http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/us/building-homes-for-modern-multigenerational-families.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=todayspaper

I had been asking what people are doing about the old folks. This is a back to the future answer. The other question, of course, it what people are doing about the young folks who are returning home. I like the idea of a mish-mash, although because we have to have some independence, we do do better with separate entrances. These solutions require a lot of give and take, and a lot of flexibility and some $.

But when you think of how much it costs to into independent living, or run two or three households, the $ thing changes. I also like the idea of plunking an already built home in the back yard and using it for a B&B when Mum or Dad isn't around.

I did the help take care of the grandchild duty for a few years. I was lucky to live on my son-in-laws sailboat in a marina very near their house. It gave us all space at the end of the day.  It was a good trade from my side. I loved having so much contact with the baby and I loved being on the water. I even thought of buying a houseboat of some sort. But it didn't work at all well after I broke my hip and became afraid of slipping on the wet dock. Plus, the baby did that thing they do of growing up and moving on to day care.

I think it takes a very confident family to do this kind of arrangement well. I had a friend who was a great cook and ran a gorgeous house. Her girls all managed to come home to finish college and then lingered after they graduated. When she was pulling her hair out wishing for a rest from taking care of everyone, I suggested that maybe one day they should come home to an empty fridge and no neat piles of clean laundry on their beds. She couldn't do it. Italian. But this same family had taken in the old folks when they got too old to live alone, so it was hard wired.

As with any good plan, it is best to put it into action before desperation sets in. Hard to do. Just as it seems to be a horrible wrenching to take grandpa's car keys away, it is hard for people to give up their little piece of territory before the moment when there is no choice.

I think we need to think about these things. I think that young and old alike are finding themselves in situations they hadn't imagined. Kids, be nice to your parents. You may find yourself back home one day. Parents, be nice to your kids. Same deal.

Getting My Hair Washed ..Nica Beauty Shop

We have been experiencing the city water being turned off at random intervals as they do work on ? Something.  Each time it happens I get this feeling that all will be well tomorrow.   Consequently, I decide that I'll wash my hair in the morning because I don't want to sleep with wet hair...the mold factor.

I was out and about yesterday afternoon, down near the insane market and I couldn't stand my dirty hair another minute. I can sometimes be pretty impatient. I looked up and there was a salon right above me. Before I had a chance to check it out, the little toothless (there but for the grace of God go I) hairdresser had a good grip on my arm and was leading me into her house? salon? and plunking me in a chair. I told her wash it and creme rinse it. There was no water in sight, no sink even.

She started spraying water on my head, then put a ton of shampoo and gave a vigorous rub. I mean I thought she was doing adjustments. The hair was fully foamy and the head and neck were actually feeling good, a bit more awake, if you will. We had exchanged no words. Some neighborhood kids had come in to watch. She kind of yanked me by the towel around my neck and took me back into the dark bowels of her house and had me put my head over the pila (the stone sink) Then she took a small plastic bowl and poured water all over me and my hair. Then the same deal with the creme rinse.

We went back to the front and she combed my hair and I paid her the $1.25 and left with the cleanest smoothest hair I have ever sported.

I thought you might enjoy a little picture into the third world life. Oh ya, and I mentioned before the Dengue Fever thing. The other day two really attractive young people came to the door and said they were from the Dept. of Health and they needed to enter. I took the chance and while I was locking the doors, they went areound the garden  and put some powder from little plastic bags around the edges. When I asked them what they were doing, it was getting rid of mosquitoes. When I them what they were using, it sounded a lot like DDT. It must be my Spanish, I couldn't have heard right.

Are We Our Stuff, or Are We More Than That?

A bunch of years ago, (before parasites, that is) I had this image come to me. I saw our homes being our stage set, our clothes being our costumes and we could make up the play we were presenting. I am one of those people who likes to change the play. I am also a "second hand rose" so I never really have experienced what play I would put on if I had the means. I have often thought it would be a southwestern style, adobe, cactus theme. But, then, I do like green growing a lot. Quien Sabe? Maybe a southwestern jungle?

And with clothes, it is pretty much the same deal. I can do the preppy society dame thing pretty well. I can do the grey haired hippy woman. I can do the "I don't give a shit, let's be comfortable thing." But, the truth is that I certainly have my likes and dislikes. I have had houses that made me happy and houses that never felt right.

I am worried by several things; one is that I know a lot of  people who make the stage set and never change it. We all know those people. They have the plant in the same corner for 20 years, long after it has started to look sad and half dead. These are often the same people who won't move to their child's house when they get old and sick. They need their stuff. Have they merged their being with their junk? Is being with old memories, covered with dust and chipped plates easier than letting go?

Is my lack of stuff a bad sign? All my worldly possessions are in my sister's garage. Am I nobody because I don't have a stage to play on or is all the world my stage as said the Sage?  Do we encourage people to identify with their few or many possessions? Like saying "Dad couldn't stand to move because his familiar stuff is all around him? Maybe Dad is sick to death of the same old shit and the faded pictures of the grandchildren when they were little and is just trying to humor us in our delusions.

I can see having a movable altar with some treasures and pix of those who have gone before you. But the truth is, you can't take it with you. Unless you are a pharaoh or something like that. Is having a lot of stuff or never changing anything as sign of a well adjusted person or some kind of a nut? Does changing the stage willingly prevent the forced changes that fires and floods bring? I am looking for some of your thoughts, dear readers. Is this a dumb question? I don't think so. Some day someone will be throwing our stuff in dumpsters or selling it on ebay. How much of our life gets thrown away when that day comes?

When Pain is not Pain.. I am trying to get my head around this..

So, my friend Ron is sticking to his guns. Well, the opposite of guns, actually, love, peace and gratitude. He is writing a book on the subject of how everything and everyone is perfect. I am ridiculously reducing his idea, his belief, but I will try and illustrate.

His daughter suffered a terrible injury getting kicked by or kicked off a horse. Her pain and her being pretty much incapacitated has led to her hardly being able to do her work or live her life. That is depressing and isolating. Some surgery may help in the future, but for now, things are mighty dark.

Ron is Jewish, but he is no Job. He keeps an active and abiding belief that everything is perfect and everything works out for the good. This is not some Pollyanna, take the easy way out kind of magical thinking. It is his life experience both as a doctor and as a human. (no intended contradiction there) I talked before about John Gardner's teaching that everything is a gift, but often we don't like the wrapping paper and toss aside the present without opening it.

Often in hindsight we can see the gifts. If I hadn't broken my hip when I did, I wouldn't have had the chance to go on the Camino with Ron. That kind of thing. If I hadn't lost my job, I wouldn't have written my book. If we hadn't run out of food in our village in El Salvador, we wouldn't have met the magic nun.

But the thing about Ron is he keeps the faith during the crisis, the trouble. For this reason, he can keep his equanimity during the roughest times. I am trying to learn this. I am pretty good in a disaster. I can usually go to an unnatural calm and quickly assess and act. Practicing midwifery was great training for this. Everything is perfect one minute, and the next all hell is breaking loose. But in my own world, my monkey mind, my coping with ongoing, slow, painful, stuff, I am still learning, still practicing, still going nuts, having panics, pulling myself back from the brink and recalibrating.

So, I watch Ron with admiration. The ability to keep the faith during a long crisis is very important. In the book, Pilgrim's Progress, the little guy's aim was to "Pray without Ceasing". I guess if we reduce it to its essence, this is the whole ball game.

Guru Yoga

If the purpose of having a guru is that your teacher can reflect yourself back to you, then people who do not have a living guru can get off track more than most. Wow! Who prides herself on clear thinking here? Let me try and bumble through this. I need to get this straightened out in my own mind.

As Lama Marut tells it, the goal of having a beloved teacher is not to soak up his every word and thought. It is not to lose yourself and your discernment. He tells of teachers in ancient India who taught their students to live a moral life. The students all loved his teachings and agreed with his every word. One day he asked them to go steal some food. Three went and one just sat there. When the three came back, he sent them away. "You have learned nothing from me." That was a test.

If we don't have a teacher, who is there to tell us that we have become prideful or judgemental in our practice? Who can reflect our own tendency toward spiritual pride? One thing he points to is the notion that if we can become aware enough, our teachers come to us by way of everyone we interact with. Sometimes we can see this after the fact."I shouldn't have lost my shit on that person, he was just being himself. I was the one who got weird. I'll try to do better next time." With the understatement of the century, I'll admit that I could use a little work in this realm, like when I go off on the Mormons or the Israelis, or other kinds of rapists. I know that the people historically who have been effective in bringing about positive change have done it through staying centered, staying moral, staying in their highest self. I picture Gandhi's fast that ended the British Empire in India. "No naked nigger is going to dictate our policy." said one British Parliamentarian. How wrong he was.

