Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

I am just getting less and less willing to deal with plastic, particularly plastic that can’t be recycled. I’m also much less willing to put food in plastic.

So one step I’ve taken is to wash and remove the labels from glass jars after I use them. Then, if I’m going to share homemade soup with someone, it can go into a glass jar for the trip to their homestead. And I’ve been just throwing away the number 5 plastic that most delis use - all that gassing off it does goes right into our food. I don’t even want to see it or think about it. I haven’t started taking my glass jars to What’s for Dinner yet, for them to fill up, but that’ll happen soon.

So when I ran out coriander and cinnamon a few days ago, I decided to use two tiny glass bottles I already had (one was a tiny catsup bottle from a restaurant). Clifton Natural Foods sells bulk spices, so I bought a half ounce of each - which they put in plastic bags. When I got them home, the spices went into the little glass jars, with the labels from the bags in the jar with them. I feel good about having made that switch. Next time, I’ll take the little jars to Clifton Natural, so the spices never have to spend time in plastic.

I decided just a while ago not to buy any more of a goat milk yogurt I’ve been buying, because their plastic container can’t be recycled. I’ll email them about it first, to give them a chance to change and convince me they’ve changed.

I’m just getting more and more serious about doing this. It is so wrong to use a non-renewable resource like plastic, which gasses off and is affecting our health in ways we don’t even know about, to hold our food.

I’m glad that Keller’s IGA, Staples and Bigg’s have cartons where we can recycle plastic bags right inside their doors. Hope Remke’s keeps that up, once they buy Bigg’s.

p.s. and here’s another thought I’ve been thinking lately: when I was a kid, in the late 40’s and early 50’s, breast cancer almost did not exist. I’ve watched those numbers go up all my life. Now it’s a bit more than 1 in 8. So it’s something we’ve been doing to ourselves, in a relatively short period of time. May or may not have anything directly to do with plastic, but is just symptomatic of our disregard for ourselves - at the same time we tend to overindulge in everything. Quite the paradox, isn’t it?

Woke up this morning with that new mantra in my head. Just there, being clear. Then it finished itself:

Life is a Breeze - Beautiful, Light and Easy.

Felt good, especially on this bright spring day.

So I’m going to keep playing with it, letting it run around in my head as long as it wants to. Just turning everything I bump into right into that breeze - so it’s all Beautiful, Light and Easy. Sure worked well the entire day today!

Feel free to adopt it for yourself - as I always say, an affirmation is seldom true the first time we say it. After 13,000 or 14,000 times, though - that’s another story! : >

This is a Great Movie! Super fun, lots of silliness, tons of wonderful dragons, great and supersized Vikings with Scots accents, which takes some getting used to. And a very brave little hero named Hiccup, who can only follow his own star - er, dragon, and thereby changes history.

Mary and I saw it in Imax 3D (getting spoiled and loving being in the middle of the action). This is such a smart and always-thinking little kid - raised to believe, as his culture does, that the highest and best activity of a man is to kill a dragon. When, after his good thinking helps him figure out a way to bring one down, he has a chance to kill it - he can’t. He even goes home and makes a partial leather tail for it, to replace the one damaged when Hiccup brought him down.

There are lots of other interesting interactions - Hiccup with his father, with his father’s friend, the father and the friend together, Hiccup and Astrid, lots of twists and turns, and interesting architecture, lots of stubbornness and not listening. Also archetypes in abundance, as well as morals, fables and mythic happenings.

Doesn’t matter how old you are - you’re gonna like this movie!

I’ve been playing with the weather for a long time. Just started out picking out a cloud to focus on - and then picking it apart. I graduated over time to working on the weather during the Masters Tennis in August. And then was in charge of the weather for Second Sunday on Main, during the years our troupe of metaphysicians participated.

And now I’ll be doing a workshop on Working with the Weather at the Victory of Light Fair at the Sharonville Convention Center. The workshop will be on Sunday, 4 p m. Which means I have to write down what I learned how to do first by just playing - and then eventually, by taking some responsibility and refining my techniques.

My friend Kathleen called yesterday afternoon to thank me for stopping the rain during the Heart Mini-Marathon. I was feeling like a failure because, though the rain stopped, it continued to be a chilly and cloudy day. She pointed out that none of the runners wanted sun and heat. They were very content just not to be running in the rain.

