2007-02-27

Jim and I had a leisurely day with Mom McCarty. We did get a bit done on behalf of L/L Research. We cobbled together a letter to the present members of our Board, discussing some items for the agenda of a mid-year meeting and sent the letter off to the five worthy gentlemen who are serving L/L Research in that capacity. We will wait to hear from them and obtain consensus before moving further.

I also worked through the comments Steve M had made on Chapter Three of The Choice. I was delighted to se that he really liked that chapter. It is a challenge to write about the mind and consciousness in a way that is natural and simple. There are so many misconceptions about the mind! It is a good sign that Steve thought the chapter succeeded.

Other than that, we enjoyed our visit, sharing conversation and TV with Mom and taking her out for supper to the best eatery in Nebraska, Grandpa’s Steak House in Kearney and drinking in the glorious weather on the trip there, which is rather cold, of course, but intensely sunny. The sunny weather seems more vibrant, somehow, in this great big plains sky.

2007-02-26

Mick and I are now officially immersed in Mom McCarty’s somewhat noisy world. She is fond of watching CNN all night and in the morning until her daytime soaps and game shows kick in, so the TV is always sounding, 24/7. She tops that cacophony off with her police scanner, which squawks piercingly from time to time. It is a sound-saturated environment, something I am not at all used to experiencing.

Mick slept quite late and we did our Morning Offering at almost 11 AM. After that, until lunch time and then after lunch as well, I worked on Jim’s and my worksheet of instructions to our Board of Directors at L/L Research in case of our deaths, updating it extensively. Towards the late afternoon, Jim read the document through and OK’d its contents.

After our stretching exercise routine, Jim went off with Mom to attend to some chores she needed done. I worked a bit on e-mail. Dana R, Rick C, Diane P and Melissa T all had sent good letters and I enjoyed catching up with them. And Lindy T wrote to say that her NC business is now up and running. We have kept up our friendship since 1977, when we met at Andrija Puharich’s “Mind Link”. She was a mere lass then. Now her kids are grown!

I wrote my thanks to Tobey, who is doing the re-listening project and has agreed to host his Law of One database on his own site. It is very good to have that scholarly resource kept safe. He assures me that the move should be painless. I devoutly hope so. My experience with computers tends towards an impression that nothing about them is painless!

Judy R wrote to talk more about her pre-editing on the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. She is such an excellent volunteer and the best friend ever. I so admire her! She is one of those people who seem so angelic that you keep looking for her wings. Not that she would accept that as true – but it is!

And before I shut down Traveller for the night, I discussed footnotes with Ian! All in all a handsome day. I am so thankful that Romi was able to configure this system to use dial-up. It makes all the difference! However I had forgotten how spoiled DSL makes one. It took forever to download my mail.

For the rest of the evening, we watched a sci-fi block of “Star Trek Enterprise” and a CSI Miami. No Amy Goodman shows here! We had supper, offered the Gaia Meditation and said good night around 11 PM.

2007-02-23 through 25

Mick and I arose at our usual off-season hour, made our Morning Offering and finished packing our traps and we were off to Nebraska in Stanley Outback, who was enjoying having brand new tires and a good check-up and wheel alignment. The day was blissfully pretty, with a dramatic and ever-changing sky generous with sunshine and witty with very imaginable configuration of clouds, from the mackerel sky of the morning to the flock-of-sheep-dotting-the-sky look to sweeps of various larger layers of clouds shimmering with the sun behind in the later afternoon. And the sunset was simply sublime. We pulled in to our hotel in Columbia, MO, in good time and called Mom McCarty in Nebraska to check in.

For the second time this off-season, the weather conspired to keep us in Columbia an extra day. This time it was a blizzard blowing through Nebraska. We could not go further as the roads were closing out west of us. So Mick and I had a lovely day of pure vacation. Thankfully, the hotel had room enough for us to stay over, so we hived in and relaxed for the day and evening, visiting a near-by casino to inspect the rooms for possibly staying there next time, watching a movie and waxing amorous.

I-80 was still reported as closed the next morning, the Sabbath, but the sun was shining and it was clear all the way to Nebraska so we decided to trust the road crews and go for it. in the event, we had a perfect driving day, seeing ample evidence that, had we gone yesterday, we would perhaps have ended in the ditch, for there were literally hundreds of cars and trucks off the road, still not picked up and towed off, as we drove through Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska, but free of any ice or snow now. The sunset today was unique, one huge swirl of storm cloud across the plains’ “Big Sky”, opening like a chambered nautilus against Sunday school rays piercing various layers of surrounding cumulus clouds and surmounted by the pinky-orange of the lower sky and the aqua of the higher ethers.

It was good to arrive in Lexington at last in the last of the twilight. Mom welcomed us with a good meal and we settled in, watching the Oscar Awards show with her. I mostly slept, hugging my hotpad, but awakening from time to time to enjoy Ellen Degeneres’s gentle humor. Of the comics around today, I believe she may be the most kindly-affectioned and gentle humorist we have.

Mick and I hope to accomplish some business for L/L Research during the next four days, while we visit with Mom, updating our basic list of instructions to the Board of Directors in case of our demise and working on other projects together. We shall see how much work gets done, and how much we are drawn into the joy of just goofing off! It’s a true temptation, as when we get back to Louisville, it will be time for Jim’s mowing season to start and time for me to get cracking on the Choice project.

We – speaking mostly for Jim and Mom, as I was exhausted and napped in my chair, mostly – stayed up quite late, watching the Awards show to the end and cheering on the worthy winners. We said good night around midnight.

2007-02-22

Being home and sleeping in my own bed was wonderful! And tonight will be my last night in my own bed for a while, as Mick and I are heading for Nebraska tomorrow. Still feeling rocky, I moved slowly today, much cheered by being ale to work at all.

Larry M had suggested I wait until next Wednesday to write my next column, just to give me a rest, which was very thoughtful of him. So after Morning Offering, while Jim cooked the food Gary will eat next week, I spent the morning on e-mail.

Things came together today for the resolution of a tangle the solution to which had been puzzling us for some time: the disposition of Tobey W’s database. He took on the volunteer task of re-listening to the original Ra session tapes and he is quite a ways through the sessions now. It is a good scholarly resource for those who want to check version against version. Some people’s seeking processes work like that.

However, it is currently up on a web site that will be discontinued at the end of this month. And we do not want to lose his work. After much discussion, it was agreed that Tobey himself would host the database of TLOO on his own web site, and we will link to that from the llresearch site.

As to our two other domain names, which are www.bring4th.org and www.lawof1.org, we will keep the names on hand to use when spirit brings us loving and capable webmasters who love the LOO and who wish to create features we currently do not offer on our archive site, such as an L/L forum and an on-line store. The two sites, B4 and lo1, will disappear completely by the end of March, and this is the way it needs to be. There has been some negative energy connected with the work of the people who ran those sites previously, and our goal at L/L Research – and it is a firm and steadfastly held goal – is to create offerings in service to others as a pure labor of love. So the previous sites will come down. This is true progress. Sometimes you have to raze an old structure to make way for a better one.

What delighted me the most about this whole decision cluster was the kindness between the four people involved – Ian, Tobey, Gary and me. The discussion was lengthy and the points quite complex at times, yet all the folks involved kept their hearts open. Now that is living the Law of One!

Gary had sent copies of two of our videos to Ian so he could see them. One is a good interview of Don and me done in 1978 in Atlanta, on Bill Tush’s “Open Up” show on the Turner station there. The other is my speech at the International UFO Convention in 2001. Ian thinks that both videos would interest our seekers and suggested that we pursue the project of creating them as DVDs for sale. So I sent Gary a note asking him to look into the particulars of this, especially the costs, while Mick and I are visiting Mom McCarty.

Gary and I have been talking for a while about the project of digitizing the “Brown Notebook” and “Man, Consciousness and Understanding” channeling material from the Detroit Group. It was the Brown Notebook wherein the Elk originally read the instructions on how to create an ET channeling circle. Following their instructions, we did just that starting in January of 1962. So these Detroit Group materials are our forebears. The material is pure Confederation in terms of its thoughts and themes. I think it will be a good addition to the resources on our archive site.

Gary wrote to say that he was not able to field a large enough group of volunteers to scan and OCR these many hundreds of pages quickly. He wanted to put up a special notice on the home page, replacing the thank you for contributors to the Matching Funds Campaign.

However I thought it would be better to do it a bit differently, so I wrote him outlining my idea, which is to replace the current thank-you plus “donation” button with a button which says, “If you would like to help L/L Research”. When a seeker clicked on that button, the whole range of our volunteer projects would come up, so that whether people wanted to donate the “green energy” of money, the skills and talents they have in getting material ready for the site, or the time to do various projects for L/L, they will be able to see the full spectrum of our needs in one chart. And I like the idea of this having its own page, just to unclutter the Home Page.

Gary liked my idea, so he is now tasked with creating a proposed rough draft for a new volunteers’ to-do chart while Mick and I are in Nebraska.

A reader caught my error in attributing a saying to Thales which is credited to Heraclitus. I had a good time reading back to find how I had made such an error. The reader was quite correct in saying that the phrase was Heraclitus’s. However, Thales stated that the universe was unitary and made of one thing. He thought that this one thing was water. He further said, roughly, that part of truth inheres and does not change while the other part of truth is in constant change. So the implication is that you can’t step in the same water twice. I think what threw my memory off was that Heraclitus was also of the belief that the creation was made up of one thing. However he named that fundamental element fire, not water.

