camelot_2005

This All Saints’ Day sees our national leadership in quite some disarray! I am glad to see the country dealing now with perceived misdoings having to do with the actions in Iraq. Capital Hill has deep divisions at this time. I salute those who called to account the matter of Scooter Libby. It is good to comb this out of the national ethos.

After our Morning Offering, Jim was off to mow. Vara came down from Avalon to do the books. I started the work of the day with a general e-mail clean-up and settled in to creating a letter to send out to our new transcribers’ group. By lunchtime I had the letter written and had started sending them out to the members.

Jim came home for lunch and stayed long enough to have a planning session with Vara before heading off for his afternoon’s work. I got back to sending out the letters and finished that, then turned to catching up quite a few e-mails from Ian on various matters, mostly to do with Ian’s new additions to the archive site. In the last few days he has gotten several of our complete books up on site, including A Wanderer’s Handbook, Secrets of the UFO, and A Channeling Handbook. Now he is working to put up The Crucifixion of Esmerelda Sweetwater. He was also asking about various issues related to putting The Law of One up as a complete-session e-book. It is exciting to see these works up on line. I think Don Elkins would be most pleased. He wanted our material to be globally available. More and more, it is!

Vara and I found time before Judy’s Reiki session for a planning session of our own, chewing through Avalon issues and talking strategy on T-shirts and figuring out new book prices for our re-do on the order form.

Then Judy C. arrived and she and I had a wonderful session of Reiki. What a blessing that is! It truly recharges my batteries. After that, it was bath time and Jim and I had a quiet and relaxing evening before Gaia Meditation and bedtime.

Thursday, November 3, 2005

The day dawned bright and lovely in this Indian Summer season here. This was a pretty standard day spent at the computer except for my once-every-six-weeks trip to have my nails done. That keeps my toenails in good order, a private and much-appreciated luxury.

I dealt with some people trying to order books from England and elsewhere. I worked with three people who are thinking of having personal channeling sessions. We have a special problem with one man in Taiwan, since he does not want to telephone in and be a part of the session. I need three people to do such a session and normally the client is one person, I am the second and Vara, bless her, is the third. Getting that third person for a session in this busy household is a real trick. I am sure we’ll find an opportunity.

I tried three times, so far, to get Jim K’s e-mail to send. I have had this trouble with his account before. He is a faithful transcriber. He is the only one of our group of 13 valiant typing knights I have not been able to reach so far.

I made a log entry in the Camelot Journal and wrote Wynn Free, who has been a friend for years. He was wondering what’s up with the bring4th site. Wynn moves too quickly to be fond of our snail’s pace at rebooting this site. However, no one is better than Wynn at talking about the spiritual and metaphysical side of life in ways that people new to the study of spirituality can get easily. It was good to check in with him.

I had a good e-mail conversation with Shasta G., who transcribes for L/L Research. He lives a fascinating life and we are talking about his doing a monthly blog niche for bring4th. I am thrilled to hear he is ready to begin. If he starts before we have B4 launched, we’ll just give him a niche on lawof1.org, where the niches currently are parked. I greatly look forward to hearing more about his thoughts and life, as he lives in Africa and spends part of his time in primitive conditions.

Tobey W. had written in following through with the beginning of planning for the midwinter gathering. We dealt with every aspect of the production of that time together. When he responds to the letter I sent him, which could take a while as I was very thorough in raising questions for him, I’ll get together our first newsletter for Gatherings. I’d like to write all the people who came to the Rangers Gathering last July and to Wooded Glen in August, encouraging them to respond with their feelings about their time here and also their requests for content to be the focus of future gatherings.

I was keenly disappointed that I was not able to get to working on the Avalon needs section. Bruce and I had begun work on that weeks ago but it keeps falling off the back of my wagon. I shall hope to take that up next Monday, when time rolls around for special projects again! It feels good to have a fairly comprehensive needs list up for Camelot—it’s not very well placed right now, as Ian put it on the Transcriptions section of the Library on the llresearch site. But it is there, and people are responding to it! I would like to offer the same thing for people who want to know how to donate to the Avalon Project.

Then it was time for a bath and I was off to choir practice. We are practicing for Christmas now. I had intended for the night to be a jazz evening. However I fell fairly hard coming back into the house, and after I bound up my poor knee, which took the brunt of the fall, Jim and I decided to hive in with a TV movie.

I did not see Gary all day, as he had a shift at Cracker Barrel from 2 PM to closing, but during the morning, I saw from my Inbox that he had transcribed Kathy G’s session! We do still have old session tapes to transcribe but for 2005, Gary has us all caught up except for the Wooded Glen tapes, which are stuck in the no-man’s-land of dead camera batteries and confusion about cables. I trust this will be cleared up soon.

And so to bed!

Friday, November 4, 2005

This was supposedly my day to catch up on forum posts. I did read quite a few posts and responded to a few. However, most of the morning was spent chasing after those necessary details. Jim K. is still eluding me, and I KNOW I have his address right, as he just sent me an e-mail. I suppose his box is full. It is a situation many a woman would wish to have but in his case it is mighty inconvenient for me!

I did the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday. I wrote everyone in-house to whom the order form information applies letting them know that I am working on a new price list and asking them to get their order forms finished. We are working to get a PayPal order form up on all sites.

I wrote Parnell with the thought of preparing for a series of channelings for the Ranger web site. The group that was here last summer had a very strong service-to-others polarity and it seemed to me that we might get exceptional sessions from using such a good group, if they all came up with group questions from consensus.

I sent Sherry F. at Glenview Jim’s date of birth, as she is helping us out with some quotes on insurance and sent Tim, in Australia, who joins our Sunday meditations by telephone, word that we would indeed call him tomorrow as requested.

I got my password changed on one of our service sites and wrote Wynn F. to discuss his kind offer that I join him by telephone for one of his radio shows to talk about the Law of One. I always accept such offers!

Then it was lunch time and Jim joined me for a late but delightful repast. After that, he and Gary finished up Jim’s Lawn Service’s Friday afternoon work while I spent a glorious, lazy and hedonistic afternoon playing hooky from all responsibility whatever and won seven solitaire games before declaring enough! That was just in time for a bath.

The bath time was elongated by Jim’s working with me on my knee. I got some sort of a puncture wound when I fell the other day which keeps seeping. My pretty pants—I would pick this day to wear golden toreador pants instead of jeans—got blood on the knee from the continued seepage right through the bandage. That joins the blood stains on socks and sheets from this ornery little bleeder. He reapplied all the disinfectants of hydrogen peroxide, iodine and antibiotic cream and got the wound all bandaged up again. For such a small and relatively innocent looking wound, it smarts! I think I must have wrenched muscles as well as bruising and stabbing myself. I understand that Bruce also fell, at the same time I did, and also wrenched his knee. It’s a bit of a silly season around here sometimes! We more elderly folks need to watch our step!

After that, we watched a particularly tasty episode of Stargate and then played a DVD Jim had rented of Batman Begins, a dark but interesting version of how the caped crusader’s career in epic crime fighting for the sake of Gotham began. It was well and cleverly done and we enjoyed it. Then it was time for a cuddle and bedtime. Oh, I was glad to see it come! My eyes have been swollen and cranky and I was glad to close them.

Saturday, November 5, 2005

It was tulip planting day at Camelot. Jim took a good deal of the day to replant our borders and plantings with tulips and daffodils. It is a lot of work now but next spring the glory will be amazing! Jim got quite a bit of the front border done. I believe he hopes to work on the planting more tomorrow. The fine, warm weather is bringing the leaves down in a rain of beautiful colors. Jim was telling me that when he mows, he looks behind him and sees the leaves coming down at such a rate he can hardly see where he has been!

I got the text of the Avalon Needs blurb off to Vara and talked with Bruce by e-mail. I called Brad Steinfeld at Beechmont Press for an appointment so I can drop off our books to him for his estimate of what it would cost to reprint the various books. I worked with Jim S. on his appointment for Monday. Then the rest of the morning was spent on general e-mail.

After lunch I worked on my Christmas List most of the afternoon, except for the lazy foray into the silly world of solitaire, a game I dearly love to play when I am goofing off. I got quite a bit of shopping done for friends and family.

Eventually I let the energies of “day off” take over and enjoyed football with Mick while reading a mystery novel. It was a grand day off.

Sunday, November 6, 2005

I awoke early to the pounding of very heavy rain, the bangs of hail on the roof and wind and thunder from Thor worthy of applause! I am sorry to say that, although we here are fine, not two hours down the road west from here, the Evansville, Indiana, area received a terrible drubbing along a patch three quarters of a mile wide by twenty miles long and the earth has lost 22 souls from its tempest while over 100 people are hospitalized from the event. Good morning, America!

Sunday mornings—this is the last Sunday before Advent, believe it or not—are pretty well scheduled for Jim and me, the cleanliness-is-next-to-Godliness partners. He got the house spiffed up while I went to St. Luke’s early enough to sit in the chancel for an altar visit and pray hard to Holly before the service. Sometimes a girl needs help!

We sang a lovely song for the offertory by Tavner which was sung at Princess Diana’s funeral, “Choirs of Angels Sing You to your Rest.” It was just heavenly music and fit the All-Saints’ service perfectly. We also read the names of those who had departed this life from St. Luke’s at the end of the service, while singing “Jesus, Remember Me When You Come into your Kingdom.” It was very moving and brought that wonderful feeling of rightness that I receive from working through the “church year” with its seasons of hope and despair, joy and repentance. It felt so right to remember those who had gone on, even though I am new to the parish and knew none of the people whose names were given. It gave me time to sit and give thanks and praise for the lives of my family, my parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, Don and good friends who have left before me. It is good to craft time for such moments in the soul’s depths.

After our fast-food lunch Jim settled in to a well-deserved nap and I began the process of discernment on an in-house issue, upon which I ended up writing a few e-mails. The details are almost meaningless but the ramifications are deep, so I feel this is a time to rely heavily on spirit. And Holly is always right there, Holly being my nickname for the Holy Spirit that is so very real a presence in my life, with sound counsel and arms of love.

Then it was time for the public meeting. It was a small meeting today with Connie M. in from Columbus and Tim calling in from Australia. Gary had left a question on infinity for us to ask, when he had left for the Army training early this morning. After our pre-meditation round-robin discussion, during which we found that both Connie and I had difficult weeks along lines which we could easily identify as being incarnational and repetitive lessons, we asked for thoughts on that. And I had a question about the difficulties we had experienced in the group. It was an intriguing session and one I look forward to reading with great interest.

I seldom recall much of what I channel because I am so involved in the mechanics of channeling during an actual session. I spend the whole time getting concepts and translating them into words. And some session questions, like today’s, seem to bring forward concepts that are really hard to shape into words. I am so often struck, while channeling, with the paucity of language compared to the richness of concept. This means that I get little of what is said during a session, so I am glad I have the chance to catch up as I edit the transcript for Ian’s site.

After the session Jim took Romi’s place (Ro had his brother in town for a visit and could not attend) in making some Love Tea. Connie had brought cookies to go with. We had a great conversation at the tea party about the session and then Jim went to call his Mom while Connie offered me a wonderful Reiki session. She as well as Judy feel that for some reason my life force is low right now. I know the Reiki charges my batteries very effectively and I am most grateful for my two sisters and their loving help. What would my world be without girlfriends! I don’t even want to think!

