Friends on the way

 Dec 07 – March 08

“There aren’t just tigers and snakes in the jungle of Calcutta”, mused Hasan Pal, “You also meet lambs and doves there...”  from The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre.

People I met as I backpacked around the world:

Political activists, lawyers, film-makers, psychologists, actors, farmers, artists, missionaries, business people, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, students, monks, bus drivers, an artificial limb specialist, priests, nurses, ex-prisoners, volunteers, secretaries, musicians, writers, scientists, chefs, a coffin maker, taxi drivers, rickshaw and tuk-tuk drivers, OTs, a fitness instructor, morris dancers, a village chief, homeless guys, singers, backpackers.

Healing

Sava’ai, Samoa, March 2008

There comes a point in healing where you just have to step out and believe for the fullness of it. It’s easy to get stuck and keep waiting for that fullness, looking at the wounds still sore and too afraid to step out. With the focus still on our frailty we will become frozen. In accepting these frailties but still believing for completion, we are free to step out. To walk in the freedom of healing received and healing yet to come. Our walk is a walk of faith and each one of us has been wounded to a greater or lesser extent. We are called to walk forward with one another and often we will find that in that solidarity, our healing will come.

Residual Sadness

by Lake Tekapo, South Island, New Zealand, 16/03/08

I carry around a residue of sadness

Left over from some past sorrow

That I can never pin down.

This film around my heart

Has remained. And remained.

And I’m past prodding or poking it,

For still, it remains.

And now, in this post supper state,

This beer and brooding moment,

I breathe deep.

I breathe in the turquoise beauty of the water,

The playful swirls of the clouds,

The grey-green thereness of the mountains

And breathe in the now

That will never come again,

And revel in its respite.