Blog #1 6-24-2013 The Turning of the Wheel, Where Have I Been? What is here, now?

Posted on August 1, 2013 by musingsontheway

Blog 1 of 2013 6-24-2013

The Turning of the Wheel, Where Have I Been; What is here, now?

The long, lingering salmon sunset of the solstice seemed to go on forever. Now, it is summer again. Where was I this day in 2012? I was driving from Irapetra, Crete to Iraklion in preparation to take a ferry across the Ionian Sea to Santorini. It was the final day of my month long retreat on the little travelled southeast coast of Crete.

I returned home from my sabbatical pilgrimage to Europe and Turkey at the beginning of August, 2012. My 3 1/2 months on the road had begun to break the many scripted patterns of house holding, family, and work that had long gripped me.
So, began the next challenge, reentry. It was wonderful, at first. The honeymoon of homecoming, the sunny pleasure of Lake Chelan with Maureen and David, swimming, sunning, wine tasting, hanging out with Pat and Ralph, her brother and his family. Spending time with David and helping him move out of his apartment and prepare to depart for active duty training in the Navy, en route to Djibouti, Africa, as an Information Dominance Warfare Officer (IWDO) was a valuable father-son time together. And then, he was gone.

The next stage of reentry arrived with the fall of 2012. In September, There was a Ceile De silent retreat in Oregon, packed with learning Celtic spiritual lore, legend, tradition, and Gaelic chants, and sacred movement.

Then in early October, Pat and I attended a Yoga retreat at beautiful Harmony Hills, just above the Hood Canal, a vast deep water extension of Puget Sound adjacent to the Olympic Mountains and National Park.

I had mostly avoided full Yoga practice in the preceding few years, after experiencing several injuries. However, I entered into the Yoga practice, over the three days, engaging 3 extensive sets, with caution and consciousness. It was centering and grounding, as it always had been, and I emerged without injury, feeling grateful to be back among the Three Trees yoga community.

Concomitantly, I began an 8 week course in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the profound training practice pioneered and extensively researched by Jon Kabat-Zin. I was, and I am very impressed with the ingenious simplicity and depth of teaching, not only of mindfulness meditation practice, but also body scan, walking meditation, mindful practice in every aspect of daily life, and metta (loving kindness) meditation.

Thus began a new routine of Yoga twice a week and daily Mindfulness meditation. I resolved to seek further training to become a teacher of MBSR, certified through the University of Massachusetts teacher certification program. As I attempted to sign up for the initial week of training with the originators, Drs Kabot-Zinn and Saki Sakerelli, I was disappointed to discover that it was full with a long waiting list.

In addition to the yoga, meditation, walking, and house holding, I began aerobic workouts and resistance training at the gym, in preparation for a long planned “bucket-list” trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. It was a “moderate” intensity REI Adventures guided expedition, with 7-10 mile hikes at over 11,000 feet elevation.

Meanwhile, I began to follow the “paleolithic” diet, recommended by my Naturopath to lose 10-15 pounds accumulated over the preceding few years, especially during my travels. My blood pressure and heart rate had increased over the previous two years and I was determined to reclaim cardiac fitness. The paleo diet is a high protein diet modeled after what early human “hunter-gatherer” populations must have eaten. No grains or dairy products are allowed, almost no starches at all. I began to eat more meat, poultry, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. It was remarkable how quickly 10 pounds dropped away, and later, another 5 pounds. I felt more fit by the time we departed for Ecuador, in late December, than I had in years. I had, however, developed a pain in my right S-I joint, (pain in the butt) during the course of my increasing intensity of workout in yoga and the gym.

Pat and I had an excellent and vigorous adventure, hiking in the Otovalo Highlands, up the flanks of active volcanos, bicycling, kayaking, swimming, and snorkeling in the Galapagos Islands. The amazing, exotic wildlife, giant tortoises, iguanas, bird life, and under-sea rays, sharks, fish, and coral were breath taking, exceeding my expectations!

We returned from the equatorial climate to the depth of NW winter and the new year, 2013. I began to feel inner compulsion to “get busy” and validate my time off with some “productive” outcome. Meanwhile, Pat was ill for several months and clearly recognized that she was burning out with the intensity of her work and would need to reduce her hours. Without realizing it, I began to push myself again. I signed up for 9 intense days of training in Part 2 of the Enneagram professional teacher training in Menlo Park, then flew down to visit my sister and her family in LA.

I signed up for a week long silent retreat sponsored by Spirit Rock, Buddhist Center, entitled “The Convergence of Mindfulness Based Interventions with Buddhist Dharma Traditions”. I had called repeatedly and failed again to gain entry to the Kabot-Zinn primary MBSR program. However, at least three 5-10 day silent mindfulness retreats are a part of the requirements for the teacher certification. It became apparent that it would take 3-4 years to complete all of the extensive and expensive requirements to become a certified teacher of MBSR. Nevertheless, I was discovering a continuing deepening of meditation and a quieting of my mind, and increased alertness to the daily life around me.

Feeling more fit, and Pat recovering, we went skiing at Crystal Mountain, on Mount Rainier. I had not skied for several years and rented the new wider type of skis. We had a wonderful time in the morning, ate lunch at the top of the ridge facing mighty Mt. Rainier. However, in the afternoon, we got ambitious and tried several, more challenging slopes as the sun turned the snow to “mashed potatoes”, heavy thick sticky snow. At one point, skiing, traversing back and forth across a steep slope, I turned my skis upslope and tore my left calf muscle. It was like a molten spike was plunged into my calf. It was very difficult to ski down the rest of the slope. I knew right away that I had done significant damage. Also, very unmindfully, I had worn my contact lenses under my ski goggles. I had not worn them for many months. When I got down from the slope and back home, I not only was lame, but I also had a virulent eye infection, purulent and losing vision rapidly. Fortunately, I was able to get in to see my optometrist emergently that night. With antibiotic drops, I recovered over the following week. I had not been mindful….

For the next three weeks, I was unable to walk, do yoga, or any other workouts. I was soundly chastened for my recklessness. Gradually, however, My leg improved, I began to walk, walk further, go to yoga, and then to jog a small amount. Feeling better and vitality returning, I jogged a bit the next two days. Suddenly, my calf gave way and the molten spike was worse. I had retorn the injured, partially healed muscle fibers and I was lame again, but worse this time.

In the fall, 2012, I had also participated in an annual Dance of Universal Peace combined with the enneagram, a program that I loved every year. I had completed the Part 2 of the professional Enneagram teacher training and now was faced with the decision as to whether to embark on the internship required for enneagram teacher certification. I attended another intensive three day enneagram program taught by the pioneer Stanford psychiatrist, Dr. David Daniels. I had resumed attendance at the monthly Seattle enneagram society meetings. I resolved to begin the internship process which required that I engage a professional enneagram supervisor, purchase a video camera, and complete at least 20, 1 – 1 1/2 hour enneagram typing interviews, at least 10 video recorded and discussed with my supervisor. There are other requirements, as well.

Meanwhile, I saw a world Mindfulness scientific research conference, in Boston, and decided to fit it in. It was an amazing conference, the science from researchers all over the world that is demonstrating powerful health and resilience effects in multiple populations, including students, soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, elderly, and hospice patients, among others. The day before I arrived in Boston, however, the terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon occurred. The experience of being in Boston during the manhunt, confined to the hotel, sharing in the frozen shock of the Bostonians, was almost paralyzing, especially with intensive mindfulness practice during the seminar.

I returned home for a few days, and that was the time that I reinjured my torn calf muscle. When I departed for the Spirit Rock Mindfulness 7 day silent retreat a few days later, I could barely walk through the airport. I limped painfully and remained mostly sedentary during the week of meditation in California. I recognized that I had fallen back into an old pattern of over-performance, pushing too hard. I could feel the too muchness of it. I had to slow down.

I began to recognize that I was experiencing a return of the old “driven to perform in order to feel worthy” pattern. Specifically, I was approaching the anniversary of my one year sabbatical, April 1, April fools day, and I had no plan for return to work.

I did not feel called to any specific career activity. I had been networking with various professional colleagues, especially hospice and palliative care psychiatry, psychooncology, and spiritual/existential psychotherapy practice. I also had met with some colleagues that invited me to join their Wellness Development Group (WDG) as a teacher, retreat leader, and consultant. As I investigated, both areas seemed elusive and uncertain. Meanwhile, I prepared and taught two different presentations on spirituality and psychiatry to the UWMC psychiatry residents that went extremely well.

As I faced the end of my formal sabbatical, on April Fools Day, I began to acknowledge that the term “one year sabbatical” was a cosmetic disguise for semiretirement. I did not feel any energy or desire to return to work at that point. For several weeks, I experienced painful insecurity, a siege of comparing myself to other physicians and psychiatrists, and feeling ashamed of my weakness, chronic pain, and lack of energy. I walked painfully with a slight limp, could not do yoga, and felt vulnerable to reinjure myself. Meanwhile, the pain in my right S-I joint had increased. I had mostly ignored it, as it was overshadowed by my acutely injured calf. Gradually, I came to terms with myself that my sabbatical was going to take more than a year and I had no idea if I really wanted to return to professional work.

As the weeks past, and I settled and slowed down at home, after the flurry of traveling and workshops, I began to feel a sense of peace and decreasing muscular and personal tension. I began physical therapy twice a week with new, additional daily exercises and avoidance of many yoga stretch movements and positions. After 7 weeks post reinjury of my torn calf muscle, I began to resume my daily walking by the water at Redondo. As I walked, however, I noted increasing pain in my right S-I joint and I tried to listen to my body to understand what it was expressing or acting out.

I had purchased a small video camera and begun enneagram typing interviews. I recorded several interviews and discussed and was mentored by my supervisor by phone from the east coast. I began scheduling weekly interviews months ahead. I and my interviewees enjoyed the interview process and several referred their friends. I have begun to consider how I might make use of this growing expertise professionally.

Two other growth edges began during the first half of the year. After clinging to the edge of membership at my long time Missouri Synod Lutheran church for a decade despite feeling progressively more constricted and unseen, I visited a small Unity Church nearby. Immediately, I felt at home. It was easy to be open fully with the people I met there. They were pursuing spiritual growth through meditation, prayer, and direct experience of the divine in all things, just as I am. I began attending week day seminars and discussions and meeting new friends, including a couple of coaches who invited me to join their coaching group in Tacoma. The pastor, Darlene Strickland was very real and genuine, with a sense of humor and advanced and broad spiritual perspective. I had much that I could learn from her. I look forward to Sunday services and other Unity events. I am reading about, learning, and practicing “affirmative prayer” as part of my daily 45 minute mindfulness meditation practice. I find this “affirmative prayer” difficult.

One of the hopes that I had for my sabbatical year was that of developing a writing practice. During my time overseas, I wrote regularly for my blog and journaled frequently, but I experienced a block in trying to write anything serious or goal oriented (publishable). At the beginning of 2013, I discovered and joined a writers group and began practicing small writing experiments and stories. I continue to nourish a small hope that I might develop as a writer, though I have not developed or devoted myself to daily writing commitment. My return to this blog is a manifestation of my intent to grow my writing, as well as my observation of “what is here, now”. I have been experimenting with writing fiction, watching what emerges for fun as well as practice.

My life feels full and growing organically, less pressured or intensely trying hard. I am developing an inner observer through my mindfulness practice and enneagram awareness that alerts me when I relapse into unconscious old reactive patterns of unworthiness, scarcity, and effort-fulness. I am developing friendships and social and spiritual community, having fun and fascinating conversations through my enneagram interviewing. I have continued weekly chiropracty, massage, and now physical therapy accompanied by daily walking and other exercises. Though, at times, I despair of healing in my body to become relatively free of constant pain, I believe that it might be possible to heal and gain relief of the wearing, tiring effects of living with chronic pain.

Do I want to return to work professionally? Not in the next 6-8 months, I don’t. It is not calling me; there is no sense of urgency. Do I think that I will return to my profession? Yes, I think it is likely when I have fulfilled the calling of this extended sabbatical. But, I am not sure. If writing were to become more of a passion, if opportunities to coach, teach, and lead retreats presented themselves, I might move beyond the complicated workaday medical model, focused on clinical pathology. Perhaps, I might volunteer somewhere, hospice, or some activity with children.

My wife, Pat has begun to feel burnt out with her overwork in the past year or two and plans to cut back on her work to 3/5s time. This will make our finances much tighter and require living partially from our savings and investments. I have been deeply engaged in organizing and tracking our finances, our budget, savings, and pension investments. Pat and I will soon conference with a financial planner to assist us in understanding how much we need to live on and how much we can afford to take as pension distributions without running out of money in old age. We are beginning to investigate long term care insurance (LTC). We plan to investigate home and landscape remodeling as well as decluttering, with the aim of eventually selling this house.

Meanwhile, summer rain is falling softly on my garden. This year, for the first time in perhaps a decade, I am tending my roses carefully and growing tomatoes, strawberries, and zucchini. Palisades of scudding clouds present fantastical figures against the blue sky. It is quiet, here, now, only the birds, the gentle rain, and distant airplanes punctuate the silence. All is well.

A Unity blessing

The light of God surrounds me; the love of God enfolds me; the power of God protects me; the presence of God watches over me; wherever, I am, God is! And all is well.

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Creating space for the unknown to emerge

Posted on October 7, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #36 October 2, 2012 Creating space for new emergence

Scheduling open time dedicated to the unknown

On July 31st, I flew home from my 3 1/2 month pilgrimage overseas. It was time to bring home the unconstrained spontaneity and awareness of the present moment, “what is here, now?” I was wary of the routine and chores of householding regaining their grip on my nascent creativity. I knew that a series of important family events would take priority in August. Maureen was visiting from NYC, David, preparing to leave for at least a year on active duty Navy orders to Djibouti, in Africa. We enjoyed a 5 day trip to Lake Chelan for swimming, wine tasting, and reading in the sun together. I helped David move out of his apartment and sort his belongings into storage or our house preparatory for sending to him in Djibouti.

Grocery shopping, preparing meals, cleaning up, keeping up with garbage and recycling, doctor and dental appointments closed around me. I went to the apple store for 8-10 hours for classes and assistance in using my IMAC and IPAD, photography, word processing, and the new Mountain Lion operating system. Pat and I went to Oregon for 5 day Ceile De silent retreat. I worked hard on a teaching presentation for the UWMC first year medical students on “Medical student well-being”, learning to use the Apple equivalent of powerpoint, “Keynote”. I attended an excellent seminar at Swedish hospital on Physician Well-Being. I also sought to relax and not become driven by my task lists, to read the newspaper, books, and magazines, and exercise outside vigorously to improve my conditioning. Keeping up with snail mail and email and reconnecting with friends was a priority.