Gary got back from a weekend spent with the Army, exuberant that he was done with that until after Christmas. And after that, he has only three months to go before he is rotated out, his contract with Army Reserve all completed. We had Gaia Meditation together and then he sat down with Jim and me for a discussion of his plans. He is talking seriously now about working and going to college. It could be that he will visit his friend, Ed, in Nashville again over Christmas and work at Ed’s restaurant, where the tips are reportedly amazingly better than at Cracker Barrel. Jim and I wished him well with all his hopes.

Gary will, he said, be able to keep up with his L/L Research volunteering—he has done almost every single session transcript from tape since arriving here in 2003, and if you look on site, that is a huge amount of work—and with his current project of finding resource quotes within our site on certain often-requested subjects. I was most relieved to hear that he would be able to continue this volunteering effort.

Jim and I then went upstairs to my bedroom to snuggle, watch some science TV on sea turtles, iguanas and other marvels of tropical life, and invite rest. It was not long in coming!

Monday, November 7, 2005

This is the anniversary of Don Elkins’ death, as he entered the gates of larger life 11-7-84. Here’s to you, dear and beloved companion and great soul!

After Jim and I had our morning offering and he set out to conquer the great leaf fall of 2005, I worked with e-mails to Ian and Bruce concerning in-house issues with the three web sites and most especially correcting errors I had made and needed to apologize for. Unfortunately my lack of technical training and aptitude makes such errors a periodic occurrence, so I am very used to making apologies! I do not begrudge them, for I am saddened by the work I cause such good people by my simple ignorance of how things should be done with computers and software and what to think of when planning ahead. I regret it when people trying hard to help me are discommoded by my incompetence with technical work.

Vara arrived here at Camelot at the point where I was finishing this round of carefully thought out e-mail. She had expected that we would have a channeling session today with Jim S. and we had set time aside, but Jim cancelled at the last minute. So we had time for a good planning session instead and took the chance to eat at Cheddar’s while we worked. We talked our way through a number of issues.

We are trying to visualize how the web sites will work when B4 is up, and Vara advised me to ask Ian and Jeremy to create links on B4 so that the link opens in such a way that the header bar for the web site does not go away. That way the user does not lose the ability to move around on our site simply because a link is followed. Vara agreed to check our archive site, www.llresearch.org, carefully to see if there were suggestions she could make to help that site be a bit more readable. Her feeling is that the line spacing is a bit narrow. As well, she has some suggestions for sub-headings being added to our material to open it up. She sees it as being too dense-looking for the average surfer.

We talked about how to handle getting the Wooded Glen journal up on line. She and Bruce had arranged the placement of that journal within the Camelot Journal and given it its sub-heading. I described to her my plan for placing a digest of participant mail in that Journal and we talked about how I could do that.

We visited the price list issue. She suggested contacting UPS, as PayPal has an option for UPS shipping. The advantage of UPS shipping is that once they are set up with all your book titles and their weights they will figure postage for you. They also pick up your packages which would eliminate the scales, the stamps and the trips to the post office. This appeals!

Vara gave me her airport drop off and pick up information for Thanksgiving.

We went over Hana’s designs for the CD covers and chose the softly colored bee design for the CDs we sell to people and the ring-of-bees design for our archive CD covers.

We talked over the situation on Avalon, as I was concerned that they were adequately warm during the ever more chilly weather that is coming, if not here presently with this Indian summer warmth lulling us. I am happy to hear that all the foam board is up and most of the covering hardboard that protects the foamboard from being punctured, which is easy to do as that material is soft, is now up also. The old wood stove that Jim and I have used at Sugar Shack for 15 years—and it was ancient when we got the place—is now completely restored, thanks to Parnell air-brushing the rust off the stove pieces after Vara got the stove apart. She then painted the stove with stove paint and they reassembled and sealed it. There are just a few things to do before they are quite snug for the winter in both Ute and Sugar Shack. This is wonderful news! Bruce, she says, has completed his move to the Ute, with much of his chattels stored until the sumai is built, but the basics for Bruce in the Ute for his comfort.

I returned home from the planning session to find a package from Papa containing a CD of three of his mammoth teaching letters—two were over forty pages and one was over sixty pages. His generosity in teaching me is astounding! Generally he moves between politics, economics, history, archeology and mythology! We touch on just about everything, as Papa wishes me to become able to move between the spiritual and the worldly with more and more ease, seeing the interpenetration of the sacred and the earthly. I took the time to print out hard copies of his letters, as I have trouble reading on-line. While I was in the office printing out Papa’s CDs I took the time to clear away the snail mail so Vara could have a clear shot at the bookkeeping.

Vara took a bath, did laundry and started her Quick Books late in the afternoon. I finished my work day by talking on e-mail with Tobey about the midwinter gathering and getting Lorna Y. squared away with her first batch of “newbie” e-mails. I sent her the form letter for seekers for her to use any or all of, if she wishes, and three letters from people writing in to the site as surfers. Her attitude is perfect for this work. She remembers a feeling of coming home, she says, when she first found our sites. She wants to make others feel as welcome as she felt. I greatly hope she takes to the work! That’s exactly the loving attitude we need for this mail.

It was bath time all too soon. I was very tired, and glad to kick back and enjoy being warm, clean and prone! Jim and I watched a bonanza of two Stargate episodes we had somehow missed previously, and then had our supper. Gary came back from a double shift at Cracker Barrel to join us. We had a good Gaia Meditation and then a pleasant conversation while Jim repackaged an overseas book order which the post office rejected as being overweight for its box. You can see why UPS is looking good! And then it was time for a snuggle and early bed.

Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Some nights are not meant for rest! I awoke before 3 AM and never fell asleep again. I did rest and tried TV but finally settled on a good round of solitaire before arising. The one thing I knew was that it was not the time for working as I was weary and bleary.

I felt much better after morning offering, which tends to energize me. We came across a wonderful quotation in one of the books we are reading through right now, Handbook for the New Paradigm.

Remember your imagination is the entry point into the “mind of God” which is infinite potentiality. The invocation of His presence when “two or more are present” is true to a degree you limited ones have not yet perceived.

Our imaginations are wonderful things! Mine certainly is. I have an incredibly powerful and persistent imaginer inside me. I also have the persistent sense that I need to work as part of a group and perhaps this quotation is the key to that sense. There are moments when I could wish my life were simpler. When Jim and I were a more seemingly conventional “nuclear family” before the great advent of the precious people who came in 2003 to form a community with us, our life was orderly, peaceful and idyllically contented. Jim and I have the gift of true love, love grown organically through good times and hard times. We have earned every right to the joy we have as a couple. It is easy to think of the simplicity of those times with rueful wistfulness.

However, it is interesting to note that in those years before 2003, we also remained at one level in terms of our progress as a group. Since 2003 our group has been chaotic at times, fraught with various degrees of soap-opera-ness, challenged with the beau geste of loving good people through difficult times ending in good-byes and challenged even more with working together when we, as individuals, are all ornery loners used to following the dictates of our individual processes. Naturally we are all mavericks! What other kind of person would ever pick up the Law of One material and find virtue in it? But together, look at the explosion of new offerings from L/L Research. New gatherings, new projects and new thinking!

I salute this little family. How I love feel thankful for each and every member.

I am happy to say that this day’s e-mail saw the happy ending of our recent small in-house storm, which was my fault entirely, innocent though my intentions were, as my ignorance of technical matters caused me to create some chaos on site work. My companions in L/L Research have forgiven and embraced me and now it is time for us to get back to imagining together, invoking the Creator every step of the way.

My day at the computer was designed, after my sleepless night, to be full of naps. Oddly enough I never did nod off. I did give myself permission to stray off my track of work for the day and answered e-mails by inspiration, which was naughty but fun. I worked with Judy C., both a channeling client and a transcriber. She reported having a good time working with new mail from surfers, which thrills my soul! Terry H., from Taiwan, also volunteered to work with new mail and I sent both him and Judy new batches from my backlog. It is balm of Gilead to me to see these dear newbies receive welcoming and loving e-mails from Judy and Terry as well as Lorna, our third volunteer newbie e-mail greeter.

And Mike/Guest offered to work with people in a kind of counseling approach involving e-mail, followed up with focused telephone work. This goes beyond the scope of greeting people, as in greeting new surfers we wish to make them feel at home, loved and welcome rather than engaging in ongoing therapy. However I promised him I would keep my eyes out for e-mail from new people where I thought perhaps they would welcome his approach.

Then I turned to e-mails from Ian, with whom much traffic has been occurring because of his large amount of work on the archive site (llresearch). Ian has been placing full versions of our printed books on site, as opposed to the first three chapters, which is what we used to have. I have come to the conclusion that people who want our books will buy the books even though our work is up on site in its entirety, preferring that feeling of “book” to a big sheaf of 8 ½ x11” sheets of paper, which is heavy to lug around. And I very much feel that people who seek on our site should have free access to our material. Ian has masterminded an enormous effort in getting all these books up on site. And we have more books and tapes to OCR or otherwise process to get up on site. Check our Camelot needs list on www.llresearch.org for opportunities to pitch in with skills you may have in OCR, creating PDFs and other arcane matters. And by all means, please check on www.lawof1.org to see our needs on Avalon.

I started editing the Kathy G. session before lunch and took it up again after lunch. It was a long session and a particularly sweet one. I enjoyed the information on contacting your guidance system. However I also got a lot out of the Q’uo’s discussion of how to create a good ending to a marriage when that has become needed.

Judy C. called to cancel our Reiki session due to her illness. Prayers for Judy are requested!

Jim got back from working with a client’s tangled fence line weary as he could be. The poor man had been talked nearly to death by a brand new client whom Jim picked up because the client’s property backs up to the property of Jim’s faithful client, Bonnie. They share a complicated fenceline at their back yard’s end, as they both have private fences and in between their fences the city has a third fence. The city, however, does not maintain the fenceline. Bonnie decided to clean her fence line up, which Jim did. Her neighbor saw this occurring and asked Jim to go ahead and clean up his part too. Unfortunately for James, this guy is a kibitzer. Jim told me of the sign in a local garage:

Our charges for labor: $40.00/hour.
If customer is watching: $50.00 per hour.
If customer is advising: $60.00 per hour.

I asked him if he shared this concept with the neighbor. “Oh, no,” Jim replied. “But it helped me to think about it!”

Romi came over in the evening to return to us our mattress, which he had borrowed when his brother visited over the weekend. He stayed for chili and the Gaia meditation, in which Gary returned home from Cracker Barrel work in time to join.

Jim and I enjoyed an episode of House on TV and bade Gary and Romi good night after that.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Awakening late, I scurried to get ready for the day in time to have some snuggle time before Jim and I had our morning offering. Then he was off for his leafiest and toughest day of the autumn season so far and I got on the e-mail with Ian to discuss the CD recorders that L/L Research needs to buy for our sessions and to send him the private session for KG I edited yesterday.

