August, 2009

The day was idyllic, with low humidity and a gentle, upper-seventies warmth exuding from cerulean heavens and a golden sun. After Morning Offering Mick set forth and by day’s end had mown his eight lawns for the day, done the chores requested and had a meeting with the Jr. Warden and Fr. Joe at St. Luke’s regarding what he does for them.

It is a long list of things—in addition to mowing, Mick trims hedges, waters various plantings, sprays the grape vines, clears the gutters and salts the walks in wintry weather, among other things, around the three-acre campus. The meeting went well. He is greatly appreciated there.

I began my day by requesting a couple of odd jobs from Gary—that he repack a massage table Mick bought, which does not work for me because of the way its head attachment sits—it actually hurts for me to be on the table—and that he restore a desktop image on my computer. In the course of the day, he did both things. It is so good to have that little photo on my desktop again!

I plunged into a quote search for Nalin K on his topic, Osho, after having a planning meeting with Melissa for our day’s shared work. She went to treat the lawn again for mosquitoes, which will make it nice for Homecoming, and then put the table which goes between the beds in the upstairs guest room, which we found last week, together and set it up. It fits perfectly in the space!

I was one quote away from finishing Nalin’s collection when I ran out of time and into a lunch date with Nancy F. She and I enjoyed a good girlfriend time at Limestone and then went to Middletown Consignments for a look-see. I pounced on two small, matching table lamps for the upstairs guest room, and also found a nice, soft, blue jersey for the coming cool weather. The price was right and I brought home my haul feeling like the happy shopper I am!

I polished off Nalin’s collection and then did a collection for Melissa’s talk on the spiritual significance of soil, finishing that just as Melissa was ready to go shopping for items at Ben Franklin while I found a birthday gift for a certain someone who will be visiting from Brussels on her birthday at A Taste of Kentucky, a very nice gift shop in Middletown. We were both hugely successful.

While Melissa continued north to Home Depot, after dropping me off here at Camelot, in order to obtain hardware for one of our kitchen cabinet doors which has fallen apart thirteen years into its hard use—it covers the kitchen garbage can—I came upstairs to do some e-mail.

- I commiserated with Marcia M-M on her being unable to come to Homecoming this year.

- I wrote Steve M, which Melissa had asked me to do, letting him know her thinking on some bio-dynamic issues on which Steve has volunteered to provide supportive funding

- I congratulated Sonia on her son, Kenneth, finding a job at last and sympathized with his living for now in company housing where she cannot join him. He will have to save up some of his pay before being able to afford his own place.

- I wrote Anne H, who is joining us for Homecoming this year from Norway, promising that we would find time on Monday for her presentation on CPFC, a peace-and-social-justice organization of which she is a part, and accepted her topic for presentation during the Friday-to-Sunday schedule of 2012. I also assured her we have good health-food stores hereabouts. She says she can get good things here in America which cannot be found in Europe.

- I sent on to Gary Tommy’s information about our The Journey CDs. My brother—with whom I wrote and made that album when it was on vinyl—has succeeded in having the work changed to CD format. Gary responded that we would offer it for download and also in CD form.

- I wrote Helen D concerning plans for picking her up at the airport on Thursday.

This brought me to bath time, and Mick and I enjoyed a most restorative bath together before coming upstairs for a date that was truly amazing, taking us both to places we have never been and to deep experiences of the Creator that awed us. Thank you Lord!

When we came downstairs it was to discover that Melissa had somehow found the time to create a batch of Neiman Marcus cookies that taste like ambrosia! She carefully packed them all away until Homecoming and Mick promised, Scout’s honor, not to get into them beforehand. He tends to be bad about that! But he’s promised, so the cookies are safe! Gary joined us for dinner and the Gaia Meditation, at which I offered the closing prayer tonight.

2009-08-30

August 31, 2009 5:30am

This is our very last summer weekend. While part of me looks forward to all of the various things that will fill my time this fall, another part wishes for the continuance of the relatively slow pace and increased leisure of the summer hiatus. I told Mick today that I felt as though I were pregnant with the upcoming season—nine months of channeling, counseling and other outer work for L/L Research—and about to be delivered of it!

I spent the morning at church, singing a service of pretty music plus an old Baptist hymn, “Standing on the Promises”, which the church is using this year as the theme for its annual pledge drive. We posed for the annual choir photo after the service and then Mick brought me home to a beautifully clean house, lunch and a good two-hour nap.

We roused from that to watch Nicholas Cage in the science-fiction doomsday film, Knowing. I enjoyed suspending my disbelief as he and an able cast of supporting players—Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury and Lara Robinson - dealt with the proposition that Earth was about to be wiped out by a solar flare and that fifty years ago, a young girl had predicted it. The eerie aspects of the film were underscored by a remarkably atonal and ugly musical score composed by Marco Beltrami.

The many writers and producers conceived the special effects of UFOs, ETs and planet-ravaging firestorms well, and it was interesting to see their original take on the rapture of the chosen. And the film caught many beautiful moments in Australia standing in for New England.

During our break, Mick watered our yard for only the second time this year, then chose quotations for the back cover of three more volumes of the eighteen-volume archives collection of our channeling. Meanwhile I enjoyed some solitaire and then developed the handout pages that will go along with my talks at Homecoming. I am reporting, in my own time slot, on 101. In Mick’s time slot—he opted to be a lurker this year—I will report on The Alphabet Mosaics and the 25-year collection of Light/Lines.

Mick and I spent our evening watching Casino Royale on TV, enjoying Daniel Craig as James Bond and the myriad special effects which, though improbable, are very entertaining. Craig catches something of the 007 character’s innate brutality which I have not seen before in the many Bonds. Generally the emphasis is on suavity, the romance of the spy and ironic one-liners, well delivered with one eyebrow raised and a martini in hand. The martini was there, but it was accompanied by an unromantic, very fit and palpably dangerous man of action, which I liked.

Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia meditation tonight.

2009-08-29

August 30, 2009 6:42am

It was a pretty Saturday, with unusually fall-like weather for late August. The cool and dryer air fuelled Mick’s work, as after Morning Offering he cleaned the kitchen, went on errands and then drove over to Shelbyville to cut Steve F’s three acres.

I barely got my journals done and started on a quote search for an attendee of our upcoming Homecoming, Stephen K, when Romi showed up to work on my computer. So I inadvertently had a pleasant morning of reading while Romi solved the mystery of why my instructions to send e-letters were not working. Romi found a box unchecked—or checked; on this I am confused—deep in the internal workings of MS Outlook and changed the setting, and voila, since then all my mail gets sent. Yay Romi! Now to find my desktop image again! Somehow that got lost.

I treasure that image! It is a photo I asked Vara to take in June 2005 in East Sussex, Britain. It is an image of my computer and mouse sitting on Pupie’s kitchen table. It is where I worked on my presentations for the five talks I gave while I was there in England. I had a very clear, lucid, deep moment, sitting there, with the table so clean, the house so quiet. I thought, “If I just had a few months clear, with these conditions, I could edit and publish A Book of Days and The Aaron/Q’uo Dialogues and otherwise catch up with my previous creative output.”

When I returned home, I was blitzed with the Inbox which Gary now manages so admirably. However the next January, my hopes began to come true when Bill H held a conference at his California home focused on how to get me into a more creative mode, and L/L Research into a more self-sustaining stance. Out of that funding came the creation of this upstairs office and the hiring of an admin and bookkeeper for L/L Research, which left me free to do creative work.

Two and a half years later, I have written 101, edited ABOD and A/Q, as well as editing and publishing Dana Redfield’s Alphabet Mosaics. The Aaron/Q’uo project is not yet published because we decided to submit it to Hampton Roads. They have held it for more than a year now without moving on it and after Homecoming, I will write them and ask them to say yes or no. We can always self-publish that work.

Left to do, in order to make my vision in Forest Row come true, is the editing and publication of the unabridged e-version of A Wanderer’s Handbook, in order to include half again as much original material, and the editing and publication, either in print or as an e-book, of my writings on prayer over a 23-year period for Calvary Episcopal Church’s Intercessory Prayer Group. That would clear out my backlog of finished works.

I am very pleased with my progress so far. However until I finish all of those projects, I want to see that desktop image of the clear, quiet kitchen table, with Pupie’s little vase of flowers and my computer waiting and ready, every day for inspiration and motivation.

After lunch, Romi left and I worked with Gary to choose the menu for our opening feast at Homecoming. We chose marinated salmon steaks with an oriental glaze, spinach mashed potatoes and asparagus with mock Hollandaise sauce, mushrooms and artichoke hearts.

We also settled on the restaurants at which we will dine on Saturday and Sunday evenings during Homecoming—Selena’s and Captain’s Quarters—and Gary will make reservations for those places.

I will work separately with Melissa to choose our desserts and snacks on Monday or soon thereafter. We have some people coming early, and we can press them into service, getting those goodies ready.

I spent the remainder of my working day finishing the quotes collection for Stephen K’s presentation on the chakras.

Gary and I had a discussion about which presenters should receive a quote selection from me. Gary felt that all the participants should receive one, whereas I felt that only those who would use the quotes in order to fuel discussion during their presentation would need a selection. I will think about that overnight.

Before I closed up for the day I wrote Steve T, a faithful and long-time L/L Research friend, who is on the fence about attending this year’s Homecoming due to two recent illnesses. I encouraged him to come if he could make it. Steve is a wise old bird—younger than I am by ten years, but far older and wiser within his being—and is a real anchor at any Gathering he attends. His steady, loving presence is precious, and so I told him. I do hope he can make it!

And I wrote Sonia in California, who has had disgruntling news about her Disability hearing. She thought it would be held this September, but the Social Security Administration just let her know that the hearing will take place in about a year. I encouraged her to move on, either to stay with her son or with us, and to visit California again when her hearing is due next fall. It is awful to be in limbo!

Mick and I bathed when he returned and then we shared a late dinner and the Gaia Meditation with Gary, who offered the closing prayer tonight.

2009-08-28

August 29, 2009 6:29am

After rising quite early in order to get in our Morning Offering, Gary took me to the orthopedic specialist’s office while Mick set out on his Friday mowing schedule. The doctor put me in a special shoe designed to prevent my sore foot from flexing and sent me home. I shall wear the shoe for four weeks and then see him again.

I will never understand the lack of humor that accompanies the Doctor’s question, while pressing a medical finger into the worst of a swollen area, “Does it hurt?” Could there be there any doubt?

I did some e-mail before tackling the editing.

- I made a trouble report to Romi. My computer has taken to sliding things into my Outbox instead of sending them when I hit “Send/Receive”. This only becomes critical when someone is waiting for my letter and does not get it. This happened the other day. Gary was waiting for my edit on the Homecoming curriculum. I was on my way to my bath at the work-day’s end and asked him what he thought of the changes. “I haven’t gotten them,” he said. He investigated and found that I had a total of five letters unsent, which I was sure that I had sent. They were just sitting in my Outbox.

