Dear L,

I am very sad that summer has gone so fast and I have so little energy to enjoy it because I love being out in the heat, but I have felt poorly. I have had stomach problems that actually began last [inaudible]; I never have gotten over that. I am sort of moving along. I am not down or anything. It is just that it takes a certain amount of will to carry along.

I am really impressed that you only were with us here for a week [inaudible] and I loved the towns, their homes and everything. The traffic and attitude towards winter seems to me to be dealt with realistically and I got S’s letter and she wears a size 11 shoe. Another one of my heart sisters, and she is 5’2 1/2“ ballerina. She does not perform, but when she stands up on her toe shoes, very few men are as tall as she is. She took ballet all through college.

The big difference between Black and White is, the Black is just lacking the White. It is very polarized and people aren’t really taking adequate action to cool down the situation. I really wonder if in-breeding wouldn’t be the only answer to some shade of Brown. You can’t be prejudiced any more, but people will always find something to be prejudiced about, I am afraid, especially when they don’t have so much. I think that is what causes the prejudice to be so difficult—the haves against the have-nots, and the haves find have-not people rather tacky because they just don’t look right. And for people who don’t have anything, they are jealous of the ones who have. And they don’t want to know how to get there. It is difficult.

I am glad that you feel at home and I hope that all is well with your project. I know exactly what you mean. Most women really can’t handle construction. It is not that they are not strong enough. It is just that nobody taught them how to do it. I have painted, but I don’t believe I have ever hammered and nailed and stuff like that. I did used to really enjoy manual labor, using the big muscles, and sweating and getting the job done. That is one of the things I can’t do now so I really understand that you think of it as being fun. I used to think it was fun too and I never called it workaholicism. I called it helping people.

If I was awake and somebody was needing something, I went and did it and I think that is pretty much what you do.

Any strong gal is going to be bossy at times, I am afraid, myself included. The only thing about my bossiness is that I have no meanness in me. I tell somebody exactly what I think because if they do the exact opposite thing, I don’t hold it against them. I think that is an all right sort of a boss.

It is still early in the morning. We just finished our morning offering and I am just coming up to speed here.

I know what you mean about urbanization and housework. I never could understand why people fuss so much over housework because when I was able, I had five rooms, a week’s wash for two people to do (including hand washing). I had ironing to do when the washing was finished, kitchen, bathroom to … Just the regular—most people usually have at least five rooms in their house, maybe a porch or something. All of that I accomplished between about 8:30 in the morning on Saturday to about 2 in the afternoon. That was when I was working and able-bodied.

I thought to myself, Why are these people complaining so about having to do housework because there is nothing to it. It is just so easy. The washing smells good, and the ironing smells good, and the soap smells good and the Spic & Span smells good. It is nice to see everything get neat again.

I am not much on extreme cleanliness. Dust and I have an understanding, but I am neat and it is a pure blessing to me that Jim does clean the house once a week, but he doesn’t clean it to where I would do it if I had the choice. So I don’t feel it is mine to think when he is the one who is responsible for it to criticize his efforts. Because it is not fair because I can’t pitch in and help so we may have more dust around—like behind the couch, things that would take some more doing. He doesn’t know when a window gets dirty or when curtains get dirty. He just doesn’t see it.

So once in a while to bring us up to snuff, usually before his Mom and Dad come to visit because I like to make a good impression on them, they are such nice people, but it is the organization that really matters. It is knowing where everything is and I really love that about Jim because he is a very orderly person. As a matter of fact, he says he is trying to learn English spontaneously. I think he is doing fine.

He puts in an incredible amount of work each and every day. I can hear him typing in the next room. He is working on the mail. This is Thursday—he is probably answering letters now. He has gotten all of the books sent out. I can’t believe his energy level. It is very high. He is just a dynamo and he loves it. He really likes it, but the only thing that gets him is when some things are added at the last minute. He is not a person who can adapt swiftly. He is a person who needs about two weeks to think through anything new so when some emergency happens and I have forgotten something that he has to go back for it, or if I have an appointment that he didn’t know about it and he has to take me, it will be hard for him because he has got so much that he has got himself to do and he is so self-going, self-starting, that the schedule has the authenticity to his mind of an agenda not to be disturbed.