So, a good teacher can tell you to steal or not to steal and you will stay in your morality. You can't obey anything that is against your truth. That is the picture of the good student. Gandhi is a picture of a great teacher. With his morality so high, anyone sitting at his feet would have to be measuring his own actions against one of the highest living examples.

In Liberation Theology there is a term that states a "preferential option for the poor". I met a nun in El Salvador who was the living embodiment of this. she lovingly chose to live and work among the hardest hit humans that you can imagine. Her face was always beatific, her actions always loving, her smile curative. I loved her.

A Multitude of Answers

I followed the parade and escaped being at the center of the fireworks. The parade ended up going into the Cathedral, all the floats (gigantic) and the dancers and the bands, and the rock groups, and the many many priests including one extremely handsome Cuban priest who had all the teenage girls aflutter after he passed by. They all convulsed or swooned in each others arms. I remember that feeling with an Irish priest when I was young and religious.

I asked about ten people, some friends, what this was about and got ten different answers. "It is December, the month of the Virgen". Well, actually, it is not December. "It is the end of the Catholic year, so we celebrate." Actually it is not. "It is the feast of something." I couldn't get the translation even thought most catholic things resemble the Latin I grew up with. I gave up. Does it really matter?

About Ralphie. He was born on the day we buried my mother. I didn't meet him until he was six weeks old. I was at a party in Temple , New Hampshire at Raphael's house. His barn dog had something like 11 puppies and it was a freezing night in February. It was Raphael's birthday. The dogs weren't allowed inside, they were barn dogs. But, the runt of the litter who was blond whereas all the rest were black, just kept managing to get in. He also wouldn't stop coming to me. I had a little moment of black out and decided to take him home with me.

Oops. He got named Ralphie for two huge reason's. Whenever we looked at a picture of my mother and her siblings, they always had a dog. When I asked her what the various dogs were named, she always answered, "Ralph". It was also Raphael's birthday so that seemed appropriate also. He was part Huskie and part Australian Sheep Dog. His coloring was exactly the same as mine. He quickly became a community effort. I traveled a lot and he wore out his welcome at many friend's houses...even farms. The thing is everyone liked him and at the same time couldn't stand him. He was a little crazy.

I lived on the ocean. At low tide, the rocks in front of my house were exposed and covered with frozen sea weed. The only place Ralph would poop was on top of the highest rock. So, it was a process that took forever. He had to climb up the frozen sea weed on these giant granite boulders and perch on the peak and then he would start to do his business and his paws would start to slide out from under him and he would end up on the sand and start the process all over again. He was a perfectionist, just made weird choices.

He was also grand sneak. When I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I would come back to bed and find Ralphie in my warm spot in the bed, the blanket tucked up to his head, eyes shut, pretending to sleep. If I waited a bit, he would peak out of one eye and I would bust him. He never gave up trying.

When the end of my finger got cut off, Ralphie sat on the couch with me and wouldn't leave my side. I liked that. Soon, however, I had to move and my sister who loooooooooooooooves dogs finally talked her husband, Lenny, into accepting Ralphie. He called me pretty frequently over the years. I enjoyed being a friend on facebook with him. But mostly I enjoyed visiting Sarah and watching Ralphie going nuts because he was profoundly loyal to both of us. We had to sit next each other or he couldn't relax.

I am sad that I won't see him again or talk to him on the phone.

More Personal Stuff

Firstly, I am not hungry all the time and when I eat, I don't get a terrible stomach ache. So, I conclude for now that the magic pills have killed the little buggers and I am regaining health. Astounding. It is probably good that I went the the doctor? He gave me the cover all bases pills. Am I now filled with dead things? If so, I'd rather them dead than alive any day.

There is either a funeral or a wedding at the church next to my house. (I'll post some pix soon.) I know something big is going on because not only are the church bells going nuts, but the fireworks feel like they are going off in the walls of my house. Oops, they are. And the newest addition to the riot of sound, car alarms!

Wrong again, There are bands playing and people marching in what looks like a combo thing. They are carrying a huge statue of the Virgen and Sandinista flags. Estoy muy confundida??  But it is big. I saw many priests running all over the plaza this morning, so God is in it. The Johova Witness people next door look bereft. They can't celebrate anything. Sucks for them in a place where people love a party.

Ralph died last night. I am utterly amazed how sad I am. He was my dog. Then he was my sister's dog. The thing is that he was a crazy nut case and a soul mate to anyone who loved him. RIP. I gotta go to the church. This is so nutty I want to be a part of it. Hasta Rasta.

So, I went to the good doctor and....

I generally consider myself a person of above average intelligence. That is already a dumb thing to do, but when you get living proof of how stupid you are you really do have to consider reconsidering all previously held beliefs.

When I think that I have been saying that I am tired a lot for eight months. When I consider that I have self-diagnosed with all sorts of stomach cancers for at least six months. When I told my son what I want for my current funeral plans and then when I think about walking into the doctor's office this morning, relating my two worst symptoms and hearing loud and clear his first question before he even started my exam..."When did you least take your anti-parasite medicine?" "Ah, never". "Never!", "Yes, Never!", "Never?" OK. You get the idea.

He did a thorough exam." Firstly, you have parasites. You'll take the anti-parasite for two days and we'll run a few tests." the tests are for anemia...ya, with all my organic vegetarian food, I could be suffering from malnutrition because of the parasites! And for kidney function. I could have caused a bit of harm there because of my long neglected parasites...and so on.

Then I got the lecture. "You don't have to be dirty or eat dirty food or water to get parasites. They survive a long time without hosts. You might have touched you shoe and not remembered it and somehow touched your mouth. That simple. Everyone who lives here (natives) or travels here needs to take parasite medicine at least twice a year. If you have symptoms, more often. All my years of visiting Central and South America and I never knew this. I knew the signs and symptoms of amoebas and of dysentery and giardia, but not the parasite thing.

This is what I am talking about being smart but not truly smart. So, after Alex and Yvonne took my sorry ass to the doctor. (No poop test necessary..no wondering about this diagnosis) we went to the lab. There I was told that I had to come at six tomorrow morning and I couldn't eat anything after 7 tonite and no grass at dinner. OK, I thought, I wasn't planning on grass. But they kept repeating this in English and I knew I was too out to lunch to understand. No grass at dinner?? Then I got the drift. They were saying the Spanish word 'grasa' and thinking the English word was grass. OK no fat tonite. Then we had to go out for espresso and cake to fortify ourselves for the horrible wait at the pharmacy.

Part of the reason the wait is horrible is because it costs so much money. The medicines (Two magic pills and no more parasites! Now that I know I have them I can't live with them another second. My imagination is picturing all those little fuckers laying their eggs and multiplying. Ugh.) don't cost much at all. What costs is all the sad, mutilated old ladies begging for money for their medicines. They might be scamming. I don't know, but the longer you stand there in line, the harder it is to turn them down. There but for the grace of God, go I.

Feeling Not Quite Right

So, I am trying to figure out why deciding to see a doctor is such agony for me. The last four times I have seen doctors were all highly positive experiences for me. A few years ago when I broke my hip and the emergency room doctor via SKYPE told me I could try and heal without surgery and it worked!! That was great. I am forever grateful that I don't have pins and crap in my hip and that everything is just as new. (well, as new as a 68 year old hip can be).

Then there was the wonderful doc in Spain who said, yes my eardrum had burst, but I was fit as a fiddle. Good thing that because I was at the start of the Camino and Dr. Ron had already treated me for my infection. Then there was the doctor who changed my life in Ashland, Oregon when he was taking off a few skin things and asked me how I was doing. I had never met him before and almost said, "fine", what did he know? But instead I told him how grey everything was, how I hated winter, how hard it was to stay cheerful. He told me about how I seemed to be suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder and should take precautions. I decided on the spot that until I was dying and confined to bed and maybe not even then, I was becoming a snow bird. Brilliant man.

Oh yes, the emergency room doc here in Nica last winter when I torqued my tendon. He gave me a drug to take down the swelling and it certainly did. He also told me I would be fine and I was.