- Mike Quinsey of the radio show, Connecting the Light, confirmed that he will interview me in November.

- Gary sent me notice that Paige B wishes a counseling session and I sent Gary back my first open counseling date, in October.

- Romi wrote back, offering to spend his Saturday over here working on my computer, so I asked him out to lunch at Selena’s as a thank-you. What a guy, to give up his Saturday to help L/L and me out!

Then I turned to editing. By lunchtime I had finished the editing on Wynn Free’s interview with me in May of this year. I sent that off to Ian for placement in our archives.

Mick stopped by at lunchtime, which was a real pleasure. Then he was off again and I promptly fell asleep, losing a couple of work hours. When I awoke, I worked on editing the Voices of the Confederation manuscript until bath time. I have now worked through 35 of the present 150 pages of text. When Ian sends me the OCR’d pages from the end of the manuscript which were missing in his copy, and which Gary recently sent him, the manuscript will be considerably longer, probably over 200 pages. It is a long job! But it is one well worth doing.

Mick and I had a bath and then a lovely date, eventually falling asleep in the afterglow. We roused to enjoy a late supper and the Gaia Meditation, at which Mick offered the closing prayer.

2009-08-27

August 28, 2009 5:22am

Mick went out into the summery weather after Morning Offering to mow a complete day’s schedule, and was able to finish all of his work despite a rain shower in late afternoon.

I started my day with some e-mail.

- I had copied off some material I wanted Romi to see, and did not have his new address, so I applied to Gary for it so I could send it to him.

- I asked Gary to check out some suspected problems on B4, and later he reported to me that all was OK.

- Gary sent me the proposed curriculum sheet for the Channeling Intensive 1, Cycle 2. I looked it over and suggested some changes and sent it back to him.

- I sent Ian a request to help me think about a lack I have noted as I edit the Voices of the Gods manuscript—no sources are noted for the quote selections. In all our other publications of channeling, the names of the sources, like Q’uo, Hatonn or Ra, are noted. I asked him whether I should think of this lack as simply a characteristic of this historical manuscript, or whether I should assign sources to the quotes as I edit, wherever I can. I am torn as to which course to take.

- Gary sent me the curriculum for Homecoming 2009, which I checked over. Again, I made a few changes, notably switching the Morning Offering and Caffeination time slots so we caffeinate first and have Morning Offering right before the study and discussion of the days begins.

- I thanked Gary for sending me notice that one of our attendees wants us to have a group discussion on his topic rather than his presenting on it himself. This will mean I do a quote search for his topic.

With what time I had left in the morning I continued to edit Wynn Free’s interview with me last May. I got about halfway through it.

Melissa and I then went out shopping for my outdoor “office” furniture as well as for a table to place between the beds in the upstairs guest bedroom. We found both items! It was so good to discover them, and I felt as proud as if I’d caught a big fish as we set the chair up outside.

We were unable to find side tables for my outdoor office chaise lounge, but Melissa discovered that the little café chairs on our deck would do the job temporarily. She spent the rest of her afternoon hours covering the arms of the chaise with foam to soften them for my elbows as I use the mouse. I can’t wait to try it out, working on 102!

We were also unable to find good, small lamps for the between-the-beds table. However Melissa says that she will be back Monday to help get ready for Homecoming, and we can look further for them then.

I came back to my upstairs office to finish out my work day with editing on Voices of the Confederation.

After our bath, I rested with Mick for a short but happy hour before it was time for choir practice. I stayed in my wheel chair for the rehearsal so I could keep my right foot elevated. What a blessing the chair was! Because of the fact that I had been out and about in the afternoon with Melissa, the foot was aching abominably. I will follow up with an orthopedic specialist tomorrow morning early, at Dr. Aboud’s request. He will look at the X-rays of the stress fracture and advise me further.

Melissa went back up to Avalon because the chicken coop was not secure. She is in the middle of expanding the run. However she left us with some good news! Laura of Fox Hollow Bio-Dynamic Farm, here in eastern Louisville, has begun to make and sell bio-dynamic preparations! And Laura will take Melissa on as a student! This is wonderful, since previous to this, the experienced bio-dynamic farmers closest to us were both about four hours’ drive away, one up in northern Indiana and one in Tennessee.

Mick and I dined with Gary, who was at the L/L Research helm today, and then Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation.

2009-08-26

August 27, 2009 10:13am

It was warm and muggy, but rainless, which was right down Mick’s alley. He enjoyed a good day of mowing after Morning Offering and even finished the big job of replanting long lines of lariope for a customer whose walkway had been torn up by the hook-up of the new Anchorage sewers to their home.

The fingernail he crushed inadvertently in his big mower while lowering the cutting level one unfortunate day a couple of weeks ago has started to loosen. I imagine he will lose that nail completely. This is a good part of the healing process, but a bit unnerving to see happen if you’re the owner of that finger!

I started to edit Wynn Free’s interview with me in May of 2009 this morning, but did not get very far, as the first part of the work time was taken up with chapel hour and my journal entries. I also caught up some e-mail.

- I sent on to Ian Gary’s report on a software foul-up on B4 where those who clicked on our upcoming Channeling Intensive 1, Cycle 2 announcement got only the cryptic message, “endif”. Then I checked it for myself and found that the fix was not in after all, and let Gary know.

- I continued a conversation with Gary on a word, nirvana, which I had used in my latest UPI article. He had noted that I misused that word, and gave me an alternative suggestion. (He studies Buddhism, which I never have done.) I edited his suggested phrase and asked Gary to substitute our finished collaboration for the sentence in my posted article using the word nirvana. You have to appreciate an admin who watches your back like that!

- I asked Gary for a reminder as to what attendees’ presentations need my quote searches and he sent me the answer right away.

- I wrote Mike Quinsey to thank him for his kind words concerning the transcript of our June interview which I sent him yesterday, and to ask him if it was correct that we would talk again in November, as he did not seem to recall that.

- I fielded a book order for The Alphabet Mosaics from Eli E and directed him to lulu.com for the order. We do not keep an inventory of that book here. But it is simple to order from them. Click, click, click!

That work took me to lunch time, and what a lunch it was! Gary treated me to a feast at Selena’s, which is right here in Anchorage. We had a delicious artichoke chicken soup, and then he had spinach lasagna and I had shrimp and linguine in a wonderfully garlicky sauce, plus a baguette of French bread with herbed butter. Yum!

I worked on editing the Voices of the Confederation manuscript during the afternoon, and in the midst of it, wrote Ian to ask him to make me a “style” for boxed quotes. I just don’t seem to have the hang of making new styles. I am truly computer-challenged.

At the end of the afternoon, I attended to more e-mail.

- My choirmistress wrote with lots of schedule information—we have a concert coming up in October at the centennial of St. Luke’s stay in its present church building, and extra rehearsals before that concert—and I responded with my own information—preferences on the extra rehearsal times, which she requested, plus notification to her of my upcoming absences due to Homecoming and Channeling Intensive 1, Cycle 2.

- Carol C wrote me with a question about psychic greeting and I responded with a link to my talk on Psychic Greeting in Channeling Intensive 1, Cycle 1. She later wrote me back to let me know the information had helped, and that she was now getting aid from a good psychic who could see where a “cling-on” (yes, that’s a Star Trek pun on Klingon.) had dug in, and felt she was being successful at removing it. That’s such great news!

- Anne H of Norway wrote to talk about some difficulties which might prevent her from coming to Homecoming, and I encouraged her to see if she could make it anyway. She has a very energizing presentation she wants to give and I really hope she can come and give it. For her it is a choice of coming to Homecoming or later in the fall. And she will, I think, have a better experience coming when we have a wonderful group of people here to hear her presentation and add their group energy to her concerns. There is absolutely nothing like any L/L Gathering’s group energy! This is due to the filtering influence of The Law of One, an appreciation of which all our attendees have in common. The energy starts to coalesce the moment we begin, and by the end of the Gathering, everyone is soaring.

I wrote a fax to Dr. Aboud concerning my foot, letting her know Dr. Bird’s reading of the X-ray and telling her that unless she wanted me to follow up, I would not, since they can’t do a doggone thing for stress fractures of the foot. I went downstairs to fax it to her just as Mick called bath time. I was glad that it was time to rest, as my right foot was aching badly.

We stayed downstairs again until supper, to save me the walk up to my bedroom. Mick says it is fine with him, and I think it really is. I am grateful for that! I was afraid he’d miss snoozing on my bed during our evening snuggle. But he says he can nap anywhere!

Gary, who was at the L/L Research helm today, joined us for the Gaia Meditation, at which I offered the closing prayer.

2009-08-25

August 26, 2009 8:51am

The weather is heating up again but still fair, and after Morning Offering Mick went out to mow, happy to have all his mowers back from their 100-hour servicing. He was not able to finish the lariope replanting job as he had hoped today because in addition to his mowing, two of his Tuesday customers had extra chores for him to do.

For Cecil he bundled and took away limbs she had pruned out of low-limbed trees in her back yard and pruned her forsythia as she requested, a special pruning that results in long, arching wands of yellow bloom in the spring. For Marjorie—well, actually for Marjorie’s children, now that she has passed into larger life—he trimmed some hedges.

I finished editing the transcript of my interview with Wynn Free in March of this year and sent that in to the archive site, as well as sending a copy to Wynn. Then it was off to a 10:15 appointment for a sacral-cranial massage by Liz J.

It was an amazing session, with a lot of light images running behind my closed eyelids. Mostly it was pure white, but I also saw tracers of red and pools of blue. I emerged feeling very clear. And I enjoyed a lovely lunch with Connie while I was on the other side of the Ohio River.

However, when I drove home, I had to face the fact that my right foot was smarting badly. So I went to the Immediate Care center in Middletown. Dr. Bird diagnosed a stress fracture. This is my fourth stress fracture on that foot. However it is in a new place—the second and third metatarsals, as opposed to the fourth and fifth metatarsals, where my previous three fractures have been.

I was sorry to hear the diagnosis but unsurprised. Generally that level of pain and swelling indicates a fracture. His instructions are to stay off my feet. I told him that if I were any more sedentary I would be in bed!

He also offered me pain pills, but I declined, explaining that they make me sicker than the pain does, as I am nauseated by all of them. My pain medication of choice is alcohol, whose side effects are quite limited when the ‘drug’ is taken in moderation, wear off quickly and do not include getting deathly ill and losing the contents of my stomach!

I was finished with the X-rays and diagnosis at bath time, and it was grand to be reunited with Mick. He was especially kind to me tonight, fixing me some Finlandia vodka over ice for my foot - my favorite brand - and staying downstairs with me for our snuggle-and-snooze session before supper to save me walking up and down the stairs.

