un Viaje Interior

I can't remember the exact date it happened, but it was some time in July 1995 that we decided to take an adult 'Gap Year.' To abandon our orderly timetabled lifestyle and celebrate millennium year with a full 12 months traveling.

An overland Odyssey of discovery through south east Asia, the sub continent, the middle east and finally, wintering over somewhere on the west coast of Ireland in a small fishing village: any fishing village.

Because an Odyssey is not something you can timetable very precisely, planning gave way to spontaneity and we began to see our lives in small rather than large bytes of time. A day here, a week or two there, several weeks to make our way down from Istanbul to Jerusalem then, sometime in the Autumn, to head for Ireland, etc. etc. We had never lived like this before. It was vaguely irresponsible but very exciting.

Then, as is the way with Odysseys, one year rolled over in to two, two became four and then, before we knew it, seven years had elapsed and our life style had become permanently transitory, spontaneous and subject to sudden change. Over the course of those seven years we lived at 9 different addresses in four different countries, spent 18 months traveling and visited over 50 different nations.

The exception had become the rule and short term ruled us absolutely.

Now that we have decided to re settle in New Zealand, part of us feels we should revert to our previously well ordered long term outlook on life, like everyone else, while the rest of us wonders if we can - or even want to anymore?

Maybe the next big journey should be the one the Spanish call un Viaje Interior, a journey inside. The road least traveled, the spiritual voyage of faith we are invited to undertake each Lent that leads to the discovery of God within.

Now thats a journey that required flexibility, an openness to radical change and a readiness to embrace the unknown!

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Bush warns of dangers in withdrawing from Iraq

Because of the very remote areas we travelled through last year we were almost totally cut off from international news for almost seven months. For many of us this meant going cold turkey from something we had fed on daily (even hourly) almost all our lives. So on the rear occasions when a CNN or a BBC connection was available, we sat transfixed around the TV to scare and horrify our selves once more.

However, back now in a western civilisation, the international soap opera called World News, invades and bombards us from every angle. So much so that its easy to suffer from News Fatigue. To just mentally skim the headline without giving a second thought for the human story that always lies beneath.

This week it's the 'will we won't we pull out of Iraq and if so, when' episode. Beneath all the political pros and cons I discovered this letter. It was written by an Iraqi woman called Shahla who escaped from Baghdad in 2003 to live & study in Boston. Her letter was published in the National Catholic Reporter and is well worth reading.

Use this link to read her letter.

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Living in the past

The neatly sewn monogram on her yellow Polo Shirt announced to me, and any one else who cared to look, that she was Kylie, Assistant Manager at the local swimming complex. It was my first visit.

'Senior please Kylie', I said, - almost proud of the fact I'd reached that magic age where every thing's half price again. 'Oh yes', she questioned? 'My dad looks way older than you, and he's only 56! 'Mind you', she added, he is 50 kg over weight, a couch potato, and wouldn't come to the pool if his life depended on it.' 'Well, perhaps it might,' I replied with a smile as I ratted through the change in my jeans pocket for the $3.50 cost of a senior entrance. We're now the chattiest of friends, but her comments made me wonder, what constitutes old, and how come it doesn't always equate to age?

When I was first married I was 22 (yes, really) I was very much the trendy young man about town: 'Avengers' style 3 piece hand tailored suites, winkle picker shoes, a tailored 'car-coat' and always a colored silk handkerchief in my jacket pocket. My musical tastes were current. I went to all the right parties and to use the urban jargon of the day, I was very much 'in the grove!'

Ten years and 5 children later I found it impossible to button the suit jacket, I'd long since discarded the waist coat, the silk handkerchief had been mangled in the wash and the winkle pickers were past their best. We occasionally still got together for a 60's revival evening and a chat about how great it was back then, but the 2am feed for the little one meant the evenings finished early and the 'grove' I so proudly once occupied was now beginning to look more like a grave.

Like so many of our generation, we had built a demographic wall around our fading youth, shut ourselves off from outside stimulation and were struggling to rise our children in post war cultural vaccum which wasn't appropriate for the 80's and which only increased the hight of the wall. I knew very well where Kiley's dad was: lost for ever in the timeless 60's with no hope of ever being found.

Yes, they were 'good old days,' they always will be, but they're past. You can't live there and the only difference between a grove and a grave is the depth.

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Getting in touch with Charlie

'Why do you blog', a friend asked me yesterday. We were talking about creating a web presence for him and, so naturally, he wanted to know what blogging was all about.

I've been blogging regularly now for nearly 5 years (publicly and privately) and for almost 20 years, journaling as well, so coming up with an answer wasn't too hard.

'Well'. I said, 'I think the best way to explain it is to tell you a story. It's about a man called Edgar Bergan. Edger is probably best known as the father of the actress Candice Bergan, but in the 1930-40's he hosted one of the most popular radio shows in America. It was a very simply format. Edgar was a ventriloquist and the program was just him dialogging with his dummy, a character he called Charlie McCarthy.

