One of my good friends here is starting a discussion blog called anns_lace.

Here's what she says from the intro page:

This is a site for people interested in discussing metaphysical subjects such as life, death, miracles, the law of attraction, the purpose of life, and who knows what else. These are subjects that are close to my heart, and I hope to learn from each of you in this exchange of ideas and beliefs.

In addition to providing discussion topics, I'll include quotes from and references to pertinent books. If you'll do the same, this site will also be a place we can all find new authors we might want to read.

How It Works
Starting Sunday, August 3, 2008, Anns_Lace will present an issue each Sunday, which will remain open for comments (and comments on comments) all week. Then the next Sunday we'll take up a new topic.

All of the postings on this site (except this one) will be marked "private" - viewable only to LJ friends of Anns_Lace. There are no restrictions on who can be a friend, so if you're interested, please friend me and I will friend you back, so you can participate. The purpose is not to exclude people, but to make this a safe place for any sincere discussion. If a belligerent commentater happens to join us and crosses the line between vigorous discussion to rudeness, he or she will be unfriended and excluded from future postings. This couldn't be any of you, though, so don't worry.

Just to whet your appetite, the first topic will deal with miracles. I won't give you the exact question until August 3, but go ahead and friend me today so I can add you as a friend, and you'll be able to read it. I'm looking forward to some wonderful discussions!

Add her as a friend, just to check out the first couple of weeks. If you like it, you might want to stick around. I do know that this is a woman who has thought long and deeply about a lot of topics. She's already on my Friend's List.

I have decided to stay at West End Ministries until I can find a full-time, paying job. That may mean that I start getting my resume out there now, and if something comes along that is right for me, I'll take it, but the real push won't come until spring.

This fall, I need to get back into shape again, as usual. I did really well for several weeks in Nepal, but the forced confinement of the general strikes, the heat in Calcutta, and the illness in Nepal upon my return, coupled with French food-- none of which I regret, really-- means that I have to begin once again to get myself out of bed in the early a.m., and to watch what I eat. I KNOW why I don't want to be a roly-poly fat girl, but my sweet tooth doesn't.

Natasha called last night to say that her back issues have at least been diagnosed: disintegrated disk. Yikes. Isn't that what you had, Suzan? The doc told her that it can be healed with some good physical therapy and taking care of it for the rest of her life.

I look around me at the people I know who have dealt with ongoing health issues all their lives, issues that are not "lifestyle" related. My brother, for instance. Well, I don't know how much exercise the guy has ever gotten, but he has been dealing with one thing after another. Some people, say the French, have une petite nature, and so have to take care of their health more assiduously than I ever have. I don't want to call this "luck" on my part, but it is some kind of blessing from the universe that I have been basically healthy if I did the minimum to keep myself that way. And energy! I don't have any idea how long I'm going to have this kind of get-up-and-go, but whooeeee, while it lasts, let's ROCK!

And when I don't have it any more, I can read, or I can be read to. I got projects to last me all the days of my life, not even counting this wonderful work I've found to do. I think this post is about gratitude. As they say around here, Thiank yew Jesus! Which, to me, means sending blessings out from me to the rest of everything.

At the Y this morning, I was listening to Speaking of Faith, the radio program about ethics, religion, meaning and ideas. Or something like that. I am in the middle of one of the programs right now, so I can't go to the beginning of the show to grab the tagline.

I had a couple of those moments of tearful epiphany this morning. The first piece I listened to is this particle physicist from England, whose pedigree and qualifications are so impressive that when he starts talking about religion, you have to listen because he's so incredibly recognized for what he says. He's also some kind of high mucky-much in the Anglican Church as well as being a physicist. His whole concept of God is gorgeous and I won't try to sum up his arguments. You can find it on "Quarks and Creation."

What he said that really grabbed me was this:
All the really interesting and new things come out of the interface between order and chaos. If you're too far into order, it's lockstep, it's mechanical, every day is the same. If you're too far into chaos, then everything falls apart and nothing lasts and things are all about smoke and clouds and nothing else.

This just gobsmacked me. This is precisely how I feel about working and my job as a technology consultant. It CAN'T be mechanical, getting up every day, being part of the rat race, the cog in the wheel, etc. I love the chaos of it, but I also love the rational, logical beauty of it. My very best self, my very best moments are exactly there, at the interface between order and chaos.

The second piece I started was less interesting over all, an interview with a Unitarian chaplain to the police and forestry people who have to be there when people have disappeared into woods or fallen into rivers, etc. So she deals regularly with death and its consequences. She says that the Buddhists argue that we are constantly and always preparing for our death, and I got that one immediately. I've always been preparing for my debilitated old age, storing up memories, making sure that my LIFE was interesting and fulfilling and fun, making sure I never got STUCK in misery or resentment or law suits or ongoing conflict (those things will truly screw up an old age...)

And I thought about Scott and how he's helping me prepare for my own death very consciously.