Romi joined us for a nice visit at 8:00 and shared dinner and conversation with us. Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-24

August 25, 2009 5:27am

Our astonishingly comfy, cool, pretty weather continues, making Mick’s job into a delight, he says. After Morning Offering he set out on a different workday—different because one big mowing job does not need to be done today. One of his customers asked him to mow a second time last week, on Friday, since they had a family wedding at their house over the weekend. So instead of mowing that customer today, Mick worked on replanting a huge amount of lariope for another customer. The company that plumbed their home for receiving the new sewers here in Anchorage had dug up their lariope in one huge root-ball, too heavy to handle, which Mick had to chop up with a shovel in order to make into manageable parts. He has about half of that odd job still to do.

I spent my morning collecting the quotations I wished to use from Penny Kelly’s book, From the Soil to the Stomach, and also from our channeling archives, for my UPI article, the fourth of this series of articles reporting on her book. This one is on water, its physical and metaphysical aspects.

I find her information so fascinating and useful! Many ecological issues come clear when you know the facts she shares. And it is such a strong example of how everything is interrelated and part of one thing.

In the afternoon I wrote the article. With the work time I had left after I posted that, I started work on editing the transcript of the interview I had last March with Wynn Free on BBS Radio. Like Mick’s lariope-planting job, at bath time it was only half-done. I shall take it up tomorrow.

After Mick and I enjoyed a bath together we came upstairs for a delicious date, playing and dancing in the fields of the Lord and emerging from the experience of shared energy with a good deal of awe. We seem to have hit a new level, with so much energy being transferred that we just don’t know where to put it all! Praise the Lord!

We spent a quiet evening, touching in with Amy Goodman but finding no Stewart or Colbert to see. The two comics must be on holiday. So we conversed most enjoyably with Gary instead. Gary offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-23

August 24, 2009 5:29am

Mick and I enjoyed a beautiful, cool, fall-like day. It was even cool in church! That’s a first for August! The psalm for the day’s service contained the words, “O how amiable are thy dwellings, O Lord of hosts,” and the choir sang arrangements of that text by Ralph Vaughn Williams at the offertory and by Vaughn Williams, little-known student of John Blow, at the communion. We had the blessing of the backpacks and as usual at St. Luke’s it was a party at the Peace.

Meanwhile Mick cleaned house, bringing all into tidiness and a feeling of peace. It is his Sabbath of choice—although, given that someone else could clean, Mick would undoubtedly be outside instead, tending his beloved gardens. I saw, when I went out to the car to go to church, the change he has made in the Ruins Garden, planting a dozen chrysanthemums here and there where the color of the spring had faded, so all will look beautiful for Homecoming. It just lifts the heart to see this matured garden. There is an especially fine stand of purple-leaved huechera at one corner of it.

We took a nap after lunch—a tactic we have learned to employ in order not to sleep through our movie—and then watched Columbus Day, starring Val Kilmer. I was somewhat allergic to the film because of my unreasoning prejudice against telephones. It was bad enough when the worst a telephone’s ring could do was interrupt a quiet family supper. These days the little beasts are everywhere. If you carry a turned-on cell phone, your life is not your own, ever! I carry one, but it is only turned on when I want to call out on it.

Kilmer plays a thief who has made a big score and looks to fence the goods. While helicopters hover and police cars drive by looking for him, he hides out in Los Angeles’s Echo Park—the film was visually lovely because of its location—and calls people. He calls his fence. He calls his ex-wife. He calls his girlfriend. He calls his daughter. Then he does it all over again. Bobb’e J Thompson plays a precocious kid who companions Kilmer’s character as he dodges from tree cover to maintenance building and back to the balloon man, evading police notice.

It is a very clever screenplay, revealing character largely through the telephone dialogue. However it does not hit the mainstream hunger for action, remaining in the art film category.

Mick and I then took a break. I gave my itchy skin a facial and whiled away my time playing solitaire on the computer, a favorite pastime for me. Mick collected quotations for the back covers of three more volumes of the archives, 6, 7 and 8, completing one-third of his assignment today. I finished my break time by editing and sending on to Ian these quotations choices. These archives volumes should be finished fairly quickly now that Ian has chosen a front-cover image of Mick and me during a channeling session.

Over a late supper we enjoyed the vintage buddy movie, Tango and Cash, starring Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone. It was clichéd and obvious, but great fun. The supporting cast had many faces we love—Teri Hatcher, Jack Palance, James Hong and Michael J. Pollard. It was nostalgic to see the film again and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

I offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-22

August 23, 2009 6:31am

It was a sweet Saturday! The storms are past for now and the air is cool and dry. Sunshine and clouds chased each other all day, plus one sudden, brief shower in midafternoon to keep us guessing. After Morning Offering Mick and I put together some hamburger patties—Gary left us with bison meatballs when he left for his camping weekend, and Mick prefers cow meat to buffalo—and then Mick cleaned the kitchen and went on his errand run. I continued editing the transcript of Mike Quinsey’s interview with me from last June 6th.

After lunch Mick spent his time in our yard, trimming hedges, doing some weeding around the big fishpond in the side garden, working with the ponds to clear them of moss, cutting the grass and in general tidying up our little acre. Just at bath time I finished the rather involved editing job and sent the edited transcript to our webguy for inclusion in our archives, and to Mike. Mike asked good questions and I hope the material will be useful to seekers.

Mick and I bathed and then enjoyed a quiet evening, watching Ransom, a fine, vintage thriller starring Mel Gibson as the good guy and Gary Sinise as the bad guy and ransomer. Renee Russo played Gibson’s wife. The ensemble work was just superb and Ron Howard’s fine direction kept the pace perfectly suspenseful. At the Gaia Meditation, Mick offered the closing prayer.

2009-08-21

August 22, 2009 10:52am

There was a festive air to the day, since it was Friday, and, for the first day this week, a dry day with no fear that rain would spoil the mowing. After Morning Offering, Mick and Gary mowed. Gary left early to have a rash doctored, and Mick finished up the work by himself about mid-afternoon. Gary officially has a mystery rash! The doctor has no idea what caused it. Fortunately it neither itches nor burns. After Gary finished a bit of work in the kitchen, he was off for a weekend of canoeing in the Red River Gorge, a gorgeous, unspoiled nature preserve near here.

I started the day by thanking Elihu E for recommending Dana’s Alphabet Mosaics to John Neal, Bookseller (http://www.johnnealbooks.com/), a site which specializes in calligraphy. They asked to see sample pages, which Eli sent them. It would be great if they carried her/our book!

I told Calvin, who sometimes takes me to choir practice, that since we are now rehearsing in Board Hall, Mick will be driving me to rehearsals so he can push me up the ramp instead of my having to take a long walk into the church. She asked if she could have a ride sometimes and I welcomed her to join us any Thursday evening. (Yes, Calvin is a she. So are Cecil, Bruce, Tobey and Francis, all of whom have lived on our little road through the years.)

Ian asked if we could make do with a banner announcement of our Gatherings, plus a link to B4 where the full announcement will be, when we have a Gathering. He gave us a deadline of Christmas for getting that together. I wrote telling him that this is eminently do-able, and a good plan. I shared the letter with Gary and Steve E, our B4 webmaster, and Steve wrote back to say we could meet that deadline OK.

Then I worked on editing the interview I had with Mike Quinsey on Connecting the Light last June until lunch.

After lunch I got into Voices of the Confederation and began work on editing the text itself, after I read through the Editor’s Preface, the present-day one, again and buffed it up, adding the explanation that a couple of elements of the text had gone missing since 1974 when the manuscript was first assembled, and I had filled in the holes in 2009.

I was vastly encouraged by the afternoon’s work. The process of cleaning up the format went faster than I expected, a wonderful sign. Since the holes were mostly found in the last chapter I presently have, I patched it, then edited the chapter as a whole.

It was a good experience and I especially enjoyed immersing myself in Don’s channeling. During these sessions, the Confederation was teaching me to channel with him acting as senior channel, so there is more of his work in this volume than anywhere else in the archives.

At 4:30 I tuned and prayed for guidance before starting work on 102. The pattern for this volume has eluded me for weeks. I was still waiting and feeling that brick wall in front of my inner eyes, when I recalled Q’uo’s suggestion that I work outside, close to the earth and away from my ivory tower, up here in my bower office. So I carried my computer outside and worked on the front porch.

It was an amazing experience! I had only just settled into the love seat on the porch, placing my bare feet on the dusty concrete and my cup of green tea on the have-a-heart trap my husband plans to set tonight to catch a greedy raccoon who is presently joining the blue jays in stealing Dan D. Lion’s food, and listening to the wind soughing through the trees and the locusts’ chirring, when I was struck almost physically with a moment of insight. I would begin the book not by talking about problems but by talking about emotions.

Ah! When that hit me, I could see that the reason I had been stuck was that I was attempting to organize the book by chakras. But you can experience anger or joy, grief or peacefulness, in red, orange or yellow-ray situations. My presumption that the book’s organization would be chakra-driven had stopped me cold. It just did not work. Starting with emotions will work just fine!

Unfortunately, I injured myself slightly while toting the computer and my tea outside. I have bad knees, which sometimes buckle unexpectedly, especially when I descend the stairs. So I try to hold on to the railing along the wall. This was an awkward position for me and slow going, and I pulled my left shoulder and did something unknown to my right foot which caused the top of it to swell up and be sore. I realized that I needed help to get my office and me outside on a continuing basis.

Fortunately Gary was still finishing up in the kitchen when I came in, and we talked the situation over. He was delighted to help me get set up outside whenever he is here! I feel sure that being outside will inspire me. Being outdoors, in the heat or chill of the day, with the earth-presence close and insistent rather than gentle and distant, will put me in the right frame of mind for writing about working with the emotions of our lives

Mick and I bathed together when he finished maintaining his equipment for the week, and then we had a delicious, rollicking date. Somehow his eyes of love see right through the fatness and swollen eyes that my physical body has taken on in this last couple of years, as I deal with inability to exercise and eye problems, and he sees instead the seventeen-year-old girl who is totally in love with him and is ready to share pleasure. How blessed are those eyes of love!

We had a quiet evening, and I offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-20

August 21, 2009 6:05am

Mick and Gary went out quite early after Morning Offering to mow a customer whose grass is naturally thin, so that it would not matter that the dew was still on the roses. They mowed until a hard rain forced them indoors in late morning. However in that time they had gotten two big jobs done, and Mick used the time in the wet to trim one customer’s hedges and clear another customer’s gutters. In the afternoon he completed his jobs nicely and finished the day on schedule—a real triumph!

I began my work day with prayer time and then writing the Holly Journal. Then I turned to a transcript of the August 11th channeling that just came in from Aaron and by lunchtime, I had edited that and sent it in to Ian for placement on our archive site.

In the afternoon I opened the Voices of the Confederation manuscript and edited Don’s Introduction and my two Editor’s Prefaces, one for 1974, when the manuscript was created, and one for the present day. I created a rough draft of a title page also. And I continued talking with Ian about how to handle the manuscript.

