Bell Rocks and Giant Vaginas...

I wonder if there is anything quite like the vast beauty of Arizona to compel one to contemplate one's significance in the world. The endless flatness, punctuated almost spitefully by the jawlines of jagged rock. The sky, the haze, the scrub sprouting defiantly from the sun bleached dust. 

It is impossible to ignore the sense that whilst this wildness offers its love, it could just as easily sneer at our human self-importance, laugh at the almighty struggle off the steel and and rubber and tarmac and combustion, of economics and power and politics and progress, while all the while the dust waits, waiting to absorb it all once more.

What then is the lesson mirrored in every moment of every mile? What does the wild wish to say of every altar we erect - each pylon, privet, shipping container and billboard? How can we ever be ourselves, if the only sermon we speak is profit and for bread we eat eachother and drink the blood of the earth. We can concrete over our hearts, but cannot stop thier beat.

Yet there are no absolutes, for these words form electronically in an orgy of keystrokes and touch screen displays. But there must be enough, and meaning in our efforts beyond mere sheckels that shackle and stifle. 

We must remember how to breathe together once more and how to look to our earth for guidance.

Now...with a slightly less pretentious/sententious thrust, let me recount for you our exploits in Sedona. It's been said that while god built the Grand Canyon, he lives in Sedona. Whilst i can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of this statement, i know that if i was god i'd certainly at least have a house in Sedona. whether i'd actually live there full time is debatable. I'm pretty sure that the himalayas, parts of South America, perhaps even the Lake District may contend for my time and loyalty. 

What would qualify as suitable home for god? The criteria i've been working on is that the place should be so stunning that it would literally take even God's breath away, that god would be so awed by his/her/its own creation that they would rejoice to spend time there exploring.

Sedona certainly qualifies. Nestled in the heart of what is known as Red Rock country, Sedona is like a  sprawling modern Native American Glastonbury (the hippy/new age town as opposed to the yuppie corporate orgy the festival is fast becoming). The three things that seem to be offered to the arriving tourist more than anything else are jeep tours, mass prduced Native American arts and crafts and psychic crystal healing/aura photography.

It's easy to see why the spiritual crowd are drawn here. You feel almost like you're being cradled by the hands of Mother Earth. Wherever you turn, exquisitely sculpted peaks and cliffs reach heavenward, offering views, vistas and walks that effortlessly uplift the soul.

Furthermore, Sedona is believed to be home to a number of energy vortices - spots where the etheric energy that underpins spirit and matter swirls into being with such force that the trees in the area literally grow up twisted and gnarled, whilst the trees outside of the vortex areas grow up straight.

Obviously these vortices piqued our interest, so after an aborted first attempt, which involved us inquiring in a methodist church as to the whereabouts of the pagan vortex, we were on our way to Bell Rock. The Bell Rock vortex was certainly the strongest of the three we visited, personally manifesting as an amazing feeling of expansion within my heart and chest.

After getting a nice vortex power up, Fan and i unleashed ourselves on climbing Bell Rock with the abandon of playful children.

Having climbed to the highest point we dared, we paused to make and offering and say a prayer, which culminated in a very magical had-to-be-there moment as a Crow/Raven came to say hello and show off its thermal soaring prowess.

Other noteworthy happenings from our time in Sedona include our visit to Buddha beach - a beautiful example of nature and human creativity can enhance each other - my unexpected success in creating a pizza that somehow cost $26, and our success at emptying the s**t tank on our motorhome without getting covered.  

After learning that Sedona still has much to learn in the breakfast department (if the 'best breakfast in town' that we had is anything to go by) we headed North to witness the awesomeness of Mother Nature's Vagina - aka The Grand Canyon.

With Hindsight we should perhaps have stayed a little longer, but even so,  i shall be forever grateful to have witnessed it and breathed in its majesty. Put simply there are no words to describe it, nor any lens that could ever do it justice. At least once in your life, do whatever it takes to visit it in person. you won't be disappointed. 

In the next instalment...how to pull an illegal U-Turn in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip, and how to get addicted to American energy bars...

Dolphins, Nakedness and Carol Vorderman

Having accidentally eaten 8 funsize bags of malteasers on the way to heathrow, I wasn’t quite as hungry as I might have been when Fan and I headed for Wagammama's after clearing Heathrow security. 

I had a token salad while Fan tucked into a full on Wagamama’s Pad Thai. The salad was gone in about 3 mouthfuls so I resorted to a little people watching. About the 4^th person I subtly stared at happened to be Carol Vorderman, who had just entered the restaurant with a still unidentified man.

