Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

Way earlier, after our big October freeze, I gave up on the collard greens, kale and lettuces. Then there was a day or two of 40 degrees - and they perked up. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that until it was starting to snow again, and they drooped. But now, on New Year’s Eve, we’re in our third day of 40s - though the temperature is falling, with a high in the 20s predicted for New Year’s Day.

So after I fed the birds this morning (and son Brian’s cats and guppies), I took the scissors and Evert-Fresh green bags (keep everything fresh for a long time - but still plastic) outside to see what I could find. Wow! Quite the haul of greens. A huge bag of collard greens, a wonderful bag of kale, which got planted in September, so it’s still growing the tender young extra curly leaves, and a fair amount of staghorn lettuce. The other lettuces have given up the ghost for 2009.

I was surprised anything was left. And I’m definitely hoping for more 40 degree days in January. Next year, I’m going to plant spinach in September and October - according to the White House chef in charge of their garden, it’s a lot sweeter when grown in winter - because it knows that the sweeter it is, the less likely it is to freeze. I guess the kale and collards know that, too! Wish the parsley did.

This is a cute book, written by a New York Times bestselling author. Just didn’t particularly float my little boat. And helps me further understand my bias against bestsellers.

Blue Christmas is by Mary Kay Andrews. It was in the mystery section, so I expect all her stuff is mysteries.Looks like Savannah is her location, but she doesn’t have a series character - though Eloise Foley is the heroine for the second time, so maybe she’s about to become a series.

It’s a pleasant little book, some laughs in here, lots of Christmas-ness. But it did feel formulaic - or even computer generated. And remarkably like a bookstore owner series I really like, though I can’t remember the name. I think the author of that series is Joan Hess, and her books are usually hysterical. This book didn’t get very far in that line.

Ah well.

I have, of course, seen a couple of Rumpole mysteries on PBS - usually accidentally at friends’ houses. And I can love the stuffy and unstuffy Brits, especially the ones with a twinkle in the eye, in cozy British mysteries. And since I’d never read a Rumpole, I was delighted to find at Joseph-Beth a book of Rumpole stories all about Christmas time - called, appropriately enough, A Rumpole Christmas, by John Mortimer. He died this year, shortly after this book was printed.

Rumpole is a barrister, and a very smart observer. And knows there is no point in arguing with Mrs. Rumpole, She Who Must Be Obeyed. There were twists and turns in each story, and roundabout ways to get there, which I found was Rumpole’s preferred method of arrival. Doesn’t like the straight route, but prefers to slip up on folk. Whether in court, talking to prisoners, or in a spa struggling with the regimen.

My favorite story in the book involves Rumpole blackmailing the blackmailer. Does it very nicely, and with an especially bright twinkle. A fun book, a perfect Christmas read.

I can only read books with Christmas in them at Christmas time. Nothing else makes me content. Anne Perry’s newest in her Christmas series, A Christmas Promise, made me totally content.

Her others in the series have all been about Christmases for adults in various parts of Victorian society and in various British locations. This one is smack dab in the middle of gritty, grungy London in a cold, rainy Christmastime, and features two little girls, one 8 and one 13, caught up in a murder and a search for a missing donkey. The 13 year old is pretty far down the social totem pole, with the 8 year old, whose grandfather is gone and whose donkey is missing, even farther down that pole. I liked both the girls, and would have liked the grandfather, I’m sure, if he had stayed alive and in the story. He made the 8 year old, Minnie Maude Mudway, laugh, so she said through her tears.

Excellent writing, a good, strong and well-told story. Totally satisfying.

All the bread made to date has now been given as part of a particular Christmas celebration, or delivered this afternoon to various friends / colleagues. Last stop was to pick out the huge bouquet of Christmas flowers I love having on the buffet.

Now all the bread being made this evening and tomorrow will be taken out to my sister’s house in Glendale for our Christmas Eve celebration with her extended family. I’m expecting friend Carolyn to pop in sometime tomorrow with the quiche she always makes for me, so I can give her the bread I always make for her. I’m going to give her just one present - a book that beautifully renders Maya Angelou’s wonderful poem, Amazing Peace. Carolyn and I will get around to actually celebrating Christmas together sometime in late January or early February - some years later than that!

Then on Christmas Day, in between laying on the couch sipping Christmas teas and reading the Christmas mysteries I’ve bought just for that occasion, I’ll begin the process of baking bread for all the friends I’ll be celebrating with next week. And for the Family Feast we’ll be having on Saturday afternoon. (I intend to make popovers for that dinner, too - since it’s been years since I’ve made them! They are super fun and super good.)

Sometime over the weekend, I expect the bread making part of my Christmas Pon Farr will evaporate, disappear, cease to be. And I’ll clean the mound of flour off the top of the dishwasher and get on with life!

I love the Winter Solstice - the dark, the stillness, then candlelight and peace. I celebrated it all by myself last night. I had invited two friends, who couldn’t be here - so I called their Higher Selves in with mine, and we had a grand time.

I laid out a big green pyramid candle in the center of the coffee table, surrounded with candles of the appropriate colors for the four directions. Then I realized I had a candle holder with three Goddesses holding the space in the center - so that came to the coffee table to preside. I put in a tape of Goddess chants, lit all those candles, plus the Christmas tree lights, and let myself go.

It was one of those meditations where I thought nothing had happened. But nearly an hour had passed, and I wasn’t asleep - so something happened. Probably events over the coming days will let me know what those Higher Selves were up to!

Happy Solstice and Kwanzaa and Christmas and New Year’s and the Islamic New Year on the 18th, so one of my calendars says.

