Met up with Lindsay at the studio and did some more glazing.  She gave me a book with magnificent examples of what she believes I will be able to do using the wheel.  Today, was simply glazing some pieces I'd done last week.  I did learn a few tricks e.g. dipping a piece in wax so the glaze doesn't get on the bottom of the bowl or plate etc.  Also saw how you can pour some glaze into a bowl as opposed to painting it.  At some point Lindsay will be making her own glazes and we will have them in vats where we can dip an entire piece.  I'm looking forward to that.

Question of the Day: How do my emotions help me to understand more deeply? We must go through the stages of feeling, not only in the last death of anything but all the earlier little deaths. If we abort these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. So many people learn that the hard way—by getting ulcers, by all kinds of psycho-somatic diseases, depression, chronic irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course, honor them consciously, or find some appropriate place to share them. Emotions are not right or wrong, good or bad. They are merely indicators of what is happening, and must be listened to, usually in the body. People who do not feel deeply finally do not know or love deeply either. It is the price we pay for loving. Like Job we must be willing to feel our emotions and come to grips with the mystery in our head, our heart, and our body. To be honest, that takes years.

Thank God I don't work in Customer Service or a complaint department or a billing department.  I must have called Medicare and Tricare for Life (TFL) two separate times today plus the billing department at the hospital, and I still don't understand the gobbledy gook of the bill for Rich's stents. 

It's  10:21 AM as I type here.  I want to document (for my own edification) how I'm feeling before today's visit to the Oncologist.  How I'm feeling is somewhat (not altogether) related to a recent set of concepts I've heard about over the past year or two.

This piece from Richard Rohr OSF explains pretty much where I am regarding organized religion.  For years I believed and belonged.  I regularly attended, but I'm not sure I always practiced the message. Now I do my best to practice the message of the one I've chosen to follow...Jesus.  You may have chosen Abraham, Gandhi, Siddartha Gautama, Muhammad, or my good friend Zarathushtra....there are many from which to choose.  Take a minute, read this and give it some thought.   Does it resonate with you in any way?  (Bold emphasis added by me).  I don't belong anymore and I don't attend...but I hold myself accountable to practice.

 

Is group affiliation more important than personal transformation?

Historically, religion has more often been a belonging system or a belief system, than an actual system of transformation. When belonging and believing is your primary concern, you do not really need healing or growth, or even basic spiritual curiosity. All your homework is done for you and handed to you. If you let the group substitute for your own inner life or your own prayer journey, all you need to do is attend. Church for several centuries now has largely been a matter of attendance at a service, not an observably different lifestyle. Membership requirements predominated, not the “change your life” message that Jesus so clearly preached.

Membership questions become an endless argument about who is in and who is out, who is right and who is wrong? Who is worthy of our God and who is not? This appeals very much to our ego, and its need to feel worthy, to feel superior, to be a part of a group that defines itself by exclusion. The Country Club instinct, you might say. That is most of religious history. The group’s rightness or superiority becomes a convenient substitute for knowing anything to be true for oneself. Where did Jesus recommend this pattern? It has left Christian countries not appreciably different than other countries, in fact, sometimes worse. The two World Wars emerged within and between Christian countries. We can do so much better.

Yesterday, HSHS friend Dee called to tell me our mutual friend Rosemary's husband Pat died.  It was sad to hear this news.  Even though Pat has lived with a devastataing lung condition compounded by other medical problems, hearing about his actual death is sad.

I just finished watching the end of 'The Notebook'.   I'd seen it before, but watched it once more.  I did not like the book, but this movie fills me with so much emotion.  You probably know the story so I won't summarize it again.  Recall near the end when Allie has a brief interlude into reality, Noah (played by James Garner) says to Allie (Gena Rowlands) 'nothing is ever lost' she asks if he made that up.  "No, it's Walt Whitman".  

If you've never been to the Sistine Chapel this is a phenomenal link sent to me by Pensacola buddy Linda.  Since I will probably never get there, this is a great way to see it.  Linda said it appears much larger than she remembers it possibly due to the lack of crowds in this photo presentation.  So, enjoy. Be sure to work the keys or drag your cursor so you can see everything.  Now, if only I had someone here to tell me what I'm seeing as I go round the chapel. Click Here    

 "Owl's Creek Begs the Question"

              by Toni Wynn

Nature left to itself will end in a 

tangle

bent on succession:
the giving way of a meadow to trees

after scores of seasons.

This outdated sure thing

had no parallel life

before it got this hot. Yes, it's hot-

azaleas lurch in ugly error;

robins hoop across a February stage,

then shiver into March.

Heat waves pull water up

independent of tides.

The creek, kinetic as a scherzo,

wants to flood;

spill into meadow, making marsh.

So which species live where, and for 

how long?

If there's a planning commission,

then what is the plan?

Sad thing is, we can't leave it alone.

The meadow won't survive either

way.

What need determines our 

allegiance-

the water or the trees?

*****************************************************************************

Toni Wynn (originally from NJ...YES!) now lives in Hampton, VA.   The above poem is from her 2009 book "Ground".  The poems in it cover the gamut of her experiences when she worked at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach.  They reflect the adventures and rants of co-workers to the beauty and splendor of nature. Owl's Creeks is not far from where we live.

At first I thought the line 

'spill into meadow, making marsh' 

 was onomatopoeia, but now I realize it is alliteration.  

After lunch at home we headed to the outer banks using the mapquest directions.  It looked so different to me than when we used to drive to Nags Head in the late 70s.

Rich said the road has been rerouted in parts.  We drove out I-64 with heavy traffic and then got on some other lesser travelled roads for the duration.  Still, where is the beach road I remembered?  This new way is supposed to be quicker.  Not very scenic in my book.  We stopped a few times and then headed down dogwood road as the map advised. WRONG!!!!  It ended in a dead end and we didn't know where we were.  Boo on you Mapquest.

By then we were tired and decided to head back to VB.  If we had used our own Atlas maps we would have been fine.  Apparently we should have continued on the big road, and we would have run into a direct road to the beach road of my memory.  Oh well, it was a beautiful day and we were glad to be out.

On the way back we passed a Golf Club 'Keefer's'.  We headed down the road to a lovely setting and enjoyed a late lunch.  I had shrimp and cheese grits.  Weirdest grits I ever had.  Good but weird.  I LOVE grits and I know good grits from my living in the deep south.  These grits must have been hominy grits...there were little pieces of what appeared to be corn.  Most grits are ground very fine and look like cream of wheat.  As I said these were good tasting just different.  

Rich had some Carolina barbecue which in my mind is the best barbeque...it has a vinegary base as opposed to a tomato base.  However he said his was too dry.  He had a beer and I had a few mouthfuls...it was sooo good.  I've never been a beer drinker, but always felt it was the best thing to have on a hot day when one is thirsty.  

We may go back again and take the right road, but we'll wait a few months.  

When we got home Travis and his helper had finished staining the deck.  It looks brand new and oh so good.  Travis is hard to pin down for a definite time to do something, but when he does it....it's done to perfection.  I've lined him up for some other jobs e.g. pressure washing the house, fixing a crack in the upstairs master bedroom and painting the downstairs guest bath.  Rich also wants him to do something with the stones in the back yard.  None of these projects are urgent so it'll probably be a while before we see him again.  Neighbor Jean saw that he was staining our deck and asked him to come over and give her a quote for hers.  

On a beautiful day this poem seems appropos even tho' it is set in September.

Blackberry Eating

"Blackberry Eating" from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words by Galway Kinnell. Copyright © 1980. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.