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Carla’s Niche
Camelot Journal
Copyright © 2006 Carla L. Rueckert
December 9, 2005
It was a heavenly vacation! The drive to Nebraska and back was fair and pretty even though we had weather warnings all around us. It has been a snowy early winter in the Midwest and we gazed out the car windows on a white, clean world as the stubbled fields and oil rigs of Indiana and Illinois slid past us and gave way to the prairie. It snowed every day we were in Nebraska and I understand they have received more snow already this season than they got all of last year. This will help the farmers in the growing season to come, so rather than being dismayed by straight-line winds like that one which caused me to break into an involuntary trot rather than fall down in the parking lot of Orscheln’s, Jim’s favorite store in Lexington, Nebraska, people take it all in stride and do a bit of quiet cheering. It is great to see such calm when facing ice and snow. Growing up in Kentucky with a Yankee Mom I am especially aware that southerners tend to have inappropriate panic when spotting snowflakes descending!
Jim’s Mom was in splendid health. At 88 she has aches and pains, about which she is very quiet and stoic. She had a hip replaced years ago and still faithfully does the exercises which keep the new joint in good alignment and which strengthen the muscles that support the joint, which is an inspiration to me. I am old enough now to have seen several relatives and friends through hip surgery. Mom is the only person of those I know to have continued to walk perfectly well and I feel sure it is due to her simple persistence in doing the exercises that help her to continue to be well and independent.
We had a fine birthday celebration, taking Mom to Grandpa’s Steak House in Jim’s old college town of Kearney and then enjoying the Arch Monument and Museum which crosses the I80 expressway just east of Kearney. The displays were of the westward trek of so many who have come through Nebraska on their way to the Northwest Territories of Oregon and Washington, the Great Salt Lake and to California. These all were replete with Native Americans and African-Americans as well as European-Americans like Jim’s Mom, whose forefathers found this land fair enough that they settled and created a life right there. Mom is a true pioneer, having grown up in a sod house with a smoke hole in the ceiling. She did, however, enjoy the refinements of windows and a made wooden floor. She rode a horse to school in all weathers and her home was heated with the dung of the animals, mostly cows, which they raised.
Knowing this I look around at her present home, a modest and old-fashioned home she and Dad built together, with one bathroom and three small bedrooms, and realize that this is absolutely luxurious for her. This home is her Eden and she adores it. She and Dad, who also was extremely poor as a child, growing up in Alabama in a log cabin, this one with a dirt floor, created a grand life for themselves and their only son, Jim, there in the small railroad towns along I80 and the attendant older state routes. Their education was not advanced and they always worked for low pay. But they were thrifty and diligent. They have done so well! They put Jim through college and Jim remembers his whole childhood as full of homely happiness, peace and comfort. In contrast, because my mother was raised in a privileged life-style, her experience at having to “make do” with little money after marriage created in me, growing up, a sense of “not-enough”. It’s interesting to look at since Jim and his folks probably got by on far less than my Dad, a professional engineer, provided.
Jim’s “job” on vacation is simply to be with Mom. They do a lot of mutual napping while observing Mom’s constant stream of television programs. Occasionally they break into conversation, remembering shared history and old friends and neighbors. I do not share the history or know the neighbors and we won’t talk about my views on daytime TV; consequently I am barely missed as I slip into the kitchenette, settle down at the pretty, maple table and open up Traveller to write Papa.
Now that has been a thrill for me, just to have the time to read Papa’s massive letters and respond. I do not know why he is so kind to me as to spend the enormous amount of time needed to do this, but he teaches me almost each day, moving always from the events of the day to the underlying themes they bring up in his mind. Papa is not at all a Republican, so his colorful style renames our leaders things like BushBoob, SchwartzBoob (Papa is a Californian), RumDum and Ashteroth. His edge of fine scorn is at almost every turn discernible. Yet his interest is not in condemning individuals but in helping me to see the patterns that lurk below the surface, patterns of empire that have swept this planet since Babylon in written history and before that in pre-history Atlantis and off-planet around our solar system and near-by solar systems like Deneb and Sirius. He may break at any moment into a riff about the waves of corporatism that began with the British East India Company, or search history for evidence of whose energy became the energy that was comfortable with slavery (Anglo-Saxons, he feels, not Celts) or he may just tell me what happened in the longest baseball series game in history for several pages, getting lost in his affection for America’s one-time pastime. His erudition extends through the liberal arts as well as politics, economics, mythology, history, sociology, archeology and the mysteries of science, Papa having been trained as an engineer and metrologist.
As well, Papa is extremely sophisticated about the inner workings of government, having worked for the Armed Forces and the Executive Branch in many capacities during his 45 years of extremely responsible government service. He’s a superb teacher and I am a very lucky old student! He is only eight years older than I, but deserves the affectionate name I have given him for no one ever treated a daughter with more thoughtful kindness than he. Since both my parents are long gone from this world, I love having Jim’s Mom and my special Papa in my life.
I had such a good time reading Papa’s letters! That was my vacation, right there. I did not get a lot of direct response written to his letter, using my writing time instead to share with him the issues that are on my mind in terms of L/L Research. And I did write at length on these points. I greatly look forward to his responses.
