Joya's Birthday!!

Happy Birthday, Darling Joya!! Love from all here at QH including your adoring mother....

Ladybelle!


We love you so much and always will... and wish you all the happiness there is for your wonderful marriage about to begin!!!

Happy Birthday to Ellias Lonsdale, and good luck with the Teleconference!

Ellias is beginning a new teleconference on the Age of Aquaria(us) today, as I understand it. I wish him all the best, and a happy birthday tomorrow.
He is the father of my daughter, Joya, a great and brilliant being, as we knew she would be.

May the long time sun shine upon you.
-- ISB

A snowy Day

It's March 1, 2012, and it's a very snowy day... I hear the roads are slippery, and we seem to be getting a lot of snow coming down. Joya and Andrew are going to visit this weekend-- or at least Joya is (HOORAY!!). Andy will come for dinner on Sat.from Vermont Law School. He's been there a lot since he started his first year studies, and I've missed him very much-- Joya, too. But I know I'll see her once every four or six weeks. Andrew's so busy I am never quite sure when he will come, though it was great to see him here with Limor the other day. Snow, chickadees, cold, winter finally-- though sugaring is starting and now it is almost time for spring...

Check out "Beginner's Mind" on Facebook

It's a blog about Buddhism, and there is something very warm and open and loving about it so far. Also they have read "Tibetan YOga and Secret Wisdom" (WY Evans-Wentz)-- one of Irving's favorite books, and not nearly so widely read in those times as ANY book on Buddhism is today (I mean the early-mid-late Sixties, but he may have read it before that). He spoke often of this book, and I have his copy by my bed. I used to do a meditation each night as I went to sleep (in those days I could sleep!!) visualizing Vajra-Dakini, a fierce goddess of Wisdom (a kind of Kali of Tibet) with a necklace of skulls and so on-- visualize her and then visualize myself as her, dissolving upwards from her feet to the top of her head and the "HUM" above her...and it would dissolve away into nothingness and I would sleep. I didn't sleep much better then. But then I began to have fascinating out of body experiences during this period... and a feeling of immense power and energy. I began to get a bit worried by it because Joya was so little then. What if I could not get back into my body when I needed to because she needed me? (We were sleeping alone in a van in the Ocala National Forest at the time, though with people all around us; I would write at night as J. slept while the whipporwills called from the moonlit trees, and the shadows of the sand pines cast gently moving images on the pools of sand lit by the moon. I wrote by a (kerosene?) lamp by my bed. Hard to believe now... Radiant wisdom, joy and peace were with me. So was Joya, who is now in South Africa on her Great Mission (and I hope that she is also having fun and meeting people). It is the Fourth of July. Happy and free, may all beings be happy and free...

Just back from Princeton Jct and New York

I visited Joya's family in Princeton Junction (just about where the site of the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital is on House, M.D., and attended the Bat Mitzvah of Joya's cousin Becca, who did a great job of reading her portion of Torah and also had a really fun day, as far ss I could tell. It was nice to be there, though we all missed having Joya there too. Then I went into New York and saw my cousin Richard Gilison, Dina Brigish's father, and the son of my aunt Miriam, Irving's sister. We hung around in Washington Square and had some lunch in the Village, and just chatted. It was really nice to see him again! (He doesn't remember seeing me since I was a toddler, but I'm sure we've seen one another since then). I had a great time, but it's absolutely wonderful to be home. What a beautiful springtime this is, and I hope for peace for the world-- and that the death of Bin Laden does not bring more violence and more revenge. Peace to all living beings!

Joya and Ladybelle in 1971 (Joya about six weeks old)

A beautiful and brilliant baby... and a happy mother!

Joya, Dan, and Christina in the Seventies

I am unsure of the author of this photograph, but would like to thank her or him for its use. If anyone finds this objectionable please let me know and I will take the image down.
Joya, my daughter, here is quite young. Christina and Dan were two of her good friends (and mine) in those days. Dan was as a father to Joya when she was very little. I will always be grateful to them both! Joya was special and being with her was a great experience. She did stay up all night, however, as we felt that kids shoulld be free to do as they wished. Having friends who were willing to help us live in the freedom in which we rejoiced was a wonderful thing.

And of course...

It is very Quakerly to do all one can to help poorer people. I am very much aware that "there but for the grace of God..."
We are all one. I still think all the things I thought when I was sixteen, I find, with a very few exceptions. Love, joy and peace are at the heart of all things, and blossom into light through creativity and compassion. This is eternal.
Thanks for reading this, anyone who did!

Joya Allegra Fiske Lonsdale

Joya, Ladybelle's daughter, when she was a baby. Ladybelle's holding her. She was wonderful then and she is wonderful now.

<script src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=5&r=Joya Lonsdale at Quarry Hill Creative Center, about 1971"></script>

Celebrating Don Calhoun, Ph.D.

Today we scattered Don's ashes, and Joya read a beautifully written account of her closeness with Don and Barbara. A number of others reminisced about Don as well.
We buried Don's ashes beneath a magnolia tree to the west of the room he shared with Barbara. We will miss him. This,except for the minerals his ashes will give the soil, I suppose completes his journey on earth. Or "completes his journey on earth."
Two Japanese death poems:
The joy of dewdrops
in the grass as they
Turn back to vapor.
-- Koraku (Japanese Haiku poet)
died 1837
I read this one aloud… with many undercurrents going on…

A bright and pleasant
Autumn day
To make death's journey.
--Fukyu (Haiku poet)
d. 1771
Today was a lovely autumn day, though Don actually died May 5, 2009.
( Love that poet's name!)