Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

I don’t even remember where I saw and instantly purchased The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Psychic Awareness. In a rack of magazines, I think. The digest version, on sale for $2.95.

First off, where can you get any book for $2.95? And then the fact that psychic awareness has surely gone mainstream when it’s included in the Idiot’s Guides.

So I sat down with it just a while ago - it had been on the shelf under the coffee table for a couple of months. Not bad at all! As a matter of fact, I’m pretty impressed. It isn’t smart aleck and doesn’t make fun - and the advice is on target. It packs a lot of information into its 94 pages.

Guided Imagery - The Mind as Healer is one section. Another deals with framing beliefs in positive ways. Lots of affirmations scattered throughout - People like and trust me. I’m lucky. Situations unfold for me at the right time.

And then there’s the section on Practice, practice, practice. I always say being psychic is just like learning to tie your shoes. Just keep doing it and don’t give up. When you pay attention to hunches, you get more hunches - and they are stronger. Some great visualizations in this slim volume to strengthen your practice.

A fun book - and much more helpful than I was expecting.

What an opening night! Ferocious theater at the Shakspeare - No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre and Endgame by Samuel Beckett.

These seldom produced plays, this year’s CSC Studio Series offerings, called out the best of the company. The result was physical discomfort and shock on the part of us, the audience. I could not get comfortable, shifting in my seat, slouching, blinking to help my eyes, which were inexplicably dry.

We all knew we were watching great theater, but only clapped a bit over minimum at the end of each, though the actors deserved standing ovations. It was just shock at these stark characters face to face with themselves and each other.

No Exit is a literal picture of Sartre’s hell, though with no torture or infernal flames. Three ordinary looking people thrust one after the other into an uncomfortable drawing room by a perhaps bellhop, then discovering this is hell, and uncovering why each is there. One character interestingly is lesbian, which introduces more twists and triangles. They devour each other.

What happens when the door suddenly opens? I’m not going to tell you. Sure looked like hell to me.

Endgame was, as though that were possible, better. Giles Davies (Hamm) and Jeremy Dubin (Clov) as the centers, supported by Hamm’s parents, ghosts in separate garbage cans.

Hamm is in a wheelchair and cannot stand. His caretaker Clov cannot sit. Viciousness, power, dependence, raw loneliness, even a bit of humor - Hamm’s dog, that hat, the ladder.

A powerful evening of theater, each written by its European author as he faced the smoldering rubble that was Europe at the end of World War II.
Though neither play is directly about that war.

Bleak. Powerful. Necessary. Go. See. These. Plays.

Remember the Peter Pan movie of several years ago, starring Robin Williams?

What a fun take on that classic, with Robin’s great energy added in. I’m going to have to watch it again one of these days - perhaps I’ll have a Robin Williams film festival weekend!

At any rate - one particular scene shows us perfectly what a paradigm shift looks like, and the suddenness with which it almost always happens in an individual and in a culture.

Remember when the Lost Boys are eating dinner, all around that long table? Having a great time eating and having a food fight? But Robin looks, there is no food on those empty plates, what’s going on seems to be a complete delusion.

Until Robin relaxes and looks again. Suddenly the world is in color, the plates are heaped high, abundance is everywhere. Once he can see the food, it is actually there. As long as he cannot see it, he cannot be fed.

Once he can see the food, he cannot un-see it. That genie cannot be put back in that bottle. Thus is the way of paradigm shifts - whether it’s falling in love, seeing the power of peace, or understanding that we truly are sisters and brothers and can walk in joy.

Can’t wait for arrival of our coming shift - except, of course, I can. Knowing it’s coming - by looking at who’s pulling on which sides of the rubber band - is enough to keep me going.

I have been writing and thinking about the paradigm shift a great deal lately. And was in two major meetings this past week where the split between the two was clearly visible in the participants.

New paradigm folk believe in bringing everyone together, being inclusive. Old paradigm folk still claim to be damaged by what ‘they’ - the others - are doing. New paradigm folk are welcoming, making connections, putting information together in new ways. Old paradigm folk are still looking for the problems. Very few opportunities are visible from their point of view.

And each of these folk are creating their own realities. Someone who is afraid of change, secretive with information, not easily trusting others, sees that world.

Someone who welcomes the world and looks for what its gifts has an altogether different experience, as people shake hands heartily right back, and soon become friends.

One strategy works to increase our impact and make success more likely. The other strategy separates us, shrinks down the size of our world, makes change look a lot more unattractive.

It’s almost as if these two different points of view come from two different planets. Yet often it’s people living right in the same neighborhoods who carry these two different worlds around with them.

And we’re living right in the middle of it - the rubberband being stretched tighter and tighter. The tension of living through a paradigm shift.

It was 9 a m Thursday morning and there was a raccoon on the patio. Never happens - they are nocturnal, and I will very rarely see one at dawn or dusk. I had thrown out the remains of a bag of tortilla chips, and s/he was chowing down. The squirrels had vacated the place.

Suddenly down the path from the woods comes another raccoon - decidedly bigger. Raccoon the First went onto the path toward the newcomer, not waiting to be confronted. S/he lowered his/her body to the ground and looked up at Raccoon the Second, then rose and did considerable sniffing.