I have never had such a mind so I have learned simply to work around him because I sure as heck can’t do the things that he does and I am grateful for the things that he does. I need to get out of his way and let him do it, which puts me in the rather odd position of seeing him about the same amount of time as far as personal contact as anybody who does work because he is concentrating and I am concentrating and we have stuff to do. After supper and after his meditation and contemplation (I don’t dare meditate at night because I am too dramatic. I get myself into all kinds of trouble.) we do spend some nice time together.

Even though we live together 24 hours a day, Jim’s productivity is just incredible and I think he works harder than most. It is all a labor of love. Neither of us gets any money except what Don left us and we pinch it in and live on that. It is wonderful, if you can imagine not having to get a job in order to eat, and have shelter and being able to devote your life to a labor of love. That doesn’t come to many people. Most people have to give up the world as to worldly pleasures and become one of the religious orders in order to experience life the way Jim and I do here.

Luckily, Jim and I really love the way each other feels and have a great sexual relationship, and we enjoy living together, and pulling together and have a great team sense that we are getting what we want to do for the rest of our lives. Very settled and strong kind of a lay ministry feeling that we have and, of course, every once in a while we will hit a Sunday when I am just weird and I’ll go, “Jim, maybe nobody will come tonight.” But as soon as people get here, I sparkle up because I like people. I am real sociable with people, especially people that I know, especially people that I can help. I am terrible at parties. I can’t think of a thing to say to strangers. I don’t have any small talk.

The people who come to our meetings on Sunday nights are talking about spiritual things or they wouldn’t be here so I have a great time with that, and sensing the dynamics of the group conversation in making sure that everybody gets a chance to say what is on his mind. I enjoy that. I really do.

And I certainly do believe that putting a space between you and A, it did not seem to be working. I am really glad that you took action and yet, in the deepness of your heart you are still maintaining his friendship and personally diminishing the distance between you. That is good. I am delighted that you got the job that you visualized. Since it is you, I don’t suppose I am really surprised. You have a high degree of clairvoyance, so it would seem, and pick up on a lot of things that most of us simply don’t have the ability to pick up on. And thank God for your gift. I am so glad that you are hired and that the money will keep you. It does sound like good pay and so you will be teaching English to the Hispanic speaking people.

I think that should be very rewarding because as far as I am concerned, the Hispanics are the next Irish. The people when they come first are hated because they are queer. But everyone wants the American dream. They are the ones who are new to democracy and capitalism and making something of their lives. I look forward to the first Hispanic president because I think he will have tremendous energy because he is new here; because he hasn’t gotten stale, and tired, and sort of inherited stuff and things like that.

I think of Jack Kennedy when I say that. The Irish in the 19th century met signs all over that said, “No Irish need apply.” It was that bad. And then in the 20th century, they have found the American dream and an Irish Catholic kid of 36. I think that that dream takes more of a converse than it does with people who have grown up used to it. I think that we take a lot for granted here in America. Seeing the different parts of the world and seeing the incredible amount of police around the feeling of being watched, etc., working by bribes or tips, and everybody has got an angle.

I have been to the Philippines, and I have been to Mexico and in both places I was overwhelmed by the presence of authority or police and the crookedness, especially in Mexico. You just automatically gave whoever stopped you a bunch of money. It didn’t matter whether you were innocent or guilty. It is just that if he stopped you, he got money or you didn’t go on. No good. God bless America.

[Inaudible] sounds like it might even challenge your inner-action and creativity and I think that is great. I think probably for you at this point, since you don’t really know what your purposes are until you try everything, it couldn’t be better and it is fun, really fun, to help people learn. I always enjoyed it when I was a librarian.

