24 December 2003: Good

Christmas Eve potluck at Stagewalker's, starting early this evening. Dragon Lady and I have much cooking to do.

And the pilgrims are starting to arrive. Taarna, Galahad, and Grace are in town already. Sometime in the next week, Geminica will get here, and my parents.

There will be a December 31st Bone Council. It will be at Lexicat's. Check the Moot Jungle if you need the address, or contact me. I don't know the exact start time yet, though noonish seems likely. Also don't know yet whether it's officially a potluck brunch as well - but hey, I'm sure no one will object if you bring us something to eat.

You're invited. Invite others.

And then, of course, there's the New Year's Eve party at Aleph's.

This is shaping up to be one of those weeks in which so much is happening that there won't be time to write about it. Especially since sometime in the next few days I've got to write up a detailed proposal for a new class I'm trying to get started at the Y. So this is probably my penultimate entry for the year; there'll probably be one more on Monday, covering Sunday night's lab session and anything really interesting that might happen between now and then. And after that, I'll catch up with you in January, whenever the smoke clears.

Initiations lab, session eight of sixteen. The midpoint. A very "internal" session for me and for most of the group - more inner exploration, less dramatic action, very little interaction. Many people having questions and uncertainties about their work and where to go with it, but they're good questions and uncertainties, the kind that open one to learning. "Many people" includes me.

Syrinx, for very sound reasons, has withdrawn from the lab, bringing our number back down to 15 and again shifting the gender balance in a maleward direction.

I'm much more at peace with my vanity now - which is good, since I keep becoming aware of more of it. I've had a couple of interesting and productive conversations with Sherpa about it, last night on the way home and just now on the phone. No time to write about it all in detail. Sherpa's suggestion, in the end, was to try not just accepting my vanity, but sanctifying it and using it as a power source. I'll be trying that. May as well do something with all that vanity - I doubt it's going away anytime soon.

"At least you're aware of it," Sherpa said last night. "You'd be a terror if you weren't."

"I was," I confessed.

We did Personal Polarities this time, a standard piece of paratheatrical lab work that we hadn't done yet in this particular lab. In a Personal Polarity, each lab member works alone, within his or her own small area of the space, on whatever polarity he or she chooses to work on. I did Vanity/Freedom, of course. Very productive. Sherpa says we'll have a chance to do Personal Polarities every session now. I'm probably going to continue to explore Vanity, polarized against various interesting contrasts: Vanity/Hope, Vanity/Surrender, Vanity/Humility, and so forth.

It's been a good year for me. Thank you, God.