I worked a while at the desk sorting and placing bills for Vara to handle next Monday and changed a doctor’s appointment that conflicted with a channeling session next week and then it was time to head out to Crestwood to pick up Dianne S. Dianne has long been a LOO reader and in the late seventies, eighties and early nineties, when she was married to her first husband, she was a regular meditator with us at the public meetings. Dianne is one of those girlfriends whose children I remember from infanthood. I first met Dianne when she came to a series I did on meditation for the Louisville Park System, believe it or not, in 1975. We go back a ways! Now her oldest child has a child himself, and her youngest is headed towards post-graduate education. She is married, for the second time, to a very supportive husband. He, however, has no feeling at all for the LOO so Dianne and I get together as girlfriends these days rather than meditating together. Dianne has edited my twenty-plus years of writings for my Prayer Group at Calvary Church, which ran from 1983 to 2005—I resigned when I transferred to St. Luke’s.

Today we decided to go to a lecture by Geshe Lharampa Gelek Chodak on the Buddhist concept of interdependence as a foundation for cooperation. That seems to fit in nicely with recent themes in my process! It is sheer coincidence that this was his topic. The event was held at the Actor’s Theater complex downtown in their small “theater in the round,” where the monks also have been engaged in doing a traditional sand painting or mandala in the Buddhist way. Chodak is the resident teacher of the Kadampa Center in Raleigh, NC.

It was a vivid sight, the monks in their red and saffron robes! My favorite quote from Chodak was his statement that it does not matter how much we pray unless we place our heart in the middle of the prayer. That is so true! Forms of worship without the heart being engaged are quite empty.

His talk was to me very mainstream Buddhist and did not resonate with me, but he himself did. I have never been especially keen on the Buddhist path. Although I see much virtue in it, it leaves my heart untouched. This is probably simply my Christian bias.

After the lecture, Dianne took me to lunch at the Bristol and we had wonderful Middle Eastern pita cheese sandwiches and slaw. It was a meal at least as inspiring as the lecture! We wandered back by on our way to the car to look at their wares, since everything one buys from them is in part a donation to their charities back in India and I found some great small gifts for people for Christmas.

After I took Dianne home I edited Gary’s transcription of last Sunday’s meditation before I quit for the day. The work went long, but that was OK as Jim did not show up until 6:15 PM. Jim is usually a stickler for finishing his work by 5:30 at the latest. Unfortunately he had all sorts of equipment problems as well as having to finish the considerable work at fence-clearing at Bonnie’s and therefore having also to deal with the chatty neighbor all afternoon. This is his least favorite thing in the world other than talking on the telephone! He looked as beat up as he felt when he finally showed up!

After all too short a time together I went off to choir practice. I returned home about the same time as Gary and we all had dinner and the Gaia meditation together before Jim and I opted for early bedtime.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

After making my Camelot Journal entry for yesterday I worked with the writing of the first issue of the Gatherings Newsletter until I had everything in it which was on my mind to include. That took quite a bit of the morning! I sent it off to the in-house group, not only Jeremy and Tobey but everyone, since one way or another, we are all involved in either the Rangers who have gathered on Avalon or the Camelot gatherings in England and in Wooded Glen. My hope is to receive any feedback over the next weekend and be ready to mail out this newsletter to all participants who have been part of our gatherings in 2005 next week.

I spent the rest of the morning working with notes from planning sessions. Vara and Bruce are of great help in these sessions. However there are always many threads of issues and concerns to follow up with. I made telephone calls, e-mailed people and in general crossed items off lists.

After lunch I took some time off to take a nap and play some solitaire. I had not slept well again and was ready to declare the whole afternoon as one of my half-days off. However I kept finding things on my mind which felt urgent and so went back to work, designing a lease agreement between Jim and me as owners of the Avalon farm and L/L Research.

We have been attempting to arrange matters so Jim and I can donate this valuable property to L/L Research outright, keeping only a small homestead for ourselves. However the county the farm is within has created a so-far-insurmountable stumbling block. Jim and I got our 3-acre parcel of personal land which we would keep for our own home site surveyed off to separate it from Avalon Farm back in the spring. The surveyors said that they could not finish the surveying until the matter of our access road was resolved. Is it a county road or a private driveway? It used to be a public way when schoolkids lived in the hollow. It has not been maintained as a county road since the last kid left the hollow in 1953, over a half-century ago.

For some reason the county Fiscal Court has balked at declaring one way or the other. And until they do so we cannot finish our survey and therefore cannot donate the land. It is a sad tangle and proof that humans can complicate almost anything. Our lawyer feels the county’s motive is simple greed. They do not want to maintain this roadway. The thousands we have spent to do so make us understand that motive very well—and we still have thousand more to spend to re-gravel the road.

However, in case some one of the three owners whose land runs along this one-time road might decide to break up their farm and develop the land into a subdivision, then if they still could claim they owned the road they could create more of a tax base.

Meanwhile the situation is not good for L/L Research since it is quite central to a non-profit organization that no one is making a profit from the organization. So I created this lease which states that Jim and I are leasing the farm to L/L Research so that L/L Research can develop a spiritual community and organic farm on it. This should indicate the separation between us as persons and us as part of L/L Research. It will not hold forever! But as a way of indicating pure motives and good intentions until we can sort out the legal tangle, I think it will do.

The rest of the afternoon, after writing our vice-president, Morris H., and apprising him of all the above, was spent on general e-mail clean up and working on ordering Xmas gifts. Only one item is out of stock of those things I ordered- not a bad start to this seasonal and—for me—happy chore. Then came a bath, a Stargate with Mick and onward to Gaia meditation and an early bedtime.

Friday, November 11, 2005

After the usual morning offering and seeing Jim and Gary off to a glorious Friday with way too many leaves for their personal comfort, I tackled the exploding e-mail. It was brimming with good things.

Mike W. has offered a kind of service he calls “active listening” and it did not seem to me that this technique is needed for greeting the incoming L/L Research surfing newbie mail. It is far more than a simple greeting and expression of welcome and support. However, an e-mail had come in from someone close to the breaking point. It seemed to be right up his alley. So I spent some time putting them together. I hope it works out well for them both.

Monica L. wrote in to suggest making the information about our L/L Research forums available to the asc2k discussion group. I encouraged her to write the site moderator to be sure this was welcomed information before she posted it! We would not want to be presumptuous in any way! I know Chris, the moderator, will embrace us with love as always. But manners need to be preserved, I think. I am a big fan of going through channels, no pun intended.

Terry and Glenda had both sent in a new, completed round of their newbie e-mail. Their letters are all I would hope they would be, loving and welcoming. I am very fortunate to have this help! I found some more newbie mail to forward to them. We are over halfway caught up on that mail now! Yay!

I worked with some e-mail from Ian and Jon about the CD recorder issue. They both wish for me to get such a recorder. I am not going to do so, however, until one of them is on hand to set it all up for me and give me a clear protocol for maintaining the machines and for being sure they are ready to go before a session. The issue of actually getting recordings is large for me! I know I can be effective using our simple tape equipment. Jim, Gary and I are all non-geeks and are perfectly capable of wrongly setting up recorders and failing to record anything with new equipment. So I am sticking to what I know until I have a guiding hand I trust to help with the change-over in equipment.

That brought me to lunchtime. Again, I was slated to have a half day off but could not bring myself to abandon work! So I settled for taking some extra lunch time to read and have a brief nap, and then I went back to the agenda for the day, which was to catch up on forum posts. I caught up reading all open forum mail, at last, and answered some few posts.

Then I had time for two more catalog Xmas gift orders before bath time.

Jim came in saddened by damage done to his big mower. A tree limb had gotten hold of the side of the seat and had torn it to bits. He had also lost the wheel to his velkie, which is the little stand upon which the man working the mower perches. However he had good news: a small blower which had stopped working was fixed with some new parts he got and now works better than before!

Jim said this was the single hardest week he ever put in with Jim’s Lawn Service. The monster leaf fall overnight last weekend is the culprit. Gary told me in one yard the leaves stood a full three feet deep over a large part of the yard, all in one week. And then there was the continuing conversation with Bonnie’s neighbor, who seems determined to talk Jim’s ear off as he continues to clear the large, long swath of brush that has been allowed to grow up along the entire property fence line. Jim is a cowboy, used to working in solitude, and company takes its toll on his mental peace when he is working.

Bath time and a lovely Friday evening of leisure soothed both our souls and we took ourselves to bed early.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

It was a lovely, unseasonably warm Sunday here. I finished the puzzle before going to St. Luke’s for pre-service choir rehearsal and then offering the service. We sang a lovely version of “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”

After our lunch, I worked with e-mail from Bruce on Thanksgiving plans and Ian on web site matters, congratulating him on his getting the entire five volumes of The Law of One up on site! It is an exciting moment. Our publisher, Peter Schiffer, long ago asked me not to put the books up on site but in the years between he has consistently been extremely unhelpful, refusing to work with us in any way on publicity, refusing to allow us to make a mass market version of Book One for supermarket-type book stands as our Schiffer version will not fit in that type of rack and in many other ways. Suffice it to say that our contracts with Schiffer are terrible, probably would not be upheld by a mediating judge, and my patience with him is at an end. If he wishes to sue Jim and me, he is welcome to do so. I will be glad to lay our experience before a mediator.

Then I dealt with general e-mail until our meditation, catching up to e-mail sent October the seventh. It was actually a good day with lots of progress made although I am still way behind! I advanced over two weeks’ worth in back e-mail, largely because I have been able to move a lot of newbie e-mail on to volunteers who are responding for me.

We had a lovely session of silent meditation, with Janet F., Romi V., Gary B., Tom F., Jeanne J. and Judy C. joining Jim and me. Romi made Love tea and we had a wide-ranging conversation until supper time.

After our supper we had a quiet Gaia meditation and it was off to an early snuggle and bed for Jim and me.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

It was wonderful to awaken so late, almost 7:30! My median wake-up time is 5:30 or so and has been all my life. By the time I had performed my morning ablutions it was time to have a snuggle with Mick and arise for the day. We had our usual morning offering and breakfast time before Jim headed outside to work on tulip planting and I turned on my trusty laptop, Traveller, to do the Camelot Journal entries for the last two days.

I took in the mail and cleared the desk for quite a while, finding Papa’s emergency note—only 12 pages!—in which he was concerned enough about my chest wall pain that he asked me for an immediate response. So I spent the rest of my time before lunch in getting together the channeling sessions and other material which I had edited since sending him my last care package. I was able to get that off to him before lunch.

After a fine fast food lunch, with Jim next to me at times cruising the football day and at times back in the back yard with the tulips, I worked on reading general e-mail and replying as I could. At 3 PM I gave up the computer and spent the rest of the afternoon singing Christmas music at a special rehearsal for St. Luke’s but not at St. Luke’s—parishioners lent us their house and their hospitality for not only rehearsal but wine and hors d’oeuvres afterwards. The carols and artichoke dip were superb!

I sense in working through the day’s e-mails that many issues that have been hot topics in the group are becoming easier and smoother. We still have not concluded “what to do” in many instances, from the Avalon situation to the web sites to equipment and on and on. Yet the human factor is definitely happier and healthier. Let’s hear it for open communication and sheer love! The 11.11 waves of energy are powerful indeed. It takes some energy and integrity and sheer remembrance to work through these times with hearts full of love and hope. It’s worth it!