All of these experiences over the past 3 years were distinctly positive. So, am I traumatized by a lifetime without health insurance? Now I have medicare but I don't understand it. Or am I afraid of the big bad diagnosis. Brain cancer, whatever. There is some of that. But there is also this business of having watched my parents go to doctors and each time come home with some medication that had ghastly side effects and led to the next medicine or the next specialist. I've known a few tough old birds who never went to the doctor and lived very long very healthy lives. And others, like my grandmother, who may have been helped some if they had had some medical attention. We'll never know. She hadn't had a doctor for anything in her life (like childbirth) so she wasn't going to bother him when she didn't feel well.

On my mother's side, Dr. Uniack spent much of his home visits with my mother having the priest come by. She had Scarlet Fever and Typhoid Fever and all the big childhood illnesses and was famous for her delirious fevers. Amazing.

So, I don't feel right. I came to Nica not quite feeling right. I don't know whether I had one thing and now have another, but I have decided that it is time to get some medical attention. So the great, the famous, the beloved by Grenadinos and ex-pats, Dr. Blanco is in Cuba. He is Cuban and has the nerve to return home for a visit just when I need him. Imagine! So I am going to another Cuban doctor tomorrow, fearful that I have pancreatic cancer or lung cancer, and equally fearful that I have to take a stool sample to a lab. I have never done that and it sounds horrid. One lady in town is reputed to have shit in a shoe box and taken the whole thing to the lab. I am not that thick.

I know that with the whole world suffering from one thing or another, this is dumb talk, but this is my little life and my little blog. Every time I try to function when I am not feeling up to snuff (great expression) I have so much sympathy for people who have the courage to live whole lives with diseases and injuries.

And for my holistic friends I have tried various teas and remedies. Not helping. I think the guy I am seeing id Dr. Iglesias. I think that means church. Full circle here. I need a faith healer. We all do.

To Paraphrase Chompsky

So, today we got the duo of righteousness The Pres and Madame Clinton) giving their wisdom, veiled threats, and advice to South East Asia and to the Middle East, especially the Palestinians.

So, firstly, the easy one, other countries MUST do better in the human rights department if they want any favors from us. Hard to say "no" to that, Massa. No Cambodian would probably be wise to ask Obama about our little genocide with the Native Peoples here, or that thing about slavery or most recently, apartheid, or even more recently our prison population. Someone needs to say , "Yes, Obama and Clinton, human rights are a great idea, but you go first."

So, looking at handsome Obama and his sidekick, Hillary, once again talking into the cameras of the world with sincere clear eyes and hearing them say, actually SAY "We will not tolerate and completely condemn any use of force against civilian populations." Now, I understand that we don't like to think of ourselves as one of the worst offenders in all of history on the entire planet, but I assure you dear reader that the civilian populations of Southeast Asia still remember carpet bombing, chemical warfare, scorched earth policy. I am certain that a lot of people around the globe remember Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I would bet that recent victims of drone strikes all over the Middle East have a different picture of our righteous stance. The people of Iraq who were killed by the number???(we don't count them) by depleted uranium bombs and by cluster bombs have a different picture. And those Contras? You get my drift.

So I will say that they have to be grandstanding to us. Amazing. And the Chompsky paraphrase is that most of the world would die laughing at our absurdity if it wasn't so terrifying. Apologies, Noam, but I love the image...not of the dying, of the laughing.

As if we need proof that thoughts are powerful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvzsjcBtx8

I am going to let you all draw your own conclusions. Years ago we saw pictures of crystallisations of organic foods vs factory farm ones and the results were wonderfully similar. Loving thoughts to all of you, especially those in Palestine and Israel. Peace out!

Frustrated in Nicaragua

Spent a good a good deal of effort today arranging my internet and it doesn't work. And it is Saturday. And nothing is open on a Sunday. Thankfully, they still have internet cafes here because not everyone has an iphone yet. There is a bit of an epidemic of Dengue Fever here, and I have had a fever. The thing is you can harm yourself if you have Dengue and take tylenol and that kind of stuff. But the other thing is that I had a little fever and the Dengue people look really sick. So, I am taking aspirina and rolling the dice. I am such a wild child.

The  German economy must still be good because this town is overrun with spendy Germans. I also noticed that the surfers are well-heeled this year, staying at very fancy hotels. That didn't used to be the case here. Aside from that fascinating pierce of news, the weather is perfect.

There was a funeral of a very wealthy Nicaraguan the other day and aside from his famous family, he was also the head of the firemen. So many sirens. Such a huge precession. So many tinted window SUVs. They had such a procession that they re-routed the one way streets. As a result of that, one man was killed crashing into a fire truck and a woman on a moto broke her leg hitting the procession. More business for everyone. I live in a town of 100,000 people without a stop light. Think about it.

How Are Our Wars Doing?

My theory about how we do things here in the US, as I have preciously expounded, is if something isn't working, then more of the same is bound to work. Think about it.If more tests and interventions aren't lowering the infant mortality rate, why, we must need more and more tests and interventions. If kids aren't learning to read by our current teaching methods, they need more hours in school getting the same instruction. If fighting the war on drugs hasn't stopped the production, sale, and use of illegal drugs, then we should have more war on drugs. It is bound to work someday! Are you kidding me?

This faulty deception manifests everywhere. If one marriage doesn't pan out, then five probably will.You get my drift.I can be sarcastic, but when it comes to wars, I think this is an extremely serious problem. Our dirty little wars and our great big wars don't seem to be making the world a better place. They don't seem to be spreading democracy, they don't seem to be making life healthier, happier more wholesome for anyone except for the war profiteers and their mercenary armies.

From Guatemala to South Vietnam to Iraq to Iran to Haiti to Honduras to (you name it) we have used this formula of overthrowing the president then fighting to bring peace and harmony and love and joy and democracy and higher standards of living and have instead inflicted seemingly endless nightmares of death destruction, oppression, suspicion on our victims. Being a colonist is not something we are good at. What I think we should get really great at is getting our own house in order. If we were all educated, fit, healthy, well fed and housed, optimistic, tolerant, loving, couldn't we change the world much faster and with much less cost in human and environmental treasure?

I wonder and I wonder a lot.

Can We Change? Do We Change? Are We Fooling Ourselves?

What is the question behind these questions? Is it fruitless to keep working so hard to become better? Are we meant to transform ourselves? Are we stuck with what we were born with? Can we ignore all the advantages of our birth?

If we get low about our finances, the future of the economy, our lost pension, we could all probably use a jolt of coming to a poor country.Would our decisions be radically different if, for instance, every Israeli had to live in Gaza for a few weeks every year? Would we see what a dollar really represents if we worked as a maid in Nicaragua or any other poor country for a few days? The maids here work so very hard and their pay comes to less than $.50 an hour. They are glad to have any income. It took many many years for the people here to resent the greed and the cruelty of the Samosas enough to launch a revolution.

In answer to my own question I guess I would say that people often seem to accept their fate, their caste, their place in the grand scheme of things until they can't. That is until dying for something new is their only viable option, until they can no longer live with the status quo. It must needs be that there is something similar in questing for self-improvement regardless of social status. There is some truth in the concept of dying to become.  One must kill off the familiar, the easy, and move into the unknown. "I am going to stop doing drugs, even if it kills me." What courage is behind those words! "I am going to do unto others as I would have them do unto me." What a frightening commitment which would not only change your life but require constant vigilance and probably repetitive failures.

I suppose I think we very much can change if we have the courage, the stamina, the hope and the heart for it. When you lose heart all is lost. But, at the same time, maybe that is part of dying in order to become. A Puerto Rican shrink I knew said often, "The imperative to change is death." Same message. Die to become.

I am upset this morning at the news that Israel declared war on Gaza. David and Goliath. In 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden mentioned the his primary reason for the attacks was the Palestinian problem. So, here we are billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives later still facing the same exact problem with the same stupid cave man thinking. (I mean both sides). Aren't we suppose to be evolving? I am discouraged. I might need to go live in Gaza in solidarity.

Why I Talk So Much About Religion

I have been asked this question often by bewildered American intellectual friends and readers. "What is all this God stuff?", "We didn't know you thought so much about spiritual matters!".

Looking back through history, it appears to me that just about everything everywhere has been driven by religious beliefs. And it seems to me that great changes politically, artistically, socially, architecturally, culturally, intellectually have dramatically followed new religious impulses.It makes a kind of sense that the inner experiences come first and then the outward manifestations follow.That's sort of pathetically obvious. But is it obvious when one is in the middle of it? Does it take hundreds of years of perspective to look back and say "Those Greeks must have had some powerful mojo going with their gods to build those temples. They made gorgeous bodies and glorious wars and great theater to honor and please their gods."

