Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

Woke up this morning, looked out at the garden - there was snow on the kale and collard greens! Still a few drips coming down, but clearly, the first snow of the season is over. Everyone out in the yard is taking it all in stride - the mourning doves, the downy woodpeckers, all the finches and chickadees, the nuthatches - relative newcomers to our neighborhood.

And of course the multitudinous squirrels. I’m about to outsmart them once again - though winning is always transitory. I’m going to tie the squirrel baffle into place with wire, so they cannot get onto the peanut feeder, which is for the blue jays, cardinals and lots of other birds.

And with the snow, the chipmunks will have gone to sleep - which means I can tackle the problem of the rat who has moved into the wall. Couldn’t use traps while the chippers were out running around. I’ve talked to the rat about moving, asked Hawk to come take care of the rat, to no avail. A small Cooper’s hawk showed up - not much bigger than the critter he needs to catch. So at that point, there’s a need for more typical techniques. The rat cannot stay in Eden.

Any topic I care about, I have books about - just feels good!

As I’m heading off to Dream Group this morning (18 years and counting….), I wanted to tell you about my favorite dream dictionaries. Listings of dream symbols, with statements about what they represent.

The Dream Book: Symbols for Self-Undertanding by Betty Bethards is down to earth, clear, easy to use. She also has a lot of information on dreaming in general. My other favorite is The Mystical Magical Marvelous World of Dreams by Wilda B. Tanner. Wilda was a gifted psychic and spiritual teacher, so her definitions vary in some ways from the other book. Both are great, and I usually consult both when I’m looking something up - I like to have a variety of ideas to muse on.

In my latest remembered dream, a friend and I were having a pillow and water fight, laughing and jumping on the beds. My thought as I woke up - Happy Days Are Here Again!

So - let’s look up pillows: Wilda says ’symbol of comfort, luxury, relaxation and ease. May indicate laziness or depict a need to take it easy on yourself. The Dream Book’s definition is a bit different: ‘Bridge between conscious and unconscious; need for resting, relaxing the intellect and tapping deeper sources within self. Slow down your pace in order to see clearly, get insight. Tenderness, softness.

It almost sounds like the two authors traded places, in terms of one being practical and one being spiritual, doesn’t it? And now I’ll go off and hear what my fellow Dreamers have to say.

There are still chipmunks running in and out of the stone wall in the backyard! They’re setting a new record for staying awake. All of the impatiens are still blooming - so I’m still watering them.

I just took out yesterday and today the snake gourd vine that was covering everything in the veggie garden. It was slowly dying / losing energy - and it was also preventing the tomatoes from receiving light and ripening. I am so glad to have a compost heap, so that everything goes right back to the Mother, the Earth. The green zinnias were also done and are on the heap now.

But it’s truly amazing how much stuff is still blooming and growing. I just put a second planting of collards and kale in the garden at the end of August - they are totally happy and well started. If this winter is like the last few, they’ll grow right through the cold and into the spring.

I call all this the short term benefits of global warming. It is beautiful, wonderful - and a little sad.

This is the second quarter that I’ve taught a course on Intuition at Olli - the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, at the University of Cincinnati. OLLI is the part of Communiversity for senior citizens. The class is called Developing Your Intuition - An Overview of the Intuitive Arts.

My favorite day of the 7 or 8 classes is the day I talk about Reiki. And since you know me, you know I can’t just talk about Reiki. I have to have my hands on somebody as I’m talking. So last Thursday I worked my way around the twelve students, working on each one as I talked, answered questions, asked people what they were feeling as I worked on them, told them what I was perceiving as the healing energy perked them up one by one.

Three of the students were from the last class, so they were excited and happy to get a Reiki tune up. The former surgeon hadn’t had any further problems with the knee we worked on in the spring, but was happy to have me check it out. And we worked on his back a bit as well. Others ran the range from being sceptical to having never heard of Reiki to being ready to be well. And, of course, being willing to be well is the best thing to bring to a Reiki class.

