What Else Do You Do When You're Not Blogging?
I like to take advantage of my June garden with the perennials: iris, peony, poppy, lupine, and clematis to hold parties for a couple of the groups to which I belong. Last Thursday morning I held the yearly retreat at my home of my Spirit MindBodyGroup. We met at the usual time and meditated for about 20 minutes Several people sat at my dinette table and meditated while looking out over Lake Michigan. This location is certainly transcendental. At 8:00 AM sharp, my "bird clock" went off with the chime for that hour: a cardinal's song, to bring the group out of meditation. Breakfast was served: quiche, bagels with various flavors of cream cheese, cut up fruit, orange juice, crullers, and coffee. Then I presented a talk about Three Kinds of Spirituality as postulated by Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen, in an article from Enlightenment Next Magazine. I plan to post my talk on this site in the next few days or weeks. Watch for my talk. The first type of Spirituality is called polytheism, or animism, or the idea that spirit is in everything -- we humans, animals and in even in rocks -- much like what Native Americans believe. Therefore I presented several of my collection of camouflage prints which have a Native American theme. tune in to one of the next few posts to read the whole summary of my presentation. After an hour, the group went outside to my property and did some walking meditation along the Lake and among my flower beds. Afterwards, I presented Ken Wilbur's Theory of Everything, from his book by the same name. We closed at about 11 AM -- another successful retreat!
Last Friday I entertained my water aerobics group, the Water Wonders, at my home. I had 22 ladies and 3 brave men for a potluck lunch. Everyone brought a dish to share so we had lots and lot of food. I made some punch--one spiked with vodka and the other identical but without vodka- containing blenderized strawberries, frozen lemonade mix, orange juice, club soda, and sliced kiwi for garnish. As I was shopping for condiments for this potluck at MetroMarket, they were giving free tastes of an appetizer that I thought had a great taste combination. If you can believe it, the sample lady was actually stuffing green grapes cut in half with a tiny bit of a Gorgonzola cheese and chopped pistachio mixture. I loved the taste, but hated the idea of the work involved. So I just cut the grapes in half, and combined them with 7 oz of crumbled Gorgonzola, and a similar amount of chopped pistachios, all together in a bowl and added a tablespoon of a sweet orange sesame salad dressing to hold the mixture together. I served it on some pita crackers. This provided that same taste sensation with a lot less work. The mixture of potluck dishes was extraordinary. I had enough seating at the dining room table, the dinette table and the outdoor patio table. At 1 PM sharp I presented my Powerpoint presentation of "La Folia" -- the history of a classical music piece dating from the 1600s, and moving forward to the score of the movie 1492, Conquest of Paradise. This is a very moving presentation that I have presented in various venues. Sometime I might post that presentation on this blog, if I can figure out how to transfer PowerPoint slides to a blog. In the mean time, use the following link to find the music, sung by Dana Winner, that culminated my presentation. I think you will find it very moving. I did!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T9ipPkr6Xo
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