A Little Light and Letting Go

Remember the US Army ad that said:  "Be all that you can be,  join the adventure"? I often think about this ad and imagine a strapping young man eager for adventure months later after having enlisted finding himself in the dark, waist high in mud, surrounded by heavy artillery, wondering if he could do a little with out THIS adventure.  His thoughts are focused not on all that he can be but on the fact that he is terrified to the inner core of his being.  If he is lucky he will survive this or worse.

I am very anti-war and a strong pacifist, so why is this a prevalent thought running through my head?  I often get this image at times in my life when I am faced with a major change.  So now, after 20 years I am getting ready to leave Miami to move to Wisconsin.  I initially welcomed this as great adventure!  I can go home, spend time thinking about what I really want to do in life, plan to go to India, who knows.  I look forward to all the promise of developing and using my innate giftings and exploring untraveled terrain.  But part and parcel of such change, the great adventure, is the confrontation of the muck and mire and heavy artillery of inner fears and insecurities that come gushing to the surface when I face the great unknown!  I find myself figuratively waist high in the mud, with a foreboding sinking feeling.   But, I soon remember it is just a day-dream or image in my mind and that in reality I will not be destroyed or decapitated! Perhaps the soldier in the trenches sets his hopes on survival and that's what gets them through it.  God help the hundreds and thousands of souls who truly are in such merciless circumstances.  And thanks be to God that my reality, while it may feel temporarily dire, it is not, in truth!

So, why the sinking feeling in the face of life changing adventure?  Yes, there is fear of the unknown.  While I love change, I do feel uneasy about not really knowing what is ahead.  I identify strongly with the Psalmist words: "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my way".  That's about as much as I see at any given time.  On rare occasion I am shown much farther down the path.  But only a glance and then it is just that step immediately in front of me.

When I was younger, we lived in a house in the mountains that was built on the edge of a cliff and had a very narrow path leading to it.  My cousin came to visit us and arrived late on a very dark night.  He followed dutifully behind my father with just his flash light on the path directly behind my father's feet.  He dared not shine his light around, for the night was pitch black and my father's pace was fast.  The next morning when he woke up we took our coffee out to the yard to get the warmth of the morning sun and he looked out at the beautiful scenery looking out over the cliff.  "But how did I get here" he asked.  So we pointed to the "eye-brow" of a path that skirted the mountain and led to the house.  The path, which had a shear drop along the edge, was just wide enough for one person to walk on!  He gasped in horror: "That's where I was walking last night? I would have been terrified if I'd seen it in the light"  After you do it once, however, you get use to it, and before long he found himself running along the path without a thought about it's potential danger!

Sometimes it's good only to have that little bit of light shining on your path as you start on a journey.  In time you see the whole panorama!  And as you see more and experience more, you walk those narrow paths along steep cliffs, with a skip and a jump!

So right now, as I approach my new adventure, I only can see the little bit before me.  And it's a little scary, but not half as scary as if I saw what a precipice I am near! Sometimes people want to shed light on that: What? You don't have a job? What? You are going up to Wisconsin in the dead of winter? But I just keep my eyes focus on what I have to do now and say like Scarlet O'Hare "Oh fiddle-dee-dee, I'll think about THAT tomorrow!"

So what exactly is scary? I have been daily going through my stuff and picking out what I will keep and what I need to get rid of.  One day it is ridding myself of books that I've enjoyed.  Do I really need to keep Their Eyes Were Watching God or The Odyssey? Can I do without The Journey of Desire?  The next day I decide I can give up my black suit jacket and a sari I've had for years but never wear.  Then today I decided I can give up my sitar (Indian instrument) that I've had for 37 years.  Sigh!  It's a constant letting go.  Honestly it is very unsettling!

Regardless of how unsettling this feels, it ultimately is freeing.  I have greatly enjoyed the abundance of things that I have had, but it's also nice to not be weighed down and held back by "stuff".  For a moment I feel I'm in the trenches and missiles of sentimentality and insecurity come crashing in.  But I don't stay there.  I get up and out and see the beautiful Morning Star that shines ever brighter until the full light of day!  THIS is not MY war! Oh, believe me there very well will be real trenches and battles ahead.  But this one....phff....this one I can live through!  Yep...this one I can let go!