The group also ran the range from being fine to having serious health challenges. So Prescription for Nutritional Healing and Louise Hay’s Heal Your Body were also passed around, bringing lots of new ideas into the mix. it is such a joy to see people waking up to possibilities they hadn’t considered before. And to see them relax and get both calmer and happier. In the meantime, as I’m doing Reiki, I’m also getting a hit of that great healing energy. What could be better?!

One of the best books I’ve ever read: The Open Road - The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer. Pico, who is one of my favorite writers, creates the Dalai Lama whole by breaking him into pieces.

The book is divided into 3 sections: In Public, In Private and In Practice. Each of those is divided into 3 sections. In Public, for instance, has three chapters: The Conundrum, The Fairy Tale, The Icon. Each chapter resonates with understanding and intellect, drawing evidence of the Dalai Lama’s gifts and presence from his life as lived, and his impact on others and the world.

This is not a biography in any traditional sense. We learn little about his being discovered to be a rinpoche - a reincarnate lama. We learn much about the land of Tibet and the context of those beliefs. We learn about China, spirituality, the Dalai Lama’s meditation practice, his community of Dharamsala in India. Pico’s view, as an agnostic, gives distance and acute observations. His view, as the son of a father who wrote a book in the early 60’s about Asia’s separation from the West, with a foreword by his friend the Dalai Lama, gives an immediacy and intimacy that is irrestible.

The book is rhythmic, full of beauty and clarity, meshed with left brained logic and right brained wholeness.
Hard to classify, easy to absorb directly into one’s soul. Aaaahhhhhh.

It will be over soon. I’m expecting Barack to win in a blowout. The results, as I expect them to be, will show Barack with 59% of the vote, and John McCain with 39%. (Have you seen the list of candidates on that ballot? 8 or 9 different presidential candidates! I recognized the Libertarian Barr, Ralph Nader, and knew there was a Green Party candidate. The others are a complete mystery.)

The electoral college vote will be McCain right around his current 185 and Barack with somewhere close to 350.

And then we can get on with getting our beloved country back on track.

P.S. There will be a blowout around here, too, with Democrats sweeping most everything there is to sweep, including both Congressional seats. There’ll be a few tricky moments, but it’s going to work out just the way we need it to!

Each debate has been very different. This final one had lots of interesting things to observe - as long as I stayed calm! The split screen - and the dialing of the reactions from the focus group of undecided voters running under the screen on CNN - was a treat. McCain’s constant blinking, his rolling his eyes, his smart-aleck tone, his sarcastic repetition of ‘the health of the mother’ during the abortion discussion - as though the mother’s health is just a made-up excuse for having an abortion - he sure didn’t look presidential, or even particularly civilized. Each time he spoke, the yellow line representing the women in the focus group headed down toward the bottom. Sometimes the guys joined them, but sometimes they actually agreed.

Barack stayed calm and peaceful during John’s attacks - the two big ones being William Ayres and then the abortion discussion. The split screen occasionally showed a raised eyebrow or an incredulous glance at moderator Bob Schieffer, but none of McCain’s third-grader antics.

Barack handled just perfectly, I feel, the William Ayres issue. A simple, calm and complete explanation of the relationship, pointing out that Barack had been 8 when Ayres was a Weatherman, and that many high-ranking Republicans served on that Annenberg Board along with he and Ayres. It seems to have erased all doubts among the persuadable electorate, and we really don’t have to worry about that rabid 12% who adore Governor Palin.

The abortion response from Barack was even better. Reasonable, clear, and no hesitation in stating that this is an issue best handled between the woman and her doctor. Since Barack will be appointing probably three new Supreme Court Justices, we can feel good about our future.

Once again, the pundits, who must love scoring boxing matches, seemed to miss the point. McCain’s best, they said, scoring it for him. It was McCain’s best, but no voters scored it for him. Even the Fox News focus group came over to Barack’s side.