What a great weekend! I need it to stop so I can get other stuff done! : > and since it’s Sunday evening, that’s a given.

Friday night, after a great lunch at Suzie Wong’s with a good friend, another friend and I celebrated Christmas at Lavamatic - and then walked down the street to the Ensemble to see Sleeping Beauty. Which was, to put it simply, Just Perfect!

Saturday morning was sadness. Linda Bates Parker, a key administrator at UC, who created the Career Center, worked to create a program to make sure young black youth made it in college, and established a wonderful scholarship fund, has left the planet. Her visitation and funeral were at St. Joseph Church on Ezzard Charles. Many, many people came to say goodbye.

On the way home, I took a few minutes to stop into Lucky John’s Slow Food Market, which opened up the street on Woodburn a few weeks ago. A heavenly place, though I couldn’t stay long. Because I needed to prepare for a Reiki First Degree class for some out of town folk. Then with other friends, there was dinner at Washington Platform, and a walk up the street to Music Hall for The Messiah. Which I had never seen in its entirety.

Sunday morning I was moving from the time my eyes popped open. I had two batches of bread in the refrigerator (6 loaves) and some wrapping done by the time my friend Diane and I headed down to the Netherland for the Dickens Brunch, We did the same last year, and just loved it. As we headed out through the lobby, we say a fantastic display! Downtown Cincinnati’s major buildings in cake and icing - so well done and so fun - I’m making it my cellphone wallpaper for the season.

Got home in time to teach the Reiki Second Degree class to the same folk , then baked one batch of the bread I made into loaves this morning. I’m going to wrap the rest of the out of town gifts, put a loaf into each package and put them in the mail first thing tomorrow morning. I’ve been wrapping and writing and listening to VXU’s Christmas music all evening. Aaaahhhhhhhh…… it’s Christmas!

I love this entire season, and all the different ways different peoples celebrate it! So I usually commemorate them all, one way or the other. And St. Nicholas and St. Lucia’s Days, plus Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and Day, plus Epiphany.

Isn’t it great that so many cultures celebrate the tipping point of the light - when the days are the very shortest, and then, a few seconds at a time, begin to get longer again. Tomorrow the 19th, for instance, will be 10 seconds shorter than today. And then about 3 days after the Solstice on Monday the 21st, the days will be begin to lengthen by a few seconds. The increasingly longer days are really noticeable by mid-January.

All the Christmas lights and candles, all the celebrations, all the wonderfully nice folk in the streets, the smell of baking bread throughout my house….. I’m grateful for all those good reasons for the season!

I’ve had Louise Hay’s Meditations to Heal Your Life for quite a while. It came out of her own life, and particularly the self-healing she accomplished, recorded in You Can Heal Your Life. It’s always one of the most popular books on the magic coffee table. Someone will flip it open, read that page, and often give a small sigh of contentment - an Ahhhh of rightness. At Reiki Healing Circle and other gatherings, we might pass it around, so that each person can flip open a page, read it, and then talk about what feelings and ideas have been triggered by that reading.

I just flipped it open to the affirmation: I choose my own loving concept of God. The meditation on the opposite page is titled: One Power created us all. It includes one of my favorite sentences of Louise’s - I Am a Beloved Child of the Universe, and the Universe lovingly takes care of me, now and forevermore.

Here are the thoughts triggered in me by that meditation:

Of course, I chose my own Loving Goddess a long time ago. A mean old guy who believes in hell is not a friend of mine. I also know that we are each a drop in the Ocean that is God/dess/All That Is. Now more often I say The Universe. Everything is Energy, everything is Love.

The opposite of Love is Fear. If there is sin in this loving space, it comes in the form of fear. When fear invades - just push it away, bring up a great memory, relax, take deep breaths, curl your lips up in a smile. Repeat as many times as you have to. ‘Bring back that lovin’ feelin’, as the song says. Picturing God as a loving energy will really make a great difference - give it a try!

A lot of Christmas going on at my house! And one of my favorite parts is buying all the ingredients (mostly organic) and baking all this bread. Anyone I run into this time of year is likely to get a loaf! Just made another batch a few minutes ago. I use a technique called rapidmix, where all the dry ingredients, including the yeast, are stirred together, and then the butter and liquid (milk or water) are heated, and added to the dry all at one time. The big industrial size mixer Brian bought me several years ago then goes to work.

After the dough is pulling away nicely from the side of the bowl, I turn off the mixed, add more flour (I usually use 3 different kinds, and add the fruits and nuts, mixing and matching (dried cherries, blueberries, currants, dates, apples, raisins, golden raisins, almonds and pecans this year). The mixer goes back on for a few, and then I turn the dough out onto the butcher block and knead until it pushes back and is smooth.

I also use a technique called coolrise, which makes it possible to produce fresh hot bread most any time. I let the bread rest on the board for 20 minutes, then form it into loaves, cover with wrap, and stick them in the fridge for 2 to 24 hours. Where it rises some more, albeit slowly. But the yeast is eating the sugar (not too much in my self-invented recipe), and good stuff is happening to the dough.

When I’m ready to bake, the dough gets taken out of the fridge for a few minutes, to get used to being at room temperature, and then gets put in the oven for about 45 minutes, give or take. The whole house smells like fresh bread for days and days.

The loaves have to rest again for a few minutes after coming out of the oven - to get themselves cool enough to cut. It can be hard to wait - especially because I’m always finding wonderful kinds of butter, which I love on warm bread.

Ahhhhhh. It’s Christmas time.