I returned home to a still-recovering Bruce, Parnell, who had come up to Camelot to help Bruce make repairs to Camelot’s various systems, Gary and Vara, who were out of the house working or on errands, and Romi, who had come over for a visit and to help with the computers. It is time to pick up the reins of this buggy and help the team giddy-up as we wend our way through the matters of the moment. I imagine I will be overcome by the Christmas Spirit soon and find myself completing those dear, old patterns of preparing cards, gifts and home for the generous and sweetly innocent times of Christmas. I always look forward to that, never having lost the wonder of the season, even under the determined attack of the American Business Model. I still hear the angels’ song and the bells of Christmas and respond with a surge of pure joy and thankfulness.
Jim and I give thanks for this wonderful time away, for our splendid time of extended conversations, for our adventures in room service, and a good, safe trip as we drove through the miles between. The old year is being swallowed up! The New Year awaits, as clean and untrodden as a snow-swept field before anyone comes to see it. As always—I can’t wait!
December 10, 2005
Coming back from a trip I always expect a lot of mail and this return had no disappointments for me! I spent a lot of the day sorting snail mail, organizing details that had gone amiss in the office and all its endless papers, putting bills in their proper folders, opening packages and in general clearing the office of the business of incoming things. Jim got the one order filled which we had picked up from L/L Research’s P. O. Box on our way home and I wrote a gift-giver about some snafu’d return mail where his giftee had “gone away” according to the Irish postman who shipped all the books back to us across the pond. It was a person living at Sir Someone’s Quay and I thought at the time, what a grand address! But this wanderer had moved on.
When the desk was cleared I turned to e-mail and again, there was much clearing to do, as I started with over 150 new e-mail. Fortunately none of it was explosive! All the in-house people had known Jim and I would be gone during this last week, so there was no terrible rush to answer hot e-mail. It was, therefore, a leisurely business to sort out the spam from the good letters and then to respond to that which was most urgent.
There was a long list of calls as well, and I got to those throughout the day. One notable person had called repeatedly as well as writing e-mails. She was convinced she had a terrible “overshadowing” with a psychic greeting. I called this person and shared my advice for a good 10 minutes only to find that she was not nearly ready to hang up. She needed far more help than THAT! However, I believe if one reads A Wanderer’s Handbook on the subject of psychic greeting one can retrieve every whit and iota of information I have on that subject! And she does have e-mail, as she wrote me twice, once asking for help and once informing me that I had helped her insufficiently. I trust she will persevere and do her own work in finding out how to progress with her issue, which is very upsetting, I know.
No good deed goes unpunished! I did not make up that witticism but I do find it to be true.
Tomorrow we will have a house meeting, our first general meeting in quite a while. I worked to prepare for this during the afternoon. My hopes for our B4 site have been rather snagged and stopped for a bit and I was fortunate enough to be able to arrange a conference call between Ian, Jeremy and myself. It was such a blessing to hear first-hand just what had held up site work—only Jeremy’s complete and utter immersion in his new job, which is more than a challenge for him right now and a real time-eater—that’s all! And while this sort of woe is difficult in its way, in terms of my concerns that Jeremy had second thoughts about the immense job of bringing forth www.bring4th.org, it is nothing much! I am a patient woman, within limits.
We got down to brass tacks and I was able to share with Jeremy my own thoughts about the priorities on B4, as well as Ian’s being able to provide some counsel. And Jeremy sent me the request for what he needed from Bruce in terms of moving items, eventually, from lawof1 to B4. Eventually we will slim down to having only the two L/L Research web sites and lawof1 will be discontinued as we do not need it. That will probably take six months or so to complete doing, but for this upcoming meeting, I needed to know what to ask for NOW! SO it was just great to get that straight.
Bruce and Parnell may well be at Camelot for a while, as Bruce is still under the weather and also is attempting to do repair work for Camelot while here and recovering. Fortunately I make a habit of creating broth whenever we roast a bird, so we have loads of good, rich, fresh turkey broth from Thanksgiving cooking, all ready to defrost for a man with a bad cold. Let’s just pray it stays a cold—Bruce has a tendency towards pneumonia.
Jim spent his Saturday night partying as usual for him by first doing my nails, a job at which he is far more artistic than I, and then cleaning the kitchen. Gary came home and we sat in the living room and conversed about topics from magnetics to fourth-density physics to everything under the sun until I became too sleepy to follow. Jim and I finished the evening cuddling and said good-night around 11 PM.
December 11, 2005
It was Pudding Sunday at church, that third Sunday in Advent when the Collect for the day begins, “Stir up, we beseech thee…” Of course the prayer is about the Holy Spirit stirring up our hearts, but the tradition centers around stirring up Christmas Puddings at this point so they will be set by Christmas Day. That season looms indeed!
I tried for almost an hour to edit early in the morning but was unable to make the software work. Later I went back into the document and all the problems had disappeared. Now there’s luck! I am editing the last Sunday meditation we offered, an interesting one based on a question about bringing young people into community by Parnell. Unfortunately I was running out of time by the time the software cooperated, so shall need to work more on that tomorrow.