The breakneck pace of these days before the oh-so-important election of our new president for 2008. And yet the sameness and even tedium. All those images of Barack and Joe, John and Sarah, day after day in different locations. With no real point in keeping track of the cities, or even of figuring out where they all are on a given day.

From the Obama campaign, incredible pictures are becoming commonplace. Barack has gone back to the huge events that were so made fun of by the Republicans. Jealousy, don’t you think? I was amazed that the Obama campaign scaled back. Now they’ve dialed up the energy again. 100,000 people under the Arch in St. Louis on Saturday, a few hours later 75,000 in Kansas City - sure makes it feel like Missouri, long red, might be turning blue - or at least a beautiful shade of purple.

But what amazing crowds, just looking at the pictures. Who can believe so many folk coming together like this, and in cities across the nation? These kinds of crowds might be seen every decade or so on the mall in our capitol, with the Washington Monument in the background. But happening now, twice in one day, in the hinterlands? And, when the news reports are given, the statement is: the biggest crowd in the US. Because that Berlin crowd last summer still holds the record.

Then the picture of Colin Powell last Sunday morning on Meet the Press, delivering in a calm and deliberate and fairly-Barack-like way, his measured explanation of his choice and then his endorsement of Barack for President. And evidence in the polls 4 or 5 days later that the momentum is building. Hurray!

Conor McPherson is a modern Irish playwright. His work is Ireland without the glamour - but there remains always the magic, and the supernatural will be part of the story somehow.

This is particularly true of The Seafarer, running at the Ensemble through November 2. Four old Irish drunks, replaying old tapes every day and every minute - especially on this Christmas Eve. They each have their back stories, and Sharky is currently not drinking. After waking up in various stages of disrepair, the group wanders out to shop for the final touches for Christmas - mainly everything from Harp and Miller’s to poteen (Irish moonshine). They find a stranger on their trip and bring him back with them, to play cards through the evening. Since this is a Faustian tale, you can guess who that Dark Stranger is.

Lots of great touches in the set, in the music, in the play’s references and unfolding. A little strange to be hearing Christmas music during a play at Halloween, but there’s plenty of trick or treat included. It turned out to be a great way to let my red-headed grandson get a taste of what holidays were like with all my Irish uncles as I was growing up.

Definitely worth seeing, and you’ve only got another week. Do your election volunteering and then show up at the Ensemble.

Barbara G. Walker finished in 1983 a wonderful spiritual reference book: The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. The London Times Education Supplement honored it as its 1986 Book of the Year. I have owned it nearly that long, having started buying these sorts of books once I started on my conscious spiritual journey in 1985.

I like to just flip it open randomly and see what I learn. So I’m doing that right now…to the E’s. Saint Edmund is up first, named as the canonized form of the heathen deity worshipped at Bury St. Edmunds, where he was seasonally slain, like Shiva, in the shape of a white bull.

Then comes Egg, the mystical symbol of the Creatress, whose World Egg contained the universe in embryo. Next is Egg-and-Dart Frieze, a classical architectural decoration, using the magic circle and alternating the symbols for women and men. Too bad there’s not a drawing. Eide means ‘Goddess-within’, the Greek concept for the female soul, corresponding to the Latin Idea. Wow! Who knew?

Next is Eire (variation Erin), the Celtic name of Ireland - I knew those, of course. And finally, El, the general Semitic word or name for a deity, especially in combining forms, as Isra-el, Dani-el, El-ijah.

There’s a lot more information on each of these topics, and each one sheds light on women’s spirituality and on human belief systems down through the ages. Handy, too, when I’m teaching a class and we come up with a question needing research. It’s also super fun when we’re doing Goddess meditations, and good when Goddesses go by more than one name.

A great book to wander through from time to time. Barbara’s written several other good books, as well as a Tarot deck and an I Ching. Always interesting ideas and good thinking.