It was just a dream job because I had thirteen grades and nobody knows anything about librarianship in that school. It was 150 years old and a librarian had come in before me, but she couldn’t stand children and had a nervous breakdown in March and did practically nothing for the library. When I came in (I am quick), it is too bad that I am not quicker now, but I was quick then, and I got the place whipped into good shape. I was able to, if a teacher had a project, I would search the magazine files and all kinds of places and make out a biography on metafiles and the kids could come and use the library and know what to look for. I really enjoyed choosing the books that I honestly felt was the best in each area and showing new book reviews to the teachers to see if they thought that would help kids. I got projects together for the teachers so that kids could come to the library and work.

In this interaction I had study hall out of the sixth period of the day so I was constantly being asked this or that by one of the students and I really enjoyed that. I had a great program of the people who were the troublesome ages, about 12 or 13. I got them to be my helpers and we shelved. That is one thing that is irritating to do, but you have to do it once a week or you will never find anything in your library. I taught a little bit of creative writing, and for the little ones there was always a story time and a singing time. For the older ones, I gave them a real series on how to use the library. It was fun and I guess I am sort of like you. The flexibility, the different things that I was able to do pleased me.

Only I didn’t get stuck with one job because running a library involves everything from cataloguing, to choosing books, to doing the mechanic things you have to do, purchasing them, repairing them, keeping them in order for special projects. It is just fun.

Don’s asking me to work with him was the only reason I ever left, actually. He did very much see service in that and I am sure you will feel that too.

You got a guide reading, a channeled tape after you received my comments and the guide agreed with me. Ah. I am not infallible. I will say that I was told by a very good teacher of mine in college that, “American criticism needs your voice.” He was really unhappy with me because I didn’t have any worldly ambition, but the job of being critical about somebody else’s work is only acceptable to me if that person really wants to improve his work. Criticism of a piece that has already been written, to me, is just a chance for me to sharpen my tongue on someone. It has been my idea that any work will appeal to somebody so there is just so much worth in constructive criticism. It only goes so far. You are the one who is writing a book.

The book that you write will be a help to some people. That is always, always true so I don’t feel that angst of the general populations that you do. Of course, I am not in a huge city like Atlanta, but in a relatively small city sort of in the back of beyond, nowhere in particular. I haven’t served more simple ignorance of the fact that there is a choice to make, or what is to be done as much as I have encountered the suffering person, the person who is searching, the person who is wandering, but I know they are there all over the country.

It is just that it is not the kind of thing that you can organize like a church without becoming all of the things that the church is that are so difficult for people. Mainly any organization once it is founded has one particular goal, which is very self-serving and that is to keep itself alive. There is going to be a slant towards bringing in money and that sort of thing.

So we are giving them another way to come to the center and I feel that is pretty much what Jim and I do and work on alternative ways for people to receive inspiration, and its spiritual principles, and have the opportunity, and tools and resources to practice that in their lives.

As far as myself, you can certainly rely on my talents and expertise. Like I said, I am a good critic, a fair critic. I don’t have any false humility. I am very perceptive, a little more complex than most so I can get into nuances a little bit better. I really would not know how to criticize the book dishonestly or soften a blow. I just say it the way it appears to me, realizing after writing back and forth to you for some time that you listen to what I have to say and put it right through that brain of yours. If it doesn’t make sense, you will just reject it. That means that I have complete freedom to tell you the absolute truth. I don’t have to lie to you and I don’t have to bum you out in order to make you work harder. All I have to do is given you an opinion.

I agree with you about the clarity of my mind. That probably is most, the characteristic is that I think clearly. I was one of those weirdoes that got a 99 in logic and a 99 in geometry. It is too bad that I never went further with that because my kind of mind apparently works with mathematical symbology and perhaps I could discover something, but to tell you the truth, I have never had any worldly ambition in my life. All I wanted to do is, “I want to help.” That is all.

I don’t know about concise wisdom—wisdom, maybe. Every once in a while it might sneak in there because Jim says something to me, but concise no. I mean, I wander. I don’t placate. I don’t hold back. No need to worry about all that. And you are very, very kind to perceive me as one who has the mind and heart of one who has their eyes upon the ground. That is a compliment that I take well because it is my goal. I am thoroughly single-minded in working toward that goal so don’t worry about my being honest. Honest I am.