I turned to catching up general e-mail and wrote to a couple dozen people on issues varying from personal catch-ups to Christmas cards to web site issues. Newbie e-mail was forwarded to Terry and Judy, friends visiting in the New Year were welcomed, contacts were made on a couple of business matters—insurance and living wills—and I set up a session in January with Kathy G. And I did the Camelot Journal entry for the time I was gone. Ah, what a joy just remembering the spaciousness of vacation.
The public meditation meeting went well, with a powerful circle of seeking composed of Bruce, Parnell, Vara, Gary, Romi, Jim and me. The question was from Bruce and had to do with how language works. It was an interesting session! Bruce and Parnell talked about perhaps doing an extra follow=up session on Wednesday next.
We all had dinner and then had the group meeting. From my point of view it went very well. My concern in the meeting was to address what I perceived as a lack of commitment to loving interaction within the group. The message had actually gotten across already, because I had let everyone know well ahead about the meeting, and so the prescient group, feeling which way the wind blew, had taken the time and energy while Jim and I were gone to work on their relationships and indeed, the group already seems more tight and together.
Of course after my firm and fervent discussion about what a spiritual community is, especially what I see such a community to be, the assembled were quite sore at me for being such a meanie. I did not expect the direction of my talk to be one that was enjoyed or liked because I was calling people on their behavior and asking them to change. My review from the group indicates that I am cruel, lack compassion and have wretched timing.
However, my own sense is that I acted in the best interest of the group, gave direction needed by the group, offered limits on acceptable behavior and in general created a clarity on “house rules” that we had lacked before. The basic rule is that we need to be kind to each other at all times. By the group’s own individual and increasing complaints to me this had ceased happening. My request was that the healing begin now. I believe I am late on that—the healing has begun! Yay!
I think it is always a challenge to work with volunteers. Unlike paid workers, they feel, in spite of it being quite sacrificial for Jim and me to spend the approximate $600.00 per month per volunteer to keep them warm and fed, that they are overworked and unappreciated. How much simpler it would be for Jim and me to live as a couple, accept volunteer help when it is offered, but not attempt to dwell together in community!
Yet I see the potential for a powerful group service if we can, indeed, do the near-impossible thing of learning to think as a group, work together as a group and refrain from the constant tendency to split apart over small issues. So I remain enthusiastic and committed to living in community. However, my priority is to live as and be a community grounded in love and light. If we never build a community house on Avalon or farm it, we are still working in community here at Camelot. So my priority is not buildings or outer accomplishments but living the Law of One.
The group listened to me with care and courtesy. That is all I can hope for. I leave the rest in Spirit’s hands. In actuality I think that I was accurate in determining that this time was the best time to clarify my thinking for the group. And I spoke as well as I could hope to speak, for Holly was truly with me. In the end, one can only act as impeccably as possible on one’s deep convictions. And it was a blessing to be able to do that.
I ended the session by stating that if I lacked compassion or love myself, I could only confess those faults. That felt balanced, as well. I, too, have many distortions and am a flawed human being. To end on my knees, figuratively speaking, felt very right.
What a powerful day! Jim and I ended the day with a most thankful cuddle and quiet conversation. It was very healing to hear Jim say that he thought I spoke really well and expressed his sentiments as well as my own. My love and gratitude for Jim and his wonderful companionship are overwhelming. My love for our little cadre is great as well. I pray we may have a long time of service together. I pray we may grow together and learn together as well. Most of all I pray that we may love each other.
December 12, 2005
After writing the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday and mailing off my letter to Papa, I located our old Christmas card list and every address book and Rolodex we had. Vara gave us a hand with Jim’s customers’ addresses. With Jim’s aid, I spent most of the day getting the Christmas card list updated. It is not quite finished, as I have not yet checked our visitor’s log and contacts list for people whom we have met for the first time during this very eventful year. But we are very close to complete. It was a big job but needed doing as our old data base had been done so long ago that Word no longer recognized how to print out labels from it. We’ve been hand-printing addresses at Christmas for a couple of years now.
Trenton, Vara’s friend, had come in overnight. He and Vara share Christmas plans. It was good to see him! He came up from his Florida home in August to help us with the Wooded Glen gathering and while he was here he aided on Avalon as well. We had a good talk over lunch with Trenton advising me on creating an environment for growth.
Bruce and Parnell came in to join us after working to finish repairs to our back deck during the morning. It is now in far better shape structurally. We called for another termite inspection, for they found termites under the structure, for sure! It is time to spray! Bruce and Parnell then left to check in with Avalon. They should return to Camelot by Friday. Before they left, Bruce and I looked at the hall where shelving is intended to go. He will bring back tools with which to do that work when he returns. It will be grand to have enough shelving again! Our library has outgrown its present system and we have books waiting to be shelved in several sections, not to mention the archives presently stored in my bedroom closet!
We had a personal channeling session today with Judy C. This is our very last private session for the year, as Vara will be gone from now until year’s end, pretty much. She had been scheduled for the sitting today but since Trenton had arrived, and Jim was able to act in her place, we urged the couple to go have some fun and Jim was our third person for the circle of seeking. Judy’s questions were thoughtful and far-ranging, spanning interests in service to others, cats and their purpose, the nature of colors she was seeing when working in healing and other matters.