Monday, November 14, 2005

Jim was eager to get going this morning as severe weather is predicted to start coming through by late afternoon, so we got an early start on our Morning offering. I had a morning of working with e-mails. Mike W. sent me an updated contact. I continued discussing the issue of how to look at our forums. Do we need to be able to ban unruly participants? What exactly is our viewpoint as a group on rules for participation in forums? Jeremy is spearheading this discussion but I think it is good to work this out as a group. My suggestion was, instead of banning people like Honto, to give the malcontents their own forum. If people are PO’d at LL, then let’s have a POLL forum. Don’t ban our shadow—include the beings who choose to express themselves in ways not loving or civilized but give them their own space where they will not intrude on the in-surfers and other newbies and lurkers on the forums. We shall see if this solution satisfies the group.

I sent three more newbie e-mails to Lorna Y., worked with e-mail from Mohan R. on his healing ministry and then turned to the week’s mail, which I had been sorting for removing ads and then piling on my desk. Vara was due to arrive and I wanted to get our bills and other papers sorted into the proper folders for her before she got here and started on doing the books. The week’s LL box mail was part of the pile. We got 16 book orders this week. This is good timing, as Jim the Lawn Man may well have some time off tomorrow, if the weather predictions are right.

After lunch I got ready for the channeling session with Elmer R. and Vara set up for the session. Elmer called in right on time and we asked his questions and had, I think, a good session for him. The session went long as he had six questions, but the energy for the session seemed strong, so that was OK.

After the session Vara and I sat and had a girlfriend time, no planning, just enjoying each others’ company for a brief rest. Then she got busy with the books while I got Elmer’s tape of the session mailed off to him and then sorted through other channeling appointments. I had mis-done two appointments, not knowing, when I made them, that either Vara or I would be out of town! That won’t work! I have successfully re-made one of the two appointments and am waiting for response from the other client.

I responded to Susanna A., from Italy, who wrote in to say that she has been translating Q’uo channelings into Italian for the Italian-language site, www.stazioneceleste.it/ll_research.htm. this site, she says, is the largest spiritual site in Italy and folks, the L/L Research material is very much part of it. It turns out, says Susanna, that the head of that site had a transformative experience reading The Law of One and therefore her intention is to create Italian versions of as much of our material as possible. How grand to run into this wonderful aid in sharing our material globally, which was the Elk’s hope.

The rest of the afternoon was spent working with material from Jon Grindstaff. He has been working on shaping up our plans for archiving to CDs and had some suggestions for saving space on the CDs by putting more than one session on them if they were short, as many of the sessions early in my channeling career were. To me, this looks like a classic conflict between “book” oriented thinking and “net” oriented thinking. On a computer items are stored in memory willy-nilly, not in order as I would think of it. Whereas in a library, each item has its own name, number and slot in the shelving of the archives. So far I come down in favor of the one-CD-one-session approach, just for the comfort of the Librarian, myself.

Jim came in having worked solid all day and having gotten somewhat ahead on mowing, which was his goal. He was very weary but a happy man! We had a fine hot bath and subsided to a night of Stargate reruns. As it happened, we had seen none of them so it was a bonanza for us sci fi fans. Vara stayed through dinner and Gary joined us after the Gaia meditation, having worked at Cracker Barrel all day.

Jim and I headed up to early bed. I may have to see a doctor about the injury to my knee from a fall almost two weeks ago now. It seems to be infected despite our careful care of the wound site. I guess the deep part of the wound must have contained some dirt we could not get out. It has continued to be sore and troublesome when clothing touches it. Needless to say at this time of year, clothing will always be touching it! This is NOT shorts weather!

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

It was squalling and rainy outside, with no chance for Jim to work early, and so Jim and I slept in until 8:30. What a delightful luxury! After morning offering Jim went off to put plastic up for one of his clients’ dog run and I settled in to dear Traveller for computer work. I wrote the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday and spent quite a bit of time working to get my thoughts down on the virtual “paper” of the computer on a matter internal to the group. Jim and I will work on this together over a period of days.

I then took off for the grocery, reflecting to myself that my timing was terrible! Here I was stocking up on foodstuffs on a day which had storms and even tornadoes predicted. We live in a heavily forested old village which abounds in storm-related power outages. I crossed my fingers and got the groceries we needed. Coming home I went to get my lunch out of the oven only to find that I had placed the food in the wrong oven. I remade lunch and was still finishing it when Judy C. came.

Judy kindly waited for me to eat my cheese sandwich and then we had a Reiki session that really charged my batteries. I showed Judy my sore knee and she felt—as a mother of four, I trust her opinions—that the wound was infected but that it would heal itself if I kept it dry. I have been soaking it each day as I bathe. I will keep it dry!

Back at the computer I altered a remaining channeling appointment and thanked Melissa T. for her substantial work on the history of the deeds around Avalon. She had done the work last summer and kept careful notes on it which were finally requested by our lawyer, Jeff P., and she had written today to say that she had sent all the requested info to Jeff. He may be able to shorten the incredibly long process of straightening out our Avalon access road issue by using her information, which took her hours and hours of patient digging at the county courthouse. I was really pleased to see that work put into use at last.

Eccles P. had read the Camelot Journal for yesterday and had checked out the Italian site spoken of there. He found on that site a list of favorite L/L Research meditation sessions on various topics and sent in to the asc2k group the list of favorite sessions on these topics. I thought that was a wonderful idea! In fact, I had asked Gary already to create a similar resource for B4 of favorite quotes on various topics. So I sent the asc2k group our list of topics and invited their participants to send us their faves.

I also asked Eccles if he would consider officially working with Gary on this project for our B4 site. His energy is wonderful! I feel that they will spark each other and create a really super resource for people who are sniffing around in the FAQ section for information on various topics.

Then there was just time for e-mail to Vara and Parnell about our Camelot Thanksgiving plans—we are having our feast after the Sunday meditation next Sunday—and to my brothers, Tommy and Jim Rueckert, about Jim’s and my Christmas plans before bath time.

After a restful and relaxing 2 hours of sci fi TV we had supper and the Gaia meditation. Then Jim got all 16 book orders ready for shipping and we went up for a snuggle and bedtime.

There were tornadoes in Evansville but the path of the heaviest storm went south of us. Our power stayed on—YAY! Jim had gotten out all our kerosene lanterns and flashlights, checked for canned food and spring water and gotten all ready for “power out,” but in the end there was a gentle rain, some exhilarating winds and no catastrophes here. Vara called to report that at Avalon they had received 6 inches of rain, where we only got about 1 1/2 inches. She reported also that she, Parnell and Bruce walked the access road after the storm and could see patterns of erosion that we still have not yet solved and repaired. Now that we know where they are, we can rework those areas prior to laying down more gravel. That should help a lot to keep our gravel on the road and not at the bottom of the ravine, after we do pour the gravel!

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

We booked through Morning Offering and Jim set out on a very full day of crunching leaves while I chose to spend some quality time finding easy-to-make recipes for a Thanksgiving feast for next Sunday. Now that was fun! It is time-consuming to do such work but one of my favorite things in this world is to develop recipes that have all the taste of gourmet while preserving time and sanity in the kitchen prep. We shall have turkey, dressing, gravy, sweet potatoes, peas with pearl onions and roasted cauliflower, along with the traditional pumpkin and mincemeat pies. Aren’t feast days grand? I love that generous energy.

It is a “7” day! (Being the 16th.) That is my most telling number. I was born on 7-16-43. Sevens all over the place. And it was that kind of a day—the joint was jumping.

I worked more with newbie energy in sending e-mail to Judy C and wrote to ask Festus O. for his picture and blurb. His site, the All-Africa Divine Peace Project, wants a link with ours and we are creating all our links for the upcoming B4 site to contain such introductory text and a real picture of a real person, or at least a logo or image they feel represents them, as well as the link holder’s agreement to respond to any e-mail the link produces. This makes a link holder a real part of our extended L/L Research community, whether or not their views might agree with my views or whatever. The B4 site is not about creating an atmosphere of unremitting agreement but about exploring all the ways to the one Creator that our own material encourages us to seek for ourselves. Our difference from other sites that have a lot of links is the insistence on responsiveness and identity in the link holders, so people know there is a person or a group behind such information which is ready to interact with them as a community or family member. We are also, by this means, eliminating the STS aspect of those who are trying to sell something rather than offer something for free.

I sent out the LAST of the current new e-mails to Judy C!!! Dig it! That problem has vanished. Sure, I have tons of old e-mail but now it is all from people who have written me before. They ALL know how very long a letter from them might wait to be answered and they are willing to wait. It was the new surfers that were bothering me. Our volunteers have made quick work of greeting them and I have been treated, in reading their responses, to some inspiration myself. Thanks to Judy, Terry and Lorna!

After the Camelot journal entry was written it was lunchtime and I knocked off to relax for a while. Then it was back to the computer. Marcia had written in to ask for a link. She is an inner-planes medium who channels Princess Diana, john Lennon and others, all connected by their concern for peace on earth. The material is inner-guide and therefore possessed of the characteristics of that sort of channeling but I feel many people would enjoy checking out her stuff, even though I may have reservations about aspects of her work personally. She sent me a good blurb and her picture. I decided to send this link info in to Jeremy and Ian, even though they are definitely nowhere near ready to use it. They are building B4 from the ground up and it will take the winter probably to get that together. However I felt that perhaps they could use a clear-cut example of a link with all info on hand as they try to write code for such links.

Then it was time for another lab appointment, testing for liver problems because I take Methotrexate for rheumatoid disease. It turned out my liver enzymes are high this time and they took me off the Methotrexate for a while. I also was given a flu shot.

Then I tackled the editing of the Guidelines for Participation for L/L Research Forums. It was an afternoon’s job to try to lessen the Sieg Heil Factor—which is my chief complaint about all such lists of rules—they seem a bit Nazi to a loner like me—while increasing the human, loving, spiritual energy carried by these Guidelines.

In the Guidelines I created a THRALL forum. This stands for Those Hacked Royally At LL. This will be the home of those e-mails posts to the forums which the Moderation Team decides are critical of our material in a way not responsive to conversation. If the stuff is personal, the Moderator will simply delete the e-mail. However if the points made are angry or hostile but are about the material, even if the writer never responds to conversation from the forums and does not change or move on, I feel that such angry, shadow posts deserve a roosting place on our site. We only have one such poster at present but who knows what the future may hold!

I think such challenging criticisms have their place. However the unpleasant tone of such e-mail is not safe or welcoming for new people so I think such material is best placed in a forum which is explicitly designed to hold such negative e-mails and to invite discussion there. I have no idea if Jeremy will find this compromise feasible to build in or acceptable in other terms such as ethics. It may not fly! But I am reluctant to ban an entity such as Honto just because he is misbehaving as long as his discussion is about the LOO material. I would rather place his material in its own island home. We have several other special-interest forums, such as one on dreams. If Jeremy likes the idea we will have one for our detractors. I love the idea of including them too in the L/L Research embrace.

