Over the last 5 months since I last posted a blog entry, I have been rebuilding the HLC&R (Haelan LifeStream Center and Retreat), and celebrating the Crimson Tide’s 13^th National Championship season, and all the exciting games of that fabulous 2009 season. Regarding the HLC&R, please see the Photo Gallery of pictures taken this past January. I hope to update the photos as the seasons go by, and improvements continue. Please feel free to give me a call and come and rent this incredible deal!

Regarding Alabama’s football success, well, it’s been fun, and there are just a mere 140 days to go until the 2010 season opens. Great Expectations abound in the hearts and in the collective consciousness of the Bama Nation! We, who are fans of the Tide, are looking for a repeat of last year’s success. The annual intersquad scrimmage concluded the team’s spring practice just yesterday. Over  91300 people attended the scrimmage held in Tuscaloosa at Bryant-Denny stadium which is currently being remodeled to accomodate upwards of 100,000 fans. The 2010 spring A Day Game was broadcasted live by ESPN. Over the top, you think? Get a life ye Bammers, you think?

If you are thinking such thoughts, then you might not understand what is regarded as a religious standard in the Southeastern part of these United States. It’s the Crimson Tide, it’s football in Alabama. According to a recent Facebook poll, the head coach, Nick Saban, is more popular in the state than God! 

Yes, there are some other competitive football teams in Alabama, and so there are numerous sects, if you will.  

It is really good for the team to have so much fan support for a spring scrimmage. It’s good for the players, the coaches, the recruiting, the fans, and somebody is probably improving some bottom line. One might also think that the good folks in the good state of Alabama, like me, love the ongoing distractions provided by their team’s storied tradition and legacy. The White Team (second string offense and first team defense) beat the Crimson Team (first string offense and second string defense) in a sudden death tie breaker. One of the announcers put the Alabama White Team as the 5^th best team in next season’s poll!  His #1 team was the Alabama Crimson Team. Other teams listed by the announcers in the top 5 for the 2010 season were Ohio State, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia Tech.

It would be rather interesting to see how Alabama’s  White Team would play against such a gauntlet of rivals, not to mention the usual gauntlet of SEC rivals, considered perennially as the nation’s most difficult conference. Fortunately, for Tide fans, the Crimson Team will be around to lend the White Team a hand. I should post a whole blog on this entertaining mundane college football subject, and just try get some of it out of my system. After all, I’m just exercising my ability at creative and wholesome journaling…

OK, here is a short version: I’ve been an addict of this football team since I went with my grandfather from Montgomery to New Orleans on an overnight Pullman coach to watch the Tide defeat Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl (the Tulane Stadium, now no longer existent), 10-3, capping the 1961 season to claim its 6^th National championship. It was pretty exciting for a 10 year old kid (I never even attended the University of Alabama.) to watch QB Pat Trammell, Lee Roy Jordan, Billy Neighbors, Bill Oliver, Mal Moore, and other greats, smother the Razorbacks with the same suffocating defense which had allowed the season’s 11 opponents a total of a mere 25 points scored. Yeah, I’ll probably have to get this out of my system someday, and journal my memories of some fun times.

For you readers who may not know what a Pullman coach is, well, it is a railroad passenger car with especially comfortable furnishings for day and night travel. These days it’s one of those bygone era type of lovely memories. My last experience in a Pullman like venue was traveling through the Alps on a full moon night from Austria to Italy, and waking up near a ferry location on the way to Venice. It was the summer of 1972, during my college years. For about 20 years I forgot about my football passion as I studied premed, medical school, surgical residency, and developed a surgery practice. I also studied spirtuality, natural healing, marriage, and child rearing. I forgot about the Crimson Tide for a while, but it resurfaced in the late 1980’s part of my life.

A couple of blog entries ago, I was studying and writing about the Mayan calendar and 2012, and I promised some more research analysis. I still want to do that, and I shall, for things on Gaia are beginning to intensify, more so starting in August of this year. What happened in my research efforts about the 2012 process is that I began to feel a bit overwhelmed by some rather interesting interpretations of the Mayan dates. In my analytic swoon, the Alabama Crimson Tide started looking like a juicier subject to focus on, and so I lapsed into the high drama of college football, some good old football voodoo (harmless fun white magic), and allowed myself a distraction from my study of the world’s problems.

My last blog entry of September 17, 2009 mentioned the Crestone arrival and community presentation of my friend and mentor, Mark Macy. I devoted a blog entry, on June 16, 2009, to how I met Mark and his work, entitled “Study Categories of Life After Life, III.” Mark’s colon cancer changed both of our lives forever. He has written about this experience in several of his 7 books, and on his earlier blog postings. His macyafterlifeblogdrive site has changed its web address, meanwhile, to www.macyafterlife.wordpress.com. His entries on how to improve oneself and the world are excellent, and represent over 2 decades of worldly and spiritual research. Recommended for all.

In late February of this year, I found my self contemplating a personal quandary. Football season was over; no more distractions, excepting Crestone’s beauty and loving inhabitants. I had to fish or cut bait over my quandary, let go, and discover a simple resolution to what was on my mind.

This discovery announced itself at a cremation ceremony conducted here for a friend and client named Greg, who passed on to Glory in late February. Greg was involved with The Crestone End of Life Project, and his body was cremated one early morning in an open air cremation ceremony.

Crestone is the only community in the United States which offers its inhabitants the option of open air cremation, a dignified, sensitive, and profound experience for all. You can see www.crestoneendoflifeproject.org for more information.

Well, as Greg’s body was offered to the ethers in that 4 hour experience, I received some answers from a familiar Spirit side voice from my past.

Coming next on Crestone and Beyond is the story of this ceremony, and how it affected me.

In the meantime I shall continue to honor the mundane, as well, with a hearty ROLL TIDE!

Signing off from Crestone and Beyond,

Love.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 11:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.