I shared fun summer activities with Pat and supported her during an illness as her work was wearing on her. Gradually, my days became more and more dominated by lists and things to do. I practiced daily writing intermittently, journalling, and recording dreams. I strengthened my meditation practice and began to explore training in mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR). I began to notice the return of increased neck and back pain and misalignment, requiring a return to the chiropractor. I developed a dental abscess in right upper face that required painful root canal, antibiotics, and construction of a new biteguard. It slowed me down and distracted me a lot.  As is my usual tendency, I pushed through it.

Despite the painful body ailments, I deeply enjoyed a 1 1/2 day enneagram workshop combined with the Dance of Universal Peace. I love the people and the energy and grace of this annual program. My niece, Naomi, who is now graduated from college, 22 years old, visited for the first time in many years , and stayed at our house. I enjoyed showing her around Seattle and hosting her for 5 days. Her visit was especially heart warming as I have long sought to reconnect with my siblings and their families. As September came to a close, I recognized a familiar unwelcome busyness overtaking me. And, I had not blogged for over a month.

My intention of getting a writing coach and reserving daily hours for writing eluded me. On the other hand, I had begun an 8 week training in Kabot-Zinn’s Mindfulness program MBSR, beginning to work toward the experience and life style that would eventually allow me to become a teacher of the MBSR. I notice that although I have meditated and sought awareness for many years, remaining awake and aware mindfully is very difficult. I am excited by the vision of increasing my awareness and presence with the aid of this program, daily practice, and subsequent required retreats, leading to teaching this to doctors and other health professionals. It is in total accord with my sabbatical theme of what is here, now? What better gift to myself and the world can I give than helping to increase awareness and raise consciousness of our own default patterns of reactivity, fear, violence, and scarcity?

Awareness, in my experience, brings a calm peace, a compassionate and kind disposition to our human foibles and ignorance. When I am aware, I have a choice to not act out my fears and attachments, to eschew violence and reactivity, in favor of a more loving and accepting attitude toward everyone and everything. When I am aware, I am not on autopilot, reacting to life according to fight/flight survival related habitual neural pathways, learned early in childhood. I agree with my wise mentor, Richard Rohr, who says, “pain that is not transformed, is transferred”. If I am aware of my own pain and suffering, I can choose to experience it fully and accept it as part of the truth of my human life, with compassion. When I accept and am reconciled to suffering, I don’t take it out on someone else or “kick the dog”. I don’t pass it on, creating violence and suffering in others. I do not know what pathway ahead that I am called to as yet, but I am convinced that a contemplative life of mindfulness is a key part of my spiritual calling.

I have spoken of writing, perhaps writing a book. Yet, my ego and my shadow have resisted the discipline so far. It is hard to discern whether becoming a writer is truly my spiritual calling or an ego thing. Perhaps, it is both. Perhaps, my call to writing will only emerge freely when I have let go of any attachment to outcome. I believe that my spiritual path will only evolve in process, through listening for the divine still small voice. My ideas of a book and recognition or financial reward may be the critical obstacles to writing in the moment. The divine can only emerge in the present. I cannot hurry or force it, I cannot “push the river”.

To be fully alive, I must receive the pain and the joy, fear and love that life offers me. I acknowledge that I am not in control of reality, and I wait and watch with wonder and curiosity about what I experience, what is going on, within and without.  In my life these days, it is as if everything is an experiment.  I have experienced frequent brief moments of attunement with the divine flow, in which I joyfully embody and act from, and with the creative emergence, in each moment. This is my deepest desire but quite difficult for me, as living in this way requires a continuing surrender each moment, and profound trust in God and the universe. My ego and default patterns react with fear and reflex effort to control, to cling, or to avoid reality. These holding patterns contribute to painful misalignment and muscle tension in back, neck, and head. It is what it is. I do not know whether becoming mindfully aware of my body can loosen the grip of old neuromuscular reflexes. In the meanwhile, I trust my body to be part of my soul’s guidance.

From “The Four Quartets”by T. S. Elliot (1943)

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre to pyre–

To be redeemed from fire to fire.

Who then devised the torment?

Love, Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hand that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power can not remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

The Many Wines, Rumi

God has given us a dark wine

so potent that drinking it,

we leave the two worlds.

God has made sleep

so that it erases every thought.

God has made Majnun

love Layla

so much that just her dog

would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines

that can take over our minds.

Don’t think all ecstasies are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.

His donkey was drunk on barley.

Drink from the presence of saints

not from those of other jars.

Every object, every being

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.

Judge like a king and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,

or some urgency about,

“What’s needed”.

Drink the wine that moves you

as a camel moves when it’s been untied,

and is just ambling about.

The Road Home

An ant hurries along a threshing floor

with its wheat grain, moving

Between huge stacks of wheat,

not knowing their abundance all around.

It thinks its one grain is all there is to love

So we choose a tiny seed to be devoted to.

This body, one path or one teacher.

Look wider and farther.

The essence of every human being

can see and what that essence eye

takes in the being becomes.

Saturn. Solomon!

The ocean pours through a jar,

and you might say it swims inside the fish!

This mystery gives peace to your longing

and makes the road home home.

Begin, Rumi

This is now. Now is.

Don’t postpone till then.

Spend the spark of iron on stone.

Sit at the head of the table.

Dip your spoon in the bowl.

Seat yourself

Next to your joy

and have your awakened soul

pour wine.

Branches in the spring wind,

Easy dance of jasmine and cypress.

Cloth for green has been cut from pure absence.

You’re the tailor,

settled among his shop goods,

quietly sewing.

Posted in sabbatical 2012, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Arrival, Transition Home

Posted on September 10, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #35.   August 6th

Transition Home – What is Here, Now?

As I described in my previous blog, I spent my last couple of days in the Brittany region of France.  I stayed in a small cheap hotel, above a bar in the tiny town of Thiex, about 8km from Vannes, the regional capital.   The continental breakfast in France included coffee, juice, a baguette, cut in three or four pieces, butter, jam, and also a large croissant.  After breakfast, I would always save a piece of the baguette with bread and butter (or with cheese if I had some) in a napkin for lunch.  Occasionally, a hard boiled egg would be part of breakfast, and I could add that to my lunch.  

Each morning, I drove west into the Breton region of the Morbihan Gulf, a large area of water, islands, wetlands, bird sanctuaries, and complex ecosystems.  In this area also, are a multitude of Neolithic standing stones from the prehistoric Celtic tribes related directly to those is Ireland and Scotland, their Breton language closely related to Gaelic.  They too share in the legends of King Arthur and Merlin, and a common body of oral history.  I wandered through acres of aligned standing stones, stretching for kilometers outside the tiny town of Carnac.  Dolmens, menhirs, tumuli, and ring forts are widely scattered about the landscape.  I hiked on forest trails, in some cases, alone, to discover a huge Dolmen hidden away in a wooded clearing.  Later in the afternoon, I drove to the end of the Quiberon peninsula to find a swimming beach.  Both days, I was refreshed by a swim in the Atlantic Ocean.  It was a bit of heaven, standing stones and ocean swimming.  It seemed an apt circle to complete as I returned to Celtic lands and Neolithic sites in France after beginning my sabbatical in Celtic, west Ireland, searching for neolithic monuments.

On August 30th, I began my return home, driving from Brittany back to the Paris area.  As I got within 45 km of Paris, at 2:00 PM, in the 4 lane traffic came to a stop.  It took 31/2 hours to get through the Paris area and north to Senlis, an old village with many Medieval buildings.  I stayed there, 35 km outside Paris, and only 20 km from the airport.  The next morning, it was relatively easy to return my renal car and make my way through the labyrinthine airport terminals to my departure gate.

On August 31st, I departed Paris Charles De Gaule Airport on Icelandic Airlines at 2:15 in the afternoon.  There was a 2 hour layover at Reyhavik, Iceland, with a change of planes.  I arrived at SeaTac Airport at about 6:25 PM and 9 hours time zone change, a little early, and customs and immigration went remarkably quickly.  It had been a comfortable and smooth flight, and I contacted Pat by cell phone when I landed.  She had  checked on the flight time of arrival and was already at the airport, so we met at baggage claim.  My bag was among the first unloaded.  Before I knew it, Pat and I were on our way home.  The weather was beautiful, sunny and balmy, and welcoming.
I noted a feeling of the strangeness that everything was familiar, after 3 1/2 months of continuous unfamiliarity.

My first week at home, I was jet lagged, fatigued, and forgetful.  I sorted through my mail that Pat had saved in a box, while I was away.  Over the next 1-2 weeks,I noted an inner pressure to do, be be busy, resume a task driven schedule, as Pat was doing with her work life.  I made lists and pushed myself to accomplish them for a few days.  I could notice waves of urge and compulsion to make more lists and earn my worthiness somehow, since I was not “gainfully employed”.  However, as the jet lag mental fog cleared, I found myself able to restrain my automatic reaction.  I practiced being quiet, meditating, and allowing sufficiency to live in me.  Of course, there was yard work, house decluttering after having moved out of my professional office, and some professional and business issues that needed attention.  I wanted to begin to discover a new pattern of life, a creative way forward, without preconceptions or cognitive lists and goals.

However, it was August in Seattle, a month of optimal weather and fun local activities.  Almost immediately, we planned and enjoyed Pat’s mom’s 85th birthday celebration.  David was preparing for his move out of his rented apartment of 2 years and mobilization to active duty in the Navy.  He had struggled and pushed the Navy bureaucracy over the past year to qualify on a fast track, in his specialized duty as an information dominance warfare officer (IDWO), and then obtained orders to Djibouti, Africa for a year.  Also, Maureen had completed a grueling summer internship with a leading consulting company, commuting from New York City to Washington DC each week. She flew home for a vacation and to see her friends and contacts here in Seattle.  During her stay, we enjoyed a relaxing 4-5 days together with our adult kids, in Chelan, swimming in the lake and visiting wineries for tastings and dinner.  Maureen departed a few days later to visit friends in San Francisco and Los Angeles, before returning to New York to prepare for her second and final year in her MBA program at Stern School of Business, NYU.

After our trip together to Chelan, and Maureen had departed, Pat worked hard to catch up with her work life.  David’s time in Seattle, near to family, was rapidly drawing to a close.  We both knew that David would be gone for more than a year on a tough assignment to the Horn of Africa, and wanted to enjoy some time together.  He invited me to fly with him, in a small Cessna aircraft, at sunset over the gorgeous Puget Sound area, and practiced “touch and go” landings and flying with instruments only, as the summer skies darkened.  He has completed his commercial certification as a pilot and trained as a flight instructor.  A few days later, David and I met in Seattle at Century Link field for dinner and a Mariners game.  The Mariners won their game and we had a great time together.  And then the day arrived when he was moving out of his apartment.  A friend helped him with the heavy furniture, and I enjoyed helping him complete his move, organize his stuff in a storage locker and prepare for his time away, separating his civilian clothes from military uniforms and the few things he would need to take with him.

After David’s move, he stayed with us for a few days, sorting his life in transition.  After we dropped him off at the airport in late, August, I awoke and began to refocus on my sabbatical journey. I am entering new territory, without professional job or income for the first time in my adult life. I now have the opportunity to follow my heart and listen to my soul’s call as to what is next for me. I have a teaching project at the UWMC, teaching 1st year medical students about “medical student well-being”…. Which requires research and discernment about what these young doctors in the making really need to know to survive and thrive in the chaotic modern world of medicine and health care.  My past study and teaching on the topic of “The Wounded Healer” is directly connected to this topic of medical student well being and invites creative thinking, mining my own experience and research as I seek to build my expertise in the growing field of physician well-being.  

Swimming in Lake Chelan was heavenly during our days east of the mountains. It was like a baptism and a welcome immersion in the elements of sun, earth, air, and water, continuity from my pilgrimage in Europe.

The Swimmer    Mary Oliver

All winter the water 
has crashed over
the cold sand.  Now
it breaks over the thin 

branch of your body.
You plunge down, you swim
two or three strokes, you dream
of lingering

in the luminous undertow
but can’t; you splash
through the bursting
white blossom,

the silk sheets—–gasping,
you rise and struggle
lightward, finding you way
through the blue ribs back

to the sun, and emerge
as though for the first time.
Poor fish,
poor flesh,

you can never forget.
Once every walll was water,
the soft strings filled
with a perfect nourishment,

pumping your body full
of appetite, elaborating
your stubby bones, tucking in,
like stars,
the seeds of restlessness
that made you, finally
swim toward the world,
kicking and shouting

but trailing a mossy darkness—–
a dream that would never breathe air
and was hinged to your wildest joy
like a shadow.

I Am Too Alone in the World, Yet Not Alone Enough      Rilke

I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing—–
just as it is.

I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want , in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones—–
or alone.

I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too old
to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

I would describe myself
like a landscape I’ve studied
at length, in detail;
like a word I’m coming to understand;
like a pitcher at mealtime;
like my mother’s face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged.

Husam      Rumi

There is a way of passing away from the personal,
a dying that makes one plural.

Serve light in the buttermilk to become nourishment
for many.  Your soul is like that, Husam.

Hundreds of thousands of impressions
from the invisible are wanting to come through you!

I get dizzy with the abundance.  when life
is this dear, it means the source is pulling us.

Freshness comes from there.  We’re given the gift
of continuously dying and being resurrected.

the body’s death now to me is like going to sleep.
No fear of drowning.  I’m in another water.

Stones don’t dissolve in rain.  This is the end
of the Fifth Book of the Masnavi.

With constellations in the night sky, some look up
and point.  Others can be guided by the arrangements:

the Sagitttarian bow piercing enemies, the Water Jar
soaking the fruit trees, the Bull plowing its truth,

the Lion tearing darkness open to red satin.  Use
these words to change.  Be kid and honest,

and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.

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A Golden Thread of the Journey

Posted on August 10, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #34. July 31st

Reflections on a Golden Thread of the Journey

Return to Home, on Icelandic Airlines, and 9 hours of jet lag

Lourdes was such a return to the spiritual womb for me, triggering so many memories and yearnings from my early childhood spiritual training and initiation, as a Catholic. Being in Lourdes was also a real pilgrimage, as I seek to become an elder, one of the “grandfathers” of my community, seeking mercy and healing for my own mental and spiritual pain and confusion. I am beginning to realize further the internal spiritual split that the millennial crisis of Western Christian story, myth, and symbol has imprinted within me. The Father/Mother, Masculine/Feminine, Yang/Yin, Mind and Spirit/Body and Soul is an imbalance, a crack, in which the world is broken. This split extends in so many directions, like splintered glass both within me and our world culture. I believe it is clearly a, or the, critical source of violence and runaway exploitation of the earth and all of its people, including ourselves. The more that I practice inner observation and awareness, the more that I realize how I do violence and exploit myself, and am prone to do so to others. This is a multigenerational brokenness or split. It is most fully realized in western Eurocentric civilization, but attempts throughout the world, in other cultures to imitate us and/or react against us, have made the split extend to nearly every culture on the planet.