And then last night, during Reiki Healing Circle, I wanted the thick clouds to break up, so that we could see the full moon. Instead they got thicker. Maybe it’s only one request per customer per day? : >

The Pope in his Palm Sunday sermon says he won’t be intimidated? I haven’t heard or read anything about intimidation. How about justice, though, Papa? I haven’t seen any tears for all those years and all those children. And then the Vatican’s press machine wants to deflect everything and take care of the Pope by accusing everyone of intimidation. Church leaders should really be the last things on their own minds and our minds. Sounds like the church is as self-protective as ever, and doesn’t understand at all what’s going on.

I was amazed, too, to read, in the German coverage, that only 2% of former East Germans, and 8% of West Germans go to church at all! All of Europe is almost de-churched. And Ireland is so incredibly angry. Sinead O’Connor, who was also abused in a church run institution for wayward kids, has been very on target with her writing. Whereas, in much of America, Catholics go to the church they choose, believing what they choose to believe, and turn off when one of those disgusting cover-up or negative letters from bishop and archbishops is read.

Interesting to watch a powerful institution destroy itself because it refuses to see. It’s actually an excellent case study in organizational behavior. And the pace of destruction is picking up. Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times on Sunday, called for a nope - a nun - to be pope. So that when the next pope is announced, they could say Habemus Mama: We have a pope. Sure sounds good to me!

Wow! What an evening!

First to ZZ’s Pizza, where we sat at the bar and watched Butler beat Kansas State. And saw the beginnings of another upset - West Virginia over Kentucky (Pat followed the rest of it on her iPhone, before, during intermission, and after the ballet). The re-opened Zz’s is still as good as ever - and maybe (in the case of the house salad and the banana cream pie), even a bit better. Very hard to do.

Then to the Aronoff to see the world premiere of Mozart’s Requiem as a ballet. The loge level was the perfect spot to see all the patterns of those wonderful dancers. My favorite dancer, Cervilio Miguel Amador, performed as part of the company, then had a solo, again with the company, then a bit later a duet with Dawn Kelly. And back again after intermission with the company. His compactness and power - along with grace - make him easy to spot.

The staging, the lighting, the choreography, Carmen DeLeon, Xavier’s Chorus, excellent solo singers. And a thrilling, archetypal story of paralyzing grief, just going through the motions, falling into despair, then the slow recovery and finally, moving on. An incredible story told with great drama through bodies and music, not with words.

We truly have a world class ballet - they absolutely earned the more than 5 minute standing ovation.

A Jewish friend of mine, who moved out of town long ago, used to hold a very eclectic and more or less vegetarian seder (not to say macrobiotic!). When she moved, I took over for a long time. Gradually, the whole thing has died down to just our family - Brian, Patrick and I. We have several different Haggadahs - the book that is read during Seder, which this year is coming up on Monday the 29th.

But the book I wanted to talk about is my friend Zell Schulman’s book, Passover Seders Made Simple. She’s even got a section on vegetarian seders. Plus she’s made shopping lists for us, with each different passover meal she’s describing. Too fun and easy!

Then I had to go to Kroger’s a couple of weeks ago to get currants for the Irish soda bread - next year maybe I’ll order them from Ireland. I hadn’t been to Kroger’s for about 2 years, and it was only currants that could make me go. Just doesn’t feel very good to me - no one seems happy (shoppers or employees), and I want my food to be around happy folk.

At any rate - I was in the City Center Kroger at Mitchell and Spring Grove - found the international section, and had a great time wandering around. Bought all kinds of great stuff for the seder. I had chosen that Kroger for the health food section I had heard mentioned. It was just plain pitiful. So hidden I walked by it twice, and had to ask a staffer. And they actually had Centrum vitamins in there. No health food store would carry such an artificial product. It was not a loved, energized or vital place. Prices didn’t seem different from the same brands at health food stores, and products were just the same. Just an Ugh! section. I also couldn’t find the organic produce, except for some lettuces. Maybe that’s all there was. It all just reminded me that I had made the right decision years ago. To shop where folk are happy and it all feels good.