My mother calls it surgical honesty. Maybe that is what you mean by concise. She is just kind of a dodo. I mean she is very bright, but she is very self-centered and oblivious and sometimes I need to bring her up short. When I do that and I explain to her what it is that she is doing that is driving everybody crazy, she says “operation” because I make a very insightful entry into her mental, mental surgery by mouth, by talking and she says, “You know, it doesn’t take long for me to hear what you have to say, but boy, does it smart!” She doesn’t mind that because she, herself, always values my opinion, which is nice. I am glad that she has a possible publisher in Oklahoma. I love chauvinism and that may get you published.

Remember, that my advice on editing is geared more to the definite truth that I have, not a hidden agenda, but a way of looking at things that might not suit you here and there and I ask you please to discriminate in comments that I make so that you can use when you feel the resonance in the truth of what I say. If you can’t feel any resonance, then I ask you please just to leave it behind because I have no need to be considered infallible. There is no truth to that.

You were wanting to know, and I do realize the rudeness of talking to you on tape when you are so kind as to write in very legible handwriting because it takes so much longer to listen to a person on tape than it does to read the same amount in a letter, but my hands are at the point where I really need to conserve them as much as possible. When I am going to write a substantial letter like this one to you, I use a tape, but I do concede, of course, very selfishly for you to answer me on paper so that I can read and respond to you in a quicker fashion than real time.

Jim and I are going through a questioning period of what we have to offer with the channeling. Last summer we had a channeling intensive, which was very, very successful in that everybody wanted to channel. The problem was that I was unable, because of my bias towards Don, I suppose, when he was alive to perceive that this guy who was going on and on about various phenomena like Big Foot and the Great Pyramid and all that phenomena. It was getting to 10:30 and 11 and I conked out. I came to find out after the fact that this guy had been staying up until at least 4 o’clock every morning and we were supposed to be meditating by 8:30, the morning offering.

Our disastrous luck continues with the Law of One, which was renamed by D. Publishers The Ra Material. We had a contract with them, which we didn’t realize was so firm. We had no idea that they even wanted to change the title of the book because it was part of a series. So from that point on, like vanity press, if you know what that is, it will publish your book for you for a price and they promise distribution, but they don’t do it. It is always a work off and I don’t believe the D. Publishers Editor who wanted to publish the Ra material was at like that, but he was fired before the book was published. Our needs for the Ra material is twice a year. People write in and he distributes about 2,000 a year. They were only reprinting for themselves when they reprinted for Jim, which meant that about eight months out of the year, people in other places would just be out so now, they decided the contract somehow to ship from the publishing company. The shipper wanted to do the same thing that D did, which was to publish the whole series, but Jim and I have sent a very clear letter to them that unless we can get copies of the book that we paid for publication, you know, printing it ourselves, we are just going to go ahead and print everything ourselves. We are trying to get out of the Ra material contract so that we can continue publishing ourselves.

It looks like it is going to be a while in manifesting. Jim has got the thing all typed up ready for a modem to fit it onto a printing computer. He has got all of the printing language on there and everything. He had to do that with the channeling handbook so he has got the Book of Days finished. The Book of Days, by the way if I haven’t explained it to you, is just that at the end of the morning offering, sometimes Jim will go the trouble to hook me up and I will practice my channeling for 2, 3, 4, minutes, something like that. I ask for a thought for the day basically. Actually I am not trying to learn anything as much as I am trying to practice because as in anything else that goes beyond linear thinking, you simply must do it, and do it and do it until it becomes something that you do without stage fright or what is going to happen next, or I don’t know anything about that question. Oh gosh!

That kind of thoughts and certainly daily channeling of that nature thought for the day has really improved my fearlessness, which I think is absolutely necessary. I don’t mean that I am without care as to tuning or challenging spirits. I mean that I am trusting that the experience, once I have myself hooked up to something that I consider accessible, will be just done. I will get some kind of message. I will put it out and that will be it. There is no stress involved.