The group continued to embrace me and my “big talk” of yesterday in a very kind way. We have many steps to go in finding our way towards being a stronger and more unified group in service to the Creator but there is no question of the group’s sincerity, person by person. I only pray that I may never quench either their spirit or my own.
I sent out a few e-mails to people to whom we wish to send our L/L Research card and yearly letter whose addresses we do not have for snail mail and called it a day! Good conversation, sci-fi TV, dinner and the Gaia Meditation brought Jim and me to bath and bed fairly early.
December 13, 2005
This was a day steeped in Christmas doings. I finished the process of creating a fresh Christmas Card list by going through the list looking for people who we intended to include in the list but for whom we had no snail-mail address, or one we knew was wrong and e-mailing them to ask for their snail-mail address. I was adding new information to the Contacts all day! I also wrote the insert letter for the card-calendars we have ready to send out and did the first work in a while on wrapping presents by unboxing gifts that had come in and getting them ready to wrap. My sister-in-law, Mary, has now decided we can offer two presents per person to the family at her Christmas celebration, so I am freed up to move ahead with wrapping.
This is to an extent an L/L Research effort, since the majority of folks on our list are related in some way to L/L Research. However, in this day there were also more direct items done for L/L:
- Wrote Ann S regarding a channeling session in January.
- Worked with Terry H, who is translating LOO, on a question on session 71.
- Wrote the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday.
- Worked with Marcia M on her Diana channeling niche.
- E-mailed Victoria and we settled on her transcribing Jenny and The Journey.
- E-mailed Brad S on price quotes for a new price list of our print books.
- Sent Terry another newbie to work with and welcome.
- Sent lawof1 access codes to Ian and Jeremy as they work on redeveloping B4.
- Arranged for a meeting about insurance (oh joy!).
- Worked with Tobey on Midwinter gathering; sent him new Gatherings request.
- Did a general office and desk clean-up, mailing out several tapes and books
I was glad when Jim called bath time. We settled in for a lovely whirlpool together, got clean and went up to watch some TV and relax. Democracy Now, which we feel is our best possible news source on TV, had Amy Goodman, one of my personal heroes, battling laryngitis and interviewing people who had something to say about the sad execution of Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Stanley “Tookie” Williams. It was an impressive show and a really good window into the issue of clemency versus judgment. I thought about this all night. Tookie, founder of an L. A. gang, had done acts of violence aplenty. He admitted those long ago and has served a lot of jail time. The challenge comes from two items: he did not commit the crime for which he was sentenced to death and he worked hard to redeem his life, writing books on how to embrace a non-violent response to perceived social injustice. Many gang members say they owe their very lives to this writing.
And yet our government, in the person of California governor Schwarzenegger, decided that “eye for an eye” justice was preferable to the compassionate justice of finding it possible that a sinner could change, turn and start a new life. Such ethical choices are central to our polarization as a people. I just pray that we may polarize individually in ways that increase the light!
Romi came over to work with the computers and have a good visit. Jim wrapped books to mail out while we conversed and after the Gaia meditation, Jim and I bade good-night to Romi and Gary, who had just come in after working a double shift as a server. We can officially state that Gary is working too hard! St. James and I went upstairs for a cuddle and bade each other an early “sweet dreams.”
December 14, 2005
This was a day of amazing disaster for our printer, Jessica. I had created the Christmas letter which inserts into our cards yesterday. I’d printed out the first 150 or so cards, for which we already had computer paper. However when I tried to print the rest this morning, using the new computer paper Jim had picked up, Jessica would not print. I did everything I knew, looked up the meaning of the occult lights blinking away on Jessica, could find no answers, and blessed my lucky start when Trenton, Vara’s friend, was able to sort out the woe.
Trenton works for the armed forces as an IT and has for many years. He was familiar with our problem as he works on Hewitt-Packard equipment all the time in his job. He and the telephone tech service for HP concluded that our woe was a faulty imagining drum. We had just bought that about a month ago. It was under warranty and HP is expressing to us a new drum. Kudos and thanks to Trenton!
Our woes were not over. The work I do on the computer I tend to do these days on my laptop, Traveller, in my Mama chair, which is a recliner, as that is the easiest way for me to rest my sore back. I could not access Maggie from Traveller, which meant I could not work in my recliner. So I came in to the office and worked directly on Maggie, my big old PC. I had no trouble establishing internet connection. However I found the MS Outlook had stopped being able to receive or send mail. Again I fiddled with the machine and the software but to no avail. I put in a call to Romi, but he was totally booked so help is on its way, but not today or tomorrow.
I am just so thankful that we were able to get our cards out, letter and all. After lunch I sat down and jotted notes to some few people on the insert letters and Jim sealed them all up, about 250 cards. We discovered that the post office wants an extra 23 cents on each letter- the insert puts the card weight at just a hair over one ounce. May I cast the post office as Scrooge in our little drama? Thank you!
We had a couple of days’ snail mail to process and I did that, getting out the ladder and starting to tape the pretty cards to our wide doorway into the living room from the office. With everything sorted, taped up, filed or otherwise disposed of, I went back to general e-mail and spent most of the afternoon building up mail in my Outbox. It felt good getting letters answered even if I cannot deliver the mail today!