My sister in law, Mary R., e-mailed me to ask that we not give gifts at our family Christmas gathering this year. I wrote back to suggest that perhaps we could, instead, give as a family to a worthy cause, like giving a cow or goat to a family or village, such as some organizations offer, so that the family or village would have food, such as milk and meat, or wool or work in plowing. Various animals can offer various benefits. Or we could simply make donations together to a worthy organization of our choice. I also suggested that the kids in the family write a service in which we dedicate our gift and bless it on its way to help others and also to dedicate ourselves to serving others next year. I feel strongly that the spirit of giving should be encouraged, not abated, at Christmas.

We shall see! It came out in discussion that the request was based on Mary’s having lost her job this year and feeling poor. That’s a legitimate consideration!

Her response was immediate and ended up taking over my afternoon. Mary was ecstatic about my ideas. However, her husband and my bro, Tommy, was not pleased! And Tommy chimed in. Tommy’s and my Mother, whom we both loved dearly, loved Christmas and would buy for it all year, storing up from sales and consignment and wrapping it all up in a glorious potlatch at Christmas from her secret hiding places. I do limit giving far more than she but, like her, I also collect gifts all year as I see things that remind me of my loved ones. I had almost half my presents already wrapped. Everything else is on order except a very small remaining list of hard-to-find gifts for special people.

The energy of giving to strangers who are needy appeals to me. On the other hand, it is so much fun to receive something pretty or thoughtful just because. We shall see how this comes out!

After a quick bath and part of a Stargate episode I was off to choir practice, where we are focused almost exclusively on Christmas music now. Angels float about the choir room! It is a wonderful time of year for good music!

Jim had, at my request, gone out and cut all the remaining “last roses of summer” from the garden since the low for tonight is promised to plunge down to 20F. The beauty of these sweet buds and flowers is extraordinary! Gary was going out to dinner with a new girl friend and he took the full-blown roses with him when he went to pick her up. By bedtime one of the buds sitting in our kitchen out of reach of our kitties had bloomed! How generous is our Creator, and what good work It does! I could spend any amount of time just contemplating the rose. Its beauty, color, scent and form are beyond imagination! Thank you, Lord.

And so to bed!

Thursday, November 17, 2005

After morning offering I opened my e-mail. I habitually scan through asc2k postings as I clear my Inbox each day, just to stay in touch with that on-line group’s discussions, since they are a Law of One study group. Almost always I simply file them away without comment but today I got caught on a post from Petrus. He was wondering what sort of being the Ra group is and asking me to respond. It is a question that usually stems from someone discussing our work with a fundamentalist Christian. Inerrantists condemn me and all channels as sadly sinful and the Ra group and similar channeled sources as demonic.

Not that Petrus was implying that he felt this was so.

I thought it was a dandy question. It comes up quite frequently. So I tackled it and had a good time working with the nuances of the issue. That took most of the morning! I think perhaps I can re-use that material in the FAQ section of B4 someday. I filed it away for when I tackle that project. That time could come as early as next week, depending on what transcripts come in from Gary in the meantime. Editing new transcripts always takes priority over other projects since many people prowl the archive site scanning for new material.

After making a Camelot Journal entry for yesterday I spent the rest of the morning on Christmas details, first replying to Melissa on her suggestions for Jim’s gifts and then working with Mary R., my sister in law, by e-mail on our family plans.

After a nice lunch with Jim for a change I was back on the Christmas theme with a long, long telephone call from Tommy. Tommy likes receiving gifts and Mary’s no-gift request had rattled his cage, or cattled his rage, more like. We ended by agreeing that he will have to solve this with Mary and just let me know how it comes out. I am adaptable. I can always give the gifts bought for Christmas at birthday time.

Back on track at last (in terms of my inner schedule, which reserves normal working hours for L/L Research) I re-worked the home page details on the llresearch site for Ian—nothing looks flatter than outdated notes! It was very pleasing to be able to change so many items for the better. Mail is more up to date, new material is on line and there are more ways to check us out than there used to be, like the Camelot and Avalon Journals and the Need Lists for both campuses.

Gary had transcribed a reading done for Romi on 8-29-2001—it had gotten lost at a transcriber’s and we had just figured out that it still had not been transcribed. I edited that and sent it in to Ian to be posted. It contained some good advice about job choices and romance which Gary reported being able to use immediately. It is notable how often the personal sessions are found useful not just by the client but also by other people than those who asked for the sessions.

Then I did old editing, working on the Book of Days and reaching Day 100! I am now more than a third of the way through this first manuscript. After this one there are two other manuscripts, so I am a long way from being finished with this editing. However it feels good to have reached three digits in this first big bunch of 275 Days. I think there are 467 Days or so altogether in this unique channeling from my personal guidance system, the Holy Spirit. It is quite beautiful work and very intense to work with. Each Day is a very short channeling, just a thought. However there is a lot in each Day’s thought! I collected these channelings when I was working on my tuning and challenging techniques back in the 1990s. When I get the editing done we have one donor who is willing to pay half the cost of printing, so we are excited and eager to get it to that point! I am all that is holding up the process.

Sometimes I wish I could “get away” and just do the old editing. I think in two months, without doing other projects and correspondence and just working on the editing, I could finish the Book of Days, the unabridged edition of A Wanderer’s Handbook, the co-channeling with Barbara Brodsky—a superb work—called The Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues and my little volume of writings on prayer, a 20-year retrospective called Praise, Prayer, Thanksgiving. What my Inbox would look like if I did get the chance to have such a working vacation does not bear thinking about, however!

I decided after finishing my stint at editing at 6 PM to celebrate by drinking some Sambuca which we had left over from cooking. It had an immediate and a terrible effect on me and I was not only surprisingly drunk but quite ill. My memory of the rest of the evening is hazy! I recall making the decision to get myself upstairs and to put myself to bed. I kept feeling worse and worse and it was fortunate that I was in the bathroom already when my stomach decided it was definitely not going to keep the Sambuca. We shall cross that liqueur off our list of good celebratory drinks. I persevered, I remember, through the face washing and tooth brushing phase and I recall carefully putting my clothes away. After that my memory is blank. Jim reports finding me lying on my bed, undressed, my nightgown folded on my chest. Apparently that last putting-on-the-nightgown thing was one thing too many. Golly, is drinking always this much fun? I don’t seem to be very good at it.

The Sambuca did taste delicious, however! I do not want to seem unappreciative of good spirits, even if I am apparently allergic to this kind.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

After morning offering I settled in to desk work. Mail got sorted. I caught the Booklist up. Our Library has been enriched by gifts: Wynn Free sent us his new CD of songs and his volume of poems and a prisoner gave us a book about Sai Baba. Mike W. donated a CD copy of the first three of an 18-part PBS series on Krishnamurti. I straightened out a book order where the client sent a credit card number when ordering for a gift. I managed to fish out his address, for the merchant service verification, and got the paperwork set up for a ship-to different than the charge-to. There were four telephone calls I needed to return and two doctor’s appointments to follow through and either remake or make differently.

Lunchtime came, with the pleasure of Jim’s fine company. Afterwards I set out for the Immediate Care Center to get my tetanus shot. That was the upshot of the conversation with one of the two doctors! The staff kept me there after the shot to be sure I did not have an adverse reaction, something I had not experienced before.

Arriving back home, I worked with Ian’s questions on the Home Page copy and answered more forum e-mail, finishing the read-through of several forums and catching up as far as my Inbox forum e-mail is concerned.

Jim interrupted my musings to invite me out for a Friday Night celebration. We stopped by the Dairy Queen for his traditional milk shake and I had a big, cold root beer. The sunset was just gorgeous! I love the shapes of the bare trees and the crisp feel of the colder air.

We returned to find that Romi had stopped by to pick up a recipe to make for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast. We will all gather here at Camelot after the public meeting Sunday to celebrate L/L Research Thanksgiving. Ro chose pumpkin pie.

We had a good conversation and watched a History Channel program on the Queen of Sheba from the Muslim, Jewish and Christian points of view. It was fascinating and a good end to a TGIF day.

I preceded Jim up to an early bed as I had felt quite poorly all day. Romi told a tale almost exactly like mine about falling suddenly ill with a stomach disturbance and needing to cast up his accounts. He had also gone precipitously to bed and had called in to work reporting illness before heading back to bed for most of the day. It makes me feel my own trouble yesterday was probably stomach flu.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Doing my puzzle before morning offering I gazed up at the Thanksgiving cactus over Jim’s seat right next to me at our love seat in the common room. It has pinked out from slow-opening buds in the brilliant sunlight of the last few days and is now in its absolute glory. This is so perfect, as we will celebrate subjective Thanksgiving tomorrow here at Camelot. It is stunning; one can barely see the serrated leaves for the pink blooms, sometimes two and three on a stem.

After morning offering Jim and I started cooking for the feast tomorrow and soon Gary came to join us. Cooking for holidays always makes me think of my childhood. I always make peas creamed with pearl onions on a holiday if I can in memory of my Mom, who loved that dish best of all.

It was a great cooking day in that, by lunchtime, we had finished our menu! Jim prepared the bird to cook tomorrow, and the sweet potatoes are all ready but uncooked as they only need to be heated through. The stuffing, cranberry compote, creamed peas and mushrooms and roasted cauliflower were all prepared, labeled and stored and all is readied for the remaining challenge: bringing it all to the table, hot and on time, after the meditation meeting tomorrow.

We used to have a rusty old electric stove, left over from the early 1980s when Jim, Don and I were on Watterson Trail, here in Louisville and then in Georgia. Water damage in Georgia from broken pipes during a 1983 Christmas freeze at the Lake House there in Cumming, Georgia, started the destruction process of our noble kitchen steed, but for years we were able to use the ovens for heating up dishes for big meals. When our community members started arriving on our doorstep in 2003, the stove had to go to make room in the basement for three bedrooms and a laundry area. Now we are wondering just how to heat everything at once! Hmmmm! Time will tell!

After an e-mail clean up I took some time to respond to a post from Fizay who was talking about finding a way to respond sensibly and lovingly to the times that we see at hand. Her post was extremely synchronistic as I had been galvanized at morning offering with a reading from Handbook for the New Paradigm. This is a channeled work with no author at all noted on the title page. Its integrity as a piece of channeling seems to me to be high and the thoughts are provocative in a way resonant to my imagination. I hope we as a group can follow some of these rather challenging threads about thinking outside the box to create a whole new way of relating to each other and to the planet.

After lunch, while Jim watched football and then cleared our gutters, I cast my cares away and played solitaire until I fell asleep, a wonderful luxury afforded me by that concept of “day off.” When I awoke I found e-mail from Ian, who still was trying to follow my requests for new ways to click on various sources of information from inside llresearch’s home page. These requests seem innocent enough when they go out to the web master but are sometimes quite a bit of work to figure out how to create in programming for getting the user’s “click” to proceed smoothly.

