Blogging again!

Almost two months later, here I am again. Blogging since 2006 recently seemed like too long a time. Having a vacation, various trips, and enduring the hot summer of south TX (which continues), I will attempt to get back to writing. 

So here is a random sampling of my retired life:

• I have gotten two postcards from Dee, who commented on my last post in July that she would like to exchange postcards! I have enjoyed her cards so much that I feel like I have found a new friend! It is really easy to write a few lines on a postcard and count it as "mail." 

• The Wisdom Class started again this past Tuesday with a new book that is sparking interesting conversations: The December Project: An Extraordinary Rabbi and a Skeptical Seeker Confront Life's Greatest Mystery by Sara Davidson.

 Although Reb Zalman died this past July, he spent the previous two years talking to Sara Davidson, a seeking and spiritually cynical writer, about dying and death, with stories about his life thrown in. It is very interesting how he met theologian Howard Thurman when he was a young man and thought he was the janitor!

Later, he came to admire him as his professor.

I liked how Reb Zalman described dying (or the "dark end"):

"I don't think it's all dark. Something continues. It's as if the body and soul are tied together with little strings. The closer you get to leaving, the more the strings loosen and the more you connect with greater awareness, the expanded mind." (6)

So often Americans look to Eastern religions for further answers, but it seemed time for us to look at Judaism, the foundation of Christianity in the Wisdom Class.

Reb Zalman and Sara Davidson

•  On the various trips we've taken, I have read a lot of books. I finished the witches trilogy by Diana Harkness with The Book of Life. It's been fun to read all three books; I even re-read the first two before reading the third when it was published this summer. Just days ago, I finished the latest Louise Penny mystery that features Inspector Gamache: The Long Way Home. Louise Penny writes better with each mystery; this one was excellent. 

• I found other books on my travels in independent book stores, so those will be on my list to write about in the near future. 

• And here is a wonderful quote about listening, which was our opening meditation in the Wisdom Class this past Tuesday:

• “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.”
  
  
  
                      ~~Brenda Ueland (1891-1985) writer, editor, teacher of writing