I used to have a very high stress level when I channeled because I had not finished wondering if it was I who was channeling. Now I know it makes no difference and in the end, of course, it is I because we are all one. But like you, I just keep on doing it because if I can help one person, that is what I want to do and I think this is the best way for me to do it, given that everything about me is supposed to be for strong physical labor is shot.

It costs $10,000 to put that book out and we have a fair amount in our checking account, but it is for reprinting of the books, and the printing and the reprinting of the Lightlines, who are constantly asking us for back issues, and actually, a lot of people don’t send contributions for that newsletter, which is too bad because it cost us about $700 last time to get it out. They raised the 501 (c3) postal mail, charity type, printed matter packages from less than 50¢ to more than $1 and it has just torn our budget up. That is why it went in the red last year and that is why I was asking people to change their donations, but we got less than $l,000 in subscriptions for the book and it is just not going to work out, I don’t think.

Now there is a company, T. Publishers, that wants to publish the book, but it obviously, as you can see from its name, is just getting started and it is New Age and they said we want to publish your book. Right beside one thing in Lightlines and they wrote us and said, if there is a book of these we want to publish it.

That is great, but we don’t want to make the same mistake we did with D, plus the fact that they said they didn’t have the money to proceed with the book’s printing right now, but they would keep in touch. So far they have led Jim a merry dance. He wants to know the nitty gritty: how much will it cost us to get a copy of the book? The basic details of that and he hasn’t been answered yet so he is on the verge of terminating communication with this guy because he simply can’t get any close communication. I have urged him to call him, but Jim says he wants a record of everything on paper because he is really trying to get out of the contract entirely.

I let him run the business side. I don’t know what the best way to do things is and I figure he has a better shot at it than I do. He went to business school before he turned to sociology and teaching kids and then retired to homesteading.

Our hiatus ends with the rural Box Society the first Monday in August so I will be going back to singing for 2 ½ hours every Monday night. Probably the hardest I work all week. This music is difficult and I think soprano takes a little bit more support to make a pretty sound.

In September when we welcome a third person into our household, KH, who we haven’t been in community since Don died, just Jim and me. Jim has to work so terrible hard to get everything done that I think K will be a godsend. She is a lovely girl. A lot of people have asked if we were sisters and there is really not that much resemblance between us at all. It must be something about the way we present ourselves or something. We are both slender. We are both about the same height. We both have about the same length of hair, which is almost to our waist, but she has four times the hair that I do and it is blond. She has a wonderful figure so I am not counting on her to be a member of the L/L Research band for longer than it takes her to get mated because I am sure her biological clock is going to crave it.

K’s background is unusual. She was the daughter of missionaries to Japan and spent most of her childhood abroad. Actually they are finished as missionaries. They came back and lived in California so she is sort of a combination of those influences and one who has had a really bad time with the experience of church because her parents were the type who made her memorize. When she was five years she knew sixty Bible verses until thirteen. She was just able to spit it out. She was just inundated with fundamentalist Christianity and she couldn’t take it.

She is a good one to join L/L because I am the mystical Christian. I am not a fundamentalist Christian at all. I don’t take anything literally and I really consider my most important ministry is to be unchurched and both K and Jim are in the same basic mindset of the unchurched person, who nevertheless, wishes very much to experience the wonders of the Creator.

It would be so great in many ways. Obviously this has been planned before this lifetime because I don’t know too many women who would, without any thought, give a grown woman a bath or share a shower, or wash her hair. I mean she would do many of the immediate things I simply can’t do any more, but K has no problem with it and acts just like Jim, which makes me think that we have undoubtedly set all of this up a long time ago.

I am just curious as to how big of a [inaudible] that we have. If I like people, I began seeing more and more heart sisters, heart brothers, in various places. Of course, with the latter one has to be a little careful with because of their sensitivity towards the erotic. I have to watch and make sure that people are aware that I am offering them unconditional love, but not love. With girls you don’t have that problem or at least I never had that problem. I suppose I am just not the type for a Lesbian because I am somewhere in the upper nineties of heterosexual and am glad of it because I think that vitality of sexuality has enabled me to have a world that I could never, ever have if I didn’t have the passion in my bones.