Aaron T wrote in with a request for information on “spiritual democracy”, a phrase I have used for decades and which she has come across in transcribing my old letter tapes. I will do an article on that very thing soon. She also asked about the polarity of anger, and I think that is a great topic for our next channeling Sunday, which will be the first Sunday in March.

Romi wrote in, quite concerned about me because of the hospital stay, and I wrote him a reassurance – the doctors had not actually made anything worse, even if they did not make anything better either. All in all, good stats for a hospital experience! Hospitals are wretched places! However the care offered there to me by the people on staff was loving and kind all the way through.

I managed to get some personal e-mail in before lunch, and then went down to enjoy the last of my leftover steak from our Valentine’s Day dinner out. Jim and I had a good meal and did our stretching, and we sat for quite some time and talked about L/L matters. He, Gary and I are chewing over the idea of enlarging our Board of Directors, in order to place our organization in a good position to survive our personal demises. We all must die sometime, and Jim and I are older now. A larger Board, and one far more sophisticated in terms of business, will be more able to keep our material available than our present 6-person Board.

Between the three of us, we have come up with four more people who we feel would round out the Board. While Mick and I are in Nebraska, we’ll write these four candidates and discover whether they are willing to serve on L/L’s Board. Mick and I worked through thoughts about this change in a really good discussion.

Jim also pointed out that it has been at least five years since we updated our “in case we croak” instructions to the Board, so we will take that document with us to NE also and update it there.

In the afternoon Mick put on his cleaning hat and cleaned the house, so that Gary would not have to clean this weekend at all except, as he usually does, cleaning the bathroom and his bedroom in the basement.

I spent the afternoon choosing items to take with me on this trip. I kept running out of steam and having to rest. However I persevered, and ultimately got all my items together except this computer, which I needed to save out so I could journal before we leave tomorrow, and my big bundle of snail mail, plus a few odds and ends like hotpads, extension cords, travel clocks and flashlights, which we’ll pack up tomorrow morning

We enjoyed a Democracy Now program and World Music before coming downstairs for supper and turning on a two-hour Gray’s Anatomy, a hospital drama series we enjoy. Jim offered the ending prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

Mick and I snuggled with the kitties, enjoying our last bedtime snuggle with them for a week or so! We miss those cats so much when we are gone! When we see a cat in Nebraska on the street, we just want to pat it and get a purr fix! That’s the second hardest thing about travel for us. The first hardest, of course, is just being away from our comfort zone, where we have our beds and chairs set up just the way they are the most comfortable for us. However, we have an honor/duty to perform. Jim’s Mom is not getting any younger and her one wish is to visit with us in person. So off we are going!

We’ll be praying for better luck with the weather than our last journey west, where we were stranded in Columbia, MO, for over a day with ice and snow conditions tanking and the interstates closed. Things look good so far.

2007-02-21

I was awakened at 6 AM in the hospital by a nurse who wished me to know that in an hour I would be starting my tests. This gave me the time to deal with the “morning rush” of IC symptoms, so I was glad of the warning.

The day was triumphant in getting every hospital procedure done for which Dr. A had written orders. One test, a non-treadmill stress test which made me extremely ill, lasted a little over three hours away from my bed, lying on an uncomfortable gurney and stashed against the side of a hallway for most of the time – the procedure took only twenty minutes, then six minutes and then twenty minutes more. However the hospital stacks the patients in like cordwood. Two other tests took over an hour apiece, not counting time in the hallways, waiting for transport.

The tests came out indeterminate. Yes, I have an abnormal heart, but it is not bad enough to fix. The same goes for the heart murmur, for which they did an echo-cardiogram. They MRI’d my right shoulder, since it is experiencing nerve pain. However I do not know the results of that. With an appetite worthy of Dracula, seven separate lab tubes were drawn of my blood. So, no joy on diagnosing something they can fix.

Lying in those hallways, I pondered how our society treats illness. I came in with discomfort and left with the same discomfort. The staff at the hospital was not nearly as interested in my perceived comfort as they were in heart-trouble-like symptoms which they felt could be threatening my life. They needed to know the things these tests would tell them about my heart.

Had I been close to a heart attack or stroke, five hours of tests in one day and all the discomfort of them might well have provoked a heart attack. Definitely, a review of how the patient feels might slow down the pace of their testing if they were just thinking about the comfort of the patient and not seeing themselves as valiantly saving lives by doing these tests. They were focusing completely on what was life-threatening. I am sure that if I called them on their choices, they would say, “She may have been uncomfortable but we were protecting her life, not her comfort.”

I suppose that is a good thing!! However, it was a miserable day in terms of how I felt. And in hospital, there is no contact with the outside. I asked one nurse what the day was like, since from nowhere could I see outside. It’s very dislocating to be sunk in the indoors to the extent that there is no outside contact. Whew! Prison!

It was such a blessing to see Mick, who came to get me after my last test was done. His sweet face, often rather ascetic and stern in natural demeanor, was wreathed in smiles when he saw me all ready to go, and in a jiffy we were packed up and outta there. We stopped on the way home for the first decent food I had eaten since day before yesterday and then I was blissfully, blessedly HOME!

I had not been able to write my weekly article for UPI today, being a tad busy elsewhere, so my first thought when I was settled into my Mama chair was to contact Larry M, my editor there, and ask him if he would prefer that I write a Thursday article or wait until next Wednesday. I can go either way, but it would be great if he said to hold off till next Wednesday. We’ll have to see on that one.

Steve M had written to say that his Dad had passed into larger life. His was a beautiful note, written by a loving son who saw that his Dad was a definite STO graduate, serving tirelessly throughout his life, in a self-effacing and very quiet way. I offered my sympathies. In the midst of his grief and what I can well imagine were busy times as well as sad ones for his family, Steve also had finished his comments on Chapter Three of The Choice. So I am rich in work to do tomorrow morning!

Ian and Jim and I had been having a round-robin discussion about an Italian fan of the LOO who had prepared a version of our channelings by year. He then put up a fan-site to display them in Italy. This sounds good on the surface, but unfortunately he was not at all sophisticated in his work, and our material had lost all formatting – paragraphing, footnotes, like that – as well as the copyright notice which is printed out at the bottom of any page you print from our site, protecting our material.

Today, I found that Jim had chimed in, agreeing with Ian, that we should ask Federico to take that site down. We all agreed that Ian should write Federico, suggesting that he put his love of our material to work by joining the translators who are translating our sessions into Italian on the site whose address is http://www.stazioneceleste.it/. I hope Federico does not feel disrespected! We truly appreciate his great energy and love for the material. Hopefully this solution will make sense to him.

Dale C wrote in suggesting I write a column on Peace Pilgrim, since I am talking about dignity and human worth in my latest series of articles. I wrote to tell him it was a good idea. What he does not know is that I chose Peace Pilgrim as one of my examples of STO in Chapter Two of The Choice, so I am already writing about her currently!

And lastly, I responded to Wendy Jane C, whose loving thoughts reached out to me from California.

Needless to say, Gary, Jim and I had a very quiet evening. Jim, as usual, was active around the house, running loads of laundry and doing some housecleaning because he will not be here this weekend, as we are headed to Nebraska Friday. I caught up with Gary and we watched Amy Goodman and World Music on TV before I fell asleep in my chair. Jim woke me at nine for the Gaia Meditation, with Gary offering the ending prayer, and then Mick and I had a sweet snuggle with the kitties before saying good night around 11 PM.

2007-02-20

This day was a surprise! I had envisioned that I would need to spend the morning at the emergency room getting lab tests and EKGs done, and after Morning Offering, Jim and I did just that.

The surprise came when the doctors decided to hold me overnight for observation, as my heart tests came up hinky. So I enjoyed a quiet day at the hospital, being forcefully reminded of just how bad hospital food really is. I have far kinder words for the doctors, nurses and everyone at this place. They have taken good care of me.

Mick came back to the hospital at the end of the day and we enjoyed a game of Trivial Pursuit together before the Gaia Meditation. After we said good night, I went sound asleep, another surprise in a busy place like the hospital. Tomorrow, more tests.

2007-02-19

The great thaw began today, with temperatures starting at 25 and rising handily to 52 by the afternoon. I awoke still in rocky shape. Jim and I planned that I would devote the afternoon to regaining solid contact with the two doctors involved in my case, since I needed to leave the house briefly in the morning and we are aware that there is a principle, following the “bread always falls butter-side down” rule, which states that if you call a doctor, she will return your call when you are in the bathroom or otherwise away from the telephone.

So after Morning Offering while Jim busied himself with all manner of good works, I napped. Actually I intended to work on e-mail, but as soon as I hit my Mama chair I was a goner. The sleep was very refreshing.

Jim woke me so that I could go to Mr. Cavalier, our tailor, with my new St. Luke’s choir robe. It fastens in a particularly uncomfortable manner for my arthritic hands to accommodate, and I wanted to exchange the buttons for snaps and shorten the sleeves. I also wanted him to install pockets where there were only holes in sides of the brand new robe, and to secure the buttons better on the garment, which were shoddily attached and with my clumsy attentions, would soon be torn away. It was great to get that done! Jim had taken the robe itself to our neighbor, Calvin, who also sings in the choir, so that it could be blessed when all the other robes were blessed this last Sunday.

