2009-01-01

Happy New Year! Mick and I enjoyed having Tommy join us for a late Morning Offering. For the hymn, Tommy got out his guitar and we sang “Down to Earth like a Dove” together. It felt so good to sing with my li'l bro!

I made a streusel coffeecake – thanks, Tom C, for the recipe – for the assembled, who joined Mick and me throughout the next couple of hours. Ted was the last one up, surfacing at 11:30 or so. There was half a coffeecake left, after everyone else had had all they wanted, and I was amazed to see it all disappear! It brought me a vivid flash of how different my attitude towards food is from a mother feeding a 16-year-old son! I think in terms of cooking for a week. Mary must think in terms of cooking enough for today, she hopes!

Our day flowed effortlessly from there. Melissa spent her work time today at the computer, doing research and e-mail. Gary joined her at the L/L helm around lunchtime and worked until late into the evening.

Mick settled in with the generous array of football bowls at 1:00 and enjoyed the games all the rest of the day when he was not cleaning up after us all in the kitchen or staging dinner. He was a happy man!

I enjoyed hanging with the kids and Mary in the morning, and spent the afternoon with Gary up in my office, getting further educated on www.bring4th.org, our new sister site to www.llresearch.org. I learned how to make a forum entry – I chose the 2012 forum since I wanted to mention the upcoming 2012-oriented gathering this April – and gave a link to my two Mackinac Island speeches on 2012 at “A Time of Awakening in August 2007.

We all came together for a dinner of Wimmer’s Wieners, which we brought back from Nebraska, mashed potatoes, white chili and a big salad. Mick put that all together, and again, thanks to Ted’s appetite, the chili and the wieners were all polished off! Ted is a slender young man who tops out at 5’ 8”, so he clearly has the proverbial hollow leg. I must say that Tommy and Mary’s three children are exceptionally fun and good to know, bright as new pennies and full of interests and gifts. It has been terrific catching up with Rosie, EJ and Ted.

Christiana Rose is in her freshman year in college now, while Theodore Thomas is in his junior year in high school and Emily Jean is in her eighth grade year. They truly do Tommy and Mary proud! And they all happen to be beautiful of face and form. As Melissa said when she was preparing to leave late in the evening for Avalon, “You are a remarkable family!” I am so grateful that Mary Craver said yes to Tommy Rueckert just a few short years back!

After supper we settled down to a thoughtful time of reflection and shared around the circle about our spiritual journeys. I talked about finding a new level of prayer as I did the daily Holly meditations and Journal. Then Mick talked about faith, and from there it just got better and better.

We then sang carols, with Tommy accompanying on guitar and EJ on violin, until midnight.

Finally it was time for a late session for the Craver-Rueckerts of packing the car so that they could make an early start for the drive home tomorrow. We’ll go downtown to Artemisia Restaurant for their farewell meal, a breakfast with Walker and Kays, Mick’s and my favorite local jazz group. Artemisia is having a special “New Year’s Brunch”, and that fits our plans perfectly.

We were supping at 9:00, so Mick and I shared a brief prayer for peace in our hearts and in the world, the quickest Gaia Meditation in history! But the thought was there!