The big question for me was, should the section-heading quotations from other sources than the Confederation, plus my comments, be retained? Or should they be edited out? If we retained them, I would need to patch some holes, for I was not complete in doing these prefatory sections. I missed some topics. Ian thinks the quotations and comments are good and suggested I keep them and complete them. Since I am the editor now, as then, there is continuity. That suited me, and I will start tomorrow to ascertain what holes in the text need patching.

The last part of the day was devoted to thinking about 102. I tuned and then asked for help, but got nowhere! The pattern for this book is eluding me. I’ll give it another whack tomorrow!

Melissa and I chatted briefly on her way out of town—she came in for a bio-dynamics class, which got cancelled because of a death in the teacher’s family—concerning the linens project. She says she will get the foam needed to cushion our basement’s supporting poles, where people inevitably bump into them from time to time, as space is tight in our basement bedrooms. We will look for a parson’s table for the upstairs guest room next week, as well as a basket for the throws in the living room. That completes most of the items on our remaining list of things to do there. As she left, I asked Gary to laminate the key to the linens’ markings and put it up in the laundry area, which he did.

Melissa also dug a trench today for the electrical outlet that feeds the pump to the waterfall of the small, heart-shaped pond in our front garden. Hopefully, burying the cord will keep it from being disturbed and causing the waterfall to stop. She ran into a huge stone during the digging and Gary pitched in to get that out of the way. This is intended to solve a problem that has plagued Mick for years. Here’s hoping it works!

After a refreshing bath and some cuddle-time with Mick, I went to the first choir practice of the year at St. Luke’s. It was fun to see what the fall’s music program holds—we read through a lot of pieces—but I regretted the loss of my Thursday evenings at home! The summer is starting to wind down, and with it my precious leisure time. Ah well, it was bound to happen!

I came home to a late supper and the Gaia Meditation, at which Mick offered the closing prayer.

2009-08-19

August 20, 2009 5:18am

Since this week’s weather is solid with rain predictions, Mick and I rose early so he could get an extra hour of mowing done today. And that he did, coming home very satisfied with his effort. He has secured Gary’s help for tomorrow morning, as heavy storms are predicted for the afternoon then. So he has as much peace of mind as an amazingly wet spell of summer weather can provide a lawn man.

I had chapel time and wrote my journal entries before dealing with the morning’s crop of e-mail concerns.

- I accepted Gary’s very kind invitation to go to lunch at Selena’s next Wednesday.

- I let Gary know that Pupie’s hope to come to the US next year faces heavy headwinds in that our INS, for the trivial reason of her going to school here on a tourist visa, has denied Pupie access to American soil for life.

- I thanked Morris H for sharing with me his nephew’s newsletter. Roger H and his wife have been missionaries in China for the last eight years of their young lives, and are returning to the States for more Christian education and a new assignment after that. My favorite photo was of some of the very strange food they enjoyed while working there—which included insects. Hmmm.

Gary OK’d my edit on the announcement for the Channeling Intensives’ beginning of Cycle Two. We will have the introductory Gathering for that on October 22nd through 25th. I sent the announcement on to Ian.

I wrote to thank Aaron T, our stellar transcriber, for turning around the session done on August 4th, with the question to Q’uo concerning things I could think about while starting Living the Law of One—102: The Outer Work, so quickly. Then I edited that session and sent the finished edit to Ian for placement on site. TheQ’uo group gave me some good advice!

Overnight Ian had sent me the first hundred-plus pages of Voices of the Confederation, formerly titled Voices of the Gods, a weak title indeed—back in 1974 when it was compiled by me, Don thought the title might be commercial—and I took my first look at it. It is a treasury of Don’s channeling and it will be good to revisit his work. But there are editing challenges! I shall need to spend more time looking it over before I can really tell what needs to be done. As Mick called bath time, I started a conversation with Ian concerning various points of concern on how to handle the work.

Gary took time on his day off to Xerox the remaining missing pages of VOC and packaged them up, ready to send to Ian so that he can complete the scan-and-OCR work which has rendered this manuscript into an archive document which I can work with on the computer. Now that’s “above and beyond”! Go Gary!

Mick and I enjoyed a nap after our bath, then came down to share Stewart and Colbert’s humor and news before dining and having the Gaia Meditation, at which Gary offered the closing prayer.

2009-08-18

August 19, 2009 9:38am

Rain threatened, so Mick and I made our Morning Offering early. Mick lucked out and was able to mow everything on today’s schedule, plus a big job on tomorrow’s. He came home a happy, weary man.

I had chapel time and wrote my journals and then started on writing the UPI article on trees, taking information about their place in the grand scheme of things from Penny Kelly’s book. The article went through three rewrites, one more than usual, as I had trouble at first making it flow well. I was satisfied with it finally and posted it at bath time. Gary later sent it on to our “send” list.

Melissa continued her weeding work, clearing several rock gardens and the cross-shaped patio around what used to be our fountain as well. It is amazing just how many weeds there are in our seemingly well-kept gardens! And I know if I went out and weeded after her, I would find more! All this rain makes everything grow, especially the weeds! We consider dandelions, false strawberries and violets good things, which does make our weeding easier.

Then, finally, Melissa’s car was ready, so she picked it up and drove thankfully up to Avalon to be reunited with her life there—it has been on hold for a solid week while she waited out the car repair here at Camelot. The repair shop is innocent of boondoggling. They just could not get the right parts. Each day they thought they could finish the next day. And each day, until today, they were wrong!

We got a note from one of our Homecoming attendees responding to my article on soil. It turns out he is a soil scientist! And Melissa will give a presentation on the spiritual significance of soil at Homecoming. How is that for synchronicity?

Ian and I talked back and forth about issues to do with the Voices of the Gods manuscript, which we will call Voices of the Confederation when it is published. He will send me the first 150 or so pages of the manuscript in digital form once he cleans up the missing pages he just received from Gary. He also discovered that there are eighty more pages missing from the end of the manuscript in his copy, so Gary carefully Xeroxed them today from the original cut-and-paste-using-glue manuscript and prepared them for mailing tomorrow. We will get a complete digital manuscript going here shortly!

My beautiful husband was feeling romantic after our bath and we enjoyed a spirited dance in the fields of the Lord together before coming downstairs to join Gary for the Gaia Meditation, at which he offered the closing prayer, and a quiet evening of conversation and the comedic newscasts of Stewart and Colbert.

2009-08-17

August 18, 2009 10:00am

It is the one day this work week where rain is not expected, so Mick and I got up early and after Morning Offering he started a nine-hour working day, finishing up with a big job from tomorrow done, in addition to all of today’s mowing.

I had my chapel time and wrote my journal entries before tackling the e-mail which had come in overnight.

- Nancy and I made a lunch date for August 24th.

- Rob Schwartz, the author who made an appointment with me for September 29th for a channeling session in which he will ask about pre-birth experiences of the soul, wrote for clarification as to why we used more people than just him and me for the session and I responded. He later wrote to say that this was fine with him.

- Marcia M wrote asking if we still had seats at Homecoming and I responded that we did, and invited her to sign up.

- Helen D sent in her sheet of explanation for her presentation on yoga and I edited it and sent it to Gary for inclusion in our packet.

- Romi asked for another counseling session when he visits tonight and I said OK.

- And in response to a note from Ian, I sent him the details of the Voices if the Gods manuscript. We have only the one original manuscript, which was the old-fashioned cut-and-paste-with-glue version, plus an incomplete copy. Gary, being reluctant to chance handling the cut-and-paste pages, had copied the copy to send to Ian. Then Ian found that this copy is distinctly incomplete, which is why he keeps having to ask for missing pages to be copied for his use. Little did we know!

And I have no idea why the copy is so incomplete! We used to have another copy, but it has disappeared. Someone probably borrowed it with every intention of returning it, and then forgot about it.

I began working to collect quotes on trees for my next UPI article on Penny Kelly’s splendid book, From the Soil to the Stomach. I broke for lunch to pick up my new glasses and to go to J. C. Penney, as they are having a good pillow sale and we need two of them. Melissa and I got them, and stopped to look at the foam they sell at Jo Ann’s, a local crafts and sewing chain.

Her next step is to come back and measure the pole she wants to cover with the foam. One of our basement bedrooms, having been crafted out of basement space, has a supporting pole smack-dab in the middle of it, and it is inevitable that people bump into it, since the room is small. Melissa wants to alleviate the results of such bumping-into.

It is good to see this big linens project coming to an end. Since Melissa also found pillow protectors today and got the two that we needed, we now have only to mend the beige blankets in the upstairs guest room, get a small hand-towel rack for the basement bath, find a couple of really good hooks for the “compass room”, our smallest basement bedroom, and buy baskets to hold our washcloths and our living room throws, and we will be almost done.

Looking to finish the list completely, we will need to repair our sewing machine or replace it. Someone has, at some time in the past few years, apparently spilled a drink down into the machine as it lay closed in the compass room, since it is rusted shut and cannot be lifted into working position. I am assuming—hopefully wrongly—that whatever substance rusted the top of the machine to its table also ruined its motor, but we will have to get the machine unstuck before we can check that out.

Once again we found that Melissa’s car is still waiting for parts before it can be repaired. These folks do not usually put Melissa in such a bind! They have had it since last Wednesday morning! But I guess when you have an old car, it is sometimes very hard to find replacement parts.

When we returned from pillow-shopping, Melissa went outside to garden while I went back to collecting quotes from Kelly’s book and also from our channeling archives for the UPI article on trees. I finished my collection just as Mick called bath time.

On the way downstairs Gary and I consulted concerning the exercise machine that currently is in the upstairs guest room. He suggested getting a table to straddle it which could be used as a bedside table by both occupants of the room at Gatherings. He also agreed that if Sonia needs to come live with us, the Mantis—my name for the machine, because of the way it looks folded up—will go somewhere else!

Mick and I shared a restorative bath and then a delightful date before coming down at 9:00 for the Gaia Meditation, at which I offered the closing prayer, and a late supper.

2009-08-16

August 17, 2009 9:26am

It was a sultry summer Sunday, very warm in the chancel in church. Guest sermonizer Robert Thompson offered a short and sweet homily about how people tend to want from their saviors an earthly “save” of free food and revolution, which is what many of Jesus’ followers wanted of him, rather than the redemption of their eternal souls. We sang Thiman’s “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing, My God and King”, which resounded well. Lisette M offered her rendition of Handel’s aria, “If God Be for Us” from the Messiah oratorio at the communion.

The service was topped off for me by a long wait, as Mick’ clock, kept in his truck, started running slow, and he did not realize it. A half hour into the wait, with the church elders ready to lock the doors, I found myself worrying about his health—was he keeled over in a flower bed or in the garage? I have found that panic is very close to me at all times when it comes to Mick’s well-being! I would like to have more faith than that!

After lunch and a nap, we watched Dark Matter, an art film from Chinese opera director Chen Shi-Zheng. It was a flawed but beautiful gem of a film, short, lyrically shot, accompanied by a masterfully chosen array of American folk songs mixed with Bach pieces and studded with a superb cast.