In just a bit more time, in which I addressed old e-mails, it was bath time and then we found a delightful surprise—one of our favorite older sci fi shows, Star Trek Enterprise, was on. We watched that, had some supper and went upstairs for an early cuddle and bedtime.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

The puzzles were hard this morning! It was a blast to get them solved at last, just in time for choir practice and church. We sang the Halleluiah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah this morning, not at ALL my favorite piece after so very much repetition through so many decades. It is a swell work once in a while but all that bombast wears thin after a few dozen times through. And the congregation always has to stand for the thing and it is a long piece. We also sang a lovely Purcell piece during communion, “Let Not Our Offences.”

The Gospel really spoke to me today as it was the bit where we review “If you do this to the least of these, my brethren, you do it unto Me.” Touching into the lives of people to visit, feed, clothe, etc., is not only about “charity.” It is also about serving the Creator. Focusing on service to others is a sign of this season of the year. I hope as people go through the motions they realize they are touching the Creator Itself by donating money or used clothing to whomever.

Picking up our treat for the weekend, a fast food lunch, I came back home to find that the Avalon crew was in residence, happily involved in enjoying the amenities of hot showers and washing machine plus dryer—hog heaven for the power-shy farm bunch. We had an ongoing, on-and-off conversation the rest of the day as Jim and I caught up on face-to-face Avalon news. It was so great to see everyone! I made gravy while Jim cut up the bird, which he had cooked in the morning in order to free up the ovens for the rest of the pre-heating for the feast. Then I worked on general e-mail, catching up from October 6 to October 20. Ah! Only a month behind now on general e-mail!

Judy R. wrote to ask if she could visit in January. Judy has done wonderful volunteer work for L/L Research for years. Her most amazing feat to date is the editing of the Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues—nine weekends’ worth of very complex co-channeling sessions, at least three sessions each time, with two separate tape records, one for Barbara and one for me, and an incomplete hard copy version as well. Barbara is deaf and so had to read the Q’uo’s channeling, during the sessions’ being produced, over Jim’s shoulder as he transcribed my channeled words directly on to the computer screen. So we had Jim’s incomplete hard copy, the tapes we always run of any session here at L/L Research and then we had Barbara’s tapes, which she ran herself and which recorded her voice better than our tapes did but did not get my words well. Judy took all three of these sources and made one unified and endlessly checked editing copy for me of this HUGE and incredibly, magically rich material, collected over a decade of working together. It’s fascinating to see the play between a really good inner-planes guide and the Q’uo principle. Aaron’s chatty stories and linear approach made the Q’uo’s speech seem poetic and terse, if you can imagine! This is one of the manuscripts I hope to edit and get out to the world One Day!

Anyway, Judy wants, at last, to come visit again! (She has been re-schooling herself for a change in career.) She is, in addition to being a wonderful volunteer, a most authentic girl friend and co-seeker. We have shared history going back 15 years and, like Vara, she and I tend to share archetypal material. I greatly look forward to her visit and will undoubtedly put her to work!

After I wrote up the Camelot journal entry for yesterday I found that people were arriving for the session today so shut down Traveller and abandoned myself to the meeting. It was a great group—Vara, Parnell, Bruce, Gary, Romi, Connie, Tom, Jeanne J. and Tim by telephone from Australia, in addition to Jim and me. Parnell had come with a question which the group decided to take up and I understand from Parnell that it was a helpful response. He was asking about how to gather young people who wanted to live in a 4-D way. It should be interesting for us all.

Bruce made a digital recording of the channeling on his computer and said he really liked getting the information that way. He would like us to investigate creating such a recording system. That would make three systems: our present taping system, the CD system Jon G. wishes to install and now, if Bruce gets involved, the computer-generated recording. Ah, technology. I wonder ho we shall best be served in setting up a settled new system! Consulting with Bruce and Jon seems needed. Bruce agreed to dialogue with Jon on this matter.

After the great meeting, it was time for the Thanksgiving feast and we chowed down with much happiness on all our good food, including Romi’s pie. We had good conversation and both Vara and I got sessions of Reiki from Connie, bless her! That energy work is so helpful to charging my battery I can’t express it. More to be thankful for!

Conversation was still flowing like good wine when I found myself falling asleep and took myself up to bed sometime around ten PM. Jim joined me soon thereafter for a cuddle, and so to bed.

Monday, November 21, 2005

I wrote Jon G. after morning offering to ask him to let me know when he was back from holidaying so I could send him the Wooded Glen videotapes, which Bruce brought back from Avalon where he had unsuccessfully tried to process them. The camera he was working with, belonging to David Wilcock, was missing its cables and battery charger and so he had been unable to get anything done there. Jon, bless him, has agreed to take the sound track off these tapes and even to do some transcribing. We’re talking 20 tapes and a huge job!

But Jon is even more generous. Knowing that we have a large amount of footage shot by Mark H. last May Jon asked also if we could send him copies of those tapes as well, so I wrote Marki, bless his soul as well, to ask if he could send us some dubbed copies of his camera tapes so Jon could take sound off them as well. Mark is busy as a bee but nevertheless found time to write and say he would send them! I promised him to treat them as my own babies and get them back to him as soon as Jon was through using them.

The eventual goal is to create an L/L DVD. After so many years of being here, such a document makes sense and I think our readers would appreciate it. Mark said that he was not yet satisfied with the amount of footage of gatherings—he is highly doubtful that the Wooded Glen footage is of a high enough quality to use much of it—so he says he hopes to attend the midwinter gathering here at Camelot the weekend of 2-11-06 and film again. I welcomed him.

I worked again with Festus O. on the All-Africa Peace project link, editing his blurb, choosing a picture from his many offerings and sending the editing back to him for approval.

While Bruce was here I sat down with him and wrote Jeff, L/L Research’s and our lawyer, giving him information he had requested on what repair work we had done on the access road. With Bruce here I could be sure not to miss or distort any of our work. It is an impressive list of things done on that road! The crew has been wonderfully busy. It is possible now that the county may agree to claim the road since it will not have to spend money on fixing it. If they will assert it is a public way down to our gate, our troubles in gaining deeded access both to Avalon and to Jim’s and my retirement site next to Avalon will be over! So here’s hoping.

I searched by telephone and internet for a trailer net for Jim for Christmas, as he said he’d like one. No luck yet. However I have inquiries out now. I do love to give gifts that really hit the mark! Jim has little need or wish for most worldly goods but good tools are valuable to him and this trailer net, a new product, is an improvement over tarps in that they do not catch the wind.

Then it was time for Vara, Gary and I to go to Executive Inn, a large hotel by Louisville’s airport. Jeanne J., a frequent meditation member, works there and we met her for a walk around the hotel to see the meeting rooms, hotel rooms and restaurant. We found all the rooms satisfactory and even discovered that we could rent space for an all-night meeting place for participants so any time, anybody can go, have a conversation and grab a snack. Or meditate. Or whatever! They are very willing to set me up a hospital bed and find a space for us to meditate in the early morning privately. Jeanne treated us to a lunch and the food was quite good. Their rates are good also. We will need a bit more information in order to get all the facts and be able to determine what the true cost of things is. However our guess now is that Executive Inn will be our venue for the next summer gathering for L/L Research. I look forward to having that detail settled and the dates set. It should happen this week.

Back home I cranked up Traveller again and wrote Frances S. concerning the blurb and picture for her niche on B4. She has a wonderfully interesting little work, Samadhi, which we shall give niche space to. I think the larger community will appreciate her work being available.

Bruce took a good look at the damage to the very back of our house, where a deck was added to replace the old back porch steps back in 1996. Apparently the rotten wood stems from the wrong kind of wood being used by our carpenter and the wood being painted rather than sealed. It has now rotted. Bruce felt that he and Parnell can fix it when they come up to work on Camelot, which needs several repairs. This is good news!

Before he and Parnell left, we sat and talked for a while as Parnell had many questions on channeling and on male-female polarity.

Parnell and I also talked about how to do Ranger channelings. He would like special channelings for the Ranger web site. I am glad to do such a series when he and Bob Blue Eagle get their protocol for organizing questions together. Such rash promises make for a crowded work schedule for me but I cannot say no! I know this series will be very good because the questions will be carefully thought out—Parnell and Bob, both intense and careful men, will make sure of that—and because the channeling circle will include Bruce and Parnell and from working with Bruce before and Parnell this Sunday I know they are excellent circle companions and their intensity of seeking will pull from me a good focus simply because of their both being scientifically oriented. I know from long years of working with Don that the Confederation appreciates this sort of energy in the circle of seeking.

They were just going out the door when Sandie and Steve showed up. Sandie asked me to channel a series of sessions for her e-zine, PlanetLightworker.com and this is the second in that series. We had a good talk around the circle before I went to tune. Then we sat down together and had the session. The Planet Lightworker question this time was about the Mayan calendar and 2012. A lot of good energy came through and that is mostly what I remember about the session—nothing that was said. It will be interesting to see how it came out when it gets transcribed.

Steve took us to Lemon Grass Restaurant for Thai food and then I finally came back home and found Jim. We shared some lazy vedge TV and eventual snuggled and snoozed. My eyes were hurting and the lids had become red and swollen so bedtime felt especially sweet tonight!

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

After morning offering Jim was off to cope with lawn service problems and mow. His largest mower had a dead battery and he took it in not only for a new battery but also for a replacement engine and a new seat cover or seat, whichever his model mower uses when the leather of the cover is torn. The seat was recently gashed by a tree and sports gaffer tape up one side and down the other. I should say “duck” tape! The poor mower seat forgot to duck!

Judy R. had written concerning her visit here in January and we exchanged e-mails about possible volunteer projects for her. We have plenty of those from which to choose! The choices range from household chores if she is feeling active and “put-brain-on-hold” to editing for format in my Prayer Group writings if she is feeling intellectual to office chores involving securing better insurance rates for our group or teaching me how to use digital pictures or embed them in my Camelot Journal if she is feeling brave. Who knows what she will choose! All help is enormously appreciated!

I wrote Ian concerning the Guidelines. He signed off on those, so if Jeremy is OK with my editing of them, our forums are now replete with Guidelines. That seems to be a necessity for such groups for legal reasons, although speaking as a maverick I am not fond of rules. I hope ours are a good balance between Heil Hitler and having no rules at all. Ian tells me that women in general are less fond of rules than men, whose cultural training is all about rules, growing up. It is interesting to ponder the archetypal differences between male and female here as well as how much is cultural and how much natural.

Working on the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday I received a telephone call from Brad S. of Beechmont Press, who was gathering information so he could give me reprint prices on all the books that used to be printed for us by Palmer Publications. It went out of business some years ago now. We are trying to create a new price list and are trying to ascertain what reprint costs would be so as to charge that replacement cost from January on. I also e-mailed Gary F. at Falk Audio to find out what it will cost to change our masters there from tape to CD, and what CDs will cost. That, too, will go in to our price list changes in January.

I barely got the CJ entry done when it was time for Vara and I to take off for a haircut. We stopped on the way for a planning session, and at the same time ate, at KTs, where they are glad to have us sit and work after we eat. They have soft-seat booths too, and great food. We both felt better after the hair cut about ourselves and the planning session went well. Vara will follow through with UPS on figuring out if we can switch to them for our book mailing. She will also locate all of our book images and blurbs for an on-line seller who is soliciting our business. He is interested only in selling books and other media which he feels are service-to-others and he loves our material. It seems like a very good deal, but of course he needs those book cover images and I have no clue where they are in our capacious files, as David Wilcock took the pictures over two years ago. David has since moved out and on and I understand from recent e-mail that he is headed for California. However Vara believes we do have those images, or copies of them, and she will find them, for which may the heavens bless Vara!

