How do I sit with it all?

I do not quite know how to be here. I am hyper-sensitized by my time in Thailand.

I think it all started 4 years ago in India. When I got to India, my being felt like I had found “HOME” in a very profound way. One of my main memories is standing in the middle of the lake bed in Udaipur, Rajastan, in the early morning and listening to the Muslim call to prayer in one ear and the Hindu morning chanting in the other. I loved the pluralism. I loved the calling out in prayer. I loved the chanting.

Being in Thailand I saw the many many many faces and representations of the Buddha. There was a Buddha for each day of the week. A different position. A different look and feel. Some Buddhas are more androgynous than others. All felt generous of spirit. None were as scary to me as Jesus on a cross. All together giving me that sense of permission for one to find the personal image of Buddha that spoke to you. I like that. It was a different pluralism for me.

I returned to the states humbled. I remain quite open and vulnerable. Sometimes that is hard, but I would not trade it. I am just trying to learn from it. I am just noticing. I hear the adversarial nature of our interactions. I hear the ‘right and wrong’ judgment in our talking. I see the fear and self protection. I notice the multi-culturalism that is present in this country and our separations within that. I am aware of our fear of death. It seems very different in Thailand or India; I do not believe they fear death as we do. I wonder if that is the core of much of the differences.

I do not have answers, but many questions……..I encourage you to please share your thoughts/ponderings with me as well.

Continuing at home

I started this blog as a traveling journal. I was encouraged after sending many emails back from India. I used the emails to give insights and impressions of my visit to another culture. Before going to Thailand I decided to blog my travels as oppose to trying to remember all the people to email…and also because blogging allows people to check in to see the entry as oppose to being invaded by emails.

So it seems appropriate to continue this idea of “Ambassador of Humanity” while I am home. I want to share my thoughts with my friends and family with the same consideration and respect that I try to do with people in another culture. I am more limited in another culture by language. [Well perhaps I am limited within my own culture with that as well; my x-father-in-relationship once told me “we don’t speak the same language”………but we both spoke English.] At any rate, I think a lot. I do have a degree in Philosophy! Because of the enthusiasm I have heard about my travel blogging, I am going to start trying to just write periodically, or often (we shall see). I hope it will inspire dialog. I hope it will spark further thinking on all of our parts.

We are in an incredible time. One can easily look at the world we live in right now and find overwhelming despair. See the ending of things as we know them and find that fearful. One could predict a horrendous future. OR one can see change. One can see the institutions we have known falling apart and revealing remarkable opportunity. It is an exciting time. It is a scary time. It is an age of enlightenment of a new sort. When my Dad died, the hospice counselor who had been visiting him said “there was a shift in the universe when he died”. Of course I could feel that, but I was taken aback to hear her say it. Well, I think it goes beyond my Dad. I think the crack in the ceiling, the drop in the market, the shakedown/shakeup of our systems, the election of a person who can think outside the box are all signs of a shift happening in the universe. It is a time for self-reflection and creativity. We can no longer count on things being the way they have been, however, we are not bound by what has been either. This year during the holiday season, I heard of more creative ways to ‘deal’ with the season. More toned down, homemade, innovative and heart-felt exchanges than I have heard for a long time. We can do that in many other areas of our life, our work, our living situations….the possibilities are endless.

So I invite you to visit the blog, make comments, contribute; you name it I leave it wide open. I look forward to learning with you. I look forward to getting all these thoughts out of my head so maybe I can sleep better at night. And I thank you for your encouragement.

Less plastic and more glue guns!
Karen