I return to memories of my own early spiritual imprinting, as a Catholic. My mother was an Irish Catholic from New York City. My father, from Texas, was a non-practicing Southern Baptist, which was an obvious split in itself. My writing trail is returning me to narratives that I received in my Catholic training, that has been reawakened by my pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Another story that fascinates me now from those early days, fourth grade or so. I was in catechism class preparing for the sacrament of my first communion, a very important occasion in my life. We were carefully instructed in the spiritual mystery of the Eucharist, the wafer of unleavened bread, that was transubstantiated into the actual body of Christ. Transubstantiated, that’s a mouthful for a 10 year old, but I was skeptical, curious, and naughty. I had fantasies of taking the host out of my mouth after receiving it and studying it, scrutinizing it for what made it special. It tasted like cardboard. The nuns heard some of us mischievous boys murmurings and told us this story. Once there was a curious boy who did not respect the mystery of the Eucharist. He held the host in his mouth until he could remove it and take it home. Then, he stuck a pin in it to see if it was really the Body of Christ. It started gushing blood. It bled and bled and it would not stop. I had visions of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Disneyland version, with the room and the whole house filling up and sloshing with blood, flowing out of windows and down the street. I dared not mess with the host after that story, which I remember vividly to this day.

Being in Lourdes was like being back in the Catholic world of my childhood, still skeptical and rebellious, yet daring also to suspend disbelief, and allow myself the experience, to hope from a place beneath my rational mind. And I approached my journey there as a faithful pilgrim, noticing, taking in the details, the spiritual atmosphere and valuing the encounter. My experience in Lourdes, while peaceful and penetrating, was not comparable to the unexpected shuddering spiritual seizure that I bathed in at the Chartres Cathedral that recent morning when the unseen organist broke through the veil of my commonplace world.

All around the world, in every race, gender, culture, nationality, level of education, wellness or lifelong disability the search and striving for such an encounter with the holy, in every era of human development has mobilized and motivated us in ever new ways, as well as the traditional. The wonderful, awful, painful, now distorted Christian myth and symbol is my tradition. I do believe “there is something afoot in the universe”, and that we humans always anthropomorphize. We need stories and images, and myths that are truer than surface reality, even while they are place holders for the invisible, unknowable, inscrutable, “Ground of Being”. As I write this, I feel a burning of tears about what these myths, my Western tradition Christian myth means, the mystery that it holds, the spiritual heights and depths it has reached for, found, fought over, lost, and in small pockets around the world, regained.

Carl Jung deeply respected and saw the amazing power of the Christian myth for the first 1800 years after Christ. The art, music, architecture, poetry, mystical writings, monastic life, and community coherence, the symbolic, held the zeitgeist of the west for millennia. But Jung saw that the Christian myth had lost its power, its salience. Writing from Switzerland, Jung saw that Europe, particularly, had become secular, and it’s massive legacy of ancient cathedrals stood largely empty, the metaphor no longer providing the necessary spiritual container for the individual or the collective psyche. He saw the world wars, the holocaust, the nuclear bomb as evidence of humanities’ need for a new, more comprehensive myth, a spiritual verity, that could provide the coherent container for our civilization’s science, wars, capitalistic juggernaut, population explosion, and ecological crisis.

As I have visited 11th to 15th century, soaring, Gothic cathedrals in a number of French towns, I am repeatedly struck that the beautiful orate church in each town is named Notre Dame. And in each church, the statue of the virgin Mary and her various images, myths, and stories filled the stain glass windows, the many altars in the front and sides of the church, and its separate chapels. I couldn’t understand why the name, Notre Dame, was so widespread. I looked up the translation on the Internet and found that it means “Our Lady”. The great Chartres Cathedral is dedicated to Mary and there are several Black Madonna statues, holding a black Christ child. It would be heretical to say, though perhaps true. Much of the “Christ”ian church, unspoken, could be said to be Maryians, disciples of Maryism. The Catholics, with all of their tired and painful patriarchy preside over a vast underground worship and devotion to Mary, the Mother of God. She is the nurturing, gentle, approachable, image of God(dess), to whom real and broken people can come. I think of her as holding divine feminine archetypal qualities as Kwan Yin, in the Buddhist tradition, or Durga, in the Hindu faith.

Just as Celtic Christianity (and Native American and other indigenous religions) and it’s strong balanced focus of Masculine and Feminine, invisible, transcendent, sky father and immanent, earth/material/embodied earth mother has been making a comeback, and feminism, and the rebalancing of gender power and ideals, the feminine face of God is showing up everywhere. And none too soon, if the earth is to survive. I was always a spiritual seeker and I was raised in the patriarchal, masculine image of God. Jesus was a man. All priests and most pastors were men. Buddha was male as was Mohammed. The Hindu yogis seemed to be mostly male as I learned about them in the 1960s and the 1970s. In college, at Baylor, the preachers were all men. As I studied the Bible and became a Protestant, Lutheran, Missouri Synod, the pastors were all men. For me, there was something important missing in the Godhead.

Perhaps fifteen years ago, I read a book called The Feminine Face of God. It was eye opening, a kind of “of course”. Within my self, within our culture, within the Christian and most other religious communities that I knew about, this “of course” did not translate into my lived inner or outer experience. I talked about it, studied it, wrote, promoted, and sought spiritual community where it was real. Perhaps, because I could not extirpate my entrenched masculine God programming, in my primary world view, all of the secondary world view learning and seeking about God’s visible, earthly, somatic feminine face seemed weak. I could think it and feel it but not live the experience fully enough to buy it, at the cost of my life, temporal and eternal. There was always the shadow of my childhood punitive, God who could consign me to eternal hell, fiery torment and oblivion, if I didn’t stay within “the lines”. Besides, heaven never attracted me that much as a kid, but hell sure scared and deterred me.

My sabbatical pilgrimage, began in Ireland, the source and wellspring of Celtic Christianity, where also Saint Bridget and Mary are powerful images of light bearers, giving birth to the light, mother’s of God. I proceeded to Iona, an island of Celtic Christian prayer and pilgrimage for a thousand years, where I had heard that the ground, the dirt itself, was permeated with prayer and holiness. I did not receive any lightning bolts or divine encounters there. Then, I visited Fionn, the Anamcara, in my Ceile De’s wee monastery, in Scotland, keeping and cultivating the flickering candle of the continuous and ancient Celtic Christian tradition, in which the feminine face and reality of God was a given, not a new idea or a grafted on compensation. Fionn holds or “channels” some lovely aspects of the goddess archetype. It still felt too heady, not in them, but in me. The cold wind and the monastic prayer schedule were difficult. I am afraid that I have developed reflexive inner resistance when I am asked to color within the lines, even when it’s my own choice…..

So, I went to Crete, to one of the earthiest places that I knew, where the elements are fiercely present, and where I reflected on the elements of mother earth and father sky, in my blog, highly conscious of the dangers of the masculine sun, and the balm of my daily swims in the feminine ocean. Crete was also the seat of the Minoan civilization which was matriarchal, had women priestesses, held the Dolphin in esteem, and did not make war with its neighbors as far as we know. I did not know about the feminine in the Minoan civilization when I chose to go to Crete.

However, I still am a child of my tradition as a Western Christian, raised Catholic and educated as an adult in Protestantism. I will never escape God the Father, and if He somehow can also be a She, I believe the human race has not found a better model or Godman reconciler, human face of love and grace, compassion and forgiveness than His son, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I appreciate Buddha and believe that he is of the same mindset as Jesus but he is not the western anthropomorphized intersection of the divine and the human, invisible and visible divine that lives in me.

My visit to Turkey was a return to a place that held great spiritual energy for me at age 19-21. (Crete also had been a safe, earthy, healing place for me then as well) I smiled to learn, while in Cappadocia, that Anatolia means “Land of the Mother”. I did not know this when I chose to go to Turkey. Visiting the magnificent AyaSophia Cathedral, mosque, now museum, was another unexpected exposure to God as the Woman Goddess, Wisdom or Knowledge, which is the meaning of Sophia. In Cappadocia, I found myself exploring caves of hermit monks and monasteries hidden in cave from the 1st through the 4th century and learning about the Eastern Orthodox tradition about which I knew very little. The Eastern Orthodox tradition is also very patriarchal. However, during my journey, I have been reading translations of the stories and writings of the “desert fathers” and come to discover that there were also recluse and monastic “desert mothers”, reknown, holy women anchorites as well. My 9 days in Dalyan were more like my time in Crete, a mental and spiritual intermission, earthy, embodied, snorkeling and swimming in the warm Mediterranean Sea.

I still do not know really how or why I chose to spend the last two weeks of my sabbatical pilgrimage in France, though Chartres and Lourdes had been calling me. I considered many other countries, but none seemed to beckon me. I did not think about why, when I decided to immediately drive to Chartres upon landing in Paris. I did not know that Chartres was dedicated to the virgin Mary, when I chose to go there, or that so many cathedrals that I would explore in France would be named “Notre Dame”, Our Lady. I had a somewhat vague idea about Bernadette and Lourdes, being associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary. I am always intrigued to notice what and where I end up when I allow myself to be spontaneous, to wander, to be nonlinear, and receptive. So, this process of internalization and real embodied integration of the dark, underground, lunar, earthy, physical, chaotic, playful, creative, destructive, abundant, nurturing, seductive, receptive, oceanic “feminine”, yin, with the all powerful, transcendent, terrifying, assertive/aggressive, invisible, spiritual, solar, light filled, creative, overpowering “masculine”, yang is a paradoxical unity in duality. These opposing polar aspects of the divine were calling me, a work in progress. Throughout this pilgrimage, without really intending it, I was synchronously drawn to the divine feminine. How do I realize this “conjunction” in the aspects of God, as Jung called it?

After leaving Lourdes, the last 6 days of my time in France have been a wrap-up. I have been traveling along the Atlantic Coast to Royan and La Tremblade, during an intense heat wave for several days. On my last day in Lourdes, the temperature scale hit 35 degrees and more (95 degrees Fahrenheit). The air and the car were very hot as I drove north and west to the Atlantic Ocean. My first night along the Atlantic, at La Tremblade, the hotel was without air conditioning and the 98-100 degree heat was accompanied by high humidity. Leaving the window open to allow some air movement and hope for cooling during the night, let in a myriad of bugs, mosquitos, flies, gnats, tiny biting “noseeums”. Drenched sweating outline on the sheets and the, skin crawl and prick of insects and humidity, made sleep difficult. I was groggy and exhausted in the morning, with some insect bite wheal and flare reactions. I had wanted to go exploring on the Isle of Oberon, the wild coast of a slender island, just a few miles west, over a span of bridge.

After breakfast, I wrestled with the idea of staying through another sleepless miserable night, there, as I had reserved for 2 nights. I listened to my inner dialogue, old stoic pattern, “you can do it one more night, it will be a hassle to move and find another hotel, right now, in the peak of the French vacation season. You’ve already paid for it; you don’t want to lose the cost for a room you don’t use, etc. it will cause ill feelings with the management and it is really a comfortable and friendly, well located hotel other than the heat wave and lack of air conditioning”. However, a new thought entered my mind, a way of thinking that I have been seeking to cultivate. “I don’t have to be miserable, I can be good to myself, listen to myself and make a compassionate choice”. I don’t have to suffer this . Many things that are beyond our control do cause me to suffer unavoidably. Acceptance of legitimate suffering is healthy, I believe, the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference. Gratuitous suffering, however, is not a virtue…. It is masochism.

I spoke with the proprietress and she understood, despite her only French and my minimal French. My room was on the western side, and the heat wave was a tough spike lasting only a few days during each summer. She suggested that I contact booking.com, through whom I had reserved for two nights, to see if I could cancel the reservation at such short notice, without being liable for payment. After calling and talking frankly with the booking.com guy, and then asking the proprietress to call him, they agreed that I could cancel the reservation without charge. The hotel lady made a few calls for me and found a hotel within about 10 km, with air conditioning, that had a room available. It was a win, a significant change in my pattern. I was grateful to my self for advocating compassionately for myself and not merely enduring unnecessary suffering. The following day, I drove north again along the Atlantic Coast, through Nantes, and into the Breton peninsula, under hot, brilliant, leaden skies.

I enjoyed my final 3 nights, As I wandered a few days in Brittany, exploring ancient Celtic standing stones, dolmens, menhirs, and stone circles, around Carnac and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, around the Gulf of Morbihan, and the small Breton city of Vannes. Heavy squalls and marine weather washed over the peninsula, as I drove out to Quiberon, cooling the torrid heat, and greening the dry fields. Those last couple of days, I stayed in a cheap but comfortable hotel upstairs from a bar, in a town 10-15 km away from the Gulf of Morbihan and its beaches and neolithic sites. I visited a museum of prehistory during the worst of a downpour. Later in the afternoon, it cleared up enough to go swimming on a sandy stretch of Atlantic Beach.

I began my sabbatical on April 1st, and my pilgrimage to Europe on April 12th. I write this blog as I am flying home on Icelandic Airlines, July 31st, somewhere over central Canada, en route to Seattle from Reyhavik, Iceland.

I Believe in All that has Never been Spoken Rilke

I believe in all that has never been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for;

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

What Hurts the Soul? Rilke

We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve

into nonexistence, but nonexistence

fears even more that it might be given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure. Other delights

turn bitter. What hurts the soul?

To live without tasting the water of its own essence.

People focus on death and this material earth.

They have doubts about soul water.

Those doubts can be reduced! Use night

to wake your clarity. Darkness and the living water

are lovers. Let them stay up together.

When the merchants eat their big meals

and sleep their dead sleep,

we night-thieves go to work.

The Journey. Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice…..

though the whole house

began to tremble

and felt the old rug

at your ankles.”Mend you life!”

each voice cried.

but you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations…..

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world

determined to do

the only thing you could do….

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Posted in sabbatical 2012 | Tagged | 1 Comment

Pilgrimage to Lourdes, the Foothills of the Pyrenees

Posted on August 9, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #33, July 26th

Pilgrimage to Lourdes, the Foothills of the Pyrenees

Bernadette and the healing spring waters

 After my departure from Chartres, a cathedral dedicated to the Virgin Mary, I drove south through the Loire Valley to an area of volcanic mountains, and dramatic uplands in what is called the Central Massif.  I had reserved a small hotel in the town of Mauriac that was both very reasonably priced and had excellent reviews, 9.3!  I was searching for hotels in the Dordognes, in the limestone cave interlaced, Dordognes River Valley, hoping to visit the Lascaux cave paintings on my way south to Lourdes.  I ended up in a small mountain town near the headwaters of the Dordogne River, a long, 3 hour drive from the area of the caves.  