History is overflowing with religious wars. Every area of the planet that has achieved a grand civilization has great monuments to the gods that inspired. Traditional music from many places developed to cause states of ecstasy or forgetting or having heightened awareness or even crowd control.

In my country today there is a blur of spiritual trends. We are clearly unfocussed as a culture. The intellectual class which for years eschewed religion is practicing yoga and meditation and sufism and other flashes from the past. The born again thing is growing wildly. Many echoes of puritanism resonate from within the cultural life of the Jesus people, such as submissive wives. Materialism has god-like status, giving us iconic figures like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Sports arenas and crowds look a lot like, what? The Romans come to mind. Our iconic buildings; The World Trade Center, The White House, and the Pentagon are known all over the world and clearly symbolize, at least to outsiders, the essence of the United States. Power, money, worship? I read that Islam is the fastest growing religion on the planet. What does that mean?

Sometimes I am sad that both Judaism and Islam don't go in for great statues and paintings and music. But, clearly, war, territory, the rights to practice their traditions of worship are worth fighting for. And for us there seems to be an inherent threat in any tribal spiritual culture that causes us to want to eradicate it. Think of our history with Native Americans. Think of our genocide of the Mayans in Guatemala. What exactly is so threatening about people who value tradition over property, for instance. I would say ...lots is threatening.

My constant reference to God, religions and spirituality is both an effort to see and understand what is going on in my world and also an effort to find my own place in the world I live in. I keep coming back to the notion that I am somewhat mystically inclined and the mystics of all religion and all known time seem to sound pretty much the same.

I Make My Kids Anxious When I Talk About Lama Marut

I knew this and I didn't know this. I knew that my kids got a little squirrelly when I started to quote the good Lama. I felt that. When I think about it, they have experienced a bunch of my friends over many years pretty much go off the deep end with various gurus or fake gurus and certainly weird paths that have led folks down very strange trips. And even some pretty conventional paths that had a fanatical following.

For instance, the vegans we once  hung out with who wouldn't use "products". As a consequence , many smelled frightfully awful, had dirty hair, BO, bad breath and so on. The failing was not the concept of veganism, but the fact that they didn't find natural vegetarian ways to get clean. It was pretty intense for a while. Then there were the Anthroposophists who dressed up like they stepped out of Little House on the Prairie or Germany before WW1. Not quite looking like Mormons, but not too far off either.

Then there were the Breathetarians and lately the Raw Food fanatics. Sometimes hard to integrate into life as we know it. They also remember friends who disappeared to various ashrams and came back really skinny and extremely spaced out, or worse, never came back. Lots of stuff out there to lose yourself or find yourself in.

So, when I became a Buddhist, that was not so far out. They knew about the Middle Path, they knew that many, many Buddhists lived normal lives and worked in whatever society they lived in. But, when I started talking all the time about  Lama Marut, their antennae went up. What now? Is she going to follow this guy to the ends of the earth? Is she going to lose her capacity to think for herself and her life experience and kill us with endless "Lama Marut says" lessons?

I do get the concern. Yet, the other day when asked straight out what Marut means to me, I think my truth satisfied the question. He is the teacher of Buddhism who talks my language. (He also speaks Sanskrit and Tibetan.) When he explains a principle of the path, I get it. I have listened and revered many Buddhist teachers, most especially the Dalai Lama. With some, I have felt their energy, power, focus, holiness, but don't really understand them.

Marut is American. He was a professor at Columbia and UC somewhere before he got lamaized. He is very clear. He is funny. He doesn't soft-petal the work, but his teaching seems to me to be teaching Buddhism, not how to become a Tibetan (not happening in this lifetime), not temple rituals, not how to be a medieval monk, but the basic steps to living a righteous life. And did I mention that he is funny? And did I mention that he needs to go on a music, movie, TV retreat because his media references are getting out dated? And did I mention that he surfs and drives a Harley? Good references in my book.

That's my deal with the good Lama. I am filled with gratitude when I see him or hear him or get a tweet from him. I try to be a better person. I think he would be as horrified as my kids would be if I started kissing his feet. In fact, recently he took off his robes because he thought too many of his students were putting the form of traditional Buddhism before the intrinsic reality of the teaching. I don't mean he took them off in class, I mean he exchanged them for ordinary clothes. He also did this because we are all Buddha.

 Namaste.

My Camino, For those Who Missed This Before

MY CAMINO

I had given up the idea of walking The Camino. When I broke my hip two weeks before my previously planned trip, when I couldn't get a refund from Air France, when I started to get depressed, it had all seemed like too much to handle. And, this was key; in all my thinking, I had no real idea of what a pilgrimage was.

I had the notion that it was something I would like to do. I guess it was more than an idea. I talked about it. I read some books. I had collected gear, mostly from my kids who knew how important great boots, light backpack, walking sticks were to a successful venture. But, I was ignorantly casual about what was involved.

Then, after my Dad's memorial service, my friend Ron mentioned that he would come with me if I ever decided to renew my venture and walk the pilgrimage. He is ever the nice guy, but I dismissed his offer perfunctorily. “No way in hell. If I go anywhere, I'll be sitting on a fine beach in the Caribbean.” I knew that was more my style. I was tired, tired of my life, tired of not having a plan for the third act of my life, ( I was coming up on 67) tired of worrying about Olivia and most of all tired of not doing anything.

What's more, Ron is a Jewish guy from Queens and the Camino de Santiago de Campostella is an ancient Catholic walk. I grew up a Catholic and had had deep moving experiences with love and reverence for the traditions, the art, and for Liberation Theology in El Salvador. He had his own path. We had met each other over the work of Rudolf Steiner whose writings definitely centered on the Cosmic Christ, but I still rejected his offer.

Less than a half a year later, I don't really remember the moment, I suddenly opened myself to the possibility of going and called Ron and put it in motion. Thinking about that moment I am going to go with the idea of inspiration. (the breath of the Gods). In any case, I had started something that rapidly gained a life of its own. I went from “Never again” to “OK Ron, May looks good to me” to “Lets book the tickets” in a nanosecond. Maybe if I had thought about it, I wouldn't have had the courage.

I asked Ron why he was going. He said it was for the pleasure of my company. Little did he know that that wouldn't be worth much when we really got going. I know now that I really needed him both to jump start my trip and to give me support and strength as I was more depleted than I knew. Making a commitment to him kept me going when I was flagging. I was sinking. We had an unusually gray winter, my son was about to move out of the country, Olivia needed a lot of help, and my life in Ashland wasn't amounting to much of anything. I had reached a time when I couldn't commit to anything.

My wonderful ignorance of what a pilgrimage entailed helped also. How many times in my life have I jumped without looking? And, truth be told, how many times had I been glad that I had? Many. It is ironic how many friends have praised me for my courage in undertaking this walk when I ended up praying daily, hourly, for the courage to continue and the strength.

Our plans were open-ended. Ron had only three weeks that he could miss work. He also had a strong desire to see the ruins of the castle of the Knights Templar, which was near the beginning of the Camino. We kept it open that we might split up and I spend longer than he would.

I flew from Oregon to the East Coast, visited with friends and family and walked every day. I went to Martha's Vineyard with Alice and was insanely allergic. So I thought. By the time I arrived at Ron's to pack our packs and set out, I had a full fledged sinus infection, fever and all. I hadn't even had a cold for a whole year. Was this the broken hip all over again?

Ron was very cool about it. He prescribed an antibiotic and offered “You can change your ticket and come when you are better.” I was too sick to make such a decision, so we went. This involved an overnight flight to Madrid, a race across the city to the train station, first time with the pack on, Oh God, a five hour train ride. The fever was going away but I was hungry, coughing, tired. At the station we met some wonderful cheerful, beautiful done-up southern women and shared a long taxi ride to Roncesvalles. Our start place.

We arrived at Roncesvalles in the afternoon. It was a stunningly clear and beautiful weather. It felt like we had landed on another planet. The huge building had been a hospital, monastery or convent, or all three as we would later encounter. There was nothing else in the town except a few restaurant-bars. The fields around were perfectly groomed, having been cultivated for thousands of years, the river was pristine mountain water. I was sick. My mood didn't improve as pilgrims who had started their journey in St. Jean Pied de Port in the Pyrenees were straggling in with frightening blisters,twisted ankles, sun burns, moaning and groaning about the tortures of their long steep first day. A few had started much further, one woman at Lourdes, another at du Puy. They were in better shape. I was in a completer fog, almost unable to be civil. I was exhausted, stuffed up and plotting how much energy, money and wit it would take to get the hell out of there.