I took out some time to go to Dr. June’s office for another lab and an appointment with Dr. June. She says my liver enzymes are still elevated. I also had her take a urine sample and her lab will culture that, as I believe I have a low-grade infection that never has gone away since Nebraska.
Back home I did a clean-up of all gift wrapping in the basement and found mailing boxes for those gifts which need mailing out of town. I found the last box just as Jim called bath time. I dressed for church and was off again.
This evening we offered Lessons and Carols at St. Luke’s and I sang in the choir and also was a lay reader for that service, my first time to read for my new parish. It was a wonderful event marred only slightly by our being severely under-rehearsed. There were two British carols we offered as a choir to which I made little contribution because of the goofy way some British music is printed, out of order on verses and only in order by fishing back and forth and watching for verse numbers. After the service I heard several other choir members saying the same thing- they had gotten lost on those same two carols halfway through. Oh well! The Biblical instruction is to “make a joyful NOISE” after all, and that we always did!
I came back to find Mick finishing up all the cards and I helped him with a couple of oddball questions before we subsided to supper, the Gaia meditation and an early bedtime.
December 15, 2005
One thing about disasters is that when one cannot do one sort of work, one finds other things to do! I was quite unable to get on the Internet, still, so continued working on responding to old e-mails and adding those letters to our Outbox. I am beginning to feel like Santa Claus! What a glorious “Send/Receive” awaits us when we do get this glitch fixed.
The HP drum came early and Trenton got it installed very handily. However, after printing only a few sheets it died again in the same spectacular way it had before, which to Trenton means that the drum was again faulty or that Jessica has problems which are killing the drums. This is mortal news for Jessica and Trenton suggested we bundle her off to the HP reps here for a diagnosis. We did that and I am now gazing at a big empty space where Jessica normally lives.
Romi and I talked again. He still cannot come out to work on the Outlook until tomorrow so we are still out of touch even though we do have a working Internet connection. It is a great opportunity for me to clear up what remains in the Inbox of old e-mails.
I had a date for lunch with my friend JoAn and it was sheer heaven to go to her Pendennis Club downtown and sit in the spacious elegance of that old mansion’s dining room. The ceilings in that space are 16 feet high, with crown molding and a heavily ornamented dome and other embellishments on the ceiling. Time falls away in that place and it could be 1905 as easily as 2005. I will never have the money to afford membership in such a club. But I have wonderful childhood memories of being taken there many times, as my godmother, Patti Kemper, was a member there. When JoAn treats me to a visit I feel like it’s Old Home Week in a very special way.
Unfortunately, I suppose, I must face the fact that it is a relic of a time redolent of slavery and plantations as well as gracious living and a deep commitment to aesthetics and culture. But I still love to go there with my buddy, politics aside! We sat long over wine (me) and coffee (JoAn) and had a wonderful time just talking after lunch was over. I cannot say enough about girlfriend time. It is tremendously healing for me!
Arriving home, I found that Trenton and Vara had left for their extended Christmas break together. Vara will return about 12-28.
With people coming and going over this last week, Camelot was mildly out of order and I spent the remainder of the afternoon straightening around from room to room all over the house and at last opening the snail mail from today. Again I took up the old e-mail for the few minutes that remained before our bath.
Jim finished mailing almost all of the Christmas packages off and spent the rest of his time today cleaning out the garage where he keeps all his lawn service tools and maintaining various pieces of equipment, readying them for the winter. It is a wonderful feeling to be just about through with Christmas preparations and putting JLS to bed as far as mowing tools go! Jim says the leaves managed to get in every conceivable space in that outbuilding, and he actually filled up a 30-gallon garbage bag with cleaned-up leaves and bark from our sycamore, a majestic twin-trunked elder of our back yard, which had drifted in with storms and wind over the fall season.
We found Amy Goodman, in better voice, on Democracy Now, on TV and after the news, a lucky find of CSI and then a fascinating biography of Gregory Rasputin, one of the few the Ra group mentioned as having made graduation to fourth density along the path of service to self. It is interesting that in the midst of his manipulation and intrigue he offered repeated miraculous healings!
Gary came back after yet another double shift at Cracker Barrel in time for the Gaia Meditation and we had a good conversation with him about his transcription plans before bidding him “sweet dreams” and heading upstairs for the night.
December 16, 2005
It was bitter cold out with black ice in patches when I fetched the paper but the sun was bright and cheery! Bruce and Parnell came breezing in from the wilds of Avalon about mid-morning, after I had cleared Morning Offering and worked at the computer getting yesterday’s editing sent off to wait in the Outbox to be sent to Ian at our llresearch web site and off to the session members as well after having cleaned up the “track changes” I use to send the work to Ian, who does the final edit for the site.
Ian has edited every archive session you see in the site Library! I have only edited the Newsletters and the sessions since 2003. Ian’s is an amazing accomplishment! Modest person that he is, he says he enjoyed the reading and he might as well edit while he’s there!
Bruce reported having a certain amount of trouble getting up Avalon’s access road this morning. Apparently there is a tendency to gather ice at one point in the road. But to our good fortune, they made it!! They also report that our dear Sugar Shack took a nasty knock from a storm branch falling across its roof. The Shack’s days may be numbered.
