Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

Reiki Healing Circle is here at my house the last Sunday of every month, a fixed pattern.

Everything else about the Circle has its own energy, a different pattern each time. This time, it was a bit smaller than usual - 7 people. And all of us were women - none of the guys were present. Another difference was that we were silent during the healing work. Three differences all in one evening.

The whole session was relaxing, more leisurely than usual. We did Reiki energy healing on 3 of the 7 of us.

One had never been worked on by a group before, another had never experienced energy healing at all and wasn’t sure she believed in it, the third and youngest had been suffering with that American disease, anxiety attacks.

It was fun, working in silence, to look at each other, to nod, as our way of passing information about what we felt should happen next. It is always amazing to me how we all finish at the same time, even though we’re each putting energy into different parts of the receiver’s body. We just look up from where we’re focused, and know the healing is complete for now.

Then we enjoyed chocolate cake and lemon pound cake, almonds, hot teas. There was a lot of shopping at the giveaway table, followed by mini-readings about current issues in our lives with several different decks.

And then I won the contents of the giveaway bowl - the maraschino cherry on top of the perfect Sunday!

A collection of short stories by Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House weaves the stories of many different families living over time in a small farmhouse on Cape Cod.

The stories are good - she is an excellent writer, and couldn’t turn out stories that weren’t. But these stories are much darker than the novels of hers that I’m familiar with. There is also less of magic, less of hope, less of an optimistic point of view.

It’s interesting to follow American families from the time we were a British colony until nearly the present day - lots of interesting history and culture woven into the every day lives of the house’s inhabitants. It’s also fun to trace the white blackbird, the berries, the pond, the red pear tree through the stories.

But the bleakness overall was not a tone I cared for. If I’d known when I started the book what I know at the end, I might not have begun.

I am, after all, a person who wants to re-write Romeo and Juliet.

I know, I know - everyone is raving about The Road, its horror and its tenderness. A friend loaned me her copy, feeling I would enjoy it.

I mistrusted it right from the beggining, with the Winner of the Pulitzer Prize sticker on the cover and all. I tried to read the back cover, which began with “A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves….save the ash on the wind.” I resisted it even more after that.

Finally I opened it randomly near the end. Ugh. I flipped through, reading 3 or 4 pages here and there. Picking up what there was of story. More Ugh.

Apocalyptic - perhaps the end times. Who cares? We are finally in the middle of the paradigm shift, are finally heading (seen only so very dimly) into joy and peace as humans. And then we get this book - pointing us straight back toward where we’ve been.

To me, the ash on the wind is right this minute, with madmen in charge of our most precious institutions. We are definitely heading into a far different future.

I simply put this despairing and gauntly written book down, not to be picked up again - except to return it to its owner.

Karen Armstrong is the author of several of my favorite books - and of several of my least favorite!

Buddha, published in 2001, takes the sparse facts we know about Siddhartha Gautama and blends them with the history and geography of the time, giving us a breathtaking picture of him and his world.

The Battle for God, in 2000, really gives us an incredible picture of our 3 major religions, and how we got to today’s mistrust and struggles.

But her Short History of Myth starts in the wrong place, giving us a look at the patriarchal myths and what followed from them (our difficult culture). I wanted her to start with the original Goddess myths, talk about how they were distorted as the patriarchy took such destructive power, and give us some hope for today and tomorrow. Karen’s deciding that the original mythology on the planet does not need to be brought to current consciousness blows me away. Re-telling the bad stuff does not strike me as useful.

And then there’s her latest, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, 2006. Again, this book reads as though these religions sprang forth from nowhere, had no history behind them, did not have specific historical agendas. When, in fact, each of them emerged from clashes with mainly Goddess / women centered belief systems, and were created to stop women’s trust in their Goddess.

Her facts are, as always, impeccably researched. But her interpretations ignore the foundations of the people already living in the places she investigates. And those people / tribes were usually being violently overrun by the new religionists. So the facts lead to, in my point of view, incorrect conclusions.

The 35,000 to 100,000 years of human history prior to the rising of the patriarchy 6,000 to 8,000 years ago deserve more study, more truth telling, a broader place in our culture. And that’s my primary argument with Karen Armstrong.

One of my favorite days of the whole year - I know, I know, I have a lot of those - is Joseph-Beth Booksellers big semi-annual sale.

I make a list, and then it disappears into one of the piles on my desk, so I make another one. That one may or may not survive, but eventually my brain becomes imprinted with what I’m looking forward to having on my bookshelves. Even though there’s almost no room.

I’m in and out of the bookstore and bistro probably 2 or 3 times a month, and usually just pick up whatever calls my name - including my favorite teas. But as we get closer to the date (one Friday in February and one in October), I make that list.

I only had one book on it last Friday - a book of William Butler Yeats’ poetry I had seen a friend of mine with, which combined his best poems with what was going on in his life at the time. Then I asked grandson Patrick what he’d like. He inquired whether Interview with a Vampire as a book was as good as the movie. I replied that she was one of the best writers ever and books are always different than their movies. So I set out with 2 books in mind.

Interview with a Vampire was easy. Looking for the Vamp, I wandered into mysteries, and found two recent ones about Egyptologists Emerson and Amelia. I finished that series up to date about 5 years ago and hadn’t looked for them since.

