Very soon I'm off to the airport. I'm going to Christchurch and tomorrow to Melbourne to spend 10 days at the Gawler Institute. I'll eat vegan food, meditate for a period every day and participate in classes on the relationship of body mind and spirit in the company of about 30 people in much the same position as me. I hope to walk a bit. Take photos of Kangaroos and Koalas and bright raucous birds. It's the deferred beginning of the sabbatical which was the starting point of this blog, all those months ago. The Gawler Institute doesn't offer an internet connection and doesn't encourage cell phones. So it'll be a week or two until you hear from me again. TTFN
The Christmas before last our kids gave us Ancestry.com kits. You know the deal: you spit into a test tube, send it over to Ireland, and in a month or so you get a wadge of paper in the mail telling you who you are. I've never, previously, been interested in all that stuff. I knew my forbears came to Aotearoa in the 1850's from Britain but I didn't know from where, exactly. Clemency's results, as it turns out, were pretty interesting. She was born in England, but has ancestors from various European places, and some who are Ngāti Raukawa, so she can whakapapa back to a little marae called Kikopiri, near Ōtaki. And me? It turns out I'm more British than most British people. Apart from a smattering of Norse - probably the result of some Viking raid in the dim distant past - all my tūpuna seem to have come from a little group of villages in Nottinghamshire. Now I've been to the UK a few times, and I quite like it, but it's not home: my heart and soul belon...
Comments
Be well.
IRISH BLESSING
May the road rise to meet you,
And the sun stand at your shoulder,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
May the rain fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
The Irish always say things better than I ever could.
I hope your journey is wonderful, and everything you want it to be. I will be praying for you. God speed!
There is a sameness about airports - and hotels - the whole world over. They are places where noone lives; they are bardos. There is a particular flavour of spiritual deadness that clings to them.