2007-04-27

Today was the pick of the week for glorious weather. The maple trees are finally convinced that it is safe to spread their leaves to the sun, and the lovely, off-pink cast to their budding forms is exquisite.

After Morning Offering, Jim and Gary mounted up and mowed. They had a very full day – eight yards to cut and all the attendant gardening to spiff up plantings and trim around trees and posts. Thank heavens it was the best day in the world to do that! The temperature reached 70 late in the day and there was a brisk breeze, so conditions were ideal for working outside.

I got to item 38 on my list of things to do while waiting for my new laptop, a list which is getting shorter all the time. And it was a joy. I spent the day with Papa’s letters. I had reached the first page of the latest letter Papa sent, about two weeks ago now, in my evening reading. So I took the morning and the early afternoon to finish reading his thoughts. He writes long letters indeed: this one ran 66 pages, and these are dense pages.

Papa writes a mixture of diary entries and teaching units. He lets the spirit move him. I have to read quite carefully and deliberately, because he often creates a brilliant exposition in the middle of his daily weather report or the discussion of local zoning issues. And I don’t want to miss a thing!

He is struggling, as am I, with physical health issues, so we encourage each other to live strong and remain on task.

I had a wonderful time reading through his work and am most pleased that Papa did what I asked – he gave me more of a consolidated summary of the cycles of empire on our planet. He is far more accurate at historical detail than am I. Thank you, Papa! I will be using his material in 102, when I talk about the outer work of living well on planet Earth.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent starting a letter to Papa responding to things in those 200 or so pages of letters which I am answering. I never would have the wit or time to write such long letters in return! But Papa does not care about that. His joy is in teaching me, for I am the only student he has now, despite the breadth and depth of his knowledge, which ranges from shamanism, religion and spirituality through the humanities – history especially – to economics and politics. I am a lucky one.

Papa is so funny. He’s a curmudgeon of the best kind and liberally lards his often militant prose with puns and Edward Lear-like nonsense which makes you stop and grin and lighten up with him.

Knowing that I will likely finish up my letter responding to Papa tomorrow, I asked Gary to collect a CD of my journal entries, channeling sessions and UPI articles since my last letter to him for enclosure. Papa no longer has access to the internet so he needs these sent to him snail mail as well.

I got the first letter of his four answered and decided to wait until tomorrow to go further, as it was quite late. So I collected a couple of recipes from a favorite on-line source, a feature of the Louisville Courier-Journal’s web site called “Fix It Tonight”. I love that source because my guys like vegetables a lot. It is not that easy to find interesting new recipes for veggies. But the CJ site has a veggie recipe daily. Today I collected a recipe for Roast Asparagus, a simple, garlicky recipe that sounds delicious.

I got a request off to Elihu E for any material about Dana Redfield he would like to share with me. I am gearing up to write a UPI column remembering Dana Redfield next week. I have the feeling this will end up being a series, as her life embraced some interesting issues for the spiritual seeker.

And that was my day, a very satisfactory work day which felt like a vacation.

Jim and I had a truly magnificent date after our bath and then lounged and talked until supper time. We joined Gary for a good meal and enjoyed a block of Star Gate episodes with him until the Gaia Meditation. Our evening ended with Gary going downstairs to read while Jim and I came upstairs for our bedtime kitty snuggle. We turned out the lights at midnight.