That took me upstairs to travel narrative, one of my favorites. Found more Egypt - a book on Alexandria, and a history/travel tale called In an Antique Land. Another travel work caught my eye - Tigerland and Other Unintended Destinations. When I flipped it open, I saw the words snow leopard on the page. That settled that - it went into my stack.

The Yeats I was looking for wasn’t there, but I found a small one with all my favorites - Easter 1916, in particular. Then a large tome called Origins: African Wisdom for Everyday, for Carolyn for Christmas.

A quick stop by the Halloween table found a pack of Halloween kleenex, and a cup - black and green - that I’m drinking tea from right now. It says Witch’s Brew on one side, and If the broom fits….ride it! on the other.

Totally satisfied and filled up, I headed to the counter to pay for my treasures.

My son Brian is running hard in this Council election. Political campaigns are a lot of work, and the candidate works the hardest of all.

While his wonderful staff and volunteers are organizing the lit drops and lining up those volunteers, Bri is out there on the street, walking door to door in all our 52 neighborhoods.

He - and most of the candidates - are attending 3 to 4 community council candidate forums each and every evening. That’s in addition to the luncheons, meeting presentations, editorial boards and numberless questionnaires that need his presence and attention.

A very physically demanding job, day in and day out. Brian’s handling it well, and even enjoys almost all of it. He loves being out and talking to people, listening to their ideas, working them into his overall policy strategies - the issues he’ll be working hardest on once he’s elected.

Only 10 more days. It sure is exciting, watching him doing such great work!

I used to live in a house with an instantaneous hot water heater - it didn’t store any water, but ran water through copper tubing surrounded by flame when the hot water faucet was turned on. We never ran out of hot water - it was instant!

And I’ve resented the fact that those units couldn’t be found for years, and now are available, but outrageously expensive. So I found another way to reduce my energy bill. Looking down at the base of the hot water heater, I noticed a dial, which I dialed back from hot to warm. Then I saw ‘vacation’ and I dialed it to the lowest setting.

It’s amazing what happened to my energy bill this summer, even with the air conditioning running way more than usual. And when I want to shower, do the dishes, do the laundry - I just turn it back up 15 minutes or so beforehand.

I feel better about my carbon footprint, my checkbook is considerably happier, life is good!

My friend Mary and I, looking for something new, found it at Seny last Wednesday night. A Spanish tapas restaurant - definitely Spanish dishes and ideas, served in small portions.

Our only complaint, a tiny one, was that the tables weren’t big enough for all the wonderful choices we made. Since the chef sends out each dish as it’s ready, and the wait staff quickly removes empty plates (which happens pretty fast), it was a relatively minor problem.

I love asparagus - there were 2 great recipes on the menu. There was goat cheese - 3 types. Lots of salad-y items, potatoes in several ways, and a tortilla that was divine. I’m not a meat eater, but Mary enjoyed her meat choice.

The dishes themselves, and the decor, are wonderful - not as many flowers in the women’s restroom as there were when it was Simone’s, but still ample. And it had only been open 5 days when we were there, so a few things still need to be worked out - like hot tea.

Definitely a place to go back to, especially since it’s right up the street from me, at DeSales Corner, Woodburn and Madison. Check out their website www.senycincy.com.

I just finished reading my second Alice Hoffman novel, The Probable Future. This book was a bestseller back in 2003, but since I seldom read straight fiction (I do like mysteries for a year or two, and then stop again), and almost never read bestsellers, I hadn’t encountered her work til a friend handed me one last year (and I’m not sure of the title, though I liked it).

I had enjoyed the movie Practical Magic, because Aidan Quinn, Irish and one of my favorites, was in it - but had no idea who the author was.

She is an excellent writer, full blown people that you went to school with, or see every day at work. They’re a bit quirky, but then so are you and I. I, of course, being psychic, enjoy the psychic references, in this case a different gift for each woman in the Sparrow family.

Alice is also, and I appreciate this, an optimist, and her stories tend to wind around to happy endings. I really am very unwilling to put negative images in my head, and can trust Alice’s characters to have difficulties, but to figure them out.

This one ended just right, with lots of redemption and proper comeuppances. Only the story of Rebecca Sparrow is not directly redeemed. And there is enough love in the book for us to spare some for her.

Time was when I went to a lot of concerts. That time was not lately.

So when my friend Pat wanted to go see Nickel Creek, whom she’d seen in concert elsewhere, I wasn’t sure. It turned out, as her ideas always do, to be another fun adventure.

Hadn’t been to the Madison in Covington for a long time either - felt a lot the same - sort of an upscale Bogart’s. Although I understand Bogart’s has upscaled a bit itself.

We found chairs upstairs, not the best, but chairs. A warm-up ‘comic’ started the evening off - just a bit of silliness. Then - Nickel Creek.

An interesting group with wonderful music - perhaps 21st century folk. And the instrument variety (mandolin, violin, guitar, upright bass - all acoustic) - plus the skill of Chris, Sarah and Sean - made for a terrific evening. A good energy group - they knew how to lay out the show, work it through, play with all of us.

This is their farewell for now tour - I’m glad they’re taking good care of themselves by taking time for quiet. But I definitely look forward to seeing them back here in our town!