So now I’ll have a robe both blessed and convenient. Then I will put my name in the robe! It’s mine, folks! That’s the hardest thing, in a choir – just to keep track of one’s robe. Whenever one is absent from choir for a Sunday, those who do not have a robe tend to steal away an absentee’s robe!

After lunch, I put in my calls to Drs. June (rheumatology) and Aboud (GP). Dr. Aboud called back right away, alarmed that I had experienced the acute spell of symptoms on Saturday and feeling that too much was going wrong for me to come to the office. She asked me to go to the emergency room, explain my symptoms and get a complete work-up there, since if she did the same tests in her office, it would take her a couple of weeks to be apprised of all the results of the tests. Jim and I talked and decided that we would spend tomorrow morning doing that.

While Jim took Stanley Outback for its pre-trip oil change and check-up, and then went back to the dentist to have them correct a poorly done filling which was impossible to floss, I did what e-mail I could and waited for Dr. June’s office to call. She was still ill and not taking calls, so I was stuck with the doctor on call.

It was now a different doctor from the one last week, but he also refused to medicate my pain, opining – obviously he had a crystal ball – that this pain was not arthritic. This was despite Dr. June’s having originally diagnosed my chest wall pain as arthritic and medicating me accordingly, and also despite that medication’s having worked up until the last couple of weeks to remove the nerve pain. He (and now you see why both of my doctors are women) – announced that I must go back to my primary care physician and get treated there. I informed him that this was already laid on and thanked him, tongue firmly in cheek. He did not catch the sarcasm.

Thank heavens for my very responsive doctors who do actually listen to me and who are crackerjack diagnosticians, being now thoroughly familiar with my situation. And they both genuinely care about me, the person, rare though that is these days. Kudos to you, dear doctors Aboud and June, and Dr. June, please, please get well soon!

As I was able, between further naps, I sleepily addressed some e-mail. I had sent a note to Gary and Mick about getting our beds earthed, as research shows that those who do so experience better sleep and Jim, Gary and I all have occasional sleeplessness. Gary had asked for more information, which I happened to be able to pass on.

Ian had written concerning choosing our printer for Book of Days. I eliminated one candidate, bringing our final considerations down to two – a POD Canadian printer called blitzprint.com and the printer here in Louisville who printed A Wanderer’s Handbook for us in 2001. We think we may discover that that printer, Beechmont, with its regular printing techniques, will deliver to us the same book for a considerably cheaper price to us per book that the $15 or so which the blitzprint people will probably render. We would like to keep the per-copy cost down if we can as a service both to us and to the seekers who ask for our books.

In that note I mentioned to Ian that I was ER-bound and so he called me right back to commiserate. What a good person and friend he is. We also talked further about the BOD project. He is as stoked about its being near completion as am I. He is glad of either choice of printers we make, once we get both blitzprint’s and Beechmont’s quotes on the print job, as blitzprint uses Nuvera to print its covers, a satisfactory procedure for the cover we want, and Beechmont is the very best and delivered to us a near-perfect job on AWH’s cover art.

I had written Jim to ask his advice about an Italian fan who felt that there was virtue in assembling a copy of all our material by year. Ian had looked at this fanzine site and discovered that he had eliminated all our formatting, erasing all paragraphs and other carefully placed corrections that make the work easier to read and also erased the informative footnotes. Jim and Ian agreed that such changes were unacceptable, and I reluctantly joined them in asking the fan to shut down his site and instead help with the translation work currently going on, on the Italian site, http://www.stazioneceleste.it/ll_research.htm. This site preserves all paragraphing and copyright notices and translates the sessions into Italian. It is a wonderful resource and hopefully he will like putting his considerable love of TLOO to work helping expand that effort.

It is interesting, feeling so poorly. I am soft as a kitten in energy. It is a kind of sweetness to be so weak, and although it is irritating not to be able to think clearly, there is a beauty to the intuitive and spiritually inspiring material that comes as I pray to Holly (my name for the Holy Spirit) and to Jesus the Christ for strength and serenity. Every seeming difficulty has a silver lining, and I was grateful to experience such sweetness in the midst of this time of fairly substantial is comfort.

Jim helped me bathe and we had a lovely, quiet evening, making love, which romantic tryst gave me a good jolt of vital energy, sharing a good supper and having a very low-energy TV night, mostly our favorite sci fi series, which were obligingly on all night. Gary joined us for the Gaia Meditation after a long, hard day at his admin helm, and offered the ending prayer most artistically, a very moving prayer indeed.

Knowing that we were going in to the ER early tomorrow morning, Jim and I snuggled with the cats and had an early bedtime.

2007-02-18

A skiff of snow had fallen overnight and what had melted yesterday evening from Jim’s application of calcium chloride at St. Luke’s had refrozen in the frigid night. Jim got up at daybreak and spread 200 pounds of calcium chloride all around the parking lots and sidewalks and then blew and scooped snow until all the church stairs and rampways were clear before the 8 AM service.

He came home with a tasty breakfast treat with which we often indulge ourselves on Sundays – Krispy Kreme donuts. We know the sugar rush is not good for us, but allow ourselves the sweet taste once in the week.

I did not go to church as I still feel quite poorly. Indeed, I am somewhat concerned that I have not bounced back. I napped a good deal of the morning away, hoping to feel better enough to handle the channeling, and after lunch did the same again, to no avail. I felt weak as a kitten. As I tuned for the session today, I asked the Q’uo group if I would be OK to channel, as I felt so very low-energy. They replied that if I were patient and worked slowly, I would be fine, as my channel was clear, just very weak. And that turned out to be the case.

We had a good group this Sunday, with Carmen, who had come early to put in some volunteer time on formatting the database she has created of my poetry, Romi, who came early to set up for the recording of the session for the computer group meeting in cyberspace, Mark from Nashville and Tom F, who had been missing in action for several weeks, taking his grandson to various swim meets all around this area.

Tom and his wife chose several years ago to raise him as their son, as Daniel’s mother, Tom’s wife’s daughter from her first marriage, is a crack addict and in and out of prison. I greatly admire Tom and Nancy for taking on a family at their age – they are both retired from their work. His grandson, Daniel, has a gift for swimming. Daniel’s excellence in swimming keeps Tom hopping! He takes him to early morning practice six mornings a week, plus taking him to swim meets both for school and for Lakeside Swim Club, a premier local swim team out of which came Mary T Maher some years back.

Romi had a question today about religion and the group liked it, so our group question had to do with how to find your way amidst the confusion of various dogmas and creeds to the truth.

After the session, which recorded successfully for the airwaves as far as I know, thank the Lord, we had Romi’s Love Tea and Mark’s homemade blackberry wine to enjoy, and good conversation.

In time, Jim offered a handsome feast to the crowd, roasted turkey and a new recipe for scalloped corn and tomatoes which everyone loved. I was not able to eat, one of the side effects of this last bit of illness being to remove my ability to eat in the evening, but I did drink a nutrition drink, and I take both a one-a-day vitamin-mineral tablet and a liquid infusion of minerals daily, so even if I cannot eat, I know good nutrients are being given to my system.

After we sat down for supper Gary, who had come back from visiting his friend in Corbin, joined us with a video he offered for us to see called Rize, about clown dancing groups in Los Angeles. There are groups of young people who create clown faces for themselves and dance to act out their many emotions, turning anger and feelings of disempowerment into positive entertainment for themselves and the neighborhood.

It seems to be working for disadvantaged kids there, where the clown groups support each other and keep each other out of the gangs which are plentiful on the mean streets of Watts and east L.A. It was inspiring and the dancing was very interesting to an old gypsy like me. It felt funny to hear the kids talk of how they lack any arts training because they are poor and no one in society cares to offer them any advantages. I was one of the “advantaged” kids to which the teenagers in Rize referred with some scorn, with my six years of ballet and my twelve years of modern dancing training. They kept referring to their lack of chances for training in the arts. However they are making beautiful art themselves with their dancing, training or not.

After we offered the Gaia Meditation, the group broke up for the night. Jim and I said good night to our guests and came upstairs, where we had a good conversation with Mom McCarty, who reports that she is preparing for our trip to see her, which begins next Friday. We can pray for good weather for that trip!

Mick and I snuggled with the cats and enjoyed some music on TV until we said good night around 11 PM.

2007-02-17

It snowed all day, off and on, here, not ever enough to cover the roads, which had been salted to a nicety, but a lovely treat to the eye. I took a day off after Morning Offering and had my nails trimmed up in the morning, and then set out with Carmen T for a girlfriend lunch. We tried first to go to “211”, a restaurant which specializes in very wholesome, organic cuisine, but they were booked, so we drove down Frankfort Avenue until we found place called Sweet Pea. The food there was so good! This has been my week for delicious food. They specialize in southern comfort food, so Carmen and I indulged in fried cod for her and chicken fried steak for me. Everything was prepared beautifully, even the humble cole slaw being unique and delicious.