I am very grateful for it. I am grateful for Jim too because he feels pretty much the same way about making love. The other thing that keeps us in a decent, modest schedule is that a man simply can’t do it three times a day, no matter how much he might want to. They just grow weaker so he usually does on vacation. It drives me nuts, but for the most part, we make dates. Although we are married we decided that our resonance is to remain lovers. I didn’t want him to get the mentality of a married person. I observed it too often. It is not good for sexual relationships so I said, “Look, I am going to go out on you and you are going to go out on me, and we’ll meet each other and we’ll make dates and we’ll have our lovable relationship, but it won’t have anything to do with the mundane.”

And that is what that real love force is and I am actually beginning to see the path to the Creator in the opening to Intelligent Infinity, that this effect used spiritually, with the spiritual circuitry working as well as the body circuitry, really is a praise and a rejoicing and a sharing with the Creator itself. Orgasm is the constant state of joy, that is the love, the Infinite Love of the Intelligent Creator so that I have found myself praying words of thanksgiving and blessing at the climax. Many times I find myself doing that and I am not intending to, but it is just something that is starting to happen to me because I just feel so full of praise for this wonderful thing that has been given to us. I don’t find anything that is unholy about making love. I think it is just a wonderful gift of the Creator’s. We are having a good time.

We haven’t been [inaudible] for so long that I am beginning to think that maybe this is the new reality and this may be my illusion, so I try not to think about it too much at all. Just take it one day at a time because you could go crazy having a condition like arthritis and trying to look into the future. I try not to do that.

S who is coming, is a heart sister of mine, and learned channeling maybe five or six years ago and who has remained my friend long after that. She went on to the Native American Indian ways and that really was her path and she is very happy in her path, but what she wasn’t happy about was a relationship, against all advice, she went into. The guy was an alcoholic and she wanted to rescue him. You can’t rescue a drunk. Even if you could rescue a drunk, you wouldn’t want to because it is an infringement on free will.

She has been saying all summer, and I am getting close, and I have been saying all summer, “I’ve got a nice bedroom for you.” We have spare bedrooms and even with K here, we have a place for S, which pleases mightily. S is just a lovely soul. She is not at all pretty, but she is cute. She is sweet and she has beautiful hair.

We are going to [inaudible] Island for two weeks in South Carolina for a vacation, which will be just glorious fun for us. We don’t do a thing. We just eat too much and get rested. It isn’t possible for us to walk and so for a six-day week all year because of the fact that we meditate on Sundays; we take Friday off but Saturday is a work day. With one day a week off all year, it is rather tough and when it comes vacation time, we are ready to get a little bit expansive and restful, etc. Luckily though, Jim and I are very intense people who have a real desire to get things done, which means that we don’t have to explain ourselves to each other. We can just carry on. And if I think Jim is really working too hard, I will call him on it and if he thinks I am really working too hard, he will call me on it. We just pay attention to each other.

When K comes, I am hoping that she will have the time to take the work that we have already available like there is still mailing left and put it on the computer. I think once it is on computer, it will be a lot easier to keep the records. Right now we have just got everything on 3 x 5 cards and you know how you shuffle those things endlessly, especially those people on the mailing list. Once she types that into the computer and we start having a computer record of things, then we should be able to respond a little better to people who ask if there are any Ra groups in their area, or they’d like to start a Ra group and who else is in their area? And we can call up by state, by city. To me this is fun. It is the way I do things and I am hoping that K will have the time to type up the info. Jim just has not had the time to sit at that computer and type in address after address. It has got to be boring work. Unfortunately, I can no longer sit up and type without wiping myself out, my back and my hands.

I am trying to create in myself a larger sense of self-worth. I am fighting against my earlier upbringing, which was very workaholic and what have you done lately? And high expectations and that kind of thing. At this point, I am not a real high producer and what I produce at all pleases me. But I am having kind of a tough time right now trying to live with the fact that I can’t do a lot of things and somebody has to do them for me and that means that I am taking up other people’s time. This is crushing to me. I have always been a giver and a real active person so that as my condition deepens and I have to deal with constant pain, my personality is lagging behind reality and I keep myself in grief for not doing more when I know perfectly well I am doing everything I can. It is just a natural feeling that you get.