The main character, a Chinese graduate student played with aplomb and endless nuance by Liu Ye, comes to America to pursue his graduate degree. Aidan Quinn plays his faculty advisor, a physicist whose reputation was made by proving that his mentor’s theory was faulty. Now Aidan wants Liu to continue proving Aidan’s theory correct, but Liu creates a theory that duplicates Aidan’s feat of moving beyond his teacher. Aidan talks the other professors on the degree committee into disallowing Liu’s thesis, and suddenly Liu goes from brilliant protégé to betrayed and abandoned student.

Meryl Streep shines in a role written smaller than her portrayal makes it. She plays a faculty wife and the most poignant scene in the film has Liu coming to her elegant, affluently furnished house to sell her cosmetics, a job he has taken on after his student grant runs out. She serves him tea, botching Liu’s heritage in the most well-intentioned way. Then he tries with trembling hands to show her the products. She immediately has an allergic reaction to them. Liu backs out of her house, a smile covering his despair.

The screenplay provides to the Oriental mind, whose focus is always “face”, full reason for the ending of the film, but to the Western mind the motivation is not developed sufficiently to feel right. So the film does not hit the mark; it does not sing. However I give the piece full marks for esthetic impact and heartfelt storytelling.

I took yet another nap in our break while Mick chose back-cover quotations from our channeling archives for volumes three, four and five of our archives collection. Meanwhile, Melissa weeded the planting at the foot of the huge double-boled sycamore tree in the back garden. She is beginning to create a lovely feeling of order in the plantings along the route people will take during Homecoming from the back door of Camelot to the open-sided tent where we will sit during the presentations.

Gary wrote to let me know that at last 101 has been reprinted and the books are on their way! Praise the Lord!

We all gathered for dinner over the first of the Pink Panther series of films, released in 1963 and starring Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner and David Niven. The bedroom farce is often hilarious and we all enjoyed it. Sellers remains the past master at creating the character of this buffoon. Though many excellent comics have attempted to reprise the role, their efforts all pall before Sellers’ work.

Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-15

August 16, 2009 6:28am

Saturdays are such a fine invention! Mick and I arose a whole hour later than usual, greatly enjoying the feeling of leisure. After Morning Offering Mick was off to clean the kitchen and do a round of errands while Melissa and I had a short planning meeting, organizing her efforts here today. It is a luxury having her help here—usually she is holding forth on Avalon. While it is worrisome to her to be gone, the timing on her needing to be here to pick up her car when it is repaired is beautiful for helping us get ready for Homecoming.

She spent her morning weeding the Ruins Garden and polishing off the assorting and placing of all the linens. This has developed into a very large task, and when you consider that we shoehorned three basement bedrooms into our modest bungalow so that we could house more people, plus creating a third, basement, bathroom, you can see why. With a bed pad, two sheet sets, a blanket, two pillows and pillowcases or shams and a cover quilt or comforter for each bed, plus face cloths, hand towels and bath towels for each bathroom to assign, that’s just a lot of linen to handle. Melissa got it all done except for some final acquisitions, mostly for the upstairs guest room which may become Sonia’s room.

Meanwhile I wrote my journal entries, enjoyed some chapel time and dealt with some personal e-mail. I enjoyed a particularly funny video but when I tried to share it, everyone to whom I sent it said that there was no attachment. This has happened before. There is so much I do not know about computers! Sigh!

Gary and I talked further about not using lulu in the future as a printer unless we really need to conserve funds. If we use lulu’s print-on-demand service we save money by not having to make an initial investment in inventory, since the printer does not print a book until someone orders it. But we lose the ability to know the customer. Lulu does not share the information of who is buying what. And they only send in the money our books have earned quarterly. I asked Gary to investigate blitzprint’s terms and conditions for POD sales, since they are currently expanding their business to offer this POD service.

Gary also sent me Len G’s notes for his presentation, which I can use to create some supporting quotes from our channeling archives. It will be on the place of religion in spiritual seeking.

In the afternoon, Melissa took on cleaning the bank of six French windows—they are actually sold as doors, but we used them as full-length windows when we expanded our kitchen so we could bring in the view of the beautiful gardens Mick has created in our back yard—plus the high, nearly inaccessible transom windows and got them washed and sparkling inside and out.

Mick went to Shelbyville to mow Steve F’s estate—finally getting paid for this labor, now that he has worked off the value we received from Steve when he donated his mower to L/L Research. Gary was at the L/L Research helm all afternoon and into the evening. And I created a quotes collection on synchronicity for Mishlin’s presentation at Homecoming. Then Melissa took off for Avalon to feed her chicks, pat her cats and check on things. She was back by dark.

Mick and I had a most pleasant evening after our bath, coming together for the Gaia Meditation with Melissa and Gary. Gary offered the closing prayer tonight.

2009-08-14

August 15, 2009 10:45am

After Morning Offering, Mick and Gary sailed off to conquer the bounding waves of grass on their Friday schedule and succeeded brilliantly by mid-afternoon. Then Gary donned his chef’s toque and prepared next week’s menu. Meanwhile, Mick had the always challenging job of cleaning a customer’s fishpond. Water plantings are real time-consumers to maintain, although their beauty is certainly worth it! Having at length accomplished the pond clean-up, he re-attached a fallen flower box which was a casualty of the recent heavy rainstorms for the same customer.

I had a day mostly away from home. Dianne S and I went to Images Salon for our haircuts, and her color—she was a natural blonde until recently, and likes to keep the illusion alive. We had lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, where she can get her favorite turkey-burger, and then I came home briefly.

While I was here, I scheduled two more events, an interview with Mike Quinsey on Connecting the Light this November and a telephone interview with Ben Lucyk in early October. I also reviewed some material Melissa gave me in hard copy concerning her presentation at Homecoming and sent off an e-mail to her attaching my recent articles on soil and on stress, since she has not yet seen these, and since they are pertinent to her topic, which is the spiritual nature of soil.

Then it was time for Melissa to drive me to an appointment with my eye doctor, Dr. Bassett. Bassett is concerned about my severely dry eyes and wants to find more ways to help them. I came away with a new type of eye drops to add to the two kinds I am already using. This new one is for the itchy-eyes syndrome connected to allergies.

Three weeks on the previously assigned two kinds of drops has improved my eyes slightly, and she said that it would probably take a year of using these drops before I could advance to drops that are medicated as well as moistening. So at least I do not have another appointment until next August! I also have to give up ceiling fans, especially at night, if I want to recover from this problem.

Melissa got busy when we got home, tying up loose ends of the linens project and I typed up the key we developed for the linens she has marked—BB for basement bath, etc. We will post this in the laundry area, so that whoever washes the linens will know how to read the markings on them and store them in the appropriate place.

I also typed out a list of the remaining shopping and repairs needed to finish out the project. It will take Melissa a while, as there were eleven items on the list we compiled yesterday while reviewing the project.

Mick and I shared a bath and then a marvelously long. slow and sensual date, romping in the fields of the Lord together until almost dark. Meanwhile, Melissa, who had discovered from her repair shop that her Saab would not be ready until after the weekend, drove up to Avalon, treated one of her hens for bumblefoot, fed cats and chickens and checked everything there before turning around and coming right back. She will use the extra Camelot time to do all manner of good and needed things, so we are lucky to have her working here for some extra time!

Mick and I enjoyed a late supper and welcomed Melissa back for the Gaia Meditation, at which Mick offered the closing prayer.

2009-08-13

August 14, 2009 8:42am

Mick set off into the sunny, humid, hot and hazy day after Morning Offering to complete a day of mowing and gardening and came home at bath time with everything done and some extras besides. I started my working day by catching up some e-mail.

I sent some sample photos from the meditation and channeling session Tuesday evening to Ian.

And I passed on to Gary Ian’s correspondence with two people at blitzprint concerning the reprints on A Wanderer’s Handbook and 101: The Choice. It looks as though blitzprint finally got the cover to AWH right, and have finally started moving on 101 after an unconscionable 6-week delay.

Sonia reported that after Kenneth, her son, with whom she hoped to live when he found a job, traveled 1,000 miles to apply for a job with a company for whom he has worked in the past, that opportunity was a no-show. So she is still aimed at moving to Camelot to take up duties as our housekeeper after her disability hearing in late September. It is a sad disappointment for them both. Not that Sonia does not love us—after all, she was Mick’s and my matron of honor in 1987, and her husband, who died in 1991, was Mick’s best man—but that she wants to be close to her kids and grandbaby, all of whom live on the west coast. But right now it looks as though that is not possible.

Ian wrote to tell me that when he gets the missing 20 or so pages of Voices of the Gods from Gary in the package that went out today to him by Priority Mail, and OCRs them into the manuscript, he will e-mail me the first 150 pages or so of VOG for editing.

Rick sent me photos of a beautiful, big wood rack he has built for his retirement home in Maine—he and wife Dianne use wood heat all winter there to supplement their furnace. I sent the photos on to Melissa, who is a very handy carpenter and might like to build similar off-the-ground storage for Avalon’s fuel for the wood stove, which is the only source of heat for her up there in the winter.

Mishlin sent in a correction for an erratum she found in an L/L Research channeling session she was translating into French, and I sent that on to Ian.

Ian sent me a suggestion on faster shipping for our reprints, since we have people waiting for them, which I sent on to Gary with a request for his recommendation in that matter.

Rob Schwartz, by now a well-known author, is working on a new book and wrote Gary to ask for a channeling session in early September. However, my earliest possible date for a personal channeling is September 29th. I let Gary know that and he will get back to Rob.

Gary, Steve E and Monica B have cooked up a new feature for B4—a forum which consists of ads from our members for stuff they are selling. They are calling it The Corkboard. This idea came from our not yet being ready to offer an addition to our on-line store for “friends of L/L Research”. That will be a long time in coming as Steve has many other things to do with the site before he can tackle that project. I looked at the Corkboard guidelines and thought they looked OK. There is danger of abuse in such a feature, but the guidelines prohibit someone becoming a B4 member in order solely to post to The Corkboard.

I wrote Nancy F, with whom I agreed a month ago to visit for lunch around this time, asking her when she wanted to get together. She has become more and more limited with rheumatoid arthritis, and our get-togethers are very cheering for both of us, as we encourage each other in staying up and at ‘em. I also asked her to remind her husband Tom that he wanted to come to Homecoming this year—he has not yet registered.

Helen D, my school friend who is coming to Homecoming this year, wrote asking about space for her presentation on yoga and I responded that we could work on the ground, on sheets, or we could work in chairs. Inside, we do not have enough floor room for everyone to work.

Melissa and I spent the middle part of the day working on the linens project. We finished assigning all the sheets, blankets and pillows, got a big package ready for Goodwill, got another package ready for Gary’s girlfriend Valerie, and then Melissa spent time putting all the marked linens where they go in the house.