We then went to Margaret’s to do some consignment shopping. I got two pairs of good denim jeans and two skirts, plus a couple of really lovely sweaters that had been used so gently they seemed new to me, at a very good sale price. However we had to cut the afternoon short because my health problems ganged up on me and I became quite unwell, although hopefully I was the only one who was aware of the full extent of that! In the end I was very glad I had asked to go home early, as the snow got heavier towards the end of the afternoon, and I was thankful to have both Carmen and me home safely before the darkness fell. When that occurred, snow started covering the streets.

Jim was very kind to me in my state of discomfort, tenderly helping me bathe and then treating us both to a home movie, The Black Dahlia. This is a theme weekend! The Departed, which we saw yesterday, features the corruption, helplessness and hopelessness of little people – and big ones too – caught in the machinations of their own schemes and the blackness of their own hearts. So does the Dahlia film. Martin Scorsese and Brian de Palma both find a real pleasure in delineating these dark pathways of the human heart.

The Dahlia film was notable not for its plot, which was intricate and confused, or for its characterizations, which were a good ensemble of actors representing thoroughly ungrateful characters, but for its sepia-toned homage to film noir. I longed for a good blast of primary colors and just plain daylight long before the film ended. Nevertheless I salute the impeccable effort to recapture the film atmosphere created by Humphrey Bogart films like The Maltese Falcon. It was well done.

By bedtime I was feeling a bit better, but so grateful for my own bed! While Jim was cleaning the kitchen after the Gaia Meditation, I started watching The Long Kiss Goodbye – or a title like that – on TV, and by golly it followed up the theme of depraved people and perverse fate with panache, actually an excellent movie, perhaps the best of the three. Its production values were quite high and the ensemble work by the cast was outstanding. Jim got hooked on it when he joined me, and we watched it through before saying good night at 11 PM.

Happy Day Off! And Happy Snow! It is good to have a real winter at last.

2007-02-16

It was a day of brilliant sunshine and single digit temperatures, with a mated pair of cardinals feeding at our bird station outside the living room window as if to say, “It’s not so cold!” After Morning Offering Jim cooked, roasting a turkey, while I worked on the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues, sending Judy the finished session two of the fourth group of nine with changes tracked, plus the third and fourth session of this fourth group, which she will pre-edit and send back to me with her comments.

For my lunch I enjoyed the leftovers from our Valentine’s dinner, potatoes au gratin, herbed mushrooms and some of my filet mignon. The food was still outstanding! Yum! Jim and I stretched before he set out to do all manner of errands and chores and I went back to work on Chapter Four of 101: The Choice. I was able to finalize the first two portions of that chapter and make good headway on the third section, which is on the survival aspect of red ray. The discussion was mostly upon the feelings of despair, helplessness and hopelessness, which are red-ray sources of blockage because of their ability to cause the person not to want to survive.

Jim and I had a good whirlpool and watched Democracy Now before coming downstairs and supping early – I finished the lobster bisque from that same Valentine’s dinner – so that we could open the house for a Friday Movie Night. I had expected Carmen as well as Romi but he said he forgot to let her know, as we had asked him to do. I felt badly about that! I will apologize when I see her tomorrow. She and I are going consignment shopping together after we meet for lunch.

The movie was a violent one, The Departed, ending up like the fifth act of Hamlet, with no one left standing. It was an interesting and a good story, with excellence in the ensemble and direction. One could not like the film, however. There was no redeeming quality to any of the characters and no grateful aspect to the cops-and-mob saga. It fit Churchill’s definition of life as “one damn thing after another”. I slept soundly through the second half of the film so perhaps I should not be so judgmental!

Romi joined us for the Gaia Meditation, for which we paused the video, and left after the film finished at about 10:30. Mick and I finished off the day with a snuggle with the kitties and said good night around midnight.

Gary is away visiting his friend, Jessica, after working around the house this morning.

2007-02-15

As the temperature plummeted even further into single-digit cold, our little household stayed warm and enjoyed a busy day. After Morning Offering, Jim called the vet because our gray-striped tabby tom, Dan D. Lion, has taken to peeing on our rugs. The vet said that it sounded as though Dan D. may have an infection. So Jim took Dan to the vet and sure enough, he had a bladder infection. Jim came home with pills that hopefully will clear that right up.

Meanwhile Gary and I whiled away the morning with a planning meeting. We chewed our way through various topics
- getting together the next Gathering Newsletter
- choosing the session we will use in the next issue of Light/Lines
- initial planning on Homecoming 2007
- selecting a printer for A Book of Days
- finding a permanent place for Tobey W’s re-listening project
- answering Gary’s questions about a dozen or so e-mails from various people so that Gary can respond to them

We had a good lunch together and did our stretching exercises before Jim tackled the job of steam-cleaning all of our rugs, as they have all been anointed lately by Dan. I never thought he could get them all steam-cleaned in one afternoon, but Mick did it!

Meanwhile Gary saddled up to hunt and gather needed groceries, armed with next week’s recipes. I came upstairs for a really good afternoon with Chapter Four of 101: The Choice. By the end of the working day I was completely satisfied with the opening riff on the energy body as a whole, and I believe I may also be one more read-through from being satisfied with the section on red-ray sexuality. Next up is the other red-ray energy, a far more complex one than sexuality – survival. I look forward to getting into that subject.

After a bath together, Jim and I treated ourselves to a Valentine’s dinner at Del Frisco’s. Oh, my goodness, what a delicious meal we had! I brought back the most wonderful left-overs! I’ll be having steak quesadillas for several days! We offered the Gaia Meditation during the meal, very informally.

We snuggled with the kitties and watched some sleepy-time TV before saying good night around midnight.

2007-02-14

Happy Valentine’s Day! Jim and I opted to treat each other to a nice dinner at Del Frisco’s Restaurant tomorrow rather than get caught in the rush tonight. But we did exchange cards and grin goofily at each other a lot all day! A chorus of “Isn’t It Romantic” please! Mick’s card was so special and sweet!

After Morning Offering Jim went off to the dentist to get some fillings re-done. Unfortunately most of the re-filling had to be re-done, since the tech they were training crashed and burned on the job, so Jim was sitting there with his mouth agape for a solid two hours this morning. He came home at lunchtime with that fat-lip feeling one always has when Novocain has been used, and mighty sore of jaw. His temper was none too serene either. The student tech had packed all of his fillings wrongly and the supervisor only discovered that at the end. And then another student was trusted with doing the whole job over. Fortunately Jim lucked out the second time around!

Meanwhile I wrote the UPI article for the week, a thoughtful piece about going deeper to find worth and validation from spirit rather than the world. What I liked the most about doing this particular writing was how all of the materials we read this morning at the Morning Offering fit together like a mosaic, telling one story. I experience a whole lot of synchronicities of that nature with our readings each day and it was fun to write about that.

I had no joy today with getting my medications adjusted. So here’s hoping for tomorrow! I did learn that my lab report shows that my anemia is worsening. I am not pushing at this, because regardless of my pain levels, which are intense, it is better to do nothing than to do the incorrect thing. This is a case where we see why patients are called that – patience is definitely the order of the day.

Pam M was here today not only to do the regular books but also to start on tax preparation. We do not do our own taxes, but we do need to collect information, as we use Schedule A to take deductions on donations, medical bills and property taxes. All of that information needs to be collected and placed in a worksheet for our tax preparer, Linda D, who has been doing our taxes since 1984. I was up and down the stairs several times during the afternoon helping Pam get started and then answering some of her questions.

Every year I think that this year we will have an easier time of collecting this information. And every year, I am wrong! Somehow in the space of a year we always get files mixed up and things so wildly out of place that they are lost for a while. We do have three entities – household, L/L Research and Jim’s Lawn Service – all of which need to report. So I can see how things would get snafu’d. But it always takes me a little by surprise. This year is falling right in line. I was making file folders for items new this year and re-filing all sorts of mis-filed papers. Pam will take up this beau geste de taxes next Wednesday afternoon.

I worked just a bit on Chapter Four again, but my time was quite broken up and I did not get far.

The e-mail contained good news in that Bruce P wrote Gary concerning the old bring4th site, so now we know that he is alive! Hooray! I also heard again from Melissa T, another former volunteer here, who has landed in the San Francisco area.

I wrote Fr. Joe at St. Luke’s to ask him for the text blurb on A Book of Days and he promptly sent a very nice review back, so I was able to cross that job off my little to-do list. As far as I know, the only remaining decisions to make before the Book of Days is published concern which printer to hire and how to arrange the back and front covers. I can do nothing to help that process so now it is time for me to rest and look forward to the choosing of the printer. That choice will take a conversation between our web guy, Gary and me. It will undoubtedly take place within the next week or so.

Rick C wrote by e-mail to note that a study shows that when people are grounded – literally earthed - in their beds, they sleep much better and stay in better health. I am not at all surprised by that, as Mother Nature is so powerfully benign an influence. So I sent the information on to Mick and Gary, as I have no idea how hard that is to do, practically speaking. If it is do-able, it sounds like a job worth doing.

I made a mistake in this journal yesterday in calling Jon Stewart Jon Edwards. I am getting my preachers, performers and politicians mixed up, eh? We watched Mr. Stewart’s show again tonight as well as the Colbert Report after our bath and Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now show.