Our accommodations were in this walled pile of stone with a courtyard, huge building, hotel, hostel (albergue) and little chapel. It was newly renovated, Gracias a Dios. The sleeping chamber was a giant room filled to the brim with bunk beds. Hundreds. We signed up for the pilgrim dinner. I made garbled conversation with some woman who spoke some language and we ate an awful soup that called itself 'vegetable' but tasted like flour and water, and the freshest steamed trout you can imagine. We were in Basque country. Ernest Hemingway here we come. The Mass in the chapel was touching with talk about our courageous adventure and God. If there had been a travel agent around I would have been on the next plane.

I was having a fit because I had accidentally smashed my Kindle at the Madrid airport. I can't remember ever going to sleep without reading. The only actual book I had brought was The Quiet Mind, Sayings of White Eagle. Sleep that night never came. I coughed all night. I took a million trips to the rest room, I fidgeted and watched the man across from me precision fold his stuff about a hundred times. I listened to the snoring of 200 people and suffered claustrophobia (cloister phobia) when I discovered that the doors were locked. I felt guilty because I knew I had disturbed the sleep of many others.

They turned the lights on at six AM and started hustling us out of there. My dreams of a leisurely cup of coffee and some wonderful pastry fled fast. We were the last to leave. Shuffling the pack and my long winded complaints about my lack of sleep delayed us. It was cold. We were hustled out the back door. I NEVER start my day without coffee, Oh God.

Ron couldn't get his walking sticks to adjust properly. Several nice men, Danish I think, stopped and tried to help. No dice. Everyone else hustled past us looking like they knew what they were doing. We had no choice but to start walking. I was crying inside and maybe a little outside. I kept having flashbacks to events with my daughter. I missed my Dad, I was sick. No coffee. Heavy pack. No book to read. Moan, groan, agony, pain, grief, sorrow.

We walked and the day brightened and warmed up. There was a cafe. There was food, and the people we had thought headed to walk fifty miles before breakfast were all sitting around drinking coffee and chattering. Things were looking up. Sun, food and cheerful pilgrims changed my mood. We were officially launched.

By mid afternoon we had walked about seven miles and came to a spartan town that had a store and a lunch spot. It was cold again and I had already had to soak me feet in an ice cold stream. The shopkeeper laughed at my Spanish and would only speak Basque. I couldn't walk any further but there was no alberque for another 10 miles. We finally found a woman who had a guest house and took a room with a hall bath. The town (thirty farms) had emptied out. I was restless and sad and coughing and sniffling. Ron let me use his Kindle. I started to get the idea that if you weren't walking and you had had food, and there were no pilgrims about, it was a very quiet, bare scene. Everything was quiet, except my mind. Years of meditation practice didn't kick in and help me when I tried to still my monkey mind. I was dizzy, disoriented and heavy.

I won't describe all the pleasures and tortures of the walk. We walked through deep rural farm country, much of it built up between 700 and 1200. The animals often lived in the first floor of the houses. The gardens, fields and woodlots were so beautifully established they looked like they tended themselves. The book Heidi was often mentioned by passing pilgrims. It was such a contrast to the state of Oregon where I live. In Oregon everything man has touched looks raw and crude to me; denuded hills, silt filled rivers, big roads for few people, houses often without character and too many machines. When we annihilated the Native People, we began the wild west approach to raping nature.

The weather was perfect, As we walked on, I complained a lot about my aches and pains, about whether I was too hot or too cold. Sometimes I was so done that I flopped down in the middle of the trail crushing my pack beneath me. Ron stayed in his mode of seeing the bright side of everything and proclaiming wrongly again and again “I am sure that this is the last hill of the day: it's all going to be easy from now on.” I also put my foot down on the “Hi Five 'maneuver every time we came to food, or passed a marker or had an imagined triumph. God. I became the nay-sayer to his boundless optimism, but really enjoyed his joy at meeting some of the wonderful folks we met as they invariably passed us.

At first, people asked us why we were making this pilgrimage. Then the question kind of faded away. I came to suspect, and was later proven correct that we couldn't know anything more than that for some reason we all found ourselves there in the mountains of Spain, on this path. The Way.

Any web search can tell you the history, the myths and legends that abound and the famous people who have trod this path through nowhere following little yellow arrows and scallop shells embedded in stone. This walk feels like you are walking through nowhere into the now. Druids are said to have known this: the Milky Way lights this field of stars. It follows one of the great Ley Lines on this planet (earth meridians powered by mighty chi). The Crusaders came, lost souls, mighty warriors (right up to modern times) mystery schools, ordinary people. Stories of secret energy, flash backs, little and large miracles and most of all, time for nothing.

Saint James' message was that Christ's loving gift from his incarnation, his death and resurrection was that there is no death. Catholics call Him the resurrection and the light. Old childhood memories from growing up Catholic flooded me at strange moments. I had never liked Medieval architecture because I contrasted it with the glorious buildings of the Renaissance. On the Camino, the tiny, dark, little chapels dotting the countryside seemed brave, solid, strong, grounded, simple. The stone crosses marking the path each made me hesitate for a moment and think of previous pilgrims. Daily I wondered, how could I, with my great gear, money in my pocket, sunscreen, a good friend, complain about my privations when hungry, cripples, agonized mortals had gone before me. I could and I did. God forgive me.

I have always had a loose relationship to places and things. Mr. Edmunds, always insightful, upon meeting me said' You will never have a home. You are at home everywhere.” I knew I was a gypsy at heart. Some of my happiest moments have been setting out on a trip with my backpack on my back. Not this time, that wasn't how I began, but once I had begun, that feeling kept growing in me.

That was one benefit of the pilgrimage that started to happen. I started to remember me. I am a news junkie. I didn't miss it. I didn't have to define myself by how much I knew about the world. I am a person to whom everyone spill their guts. I enjoyed meeting people, but I didn't have to hear their back stories. I took what I saw at face value. We greeted each other with “Buen Camino”, we ate lunch together, we found out what country we were from. Everybody recognized North Americans. Do we have a scarlet letter on our chests? Even with that obstacle of having been born in the US, I was accepted when I accepted. We were all coming into the present moment.

Somewhere along the way, Ron got royally pissed off at me. He had wounded me in the past (without knowing it) when he would ask me for my intuition about some concern he had. When I sat with his question and gave him my answer, he would say “No, you're wrong”, and then tell me what he thought. This might sound trivial except for the fact that my intuition is my rock solid place. I was catapulted into an soul search. “Why would I tell him anything? Why would I expose myself? Why would I let doubt creep into my heart?” Not wanting to grapple with this and not feeling that it was productive, I slammed shut a door and decided that I would talk with him about food, scenery, blisters and that kind of stuff. I was unwilling to get into some neurotic thing about who was right or spiritual competition about insights. Again, I was fighting for my life on this walk.

It seemed that when I challenged him, he thought I was judging him and that he was coming up lacking. I thought I was prodding him to be more true to himself. I am grateful to Ron for his strong reaction. I see it as part of my letting go. It wasn't at all a time for back and forth and explaining. My process was just beginning. I wasn't going to give myself to that kind of a relationship with Ron. I don't care if I am right or profound or wise or anything like that. I need to get closer to being true to myself.

That wasn't the first time that year that I had given someone I care for the power to hurt me. One day last fall when I was physically and spiritually exhausted, a friend I thought was rescuing me, verbally assaulted my integrity. I could hardly breathe. At that second I knew that a spiritual warrior never leads with her vulnerability, Lao Tzu. I was crushed, but I was also beginning my Camino. The question that had been forming was that if it was my karma that had put me more than once in the position where intimate friends could bite me, then how do I get rid of that karma?

That question brought me to a much larger question. My daughter Olivia has been sick and I have been killing myself, quite literally, trying to help her and suffering with her. There is some good Buddhist mojo in compassion, but it does no good for either of us when I lose my center, my hara, my life, in doing so. I would willingly make that sacrifice if it made her well, but that wasn't how our dynamic was playing out.

So, what was my karma that had involved me so heavily in my daughter's misery? How do we start to lead separate lives? How does one get rid of these entanglements? In other words, how do you get rid of old bad karma? How do you create new good karma? How do I die to become? How do I love fully without getting hurt?