Raccoon the Second went on to the pile of chips and proceeded to munch. After skirting the edge of the patio, First went to the far edge of the pile and resumed eating, moving away after about 5 minutes of additional chips. The Second took his/her time, finished off breakfast and wandered away.

Interesting to see how they handled what might have become a skirmish. A good solution, I thought. Especially since neither looked like a long winter’s sleep had depeleted them in any way. But what were they doing out of bed at that hour in the first place?

Cincinnati World Cinema has really come into its own. It is now showing its monthly film choices in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s theater (making dinner in the cafe beforehand a great choice), where the sound and projection ability have been enhanced, and there’s ample easy parking.

This year’s Lunafest - short films by and about women - was the best ever and we got to vote for our favorites. Plus discussion afterward was led by Linda Spalazzi, whose powerful film on domestic violence was on the bill.

I didn’t manage to blog it, but last month’s choice of Forever - a film about an ancient Parisian cemetery, all stone and with amazing stories, was heartwarming and heartfelt, even at the Christmas season. The director/producer elicited moving comments from those visiting to see its most famous resident, Jim Morrison, those giving loving care to the tombs of their dear ones, those sightseeing and others visiting their personal heroes.

A very different experience from visiting an American cemetery. A look at grief and love in all their phases, and incredible amounts of care and creativity and just plain hard work from those widows, admirers and supporters cleaning and decorating these graves.

This is an amazing calendar - check it out at www.ecologicalcalendar.info. It is stuffed with nature info, in a very natural way - not in a ‘take the test’ way.

Each season is three incredibly beautiful panels, with a star chart guide to visible planets, stars and constellations, moon phases, earth and weather phenomena, the tides, a name for each day and season, and our regular human-made days, dates and months.

The seasons start at either a solstice or equinox amd carry us through the shifts and changes of our earth, so that we can experience them with our eyes wide open. October 21 to November 21 last year, for instance, was named Shadow. The calendar showed us what was happening in space, nearer in our sky, on the earth and under it during this season of shadow.

The calendar is on the wall I see when I come in the back door from feeding the entire repertoire of woody friends who live around me. I love going through my days with a feeling of being part of the land, part of nature, of allowing what is, and being immersed in that beauty.

This calendar is a beautiful and grounding reminder to stay in that space.

So today Christmas disappeared from my house. It begins to appear the day after Thanksgiving, and is usually totally in place by December 1 - Christmas Central has arrived by then.

Its departure is unpredictable. One year, the tree was up until late February. This year, the putting away started last weekend and suddenly needed to be finished today. I was just ready. With wonderful help from my cleaning person / good friend (okay, I’ll admit it - she did nearly all of it!), it was gone and all put away by the time I arrived back home this afternoon.

And by 6 p m, St. Patrick’s Day was fully in place. With just a bit of Valentine’s Day about. I’m going to make a trip to Cappel’s sometime in the next couple of weeks to add more green fun for St. Paddy’s.

And if it’s St. Padraig’s (the Irish spelling), can spring be far behind?

Grandsons Patrick and Kyle are both in theater tech at the School for Creative and Performing Arts, so attendance at the Aronoff performance of The Musical: Miracle on 34th St was mandatory - to hear about what parts of the set they had helped to build.

We pulled into the parking lot that runs along 7th from Main to Sycamore. Where normally $5 goes into the machine which spits out a ticket, there was a man collecting the $5 (as had always been the custom until very recently), and giving a printed bit of cardboard to place on the dash.

All seemed ordinary, until we came back to the car to find a ‘ticket’ from the parking lot, that we had not paid. Whereupon another man came up, took the ticket, said he’d deal with it, and I gave him another $5. Didn’t seem quite right, but what the heck.

I kept meaning to call the parking lot company - which meant stopping and looking at the ticket machine for a phone number.

Didn’t get that done, and on Saturday, a letter from a collection agency arrived in the mail, asking for the $60 I owed them for non-payment. I managed to call their Seattle number when they were open today, and given the options, chose to punch 2 to dispute the debt.

I told the woman who answered that I really wasn’t disputing it, but just wanted to tell my sad little story. Lo and Behold, when I finished - she voided the letter, and will send me another letter confirming that! An unexpected and terrific outcome.

Everyone I know but me has read The Kite Runner. I had heard that there were difficult scenes, some painful content. I took those comments to mean I wasn’t going to be crazy about this movie - violence and cruelty, at least.

But I love picturing that part of the world - the mountains, villages, deserts, ancient ruins and old ways - and was willing to see it just to get those pictures. The visuals were terrific. And the scenes of Kabul, especially flying kites from the rooftops, were fabulous, though I assumed much of it was shot in Pakistan. The Afghan wedding celebration was great fun.

The rest of it - the young boy not communicating with his father, not defending his friend, and even managing to eliminate that friend from his life - was miserable. An ugly story. The sort-of reconciliation with his father, the trip back to Kabul to rescue the son of his friend, the perils Amir, the protagonist, faces in that exploded part of the planet. All those more or less resolved the issues. But they really didn’t make it better for me.

A good and gritty film, wonderful performances. But it could have been named Atonement. Except there’s another difficult film out with that same name. Which I’m seeing soon. Ugh.