Gary had worked at the admin helm all day and joined us for TV, supper and the Gaia Meditation. We all said good night around 10 PM and Jim and I snuggled with the kitties until about 11 before lights out.

2007-02-13

I found, to my delight, that Jim had fixed the latch on the mail box when I braved the icy cold to go retrieve the newspaper and put out the day’s mail. It works better than before! Of such small joys are a peaceful life made.

After Morning Offering, Jim tackled the very last of the silver, working with pieces that are very baroque and curliqued. They are very pretty, but very hard to clean thoroughly as they have so many crevices. Imagine living in a day when these pieces were used, and presumably polished, daily! There is no better way to track lifestyle than to look at our use of possessions, regarding form and aesthetic values versus function and getting it done. My forebears’ lifestyle clearly came with a comfortably adequate serving staff! I do not regret the changes since my grandmother’s day. I’m just glad the silver we have from that period is shining today! Kudos to the best honey-do in the world for giving me that gift!

I tried to talk to my doctor about the nerve pain I am experiencing but was unsuccessful. So I turned for the morning’s work to editing the channeling session transcript which Gary had typed up from the Sunday of the Archetypes Gathering and got that sent off to Ian for placing on site.

Jim and I had a good meal and did our stretching exercises before he returned to house chores and I came up to work on Chapter Four of The Choice 101. The changes I started making the last time I worked are good, and so I continued through the 12 pages I have written so far on this chapter, snugging up the language to reflect the change in emphasis. I am in hopes that I am on a good trail now. I kept having to go back to the beginning of the chapter and start over, as I came up against issues later in the chapter’s writing.

There is a difference between talking about sex and survival, the two energies native to red ray, as they apply in physical life and as they apply to the energy body. I have been changing from looking at those topics in life to looking at them as regards the energy body, and altering the text to deal with the energy body’s needs. This feels good.

I heard from a Spanish cousin today! I knew that my cousin Carlos had a sister, Pastora Rueckert, but had never met her or received mail from her. Thanks to the internet, she has found me, and sent a most charming Spanglish e-mail asking if I was indeed her cousin! Pastora is a photographer and artist living in Europe – she did not say where – and wrote when she came across the llresearch web site. What a treat to meet her!

Dannah R and I conferred further y e-mail about her donation to L/L Research of some of her literary works. She is a strong woman to deal so straightforwardly with these matters while she still feels about half-well. Her cancer is apparently becoming difficult to bear without a lot of pain medication. I told her, just for today, you and I are both in the basket! This nerve pain I am currently experiencing is very distracting.

Gary and I wrote back and forth finding a time to consult, as we have several matters to cover together. We’ll have a planning session Thursday morning. Tomorrow morning will be filled up for me with my UPI article – I want to go deeper on my last week’s column on dignity.

It was very wintry weather and I was glad to stay in for the evening and snuggle up with Mick. We had terrific TV all night. Amy Goodman’s news report was stellar, as usual. And there was a sci fi block we greatly enjoyed watching. To top it all off, after Jon Edwards and the Colbert Report there was a new episode of House, and Gary, Jim and I took that in after offering the Gaia Meditation together. We said good night to Gary at 10 and to each other around 11:30.

2007-02-12

I awoke still dealing with nerve pain, so after Jim’s and my Morning Offering, I set about responding to that situation. I went through all of my prescription bottles, checking them off against my paper records. I adjusted the paper records to match what I was actually taking and got the Rx List updated. Then I identified the anti-inflammatory pill and the tummy-soother pill which I would ask for the doctor to prescribe more of.

I wrote up a report on the symptoms, on what had been done to address the matter and on what I hoped we could do now to cope. It was a bit complex because I had originally thought this was heart pain rather than chest wall pain, and had called Dr. A, my GP, rather than Dr. J, my rheumatologist. So Dr. J needed to be caught up on what Dr. A. had prescribed and how that had not worked.

I got that fax, plus the supporting documents, off to Dr. J, with an FYI cc to Dr. A.

Jim and I enjoyed a most pleasant lunch. He had spent the morning polishing our ancient silver, a project which takes some time, as we have a lot of old, broken sets of things and I am loath to let anything go as it all reminds me of my Mother and how she loved the old family heirlooms. Jim’s been noodling away at this polishing project for the last couple of weeks when other work is not demanding his time.

After our stretching routine, I came up to discover an e-mail from Dana R. She had decided to donate some of her work to L/L Research. Dana is dealing with terminal cancer and is attempting to square things away with her estate. She has no money, but she owns the rights to several wonderful books she has written, all of which are now out of print. It is her hope that L/L Research be able to reprint her books, somewhere down the line in the future.

Her especial concern is her Mosaics book, a brilliant, unpublished work on language and sound. It is a very small book, less than 100 pages. She has done a mosaic page for each letter of the alphabet. Now she is writing a “Wisdoms” page of thoughts for each letter to go with the mosaics themselves. I feel sure that Hampton Roads, who commissioned the volume, will want to publish it. However I assuaged her concerns by assuring her that we would see to its publication if Hampton Roads dropped it. In any event, she wants us to put the mosaics up on line, which we will be glad to do.

Still dealing with e-mail concerning the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues protocol, I cleared away some concerns from our web guy that this project was taking up too much of my time, what with the sendings ack and forth. It does take a bit of time but I believe that time is well spent.

I had flubbed the send of my changes in Appendix A for A Book of Days, and so I sent the document a different way. Hopefully, Ian now has that copy and can complete that part of the manuscript. And I thanked Ian for a sweet photo of a kitten discovering what happens when you step on piano keys. Its expression was priceless! We have gotten a rash of absolutely maxxed-out-cute pet pics lately. Selcan sent a set from Turkey which shows kittens and puppies sleeping with infants that takes the prize, I think.

Melissa T, our beloved volunteer who has moved on to life out west, sent a very brief note to say that she is now in California! Now that’s a bold move! The west coast in general is an expensive place to live, but the Californian part of it is the most expensive place to live along that coast. I shall be praying for her big-time!

I could not focus well enough to work creatively today, the nerve pain being very distracting. I am so eager to engage again with this work. Yet when my brain is “off”, I can tell that and it is best not to slog on regardless, as I need to write deftly and securely in this project. Hopefully tomorrow will see an adjustment to my medications that takes me out of this level of pain. I do look forward to that!

I stopped by LabCorp to do the labs for Dr. J. which she requires each month, figuring that the timing was right for these tests, as she will be able to have them in hand tomorrow when she responds to my fax. Then I had a colonic, something which I do periodically as a part of my general health practice. High colonics such as Lil offers clean away small, hard particles which have gotten caught in the transverse colon, gently washing them away from the colon walls with the flowing warm water over the course of an hour. I have been seeing Lil for years, and we always have a good time catching up as she works the big machines that do the job pleasantly and painlessly.

Jim and I indulged in a good nap after our bath and a very good Democracy Now program, awakening to come down for supper and then sharing a romantic tryst. You can imagine how strengthening this activity is to my vital energy as well as my self-concept. Interstitial cystitis has me in diapers and my husband’s continued amatory interest restores me to a feeling of being human, loved and cherished as nothing else really can do. So far I have not had to go haring off to the bathroom in the midst of things when we are being romantic, and I fervently thank the Lord for that grace!

We finished the evening with the Gaia Meditation and a block of Star Trek Enterprise, most of the episodes of which we have not seen, so that was a real treat. We said good night around midnight.

2007-02-11

Winter gripped Kentucky today, with lowering skies and highs in the low 20s F. Nursing a very sore back and shoulder, I decided against going to church and instead stayed reclined somewhat in my Mama chairs, as that position affords the most relief.

We skip Morning Offering on Sunday Meeting days, since we get a good meditation and do some study during the meetings. Jim tackled his house-husband rounds of vacuum and duster while I came upstairs, after enjoying the Sunday puzzles, and worked on e-mail. First I let my neighbor, Calvin and my choirmistress, Lisa, know that I was going to miss the service, since what the choir sings depends upon who attends. Then I checked the mail from Ian and found that there were several issues needing attention.

I let him know the good news – that Judy R and I have worked out an alternate protocol for doing AQ editing which leaves him completely out of the loop. This is important as he is most busy with, among other things, completing work on the Book of Days. We want him freed up from repetitive chores, which the old protocol would have given him as in the AQ project. Now he is free from that.

Reading the traffic between Ian and Tobey on re-siting the Wiki edition of TLOO upon which Tobey has labored so faithfully, I found that there was a bit I could say, as they were considering what to do. Since there seems to be considerable volunteer energy pointed towards created a new forum site within the year, I suggested that we keep the B4 site open, but move it to the server we use for the llresearch site, which will save us money. Then Tobey’s good work can be placed there. He and Ian were also happily talking about possible changes in format, leaving behind the Wiki software in favor of another data base, and I left them to that discussion, being a technical doofus.

There were about a half dozen question which Ian had concerning the text I had sent him last week for the Book of Days – the old Introduction which I morphed into Appendix A, since it was way too scholarly and dry for a proper introduction to such a sweet and spirit-filled volume. If he likes my changes, we may well be finished with all text for the book except the back cover text which is waiting on Fr. Joe’s comments.