Then we tackled the towels. The good news is that we do not have to buy more towels! We assigned supplies to all three bathrooms and designated the rest of the still-presentable towels as extras. We use the extras for guests and Gatherings. A hefty pile of old towels went to the garage for Mick to use as JLS rags, and another pile went to our basement rag bag. The remainder will be cut and stitched to become cat-covers for the pillows and chairs where the kitties usually sit in various rooms.

Melissa stitched all day, finishing the curtains for our two basement bedrooms and hanging them. It is the first time those windows have been covered, and I know the added privacy will appeal to our guests. They are also very cute! After she hung them, she decided that they needed tie-backs, which she began to sew in the evening.

I worked on q’uotations from our archives for Romi’s presentation on “Relationships” until it was time for me to have an echocardiogram at the new Baptist East center near here. Melissa drove me there, thank heaven, because there was a ton of walking to do and without the wheelchair I would have been in a pickle. The test went uneventfully. I look forward to hearing the results from Dr. June.

When we returned, I finished the quotes selection for Romi and sent it off to Gary and Romi just as Mick called bath time. We enjoyed a quiet evening with Melissa and Gary. I offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-12

August 13, 2009 5:29am

Finally, a truly dry day! After Morning Offering Mick celebrated by putting on his lawn service hat and getting out there to mow. He had a good day, although a long one.

I spent my morning asleep, inadvertently falling into an angel nap. I feel ambivalent about these all too frequent naps. Apparently I need the rest. But I certainly do lose work time!

Ian is keeping me up to date with the difficulty we are having with blitzprint on the cover for A Wanderer’s Handbook. We may have to purchase lithograph covers in order to avoid big blotches in the black part of the cover. Ian is doing his level best to avoid the extra expense for us.

Melissa and I had arranged for me to pick her up downtown after she dropped her Saab off to be repaired and gone to Bunton Seed Company to check out their organic local seeds, but she decided to take a bus out to our end of town instead and so I picked her up in Middletown. We had a planning meeting over lunch and then I kept my nail appointment while she worked diligently with the ironing of sheets and sewing of handmade curtains for the two bedrooms in the basement that need them. When I returned home, with spiffy dark-red nail lacquer, I started collecting q’uotes for Romi’s presentation at Homecoming. His topic will be “Relationships”.

Mick called an early bath time, which was good, since Romi had arranged to take me to dinner—and have a counseling session—at 6:00. We went to Varanese, a restaurant new to us both, and enjoyed an excellent supper while Romi worked on processing catalyst with me. I think it was a good session.

When we returned to Camelot, we joined Melissa, who was patching a damaged quilt from our upstairs guest room, and Mick in having the Gaia Meditation. Mick offered the closing prayer.

2009-08-11

August 12, 2009 5:50am

There was rain overnight, but the morning dawned fresh and sunny and after Morning Offering, Mick set about a very full day’s mowing, trying to get ahead one job into tomorrow’s schedule by the end of the day. He succeeded with panache, beating the weather once again!

I started my work day by driving across the Ohio River and into Clarksville, Indiana for a sacral-cranial treatment by Liz J. These treatments seem to me to be clearing me at the energetic level very well. That first treatment was a doozy, but with each treatment I seem to progress more swiftly. I look forward to the day when I can have this therapy on a maintenance basis only rather than playing catch-up!

I spent the rest of my morning writing the Camelot Journal entry for yesterday and having prayer time. For some odd reason I forgot to write my Holly Journal today. Well durn!

After lunch I thanked Ian for his further efforts to get blitzprint moving on our reprints and let him know the channeling session was on for this evening. Then I let Connie know that my next appointment across the river was in two weeks and invited her to lunch after that appointment. Hopefully this time I will remember to bring her a copy of 101, which she has been waiting for with bated breath.

Ian sent me a copy of the first sixty or so pages of the Voices of the Gods manuscript which he is OCR-ing. I did not recall that Don and I had created a fairly long introduction to that work, and read it with interest! Then I saw my Editor’s Preface, which was no longer full of true statements, and realized I needed to write an updated Preface, so I spent most of the afternoon doing that. I also asked Ian if, before I edit the pages, he use his macros on them to unify format and pick up common errata, like a comma before a period or two spaces between sentences. Otherwise I will be spending time as an editor fixing such things one at a time and wasting time I could be spending on editing copy. It will be good to be reading Don’s channeling again. He had an inimitably simple, straightforward channeling style, with lots of short sentences, which is easily distinguishable from mine.

We have a total of eight new people who wish to go through the introductory Channeling Intensive program, so Gary and I set up the time for that on October 22nd through 25th of this year. The fall schedule is heating up! There are two Gatherings planned, Homecoming and the beginning of the second cycle of Channeling Intensives, three interviews scheduled in September and two personal channelings. In addition there is the new season of weekly meetings and Live Chats. I am grateful for the summer’s respite. It has been lovely!

With what remained of the afternoon’s work time I finished the editing of Channeling Circle 20. Steve T was working as the senior channel at that session of working, and made a reference to a poem which was unknown to me, so I wrote to ask him if he could supply the reference, but he drew a blank too. So I footnoted the reference indicating that I awaited anyone else’s knowing that poem and asking them to write in if they knew it. Now my editing basket contains no more channeling sessions, but still has three interviews waiting for me! I do look forward to making those interviews available, as both Wynn Free and Mike Quinsey ask such good questions.

After a refreshing bath with Mick, we joined Gary and Romi for the channeling session. Gary asked an interesting question about free will and the use of the will, but for the first part of the channeling he was busy taking more photographs, trying for the perfect shot of me channeling to use as the cover for the eighteen volumes of our L/L Research archive reference library. I have a feeling we got what we needed. And I look forward to editing that transcript.

Romi invited me out to dinner tomorrow, as he wishes to process his catalyst with me and he will thank me for doing the counseling by giving me a nice meal. He knows I love to go out to eat. I get to pick the restaurant! I shall have a good time picking one out to which I have not yet been.

I offered the Gaia Meditation prayer at the end of our channeling session.

2009-08-10

August 11, 2009 11:09am

We rose early because there was the threat of rain all day, and after Morning Offering, Mick headed out for a long day of mowing today’s and part of tomorrow’s lawns—rain is predicted tomorrow also, and wise lawn men make hay while the sun shines! He came home at bath time with his plan complete, a happy man!

I wrote my journal entries and had chapel time, then dealt with the e-mail. I wrote a note to Mick, Gary and Romi asking if they felt like having another channeling session, since the result of the first batch of shots was not exactly what we were looking for. By day’s end I got OKs back from Mick and Gary, but I’m still waiting to hear from Romi.

I got quite a few notes from both Ian and Gary concerning the various books we have in process with blitzprint. Our back orders for 101: The Choice and A Wanderer’s Handbook are stacking up and blitzprint is taking an ungodly amount of time to reprint. By the end of the day we were sorted out and Ian had taken on the unenviable job of dealing with the good folks at blitzprint. We really need those books!

I continued collecting quotes for Julee M’s presentation at Homecoming and sent that off to Gary to send to her in mid-afternoon. Then I began to edit Channeling Circle 20, the transcript of which has now come in. I barely got started before I had to keep an appointment with Dr. June, so I drove down the Watterson Expressway in a glut of traffic and was seen by her. She ordered knee X-rays, as my knees are speaking when I descend stairs these days, and another heart test—an outpatient one this time, thank heavens—which I will have to do day after tomorrow.

The rains came again shortly after I returned home and all evening, the skies growled at us and gave us another inch of rain. We lost power briefly but no other problems occurred in our neck of the woods. I can recall only one other year since Mick began Jim’s Lawn Service in 2001 when he was able to cut weekly straight through August—2002. It is most unusual to have plentiful rains this late in the summertime here. Delightful, but distinctly odd!

Mick and I enjoyed a bath and a long and languorous date together, then came down for a late supper and the Gaia Meditation. Gary offered the closing prayer tonight. Then we left the television off and enjoyed conversation and good company until we went upstairs around 10:00 p.m.

2009-08-09

August 10, 2009 8:57am

It was a lovely, sultry summer Sunday today, and I enjoyed going to church and singing Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus”—a Latin rendering of the psalm whose opening words are, “As the hart pants after the water-brook, so longeth my soul for Thee, O God.” Brench and Gerri B also sang his new composition, a duet titled “When David Heard”. A visiting preacher proved soundly that Father Joe gives a superior sermon! I sweltered and yawned behind my fan.

After a good lunch and a nap, Mick and I viewed The Soloist, a beautiful rendering of the true story of Nathaniel Ayers, a gifted musician who becomes schizophrenic, drops out of Juilliard and becomes homeless. Jamie Foxx plays Ayers with great sensitivity and authority. Robert Downey, Jr., plays with equal skill the Los Angeles columnist Steve Lopez, who hears Ayers playing a two-stringed violin on the street, investigates him and tries to help him.

These two excellent players create a world that feels real and whole, illuminating just one life among the 90,000 homeless people of Los Angeles. There is no preaching, judgment or condescension in the film and it deserves whatever awards it receives. I gave it a standing ovation. I have known a couple of mentally ill people, and the portrayal of Ayers’ illness, where he hears voices that block out outer reality, seems very accurate to me.

I greatly appreciated the production’s care in portraying street people. It is a surreal world to a middle-class housewife like me, but a world about which I need to know and care.

In our late-afternoon break I did some e-mail. I let Gary know that we still have a couple of blog posts on B4 by a person who is using B4 to advertise a game and asked him to remove those posts. It is sad, but typical of a capitalist society such as ours, that someone would be cynical enough to use a spiritual community site for business.

Sonia wrote to thank me again for our offer of a place for her, and said she would keep me in the loop until her disability hearing is over in late September.

Ian responded to my offer of having another channeling session during which Gary would try again for a good cover shot for the eighteen archives volumes with joy and said he will write out his detailed suggestions for getting an improved shot this time.

I enjoyed collecting a delicious sounding recipe for marinated salmon fillets with oriental rice and a wine glaze. Then I worked on finding good quotes to support Julee M’s presentation at Homecoming until Mick called bath time.

When I got downstairs, Mick and I teamed up on finding another set of back-cover quotations for the second volume of the archives, 1976 to 1980. We sent that off to Ian.

We spent a quiet evening revisiting Tom Cruise’s first Mission Impossible film and conversing. I offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-08

August 9, 2009 6:42am

After Morning Offering, Mick went on his rounds of errands and cleaned the kitchen while I came up to my bower office. I doubt that I have ever had a busier day on the internet than today, as both Gary and Ian were working through the day, and corresponding with me as they went.

One big item of discussion was the look of the photos which Gary shot on Tuesday evening for the covers of the archives volumes, four of which I sent on to Ian. Gary was not thrilled with the light values and wanted to light the shot differently. Ian would have preferred the mini-blinds to be further lowered, and Mick to have been wearing a lighter-colored shirt. I suggested that we lower the blinds, dress Mick in a lighter-colored shirt, change the lighting and have another meditation session. We shall see if that suggestion takes hold!