Well, it seems that one day, one of the shows writers called to Edgar's hotel room to deliver the script for that evenings show. As he was about to knock on the door, he overheard Edgar sharing his deepest personal problems with someone else who was in the room with him. Being sensitive to the moment, the script writer waited outside for a convenient moment to enter. When Edgar had finished his story, the writer heard the other person in the room reply. To his astonishment, Edgar's counselor was none other than Charlie, his ventriloquist dummy. When all the talking was over the writer knocked, entered and delivered the script. 'It's none of my business Mr Bergan', said the writer, 'but how come you took counsel from Charlie? He's just a wooden dummy, actually Edger - he's you.'

'I know,' said Bergan, 'I know, but when ever Charlie speaks to me, I never know what he is going to say, and often what he does say astounds me with it's brilliance.'


You see, I said to my friend, it's like that when I write. It helps me get in touch with the Charlie that's in all of us. With out getting too spiritual, I said, It's a wisdom and a perspective God plants within each of us. Some people call it 'free writing,' just starting off and seeing where it leads. For me, blogging's the best way to unlock that wisdom both for myself and others. It helps clarify my thinking, it puts me in touch with my higher self so I can see a fresh perspective on my own life,

but best of all -

. . . . . it's cheaper than therapy!

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Say aaah

You know, it's what the doctor makes you say when you have a mouth full of finger and wooden spatula!

But did you know that the aaah sound has much more profound, even spiritual connotations, at least according to Dr Wayne W Dyer, well known author of such 'self help' books as 'Your Erroneous Zones', 'Pulling Your Own Strings' and the one I'm currently reading, 'Manifest your Destiny'

According to the good doctor, it's the one sound that is common to God, no matter what you call him: Yahweh, Buddha, Allah, 'Krishah, Brama, Siddah, etc. etc., all stem from the aaah sound.

It's also the cry of a new born baby as it draws it's first breath, and is the only sound humans can make effortessly by simply breathing out, and without moving the lips, tongue, jaw or teeth.

According to Dr Wayne aaah is not only the sound of creation, but it also happens to be the sound of joy and delight Aaah, the sound that accompanies the act of procreation, (think about it), the primary vowel sound and the first phonetic letter of the alphabet!

Interstingly in Hebrew, as you may know, the vowels are not written into the word but left for the reader to fill in as the words are spoken out. However, as it is forbidden in Jewish culture to speak the name of God, the name of Yahweh (written yhwh) is simply said as an exhaled breath, aaah!, implying that God is as essential to life as breathing and as prayer itself.

This is the sound we need to make to connect with God, says Dyer, ideally as a mantra and ideally at dawn!

Hhmmm, can't be too haaard, I'll let you know how I get on!

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Will the real me stand up please,

I see it happening in my 10 month old granddaughter, Sujin. The development of an individual personality. A set of cultural practices and norms she is taking onboard that will equip her socially as she grows toward adulthood. Like a jigsaw that is slowly coming together; her mothers smile, her father's quiet gentleness, her own growing sense of self awareness and importance with in the family, etc,etc.When she was born hers was a world that's borders were largely closed to us. At first we couldn't laugh together or communicate joy or sadness or personal need, or anything. She was Gods creation, born for eternity, but like a tourist from another planet who knew nothing of our culture or our ways.

I know from our own recent travels through Central Asia and across the Tibetan Plateau how totally out of it you can feel. You don't know the language, you have no idea what food to eat. You don't know the social norms and you can't even find your way to the bathroom! Its a feeling of total dependency and helplessness. Like that of a baby. And yet to survive, you need to build your own persona, a social identiikit, a construct through which you can relate to the world around you, even though your visit there may be only for a limited time. So it was for us as travelers, and If you have any belied in life after death, so it is for each one of us on planet earth. We are born with a unique (eternal) and individual personality onto which we must weld one that's more temporal and useful for the culture in which we must survive.

So which is our real (true self) identity?

The one we were born with (and will probably return to when we die), or the one we develop during our comparatively short time here? The identity which for want of a better term we call our ego, or by comparison, false self.

It's a question I have been struggling with over the past several months as I've cared for Sujin and observed this process unfolding before me. And its a question a fellow blogger from Stockholm has mentioned to me only to day. Talking of this process in her own life she says, 'It is an ongoing struggle of becoming more and more of our true selves'.

Though it's a blinding revelation to me this concept of true self / false self is not a discovery I can claim as unique. As I Google the phrase I see that religious and philosophical scholars have been using the term and discussing this paradox for years. So who am I to try to clarify the issue.

For me these are important considerations though as I work through the personal issues of my new lifestyle. So for myself, and possibly my fellow blogger, it's more a question of how to hold both of these identities, the true and the false self in some sort of healthy tension. How to know our real eternal value as a child of God/Allah/Yahweh with out believing too much, the publicity of our own burgeouning ego.

And I used to think life would become less complicated the older I became!

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