 

Psyche must have known I needed a rest after many intense days of traveling and sightseeing in Turkey, then flight to Paris, drive to Chartres, and total immersion there as well as a noisy hotel at night, resulting in loss of sleep.  So, I ended up with several low key days in a picturesque old French town in the mountain forests, a nice swimming lake nearby.  I struggled with some inner argument with my compulsive self as to whether or not  to drive 3 hour winding mountain roads and back in one day, in order to visit the tourist site rich area of Lascaux.  

 

The site that can be visited now is called Lascaux II, a reproduction of the original 35,000 year old wall paintings Lascaux Cave, which has been closed due to damage by tourists exhaled CO2 creating an acidic environment dissolving the fragile limestone surface beneath the pigments in the paintings. I would like to see it and also visit some of the wineries and the medieval city of Sarlat and castle at Bergerac, etc.  One of the guiding principles of pilgrimage that I seek to follow, is “pass by what you do not love”.  I have asked myself that question repeatedly throughout this journey, sometimes surprised at what I was willing to let go of.  Much of my previous traveling life has been an effort to see everything possible and “not miss anything”, which can be exhausting and like force feeding a goose to produce foix gras, over fed, with decreasing ability to fully enjoy and engage what I am hurrying to cram in:-)  All of this is to say that I decided not to fill my time with more driving and site seeing, knowing that I would soon have another long drive to reach my destination, Lourdes, far in the south of France.  I enjoyed my mellow stay in the town of Mauriac, and felt refreshed when I hit the road to Lourdes.

 

After 7-8 hours of driving, I arrived in Lourdes, a small town of 27,000 inhabitants, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, not far from the border with Spain.  Since 1846, Lourdes has become a major world pilgrimage site for sick, disabled, and broken people, in hope of miraculous healing.  The story of 14 year old Bernadette, an illiterate, 4′ 8″ tall, impoverished girl, with very poor health, who experienced apparitions of a radiant woman of light in a grotto beneath a large rock outside the town on 18 separate occasions, over several months, is filled with hope and the affirmation of faith.  As her experience of these visions and instructions from the radiant woman in white, with blue sash and yellow rose on her feet, progressed, hundreds, and then thousands of people came to see what was happening.  Many, especially the educated, the town prosecutor, mayor, and others attempted to prove she was mad or a liar, or being manipulated by someone.  Gradually, evidence of her credibility increased.  At the instructions of the radiant  woman who on the 14th appearance identified herself as the “immaculate conception”, Bernadette dug into the earth with her hands, and a gush of water welled forth in a spring.  Many unexplainable healings and cures were documented from drinking or bathing in the water.  Bernadette seemed also to have a gift for comforting and healing the sick and broken people who came to her.  

 

Despite intense criticism, harassment, and persecution of Bernadette by authorities, the Catholic church reluctantly investigated her and the reports of miracles, and the reports were consistently confirmed, and by the early 1900s, she was beatified, and declared Saint Bernadette.  She never learned to read, joined a convent, and died at age 32 of tuberculosis complicating her severe asthma.  As a nun, she was a gifted hospice worker, tried to avoid public exposure, and rejected demands, and pressure to heal people despite offers of money and other inducements.

 

Today, this town of 27,000 people is visited by 6-8 million pilgrims each year.  70,000 crippled, wheelchair and stretcher bound seekers are accommodated by the massive infrastructure of the professional, clerical, and volunteer community, from all over the world.  My first night in town, I walked down the steep hill from my hotel to the the 60 hectares of land that contains the grotto, huge green spaces, paved parade grounds, and extensive basilicas, chapels, and multiple buildings that house and serve the hospitality process.  It is like a small city within the town.  Hoards of youth in yellow or blue shirts provide various helping services as do kids and adults with blue neckerchiefs.  Large numbers of nurses, doctors, and medical/nursing aids, all in white garb are everywhere, pushing wheelchairs, rolling stretchers, and caring for the needs of these profoundly disabled people.  Large numbers of clergy wander the area, making private pilgrimage to refresh their faith or accompany home town church groups.  And then there are the large number of people (like me?) who have come for their own purposes.  

 

A continuous file of carefully regulated pilgrims walks through the grotto, touching the rock, and praying, a few stopping to snap a picture, but moved along by the crowd handlers, if they hold up the line.  Prior to entering the grotto line, there is an area of small faucets, tapping the sacred spring water, for people to drink, wash briefly in, and fill containers to bring back to loved ones.  I filled several small containers of this holy spring water, drank, and splashed my face and neck, praying for healing of my neck and spine.  If not healing my body, then I pray for healing and strengthening of my soul and spirit, so that I can better harmonize with the divine flow in each moment.  After the grotto, there are kiosks with large stacks of candles of various sizes, from slim, 1/2 inch   diameter, by 8″ high white wax candles to stout fence-post candles, 4″ in diameter, 5′ tall, that burn for days.  There are several hundred feet cordoned off for dozens of covered metal kiosk candle stands, each for different size candles, and different languages of psalms and prayers.  Men and women of every size, shape, color, and race stand before their lit candles and pray in every language, for loved ones, deceased or living.

 

There are lovely pathways, lining the river Pave’, on both sides,  with its willow trees and religious art and sculpture.  Another walking path ascends a steep hill and circles through the stations of the cross, over 1 1/2 km.  Along another stretch of the river, occasional stone stations with spring water faucets, carry a scripture quotation about the spirituality of water.  The “living water”, river of life in Revelations, Jesus baptized by John in the Jordan River, Jesus meeting the woman at the well, Moses striking the rock as God instructed him, from which sprang water to save the Jews wandering in the desert after their exodus from Egypt, David discovering the spring at Ein Gedi, in a cave above the Dead Sea.  Each display had a brief, three or four lines of profound commentary upon the spirituality of the element of water.  I especially enjoyed and was moved by these reflections.  You may remember my earlier blogs on each of the elements, including water.

 

On that first night, at 9:00 PM, I joined a huge candlelight procession of the virgin Mary, a statue on a palanquin, was paraded in a circuit around the grounds, as prayers to Mary and reflections on the “joyous” or “sorrowful” mysteries of the virgin Mary, were chanted, sung, or orated, in multiple languages.  As this was continuing, and the sun set, thousands of pilgrims slowly processed into the square, following perhaps a thousand wheelchair and stretcher bound seekers, each with one or two attendants, pushing their conveyance and meeting their needs.  I was among the multitude who stood outside the roped off parade route to watch, with my candle in hand, inside its paper protector.  I was astounded as the crowd continued to increase and pack the acres of open space in front of the basilica, over the course of an hour ceremony, each and all with glowing lit candle.  I did not attend, but I understand that there is another such procession at 9:00 in the morning, several days a week, dedicated to procession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, carried on palanquin. 

 

International masses are held every other morning.  There is a schedule of multiple other events that occur every day, for various ages and interests.  On one day, I followed the pilgrim trail around the town to Bernadette’s parish church, the home with water mill, on the river where she was born, and the miserable underground cell where she was raised after her family fell on hard times.  There is a museum of miracles that has photographic evidence, drawings, attestations, letters, lists, Vatican stamped documents, memorabilia, etc from Bernadette’s life and progression to sainthood. There is a small theater which shows a tableaux of Bernadette’s life while a narration tells the history and details of her life. I enjoyed this, and then went to see the Hollywood version, a relatively new movie about Bernadette in a small, nearly empty theater.

 

High on a rocky hill outcropping above the middle of town stands a Medieval castle, in which is displayed a Museum of the Pyrenees, including cultural dress, furniture, tools, cooking equipment, festival outfits, art, and models of the castle and the houses of the region over time.  On the day that I visited the castle, I was able to time it right so that I could visit the vividly decorated basilicas, during the dinner hour when they were not overrun with people.  The modern, curved, soaring wings and central facade are covered with recent mosaics, paintings, sculpture, statues, and religious icons which are extremely ornate. A giant, 20′ diameter, golden crown sits atop the second level basilica, which houses the crypt and more chapels and icons, above that of the Virgin Mary.  

 

Each day, in order to enter the grotto area, I had to walk through a gauntlet, past rows of religious icon shops, jammed with every imaginable kind of relics, icons, rosaries, statues, Lourdes water bottles, and paraphernalia.  The Lonely Planet guide book, on-line describes Lourdes as a Catholic Disney Land, except for the seriousness and professionalism of the army of hospitality workers and their guests.  It is a remarkable mix of kitsch merchandizing, contemplative eclecticism, multiethnic Catholicism, medical, nursing, and clerical work clustered around the the visitation site.

 

I did not experience any difference in my somatic pain, but I did receive some benefit of inner “participation mystique” that was a spiritual high point, in the midst of the madding crowd.  In fact, I will always remember being a part of this crowd of the broken and the faithful, especially witnessing those who approached the spring water sites, and those who lit candles and prayed, each in their own suffering, hope, and despair.  

 

It also took me back to my childhood, raised as a Catholic, going to Catholic school with the nuns and priests.  It was an age of awe and innocence, of incense, bells, and Latin chants, priest in colorful robes and stoles, genuflecting and raising the host, holy water and the sign of the cross, first communion, and confession.  The nuns told us that if we just said our three Hail Marys every night before bed, that no matter what our sins, Mary would sneak us in the back door of heaven.  I have never ceased to appreciate this “Plan B”, knowing that I could never be good enough to merit heaven, in my child’s view of my own good and evil.

 

In Lourdes, I was close to the Pyrenees, and the place where the pilgrimage route to San Juan of Campostela begins, but that journey will have to wait for another time:-)

 

 

 

She Who Reconciles          Rilke

 

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads

of her life, and weaves them gratefully

into a single cloth

it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

and clears it for a different celebration

 

where the one guest is you.

In the softness of evening

it’s you she receives.

 

You are the partner of her loneliness,

the unspeaking center of her monologues.

With each disclosure you encompass more

and she stretches beyond what limits her,

to hold you.

 

 

The Annunciation   John O’Donahue

 

Cast from afar before the stones were born

And rain had rinsed the darkness for colour.

The words have waited for the hunger in her

To become the silence where they could form.

 

The day’s last light frames her by the window,

A young woman with distance in her gaze,

She could never imagine the surprise

That is hovering over her life now.

 

The sentence awakens like a raven,

Fluttering and dark, opening her heart

To nest the voice that first whispered the earth

From death into wind, stone, sky, and ocean.

 

She offers to mother the shadow’s child;

Her untouched life becoming wild inside.

 

the Visitation    John O’Donahue

 

In the morning it takes the mind a while

To find the world again, lost after dream

Has taken the heart to the underworld

To play with the shades of lives not chosen.

 

She awakens a stranger in her own life,

Her breath loud in the room full of listening.

Taken without touch, her flesh feels the grief

Of belonging to what cannot be seen.

 

Soon she can no longer bear to be alone.

At dusk she takes the road into the hills.

An anxious moon doubles her among the stone.

A door opens, the older one’s eyes fill.

 

Two women locked in a story of birth.

Each mirrors the secret the other heard.

 

I Live My Life in Widening Circles,    Rilke

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

 

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

 

 

 

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The Blessing and the Curse of Uncertainty

Posted on August 6, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #28. July 1st

The Blessing and Curse of Uncertainty

Which way do I go?

Oh, straw man, I am on the way to Oz and I don’t know how to find it. Toto and I have been lost and my house fell on the wicked witch of the west and and…..As the straw man said, “some people say, go this way. And some people, go that way; of course, the road goes both ways….” Oh straw man you are no help at all!….. We have had so much trouble; don’t you know anything? “Sob, that’s just the trouble, Dorothy, I don’t have a brain, nothing but straw:-(”

On June 30th, I was packed and ready to head for the Istanbul Ataturk Airport. With plenty of time, I decided to take the Metro as opposed to a taxi. It was a long way, 28 miles, but a relatively simple tram, with one transfer at Goldenhusu, that led to an underground route. My flight was at 2:15 PM, so I left at 10:30 figuring I could make it in two hours easily. I squeezed in to the crowded tram at the SultanAhmet station, with my baggage that Saturday morning, more than ready to escape from the intense, heat, energy and pressure of Istanbul in the summer. I had three fares left on my Metro card. Slowly, the tram filled even tighter, heat, body odor, breathless humidity, and pushing and pulling more with each stop. The riders were irritable and struggling to get on and off before the doors slid shut.

Gradually, after 10-12 stops, the tram began to clear, after 15 stops I was able to sit. Then, I heard in rapid Turkish that I couldn’t fully understand the words Ataturk Airport transfer station. It was too soon, not where I had been told and marked on my transport map, to transfer. It was now about 11:45, taking much longer to cover the distance than I had thought. I became anxious. Should I get off at the next stop coming up within the ext minute. desperately, I looked around and tried to communicate my question to other riders, in my broken Turkish. Some looked baffled, two men said “gidiorsunuz, burda” “yes, you get off here”. I tried to show one of the men the map which showed another station to be the transfer stop. He shook his head and queried another man in accented heavily accented Turkish, pointing at me, as the tram was pulling to a stop. Another very weathered man in threadbare clothes with a worn basket of old mechanical parts, who had not said a word, said “yok!” and remonstrated in a rapid, Turkish, completely incomprehensible sentence. One word that I understood was the name, Guldenhusu and havilimani (airport). The doors closed and the tram started gathering speed. I was committed, perhaps there were two ways to get to the airport. Another man gestured that he was getting off at Guldenhusu also and would point me towards the transfer tram. I relaxed and watched the map, the passing stations and the man carefully. He did not look as sure as he acted. Two stations before Guldenhusu, as the tram slowed to a stop, he said “git, git” (go, go!). It was a totally unfamiliar stop, so I said “hayir, yok”, (no, there is not!) and remained on the tram. He shrugged and seemed to agree. Two stops later, I got off the tram in good order and saw a sign to the Havilimani-Kuruse line. I started to climb the stairs to cross over to the other side, but the man said, “yok! And pointed emphatically to the ramp on the same side of the track where I currently was. It was now nearing 12:15 and I was feeling a sense of urgency. So, I walked up the ramp and managed to board the train just as it was pulling away. I breathed a sigh of relief and checked my ticket boarding time etc. However, after two stops that were unfamiliar front the Metro map, I recognized that I was indeed traveling away from the airport. Just before the doors closed on the third stop, I stepped off, hauling my bags and surveyed the scene. I examined the map once more, asked two young Turkish men for confirmation, and quickly crossed over the overpass. I waited only two or three minutes before I was able to board the next tram headed for the airport. It was now 12:30, and I practiced deep breathing and mindfulness, (inner mantra-“trust in the process, its all part of the experience….”) and relaxed while remaining highly vigilant :-). The three mistaken stops rolled by as did the minutes, then we were heading underground with 7 stops to the airport. Breathe, breathe.