Another point of discussion was blitzprint’s printing schedule for the reprints of A Wanderer’s Handbook and 101: The Choice. We have completely sold out of both books and the reprints are way overdue. We now have a letter off to blitzprint’s Trish inquiring as to their printing schedule.

Gary found the missing pages for Voices of the Gods, which title will change to Voices of the Confederation when we print the book. It is a good catch, since almost twenty pages were missing from the manuscript copy which Ian was sent. These missing pages, when found, were too faded to copy with Xerography, so Gary scanned them and will send them to Ian along with the CD of the rest of Gary’s photographs from last Tuesday.

Carol C, a Channeling Intensive alumna, wrote to ask how we fared in the Flash Flood of 2009. I let her know that we out in the exurbs of Louisville fared well. It was the downtown area, with its acres of concrete and lack of greenspace, that flooded. With six and a half inches of rain falling in one hour, the water had nowhere to go and whole cars disappeared underwater. The storm drain system was working, but was overwhelmed. So wherever a structure had a storm drain, the water backed up and their homes and businesses were flooded from within as well as without. Out here, we lost power and got very soggy, but otherwise were fine.

Sonia wrote to thank us for offering her a place in our little community. She very much hopes she will not have to accept it, since her children are all on the west coast and she would far prefer to be in sunnier climes than Kentucky - which tends to be overcast in cold weather - and near them. She will stay in California with her Mom until her disability hearing takes place at the end of September. Then we will all revisit the situation.

I let her know that I thought she had a good niche here if she wanted and/or needed it, since we have no housekeeper. Mick pulls that load in the evenings and on weekends. So she would have good work to do as well as a place to be, here with us. But I, too, hope she can stay closer to her kids and grandbaby, Elijah.

Jules wrote, asking if the Confederation ever said anything about Kriya Yoga, which is the brand of yoga taught by Yogananda, sometimes called Self-Realization. I let him know about the “search” function on the archive site.

Gary sent me the first nine topics chosen by Homecoming 2009 attendees, and I spent the last part of the afternoon working on the first of those topics, gathering q’uotes from our archives to support the discussion. I began with Julee M’s topic since she wants to see the quotes I choose as she prepares her presentation.

I noticed that it was the eighth of August and remembered that Tiffani was married on 8-8-8, so I sent her a “Happy Anniversary” note and let her know we pray for her and her and Ryan’s “baby on board” every day.

I also received transcripts of two of Wynn’s and my on-air conversations, the interview with Mike Quinsey on his Connecting the Light radio show and another Channeling Circle meditation session to edit, so I am bursting with good work to do.

Mick spent his afternoon driving up to Bedford to pick up a riding mower which Dianne S is donating to L/L Research. Melissa met them there and organized the mower’s move to Avalon Farm, where it will live and work now. She built a “garage” for the mower out of cedar poles she felled and trimmed herself.

Melissa had a load of creekstone from Locust Creek ready for Mick to load on his trailer for the ride back to Louisville. He likes to keep an inventory of good stones here, as his customers often ask for his stonework, whether it is a fence, a border or a planting.

After our bath, Mick concluded his very generous birthday presents to me—my birthday was July 16th—by taking me out to dinner at Corbett’s, where we had their five-course tasting menu. It was delightful food and the best company in the world! Mick looked spiffy in a khaki suit with a brightly patterned shirt and solid, matching tie. I wore my lime-green dress and shoes. We enjoyed Corbett’s not just for the delicious food but also for the ambience. The restaurant sits in the renovated Von Allmen mansion and our table looked out over their pretty patio and the stately old trees and greenery beyond.

We offered the Gaia Meditation prayer together between courses.

2009-08-07

August 8, 2009 9:13am

Gary and Mick had a great day to work as, after Morning Offering, they took off to mow and garden. The storm which brought the flash flood to Louisville, earlier this week, brought down limbs in virtually every yard, so they had lots of extra labor to do for their customers as they brought everything back to order, all trimmed up and pretty. Things went well for them and by late afternoon, Mick was doing weekly maintenance and dropping off two mowers and a blower at Louisville Tractor for their scheduled hundred-hour servicing.

I started my morning with a good chat with Dr. Lang, the naturopathic nutritionist. She seems to have a very good grasp of my situation and to know what’s going on to an extent far greater than my allopathic doctors, much as I esteem and appreciate them. She is sending me a replacement food for my daily multivitamin and another for my calcium, both of which she says I will actually be able to absorb, unlike the OTCs I am now taking.

I like Dr. Lang a lot. Hopefully the slow-moving, conservative support plan she has begun will show better results than my previous efforts with traditional doctors and specialists. She cannot do worse!

Melissa and I got together after I had finished my appointment with Dr. Lang, had my chapel time and wrote my journal entries. We sallied forth to St. Matthew’s Oxmoor’s big Kohl’s store, where they were having a great white sale. We found a set of good 300-count sheets in navy, which will live in the upstairs guest room. We found some beautiful new towels to spiff up Mick’s bathroom in terra cotta and deep teal, more blue towels for my bathroom and Gary’s bath in the basement, and a trio of nice dishtowels, plus matching dishcloths, for the kitchen. At Homecoming we will look our best!

The city is gearing up for the Kentucky State Fair, and the streets were clogged with lots more traffic than usual when we drove to the big mall. There is that late-summer buzz that comes with school starting next week and all the students-to-be looking for school supplies. Tragically, many of the town’s poorest students lost their supplies, clothes and so much else in the flood, which hit right downtown where the poorest areas are.

And our public library, the main branch downtown, lost millions of dollars’ worth of books and other materials. This is Louisville’s third huge disaster in less than a year—Hurricane Ike hit last October, then the ice storm blasted us last winter, and now the Flash Flood of 2009!

I talked with Ian when I got back to the office concerning the photos Gary took during our channeling session on Tuesday. He suggested that Gary send all the photos to him by Priority Snail-Mail, but asked him for a couple of images by e-mail just so he could get an idea of what Gary got.

Ian also asked me to take a look at the finished inside pages of the first archives volume, which he now has up on line at lulu’s developing-books site, but I could not open that file. Later I got an e-mail in which he explained that I have to log on to the lulu.com site first. I felt like Steve Martin—”Well, excuuuuuuuse me!” I will have a shot at that tomorrow.

Gary wrote to ask when I wanted to start the quote searches needed for Homecoming and I asked him for whatever materials he has right now. We have twenty or so people attending, so far, with late sign-ups inevitably swelling that number, and if I wait till the last minute to do these searches I will be rushed. So I want to do the searches as the topics come in. Hopefully I will then stay peaceful and unhurried, my favorite way to meander through life!

I had a nice e-chat with Steve E, B4’s webmaster. He has gotten many areas of B4 altered with software called CMS to allow Gary to change the content, and is now working full-tilt to implement the audio downloads being available in our on-line store. For a busy guy with a young, large blended family and two jobs, he does marvels for L/L Research! Kudos, Steve!

The matron of honor at Mick’s and my wedding in 1987, Sonia C, has fallen on hard times out west, and wrote us that she will be homeless soon, as her brother can no longer give her a room in his home, and none of her three children can take her in. She is ill and has applied for disability, but has not received it, so she is penniless.

Mick and I talked it over and decided to ask her to join us. We can implement the same arrangement we had with our previous in-house volunteers, where she works for her room and board at $10.00 credit per hour. There is certainly plenty for her to do! One chorus of “This Old House”!

If she says yes, the upstairs guest room will become Sonia’s room. Having checked with Gary and Melissa as to our plan, and gotten their OK, I wrote to invite Sonia to join us. If she takes us up on it, we will have rooms dedicated to Sonia, Gary and Melissa—who uses her room when she comes down to Louisville from Avalon—and only one spare room left! The house is getting full again!

My amorous husband and I shared a spectacular date after our bath. Whee! After a day of feeling under the weather, in the afterglow I felt just fine! Mick said he thought it might have been the most energy he has ever stored or shared.

When we came down for supper, the house was empty—Gary had gone to Valerie’s and Melissa had driven back to Avalon to feed her chickens and play with her cats. Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-06

August 7, 2009 5:51am

It was a lovely summer’s day here—what a change from earlier this week! After Morning Offering Mick started in on his backlog of mowing and after lunch, Gary joined him until they had removed that backlog and gotten all caught up!

Meanwhile my day was spent with Melissa on the linens project. She scooped linens from all over the house. We found many items I never saw before, presumably left by one or another of our former in-house volunteers. We discovered with joy missing pieces of bedding sets. After a full inventory, we found that we needed to purchase only two sheets! Every other need was filled from within our “I did not know we had these!” items. There is mending to do, but I’m thrilled that we won’t be buying out the white sales.

Melissa has started marking the proper location of each piece of bedding so that from now on, when an item is washed it can be put back in the bedroom where it belongs. When I told Gary that, he grinned and said, “You fight against entropy every day!” I told him that after all, I was a librarian. I like things in order!

Tomorrow she and I will tackle the towels and start distributing all our bedding, folded, ironed in some cases, back where it belongs!

Gary and I had a talk about Steve E’s developing plans for audio downloads of our channeling sessions. We decided against giving those away for free in the store to those who say they cannot afford them, since they will only be $3.00 per download, less than the cost of a sandwich these days. However if someone writes in to Gary with a story of hardship, we will send that person a couple of free audios of sessions.

Gary also said that he was ready to send to Ian the photographs he took last Tuesday for our archives volumes’ covers. I am to ask Ian whether he wants to schedule a time for repeated e-mail sends of these big files, or whether Ian would rather receive them through snail-mail on a CD.

Melissa closed out her day by making Benedictine sandwich spread from the cucumbers she brought down from Avalon Farm. It smelled heavenly when I went downstairs to join Mick in the tub. I spent my late afternoon taking a nap, as I continue to feel distinctly under the weather.

We four—Melissa, Gary, Mick and I—enjoyed a quiet evening of conversation together. Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-05

August 6, 2009 5:58am

It was grand to see a clear sky today, as Mick has a good deal of mowing to make up after our day of flooding rains yesterday. After Morning Offering he set out on a good, hard-working day and came home at bath time quite happy. Gary will help Mick instead of me tomorrow as well as Friday, and the JLS schedule will be all made up by the end of the work week. Whew!

I spent my morning working downstairs on Mick’s computer, replacing all of the file names for Mick’s quotation selections for the back covers of our eighteen archives volumes with Ian’s now fully set time spans. It took a while, but in terms of Mick’s being able to make his selections and cut-and-paste them into these documents easily, it will make all the difference for him. He has never learned much about how to manipulate computer software and does not like computers, so any time he has to use one to accomplish what he needs to do, it is stressful for him, and he does not need more stress!

I also chose key words and wrote a blurb for the archives volumes. That is part of the final process of publishing books with lulu.com.