Initially I had to do a quick google image search to confirm my own instinct that this lady was indeed Countdown’s answer to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Instinct confirmed, I took no little pride in being able to inform the Portuguese till attendant who took my payment that Carol was not in Eastenders, but was in fact a former stalwart of our nation’s longest running game show. (I obviously didn’t use these exact words to someone who was just mastering the basics of the English language.)

I thought this would be the end of being dazzled by minor intellectual celebrity, but sure enough, there was Carol, cool as a slightly ageing, still quite glamorous human cucumber, as we queued to board our San Diego flight. Obviously I’ve no idea what she is doing in the States. This was not the question that kept troubling me.

The real question was…did she and Richard Whiteley ever…you know…indulge in a bit of one-from-the-top-and-five-from-the-bottom on the Countdown clock? A little cunning linguistics once the conundrum had been and gone? You say surely not…but in this season of office parties and unwise alcohol fuelled indiscretions in the stationary cupboard or on the photo copier we can never be certain.

Now if you think that image is insulting and in bad taste…you should have witnessed the sight that interrupted yesterday’s romantic beach stroll, which was accompanied no less by a troupe of playfull dolphins (at this point I cannot confirm whether they were dolphins or porpoises, but obviously dolphins are perceived as a bit cooler and more spiritual, so we’ll stick with them).

So there we were, strolling hand in hand, debating whether to be all spontaneous, discard our clothes and splash out for a swim with the dolphins…or whether said dolphins may decide to bite and turn evil (like in that episode of the Simpsons where Homer pisses them off and they take over the world with a greater ruthless efficiency than Obama’s false hope could ever manage)

We concluded that they probably wouldn’t turn evil and start biting, and that we maybe should swim with them. The dolphins, however, had clearly got bored of waiting for their new friends/snacks and decided to swim off.

The reason our decision making was delayed re the dolphins was because we had another quandary to ponder. Namely: is that guy naked? … f**k is that guy naked as well … … s**t have we stumbled onto a random nudist beach in the course of our Dolphin hunt?

Still not quite sure if the stretch of beach we found ourselves on was officially ‘nudist’, but for about quarter of a mile or so we were definitely the only ones with any clothes on.

Please don’t for a minute think I’m dissing nudists, or the act of getting naked. If that’s what floats your boat, then by all means crack on. (sorry, couldn’t resist)

It wasn’t so much the nakedness as the unexpectedness of the nakedness as it interposed on our romantic dolphin moment. It was like trying to pass your driving test whilst your examiner is giving a squirrel a handjob – a little off putting I’m sure you’d agree.

Random unexpected nakedness aside, it’s been a fantastic start to our honeymoon. Ishanti, our host in San Diego, is an absolute Goddess, and her family are the kind of inspiring people who give you an abundance of hope that no matter how F’d up the world may be, there is always another side to the story, one that is joyful, inspiring and creative.

Stay tuned. In the next instalment, find out how we got on when we began our roadtrip in this beast:

Breakfast crimes and S**t Towers...

I think I might have to retire from playing in Indian village cricket tournaments.

It’s not so much that I am becoming tired of single-handedly winning matches.

I’m becoming tired of winning them for the opposition.

The losing hurts, but it stops hurting after a while.

Much more insidious and harder to ignore is the aching.

Not aching of the body. That stops after a while too. It is the aching of the soul that is the most painful and difficult to be at peace with. It is the ache that knows what you used to be able to do in your prime. It is the ache of a mind that has not come to terms with the fact that the body in this particular moment is not in its prime. The ache marries with the frustration. The frustration knows that there is no reason the body could not work itself back into its prime…but then the mind kicks in and quite justifiably asks if the best use of the combined energies of mind and body is to get into peak condition for a cricket match that starts two and a half hours late, lasts only twelve overs and outlaws the LBW rule, so that the batsman can stand in front of all 3 stumps and hit you for 20 in an over. Oh…and it’s played with a tennis ball on a pitch that would double very successfully as a piece of ridge and furrow farmland.

Two days later…

The Crime of Breakfast

Well, what an eventful two days it’s been. As I write there is a district CID officer talking with the principal and senior teachers about the foreigners staying at the school (us). The crime for which we are being investigated? The truly heinous act of…going to get breakfast!

That’s right. Being a foreigner and walking through an Indian village is apparently sufficient grounds to have enough suspicion to call the police. Never mind the fact that we have been here for over three months, are known by everyone in the village and are simply walking to the Dhaba (roadside café) on the edge of the village because it serves the best food.

The CID officer informs us that his informants thought we might have bad intentions…but that his visit is purely for our safety.