At 12:50, I disembarked at the airport stop underground and began to follow the signs. Towing my rolling bags and wearing my mid sized backpack, I began to walk a long, empty, tiled tunnel, echoing my steps. Turning, another long (300 yards?) tunnel stretched before me, then twice more, for perhaps a bit less than a mile. I came to an underground entrance to the airport, in which a rapidly moving security line was checking all bags in the x-ray device before allowing people I to the airport. Remove the belt, the wallet, the pen, the watch. Take it the IPAD and this time also remove the Kindle, and I was through and moving into the crowded, echoing lower chamber, filled with kiosks of various airline and signs pointing in all different direction. I had to get my boarding pass. I went to the single Turkish Airlines opening and there was no one behind the desk. I asked the next door airline who pointed me toward Lufthansa’ saying they were handling the Turkish airlines ticketing. I waited about ten minutes in line and the lady said “no, she is there”, pointing at the Turkish Airlines kiosk. At 1:25 PM, I quickly got my ticket and checked baggage, but for the first time, she would not let me carry on my mid sized backpack, only my little Jansport daypack.

Reluctantly, I conceded and headed for the gate, which turned out to be in another terminal. I had to wait a few minutes with a crowd to board a shuttle to take me to the right terminal. Now, 1:40, I began the trek to the gate which involved at least 4 turns and two escalators, one of them not working. On and on, I walked, while thinking anxiously that the bag that I had abruptly been forced to check on had my medication and all toiletries in it. Again and again, I had to let the thought of lost bag go. When, I arrived at the gate, a large crowd was lined up to board and pushing forward. Now, 1:55, I noted no one moving past the boarding agent. As I edged into line, minutes went by, then a half hour, no information was given. I decided to sit down. About 35 minutes later, 3:05, we began boarding, crowding into another shuttle that took us out to the airplane. We sat on the tarmac for another 25 minutes and then we were off, at 3:30. Still trying not to perseverance about possible loss of my unplanned checked bag, I was very glad to exit Istanbul.

The two and a half hour flight was smooth, with a window seat. I watched the mountains, lakes, dry plateau unfold below me. We sat for another 12 minutes or so until we could get to a parking spot. After taking the crowded shuttle to the terminal, I faced a sign pointing forward saying International flights and Baggage and to the right, Domestic Arrivals. I was arriving on a Domestic flight, but I wanted my baggage. I asked an airport official making notes on a clipboard at the junction, which way I should go to pick up my baggage. He asked to see my ticket and passport, looked vaguely alarmed, and wrote in my name and passport number at the bottom of a list of twenty or so names. He pointed me toward a door back onto the tarmac, as I protested, and led me into another shuttle telling me to wait and it would take me to my baggage. I had a very bad feeling about this, but paused in the shuttle for a minute or two, only 3 other people on it. As I stood up to seek additional guidance, the man returned to the shuttle and apologized and nodded with seeming embarrassment at a more senior airline official as he passed. The luggage had started to come out. Fairly quickly, both pieces of my luggage emerged and I happily exited the airport looking for a guy with a sign with my name on it who would take me to my stone cave hotel, 50 km away in the little town of Goreme, in the heart of the weird, volcanic land of Cappadocia.

I begin to realize that a key part of travel and pilgrimage is the constant exposure to uncertainty, especially when in a country with a foreign language. Again and again, I am startled, tense, anxious, caught “off guard” by the daily uncertainties. What will I eat? How will my stomach accept it? Will I get sick if I eat this? Is the drinking water potable? What will happen if I drink it? Which country, which city, which hotel, B&B, or Inn, which way will I walk? Which road will I take?

Where do I want to go? How will I get there? Is this person trustworthy? Whom shall I ask for directions? Which way is this taxi driver going, is he taking me for “a ride”?
Which bus do I take and where is it going, how will I know when to get off? Is it going the right direction? Could this hotel have bedbugs? Is it safe to leave valuables in the room? Where can I change currency, what rate will they give me? Will my pocket be picked in this crowded bazar or tram? What will unmarked things cost? On and on, goes this spiritual exercise of releasing the need to know, the desire for predictability, expectations? When traveling, it’s all clear that expectations are a feeble effort to retain control of what is beyond control.

There is the blessing and the curse of uncertainty when I travel. The excitement and novelty of surprise, of the new and unfamiliar is part of the “juice” that travel brings. The possibilities of renewal, growth, learning, wonder, awe, freshness, the epiphanies and theophanies are all blessings of travel and pilgrimage. When I use the word pilgrimage here, I mean the intention to allow myself to be changed by the journey, as much or more than any destination, to discover God “on the way”, more than through a visit toI some holy relic or sacred place, though that is precious also.

Both enlivening and exhausting, I wrestle again and again with the desire to make the world after my own imag(ination). The illusion of certainty and expectations to be met that I often hold at home, is stripped away again and again. It’s a remarkably difficult pattern to shake off? It seems to recur and cling with such desperate fear of the raw reality of life in the world out there totally beyond my control. This habit of mind and emotion creates such conflict and anxious despair. Yet, I am always tempted to try and create the world as I imagine and expect it to be for my comfort and security. What would it be like to live without expectations, to let God create the world, and life to happen as it will, to unfold as it is?

I think it would be at last the surrender, the yielding of my little will and idolatrous belief in the illusion of power, to the divine flow. I would still make decisions all the time, moment to moment, But I would not cling with worry to the results. It would be walking my talk of living in the moment and trusting the process. In the moments when I am able to watch and relax from my inner observer, place of spirit, honest and naked, vulnerable in truth to the world and it’s surprises, I feel so alive and filled with joy and wonder. As I reflect on my pattern of wanting and demanding things be as I desire, I am astonished by the grace and gentleness of the divine teacher.

I am reminded of Teillard de Chardin’s image that I love, in his book, “The Divine Milieu”, in which he suggests that God’s ongoing creation occurs through his/her right hand and left hand, molding me as clay. My unfolding life occurs through an inner place of choice and experience of the spirit remaking my inner being (when I yield) as the left hand of God. My outer experience, what happens, serendipity, hardship, pain, loss, and friends, loved ones, circumstance, it’s all grace as the right hand of God molds and creates me.

Can you sense the inner and outer molding, creative unfolding, unpredictable, uncontrollable emergence of the I AM, both within you and in the dailiness of your life?

The left (inner) and the right(outer) hands of the creative divine masterpiece happen in me all of the time, when I tune into spiritual awareness, one with the divine flow of Life. Will I let them, will I trust those hands? Will I stubbornly resist? Is my painful stiff neck a metaphor for being “stiff necked people” as Yahweh describes the Old Testament Jews, in Exodus 32:7. God states to Moses: “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people”. It is repeated again in Exodus 33:3 and 34:9. In Deuteronomy 9:4-6, Moses describes his people again as stiff-necked. This first appears when God has brought his people out of slavery in Egypt, and while Moses is up on Mount Sinai, receiving the ten commandments from Yahweh. His brother Aaron, who is left in charge, is forced by the people to make a golden calf, a “god” they are more familiar with, can know, and control. God left the Hebrew people to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, due to their stiff-necked idolatry, trying to control their god and escape the mystery of the One True Yahweh.

I sometimes also think of my stiff painful neck with the metaphor of Jesus as shepherd, he has his shepherds crook around my neck, trying to guide me, and I am struggling against the divine flow or life, trying to do it my way.

This area of uncertainty is one of many surprising ways that modern day quantum physics is supporting what religious mystics have long believed and practiced about the mysterious unknowable nature of reality and the universe. This realization began in 1927 with a physicist named Heisenberg, who was studying the dual nature of light, both wave and particle. And he noted that the act of observing such light wave/particles changes them, so that there can be no certainty as to the absolute location or momentum of the observed light. In fact, one cannot even know if light is composed of particle or wave because observing it may turn it from one aspect into another. This was postulated as “The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”. Nowadays, this principle is showing up everywhere physicists look at reality whether subatomic or the expanding universe. Evidence shows that opposites are linked and reflect each other wherever and whenever they occur. As the mystics knew, reality is fundamentally paradoxical.

Carl Jung, the pioneer of depth psychology taught that psychologically, the Real Self can emerge when a person can hold the tension of opposites, two contradictory feelings, beliefs, or images. He described heparin pile that he called enantiodromia, which observed how opposites tend to emerge in the psyche, when one side is held too long or strongly. One polarity tends to create its opposite. This occurs within a person’s psyche and also within the collective psyche, the outer world. Strongly asserting one position creates its opposite.

A famous spiritual writing from the middle ages is called “The Cloud of Unknowing”. Meister Eckhardt’s classic of mystical writing in the 13th-14th century, “The Dark Night of the Soul” describes his experience of God as unsearchable, unknowable, an infinite void. This way of describing the infinitebecame one of two primary ways that seekers could experience God, the Via Negativa (unknowable void) as opposed to images, metaphors, prayers, and scriptures, and certain forms of meditation, the Via Positiva.

It is a powerful spiritual discipline to live authentically in mystery without false clinging to control. I am discovering that my travel, pilgrimage is challenging spiritual exercise, often uncomfortable and stressful.

“I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and I got 100%”.
Woody Allen

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain ; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality”.
Albert Einstein

“Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines”.
Richard Buckminster Fuller

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have the answers that might be wrong. If we only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain…. in order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”
Richard Feynman

“The mistake is thinking there can be an antidote to uncertainty.”
David Levithan

“Embrace relational uncertainty. It’s call romance. Embrace spiritual uncertainty. It’s called mystery. Embrace occupational uncertainty. It’s called destiny. Embrace emotional uncertainty. It’s called joy. Embrace intellectual uncertainty. It’s called revelation.”
Mark Batterson

“when in doubt, be ridiculous.”
Sherwood Smith

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In the Caves of Cappadocia

Posted on July 27, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #29.  July 4th

In the Caves of Cappadocia<br

Small town volcanic adventures

After 1 1/2 hour delay, in Ataturk Airport, my flight took off. In less than 3 hours, I landed at Kayseri Airport, a quiet small airfield in the midst of wide open spaces of Anatolia.  Looking around, the landscape was featureless, except for one huge snow capped cone shaped mountain in the distance, named Erciyes Mountain.  We sorted out our luggage and quickly found our driver, who was meeting several arriving travelers. As we drove towards Goreme, the open land resembled Oklahoma or Eastern Washington.  However, after 50 km, I began to see weird shapes and extremely rugged rocky cliffs, escarpments rising from the flat fertile soil below.  As I entered Goreme, I found myself in the middle of hundreds of sand colored pillar and peaked towering volcanic projections, pockmarked with cave openings.  Many of the hotels are built right into one of these ragged towers.  The old part of my hotel was built into such a cave, while the newer part was made of huge stones cut from the same volcanic material.  The stone had a faint earthy odor, and provided excellent insulation against heat or cold.  The inside of my room was half dome shaped, with one window facing the courtyard.  Once inside my room, there was a precious quiet, a profound relief after the cacophony of Istanbul.

Goreme is a tiny town with 1500 population during the winter.  A continuing influx of tourists has transformed an isolated, very self sufficient, agrarian culture, descended from the Hittites of ancient Anatolia into a community of innkeepers, restaurants, tour guides, and tourist shops.  The people were kind and hospitable, and very helpful with any questions or needs.  After I got settled in my room for a while, I ventured out to wander and to find a restaurant.  One of the innkeepers, Ahcan, directed me to Topdeck Restaurant, quite nearby, through some winding narrow alleyways.  I went down half a dozen large stone depths into a below ground cave, with a few tables and many sitting cushions beside low tables on the floor.  A handsome, courtly, silver haired father of the family was actively cooking in a white apron, while his daughter, perhaps 13 years old, slim and quick and smiling, danced and raced to serve the customers as fast as her father could cook. Her mother, a large plump lady transmitted the customer orders to her husband and collected the bill as guess departed.  The food was delicious (Nefess, in Turkish), and made from scratch with old Anatolian recipes.  The local red wine was very good and it was a pleasure to watch the warm and smiling family orchestrate their service.  Later, I looked on TripAdvisor and found them to be in the top 3 restaurants, with rating 9.3, among more than 60 restaurants in town.

The next day, I relaxed and worked on my blog, taking short walks through the town, photographing the many idiosyncratic hotels, homes, and unidentifiable caves at all levels in the surrounding forest of stone towers.  I meandered outside the town and following some of the nearby dirt roads, I discovered a old church carved into a cave, which was still in use as a chapel.  As I got further from town, I found more and more farmers with their families living in caves and storing food, firewood, building materials, and animals in a network of stone caverns.  Some were harvesting apricots, some cultivating garden vegetables, or tending grape vines low to the ground.  

The following day, I had scheduled one of two day tours of the area.  I was picked up outside my hotel, in a van along with 6-8 other people, at 9:00 AM. We toured the back streets of the town stopping at various fascinating hotels to pick up the rest of the tourists.  They were an interesting and enjoyable group, one woman from South Africa, two Australians, one Turk, a family of five Canadians, and me.  Our tour guide, named Selim, was a dark, very slim and wiry man with a ready smile and quick wit.  He loved what he was doing and taught us much more than standard tourist spiel.  He was very interested in spiritual life and history and was very responsive and knowledgable to my questions.  We first stopped at a lookout point over the vast expanse of rugged badlands.  He described the eruption of a large volcano two hundred million years ago that had buried the land in 50-100 feet of soft ash and pumice.  Millennia later, a harder  more erosion resistant stone had been laid down.  The wind, rain, rivers, and snows had easily eroded the soft compressed ash stone, leaving a harder stone capping the top of the stone pillar.  It is a similar geologic story as we have in Monument Valley, Arches, etc, in the USA, though the colors and shapes of the eroded stone are quite different and the stone much softer in Capadocia.  I learned from Selim that Cappadocia means "land of the beautiful horses", because wild herds of horses have roamed the valleys and escarpments for thousands of years, and a few still do. I also learned that Anatolia means "land of the mother", as many archaeological sites have found a multitude of small statues in the crude shape of a pregnant mother, a time when the culture and religion were animistic and matriarchal.  We stopped at specific points where unusual shapes of rock, "the virgin Mary" and a camel could be seen and photographed.  We wandered through a variety of caves and pigeon houses.

