Homebodies abroad

Never underestimate the power of a sanctuary.

This is what I am learning today, as I sit feeling the ocean breeze across a tall wide veranda. Swinging in a cotton hammock, watching the clouds roll by in a bright blue sky. It seems the clouds must love to visit Belize... The endless sounds of palm leaves rustling, gracal birds chirriping, the occasional chime of the clock from inside our hosts home.

Indeed, today I am starkly reminded of 2 things...

1. The physics of the quest, as stated by Elizabeth Gilberts character in the film Eat Pray Love, which states:
"I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call 'The Physics of The Quest' -- a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: 'If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared - most of all - to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself... then truth will not be withheld from you.' Or so I've come to believe. I can't help but believe it, given my experience."

Travelling is bringing into light, again and again, the invisible limits and perceived safety controls that I have convinced myself are useful, practical and "the way things are" - which of course may or may not be true at all. In this light, the questions then become: How do I entertain and open to the myriad other possibilities? How do I hold the doors and windows of my mind open for the unknown, for discovery, for the discomfort of uncertainty and the potential therein? How do I listen closely - ears open to self and spirit - and letting go into what I hear?

which leads me again to...

2. Everything is impermanent - Coming inevitably, as a jolt to the body with each remembering!
Currently, we are staying in the guest house of a retired couple from England. When we sat down over samosas yesterday evening I asked our hostess where her husband was, assuming that he was out in town doing chores as we had not met him yet . She responded, suprisingly smoothly, that he died 2 months ago. Encountering this woman who is living her dream on a veranda in Belize, yet without her life partner of 37 years, the quest physics stir me. Shaken and moved, I want to keep talking with her, I want to hear her stories and connect with the inspiration that moves her and their lives together.

She, poignantly and preciously, continues throughout our entire conversation to use the pronoun "we".

I hold Lee tightly as we fall to sleep in this sleepy Belizean town - carefully noting the rare and precious gift of this moment in my life, the blessing I am given in each breath, the true achy nature of change and loss and rebirth again and again.

Life is teaching me to open, to not wait, to ask the questions and leave space for the answers to reveal themselves. Together, today, I see options, adventures, choices and possibilities laid out before us. I am hopeful and terrified - both arriving more fully and longing to allow my life to fill more deeply with grace.