Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

Happy birthday to me! : >

I always think it was great planning on my part to be born in May - Christmas is nearly 6 months either way, so it’s the perfect time for celebration! And the weather is wonderful for any kind of celebration we might want to have. Always the prettiest days of the year, as far as I’m concerned.

Each birthday so far - this is the 66th - has turned out to be new and original. Friends always know they are expected to come along and make the fun happen. Adventures are always the best.

This year, my eye was caught by an insert in the Cinci Shakes program at Richard III - fabulous, by the way. A tour de force for Giles Davies, my favorite. An all-out bloodsoaked villain, determined to enjoy it. The insert talked about a gritty, funny, true play about the working man set in the 30’s by a playwright not much produced these days. What better place for a liberal / progressive / spiritual person looking for a way to celebrate in these trying times?

So this evening a troop of friends and I are meeting at Arnold’s Bar and Grill for appetizers/ dinner / whatever in their garden, and then walking over to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company to see a Clifford Odets’ play, set in the 30’s about trade unionists, called Waiting for Lefty.

In the meantime, I’ll be waking up my grandson shortly and taking him to school (he and I spend Tuesdays evenings together - a plan I very seldom break), going to Moca to get my soy chai and then to Curves next door for my workout, going to the CDC Association office, where my sister is meeting me for lunch - we’re going to a benefit being held by the Center for Great Neighborhoods of Covington (some of my favorite people) at Chez Nora’s cross the river.

And then…. I may spend the time in between lunch and dinner doing nothing that resembles working in any way! Hmmm… I wonder what I’ll do? I always love watching myself to find out! So many choices - and always lots of time!

It’s full on spring and still with coolness in the air. The sky is that particular blue that is my very favorite sky. Leaves are fresh yellow green. So it must be just about that time - the very very very best day of the year - my birthday!

I start early and celebrate long - usually at least 2 full months of breakfast, lunch and dinner birthday bashes. Last year, my 65th, we had a wonderful potluck party in the backyard, with a band, food, cake, lots of friends who all sorted themselves out very nicely - the political crowd in the living room, the dancers, kids and musicians on the patio, the psychics and healers mostly in the kitchen.

This year, a different birthday, a different plan. My eye was caught by notice of a Clifford Odets 1930’s labor union play at the Shakespeare, my very favorite theater. They have been nice enough to hold a block of seats, so friends can call and reserve their own. So we’ll gather for dinner at Arnold’s 5-ish, then walk over to the Shakespeare and have fun while Waiting for Lefty.

Sounds like another perfect birthday to me. That makes 66 and counting! : >

There are some fun things that you can do on your way along the spiritual path. One of the best is playing with clouds.

I know it’s been raining all spring, but - trust me on this - one of these days will be warm and sunshiny. When that day arrives, find a place in your yard or in a park to lay down on that luscious grass and look up at the blue, blue sky. Notice a cloud - any cloud. Just focus on one of them. Look at its edges, the intensity of the color in the center, the brightness. Get to know your cloud really well.

Now - make it move. Just move it around in the sky where you will. The opposite of the direction of other clouds, or faster - maybe slower. Quite a fun way to relax through an afternoon. You may not want to dissolve your friend cloud - so pick another one. Just dissolve it. See the edges unraveling, the center getting thinner, it’s all spreading out, you can see blue through it….and now it’s gone! Easy as pie.

You don’t have to believe you can do this in order to achieve it. Just lay down on your back and play.

I had to be a bit more direct before and during Second Sunday Markets on Main in Over-the-Rhine. It was the first event of the summer season, it was Mother’s Day - and the weather forecast was predicting rain throughout the day. It was actually raining when I started working on the problem at home. I simply looked out the window, picked a particular part of the sky near the horizon, and started literally / mentally punching a hole in it. I kept that up as I was driving downtown to set up for the event, kept it up as we put together tents and canopies, got others to buy into the idea of just punching through, just persisted. Saw the hole as being big enough to keep rain from most of the city.