In the afternoon, we arrived at "the open air museum", near to Goreme.  Here, dozens of caves are still decorated with frescoes, carved religious images, and furnishings sculptured out of the rock. There are painted images, carvings, and decoration from many different cultures and religious traditions over the millennia.  A few place dimly showed worn carvings of stone age and bronze age inhabitants, 6000-3000 BC. There were Minoan, Dorian, Mycenean, , Hittite, and Greek figures and designs from 2500- 200BC.  From 100-250 AD, the most vivid and numerous were Christian images of all kinds, with Jesus Christ crowned, in Kingly poses (characteristic of the Eastern Orthodox tradition), the four gospel writers, images of Adam and Eve, Moses, and Elijah, and many others.  Early Christians hid from the Roman persecution, living for generations in these caves.  Then, in the fourth century, after the Christianization of Rome, large numbers of anchorite monks retreated to isolation and the desert for solitary prayer and meditation.  These monks have left some important mystical writings behind and we know them today as the "desert fathers and mothers" of the church.  The majority of their frescoes had been defaced by Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish Muslims when they invaded the area, spreading the word of Mohammed, in the 8th and 9th century.  Islamic decoration was/is geometric and mostly using a red iron based pigment, figures of humans or living creatures were forbidden by the Koran.  

Subsequently, with the rise of Byzantium, newer portraits of Saint Basil, one of the first priests to visit and establish a monastery in these wild, deserted spaces, are frequent.  Other icons and images from Byzantine tradition decorated rooms within the monastic settlements. Apparently, some of these were defaced by invading crusaders, from the Holy Roman Christian church who opposed the Byzantine Eastern Orthodox icons.  Some images survived behind plaster or were covered by soot from fire places and cooking rooms.  Storehouses, wine making apparatus, kitchens, dining areas, and prayer chapels are distinguishable.  Many of the prayer chambers are high up above the main rooms, tiny niches accessed through narrow vertical tunnels, with small foot and hand holding notches in the rock to allow an agile monk to ascend to his place of prayer and fasting.  It was fascinating to see how water was routed through the caves, and waste lowered in buckets by ropes to the ground outside the cave.  There were many more caves and rooms than we had time to see after 2 1/2 hours of climbing and scrambling in and out of caves, up and down worn steps, footholds crumbling underfoot.

I was full and felt a high by the end of the afternoon.  I loved it, so much to learn and remember, so many styles of art and carvings recognizable from the series of peoples and cultures that had swept through and inhabited this strange land.  My mind was full of imagining the lives of the early Christians, the desert fathers, and Byzantine monastic lives.  In this landscape, the geologic and human timelines are so evident, in truth it is an outdoor museum.

The next day, I took a break from the tours and wandered again on my own.  Late in the day, Bascan, the owner of the place wanted me to see some special cave areas and lookouts that were off the beaten track.  He loved visiting and showing these spots to interested guests at the hotel.  We walked a long way through dust and wind in the late afternoon, the sun casting long shadows in the network of towering stone caves and peaks.  We came to a large cave, carved perhaps within the last 300-400 years, with  lofty, high arched passageways and Byzantine crosses carved beautifully into the soft stone.  We wandered through the various rooms and speculated about their purpose.  This had clearly been a church and seemed to have been in use fairly recently.  I understood that we were on private land but we saw no one.  As it was getting dark, we were unable to visit the high lookout point.

On my third full day, I took another tour with Selim to the southern part of Cappadocia, to visit a huge underground city, the largest of the cave monasteries, and hike through a deep canyon carved by a river.  During these trips, Selim shared much of his knowledge and observations about Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  Hearing the Koran stories of Mohammed and his life and the origins of specific Islamic customs such as five time a day prayer facing Mecca, alms giving, hospitality, and family structure gave me a warm and compassionate inside look at Selim's tradition.  He described the reasons for women to be covered with chadors and praying in a separate area of the mosques.  He said the Islamic practice of prayer and daily life is meant to support the Muslim's focus on Allah.  Having a woman bowing down to the ground, bottom elevated could be very distracting from focus on Allah, he said.  Likewise, their rule against alcohol was oriented toward preventing thoughts and actions from straying from Allah. Selim also loved Rumi and had read and followed some of the dervish practices for much of his adult life. At this same time, I was reading Rumi on my Kindle and we compared favorite passages, rejoicing in our shared love for the 13th century mystic lover who settled in Konya, Turkey, a half days drive from there.  He also knew and deeply respected the stories of Jesus (Isa in Turkish) as the greatest of prophet and teacher.  He understood that for Christians, Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, but for Muslims, this seems too much like more than One God.  Their central belief is in Al lah ("the One", in Arabic), and part of their call to prayer is "Allah, the merciful and compassionate, there is no God but Allah".

On this day, we climbed down hundreds of steps to the 26th of 28 levels of Derinkuyu, a huge underground city.  Such a vast complex, we only could visit perhaps a fourth of the  subterranean abode.  In many areas, we had to stoop down to 4 feet or so and squeeze through narrow openings to continue down or laterally to view rooms and ventilation tunnels, wells, and alternate escape routes.  The Hittites, in 14th century BC carved the upper 21 levels, when they were hiding from invading Persian armies.  There were ingenious ways they hid their cooking smoke and cooked mostly at night when their smoke could not be seen.  They also hid the vast amount of dirt that they carved out to make the city, in a riverbed over 6 miles away.  Similarly, they had elaborate means of concealing the waste that had to be hauled up through vertical passageways to the surface. There were also a number of boobymtraps, such as Indian Jones e countered, to stop invading armies who might access the caves.

In the 1st-3rd centuries, Christians fleeing from persecution hid here.  They dug 7 more levels, for total of 28 levels.  Estimates of the population of this city vary from 2000-3000 up to 40,000 people.  The 40,000 number is ridiculous, but it probable that up to a maximum of 4,000 people lived below ground at one time.  The Turkish government has done a good job of protecting these caves and mounted lights and hand held cable along the steep routes.  It was still a challenge for several of the more claustrophobic members of our tour group.  Visualize the network of levels and tunnels in an ant colony and you will have a good sense of this underground city.   

Next we travelled to the entrance to a deep gorge following a slow lovely river at the bottom of stone cliffs filled with caves, in some parts 600 feet from the bottom.  It was cool and green along the river, with trout jumping and a myriad of bird life.  We hiked about 4km and then had lunch at a restaurant way stop near the exit from the canyon.

We finished the wonderful day with a stop at the biggest of the stone cave monasteries, which, however, had much fewer frescoes and works of art.  It had been a very utilitarian training school for monks, with up to 2,000 monks living and training there at one time.  It was mountain goat territory, requiring some serious climbing and risk, in order to access the opening of the network of caves and tunnels.  It was not hard to distinguish the cooking area from the dining and wine making rooms.  A larger chapel led to the overhead hole for climbing up to the many, many, small prayer and fasting cells.  I did not attempt to enter any of these tiny cubicles in the rock, high up the cliff side, but could vividly imagine the hardship and ascetic life these monks embraced.

The following day, the fourth of July, I had splurged and reserved a balloon ride at dawn over the wild landscape.  Up at 4:00 AM, the van arrived at 4:45, made a few more stops at other hotels, and took about 9 of us to a central dispatch point where they had coffee and bread for snacks.  By 5:30, we were climbing into the basket of the balloon, already mostly inflated.  I was right next to the pilot who was opening and closing a valve that squirted a gas flame about 8 feet long up into the hollow of the balloon, slowly heating the air in the balloon until it was ready to rise.  There were numerous other balloons, pilots and baskets, filled with excited tourists, rising all over the flat takeoff area.  About 15 minutes before sunrise, we were gliding over the rough rock and tower strewn countryside only a few hundred feet above the ground.  The pilot was very experienced and kept us close to the ground, climbing just enough to clear trees and peaks of cliffs, by seeming 10-20 feet.  We watched the sun slowly color the cliffs and shed horizontal shadows, broken by multicolored clouds.  On and on we travelled for what seemed a long time, but perhaps a half hour.  Then, continuing to heat the air in the balloon with just enough fiery breath to keep it aloft, we circled back toward our takeoff site.  The pilot was concerned because he could feel some wind rising.  It seemed minimal, but we landed a bit early with a thump and sideways basket tumble, then came to rest upright, very smoothly.  However, the helpers had to grab the ropes and hang on, getting dragged a little, because of the breeze.  It was interesting to watch the safety process for disinflation the balloon and  loading it onto a truck flatbed before we were allowed to exit.  As we were closing down, we watched multiple other balloons coming in with more difficulty, some turning over the basket on its side, spilling people onto each other.  They had taught us a brace position for landing as part of the initial safety procedure.  We watched as two balloons hit the ground hard and then lept up again, dragging their baskets over the edge of the flat space, into a small ravine.  Some of these landings looked pretty clumsy and I was glad to have had such a savvy and skilled pilot.  After things were cleared away, the crew broke out some champagne and also fruit juice options to celebrate our successful cruise.  It was so much fun!  Even though I was exhausted, I was up and thrilled with the adventure.   

The Stone House Cave proved to be a great choice particularly because the three guys who ran the place loved to practice their English and were glad to talk and share about their lives and families, hopes and dreams.  They made themselves available from early in the morning until late at night, very capable of answering any question or arranging any request for their guests.  

On the following day, I took a van into Nevsehir airport and flew to Dalaman on the Mediterranean coast, south of Bodrum and north of Fethiye.

In honor of Selim

Clear Being

I honor those who try to
rid themselves of lying,
who empty the self and have
only clear being there.

Close to Being True.    Rumi

How can we know the divine qualities
from within?  If we know only
through metaphors, it's like when children ask
what sex feels like and you answer,
"Like candy, So sweet".
The suchness of sex comes
with being inside the pleasure.
Whatsoever you say about mysteries,
"I know or I don't know",
both are close to being true.  
Neither is quite a lie.

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End? Mary Oliver

Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for. Ore than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved slowly across Asia, then Europe,
Until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
Outward, to the mountains so solidly there
Ina white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring.

As he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
In the garden of dust?

Zikr

A naked man jumps in the river
hornets swarming above him.  
The water is the zikr,
remembering,
there is no reality but God.
There is only God.
The hornets are his sexual memories,
this woman, that, or if a woman, this man, that.
The head comes up.  They sting.
Breathe water.  
Become river head to foot.
Hornets leave you alone then.
Even if you're far from the river,
they pay no attention.
No one looks for stars when the sun's out.  
A person blended into God does not disappear.
He or she is just completely soaked in
God's qualities.  
Do you need a quotefrom the Qur'an?
All shall be brought into our presence.
Join those travelers.  
The lamps we burn go out,
some quickly.  
Some last till daybreak.
Some are dim, some intense;
all are fed with fuel.  
If a light goes out in one house,
that doesn't affect the next house.
This is the story of the animal soul,
not the divine soul.  
The sun shines on every house.
When It goes down, all houses getdark.
Light is the image of your teacher.
Your enemies love the dark.  
A spider weaves a web over a light,
out of herself makes a veil.
Don't try to control a wild horse
by grabbing its leg.
Take hold the neck.  Use a bridle.
Be sensible.  Then ride!  There is
a need for self-denial.
Don't be contemptuous of old obediences.  
They help.

Posted in sabbatical 2012 | Tagged | 1 Comment

How Can I Keep From Singing?

Posted on July 27, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #32, July 18th

How Can I Keep From Singing?

Guidance and visitation on a wing and a prayer

After a fascinating and valuable two days in Seljuk, making pilgrimage to St. Paul’s Ephesus, a huge magnificent set of city ruins (letters to the Ephesians), St. John the Gospel writer’s huge Basilica, and Mereyemana, the final home of the virgin Mary after Jesus was crucified and she was cared for by St. John, I took a bus from Seljuk to Izmir Airport. As usual, Turkish Airlines flight was a little late, but not too difficult to make connection from Istanbul to Paris. This was especially because the Istanbul flight was delayed for 2 1/2 hours, with no explanation.

As a result, instead of landing in Paris at 5:00 PM, I arrived at 7:30. Baggage was extremely slow coming off the plane, so It was 8:30 PM before I could pick up the Hertz rental car. I did not want to linger or get caught in Paris, so I had reserved a hotel in Chartres, about 65 km south of Paris. I was chagrined when I learned that Charles de Gaule airport is 35 km north of Paris. I was shocked when the Herz people said they did not have a map. They directed me to airport Information, who also did not have a map of France, only maps of the Paris subway system. Fortunately, I had travelled west from Turkey, and gained an hour, and it got dark much later here, further north as well. Paris is about the same latitude as Washington state.

I received vague directions to get out of the airport and which highways to look for from the rental car lady. Driving a nice little standard transmission Nissan (gray:-), I headed south on extremely fast moving, busy highways, heading directly into Paris, with sudden splitting off roads, exits, and highways as I looked for the ring road, The Peripherique. I drove for 18 km and was getting closer into the city, exits San Chappelle, La Defense, Champs Elysee etc. Without a map, 2 1/2 hours late and dark approaching, plummeting toward the city streets of Paris, I picked a random exit, couldn’t read much of the French signs, to try to get my bearings, ask someone if I had passed my exit, before I arrived in the choked, one-way streets of the city.

I admit, I had been praying and breathing as I “trusted in the process”….. “Saying to myself, you are crazy, or you have a lot balls doing this”. The exit turned out to be a gas station with a convenience store. There, I purchased a map, some water, and food. Despite my nonexistent French, the only-French speaking cashier gave me excellent directions that I could trace on the map. Guardian angels are everywhere.

Despite a few slowdowns on the Peripherique, I made good progress around the city from the north east side to south west, heading for Chartres on fast moving toll road, 130+ km per hour. I was on the outskirts of Chartres by 10:10, just as the sun set. I made a few random turns to try to get into the town and they were blind alleys or led to one way streets with no way forward. I was looking for a live person to ask, none seemed to be about. I happened to see two guys working on a car with its hood open, in the driveway of a building. I pulled in and asked directions. The young man spoke no English at all. I bastardized French, sign language and showed him the address of the hotel. He knew where it was, but struggled to communicate anything. Then, I happened to notice the reception of the building he had unlocked and led me into. It had stands with brochures and maps of the town. So, I gave him my pen and he traced the route for me to the hotel, one way streets and all. I arrived at the hotel at 10:30 PM, last of the twilight.

When I arrived at the hotel, I found they had no parking available. They suggested that I could park at the nearby train station over night, but had to move it to an expensive paid parking garage by 8:00 AM, in order not to be towed away.

