Quite a day

Yesterday, some friends came over for tea (coffee actually).  We were joined by a new lady, but she fit in quite nicely. This required a healthy, general "clean-up" of the house, but one reason to have people over is to force me to undertake that sort of activity. We had bought some cookies, and there were a few left over.  To-o-o bad.

Then in the evening, I attended the "Mandala and Meditation" workshop at the library.  This was not what I expected.  It was mainly middle aged women, with a couple of us a little older.  I think I was the only one interested in mandala, the rest were there for the Meditation.  So the first hour, plus, was spent reviewing the 7 sacred body chakras of Hinduism, with the associated meditation focus, colour, and chant.  We spent a lot of time chanting, and trying to focus on whatever that chant focused on.  She gave us a quick explanation of what a mandala was, (very quick--it's round and you use color, taking into consideration the sacred colours associated with the chakras).  Then we were told to make a mandala. There were canvases and canvas boards, and lots of felt markers and watercolour paint.  At that point, although she put on East Indian music, we were on our own.

The older lady beside me was quite vocal in relating the chakras to the Christian Bible, and the words of St. Paul, and in discussing my interest in mediation.  She was also insistent that Hinduism is the basis of all Celtic spirituality, since, of course, all of the Celts came from India, via the Iberian peninsula.  We were told that there were symbols often associated with the chakras and mandalas, and that these were thousands of years old.  While the instructor said that the symbols had no real meaning, when I asked if they could have had meaning thousands of years ago, she poo-poo'ed the idea.  I left a little early.

In the interest of becoming more active, I walked to the library.  The wind was so strong, that my library bag, with 5 heavy books in it was almost blown out of my hand.  And then it started to rain a bit.  Thank Goodness, both the wind and the rain had disappeared when it was time to come home.

At that point all I wanted to do was get out of the darned corset, and find a glass of wine, ----and maybe, a cookie.