2007-09-13

Another day in the “barely-80s” greeted Mick and me as we made our Morning Offering. Jim set out for a full day which included taking down a tree which had mostly been felled by the last storm we had, perhaps a month ago. It put us and the whole area out of power for over a day, as, in its experiment in gravity, it had bundled itself to a telephone pole. The power company had removed enough of the tree to free the downed pole, but had left the rest in a heap. Jim took away almost everything but the living trunk, which he had not bid upon removing. He has just an hour or so to finish up there, which he will do tomorrow.

Meanwhile I continued cleaning up the files in my recipes database and then got some good work done in editing the interview Marcia McMahon and I had in March of 2006. It is fun to see the questions come, and wonder, “How am I going to get unconditional love into that answer?” Hopefully I shall finish this beast sometime soon! It’s only beastly because of the pervasive round markings, all of which must be deleted by hand.

Melissa was in town for chores and also for a farming class tonight at 6 PM. We had arranged to lunch together and then do errands, and at 11:30 I collected her and we went to Ruby Tuesday’s, home of a seriously great burger called Triple Prime. We indulged in those, YUM, and then shopped at Garden Ridge. The household is hard on its dishes and I was looking for really inexpensive dinner plates, dessert plates and side plates. We use one-of-a-kind ware, as I have never identified with having sets of anything and setting a fine table. I just want enough plates so everyone in the crowd can have one!

In the end we found one dinner plate, the entire six dessert plates we needed and zero small plates at a terrific price. They had the right sized small plates, but they were all saucers, with a central indented ring to hold a cup. I am looking for plates with a smooth surface. I shall need to look further.

We also found pretty napkins and dish towels at deep discount, 25 cents and 50 cents, and I replenished our supplies of those. We use the napkins to dress our dinner trays, rather than using cloth napkins per se.

Then we stopped by Sam’s Club to replenish my supplies of liquid minerals and vitamins. I browsed the clothing section, hoping to find a good deal for Melissa’s winter work clothes, but nothing was on sale, so no joy there.

I am thinking of placing, in the "if you want to help" section on our llresearch web site, a place where we give people the chance to offer donations strictly for Melissa's work. She exists on a tiny stipend and works 24/7 to harmonize and develop Avalon's sweet acres. Her ministry is one of deep devotion. She always has a project going, and the cost of construction materials is always more than it appears when she makes her budgets. And she needs work clothes and tools. She deserves abundance there.

Arriving home around 3 PM, I used the rest of the afternoon to work on Chapter 8 of 101. My doldrums had lifted nicely and I was able to move forward and write what is probably some of the final material in that chapter. Nothing is finalized yet, though, except the first section. I look forward to picking up this work next Monday. Tomorrow afternoon will be devoted to my going to the hospital for a mammogram.

Melissa had much movement to report on the chicken coop, which is all but finished now. She will receive her five hens over the weekend. It is exciting to see Melissa’s project completed. She has built a small house! She gave the chickens a window, for light. She has installed a door. It is quite an achievement that it is square and tight, all without a blueprint. She said it took a whole lot of thought! And she has done this virtually with no help.

She is a genius at thrift, and told me of salvaging a lot of lumber and other materials from the ruins of an old two-story house on Avalon. Our chicken coop has some century-old yellow poplar in its make-up, a testament to the enduring qualities of that tree’s wood. The coop sits near the creek, across from Sugar Shack.

After a quick whirlpool, Jim and I met Romi for his birthday dinner at The Grape leaf, a Mediterranean restaurant on Frankfort Avenue, near his home. We wanted to give him a nice gift of a dinner out because of all Romi does for us all the time. He volunteers countless hours keeping our house network and its five computers maintained. He offers the web-casts to our very small network of people all over the world who tune in to our private chat room to hear it and now has arranged to send those on to BBS Radio for broadcast.

And he is a most faithful attendee at our channeling meditations. Through the years, there have been many public meetings at which he was the third member of the sitting circle. Three in the circle is the minimum number for receiving outer and universal sources such as Q’uo.

We talked about the future a bit. Jim and I, we told him, still plan to live at Avalon. We do not have the funds to build our passive solar house there now. We are going on faith that the future holds our receiving abundance when the time is right. We have a dim sense that perhaps five years or so from now, that will happen. Romi hopes to follow us there at some point, but for now he is looking at small houses and condos in Louisville, in the neighborhood in which he now lives, which is convenient to downtown and a thriving yuppiedom, with lots of charming shops in the beautiful old renovated homes/storefronts along Frankfort Avenue.

And we talked a bit about why we want to farm bio-dynamically. To us, it is important to live the Law of One, not simply to teach it. Life-style then becomes a valid choice. And we would both choose to live at one with the earth, our little bit of earth at Avalon Farm. Bio-dynamics, a theory and practice of agriculture, was devised by Rudolf Steiner, the creator of the philosophy of Anthroposophy and the human healing ideas of Eurhythmics as well as the founder of the Waldorf School educational structure.

To Steiner, the human was designed to live in total harmony with the land. He would grow food that was native to that land. He would have mammals – cows, sheep, llamas – grazing the land and spreading wildflower and herb seeds all over its pastures, creating a distinct biota. And he would have us enrich the land not with substances alone but with essences, seeing all physical substances as carriers of sacred essences and forces. Melissa already has work in on a large composting pit, which figures large in the bio-dynamic scheme. And we now have a source for ordering their B-D additives.

All of this really resonated with Romi. He said that our Homecoming topic of “Who Am I” had gotten him thinking far more deeply about the topic, and he feels also the urge to live closer to the land.

We had a delicious meal and saw Romi’s card from Susanna Angela in Italy. There is romance in the air there. She will come to visit him and us near the end of this year. I look forward to meeting her! Susanna translates all Q’uo’s messages into Italian as soon as they appear on www.llresearch.org.

I have encouraged Romi to discuss with her the possibility of sharing those translations with our site. We already have Portuguese and Chinese translations of our sessions on site, and would welcome Italian as well. We hope through the years that people of many languages will offer us the gift of translations, making the material ever more available.

After saying good night and Happy Earth Day to the Ro Man,we meditated during the ride home. I offered the closing prayer to the Gaia Meditation as the headlights and taillights twinkled on the expressway. We then spent a happy time with the kitties before saying good night at 11 PM.