It was noisy with my room’s window overlooking the street across from a Kebab shop near the train station where activity and voices were loud until 1:00 AM. The next morning, after breakfast, I walked over to the Chartres Cathedral, only 5 minutes away. I had been here once before when I was chaperoning a middle school trip to France with my son, David. As I walked into the vast, breathtakingly beautiful cathedral, with its soaring gothic pillars supporting the conjoining arches of the nave 120 feet overhead, I realized that I hadn’t really seen it when I was there before. In a sense, I hadn’t really been there, as I had been so focused on riding herd on the middle school students and companioning with David. It’s troubling to consider how many places that I have visited and seen without being fully present enough to really see!

It was odd, how somehow, as I left Turkey and flew to Paris, without real thought, I knew I wanted to wake up in Chartres; without knowing it, being there was an essential part of my pilgrimage. As I craned my neck in awe, I took pictures, gazed at the original 13th century stained glass windows, more beautiful and arresting spiritually than anything I have ever seen, a marvel of sacred space. I spent hours there, meditated for an hour, not wanting to leave. I hung around until 2:15 PM when I was able to join a French tour of the extensive underground crypt below the cathedral. The tunnels went on and on. I could not understand any of the French tour guide, but it didn’t matter; it was a privilege to be in the ancient cool darkness beneath the earth.

Later, I wandered around the small town, purchased a French phrase book. Unfortunately, they only had a French/English phrase book for French people to learn English. Despite its limitations and no phonetic pronunciation of the French words (only the English:-), it helps a little. I returned to my hotel to lie down for an hour and to journal and answer emails. I had seen a poster for a concert at 5:00 PM in the cathedral. It was a touring choir group from Southern Mississippi University. There was a moderate crowd there, and I found a good seat. It turned out they were a handbell choir. I have never been all that excited by handbells when played occasionally at my church. They began simply and gradually built up and up until they were filling the choir area of the cathedral with more and more complicated and deeper range of musical bells. Several of the male students in the second row were athletically dancing up and down the velvet table switching bells and hands ringing in perfect time, a rich and swelling chorus. Near the end, one of those men, sang a solo with the bells; it was the hymn “How can I keep from singing?” so beautiful and such an apt question that it choked me up. I will not undervalue handbells again.

I had also learned of a light show at the cathedral at 10:30 at night, to which I returned. With music and myriad colored lights and shapes precisely projected onto the facade of the cathedral, it was magical. I stayed to watch it twice.

Again, the street was noisy units after 1:00 AM, and awake at 6:30. When I went to move my car from the train station, before 8:00 AM, after having moved it out of the paid parking again for the night, I had received a 35 euro parking ticket, sigh.

Packed and ready to go on my long drive toward Lourdes, in the south of France, that day, I went back over to the cathedral to meditate before departure and to see it one more time. As I entered, about 9:00 AM, the huge pipe organ was filling the lofty expanse with powerful music that moved me to tears, and sobs, off and on for an hour. At first the chords were low and tragic, haunting, and filled with subtle anguish. Gradually, they rose and fell with ore power and passion; they filled the huge space and my chest with awe and terror. I could sense and see God creating endlessly one Big Bang after another, an infinite number of expanding universes. I shook and shuddered and wept at the majesty, beyond describing, as I felt my self shrink to submicroscopic size and bowed low before such terrifying power and might. Never have I been broken open by a spiritual experience so all encompassing before. Again and again, the huge waves of sound, uplifting, crushing, magnificent, broke over, in, and through me. It was as if everything that I had been doing and searching for had been mere preparation, to soften me up, break down my intellectual shields and the habitual numbing that the medical profession calls objectivity. I was transfixed, as wave after wave of sacred sound swept and washed over me. I began to wish that it would be over soon, as I bathed and drowned in the maelstrom of sound and movements, and also deeply grateful, realizing what the prophets and saints spoke of when they described their awe, tears, fear, and trembling before the God, PantoCrater (creator of all). After 10:00, the organ paused or stopped playing and I very slowly circumambulated the cathedral once more, allowingmmyneyes to meet the stained glass windows, images, and architecture, then staggered out into the bright sunlight.

I have long loved the passage from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, “do not say that God is in my heart. Rather, say, I am in the heart of God”.

“My Life Flows on in Endless Song”,

Robert Lowry first wrote this hymn in 1868. In 1950, during the protests against McCarthyism and the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee in Congress, Doris Plem wrote some new verses and edited out some of the religious language of the original hymn. Pete Seeger made it a signature piece. Later, Marty Haugen, Enya (on album Shepherd Moon),and Judy Collins recorded their versions of this song.

My life flows on like endless song
Above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn
That hails a new creation;
Thro’ all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul —
How can I keep from singing?

What tho’ my joys and comforts die?
The Lord, my savior liveth;
What tho’ the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?

I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smooths,
Since I first learned to love it;
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing .
All things are mine since I am His–
How can I keep from singing?

In 1950, Doris Plem added

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And near their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile,
Our thoughts to them go winging;
When friends by shame are undefined,
How can I keep from singing ?

What Hurts the Soul? Rumi

We tremble, thinking we’re about to
dissolve
into no existence, but no existence
fears even more that it might be
given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure,
other delights
turn bitter. What hurts the soul?

To live without tasting the water of
it’s own essence.
People focus on death and this
material earth.
They have doubts about soul water.

Those can be reduced! Use
night
to wake your clarity. Darkness and
the living water
are lovers. Let them stay up together.

When merchants eat their big meals
and sleep their dead sleep,
we night-thieves go to work.

Love is the way messengers
from the mystery tell us things.

Love is the mother. We are her
children.
She shines inside us, visible-
invisible,

as we lose trust or feel it start to
grow again.

Close to Being True. Rumi

How can we know the divine
qualities
from within? If we know only
through metaphors, it’s like when

children ask what sex
feels like and you answer, “Like
candy,
So sweet”. The suchness of sex

comes with being inside the
pleasure.
Whatsoever you say about mysteries,
I know or I don’t know, both are close

to being true. Neither is quite a lie.

This World. Mary Oliver

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But, it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps it’s petals open
and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is the dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.

So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.

As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who know, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

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Pilgrimage to Mereya mana,

Posted on July 27, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #31. July 18th Pilgrimage to Mereya mana, Mary Queen of Heaven

Return to sacred travel.

I arrived in Seljuk about 7:30 PMand asked directions to my hotel, less than a mile from the bus station.  Still very hot, I carried and towed my baggage down several long blocks, then turned up a steep cobblestone street, rapidly soaking my shirt with sweat.I asked for directions along the way, two more times, and around two more narrow winding corners, I came to the gate of Hotel Nilya.  It looked very nice,with an ornate carved gate and fine metal mechanism for calling the man inside to open the gate.  I checked in briefly and then went into the almost over-decorated room and turned on the air conditioner.  I changed out of my wet shirt and washed up a little, before returning to the garden to meet with the proprietor, who was due back shortly to give me information about the hotel and it’s services.

The man behind the desk served me a cold beer while I waited for 15 minutes or so.  It was so refreshing they could have made an advertisement out of my enjoying that Turkish beer, named aptly enough, Efes. The proprietor, Elard, was a savvy man in his mid or late 50s, of great experience, who had been selling Turkish rugs and Iznik ceramics for more than 30 years.  In the past 5 years, he and his partner had opened a nearby hotel called the Hotel Bella.  There, they had also established a successful restaurant upstairs overlooking the town.  The hotel  had two well stocked, vividly beautiful showrooms, one for carpets and one for the hand painted Iznik tiles and ceramic plates, etc.  The hotel Nilya in which I was staying, had been their second hotel, opened less than 2 years ago.  They had thoroughly decorated with examples of their wares.  Hotel guests were given “special “showings and rates on the merchandise.  I was grateful that he was not very pushy, or only subtly so.

The hotel arranged transportation from the hotel to the ruins at Ephesus for free.  They also provided inexpensive transportation to Mereya mana, the home of the virgin Mary in the first century, where (according to the most popular account) she lived after the crucifixion of her son, Jesus, looked after by the apostle and gospel writer, St. John, as Jesus had requested in some of his last words on the cross.  John 19:26-27 “Woman, behold your son,” indicating John at the foot of the cross. And to John, “Behold, your mother!”  I had visited Ephesus twice before, on each of my two previous trips to Turkey, but never made it to Mereye mana.  It holds a special place of pilgrimage for me, and is today a well managed devotional site for pilgrims of all nationalities.

As I had begun my sabbatical in Ireland, a land that is spiritually feminine, by Celtic lore and belief, and have been seeking to understand the divine feminine in conjunction with the Christian God, as my ancestral tradition has known Him, visiting Mary’s home was a renewal of my focus on the divine feminine as Catholics have discovered her.  Gradually, over the centuries, the Catholic church, in it’s papal encyclicals and counsels has elevated Mary to the “queen of heaven”, and asserted that she was assumed into heaven, bodily as Jesus ascended also.  She is the “mother of God”, in Jesus Christ.

I visited Ephesus in the morning for about 3 hours, exploring its amazing expanse of ruins, frescoes, and mosaics.  It is probably the largest ruined ancient cities in the world, with marble roads and buildings extending for miles.  I returned to the hotel with some friends that I had met, from the hotel and got out of the sun before noon.  At 4:00, I walked over to the St John’s Basilica, only a few hundred meters from the hotel.  It was one of the largest Basilicas in the ancient world, 4th and 5th century, and if it were intact today, would be among the 5 largest churches in the world.  It has extensive ruins and walls, altars, and carvings, a sacred site of pilgrimage for many.  Further up, on the crest of the hill, is an intact Seljuk Turk Castle from the 8th and 9th century, when the first wave of Turks began to invade Anatolia.

At 5:30 PM, I joined the small group of folks from our hotel for the trip by van to Mereya mana, some 15 km away, up a steep hill.  It was a small stone house, now renovated into a chapel, with relics and statues of the virgin Mary on display for pilgrims to file in and pass by, then out again.  When I was there, several monks and two nuns were beginning to chant prayers in Latin, apparently a service was about to start.  After I departed the church, I paid donation for and lit several candles for prayer for loved ones and for those who are suffering, to whom Mary specially attends.  After meditating there a while, I walked down the slope to where a spring wells up from the ground that offers sacred holy water of the virgin, a healing drink or wash for pilgrims over the years.  I filled a small water bottle with the water from the shrine and drank and splashed myself well with it.

That night, I enjoyed dinner with my new companions, a professor of statistics at a University in Arizona and his wife a former professor of Museum Studies.  The professor  had a white beard over a foot long, a real candidate for Santa Claus and he wore a tie die shirt, hippy throwback statistician:-). They were delightful folks and we enjoyed breakfast the next morning before I departed.  I felt very complete, I had been able to visit or revisit some sites that I had long been interested in.  I want to struggle with and give importance spiritually to these shrines and special ruins from the early Christian world.

The next morning, I got a ride on a shuttle from Seljuk to the large city of Izmir (Smyrna in the ancient world and the bible reference) At the airport, my Turkish Airlines flight was held up for 2 1/2 hours. Instead of departing for Paris at 12:15, it  got off the ground at 3:00, making my arrival in Paris 7:30 instead of planned 5:00 PM.  24 days in Turkey had been eventful and both challenging and stimulating.  I was glad that my Turkish language skills had begun to return; it was fun to practice and see the startled looks from Turks when I spoke something more than tourist Turkish:~>). It had been very full, complete, but now I was fleeing north to escape the intensifying, debilitating heat of the Mediterranean in July/August.  The weather reports in France were more in the 70-80 degree range.

Ozymandias. Percy Bysshe Shelley, (1792-1822)

I met a traveler from and antique land,

Who said, “two vast and trunk less legs of stone
Stand in the desert”. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkles lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch  far away.

Response To Your Question Rumi

Why ask about behavior when you are soul-essence,
and a way of seeing into presence!
Plus you’re with us!
How could you worry?
You may as well free a few words from your vocabulary.
“Why” and “how” and “impossible”.  Open the mouth
cage and let those fly away.
We were all born by accident,
but still this wandering caravan
will make camp in perfection.
Forget the nonsense categories of there and here,
race, nation, religion, starting point and destination.
You are the soul, and you are love,
not a sprite or an angel or a human being!
You’re a Godman-womanGod-manGod-Godwoman!
No more questions now
as to what it is we’re doing here.
If you want what visible reality can give,
you’re an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting that
what you really want is
Love’s confusing joy.

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?    Mary Oliver

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white feet
of the trees whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved slowly across Asia, then Europe,
Until at last, now, they shine in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
Outward, to the mountains so solidly there
In a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything:  the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there, beautiful as a thumb curved
and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring. As he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
In the garden of dust?

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By the Sea in Ancient Kaunos, Everything is Better Under Water

Posted on July 26, 2012 by musingsontheway

Blog #30.  July 17th
By the Sea in Ancient Kaunos!

Everything is better under water.

My Turkish Airlines flight to Dalaman Airport from Nevsehir, in Cappadocia, was again delayed, only 40 minutes this time, however the driver from my Dalyan hotel was waiting with a sign with my name on it.  After a 30 minute drive from the airport, I arrived  in Dalyan at the MandalInn Hotel.  The proprietor Burak, about 40 years of age, spoke excellent English.  He had been on staff of vacation cruise ships for over 8 years and had been all over the world.  On his IPAD, he showed me numerous pictures, including pictures of Alaska, glaciers, and Caribou.  He was an ardent scuba diver and loved to spear fish.  He was immediately helpful when I told him of my desire for snorkeling.

