Closing of ACIM site.

Just an informational post. Nothing inspired today...

We are bringing the ACIM questions and answers site to a close this summer. There will be no further additions, though it will stay available online as a reference source. I feel like I'm saying farewell to a comfortable old house in which I have many happy memories, but all in all I'll be glad to move on to new challenges. My personal thanks to all the thousands of people who have participated over the years with questions and comments that always provoked, always stimulated, and often moved me deeply. My thanks too, to the people at the Foundation for A Course In Miracles for allowing me to be a part of this six-year project. I have grown a lot because of it, and because of all of you.

Have been in a strange space the last few months ... frantically, constantly busy, sometimes working half the night: but despite being on that treadmill -- less and less interested in conventional goals and achievements. We published a question about that this week at http://www.facimoutreach.org/qa/questions/questions292.htm#Q1342. I cannot claim I am the "happy learner" but a kind of peace is settling over me. I don't know, maybe it's just fatigue. Maybe it's old age and life is just losing luster. One side effect has been - I have lost all interest in reading books or columns or blogs about The Course. Seems like I passed through a door somewhere a few months ago, which clicked shut and suddenly shut out a whole lot of noise. With the noise gone, I realise how much I don't need it.

Went to see the new Narnia movie tonight. Fairly boring. Too long, too loud, too pointless. Too much CGI. I felt as if I were being assaulted by the music which clamored from start to finish, trying to tell me how to feel about every detail. The kids (in the movie) were fairly ineffective as heroes. Too bland, too British. They were like "the Railway Children." I do see they've re-issued "Last Year At Marienbad" up in Chicago. I'm hoping it will come to other cities. If you haven't seen this 1961 French classic, please do, if you get a chance.

Charlton Heston died ... when I was a boy I saw Ben Hur about 20 times and it was probably responsible for making me want to go into Film and TV work (which I did.) Now 50 years later I saw an interview with Gore Vidal about writing the script, and he was saying the only way to make the dialog scenes between Heston and Boyd (Ben Hur and Messala) anything but wooden and dull, was to postulate a homosexual relationship between them as boys. That's why Messala feels so spurned, and turns on his boyhood best friend. he is a jilted lover. They told Steven Boyd about this but they didn't tell Charlton Heston. Heston just "acts" and grimaces his way through it. Wow! Life has strange rivers.

I sent off to Hong Kong for a DVD of Ben Hur with Chinese subtitles, so my wife can understand the plot, but I can't sit through it any more. To me it is wooden even with the interesting new sexual undertones.

I miss London, you know? I had a flight booked there last month but I had to cancel it because I was just too busy with medical stuff. Maybe next year.

It turns out my nurse who spends one week a month with me giving me treatments has a husband who has a house down in Florida that sits empty most of the year. Occasionally he'll go down there for a week. But here's the odd thing -- she told me the property taxes are $14,000 per year. The house is in Volusia county which I know has a pretty average tax rate, so that must be at least a million dollar home. Just sitting empty! Why does that bother me?