These were the questions that arose. Ron seemed a little sad and miffed that I was not engaging with him. I was not ready to tell him what I was struggling with. He had accused me of trying to say profound things because I want praise from people's reaction. I was fighting for my sanity and to have a future. This was my stuff and the Camino was making me confront the big question of how can I give glory to God if I am depressed and miserable?

Lama Marut has said that the road to peace and happiness starts where you are. He joked while hammering home his point. We have been stuck in the “You'll get your reward in heaven” scenario. It goes like this - misery, misery ,grief, suffering, pain, helplessness, victim hood, death – Heaven! The Buddhist picture is a – a little happy, more happy, happier, happiest – Nirvana! It really has more logic behind it to my way of thinking.

I had formed my quest. I didn't do a thing about it. Just kept on walking, eating, sleeping with my new best friend, earplugs, and reading the only book I had, White Eagle. As luck would have it I came upon this saying in White Eagle:

THE WAY TO TRANSMUTE KARMA

We come to help you. A thought from you, a prayer, a hope, and your brethren know and are with you: but we can not take from you your free will, nor rob you of your experience; we cannot free you from your Karmic debts. You must accept for payment debts that you have incurred, and surrender yourselves to the infinite love of God. But we can assure you that your Karma can be softened by the love of the Lord Christ. You can work out your lessons joyfully. This is the way to transmute Karma. As soon as you have learned the lessons your Karma is meant to teach you, it will fall away. It will no longer exist.

I was to joyfully accept my lessons, being grateful for the people, events and so on that seem to cause my suffering and bring pain in my heart. I had heard and tried this before, but on the Camino, I decided to practice it with much more resolve, even when I didn't feel it, especially when I didn't feel it. After all, there was all that time while walking. As I plunged into each day, and more especially when I could hardly carry on, I repeated over and over step by step, “For the Glory of God”, and also “Hail Mary, full of grace the Lord is with thee (I pictured the Annunciation), Blessed art thou amongst woman, and blessed id the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen.”

I pictured the depictions of Mary, of Christ by Leonardo, Michaelangelo. I pictured the Pieta. I started to forget my burdens. In some moments, I forgot my hunger, my blisters, my story.

Answers, per se, didn't arrive fully conceived in my consciousness, but a kind of peacefulness crept up. A quiet place, that I had forgotten was in me.

The mantras took form; “poco a poco, paso a paso, dia por dia,” “For the Glory of God” “Hail Mary”, “Buen Camino.”

A tentative sense of wholeness was returning to me. I started to feel other people's karma dropping away from my tangled past. I felt compassion for myself and for others. The Way to Christ and the overcoming of some Karma was beginning. I was still having some kind of Post Traumatic Stress. Certain sounds, smells, brought back painful images of powerful events, but I was starting to see from a bit of a distance, to see that I could have compassion, but it was crazy and crazy making to be inside of others and lose myself. I was to lose myself in the Highest, not the muck.

My helplessness was lifting, my dark cloud. The physical challenges were still intense for me. Everyday I flirted with the idea of paying someone to deliver my pack ahead, but it seemed too complicated. How could I know how far I could possibly walk? How could I carry my food, water, rain gear? I ended up making the non-decision to carry my pack myself. We had discovered a lunch that most places served. It was a simple salad with a hunk of tuna, some hard cooked eggs, some local cheese. With it you got the thingy that held oil, vinegar, and salt. I eat salt as one of my food groups and it was never available unless you ordered something that needed vinegar and oil. Some pilgrims started to bring me salt when they got some. My other dietary mainstay was the Torte de Santiago. It is an almondy confection that is not too sweet. It really filled us up and was easy to carry. My body was emerging from its clever disguise of roundness. I was losing weight, but gaining shoulder muscles and a flat belly.

Olivia had told me to use my stomach muscles to carry the pack or my back would get too tired. I tried this when I remembered which was mostly when I felt pain in my lower back or hips or knees. Thus, another step got added to my survival routine; stomach muscles,”Glory of God”, “Hail Mary”, complain about how the book we had never quite told us how challenging the terrain was, bitch about the Germans who felt it was their duty to correct me.

One youngish German woman, about 42 came upon me collapsed, lying on top of my pack on the trail having a smoke. She didn't say “Buen Camino” or “Are you OK?” or “Do you need water?”. She came too close to my face for my comfort, hands on hips, and said “Do you know that smoking is bad for your health?”

“Get out of here!” I said incredulously.

“Yes”, she said and start to inform me with statistics.

“No”, I said, “I mean get out of here.” She looked non-plussed cut short her infomercial and walked away.

More Karmic questions. Do I have a sign on me saying “Take your best shot?” An Austrian man, passing me rapidly, had already informed me of something I already knew. “Your hat is inadequate.” I had brought my kyacking hat. It was soft and light weight. He meant that I should have a wider brim, but because the back of the “inadequate” hat kept getting bumped by my pack and knocked over my eyes, I wished I had brought a baseball hat. I was cussing it pretty regular.

That time I didn't bother to give a mean reply. I was starting to see that it was his problem, not mine. If he had to greet a stranger with a bummer comment, he couldn't be all that happy. My sign on my back, in my imagination, came off.

Ron's comment that had upset me morphed into his problem not mine. The endless struggle to help Olivia started to shift from my suffering to hers. I saw my grief at her suffering and it started to look like my choice. I began to glimpse a picture of her destiny as separate from mine. She was suffering greatly. I could choose to look at my relationship with her as a gift to me. Our relationship had led me to despair and kind of forced me, in my despair, to ask (beg, plead) for help from Mother Mary, from God, from Buddha, toward Christ. She was my teacher.

“Good thing”, the thought came, “that my first attempt at the Camino had been aborted by my broken hip: the perfect timing was not in place. I was not stripped naked enough to be a pilgrim. I was in the dark, not ready for the Light on the Path.”

In my meditation group which had met for years, many friends had alluded to feeling a strong connection with the Knights Templar and their Mystery Schools. Often I had looked around and in their faces bearings, gestures and attitudes that made sense of this. I had felt a connection with Christian Rosencreuz, but nothing more. I didn't have a feeling that I had been persecuted, of in hiding or a fighter for Christianity. I saw myself tending gardens and being a contemplative.

On the Camino, I felt different stirrings regarding past experiences. At he risk of echoing Shirley McClain, There were a few places where I felt safe. That sounds weird, but I mean deep down safe in those squat, ancient, stone chapels. I am not drawing any cosmic conclusions, I hadn't even known I was in a not safe zone until I felt safe.

I was appreciating Ron more and more. He had been the impetus for my re-engaging and taking up the pilgrimage. He was always, and I mean always, ready to help me. More than once he offered to walk to the end of the day's trip, find a place to sleep, and come back and carry my pack . When I had moments of “I can't do it” his offers gave me the courage to carry on. He never bemoaned the fact that he could have gone further, done more, that I was holding him back. I also know that being Jewish, he didn't have the years of association with the Saints, and how all the Catholic stuff works. We had many discussions about the Israeli/ Palestinian situation. We met a charming Catholic Palestinian, friend of everyone, who didn't hide his hurt when the troubles in his land came up. Once again, I felt a sense of shame to be connected with US Foreign Policy. Again, already.

Talking about the traditions of the Jews, I felt sad that the warnings about worshiping false idols , coming I assume from the ancients worshiping the Golden Calf, that seemingly halted all creation of art to express the Jewish faith. I have never had the feeling (perhaps some do) of worshiping the statues, the paintings, the architecture, even the saints of the Catholic tradition. I did have the sense of being shown through the treasury of art, how some guy a thousand years ago pictured dear St. James, or the Virgin Mary, or Christ himself. These portrayals opened me to new dimensions of gifts from the Saint, the courage with which he lived and the inner transformations he went through because of his devotion to his Master.

'Transformation ' isn't a big enough word. 'Knowledge' is. Saint James 'knew' that Christ, by his resurrection demonstrated that there is no death. It is no wonder that the Mystery Schools of the Knights Templar sought the Way of Saint James. And it is no mystery why they had been massacred for their knowledge.

I let go of the notion the the pilgrimage had anything to do with how far one walked, whom you were with, why you had come. Each of us was finding what we were looking for. This was a walk of gifts, some of which I was reluctant to open until I was forced to.

A few times I planned on taking a day off. I was too tired. But after a few cups of coffee and a bit of sitting around, it felt stupid not to go on. Strange thing though, the short walk days, 6 or 7 miles, didn't get us to our destination any earlier than more ambitious walks. We just ended up taking longer breaks, collapsed more, followed the butterflies.