I had thought Gary told me that last Sunday’s channeling transcript was in my Inbox, but it was not. Either I deleted it mistakenly, Gary’s send failed or I was mistaken about his saying he’d finished the transcript, for my Inbox was bare of that document. So I sent him a heads-up in case he has done it and can supply me with it. I expect the Archetype Gathering attendees are waiting for that session, as the question was on the archetypes.

I finished up the morning by letting Gary know what was on my mind for next week’s work. We have a Gatherings Newsletter to cobble together and a Homecoming 2007 to rough out in order to place the first news of it in the upcoming issue. We also need to begin the process of choosing the next issue of Light/Lines’ session. And I need for Gary and I to come to a conclusion on which printer to go to for our Book of Days printing.

Jim and I enjoyed a quiet lunch and then our stretching exercises and a bath together before the meeting. We were joined by Mark G, a very good person and a wanderer, from Tennessee who has become a minister in order to teach the LOO, which he really feels strongly is “the truth”.

It is odd how themes come up in bunches through life. Gary, Jim and I had joined Ian in a spirited discussion last week concerning whether or not the Ra Material was research or some sort of standard against which all other channeling needed to be measured. Now today we received the same theme again from a guy who really wants to make TLOO a Bible. It is impossible to dissuade such people from their belief system. A dogmatic Ra teacher, however, is just as potentially dangerous as a dogmatic Christian, Jew or Muslim teacher and I hope he backs off a bit in his zeal. People need to think for themselves.

Also attending were Carmen and Romi, plus the members of the circle who were listening in via our webcasting. This service has not developed in listenership quickly, but I continue to feel it is a good service nevertheless, following the Ra’s instructions to forget the counting and focus on the service.

After the channeling, which this week was responding to a question from Sandie S on the possibility that 2007 was THE year for the shift, the group had a good conversation. Romi had brought a bottle of delicious wine which we all shared along with cupcakes Carmen had made, which were equally yummy. Carmen worked a bit more on my poetry database, which she has now finished as far as entering texts, snugging up the format, before we sat down to enjoy Gary and Jim’s yummy salmon loaf and mushroom risotto.

All our guests left after the meal, and we were joined soon after by Gary, who had labored all day at Cracker Barrel. He joined us for the Gaia Meditation. Jim and I enjoyed a sweet snuggle with the kitties and distraction-and-sleep TV before saying good night at midnight.

2007-02-10

This was the final day of Jim’s and my resting time and we enjoyed it greatly. After Morning Offering we watched What The Bleep, a gift of Eccles P. In the afternoon, after a good lunch and stretching, I slept through the two films that remained on our little docket of videos.

It has been a wonderful rest, and I am only vaguely apologetic because I am still in the considerable discomfort this mini-vacation from work was intended to heal.

Regardless of that discomfort, Jim and I had a stellar day. Our twentieth year of marriage is almost at an end, as we were married May 30, 1987. The depth of sweetness between us seems to me to spiral ever upwards as we see more and more of the Creator in each other. Affectionate words are echoed in kindnesses and love is reflected in love. Surely when we pass through the gates of death into larger life and pause to look back on what we have wrought in this lifetime, our relationship and its transparency to the one infinite Creator will stand out as one of our best gifts to the Creator.

We offered the Gaia Meditation together with Gary after a good conversation about channeling and “right” versions. I had not represented Gary fairly to our web guy when this subject first came up, getting details wrong, and I apologized for that, handsomely I hope. Don’t you think the most frustrating thing, in a discussion, is to be misrepresented? I think we worked through the catalyst together well.

Other than not going to church tomorrow, which I will do, I cannot think of anything else to try to assuage the keen nerve pain in my arms and back, chest and shoulders. I shall need to talk with Dr. June about beefing up my anti-inflammatory medication. C’est la vie, say the old folks! It goes to show you never can tell! (Quoting an old rock and roll song.)

We shall persevere with joy, regardless! There is much to do, and at whatever handicap I do it, I am eager to be back at it.

2007-02-09

Another chilly day with brilliant sunshine was the backdrop for a day of rest for Jim and me. We enjoyed a film called Proof and one called V for Vendetta, neither movie a winner as a work of art but both offering excellent performances especially in the case of Gwyneth Paltrow in Proof. I got my hair cut, still leaving my pixie cut dark, shiny green until after St Patrick’s Day, and we ate a delicious lunch at KT’s, one of my favorite restaurants.

It was a blessing to rest and I hope it ends up helping my comfort level. I continue to deal with a lot of discomfort and will probably need to consult my rheumatologist and alter my medication to deal with this pain, especially the nerve pain from back and shoulders unless it lets up by tomorrow’s end.

Jim’s and my only work for L/L Research today was to offer our Morning Offering and the evening’s Gaia Meditation faithfully. I offered the ending prayer tonight.

Gary B and our web guy are having a very interesting conversation concerning the footnote Gary thought it might be a good idea to place in the 1-21-07 channeling where the Q’uo group are talking about forgiveness and karma. It echoes material in the Ra sessions, but is somewhat variant in details. The footnote suggested by Ian states simply that there is material in a specific Ra session which is also on this topic which some may find interesting to read. I think that does a good job of offering material to the reader without comment on which version holds more truth.

If I were inherently a joiner and a follower, I suppose something in me would have long ago tried to create a “right” version of my belief system, detail by detail. However neither in my Christian walk nor in my L/L Research walk, which contains not only learning but the bulk of my outer service to others, have I ever felt any urge to codify or quantify my faith into doctrine or dogma. My instinct at all times is to keep my seeking open to the qualitative nuances of information.

Those who come L/L Research’s way are coming to us at least in part because we are not a dogmatic source but a true research source, I feel.

2007-02-08

As the weather persisted in single digits and brilliant sunshine, giving us a gorgeous day, Jim and I snuggled up indoors and had the first day of our mini-vacation. We saw two movies, or rather I was awake for the moving film, Take The Lead, the story of Pierre Bulaine, who talked the New York City school system into letting him add dancing and etiquette to the curriculum, and asleep for the filmed story of Esther. That latter movie has a title something like A Night With The King. Those few seconds in which my eyes were open, it looked to be a gloriously elaborate and accurate production.

Jim and I also had a romantic tryst, napped together, read and I played solitaire for a while and knitted while Jim worked on a personal project. It was a great day!

I actually experienced more body aches than yesterday, so perhaps it is wise that I am indeed resting! Jim extended the vacation to include tomorrow and Saturday as well, so I will pray to be better by the Sabbath,

Morning Offering and the Gaia Meditation were offered as always, and Jim and I enjoyed stretching before our bath.

Gary was at work at the admin desk today.

2007-02-07

A skiff of snow was on the ground as I got the paper this morning and the metal piece which one uses to pull the mailbox open came off in my hand, frozen and brittle. I think it is time for a new mailbox. Gee, we’ve only used this one for 23 years. They just don’t make them like they usedta.

Jim had a “putter-morning”, polishing the rest of the family silver, which is genuinely old and very hard to clean up, and doing numerous other chores and errands around the house. Meanwhile I worked all morning on the UPI article. I chose to write on dignity this week, as several people have impressed me recently with their solid ethical actions is the face of much resistance. I think I will revisit the subject next week, going deeper with it.

Mick and I had a good lunch together and a stretch, and then he went outside – he has discovered a leak in our smaller pond, not important now as everything is frozen but very important when it warms up. He is attempting to find it and fix it. Meanwhile I worked on Chapter Four in The Choice 101. By the end of the afternoon the chapter had a new beginning and I think the work is a good improvement although now I need to rework the rest of that chapter, which is nine pages of material so far.

After our bath, Jim and I had a talk about how poorly I have been feeling lately. He feels that the gathering wore me down to a somewhat dangerous level and asked me to take a couple of days off, tomorrow and the next day. It makes sense and I will do it. Happily, Jim will join me and we will have a two-day vacation here at home, watching videos and napping. I look forward to the rest and to feeling better.

Gary spent a busy day at the admin desk, arranging with a lady who hails from Switzerland to come visit here soon and talking with a young man of 22 years who claims to be able to do miracles. He wishes to come here and heal me. That will be approximately the 25th person who has tried to do so. He is welcome to give it a go!

My understanding of my condition is that it was pre-incarnatively chosen in order to keep me focused on inner work. Those pre-incarnative distortions are there for a reason and I have long since made my peace with this. However I’d be glad to feel better and wish him well in trying his healing!

I also took some time today to address a question from Gary B and Terry H. They both noticed that there was a difference between the Ra’s version of Jesus’ coming to forgiveness and stopping the wheel of karma on the cross and the Q’uo’s version in the 1-21-07 session just posted.

I explained to them that we are a research organization rather than a church and the LOO is research material, not holy writ. Variant Confederation versions of the story on karma and Jesus all note that it is forgiveness, of both self and other-self, which stops the wheels of karma. I OK’d placing a footnote to that effect in the Q’uo session. I have zero interest in encouraging the energies of religion and dogma in connection with L/L Research’s work.

Jim’s and my evening was very quiet, as we watched an especially hard-hitting Democracy Now newscast concerning the illegal detention of innocent people, came downstairs for supper and conversation with Gary before the Gaia Meditation, after which we came back upstairs for a final snuggle and an early bedtime.