She expressed the need for discussion of some issues among the Avalon crew, as had Parnell and Bruce the day before. Jim and I agreed that we shall call a general meeting of the family group in December to discuss these issues and find consensus. Jim is wonderful at mediating such discussions and I look for happy outcomes.

We talked over POD printing, a method where you pay more for books but they only print what you need. It is more cost-effective in some cases than ordering larger amounts of books and then having to store them. It turns out that she has recently ordered a POD-produced book, so we will take a look at it when it arrives, see what we think about the quality and if we like it, check with the vendor for pricing on our old books. Ian’s mate, Michelle, also is sending me a sample POD book, one she herself wrote using POD for printing, so I can see what the product is like. I doubt I will go with her printer, though, as she is Canadian and I imagine an American printer will be better for us.

Vara also will determine for sure her Christmas plans so I can figure out whether and when to schedule any more channeling sessions for private clients this year after 12-13. I have a couple of days left for scheduling sessions IF she is here. If she is not here, we are through with personal sessions until after the New Year. She indicated that she would probably be gone after 12-13 but her plans are not yet final. I am very glad I am not single and waiting on boy friends’ on-again-off-again planning! That’s her situation. Nor is it the boy friend’s fault—he is waiting on his children’s’ plans to make his own. But it does make it almost impossible for me to schedule sessions until the holidays are over. Because L/L Research gains from the fees for these sessions as well as because it is a good service to others I always like to schedule them if I can as our enterprises take a good bit of funds and it feels really good when I can contribute by doing the channeling sessions.

I notified the in-group people involved that if I heard nothing more from them the Gatherings newsletter would go out tomorrow afternoon as they have seen it. Then I found the time to sort the snail mail and do another e-mail clean-up before bath time.

After that, Jim and I enjoyed sci fi TV and a visit with Romi, had a good conversation and supper and I watched House while Jim packed up books to mail off and Romi worked on the computers. And so off to snuggling with Jim and bed.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

After our morning offering I opened Traveller to discover that a poster to the forum attacking me had excited a goodly amount of e-mail. I would wish that this attack e-mail had been placed in our new Alternate Viewpoints (new name for THRALL) Forum instead of in the general conversation forum. The damage such posts do is not in the criticism but in the flurry of responses this engenders from those who want to defend me or the Law of One or who want to fix or smite the critic. I contented myself with posting a brief explanation of why I do not defend myself to the forum in which the flurry was taking place. The explanation, I felt, was probably worth sharing. It is pure instinct to defend oneself. Not to do so, however, is far more powerful! Words cannot change the material. It is out there and in no need of defense. And what can harsh words do to me besides move my feelings around a bit if I am vulnerable. My life is open and as much a public record as I can make it. So people can decide for themselves about me and about our work here.

I wrote this post to someone who was defending me on the forum and who also mentioned having a personal site. So I went on to ask him and all those posting who have such personal sites or blogs to consider offering their personal sites as links to enrich B4’s community of seekers available to surfers coming in. I hope we do get an ever increasing number of round table members who are ready to share their thinking and relate communally. We really are a global community on-line.

I then went out to see my friend Dianne, who had several copies of a book I wish to give for Christmas, the Handbook for the New Paradigm, of which I have spoken before. We had a sandwich together and a good politically oriented conversation—Dianne is an experienced political activist and fun to talk with—and on the way home I stopped at a consignment shop and came home with new clothes! How I love doing that. I found quite a few items for $2.00 as I hit a killer sale. YUM! Now I need to finish going through my closet, remove all the transitional clothing, for it is no longer Indian summer but cold weather, and settle the new clothes in for the winter.

Upon return I found that Festus O. has yet again sent me a mass of undigested material expecting me to edit, rewrite it and create from it a set of materials for his niche. So I e-mailed him as clearly as I could outlining what we could do for him—offer him space—and what was expected of him—that he fill the space as he sees fit. I am not sure where the disconnect is coming from. But it cannot be honored. I do not have a spare day to sit down and organize Festus’s material. I have never seen his Peace project or even visited Africa. If he wants a niche, he shall need to prepare it himself. It is clear to me each day that service to others is far more subtle a thing than meets the eye.

I finally wrote the Camelot journal entry for yesterday. Then I thought I would get the Gatherings Newsletter out to all the participants of our gatherings in 2005. English, Rangers and Wooded Glen participants were to be swept into one send list and I could send out the newsletter, which has been written. After an hour’s effort I had succeeded only in losing three contacts from the Wooded Glen list completely. Gone! Gone, I say! I am a computer ninny! I finally gave up before I destroyed more and wrote to Jeremy and Tobey, my two co-senders in the newsletter, for help.

Then it was bath time and off to choir practice while Jim prepared more book orders for mailing. We worked at rehearsal mainly on Haydn’s St. Nicholas Mass. It is insipidly pretty and will shine on Christmas Eve. Can you tell I am not over-fond of Haydn’s music? I find the man’s work vastly over-rated. This is one of many reasons my music history teacher, long ago in college, once described me to a colleague as “brilliant but difficult.” How could one not revere Papa Haydn? Well, try singing his music! One gets to know composers well doing that. Haydn was clever. I do not believe he ever achieved things like reverent, sacred, passionate or engaged. I would call his music the Muzak of his day. The carols are much more interesting to sing, very British and fun.

After rehearsal, Jim and I went to listen to jazz, me in my red hat, gathering stories for my articles in the Louisville Jazz Society newsletter, Jim on the track of Clifton’s good pizzas and both of us greatly enjoying the music of Kays and Walker, whose music DOES sport all the ingredients listed above, and is oh, so tasty to hear. What a pleasure! We rolled home after two delicious sets, meditating for peace on the fly, and settled in to our bedtime routine after a quick tour of evening house duties like folding laundry. We found that Dr. No was on, so ended the day with Sean Connery as Bond, James Bond. Now there’s a performance which brings out my thankfulness. Never was a British spy more foolishly and implausibly, but entertainingly, assigned to derring-do than our Bond man! And Connery is arguably the best of all the crew who have portrayed Bond. The books are so much better! But I enjoyed the movie thoroughly and it was a good way to bring in Thanksgiving Day.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

This was the coldest work day yet for Jim, down near single digits. He used my portable heater from the office, with which I toast my tootsies when the temperature drops, to warm up his mowers while we had our breakfast and morning offering and he got all his tools started up just fine!

I took some time after he left to work with John L’s letter. He had written me to say he had linked his site to our site but when I asked if he wanted to link back to our site he had reservations. I took his own language in expressing those reservations and crafted a blurb which is quite acceptable to me for his link and sent it back to him for approval. The challenge here is that he is fond of our material but wants to keep people’s attention on his messages, which is to WAKE UP and embracing a love and light message like ours would rather soften his edge, he fears. However I feel, for the round table of our links on B4, we need some reference to why such a voice as his would wish to be associated with our community. He said it perfectly, as far as I am concerned:

“I’ve read in The Ra Material over the years and feel that it is one of many good directions to make available to people. I am glad to be a part of this site’s Round Table but only if I can do it in such a way as not to come across as making a singular official endorsement. Freedom of choice is of paramount importance to me.”

I hope he agrees. His voice is a good one and comes from a good heart. Maybe many will disagree with him. Certainly his voice will disagree with other Round Table materials if one follows each link. To me this is good! There is a wide variety of voices who are all working for the good of the planet and its tribe of humankind.

I got all the addresses for the Gatherings newsletter together that I had and sent them off to Tobey, who will send the newsletter out later today or tomorrow morning. Parnell wrote to add a couple of names, saying that it was cold on Avalon too! Jim had taken a load of firewood up to him on Saturday and he reports using it with considerable enjoyment! I also wrote Bob Blue Eagle as Parnell suggested, as he may have some names and addresses Parnell has missed from the Rangers. It is good to get that newsletter out, as we want to begin planning for the midwinter gathering the weekend of February 11, 2006. we shall need to be flexible! We have one venue if we have less than 8 participants, which is Camelot itself, another venue if we have up to 16, which is Steve F’s home and if we end up with the bounty of more participants than that, we shall need to rent hotel space for ourselves. It is extremely fortunate that we have Jeanne J. to consult, for I believe she could create a place for us at need at Executive Inn.

I corresponded with Calvin, my neighbor, who is aiding me in trying to get a neighborhood street, Hazelwood, which has deep ditches on either side and unimproved shoulders, equipped with the metallic-like reflective studs at road’s edge that define the road and even “click” under one’s wheels. It is an inexpensive safety feature to install and I know it will make me feel safer on that road. Calvin thinks so too, and she has been on the City Council many times. She has been writing the Mayor and various others to encourage my proposal. We shall see! I also requested that a crosswalk striping which had been paved over and never repainted be replaced so that the kids walking to school have a bit more safety at our little corner.

I ducked in the kitchen to make my lunch so that I would be ready when Jim blew in, as we got to dine together today, and we sat down together to hear of his cold, cold morning and enjoy some time together. What great vibes! I love hanging with St. James on a Friday! This is one happy man, especially considering Nebraska plays today.

Then I went to the eye doctor. The news was good and bad. Good: my eyes have not changed for the worse and so no new prescription is needed. I had lost a pair of specs since my last check-up so ordered a new spare pair. Also good: the considerable eyestrain I have experienced lately, he says, is due to Jogren’s Syndrome. It is also called “dry eyes” and he says these days they treat cases like mine with a certain kind of contact lenses. No eye correction, just wetness for the eyeball supplied by the lenses. The bad news was that cataracts are now discernible as starting in both of my eyes. He encouraged me by noting the excellence of cataract surgery these days and its efficacy. I look forward to the level of excellence in such techniques continuing to improve and my cataracts being very slow to develop!

By the time I had waited for two different kinds of drops to take effect and then waited afterwards for the effects to wear off so I could drive home, it was time for the Nebraska game, so my work day was amazingly short. Let’s call this one a half-day off! I certainly did no good for L/L Research the rest of the day! Nebraska had a good game and I had a happy husband!

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Jim and I slept in until 8:30, a wonderful luxury. After morning offering he dove into kitchen work, re-potting our leftovers, what little remained of the turkey feast, and creating a chicken dish and some mashed potatoes from the groceries Gary had gotten yesterday evening. Gary will make fresh broccoli and carrots later today, after his shift at Cracker Barrel. It is good to see our food for the week getting all ready for us so when we come to supper time at the end of a work day, it is all ready for all of us who are tired from the day’s work. I defrosted a big container of homemade vegetable soup for my food until Jim and I leave on Wednesday. It is hard to believe that it is time for our trip to Nebraska but by golly, we have less than a week to prepare.

We are fortunate that Gary will be here to feed our kitties and take in the mail. When we need to do so, we have a wonderful service, a business called Paws and Hooves, which will come in and spend real time sitting with our cats each day and giving them some attention as well as their food. However, all things being equal, they would rather have Gary, whom they know and love already, and we would also.