Ian also wrote concerning the Voices of the Gods manuscript which we recently sent him. This volume is a compilation by subject of the year and a half in 1974 and ‘75 when I was learning to channel. It has by far the greatest concentration of Don’s channeling that we have in the archives and for that reason alone is quite valuable material. He wanted a better title for this future book. I suggested several alternative titles, and from them Ian chose Voices of the Confederation.

Ian’s mind then turned to another project that has been on the back burner while he works on the archives collection, Don’s little booklet. We talked about a cover photo for that little volume and he showed me the two images from all we have sent him which appeal to him the most. I sent Gary a note asking him to see if he could find the negatives for those photos. Our photo archive is in good shape, as a volunteer, Tim, visited from Australia in 2005 for several weeks and carefully used archival materials to clean and preserve all our slides and negatives.

After lunch I had an appointment for a manicure-pedicure at Absolutely Salon, choosing a pale mauve polish with sparkles for my “do” this week. When I returned, I began hunting for previous quote searches. They are scattered all over my files—for 101, UPI articles and other projects. I need to clean all my quote searches of quotes used in 101. I don’t want to replicate quotes in 102. I found two useful databases. I will continue to look for more tomorrow, if I have time. Melissa will be here and she wants to work on inventorying the linens.

Steve E, B4’s webmaster, reported the results of a B4 poll which show that there is a big demand for downloadable channeling sessions. He wants to move ahead with making them available in our on-line store, using free software that is like iTunes. That should help us pay our bills and I am excited to hear that the planning has come so far.

I finished up the e-mail today by forwarding to Gary a request from Ian that he check our other copy of the Voices of the Gods manuscript to see if pages missing from Ian’s copy are in the other one. Here’s hoping!

And I asked Ian to make a couple of corrections in the first archives volume which I just found. He replied almost instantly that this had been done. When he makes his choice amongst the photos Gary took at the channeling session Tuesday night, and finishes up the cover art for the archives series of volumes, he will be ready to launch Volume One!

I was feeling distinctly unwell today and was glad to see the evening come. Mick and I spent a very quiet evening and he offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-04

August 5, 2009 5:57am

I awoke to dark, lowering light and although Mick and I made our Morning Offering early, as rain was predicted from noon onwards, just as Mick headed out the door at 8:00, a tremendously heavy downpour hit. In fact, we set an all-time record here in Louisville for the amount of rain which fell in one hour—six inches! Suddenly the city was flooded. Interstate 65 was closed in two places and basements all over the metro area were awash. Downtown businesses suffered a lot of flood damage because whatever was in their basements was ruined. The main branch of the public library lost thousands upon thousands of books. We lost power right away and thanked God for our generator.

The day was a complete wash—pun intended—for Mick. He went out in the wet and gardened for one customer and removed a downed tree for another and so was not entirely rained out of earning some money, but he has all his mowing for today to do tomorrow. And there are chances of heavy rain every day this week, although not as high odds as today’s. The prayer of the lawn man is, “Dear Lord, we need the rain to come on Saturday and Sunday only, please!”

I wrote the second Penny Kelly article today, on the soil and what we have done to ruin ours here in America. I posted that at bath time.

After a relaxing bath with Mick and some snuggle time, we came downstairs to greet Romi, back from his week’s holiday, and to have a special meditation session. The question, from me, was concerning what spiritual principles I might consider as I went about starting to write Living the Law of One—102: The Outer Work. I am eager to read that session when it gets back from the transcriber.

During the session, Gary took lots of shots of Jim and me, hoping for the perfect photograph for Ian to use for the covers of the archives volumes. He used a tripod for stability and carefully followed Ian’s very detailed instructions. Hopefully we got a good shot out of all he took.

I offered the Gaia Meditation prayer at the closing of the session of working.

2009-08-03

August 4, 2009 11:12am

We arose early and made a short Morning Offering in order to get Mick out the door and mowing ASAP. Storms are predicted again, perhaps heavy ones, for tomorrow, and he wanted to get a leg up on a probably rain day manana. He did just that, coming home at bath time a bit late, but satisfied he’d done his level best.

I had once again overslept, and spent most of the morning having chapel time and writing my two journal entries. I also received the first twelve archives volumes’ time spans from Ian and sent that downstairs to Mick’s computer, where I will use his chart to modify Mick’s file names, so he knows what spans of time within which to look for his back-cover quotation choices for each volume.

I noticed that a new blog on B4 had devolved from a first entry on various aspects of marriage to a shameless ad for wedding dresses. I asked Gary to remove the blog entries. He responded later in agreement and started a dialogue with Steve E, B4’s webmaster, on just how to do that. It is our first instance of someone using our site for commercial purposes rather than spiritual community. I suppose it had to happen.

Somehow I had neglected to let Gary know the article I wrote last week was up on the UPI blog site. He read the article as he sent it out to our ‘send list’ and wrote to compliment me on it and to ask if I wanted to do all our shopping at Whole Foods, where one can get all-organic produce instead of hit-and-miss. I agreed that we did want to buy all organic foods, and suggested two other options—local farmers’ markets and the Community Farm Association’s “box of veggies a week” plan, where one simply gets a box of whatever’s freshest.

I also volunteered to help with the menus if he chose either of the latter two options, since we’d be getting our vegetables according to what is fresh locally, rather than having a completely open choice.

Gary and I talked after lunch about a glitch I am experiencing with AnthemRx, where first they issued me a wrongly spelled ID card and then began rejecting all claims because of “non-matching ID”. The depth of their incompetence is such that when I asked them to re-file these claims, showing that the whole mix-up is their fault, they sent me back a form letter with a box checked which said, “already processed claims.”

Argh.

An earlier letter I sent to them inspired them to send me a letter, received last month, which got me a new ID card, and promised to review 16 claims. Gary and I decided he would wait until after Homecoming to see if they follow through with that promise, and then contact them further, either for any claims they missed, or to find out what happened to their good intentions.

I spent the rest of my working day collecting quotes for my next article, which is based on Penny Kelly’s book, From the Soil to the Stomach. The first article dealt with stress. This one will deal with our soil—the good earth. I’m ready to write tomorrow.

Mick was full of wonderful energy when we settled into our date after our bath, and we had a superb energy exchange which revitalized us both. We took our time and did not come down for supper until the Gaia Meditation, at which I offered the closing prayer.

2009=08-02

August 3, 2009 8:56am

It was a lovely Sabbath! The nandina bushes at church by the ramp that had suffered so from last winter’s predations were looking so much better, thanks to the lush rains of last week. The sun shone sweetly through the primitive stained glass windows as we sang Carl Mueller’s version of “Create in Me, O God, a Clean Heart” and William Byrd’s “Miserere”.

We had a guest speaker for the homily today, Arthur Cox, who spoke of his ministry at St. John’s Day Center, a wonderful place in Louisville’s West End where they offer after school food programs along with their tutoring and gym programs for school kids and all manner of services for the indigent and homeless of our fair city. If you would like to help this effective ministry, send a check to St. John Center, 700 E Muhammad Ali Blvd, Louisville KY 40202. The link for St. John’s is http://www.stjohncenter.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx.

After lunch and a nap, Mick and I watched the British film, The Edge of Love. As an art film, it excelled. The cinematography was exquisite, capturing a sepia-toned World-War-Two world of London in the blitz and romance without love. In the midst of dialogue I found myself observing the pinpoint accuracy of the vision that fueled the film: mauve-tones here, brown-tones there, blue-lit tones for another scene and occasionally a splash of red amidst near-black to highlight a beautiful woman.

This was because the dialogue never came into focus. It floated atop the unbelievable proposition that two woman and one man—the man a young Dylan Thomas played by Matthew Rhys—could live together without animosity or competition. Keira Knightly and Sienna Miller played the young women, Dylan’s first love and his wife, Caitlin, with subtlety and poise and their dance created scene after scene of visual beauty. Cillian Murphy played Keira’s husband with an intensity that brooded over the film and eventually erupted into violence at the end.

It was a troubled time for England, to say the least, the picturesque countryside—caught very well by the cinematographer - suddenly alive with bombs. Murphy’s character’s shooting up of the village pub was the center of any hope for real meaning in the film, epitomizing the horror of war impinging upon normal civilians. As mainstream entertainment, it was a failure. Art films often do fail with the mainstream, which does not diminish their claims to artistic integrity and worth.

During the break, Mick selected the channeling quotation for the back cover of the first volume of the printed archives. I edited it and sent it off to Ian.

Over dinner Mick and I watched a Batman film, this one starring Michael Keaton as serious Batman and Jack Nicholson as the wildly campy Joker—great and silly fun, and no Robin! Holy Signal Omission! Kim Basinger filled the second-banana role for this film, playing Vicki Vale, whose frequent screams provided the leitmotif of this over-the-top movie. It was nice to see Pat Hingle, whose face illumined so many oaters of my childhood, in this piece.

Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

2009-08-01

August 2, 2009 6:40am

Happy August! The month padded in, cool and pleasant, seeming quite unlike its usual self. And Mick enjoyed the difference as he did errands in the morning, after Morning Offering, and mowed the Ferguson’s estate in Shelbyville in the afternoon.

It was a banner day for me, since I started work for the very first time on 102. I noodled around with topics and categories and came up with a first chapter outline for that book on the outer problems of life.

Ian and I discussed the niceties of how the dedication page should read for the archives volumes. We want to find the most grateful phrase, since that dedication will be in all of those volumes, which will number around 20. I believe we have arrived at a final choice for that page’s language.

Gary and I talked a bit about the work involved in doing a companion volume for the archives, a photo album of Jim, Don and me through the years. Gary liked the idea, but wants to wait until such time as Ian is ready to talk about the specifications for his scanning of images for that volume before doing any work.

Ian has also mentioned companion volumes to the archives and suggests that one of them be a photo album, with annotations of the photos by Jim and me. He suggests that another be an Index volume, so that one could look up all the channelings in the archives on a certain topic or from a certain source. I believe he may have more ideas for companion volumes than these two. In the fullness of time, we will undoubtedly have that delightful conversation!

I showed Gary the presentation write-ups for Homecoming 2009 which I had been attempting without success to send to him since Thursday, and he fiddled around and got the document sent, but to only one of his three possible addresses. There is something fouled up with the other two of them, for when I try to send to them, they bounce everything back to me with the notice that Gary’s mailbox is full. And as it happens, Gary is pretty well caught up with e-mail. This is one for Romi! And thank God for the Ro-Man!

At the end of the afternoon I enjoyed fishing around on the internet for another Louisville restaurant that offers a tasting menu, since Mick has proposed that I turn my consignment shopping present into a dining out present—it is far easier for him to give me a dinner out than to take me shopping, since one dines in the evening, when he is not working. I found Corbett’s, a restaurant new to me, but I have heard good things about it. I sent Corbett’s web site to Mick for his approval.

Mick and I bade farewell to Gary until Monday at dusk and enjoyed a bath and a quiet evening together. Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.

August, 2009

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