There were times when we came to a fork in the Path where we couldn't see any markers. Kind people had put yellow arrows or scallop shells marking the path. Some of the markers were a thousand years old, carved in stone crosses. This being said, there were places where cow paths merge in the middle of nowhere and branched in all directions. Taking the wrong way wouldn't have been a disaster except there would be no food or shelter to be found. When we came to unmarked intersections invariably a butterfly appeared and fluttered down one path. I followed the butterfly and invariably, 100% of the time, was led in the right direction. Hummm.

As we approached Santiago de Campostella, I felt we were going too fast. Imagine me thinking that after my painfully slow start. We had taken a train and bus for part of the trip to fit into Ron's need to return to work. I had no desire to scuttle him. He was part of my Camino, snoring and all. At the same time I was less and less inclined to talk, to read, to interact. I was forgetting my past and giving no thought to the future. I was 'being'. And still praying or repeating my mantras over and over. Now not so much to cramp thoughts of of my mind as to rest in the familiar repetition.

Walking a shorter number of miles than most pilgrims presented any number of problems. There were not many, if any, towns or albergues in between the conventional stopping points. Often if we decided in the morning that we would walk ten miles, around four in the afternoon we were miles from a place to sleep. One afternoon I hit my limit and we had to call a taxi to drive us to the nearest place to sleep. He took us to a new hotel on a highway and someone met us and gave us the key and then left. We were the only people there, no help, no guests, no one. It was weird. I am usually very social, but daily I was becoming less so. Ron liked to have a good dinner and relax and schmooze. I liked to eat snack food early and be more alone. I was getting quieter and quieter, enjoying solitude. Moi!

We had slowed down. I had expected that walking into Santiago would be like coming into any large city, that is; more traffic, faster roads, signs, noise, but we were in real countryside right up to Monte Gozo.

Monte Gozo is a hill about 7 klicks outside of Santiago. It is a spot where all the different Camino routes come together. Who knew that people were walking from all directions at the same time? The usual ancient chapel was on the pinnacle along with a huge modern sculpture, refreshment stands, and tons of people all of a sudden. There was a palpable excitement in the air. This was it. And 'it' was so many things to so many souls.

You could see Santiago de Campostella in the distance down a very steep hillside. (going down was perversely more painful than ascending) We couldn't see the old town or the huge Cathedral. Now my slow walking became different. I was savoring each step. Trying to soak it all up, being pleasantly distracted by the sudden onslaught of people. Hoping to find a room.

As always, it was a lot further away than it looked. When you look across the mountains or a valley, you see as the crow flies. When you walk, you meander around fields and properties until you can't even figure out what direction you are moving toward. When we arrived at the alberque it was impossible to contemplate staying there. It was huge, holding around 300 walkers. It was on a high hill and the town was way below. There was no way that I would go to the center and be able to walk back up at night. Never.

So. We walked. I prayed. I complained. Could I not make it after coming this far? It seemed very possible.

We did it. We allowed each other the 'high five'. It was a bit overwhelming to come into the town square and be in front of the grand cathedral and the more grand hotel and the other grand buildings. For the Glory of God. For the 'Love of Pete'. Thousands of people from tour buses, large groups from many countries. Had I mentioned we only met a handful of USAs? Had I mentioned how shocked everyone was at how the decline of America was manifesting? The great square was also a bustling marketplace selling key rings, statures, walking sticks. Who needs them now? And food places everywhere. Oh God, the wonderful smells of chocolate, bakeries, garlic.

We sought a hotel in the center. Ron found us a great hotel. One drawback which was why there was an empty room...fourth floor walk up. But now we were invincible. Ron carried my pack up. It was getting lighter by the day as I left a trail of my belongings as I realized I wouldn't need them anymore. I needed Ron to do that. Thank God.

Thanking God was actually what I was doing. I was thanking God for the peace in my heart, for finding my karma, for feeling free. For a subtle understanding of the things I knew and had been taught, but hadn't incarnated into my total being. That's not bull shit. There were many things I had heard since childhood but hadn't taken the time or space to 'know'. For example “God is everywhere”. So simple. “Yes, of course”, but to experience it fully. This was new. I could give many examples. You know them yourselves. “Be here now”. Wow!

The office where you get your Camino Certificate (with your name in Latin) was so well hidden that even locals had trouble directing us. You would think that with 1,000 people a day most of the year and 3,000 per day in July and August, the street would be worn out. But we no longer had the yellow arrows or the little scallop shells or the butterflies to direct us. Maybe when you arrive at the destination you discover that it is all the Camino now.

At the office, we climbed more stairs and presented the cards that we had had stamped each stop along our route and a lovely smiling volunteer carefully wrote my name in Latin and gave me my certificate of completion. A young couple waiting in line on the old stone stairs pointed quietly at me and the woman said to her boyfriend, “Look, she's crying.” I didn't realize until that moment that tears were running down my cheeks. Relief, sadness, triumph, joy, I don't know. Just tears.

We bathed. I put on my skirt that I had carried the whole way and Ron treated me to a really fine dinner. Later, as I was throwing away dirty stuff that I never wanted to see again (think socks) I made a list of every item I had brought, including the sticks, the pack, the boots as well as note paper and pen and every thing had been a gift from family and friends. (except for one tee shirt). I had so much encouragement for my journey. A few more tears fell. And I fell asleep saying “Hail Marys”.

The next day was the Pilgrim's Mass. In fact every day is the Pilgrim's Mass, for over a thousand years if the stories are true. After breakfast and coffee and more coffee visited the Cathedral. Another chance to wear my skirt. Although some pilgrims came in straight from the road after walking all night. They weren't so dressed up. As you can imagine, this church was a work of art, which has been added to through the ages. Many gorgeous altars and sculptures and paintings were gifts from grateful souls through the ages. The mood of the gathering hoards had a real buzz. There was a mix of eager anticipation mixed with solemn awe.

I almost didn't go up behind the main altar to visit the great silver coffin-like thing that is said to hold the remains of Saint James. I almost didn't go because of the long line of people waiting in line to ascend one at a time. I almost didn't go because it seemed touristy. But the line was moving fast and I had come that far. I couldn't have anticipated the feeling of lightness and almost electricity that I experienced when I followed the tradition and spread my arms and lay my head on the silver box. It felt like something from Saint James came to me. No shit.

Where to after that? I saw that the tiny little boxes where the priests hold confession were open for business. Unlike in the USA, you kneel face to face with the priest , with your back to the congregation, which was now in the thousands. I began, “Bless me father for I have sinned. It is 52 years since my last confession.” He didn't blink. Either he was used to this or he didn't comprehend my Spanish. Again with the tears, “I have often put myself, my worries and my comfort before God.”

He looked in my eyes and put his hands on my head and said, “God loves you.”

Then the moment was over and he asked “Ingles?”. I said, “Si” and he took out an little box of index cards and found what he was looking for and handed me the one that said “Two Our Father, three Hail Mary.” I laughed. I could have murdered my mother and gotten the same penance. It was the only card in English in his box. I whipped off the prayers and found Ron and we elbowed our way into a great perch from which to attend the Pilgrim Mass.

The mob in the Church was pressing forward. A spare little nun came to the pulpit as the organ was blasting. She started rehearsing us for some liturgical responses. The she tuned us up about no cameras, leave a space for the priests and altar people to get through and another space up front. The extra space was for a hospital bed with a dying man on it and a huge family with some severely handicapped children in wheel chairs. The no camera rule was so absurd in that setting that some of the priests saying the mass were whipping out their i phones and snapping pictures while saying mass. It was kind of annoying at first with hundreds of flashes going non-stop, but the annoyance faded as the strength of the event started to unfold.

There were ten or more priests serving mass, each speaking a different language, none of which was English. Many of them had just completed the Camino themselves. One from Mexico was still in his jogging clothes. Each spoke, in their own language, the traditional pilgrim welcome. Then each spoke a few words from themselves. The church was so quiet. The liturgy went on and then the Cathedral priest gave his talk. He spoke about the fact that the Camino was just starting. The pilgrimage so far had just been a warm up, our showing ourselves our intention and our dedication to our intention. Walking toward the resurrected Christ could be our everyday job, that by sacrificing ourselves and losing our familiar lives we had begun to find our higher, better, more eternal selves.

Then a mighty army of priests and altar boys managed to deliver the sacrament of Holy Communion to everyone. More tears, a joyful lift in my heart and it was over.