I am urban to the core. I love city bustle, so much to see, do, smell, experience. So the Walkable Neighborhoods / Workforce Housing conference at the Cincinnati Convention Center this afternoon and tomorrow morning is a real pleasure.

Hanging out with other folk who love cities - their richness of texture, diversity of folk on the streets, enormous possibilities. Today we got the definition and parameters of Workforce Housing - meaning folk can live and work in the same areas, that transportation costs and long commutes become a minor part of life, that lots of demographics are all in the same space, having fun together. Did you know that only 23% of households in this country is married folk with kids? So why are we building all those houses for them? The workforce housing we’re talking about means teachers, firefighters, police officers, medical personnel, technicians of all sorts. Some of them fit into the married with children category, many of them don’t.

We heard from Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago, who is great for tilting his head and seeing ordinary things in a new way, giving us a new perspective. Jody Robinson from Bellevue, Kentucky, talked us through her energized river city, planner David Dixon gave us more about what makes these healthy neighborhoods, and Todd Kinskey, Director of Hamilton County Regional Planning, let us know what is happening here. Carson Combs of Dublin, Ohio, outside Columbus, gave us details on the transformation that small city is planning for itself. Exciting!

Tomorrow we’ll be hearing more about regional specifics here, from a developer, a banker, an Agenda 360 leader and Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls. Another great session, no doubt!

So I celebrated in the usual way - making Irish soda bread to take with fresh organic butter to every meeting I attended for about a week and a half. What fun!

I love making Irish soda bread - have a recipe from an Irish cookbook that I alter and add to as it feels right. This year, it was better than ever. I learned how to fold in the buttermilk faster and easier, with less dough handling. That’s what my cookbook writing friend says is needed - bread doesn’t like to be handled, according to her.

So it was a great week - can’t wait til next year.

Son Brian had downstairs A Pilgrim’s Journey, the autobiography Ignatius of Loyola dictated to his friend and secretary Luis Goncalves da Camara beginning in 1553. I, along with many others currently and previously Catholic, basically believe that the Jesuits, founded by Ignatius, are the intellectuals of the church - the best and the brightest. So I thought perhaps I’d read it. Paging through, I felt that the jewels were hidden in too many footnotes, and I was not going to be willing to work that hard.

Wiki suddenly came to mind - so I wikied Ignatius, copied out several succinct subheadings of material and read them on my desktop. As you can imagine, snake lover that I am, I was surprised to find the following in the wiki material:

Upon recovery (from a major war wound), he visited the Benedictine monastery, Santa Maria de Montserrat (March 25, 1522), where he hung his military vestments before an image of the Virgin. He then went and spent several months in a cave near the town of Manresa, Catalonia where he practiced the most rigorous asceticism. Ignatius began seeing a series of hallucinations in full daylight in a hospital. This repetitive vision appeared as “a form in the air near him and this form gave him much consolation because it was exceedingly beautiful … it somehow seemed to have the shape of a serpent and had many things that shone like eyes, but were not eyes. He received much delight and consolation from gazing upon this object … but when the object vanished he became disconsolate.”

Ignatius and snakes? Who ever heard of such a thing? I’d heard about his visions of Christ, and of the Virgin - but a heathen animal like a snake, sacred to the Goddess, appearing to a saint? That was certainly great news. I’m surprised the church didn’t remove all references to that long ago.

When I flipped through the book, I found more on this beautiful serpent apparition. For a while it appeared several times a day, and continued to appear for 15 years. Eventually, he decided it was of the devil. Don’t you expect the Inquisition, sniffing around lots of future saints, might have pointed that out to him?

So now I know at least part of the reason I was drawn to the book - to learn about Ignatius and his beautiful snake, with 7 or 8 shining and jewel like eyes. Clearly at one time it was his meditation and his joy. So he was a friend of the Goddess for part of his life. He always stayed an intellectual, not swallowing whole all that he was told, though his writings instructed his followers to obey the church totally. They never did, either.

Hmmm. I’m just remembering a dream I had years ago, with a big beautiful jeweled white snake. She had a jewels all over, but a particularly beautiful huge pink stone on the very top of her head. I liked Her so much I made a sculpey figure of Her, which still lives on the spice shelves in the kitchen. Interesting to know that Ignatius and I have a jeweled serpent in common.