Two weeks

 

There has been a dream like quality to the time since we landed in San Fransisco and traveled to our new temporary home in Northern California; so two weeks has felt like four months.

 

I read once (I can't remember which book but it was a psychology for laymen book) that when you are actively doing something different to your normal routine your brain registers time as moving more slowly because it is laying in more experiential memories than if you were experiencing the same-old-same-old thing. Thus time goes faster as we get older and become less curious and less adventurous...  So i suspect this year will feel like one looooong golden dream for me before January 2014 arrives. I have no objections to actively trying to make it so.

 

We have been very blessed in this 5000 mile journey. Besides Matt getting a job so quickly, the greencard taking 6 months less than expected and our house selling for the right price almost immediately: we have been given through pure generosity and love a place to stay for as long as we need it.  I cannot express how much this has meant to Matt and I but in reality it has been possibly the greatest blessing of all our maneuvering between countries.

 

So I am making a little temporary niche in the home of one of my mothers best friends. It has been a great joy to get to know her husband who is the most amazing glove to her hand and to simply feel the gift of friendship.

 

I will eventually try to get some sort of routine back in order but for the time being the girls and I are doing small amounts of homeschooling with a few books off amazon, multiple trips to our local library and exploring within our reach. Matt works (as always) with a lot of cheerful enthusiasm finding his feet in his new job about an hour away from 'home'. And so starts our long golden dream.

 

x Jo

 

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.

– D. H. Lawrence

 

Occasionally things occur which remind me of how much life has changed me; how living in a different country and surrendering my sense of belonging to the ether has altered my vision of the world.  The feeling of being altered is generally strongest among my own compatriots and cultural background where I can observe variations with the greatest degree of contrast.

 

 

 It has lead me to believe (please feel free to argue with me if you disagree) that travel* is one of the most startling catalyst for transformation in the human mind outside of the conscientious pursuit of faith.

 

 

*By travel I don’t mean trekking round the world in a gap year or going for a week in an all-inclusive holiday resort in Sharm el-Sheikh. I am referring to going somewhere new with your eyes wide and ego dampened. Of course you may do just that trekking around the world in a gap year or in an all-inclusive holiday resort in Sharm el-Sheikh. But you can also experience it in your own town or the one down the road. Fundamentally becoming well-travelled is far more about cultivating a sense of curiosity without the self-rightness we construct like defences against change to our well laid patterns of thinking.

 

 

Travel is a mysterious thing: it can encourage humility and insight or it can reinforce prejudice and nurture pride. There are some much “adventured” people I know who remain un-humbled by what they have seen and done but instead believe that they have seen everything in the world and can make absolutist statements on any topic of conversation.

 

Proust said:  The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes; in seeing the universe through the eyes of another, one hundred others - in seeing the hundred universes that each of them sees.

 

The world would be a much better place if people allowed themselves to be awake to the differences in the minutiae of other people’s human experience.

 

Its nearly time that I return to my native soil so for the next few weeks while I "travel" I will be away from posting here and keeping my eyes wide to the wonders of the earth around me.

 

x Jo

A peaceful new year to you

 

Quiet peaceful times spent together with my children are among my greatest joys.

In a suddenly and suprisingly quiet house we spent the dawning of a new year feeding our beings with comfort, creativity and faith together.



Morning- headed home from the airport

Noon- warming our tired bodies and minds

Night- exercising creativity