Little did Bruce and Parnell know that they would be walking into an office whose tools were sadly under-functioning! While I caught up on writing the last two Camelot Journal entries, they started working with the various trouble reports and by lunchtime they had our internet “send and receive” function of e-mail restored and the house network problems solved. We were back in touch with the world and I could recline and use Traveller again! How sweet it is! It was a great feeling and kudos to the Avalon contingent for being so skillful and pitching in so fast!
I chatted with two more termite inspectors who are willing to come out and give us bids for our nuke-the-termites ploy out under our back deck. I also took a spin over to the repair shop for our printer. They needed our HP disc and our old drums, which were sitting by the front door waiting for UPS pick-up. I happily got them what they needed.
After lunch Bruce and Parnell went out to work on a gutter problem Bruce had diagnosed which had led to our woes with the back deck and I did a stretching routine and the “OLOROMO” Steiner exercises, and then got back to the various threads of the day. Cookies was the first one. It is time to bake some Christmas cookies. I sifted through my database of cookie recipes and found four to make—Snow Piggies, Candied Fruit Cookies, Norwegian Butter Cookies and Chocolate Chip & Pecan Cookies. Now there’s enough sweet to last a year!
I filled out the credit information needed so L/L Research could complete our agreement with Executive Inn to use their facilities for the Labor Day Weekend gathering and got that ready to mail off. There had been a huge mail with lots of cards to put up. Papa had sent me two letters and my Christmas present, which was a collection of jazz he had made himself and a book called Energy Medicine which looks promising. I took some time to scan his letters and log them in and then I accessed the new books we had received lately into the L/L Research Library, reflecting that this year’s booklist is about ready to close.
I spent the balance of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine through the window and Jim’s bustling presence mailing out L/L books as he had finished working for clients for the day and had come back to the roost, while I edited the 11-20-05 session. It was a session whose opening question was about how to bring together young people into physical community of a metaphysical kind. The answer was a bit unexpected to me and food for thought.
Romi came over and was delighted to hear all the good news on restored function with the computers as that enabled him immediately to work on the problem of having no printer. He, Bruce and Parnell worked to link the computers and the copier, Sam, and by the Gaia meditation time, contact was achieved. We can now print again! I did a happy dance.
After a luxurious and leisurely whirlpool bath, Jim and I watched Amy Goodman’s new program, tuned in the Stargate block which Sci Fi channel offers and promptly found ourselves napping until supper, whereat we revived and took in Harry Pickens’ piano virtuosity at the Jazz Factory for a set before driving home in the sweet, clear night and saying good-night.
December 17, 2005
The day dawned bright and cold. Jim and I had Morning Offering together and then I took off for choir practice, a rather big rehearsal since we have only one more try at all the Christmas music before singing it out on Christmas Eve. It took the morning and I arrived home to find that Jim had cooked salmon patties and mashed potatoes for the week to come. I got on the computer, did a general e-mail clean-up, sent Bruce, Romi and Parnell thank you notes and did an update on our Camelot Needs List for the llresearch site, as so many volunteers have offered to help in various ways lately.
After Jim and I had shared lunch, he went outside to plant the last of this year’s bulbs. It is a huge amount of work to plant the tulips, daffodils and all the smaller bulbs, but I love the naturalizing effect that occurs when you plant a lot of bulbs over time and let them spread. We have been doing that here at Camelot for two decades and the results in the spring are a joy to behold. Then he covered them all with chicken wire to protect them from our plentiful herd of squirrels and chipmunks, who delight in nibbling such food.
I wrote Steve F arranging for him to do his mate, Sandie’s, Planet Lightworker e-zine session here tomorrow. We are going to have a public session Christmas Day afternoon, out of order for our usual routine but logical when you realize we were a week late with the first meditation channeling of this month because of Jim’s and my visit to Nebraska! So we have tomorrow free for Steve. I also responded again to one of L/L Research’s most faithful members, Tim M, who lives in Australia but calls in to take part in the channeled sessions once each two weeks. He and his wife are working hard to deepen their connection with guidance and we will probably do a special channeling for them after the first of the year.
I ducked upstairs, where Jim was watching a locally popular b-ball game between UL and UK—the rivalry sparks KY ball. I am sure it was a great game! I fell asleep and napped my way through the first half so I have no idea. I roused myself to go downstairs and work on cookie making. I got all the ingredients measured for all four recipes and got the dough stirred up for all of them with Gary’s help, following the injunction of “stir-up Sunday”. Gary was preparing corn pudding and green beans while I was cookie-ing. I got the chocolate chip cookies all baked and a basket wrapped for Jim to give to Sean if he loses a bet on the Nebraska- Michigan game. If Sean loses we will be awash in Sean’s famous peanut butter cookies.