Gradually, over the course of the 9 days, I learned that he had multiple family members in the town.  All Burak had to do was make a call and he could arrange anything I was interested in doing with someone in his extended family, all of whom were inexpensive and quality businesses.  His family members owned excellent restaurants, a tour agency, and some owned and operated tour boats.  One wiry, dark skinned, small graying man, with sparkling eyes, Captain Ali, of Ozalp Cruises took me on two, day long cruises out to nearby islands, caves, and rocky crystal clear bays.  On both cruises, almost everyone were Turks on vacation, so I had excellent opportunity to practice and hone my Turkish.  These day trips lasted from 9:30 or 10:00 AM to 6:00 or 6:30 PM.  The boats carried about 30 or so guests, with a crew of Captain Ali and his stout and sturdy wife.  Usually one or two young Turkish men helped with the lines or small tasks.  In the morning, we would slowly motor west 3-4 km, along the Dalyan River, past the magnificent Lycian tombs carved into the side of the cliffs, and on through wetlands and islands of rushes, to pass the long sand bar that constitutes the beach for Dalyan.  It is very shallow for hundreds of meters off shore.
As we emerged from the wetlands and passed the sand bar beach, we were met by groundswell waves that caused a bit of sea sickness in a few people. Soon, however, we turned north or south and followed the coast line to a small bay or sheltered area in which to swim, snorkel, or climb up the pebble and rock beach for bathing and for the children to play.  All three of the cruises had young children and babies with their Turkish families.  They were included and looked after by everyone on board.  In each case, the children and the infants were placed on/in some flotation device and played vigorously in the water, screaming and fussing, then getting used to it and gurgling and laughing playfully, screaming again when taken out.
I found delightful opportunities for snorkeling, following the rocky cliff edges where the fish and underwater critters are found.  We would swim/ snorkel for 45-60 minutes, then move the boat to another area for more water play.  Around 1:30, the Captain and his wife would complete the cooking of a delicious seafood lunch with salad, bread, and desert, enough to fill up everyone.  Then, they would move the boat and anchor it while people napped and let their meal settle or went for another swim.  Two more times, as the afternoon wore on, we stopped for a dip and snorkel around off-shore rocky crags  and shoals.  Coming back, after a long day in the sun, on and in the warm, crystal clear  Mediterranean Sea, I was high, energized, and filled with joy.  As I described in a previous blog, I got a dopamine burst in the reward center of my brain, that said “I want to do that again!”
My second trip out was the “twelve island tour”, which was a more substantial introduction to the area waters.  We were picked up by a van and bused to Goycek, a beautiful bay town, about 15km south of Dalyan.  From there, we boarded a large schooner, perhaps 45 feet long, carrying about 50 people.  We threaded our way through multiple small uninhibited islands, shadowed by several other similar boats that cruise this popular spot.  In a similar manner to the first cruise, we anchored at a series of sheltered island bays for swimming, snorkeling and water and/or beach play.  Midday was another large and delicious repast.
Many of the younger folks, sunned on the unshaded forward surface, while I and others remained under the awning for shade from the intense sun.  These were very hot days, 95-108 degrees on shore, so being out on and in the water was a great way, the only way, to enjoy the day outside.  During the 9 days that I stayed in Dalyan, the temperature climbed steadily, the last several days were over 100 degrees with a very hot wind.  From mid July until mid or late August, the heat reaches its maximum for the year and the hotels are full.
Before I departed Dalyan, I enjoyed one more snorkeling cruise; it was so delightful, the best!  On another day, I took a small minibus (dolmush) 4-5 km down from the Dalyan beach to a  more substantial beach, called Ixtuzu.  Hundreds of Leather-Back Sea Turtles nest along this expanse of beach every year.  There is a “hospital” for treatment and rescue of injured or ill sea turtles, named Carreta Carreta.  There is a worldwide organization for protection of sea turtles, of which Ixtuzu is a  significant monitoring site.  The students and professionals patrol the beach with its nesting sites all night long and place protective wire screens around the nesting spots to prevent them being crushed by humans or machines.  I visited the sea turtle “hospital” and was given a detailed tour by a young woman pre-veterinarian student from England.  She introduced each of the sea turtles under their care by name, Rogo, Merri, Charlie, Tamoo, etc. They were kept in large tubs, 8 feet deep and 12-15 feet in diameter.  These turtles weigh 40-90 pounds and live for up to 120 years.  They were endangered, but now, with multinational cooperation, are making a comeback.  This genus, species, of turtle only have 2-3 other  nesting sites in the world, one on Crete, and one on the north coast of Tunisia whose population has nearly been destroyed.  Boats run over them and propellers lacerate their protective shells.  Pollution in the water causes weakness and loss of appetite, as does also accidentally swallowing plastic bits, or fish hooks.  Most devastating of all is the destruction of their sandy beach egg laying nest areas by building condos, humans stepping on the nest or driving over them etc.
As some of you may know, Sea Turtles are a totem of mine that often tend to show up when I am snorkeling or swimming, especially in Maui, though the Maui turtles are “Green Sea Turtles”, a different genus and species.  In one of the tanks, they did have one Green Sea Turtle, being treated for an infection with abscess under its shell.  This was an unusual turtle to see in this area and the injury was a rare, previously unseen problem.  The veterinarians had successfully treated its infection with antibiotics, but the abscess was filled with gases released from the bacteria, now caught in a “pocket” beneath its mid shell.  This caused the turtle to float and be unable to submerge more than a foot or two deep, very briefly, then pop back to the surface.  This both endangered it by its inability to dive to escape from boats, and by its inability to dive and feed on the underwater vegetation which constitute its diet.  A number of veterinarians had consulted on the problem and no solution had been found.  Apparently, sea turtles rarely survive anesthesia which is required for invasive surgery or instrumentation.
It was interesting to learn a little about turtle physiology.  Sea Turtles have a 3 chambered heart and their circulation can bypass the turtle’s lungs and tolerate very high levels of CO2, before oxygen deprivation makes them need to come to the surface to grab a breath of Oxygen, usually, two breaths before they dive again.  Adult sea turtles can remain underwater without oxygen for up to 12-15 minutes depending upon their activity level.  Sea turtles are ancient creatures, having existed for over 200 million years without significant change or evolution.  They are slow moving vegetarians who live over a century.  Recently, the genus of the largest tortoise on earth, whose habitat was an island in the Galapagos, became extinct.  These gentle, ancient creatures are threatened by humans around the globe.  They have essentially no significant natural predator, except careless humans or humans blindly enjoying “turtle soup” and making things out of their shells.
On another day, I paid the 4 liras round-trip to the women who row the boats across the river, a distance of less than 100 feet.  From the opposite side of the river, I hiked along a path that led to the ancient ruined city of Kaunos, which was at its peak of power and influence 1600-1200 BC.  On the way, I climbed up the edge of the cliff as far as I could toward the Lycian tombs carved in the rock resembling Greek temples, with columns supporting, and lintels over the entrance.
The ancient population of Kaunos were Carians.  Later inhabitants were called Lycians, including during biblical times.  St. Paul visited Lycian areas on his missionary trips through Anatolia.  They were a fierce people who resisted both Greek and later Roman occupation more than their neighbors at Ephesus, Pergamum, and Aphrodises.  As a result, they were massacred and marched away as slaves when they were finally overwhelmed.  The death blow to this people, however, was first, the gradual silting up of their sea port, which weakened them as a seafaring mercantile nation, followed by a malaria epidemic in the newly forming wetlands in 300 AD, when the city was abandoned.

I hiked about 3 1/2 km to the substantial ruined city with its walls, its large theater, public buildings and temples.  There were ruins stretching all over the surrounding landscape, fortification on high hills and residences in the lowlands around the central city.  Even though I got an early start, The temperature reached 100 degrees, with intense sun, before noon.  Walking back, despite hat and strong hydration, I noticed the beginning of weakness and heat injury.  I had stopped in a shady spot to drink some more water along the hike back to the river crossing.  Abruptly, a Turkish man, perhaps over 70 hears old, came around the bend on a small motor scooter.  I was surprised and gratified when he offered for me to get on the scooter behind him.  It was a blessing to ride several km back along my route, in the approaching noonday sun and heat.  “Guardian angels” seem to  appear when unexpected but needed.

The following day, I stayed close to the hotel swimming pool or my room with its wonderful air conditioner.  Except for the increasing heat, I would love to have stayed longer in Dalyan.  It has been “discovered” by Turkish families, who flood the town in the summer.  Fortunately, it has not been overrun with international tourists as yet, as similarly beautiful coastal town like Bodrum, Fethiye, and Ayvalik have.  And the influence of the world wide turtle protection has managed to stop and prevent the attempts to build large tourist hotels and resorts on and near the beach.  The hotels in town are almost all unique, family owned, small, local businesses.  They are multiplying and there are many very good restaurants, ticky tacky tourist shops, and tourist agencies cropping up, more each year.  Walking down the strip, small main walking thoroughfare, I and other tourists were beset by clever Turkish touts every night, trying to pull customers into their restaurant or shop.  They are pushy and clever and a nuisance.  Staying in the MandalInn, a block off the main street, two blocks from the river was quiet and relaxing.  Burak manned a bar in the evening for his guests and held court, telling wonderful stories and weighing in with insightful well stated opinions on a wide variety of world and local affairs.
The day before I was to depart, I asked to have a bit of laundry done.  When it was returned, the laundry lady had not finished drying the whites and promised them later that night.  After collecting them, I realized a tee shirt was missing, but it was by then after 10:00 PM, so I resolved to check on it in the morning.  In the morning, the laundry lady, who spoke only Turkish, is also the breakfast server.  When I communicated my request to check for my missing shirt, she became upset and seemed to believe that I was accusing her of taking it.  I tried, with my limited Turkish, to ask her just to take a look to see if there might have been an oversight.  During my visit, she had been a lovely, smiling, helpful presence, a pleasure just to share a greeting and a smile or practice simple Turkish at breakfast.  Now, she was visibly hurt and her body language was closed.  I was chagrined and did not feel the old tee shirt was that important, even though it was one of 4 shirts that I was traveling with.  I was comfortable letting it go and tried to tell her so, preferring to retain good will rather than depart with such a minor thing as a conflict.

A young Turkish man who spoke some English came Into the breakfast room and translated for me.  He told me she was certain that there had not been that tee shirt and perhaps I had left it somewhere.  I have left and lost things along the trip, and am rarely totally sure that I am right; I make mistakes too often:~>).  So, not believing it to be true, I acceded to the possibility that I might have lost it myself and returned to my room to finish packing.  I was feeling preoccupied and upset inside about this minor matter as I prepared my bags.  Just as I was scrutinizing my room to make sure that I had not left anything behind, Burak knocked on the door and handed me my tee shirt, saying that it had been misplaced, which is what I suspected had happened.  The most troubling part of the matter was the lady’s certainty and unwillingness to consider the possibility that she might have made a mistake, so that she took offense rather than check for it.Burak then offered me a ride on the back of his motorcycle to take my bags and me over to the minibus station about 5 blocks away, to which I had planned to walk.  I quickly grabbed my bags and met him in front.  First, he hauled my bags over to the little bus stop, then he was back to take me there.  As hot as it was, already by 10:00 AM, I was glad not to have to carry and pull my baggage through the streets.

So, all was right with the world and I boarded the minibus, heading for a nearby town, to the main bus station from which I had a seat on the bus reservation to the town of Seljuk, near to Efes (the amazing extensive ruins of ancient Ephesus, the Ephesians),with one bus change along the way, en route.  As I was riding out of town, it dawned on me that I had left my passport and money belt in the small safe in my room; I still had the key.  But, I was already a few miles on the way of the 18 miles to the bus station and there were 10-12 Turkish people on the minibus also traveling to the main town.  Realizing that the driver could not turn around and it did not seem wise to get him to let me off along the side of the road with my baggage, miles from Dalyan in the sun and heat, I sighed and realized that I would have to take a minibus back to Dalyan as soon as possible, but that I almost certainly would miss my bus with my reserved seat.I realized that I had been preoccupied emotionally by the minor tee shirt affair because of the interpersonal aspects of it, and then interrupted in my departure process by Burak’s offer to take me and my bags to the minibus stop, right then.

So, I forgave myself for the oversight, once again reminded how easily I can forget something or make a mistake (as in previous blogs, I have mentioned that Richard Rohr says, “we all need our daily humiliations”), a good reminder never to be too sure that “I’m right” or that I know for sure…..  I returned on the next minibus to Dalyan with all of my bags and left them with the bus stop ticket taker briefly, while I walked back to the hotel.  I tried to slip into my room and leave the key in the room safe where it was supposed to be.  With money belt and passport in hand, I began to return to the minibus stop.  Burak saw me and reproached me for missing my bus seat reservation, saying that I should have called him and he would have driven the 18 or so miles to bring my papers to me.  I believe he would have.  He was that helpful.  But I never even considered that option, taking responsibility for my own mistake, and not wanting to bother him or rely on his help.  And I was embarrassed.

In any case, I was back on the road, on the minibus shortly, but too late for my 12:00 noon reserved seat; that bus had already left.  Burak had called them for me to cancel the seat reservation so that someone else was able to get on.  When I asked about the next bus, the next two departing buses were filled, so I learned that I would need to wait until 3:00 PM for a seat.  Needing to watch my bags and having no place in this small town that I wanted to go, especially as the temperature was passing 100 degrees again, I sat in the  tiny bus station waiting room for 3 hours, until my bus was ready to leave.  Fortunately, there was a fan going in the room where also the station agent was manning the phone and dispatching customers to various routes.  He spoke no English at all and seemed unable to understand or to ignore any of my fairly decent efforts to communicate in Turkish.  While I waited, I snacked on bread and cheese and an apple that I was carrying.  And I typed on my IPAD a large part of one blog.  When it got close to my 3:00 bus, I asked the station agent to let me know when it arrived.  As people were coming and going on buses, I saw no announcements, signs, or indicators that their bus had arrived or was departing.  The station agent ignored me and seemed not to register my request.  I was apprehensive as the time reached 3:00 and I saw no sign of my bus.  Fortunately, a young village Turkish man understood my request and communicated it to the agent (another “guardian angel”).  The agent nodded, looked bored, and motioned for me to sit down.  About 15 minutes after 3:00, he made a movement with his head to point toward a bus pulling in.

I boarded and was on my way to my final stop in Turkey, a small town called Seljuk, for a visit to the ruins of ancient Ephesus.  When I arrived at the hotel in Seljuk, I realized that I also had left behind in Dalyan my electrical converter plug, which is essential to recharging my IPhone, IPad, IPod, camera, and toothbrush:-). I had left behind at least 2 electrical converters along the way, but been able to replace them, as the hotels I have frequented almost universally have spares that others have left behind…..

REVELATION MUST BE TERRIBLE                 David Whyte
Revelation must be Terrible

with no time left to say goodbye.
Imagine that moment staring at the still waters

with only the brief tremor

of your body to say you are leaving everything

and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard,

but you know at least we are exiled together.

When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for the first time.

No one is even interested in saving you now
and the world steps into test the calm fluidity

of your body from moment to moment

as if it viewed you could join it’s vibrant

dance of fire and calmness and final stillness

as if your place in the world mattered

and the world could neither speak

nor hear the fullness of
it’s own bitter and beautiful cry

without the deep well of your body

resonating in the echo
knowing that it takes only that one,

terrible word to make the circle complete,

revelation must be terrible knowing

you can never hide your voice again.

Sayings from    Rumi

Be grateful for what comes, because all has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

A thousand half-loves must beforsaken to take one whole heart home.
Roar, lion of my heart, and tear meopen.

Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity?
Why would you refuse to give this love to anyone?
Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups!

They swim the huge fluid freedom.

Please note:  I am sorry;  this blog word processor has begun creating formatting errors that I have not been able to fix. This is my third blog that has defaulted to strange word combos and two line lengths combined into one on the poetry.  I am working on it, but want to continue to publish my blog along the way, in the meanwhile.

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