentarily caught up with old e-mail. Naturally, by the end of the day I had a couple dozen new e-mails, responding to my letters, but in my fevered brain, those do not count! Now the only old e-mail I have concerns editing various transcripts. It’s a victory of sorts.

By late afternoon I was in that state of “sleepy stupid” which I have come to associate with this interstitial cystitis, so I relaxed into the need to sleep and napped until bath time. In the evening Jim and I took in a set of Walker and Kays at Clifton’s and offered the Gaia Meditation in the car coming home. Jim watched football and I dozed after we came home, until lights out around 11 PM.