I truly had worn myself out and was glad to relax into a whirlpool with Mick before going upstairs with St. Mick. What heaven! We relaxed, footballed and napped until time for dinner and the Gaia Meditation. Then Jim cleaned the kitchen while I soaked my feet and Bruce, Parnell, Gary and I conversed. Bruce had spent the afternoon exploring options for the hall shelving we have so desperately needed at Camelot. He measured and figured and hunted at close-by stores for materials options. It will be so great to have those shelves for archive materials. We have no shelves designed specifically for our oversized archives but we have many such binders and scrapbooks and so forth in copious supply all over the house. It will be wonderful to gather them all together and have some shelves elsewhere freed up for the expansion of our steadily growing special library—people from all over send us books about our area of research, and our L/L Research Library has become a very rich trove. Now if I could only say I had read all the books and listened to or watched all the tapes we have!
We retired early, about ten PM and found some old sci fi to watch while we gently wandered down the sleepy-time walk towards the Land of Nod.
December 18, 2005
I woke up early enough to get the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday written and several general e-mails answered before time for Jim’s and my morning snuggle. Then ensued my Sabbath puzzle time…ah! That and the donuts we treat ourselves to on Sundays really feel like living in the lap of luxury!
We had a great service at St. Luke’s and I read a lesson at my first Sunday meeting at my new parish. I listened at sermon time to heartwarming stories about the things that had happened to the people who had been given $100.00 as “talents” to increase as in the Bible reading a month ago. What inspiring stories they told! And altogether the seven receivers had multiplied their talents to over $3,000.00 from their original $700.00. The Spirit spoke to several of these people very directly. My favorite story was from Tony R, who prayed every day for six days before receiving a vision that what she wanted to spend the money she increased on was a defibrillator for the church to have “just in case”. This was Saturday night and the next day she came to church and by golly, someone in the congregation had a cardiac incident, EMS came to take her off and what did they use immediately but a portable defibrillator.
She took it as a sign and started telling everyone in her various environments about her vision and people began donating generously to her, effortlessly creating the precise amount of money needed to buy a good machine. It is a great lesson in prayer and in supply and abundance. The focus of intent she received gave her a story to tell, and people responded instantly and generously.
After Jim and I shared lunch Jim settled in for the football game du jour, a disappointing match. The Colts had gone unbeaten all year and no football team has gone unbeaten since 1972, when the Dolphins did it. I missed the Colts’ defeat, having pulled out some cookie dough and started baking candied fruit cookies. I barely managed to get them out of the oven before bath time. Jim and I showered and welcomed Romi and Steve F, who joined Parnell, Romi, Tim (by telephone) and Jim and I for meditation.
Steve asked a question from Planet LightWorker e-Magazine, with whom we have been doing a series of channeling sessions. This is our third question from them. It was on the difference between the 7-chakra system and the 12-chakra system. I never thought we would get much material from that question, but we did! It was an interesting session. Romi made Love Tea and we had tea, cookies and conversation as the evening set in to darkness. After the Gaia meditation and a pleasant supper together, Jim and I said good-night. The conversation was till going strong, but we were fading fast! And so up to some relaxing junk TV and bed.
December 19, 2005
I woke early and so worked on general e-mail from 6 AM onwards until 7:30, when I wrote the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday. Finishing that I made my ablutions and went to snuggle with Mick, only to receive a telephone call from Dr. Aboud’s office. She is on the trail of my elevated liver enzymes and asked me to come in to her lab and give some more blood for further tests. We arose, had our breakfast and morning offering and then I went to Dr. Aboud’s office while Jim took a load of firewood, harvested from a dead tree which he had taken down and chopped up yesterday for a client, up to Avalon. It is seasoned and ready to burn. In days of diminished heat, such fuel is most appreciated! The lab tests took far too long. Fortunately I had brought the opening text of a bio-dynamic farming book with me so I used the waiting time well.
I returned home eventually, taking a light lunch before tuning for a special session which had been requested by Parnell and Bruce. They wished to question about the concept of a “time lateral” which the Q’uo group had spoken about several times before. As is so often the case it was an interesting session. There is much in it about 2012. The session speaks of the opportunity for choosing a path of evolution and being a candidate for graduation into fourth density closing at that time. They spoke not at all of any physical cataclysm or any sort of ascension. There was nothing in the session that would provoke fear, something I always look for in estimating the value of channeling from any source. But they did suggest that this was THE time, and a time bought dearly by the combined efforts of many who have prayed and visualized to anchor the light, to wake up, get an accurate view of the situation for souls on planet Earth, and make that all-important choice to serve others or to serve the self. I look forward to reading that transcript.
After the session was over we conversed for a while about plans to come this winter and then they packed to travel up to Avalon to take care of things there. They feel that Sugar Shack has not been sufficiently winterized to allow comfortable camping there, so they will be staying in the Ute, which is a small shed but which is sufficiently heated to be comfortable. They are both large men and that Ute is packed when bedtime comes at Avalon, that’s for sure! They were very happy to be going back to the rural atmosphere of Avalon, even though the temperature was in the 20s. They also had made the decision to move quite a bit of the items that might be hurt by the unrelieved cold and also the rodents who are part of the Shack environment unless there are cats to keep the population down, either to the Ute or down to Camelot. So we have quite a bit of new storage items in our basement.
