2007-06-10

The Sabbath dawned clear and cool, a delicious day as long as one does not contemplate the need of our plants for water in this very early draught season. I sailed off to rehearsal for an early service – our main service in the summer is 10:00 AM at St. Luke’s instead of 11 – and stayed around after service was over to sell all but a few of our baseball tickets. We will be singing the National Anthem on July 15th for the Bats, for sure! It should be great fun. I love a baseball crowd. The energy is relaxed, happy and laid-back, quite unlike basketball crowds and football crowds. I think the elegant and elegiac game itself creates that atmosphere. I look forward to it.

Melissa had come in Saturday night, but we were not aware of her arrival because we were at the Anchorage Street Dance, over in Wagner Park. She did not want to disturb our good time, so she slept in her car in our parking area, where we did not see her, and she came into the house only on Sunday morning.

We were utterly delighted to see her and much relieved that her aging Saab had weathered the trip with nothing worse than a need for new brake pads. She joined Mick and me for lunch and then a brace of films.

“A Good Year” was a gregarious, generous, lovingly crafted film with an outstanding music track. We greatly enjoyed watching that.

The second film, “Children of Men”, was difficult to watch and very dark, a thoroughly unrealistic look ahead at a mere twenty years into our future, when the world is coming apart because the human gene pool has dried up. The film's intentions were the best and several performances were well realized. However Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” tells the same story in a far more compact and emotionally available manner, so I cannot recommend "Children of Men" except to say that the energies expressed in the film ring true to the tendencies inherent in our present global society’s dark side for meaningless violence and enormous, profound anger. It is a good film to view, just to gauge an artistic vision of these energies.

After the second film was finished running, Jim and I bathed and then went to the Choir Party, where I was able to introduce Mick to many of my fellow choir members for the first time. We dined sumptuously on party food and Jim was able to talk with the host, John, concerning our problem with our larger fish pond, where the water remains murky with summer algae. The fish are fine but the pond’s appearance is not good. John’s garden is wonderful and his ponds are clear! We wandered through a couple of acres of his gardens, waterfalls, pools and rock work before the evening was over. It was a pure pleasure to see!

When we got back, Jim and I took some time for a romantic tryst, offered the Gaia Meditation together and then he left me to nap until 10 PM. I had a radio interview at 10:30 and needed to rest up in order to be fresh.

My interviewer was Gina Jones, author of “Flying between Heaven and Earth” (http://www.flyingbetweenheavenandearth.com/about.htm). She credits the LOO material with inspiring her to follow her own path of service. The interview was a pleasure, as her questions were well within our material’s heart and her knowledge of the material made her questions far more pointed and good. Calls kept coming in from listeners, and no programs were planned after our interview on BBS Late Night, so we stayed on air an extra hour. Jim sat with me throughout, lending his silent but much appreciated support.

Needless to say, we were glad to seek our beds! Lights out was at about 1 AM.