2007-02-06

It was a cold, cold day and I was glad of my leg warmers as I came upstairs after Morning Offering to work on editing the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. I am about halfway through the fourth of nine weekend gatherings’ worth of material. I took some time to send Barbara and Aaron a selection from a session I just edited, a long story which I thought Aaron might find some use in shortening. I could edit it down myself but it is Aaron’s work and Barbara’s channeling, so I will let them see what they think.

And I wrote Judy R, encouraging her to send me the editing comments which I have not yet seen, so that she and I can complete our patterns together with every thread straight. Judy’s patience and care with this material is absolutely outstanding.

I told her that I was interested in her continuing to get better at pre-editing me not just for the A/Q project but also for another one. It is a project which has hung fire for six years, but I have not forgotten about it – just been unable to get to it. It is the unabridged version of A Wanderer’s Handbook, which I have intended all along to place on site in its unabridged form. This edition adds about half again as much material as resides in the printed version. It is the book I originally wrote, which Jim cut down for me in 2001. If Judy will take up this project, then all my older editing jobs will be on track.

The Book of Days is all done except for choosing a printer, in which issue Gary and Ian are now knee-deep. Carmen has my poetry all entered in digital form – the second older work. She will tackle the regularization of formatting my Prayer Group writings next – a third older work. I am presently working on A/Q in my morning editing/bathroom juggle – a fourth older project. So getting a start on pre-editing the unabridged Wanderer’s Handbook – the fifth old project, and a large one indeed - will mean that all of the older creative projects which I have had stacked up for years are now being addressed. It is a good feeling.

OK, let’s get real! It is a humongously grand, extremely swell feeling! While it is central for me to create this Living the Law of One series now, I also care about these older children of mine and would like to see them leave home and make their own way in the world of service to others.

After a most pleasant lunch with Mick and a stretching routine, Jim set out to work outdoors, sharpening his last set of blades and making a bid on another fallen tree in one of his customers’ yards, while I worked further with the red-ray section of Chapter Four of The Choice 101. I have not got it right yet.

The UPI site finally published my last column over the weekend, so I shall need to write a new article tomorrow for this week’s deadline. It is too bad that UPI got so badly confused about the articles – it took them four weeks to publish the two articles on the archetypes! I shall hope for uneventful times from now on.

My energies have continued to be extremely low today, and I napped through part of the morning as well as in the early evening, after our whirlpool, awakening to enjoy a light supper (thank heavens for Boost!) and offer the Gaia Meditation.

Gary was at the admin helm all afternoon, catching up on the massive e-mail load there after finishing his cleaning of the guest rooms and putting new sheets on those beds. It is good to have the house coming together again after last weekend’s gathering.

We heard from Tobey that he made it home, bum knee and all!

2007-02-05

It is interesting to me that as I awoke today I could feel the presence of the Gathering’s remaining people in the house. We had Ed, Michelle and Maya and Ryan and Tiffani still present. I had not thought for a while about the difference between the energy in the house when it is only Jim, Gary and me here and when there are more people present. The energy is quite different eve though they were all in the lowest level and I was on the second floor.

I was dazed and moving at a snail’s pace all of today, still exhausted from the energy expenditures I had made at the Archetypes Gathering. I think some of that is due to the questing energy of attendees who feel that perhaps I can give them some good advice or otherwise help them. This expectation pulls at my own vital store of energy. It is inevitable at a Gathering that this will happen. And that is OK. I just need to recover.

In the morning I pondered the situation as regards the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues. There were letters from both Ian and Judy. Judy R’s and my original plan was moving along OK previously, but our web guy, Ian, made the point that it might well take me a long time to get the editing done on the remaining sessions, and meanwhile they were in good shape to put up on our site and Barbara’s Deep Springs site as sessions, so people could search them for key words. He went ahead and posted the sessions with a caveat, warning that I had not yet vetted the sessions.

The only trouble with this solution is that Judy has made comments in her versions of the transcripts which she wished me to see. You have to understand here that Judy is no ordinary volunteer who does one good job and lets it go. Our angelic Judy R is a steady, sturdy server of others and as an editor, she constantly works to improve the interface between her and me, so that when she delivers to me a session, she has incorporated into it the changes she sees that I have made in previous sessions.

Her plan has worked perfectly. In each session I have received under this plan, I have fewer edits before being finished with my work on it.

This plan is now obsolete, since I am no longer getting sessions to edit from Judy but from Ian, who has created them as PDFs and removed the comments she made, so I no longer see them when I edit. So I wrote Judy to ask her to send me her comments separately. Then I can look at them as I do each session, and send her the results so that she can go ahead with her editing improvement.

Meanwhile Ian is freed up to do the massive amounts of work he is doing on other projects, both for L/L Research’s Book of Days and for highly deserving sources such as Bub Hill, whose channeling Ian says is a good deal like that of our group. He is creating a web site for Bub.

I think we have found a good solution. And Judy has already written to agree and to move ahead in our new pattern. So all is well.

Jim and I received the Bub Hill material in printed book form from Ian as a Christmas present and will take it up to read through at Morning Offering as soon as we finish our present readings of Evelyn Underhill’s beautiful writing in her little Readings for Advent book. We are excited to see the material as Ian loves it – and his taste is good.

Jim had the firm intention of taking the last load of wood from St. Luke’s job up to Avalon this morning but ran into a big problem. Gary and Ed had hitched Jim’s trailer back up to his truck but they had placed the hook-up in the wrong place and Jim did not notice it until he started to haul the wood. Immediately he could tell that something was off and stopped the truck, but unfortunately the pulling had seated the hitch in the oh-so-wrong place and the trailer was totally stuck.

Jim worked with it for a while, until lunch time, and had no joy, so very sensibly stopped and we had a good lunch and stretching together. Then he went back to the hitch and got it to let go, finally. We both cheered extensively, as failure to do so would have left Jim with no option but to take the truck-plus-trailer to the repair shop and leave both of them there to be adjusted. So Jim took off, late, for Avalon as planned.

And this is SUCH a good thing! It starts snowing here tomorrow and continues through Wednesday night, with some accumulation expected. And this is over the ice we now have on the roadways. I am most grateful this project was completed in dry weather. The high today was 16F, too chilly to let the ice melt. Jim reported that he had a tough time getting up the access road after he stacked the firewood and placed it under a tarp to season until we need it next year, even with no load on the trailer. There’s lots of ice on the road.

In the afternoon, I worked again on Chapter 4 of The Choice 101, tinkering with the red ray section more. It is still not there, but I can feel it coming as I patiently go over the material asking for guidance. I am praying without ceasing on this job!

Gary, Tiffani, Ryan, Ed, Michelle and Maya all went to lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant before Ed and family left to drive back to Tennessee and the rest of the crew went to see Volver at the cinemas. It got mixed reviews from them. Tiff and Ryan got on a plane soon after that, and the house was again down to its normal complement.

Gary spent the rest of his afternoon changing guest beds and putting everything back in the living room, my office and my bedroom, where we had switched things around for the conference. By nightfall, we were pretty much back to our usual configuration.

We did well this time with gauging how much food was needed for the group and had very few leftovers. Three cheers! Buying too much has been a problem in the past. Our only overage was on sweets – we have way too many of them left. It is tough duty to finish those up! But we shall persevere!

Jim and I enjoyed a good bath and said good night to Gary before coming upstairs for a romantic tryst and a nap. We descended to the first floor for dinner and the Gaia Meditation and enjoyed a block of Star Trek Enterprise while we rested for the evening with the kitties. We called it a night around 11 PM.

2007-02-04

The remaining attendees at the Archetypes Gathering were as slow to arise as Jim and I. We had nothing official scheduled for the group today except to offer our usual Sunday meditation; as it is a channeling meditation Sunday.

Jim and I got things ready in the kitchen for a late brunch and bade Tobey farewell. He had decided to start for home, not knowing just how far h could get along his 8-hours’ journey but wishing to press towards home where he can heal in peace.

We had a good seeking circle of Romi, Ed, Michelle, Tiffani, Ryan (Tiffani’s boyfriend, who had joined us late yesterday), Gary, Jim, Mike and me. The question of the day from the group concerned how to use the archetypes in daily life. I will have to edit the transcript to see how useful the material is.

After we completed our meditation, I came upstairs and slept, a deep sleep expressing my total exhaustion. Jim awoke me for supper and the SuperBowl festivities but I felt perfectly wretched and after the Gaia Meditation, I called it an early night and left the rest of the house to the game and the fun of cheering on your team – Ryan is a Bears fan.

Jim joined me a good deal later, after talking with Mom McCarty, and we snuggled before saying good night.

It has been a great weekend and a good Gathering, and as always when these things come to an end, I feel a bit sad to see the group energy dissolve into the various people going all of their various ways. And yet that is a good thing, with people taking seeds from the experience this weekend and planting them as they go.

2007-02-03

Snow bursts sparkled in the air from time to time today as the deep freeze weather continued. We were cozy and warm inside. After Morning Offering and everyone getting their breakfast, we picked up where we had left off yesterday and moved through the discussion and meditation upon the rest of the archetype pairs for the archetypes of the mind during the morning and afternoon.

I felt a good deal of useful contemplation and thought was shared by all. The focus was intense and I think by nightfall we were all a bit punchy from the sustained study and thought. But it was delightful, provocative and savvy conversation with everyone pitching in – the mark of a great gathering.