I shall not need to write a journal during that period of almost two weeks, as I can predict precisely what Camelot duties I shall perform in Nebraska. I shall read almost 400 pages of material from my teacher, Papa and respond to his words and I shall catch up on four dozen or so snail mail, which is mostly prisoner mail.

Other than that I shall be hanging with Jim and his Mom, who celebrates her 88th birthday on December 2. She lives in a small town of about 10,000 souls, divided almost equally between European-Americans, many Scandinavian, and Latinos from Mexico. This has created an uneasy culture where the whites have not unbent enough to embrace the Spanish population, nor have the Hispanics unbent enough to forgive the gringos for being biased and disrespectful in all the ways our culture excels at. Give the situation a couple of generations and this will ease. But prejudice will always thrive in the human psyche. One cannot stamp that out except in one’s own heart. Jim’s Mom responds by keeping to her house for the most part, so our environment there is very cooped up and inbred. The sound track is almost always a mixture of CNN Headline News (or one of those acrimonious talk shows) and the police scanner, which finds it necessary to squawk and screech at all hours before saying anything.

There are good parts to such visits. For one thing, Jim and I get to enjoy each others’ company cross country for two days both coming and going. And we really talk! We get into amazing conversations, rants, riffs, searching questions and troubled, hesitant answers, digging and seeking for deeper understanding. Our conversation began in 1978 when we met and we are still at it. I hear about couples getting bored and I cannot even imagine how they do that. We are constantly, both of us, thinking, oh, I have to talk that over with my mate.

And don’t forget room service! I adore room service, silly and shallow traveler that I am! Twice a year, on these “duty” trips to Nebraska, we stay in a hotel that has room service on our way there or back and how we enjoy that luxury! We also give ourselves a movie from the pay-per-view menu after the room service. It is our vacation! So we enjoy ourselves thoroughly.

Back to this day, though! After making the Camelot journal entry for yesterday I cracked Traveller’s inbox and started in on general e-mail. I hoped to get into November in catching up, and by golly I did, ending the day answering mail received November 4. Perhaps I can get a bit further in responding to such mail today. After that I shall need to address special projects such as the FAQ list for our B4 site and work on Christmas projects, cards and gifts, before leaving Wednesday in order to leave things in good order for when we return December 10.

Tommy called again to report that we Rueckert-McCarty’s will be allowed to give two gifts, one from me and one from Jim, to each person in the family this Christmas. That’s not so bad—I only have to rewrap one present each for the bunch to keep until summer, since my subjective limit up until this family brouhaha was three gifts per person, small ones, thoughtful ones, not big spending.

I give the whole family’s birthday gifts on my birthday, which is in July, since my faulty memory has repeatedly meant in past years that I would forget some kids during each year and miss their Earth Day. This way I always remember everyone. So it is very nice in a way to have all that shopping done so far ahead! Fortunately I can store these gifts in our basement until then. What I would do in a small apartment I don’t know. Basement storage is a wonderful thing!

I wrote several folks about the Midwinter Gathering, as the Gatherings newsletter went out today and people responded immediately. It has a good energy already!

Since newbie e-mail is now capably taken care of by volunteers I was writing old friends all day, catching up with many life streams. I know many fascinating people indeed. Lana L. is writing a book about America to give the country and democracy itself back to Americans. Her spirit is indomitable and her colorful Western cowgirl imagery is always a total delight.

Otto H. has been traveling for the ten years I have been writing him, mostly in India and Thailand. His path is replete with gurus advanced I Ching and yet also with the study of the Law of One, in which he is an unremitting scholar, studying on-line from wherever he posts. He is Norse but speaks English extremely well. He is utterly unpredictable and has wandered to Iceland, South America and all over Europe as well as the subcontinent of India.

Roberta L. is close to 90 now and has gotten infected teeth, so has come through oral surgery and diminished health and is now recovering. It took her savings to come through the crisis and she barely was able to keep her little caravan home. Her wit remains unaffected and she is writing her memoirs, including, she says, all her love life details! Roberta, even at this advanced age, is a dish, slim, leggy, a classic! This book should be a rocking report indeed! At one point, for instance, about five years ago now, she had a boy friend in his 90s who was still spry enough to want to see America so she drove him for two solid years all over the place in his Cadillac. I do not know of their intimate details but I do know that they had a two-year conversation and delighted in each other and the passing scene. What an intrepid pair! Roberta, I salute you!

Suffice it to say that the list of letters was long and that I enjoyed sharing energy with each and every dear soul.

I also received the Planet Lightworker channeling transcript from Steve F. and edited it before end of day. I quite enjoyed catching up with the material on 2012 which had been channeled. The Confederation attitude offered by the Q’uo is provocative but also very energizing and reassuring.

My osteopath, Steve J., who recently moved from Fox Hollow, where I had been seeing him, re-contacted me with his new contact information. He is setting up practice on his own now. He is very interested in bio-dynamics and wants to see Avalon. We also got a note from a new Louisvillian who wishes to attend meetings and has just found us on the net and a new wanderer who sent snail mail, which I answered yesterday, indicating his desire to come volunteer on Avalon next summer. It was a great day for connecting in with beloved friends and sharing with many newer people as well.

Jim enjoyed the many football games that were on throughout the day, dropping in on games between bouts of planting tulips and other bulbs in the back yard in the cold. He is now all done with planting except for about two hours’ work, which he shall tackle when we return from Nebraska, he says. The sun shone brightly for us today as our Thanksgiving cactus finally begins to droop and drop its lovely, spiky, pink blossoms. Our last roses of summer have blown and Jim put our rose garden to bed for the winter today. Now we shall need to find things for our altar like twigs with berries and holly. It is fully winter weather now. I embrace that! I love the cold weather and the dignity of the bare trees.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

I finished my puzzle and had my weekly sweet treat of Krispy Kreme doughnuts before coming to St. Luke’s for a unique service. We hosted about fifty Barbadians who had been looking for a place to celebrate Barbados’s Independence Day, which takes place November 30. The community is largely made up of school teachers who have found work here in the city, plus their families. Fr. Joe, St. Luke’s priest, found out about their need for a place to rejoice and offered our little village parish. It was a blessed occasion.

There have been posts on the forums lately concerning some fear-based materials having to do with “end times” and I found the scriptures for the day most useful in this regard. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away,” says Jesus, reportedly, in the Gospel of Mark. “He will strengthen you to the end,” says Paul in First Corinthians. “We are the clay and you are our potter,” says Isaiah. The gist of such readings is to strengthen my determination to rest in serene knowledge that all is well. I honestly have no notion what shall transpire. Our planet has had sudden polar shifts before in pre-history. It could happen again. Should I therefore spend the balance of my days fashioning some response to this supposedly upcoming shift? Not I! Life is too short to spent one instant in fear. Now is, instead, the time to be more steady and trusting in faith than usual. That is the energy we need to find and enlarge in our own inner beings. At least that is what I am guided to enlarge in my own being and consciousness.

I spent the early afternoon, after our delightful lunch and some football time together with the Mick, working on some questions that had come up regarding the midwinter gathering. Yes, we are sure of the dates—2-10 through 2-12-06. Tobey and I talked about whether to get a hotel meeting space or wait and see how the numbers add up. We are already out of Camelot as far as where we can hold the sessions, as we already have ten people, which is too many to exist all day in our living room! It holds about eight comfortably—more than that and people are sitting on the floor. Thank heavens for the generosity of Steve F. and Sandie S., who have offered us the much larger spaces within their capacious home. But if we get a half dozen more participants and crank the number above 16 we’ll need to be in a hotel meeting space anyway, simply because even Steve and Sandie cannot fit more than 16 or so into their home. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out!

Ian had sent me a most interesting article on internet trolls and I took the time to post a link to that article on our forums, where troll activity has been jumping lately. Criticism and even attack does not bother me, as it has been occurring to me for decades now. It does bother the forum members, but on the other hand our members have done very well with the catalyst. One cannot try too hard to embrace the unembraceable! Trolls do not want to be embraced. Their goal is to create havoc. It is an entirely different way to think, one which does not resonate to me. I understand such “troll” energy is often found when good people come together to talk and share openly. I suppose all that goodness attracts entities who like to put out that light. I doubt they will succeed on our forums.

Meanwhile we are all learning a lot!

We had a great group for silent meditation, as Judy C., Romi and Tom F. joined Jim and me. The round-robin discussion was most energizing, with each being teacher to each, and then we had a 30-minute silent meditation together. Romi and Judy fixed tea and cookies and we settled in to a fine conversation thereafter which dissolved into dinner and then the Gaia meditation.

We finally spotted Gary, who has been working his fingers to the bone at Cracker Barrel. He is very determined to pay down his credit card debt and is working very hard to do so. It was good to see him at last and find that his tips for today set a personal record! Yay Gary!

Jim and I went upstairs to find a Bond movie, the last of the “Bondathon” which one of the cable stations is offering over Thanksgiving. We got a late call from Bruce, who will show up here at Camelot later tonight or, I should say, early tomorrow. He is en route back from family visiting and is under the weather, so we shall nurse him here for a day or two.

Monday, November 28, 2005

The energy of getting ready to leave the old homestead of Camelot to set out for Nebraska has begun to take over my thinking. I spent the morning working on leaving each of the in-group people with whom I am working on this or that project in good shape for my being out of touch for the next ten days. After Morning Offering Jim took off with some alacrity to finish up his last three customers’ yards and I started in with the folks working on the Midwinter Gathering by e-mail. I sent a note off to Steve F., because after only one day with our notice out it is clear that our group will exceed the 8 which Camelot can hold comfortably for discussion. Steve and Sandie’s house is quite capacious and their common room can probably hold somewhere between 16 and 20 souls comfortably. Steve was fine with the IDEA of hosting our rowdy bunch, some two months ago when we first talked. Now it is time to be quite sure.

I worked with Shasta G. and Paul C. on their niches/links—the needs we have are the same in many ways, whether it be to open the user up to a niche or a link. Both gentlemen have material to share and it is wonderful to see good people gathering around this “round table.”

Knowing how busy Jeremy is right now, I went ahead and posted on the forum concerning internet trolls. It really is no problem—a tempest in a teapot at the most—when people attack TLOO or me, as far as I personally am concerned. This has happened before and it will again. Fortunately I lead an open life. Our material is out there very solidly. People can resolve such attacks for themselves. I am certainly not harmed.

However Jeremy’s concern, with which both Jim, my husband and Ian, our archive web guy, agree, is to provide a loving, safe space for seekers to talk about the LOO and other Confederation sessions and my writings and how these are affecting their own growth process.

I do feel a sense of humor about my own very real but probably hilariously naïve desire to provide an asylum on our site for trolls. Let them scream warnings and indulge in cleverness of all kinds, and let those who want to check their thoughts out have free access. However, my bright idea isn’t working in terms of its being possible to move anyone’s e-mail posts from one forum to another automatically. So until that software becomes available we cannot send people to Elba. If we want to effect action, it has to be a banning in general from the site. And it is kind of funny that I would even try to avoid that. But I see their beauty as souls, these trolls. If I can I would embrace them too, in all their orneriness.