It may take me a while to work it out. It is very deep programming, but I will re-program. It shall be done. I am determined because it is uncomfortable. I don’t want to feel egotistical. I just want to feel comfortable within myself that I am doing the best I can and that this is an authentic life, etc.

I am on medication right now for depression. I have taken pills to where I swear to God, I take a drugstore. Between anti-inflammatory and pills for the pain in my back and stomach medicine, which is very expensive because of all of the anti-inflammatories messing up my stomach (making it real sensitive) and I take that stuff too and then I take stuff to keep myself from feeling suicidal, which I had several bouts earlier this spring.

I take myself seriously. I have always been a person that wanted to do her absolute best or nothing at all, and one of the options is nothing at all, and it is just so tempting to think about it. That it would be over. That I would be done with it all. That I probably won’t channel anything that good again and what is the use of my taking those [inaudible]. This is Carla being extremely neurotic and I am determined to change it around because everybody else is very pleased with me.

Coaxing yourself into self-acceptance and self-forgiveness are about the hardest things I have ever tried to do. I don’t wander around like a shy mouse afraid to assert myself. I don’t act as if I had no self-esteem. I just have no self-esteem and it is private. Nobody sees it except people who live in the house with me.

We just got a summer edition of Lifelines out and got a wonderful response from the first channel I ever met, whose channeling I really felt I was a calling to this person. I wasn’t just somebody who was going to have to teach her anything. She was very much on the right track so it was a real pleasure to get that letter, and then I met a really special guy who came down from Carbondale two weekends in a row. It is like four and a half hours each way to come to the meditation and it turned out that he has a wife who is much more limited than I am. He has to even turn her over in bed. At least, I am in gear so that I can exercise and make love and all that. But she is in a terrible way and he witnessed to me that she had this wonderful vision of them both doing this together, to make a beauty of their relationship and they were just as happy the way it fell out. For her to have that attitude towards her own illness, to me, it is just miraculous.

He bought into it completely and he says they have a wonderful time with him helping her with everything and they feel this is the way it was designed to be before this incarnation so that he could learn and she could learn love and patience. That inspired me because I wasn’t nearly as limited as she was and yet she was making a going concern of her life. She was sure of herself and confident and I think that will really stay with me a long time and help me out a lot.

I just have always hated to take. I like to give and I think it is a stupid and unnecessary kind of still wishing to do when you realize that the giver and the taker are far more in complete union. It is just as important to take well as it is to give well. It just that I haven’t taken much in this life and now all of a sudden, I am taking a lot.

In other news, my being appointed Chairman of the local Arrangements Committee for the diocese of Kentucky Episcopal Women’s Church Convention next October has more or less given me a big job to do, but it shouldn’t be too hard. I will just have to get in touch with people and get them to do things for me and whereas at my wedding, I really didn’t have anybody to help me. But it is kind of a big deal. I guess we will be entertaining about 100 people and it is at Calvary this year, that’s why. I also found out, to my primary dismay and secondary the light, that it is just tradition in the ECW, which is the Episcopal Women’s auxiliary, that the local Arrangements Chairman one year becomes the Program Chairman the next year, ipso facto.

I have gone to many, many of these conventions because I am working my path of Christianity for all it’s worth, but I have been constantly disappointed in the quality of what we receive in the way of inspiration, and I feel sure that I can sniff around between now and next October 1990 and find a really enthusiastic, giving, loving, devout person who is following the Christian path, so that the women have inspiration and not just do business. I think that will be a fun thing to arrange.

The cats are fine. Jim is thriving, looking wonderful, going up on Avalon to do work in our 90-acre paradise and coming home happy and exhausted. It is great. I wish he could do more. We have a real gas burner of a car so he runs it to where he thinks our budget can take, which is probably very wise.

I guess it is time to wind this up. I am so glad you are adjusting to my writing and when you feel inspired, write me. Meanwhile, God bless and lots of love.

Carla