The rain stopped just before noon - still gloomy and cold. I for sure didn’t tackle changing the cold - figured if it stopped raining, people would come. And they did! As I was busy doing a reading midway through the afternoon, I was suddenly warm - there was actual sunshine for the first time in days! Thank you, Spirit! The sunshine didn’t last very long - just long enough to let us know it still existed - but the rain stayed away.

It was a wonderful event, with mothers carrying roses they had been given and so many people around. And at 5:05 p m, it started to rain again! I did complain to the Universe and the sky that they could have given us 10 more minutes to finish packing up… : >

WOW! My baby girl snake has returned!

She disappeared on November 11 - 11/11 - a spiritual number if there ever was one! And she was only 4 months old, thinner than a pencil, though longer. Her first night in her grown up terrarium, she somehow slipped away.

All my students and friends took the bedroom and the rest of the house apart several times looking for her. Nothing. Since many of those friends are psychics, they reported conversations with Mia (Missing In Action) reporting her own whereabouts. A dark place with wood. She could hear my footsteps, feel the vibrations. Somewhere in the ductwork, we assumed.

I never connected with her psychically. Just spent the winter missing her, and finding it hard to believe that she could hibernate away the cold time - she just didn’t have the physical size to survive that long with no easy food and water available - and no hot rock to regulate her own body temperature.

I said many times that one warm day in April, I’d know whether she was here or not. I expected she’d suddenly appear. April came and went.

So yesterday, May 11 - 6 months to the day, I’m just realizing - I asked Jen to clean up the sand, put away the water and put the cold air duct back in place on the bedroom floor. We had left a way out of the ductwork for her, with a little habitat all ready.

So, naturally, when I got home this evening from Melody’s and was unloading the car - there was Mia, not much bigger, but with much more color, on the floor downstairs in the little hallway by the stairs - looking like she had just come out of that bedroom.

She was very aggressive, tiny little girl that she is, rattling her tail as though she was a rattlesnake! So I dropped a towel on her, bundled her up, and took her upstairs to her terrarium. Which I had not asked Jen to put away. I turned her hot rock back on, put water in the bowl, thawed 2 pinkies for her dinner, and made everything ship-shape.

She ate one pinkie, took a long long drink of water, ate the other, and is now under her hot rock - a trick my now-gone-from-the-planet corn snake Hekima never did.

Weirdly, I had never been able to find her name. Knew it was supposed to be the Celtic word for Wisdom, as Hekima carried the Swahili word for Wisdom. To complete Mia’s homecoming, I just ordered from amazon.co.uk two English Irish dictionaries - so she’ll have a real name in 6 to 10 business days. Maybe then she’ll stay home! : >

I don’t think I can afford cheap food! I want to live forever - or at least to 120 - have a great time doing what I want to do, come home from metaphorically working in the fields of the village (more likely a wonderful dinner and a movie), just go to sleep and not wake up. More or less when I choose that long sleep.

Cheap food just doesn’t pay in achieving that goal. Cheap food has been shipped all over the world, back and forth, to be processed here and there. It has been irradiated, genetically modified, had additives and dyes and preservatives added, had its fat removed, and been altered in all kinds of ways. It’s not really food any more by that time, in my book.

That packaged material folk are ingesting, with the list of ingredients 14 lines long, is simply an addictive substance, made deliberately so as the fats, salt and sugar are hidden in each ingredient. No flavor and no joy.

I don’t get why that’s cheaper than buying food from the local organic farm, where the carrots simply grow in the ground, as The Goddess intended. But it is cheaper. Still doesn’t make it food as far as I’m concerned.

Anything with a list of ingredients longer than 3 lines is very suspect and is not likely to enter my house. And when the fat content or any other ingredient is altered so we can eat more with less guilt - again, not food here. Plus all those foods with a shelf life of 5 years or more. Not actual food - it’s just filler, to go into our bellies in order to shut us up until the next meal.

I just don’t think I can afford that!