A Different Goodbye

These days I am sorting through all my stuff and organizing what I will take with me and what gets thrown away, given away, or sold.  I came across a poem I wrote June 1976 after my graduation from high school at Woodstock in India.  I'd lived 12 years of my life in India, and knew it as "home".  Woodstock was an international boarding school where I'd spent most of those 12 years.  The intensity of living in the foothills of the Hymalayas 24/7 with your peers has lingered with me all these years.  I wrote this poem the last week before I left that beautiful place to return to the United States and a total unknown foreign future.  I was unable to formulate what lay ahead, what it would be like or feel like.  So the ache of leaving what I knew, and knowing that I could never really come back to it was heavy on my heart.  I wrote:

Strange be the heart of departure
To find you love with passions
So great that in leaving we see,
Ay, if I could but see them forever!
Not merely pictures and words
But better beings.
I feel I wouldn't know a heavy heart!
But life goes on and leaves my love behind.
My heart is bursting
Because "Goodbye" is mean and ugly.
Tears fill because I see beauty.
My soul cries because no light was seen
I loved them to the fullest
But wonder: did they love me for the best?

I have been back to visit twice (still way too long ago), and discovered it was true, I could never go back.  I had become an outsider to the place, and I'd lost touch with the people strewn all over the world.  Until around 2001.
Our class, the Class of 76, had its 25th reunion in Colorodo (USA).  Most of us had not  known where the others were for the past 25 years, and it was a glorious moment connecting with each other.  Since then many of us have stayed in touch, and now with Facebook, I've connected with others from our class and the school.  It really has been a balm to my woundedness expressed in this poem.  Because it was the people I was connected with in addition to the place.  And now in our global community, we who have wandered for decades, feeling still outside, have started to feel a "coming in" and reconnecting with the community that was and has been for us "home".

So today, as I say another goodbye (November 2010) to a place where I have lived for 20 years I share many of the same sentiments expressed in this poem. I still am at this place of having NO idea what the "Third Chapter" of my life will hold.  But it is no where near as sorrowful or remorseful (or perhaps as adolescent) a feeling.  Instead I say "Good-bye" with a sense that I can always come and visit and not feel so "outside", simply because I continue to be connected with the people, and the horizons of the place are now so much more expanded.   I also leave feeling that the goal of becoming "better beings" continues always, until HE returns!  I did my little part here and will continue to do it where ever I go.

In search of a Bister!

I don't typically have a computer at home, and so don't have access to the wonderful sport of "web surfing"'.  Yet it's quite frustrating.  I've now spent over an hour trying to find something on a Bister!  I thought it would be nice to have one to carry my bedding on the train to move up north.  Surely I could find one on e-Bay or something!  But first I didn't even know the spelling, or if there is an English equivalent.  I did find the word a couple of times usually as "bistar", which is Hindi for mattress.  I was terribly sidetracked by Bicester that is pronounced bister, but it appears to be a town in the UK, that has a train station and has a few luggage stores.  Two other words that I connected in my google search to try to help hunt down the word.

It appears that a standard item of one's travel luggage from my youth growing up in India is no longer in vogue, and perhaps has become extinct!  How very very sad! From what I can tell there are still bundles and tin trunks, but the bedding roll, or bistar is nowhere to be found.

click on box

The bistar that I remember having was a green canvas.  When laid out it was only about 4 ft with two pockets on either end.  You would lay your bedding in and the pillows in each pocket and then roll it up and leather straps would tie it up.  So you could really stuff it if you wanted to.  When traveling on the train, you would open the bistar up and have a soft something to lie on, your pillow and a blanket (if needed).  It was quite wonderful.  It was common to have to wait for the train on the platform and the rolled up bedding was a great soft seat!  I suppose it was not too comfortable to carry, but koolies would carry all your bags on their heads and get you to your compartment on the train
koolies click on box

So has ANYONE seen a bistar any where? Now I just want one for pure nastolgia's sake.  How could I have just left my bistar and not kept it for ever?  If you know where I can find one, please do tell!

Let's Get this Adventure Started

I am trying my hand for the first time on Blogging.  I doubt I will stay consistent on it, but I'm starting with reporting on this new adventure ahead.  I'll write about the Why, What, How later....but for now this is my agenda.

October 15, 2010:   Last Day in the Office at Family and Children Faith Coalition

November 24, 2010: Leave by Train to Charleston, South Carolina

December 6, 2010:  Go by Train to Washington, DC

December 13, 2010:  Go by Train to Chicago, Ill

December 14, 2010:  to Madison Wisconsin

December 17, 2010:  hang out in Chicago/Wheaton with my kids

December 20, 2010 back to Madison

Late January Early February:  Visit Miami Again

I invite you to track with me on this adventure!