My karmic lesson...my lesson about karma...everything has a cause and everything has an effect. So my karma with Olivia causing my pain..the cause is my clinging to the hope that I can help her that I can fix her that I can't be happy unless my kids are doing well. The effect is that she always feels more sadness and pressure from making me unhappy. I am unhappy. I can't get on with my life. To change this I need to let go of the hot coal (I can change her, it, whatever.) Then I make new good karma by not bringing suffering to her, myself others, The effect is I am happy. Clear the way to resurrection rather than continuous crucifixion

Is the USA officially a third world country as of today?

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/aboutus/map.cfm?ref=main-menu-ourwork

This world map shows where Doctors Without Borders works all over the world. As of today, they are operating in New York City. Does this finally make us a Third World Country? We have been on a slippery slope with the shrinking of the middle class. This, however seems like a great leap down the hill. Don't get me wrong!!! I want the suffering New Yorkers and New Jerseyites to get all the help they can, and right now. I am just horrified that during Katrina and now with Sandy, we can not bring help to our own countrymen. I am horrified that with all the doctors and hospitals and police and military and Coast Guard and National Guard, and caring people that we can't do what needs to be done and do it fast.

I did some work with Doctors Without Borders in Guatemala during the genocide there. I helped with triage. I went up the volcanoes with the locals and helped carry sick people down the trails. Well, they carried, I schmoozed with the family of the sick to encourage them to accept help. Most rural Guatemalans had a justified fear of hospitals. They died when they went there. But MSF was no hospital. There they could only go in as far as their Land Rovers could go because they carried their entire operating equipment in the Rovers. So we brought people down the trails.

The teams I saw were more than fantastic...they were bright, fun, energetic, seemingly fearless, spoke ten languages at once. They were super heroes. One reason they could do that was that they got paid by the month. It was paid volunteer work. No one had to or could have kept records in that environment. They did what they could and moved to the next case. No fear of lawsuits, no troubles. During the horrors after Hurricane Katrina it seemed like many people who wanted to help couldn't get in or couldn't get credentials or whatever. Our systems that work- sort of- when everything is all right can't seem to work in a crisis.

I think they will be a tremendous help in this crisis. I hope we can learn from them even during the humbling experience of being "one" with third world countries. Que viva los medicos!!

Where Have All the Flowers Gone

One great thing about being part of the sixties generation, the flower power hippies, the anti-war, anti-nuke, anti-establishment, free love, turn on, tune in, and rock out, Janis Joplin, Jimmi Hendricks, Jefferson Airplane mob scene was just that. We were a force. We stood together. We were a tribe which could answer the call from wherever we were to come together for fun or for protest, anytime, anywhere. The uprisings were often stronger than our individual plans.

When the anti-war protests hit one of their peaks at the beginning of 1970 we shut down college campuses all over the country. We sacrificed willingly our tuition, our plan, for a cause that was bigger than we were. It was a crazy ride. There was a lot of righteousness. We collectively wanted natural childbirth, natural fabrics, healthy food, no more napalm, no more nukes, no more Betty Crocker cake mixes, no more war, no more stupid text books that said we were the only democracy in the world, we wanted to bust apart the companies like AT&T and United Fruit Company, we hated Monsanto, we loved Adelle Davis, The Moosewood Cookbook, The Tassahara Bread Book, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, we 'got' the oldies like the Beat Poets, we supported the Cuban Revolution, we we we we we we....

That "we" was what gave us power. That "we" was what made us different. We were trying our damnedest to be wildly individualistic. Our hippie clothes, our music, our antiheroes and heroes reflected this.  But the more we tried to stake out our individualism, the more perfectly we fit into the "we".

Our parent's 'we' was created by the Great Depression and World War 11. We thought, felt, that the ties that bound us came from our expanded consciousnesses  (great drugs, eastern religions, meditation, yoga, rolfing, feldenchrist method, anthroposophy) our heightened consciousness. We knew we were on the right side and in retrospect, we often were. We wanted feminism, we hated apartheid whether in our country or South Africa. We we we we we.

My young friend's view is that my miraculous mob, compatriots, peeps, are/were the most self centered, over-consuming, ruin-the-world for those who follow generation ever. I am kind of devastated by this view. This is partly because we had soooooooooooooo much fun. It had to be good. And we were trying to save the world. And we were a newborn tribe. That has to be good. The idea that we not only failed miserably, but turned into the enemy hurts.

It could be right. The once most radical, now ex-hippie people I know talk about their iphones and imacs and ibooks as if they were as wonderful as the Dalai Lama. We once hated identifying with brands. Many, many, many of the old hippies buy their second house and their third car with earnings from stocks in the companies we most despised: the war companies, the exploit the labor companies, the poison the environment companies. What happened to our tribe? You might say we grew up. I might say we gave up. I might say we were co-opted big time.

For instance, the Vietnam War was the model, the prototype for all the shit wars we have made since then.(El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, god knows what other countries) One of the great successes of the anti-war movement in the day was our gift for getting and keeping media coverage. Well, that might have worked in that protest, but the powers that be certainly learned their lesson. They bought the media outlets. (What war profiteer owns CBS? NBC? and so on.) We won a battle but lost the war. I am kind of devastated by being out manoeuvred.

Maybe the great tribal feeling was our substitute for the bonding that the soldiers had in WW11. Maybe it was our substitute for making it through the Great Depression. Maybe my young friend is right. I'll have to think about it.

Why Do We Chose to Be Fucked UP?

This is an idea forming in my mind, not yet fully incarnated:

Many people take drugs to alter their consciousness. Many drugs imitate mental diseases. When you take certain psychedelics, you can get ripping hallucinations, both auditory and visual. Yet, people who have schizophrenia suffer terribly from their hallucinations. Why do people decide that they want that experience? In the 60s it was common talk that many drugs induced a religious experience. Anyone who had a bum trip would probably call it something else.

But, both Christ and Buddha were reported to have had intense long lasting bum trips. Christ spent 40 days in the desert sweating blood as he had his 'dark night of the soul'. Buddha sat as his inner eye reviewed all the suffering on earth. That was maybe 40 days also. My feeling is that those Masters did that after many years of soul cleansing and preparation. Moral and ethical training was also involved.

Many people who use drugs simply can't bear their reality. An unreality of any nature at any cost seems to be preferable. A couple of minutes of 'high' seems to be worth a lifetime of pain as in meth people. At the same time, people who are all speeded up are taking tranquillizers to slow them down. People who are having hallucinations are struggling a life time to get 'normal'. It feels a little crazy.

Then there is the matter of our unconsciously altering our brain chemistry through horrible chemicals that we allow companies like Monsanto to make billions from. Take PCPs or DDT or Dioxin. They not only alter our chemistry but do so for many generations. Studies since the 1940s have shown that PCPs are one of the most dangerous substances on earth. Then came Dioxin which kind of left PCPs in the dust. We knowingly used enough of Dioxin in Vietnam alone that it showed up in animals in the arctic and everywhere else in the planet. Studies have proven a link to Pancreatic cancer. Studies have proven a link to ADD. Studies have proven a link to mental illnesses that people struggle with their entire lives.

I guess what I am getting at is this alarming mix up between recreation, addiction and medical/chemical poisoning. How can we know what our 'normal' mind is?  How much drug use today is people trying to find a stasis in their body chemistry?  I am trying to get a grip on these puzzling issues. And as my son remind me, if any of these chemicals are still being manufactured in or sold to other countries, we are enjoying them all the time. You don't have to buy plastic toys from China or eat veggies from Guatemala to get all the toxins in your body. The whales who are highly contaminated never did.

blogear

Blogear: To blog

Election night on Ometepe volcano in Nicaragua. No, I mean it is election night in the USA and I am on Ometepe Volcano in Nicaragua. No internet seems to work here tonite. No surprise. We have seen no other people from the US, so no one is holding his breath waiting to see who got the fix in in our elections at home. I just realized that I’ll know in a few days and it won’t make any difference.

We read today that each candidate spent a billion dollars. Good work guys! We also read that the entire election cycle cost about 6 ½ billion. That is the same as the GNP of Nicaragua. I would say that “it makes you think”, but that thought is followed by no thought. So, I guess the true sentiment is “It doesn’t make me think. “ Facts are fun, but this one doesn’t take me anywhere.

It might be interesting to find out in the next few days exactly how many votes in Florida or Ohio or wherever actually made the difference in this election. Then we can figure at 6 billion dollars how much those deciding votes actually cost per. It is possible that if we were more scientific, we could have just paid a million or so to those voters who made the difference and made a few people very happy and saved us all the torture of the prolonged election cycle.