Music Of The Night

Its been 1 year since my last post.

I attended a workshop by that fellow Gary Renard back in March of 07 and it was great. I signed-up for a potential discussion group and later met some very nice people and began weekly meetings.

At first we were going through Gary's book and discussing passages that interested us. We would also read the various quotes from ACIM which are included in DU (disappearance of the universe)

After a while we started to simply read the text of ACIM and do some discussing. This has been great ---we go around the circle each taking a paragraph and reading aloud. We are up to chapter 10 now and we usually do something a like a workbook lesson or one of the terms (in the clarification of terms section) This group has been very helpful for me, as I was not making much progress when left to my own initiative. I'm not really doing the workbook yet but I will (started a few times but never stayed with it)

On the 'net, I'm trying to stay out of forum discussions about "atheism" mostly because it always seems so "black or white" ---one seldom hears about Shroedinger or Zukav or Fred Alan Wolf---its all just "Rationalism" and Logic versus "religion" (which generally translates to fundamentalism, usually Christian) Occasionally you'll hear a good word about Buddhism, since its not especially theistic, but Buddhists are not materialists and they believe in some metaphysical stuff. The whole topic is not interesting to me, I agree with Ken Wilber's observation (in his 4-quadrant system) that the lower left quadrant (exterior-collective) does not even acknowledge the existence of the other quadrants (especially not the upper-right corner - interior/individual)

On 10/28/07 I was the host of a "coffeehouse" at our Unitarian church. This is essentially a talent-show (though not a competition) with coffee and desserts. For this one, we did a "Witches and Wizards" theme and transformed the sanctuary into a kind of Hogwarts academy (from the Harry Potter books)

I think this was one of the best we've had - great performers, fun decorations, enthused audience and we managed to finish without going too much over the alloted time (that almost never happens) We had some readings of Edgar Alan Poe, violin music, a macabre story, humorous skit and assorted songs.

I wore a red leather mask and cape and opened the show with the spooky Bach organ music (Tocatta in D-minor) Later I sang "The Music Of The Night" from The Phantom. I provided guitar for a young lady who sang an old Nirvana tune. I also did plenty of odd and humorous banter/ introductions as each act was setting-up. A good time was had by all.