Then the woman who's being interviewed says this:

"If you posit a world in which the ultimate value is life, then you're utterly lost. Because we're all gonna die. And then you get have to posit this whole life after death thing, which nobody has experienced and lived to tell about it ("I died and came back" stories notwithstanding.)

"If you posit a world in which the ultimate value is LOVE, then there's something to DO."

And I went, YEAH. There is something to do, and all we need to do is allow ourselves to grow into the person who acts love out. It doesn't matter, in the end, who we grow into because as long as we're on the trajectory of love, we will not only have something to do, we'll know what it is.

--JF comes in this evening from his extended trip around France to visit our friends and relatives. I'm really looking forward to hearing about that.

--Job interview with a much larger and more organized outfit. The commute would take a pretty hefty bite out of the tee-ninesy salary that the feds pay me, so I've asked for gas money as part of the deal, if I accept the job. I've been thinking about what it would mean to go from being a very large fish in a small and floundering pond, to being almost insignificant fish in a very well-organized pond. Hmmmm.....

--I've been putting in some hours at West End Ministries since I returned, but since VISTA isn't paying me yet, I've been getting a bunch of other stuff done as well. The laundry is caught up. The dishes are caught up. I'm planning to head off for a grocery run this afternoon. It's pretty nice to have time for my LIFE.

--The newsletter is ready to send for this month. I realized, quite belatedly, that the e-newsletter hasn't been going out. I need to see about getting at least this one out today.

--I spent three hours in the ER with Raf's ear infection on Sunday night. Passed up a chance to sit by Elizabeth's pool to do that. He's okay, it's just that with Medicaid, if you get sick on a weekend, you go sit in the ER.

I certainly don't feel obligated to function today, after last night's read-a-thon. I went for an hour and a half hike with Pam and Elizabeth, both tax program volunteers for West End and also just good friends. Now, however, I will make myself some breakfast and then see what I feel like doing next. I got the laundry room cleaned up, the project I wanted to do this weekend, between 6 and 7:30 am. I mean, I was up, and so I just did it. That leaves the rest of the day for the one or two smaller tasks I have on my agenda.

I can also spend the day just dozing with a book. Could turn into Mr. Lazy Day. Yum.

When the alarm went beep-beep-beep a few minutes ago, I was shocked. First of all, I thought I'd turned THAT alarm off, since it was set to go off at 5 am, my yoga and exercise time. Second of all, my GOD, it was already FIVE A.M.? I had felt a bit sleepy a while ago, but by then I only had another chapter and I'd be done with this book.

What book could possibly keep me up all night oblivious to the time? Some fantastic science fiction novel? Some wonderful spiritual book? Ha! A book about money for someone who basically doesn't have any problem with money!

How to Get What You Want in Life with the Money You Already Have: Simple Yet Revolutionary Ideas for Reaching Your Dreams While Still Paying Your Bills, by Carol Keeffe

Don't bother writing that down. ( Read more... )

These are my friends, Surya, left and Ramesh, with whom I worked for three weeks on their web sites while I was in Nepal. I will be going through my photos in the next few days to post stuff that was somehow ignored or left behind or got orphaned for whatever reasons.

The measure of [mental] health is flexibility [not comparison to some 'norm'], the freedom to learn from experience, to be influenced by reasonable arguments and the appeal to emotions, and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.
--Lawrence Kubie

Well, just wow. I love this freedom to cease when sated part...aren't we just NUTS when we can't stop eating those damned cashew nuts??? And don't we have trouble learning from experience, even when it rears up and smacks us across the face? And being influenced...My mother used to say of my father: "My mind's made up. Don't confuse me with facts." And I can tell I'm sane, that my life is sane and going where it ought to be going, when I can feel the flexibility, the ability to go with the flow, the awareness of what I'm learning AS I LEARN IT.

I looked up Larry Kubie on the internet and while the name was vaguely familiar, the man I found there was not particularly. An obituary of him makes him sound like the kind of guy who basically pisses everyone off by not shutting up when he disagrees with them, but his dear friends loved him anyway. He was associated with the first place I ever sought psychological help, the Pratt Institute in Baltimore. But I don't think I ever met him. This quote is part of a David Brin science fiction novel I'm reading. I've learned more than I really would like to about the sun from this book.

Click on the photo to go to the other photos from my day, July 3, 2008, in Paris.

Hey my friends from India!

My mother-in-law is in touch with an astrologist who is trying to get a copy of an article written in 1883. The article is in a book at the Theosophical Society Library in Adyar, apparently a suburb of Chennai. It's not possible to photocopy the piece but the librarian will allow a digital photo record to be made. Any takers? Know anybody who knows somebody in the area willing to stop by with a digital camera?

"The Hindu Zodiac or the Discovery of the Lost Sky" by N. Chidambaram Iyer, B.A.F.B.

Found in "The Theosophist" of April 1883. English translation by BrihatJataka de VarahaMihira.

Thanks for even considering this task!