We broke in the middle of the day to go to the Cheesecake Factory Restaurant, a place where vegetarians are as much at home as carnivores and where the food is really good. We brought back some cheesecake for Mick, who had to miss the luncheon because of needing to sprinkle calcium chloride over both parking lots and all the walks at St. Luke’s. Snow bursts are predicted for the whole weekend, and Jim wanted to make sure that those who gathered for the Saturday evening service there had firm footing,

After the work of the conference proper was done at around 7 PM, we said good bye to one of our group. Steve M had to leave early in order to respond to a sudden illness in his family. Please keep Steve, his Dad and his whole family in your prayers.

Tiffani took him to the airport, as he was lucky enough to find an immediate flight. And we were all fortunate that Tiff had to go to the airport at that time anyway in order to pick up her boyfriend, Ryan, who arrived late for the weekend. He came because he wanted to meet Jim and me and see what Tiffani liked so much about our material. We were delighted to add him to the company.

Ken and Cindy S left soon after the end of our official work, needing to get back home to go to work tomorrow.

The rest of the crew chowed down on their choice of both the luncheon and the dinner items from our previous meals this weekend, kindly cleaning up our refrigerator of the its and pieces of good dishes and really enjoying the food. Everyone was most complimentary about our offerings. I do think that a gathering runs on its stomach, so we try to have good food around at all times during one of these gatherings.

After supper we cracked the wine and spread the cheese and crackers and offered the Gaia Meditation, which in this case was an extended toast. Then we chose teams for a Trivial Pursuit game which lasted until almost 11 PM and created a great goof-off lightness to balance out all the deep thoughts and profound insights which were the harvest of our work on the archetypes. We had Ed and Michelle’s infant, Maya and Valerie’s grade-school child, Ocean, for the game and the kids were a real addition, creating laughter and fun for everyone as the infant kept waddling carefully after the cats, who were glad to flee her, while Ocean, Valerie’s daughter, tossed the die for us, figuring out ever more creative ways to roll the bones. We had some chasing of that die to do when she rolled it off her head, but the fun was great.

We all said good night around 11:30 – Jim and I had a bogus, sudden death win just to end the game - and Jim and I snuggled with the kitties until almost 1 AM, as we are sleeping in tomorrow morning.

I have felt wretched all weekend with both the IC symptoms and chest pain, and Tobey has felt worse than I by far, as he deals with serious inflammation of his right knee. I think he will be staying here an extra day or two while he heals up. Thankfully, he can work from here, as his job is on his computer, which he has with him. It has been a good exercise for me in knowing that all things are well even as Tobey and deal with these symptoms of discomfort.

We agreed at the next Archetypes Gathering to take up where we left off and study the archetypes of body and spirit.

Steve and Sara T left after the TP game was over, so we have now slimmed down to the crowd that will take in the channeling meditation and the SuperBowl with us tomorrow.

2007-02-02

Jim and I got up a bit early to get breakfast items out and put on the coffee pots and hot water for tea. Then we sat down for our Morning Offering, attracting about half of the attendees.

The morning was spent working through the material on the Matrix and the Significator of the Mind archetypes. We are not being at all quick in moving through this material, but the discussion is rich and the community feeling is wonderful. People are really listening to each other and I for one am gaining some insights which before were not mine.

After a good lunch of our homemade turkey vegetable soup, salads and sandwiches or wraps, plus fudge brownies for dessert, we tackled the Catalyst and the Experience of the Mind archetypes and there we worked the entire afternoon until six o’clock, except for a couple of breaks. We are totally off schedule now, but as far as I am concerned this means that we are really focusing well on our material.

Steve T presented a thoughtful lecture-cum-discussion from 6 to 7:30 and then we were of to Hometown Buffet, pulling tables together so we could all enjoy each other’s company during dinner. We like to take gatherings there because they have a wide variety of vegan food as well as the usual southern-fried country cooking endemic to these parts of the world.

I was just exhausted and after the Gaia Meditation, which we offered directly upon our return home, I went straight to bed. Jim and I snuggled for a while, but he was not even able to finish our bedtime routine, as I fell asleep on him! One thing for sure is that our weekend study gatherings have real substance. Thinking and musing intuitively on the archetypes is dense, tough work. And so worth it!

Unfortunately, Tobey’s leg continues to be enflamed. We got a whirlpool for him after supper last night and hopefully that helped some. He is such a good sport, using my crutches from last winter’s ankle break and getting around just fine, and not a peep of complaint from him, although it is clear he is suffering greatly.

This is a great group of people. I am so glad to be a part of this weekend.

2007-02-01

The conversation has begun! We started in after Morning Offering doing the last-minute things and I helped cook, so that we had a good turkey feast for this evening’s meal and salads and a soup for our lunches to accompany the various breads, cheeses and deli-type meats we will offer then. I made some brownies for luncheon dessert and Jim put together Gary’s birthday cake for his festival Earth Day on SuperBowl Sunday, which is the last day of our conference.

I also edited an Aaron/Q’uo session once everything was declared done by Mick on the home front, sneaking in a little office work before the onslaught.

People began arriving around 2:00 PM with Steve M’s arrival. Gary retrieved Mike T from the airport within the hour. He had flown in from Florida. He immediately went back to get Tiffani, a veteran of many L/L Research gatherings who hails from Texas. Tobey W. arrived from the east coast. Ed A and his wife – I am blocking on her name - arrived from Tennessee with their infant child, Maya, just about a year old and good as gold. Steve T and his wife, Sara, also arrived, as did Ken and Cindy S. Romi came to make our roster complete. Jim, Gary and I are well joined by a really exceptional group of seekers.

Jim and Gary had removed furniture from our living room to accommodate the extra chairs needed to seat the folks and I have to keep the recliner portion of my Mama chair extended because one cannot work the controls with the chairs butted together so snugly, but I think that once we are all seated, it works well.

We talked around the circle of seeking as our first agenda point, taking all of the time between the opening at about 5:15 to suppertime at around 7:30. I could feel the group knitting together immediately and it bodes very well for the weekend. Conversation flowed throughout the dinner hour. I could feel the whole house starting to glow with the good energy people are sharing.

After supper we worked our way through the material on the archetypical mind within Book IV of The Law of One – that material which focuses on the whole mind of the archetypes and not on any one concept complex. I started with a few remarks and then we read our way through the collected quotes – collected by Tobey W and such a good job this is – and stopping for comments when people had them.

These people have lots of comments! It is a wonderful thing.

We stopped studying long enough for the Gaia Meditation, with Romi offering the closing prayer, and then ploughed right back into the material, not wishing to miss anything while we had such a good discussion group going. We finished around 10:30 PM.

The one difficulty is that one of our attendees, Tobey, pulled up lame just this morning with a bad knee. We got him a crutch so he would be steadier on his pins, as he can put virtually no weight on the bad leg. I offered him our whirlpool or a good soak with bath salts, but he was content to tolerate the condition. He believes it will go away as quickly as it came on, and I do hope he is right.

It was a blessed day and a good beginning to this weekend’s conversation.

2007-01-31

January fled away today, shaking her cold skirts behind her. I wore my flannel-lined jeans and felt toasty and cozy, inside the house. After Morning Offering I came upstairs to edit. By lunchtime I had finished another Aaron/Q’uo session.

Jim was a busy bee all morning, cleaning the upper shelves of our kitchen, living room and office where we keep my old heirlooms – pitchers, platters and all manner of other china and crystal. All the sets are broken up, but I love having my family’s treasures displayed. And we do get the good china down occasionally just for fun. By lunchtime he had refreshed all of those items and scrubbed the shelves before replacing them. He is having trouble getting the silver pieces shined up, so will look for a better polish.

Gary was at the admin desk off and on all day, plus doing the grocery shopping for the Gathering. He has labeled many items in our refrigerators so our attendees can find what they want. Between Jim and Gary, they have seen to every detail and except for finishing up on the cooking and getting the chakra drawings hung along the stair well, we are ready for the Archetypes Gathering.

Thoughtful Pupi and Peter sent some teas for the gathering! What a lovely gesture. We shall make good use of them, as several f the company, notably Romi, love tea, shunning coffee entirely.

After lunch and stretching with Mick, I worked on the red ray section of Chapter Four of The Choice 101. It’s not quite there yet but it is coming. I also rejoiced to find a good quote on despair, which I have been hunting for a couple of days now. I will need that for the upcoming section, still on red ray but moving from sexuality issues to survival issues.

I took Dr. A’s medication for the chest pain and indeed it quieted the pain. However it seems that I am allergic to it. Back to square one on that. I still feel poorly and decided to skip choir practice. Although we were scheduled for a jazz night, I asked Mick if he would mind our staying home. He got some take-out at Applebee’s and a DVD, The Sentinel, a Michael Douglas spy movie, and we snuggled up together and had a good meal right here at home.

Gary joined us for the Gaia Meditation and offered the closing prayer. The energy in the room was delightful. Both Jim and Gary could look around and see the results of their labors. The house is aglow with cleanliness and order and they had every right to feel satisfied. It feels very magical now.

We sought our beds fairly early, saying good night around 10:30 after a good snuggle with the kitties.