I sat down after they left with a letter from Bob P, who is experiencing the involuntary opening of his psychic gift. It was handy for me that I had just addressed the same issue with Fiona M last week, as in doing so I had amassed a lot of information which I simply copied to make the heart of my letter to Bob. As I told them both, I could not encourage them to open their channel alone; not in the sense of outer channeling, by which I mean channeling sources that are not your inner guidance system.
To Fiona, to Bob and to anyone who is experiencing such phenomena, I encourage instead a firm and persistent attempt to know the self and to connect with one’s guidance system. I asked Bob to read the Channeling Handbook and also to read an October 11th channeling session which is up on our archive site, www.llresearch.org. The client who requested this personal session was interested in further connecting with her inner guidance and the session was a long and fairly complex discussion of how to do that.
This took quite some time; sufficient time for Jim to finish all his chores. He arrived home just at 4 PM and after we stretched together, we had a wonderful, long moment where we were simply sitting, holding hands, with our cat, Sedgwick, purring on Jim’s lap and my dear doll, Annsy P, in mine. We had been conversing about what was to be done next but we fell silent together and just soaked in the moment. The peace and bliss of that moment was so powerful we made a mutual decision to take the rest of the afternoon just for time together. It was most romantic and just the kind of time we all yearn for, especially when things ramp up to rushing and hurrying as they seem to do at Christmas. I missed out on finishing the work day I had planned but gained the strength and rest of heart-opening companionship and energy exchange with my mate. It was a good decision!
The rest of the evening was unexceptional. After Amy Goodman’s news and some sci fi TV we had dinner and the Gaia meditation, with the treat of Gary home to offer the closing prayer, and we went up to bed quite early.
December 20, 2005
Earth truly stood hard as iron on this sunny and cold day. Jim and Gary had both worked hard to clear the yard of its fall debris and so I greatly enjoyed the charm of the view out the back windows all morning as I baked cookies from after our morning offering until they were completely done. After I finished the baking and cooling and washed up the cookie tins and cooling racks, I assembled the last present to be mailed out. It was a big box of cookies headed for Ken C and his whole family.
It was interesting to me to contemplate this gift. Ken’s family is very dear to Jim and me. His Mom was my matron of honor and his Dad was Jim’s best man at our wedding in 1987. We loved them and saw their three children through their growing up years, first as close friends and then, after Dad, Ron, died, from afar as the family moved to California to live nearer to their birth family. Ken was an intern on Avalon for a few months this spring and summer and did an amazing amount of damage to our tractor while he was here, over half the cost of buying it. The tractor had been owned by L/L Research for precisely two weeks when he destroyed it and it took most of the summer to repair it. So I was not willing to spend the money for four Christmas gifts for the family, as Ken has not attempted to repay any of the cost of the damage he did. Call me cheap, but that was my distortion.
However, I love these people, regardless. So I determined to bake them some cookies. And I did that. I put a lot of time and effort into the work. In actuality, that gift I wrapped up yesterday for Mick to mail out represented far more of a labor of love and expressed more deeply the real Christmas spirit of unconditional love than any other of the gifts I gave, because every bit of the gift was done by hand. It is a lesson to me.
By the time I had washed the last dish, tidied away the last crumb and wrapped the last package it was after 1:30. Jim arrived home with the Christmas tree and set it on the porch while we ate lunch and stretched together. The afternoon was taken up with unpacking all the Christmas regalia and spreading it around to decorate the house, then putting the tree on the stand, winding the lights around and hanging the ornaments on the tree. It is such a joy to get out the old ornaments, all of them gifts to us at one time or another and all heavy with memories.
I had been scheduled yesterday for the rite called Reconciliation of a Penitent in the Episcopalian Prayer Book but better known as Confession. However Fr. Joe called in sick. He called mid-afternoon to suggest I come over at 4 PM to do Confession and so I did, having a good talk with Fr. Joe about my channeling as well as offering my Confession. It is a wonderful discipline to gather together the best discussion one can make of one’s shadow side and offer it to another human being in all humility and emptiness. The weight of that shadow falls away as one confesses all one knows to confess, is heard and is absolved. I am ready to kneel in the straw with the shepherds now and offer up my heart to the infant that is living Love. What an enormous blessing.
I talked further with Linda D and Doris S, both women of business who help Jim and me, concerning having Linda do our books. It is a good idea for several reasons to have the firm that does our taxes—Linda is the representative of that firm who has done our and L/L Research’s taxes since 1984—do our books as well. I am very pleased that we are getting closer to an arrangement for doing that. She and Doris will continue to help guide Jim and me through the tricky business of maintaining L/L Research’s non-profit status. Not that there is trickery involved in our ethics, but that as we donate money to this, our deeply felt concern, we must be quite sure to do it correctly. Our government is deeply suspicious of those who donate money to organizations with which they have a connection. So all needs to be in exquisite order. I am glad to leave this in the hands of such superb professionals as these two women. Both of them have worked with us since the mid-80s. We are so fortunate to have their help and genuine affection as well.
After Democracy Now and CSI, Jim and I had dinner and the Gaia meditation. Then he wrote Morris, our L/L Research Vice-President, to arrange an annual meeting while Morris is in town visiting his aging parents. I worked more with the general e-mail until Jim was finished and then we called it a night, headed for the upstairs and wished Gary sweet dreams.
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