Our Indian father now has said officer in his office. Fan informs me that his body language tells its own story of paternal protectiveness and indignation. I have to say I quite like the CID officer though. He’s very hip hop. It’s 11am and he smells like he had whiskey for breakfast, and is dressed in a giant white RocaWear puffer jacket. If Jay Z was 50, Indian and even more overweight than he already is, he might well double as this CID officer.

Tragedies and Teacher Training…

Yesterday we completed a half day’s teacher training, introducing the staff to State Management, Rapport and Communication skills…and how these combine in teaching to provide Effective Learning.

Tragically, this opportunity only presented itself in the wake of a much publicised accident in which 13 school children were killed after their bus collided with a truck in heavy fog. The local government has ordered all schools to remain closed until Jan 16^th when the worst of the cold and fog will be beginning to ease. Seeing the horrific pictures in the paper, then looking out of the window and seeing our students joyous because they had an extended vacation left me really not knowing how to feel, except that my heart went out to the families who lost their treasures.

The training and the build up to it offered clear confirmation of certain conclusions we have been arriving at...as well as giving fantastic surprises for other reasons. We were surprised by the way so many of the teachers, who at the start of the day were clearly only present because they had been told to be, were by the end of the day engaged and forthcoming with ideas to a degree we have not yet seen during our time here.

From a personal perspective the chance to provide the training has been a real blessing. We have been working 12+ hour days to get everything ready for what we initially planned as a two day ‘Teacher’s Development Camp’. Both the preparation for and delivery of the training have given us a real glimpse of how much we love serving in this way, and of the wealth of potential that exists for what we can offer in the future.

Without doubt the silver lining vastly outshone the cloud. But the cloud existed in the form of the principal. The more time we spend at the school, the more I am forced to come to the conclusion of ‘ok human being, woeful manager.’

He accepted our offer to give a two training day camp, though his body language seemed to suggest he’d prefer to stick his genitalia in a blender.

A day later, after Fan and I had worked almost through the night to get the 1^st day’s training workbook ready, he informed us that it would best if we concluded our training within one day. To say this did not our dear principal to Fan and I would be a fairly accurate statement. There is further not so shiny laundry around this whole affair, but we’ll keep it under lock and key. We’ll conclude this cloudy episode by noting that said authoritarian did not see fit to show his face throughout the entire 4hrs of the training, not even for a minute.

We may be reading the whole situation wring, but sadly it seems our existence is something of an inconvenience that he’d rather endure by engaging with it as little as possible.

Two days later…

The training continues to bear fruit. It may be a short-lived phenomenon, but as a group we are now able to share moments of humour using language from the training. In addition to this, some of the exercises we shared with the teachers are now being enthusiastically shared by the on-site staff with their children. Amongst the most gratifying outcomes of the training are the heartfelt enthusiasm and gratitude for what we offered of Mr Sanjeev, who is the school’s unofficial vice-principal, and the increased rapport and warmth we are experiencing from nearly all the teaching staff.

The upshot of our breakfast crime…

As you read above, our crime of walking to get breakfast was swiftly followed by a visit from a regional CID agent. This visit was swiftly followed by a visit from two regional policemen. The ultimate consequence of all of this was that the following day Fan and I had to make a totally unnecessary trip to Fatehabad (the nearsest city) to ‘register’ ourselves. I say totally unnecessary because we are on a tourist visa which quite clearly states ‘registration required for holders of a visa longer than 180 days duration.’ Our visa is valid for just 180 days.

In spite of this, Sodagar thought it was probably best not to kick up a fuss, so, due in the District Public Relations Officer’s Office at 11am, we left from the school at a very Indian-time prompt 10.50am to make the 45 minute trip to Fatehabad.

We arrived at the district governmental buildings and somehow managed to find a parking space in a car park that was clearly designed to look like crazy paving when viewed from the air. We were greeted by Dr Sahib, the DPRO, who was genuinely warm and friendly, spoke good English, and is clearly a very capable individual. After a swift conversation in Hindi, it was agreed between Dr Sahib and Sodagar that, as we suspected, there was absolutely no need for us to be there. Then some geezer in a brown leather jacket came in. He looked a bit like a squirrel in human form, but without a tail. He proceeded to argue some point in Hindi…the end result of which was that we had to go to the office of the Deputy Superintendent of Police, so he could confirm it was unnecessary for us to be there, all the while forcing us to drink more tea as he clung onto our passports menacingly.

The trick with policemen seems to be to flatter them, so after telling him how hard he must work, and that he looked very smart in his Hitleresque sunglasses he seemed happy enough to let us go. (at this juncture I must state that I have no proof his sunglasses looked like Hitler’s…as I’ve never seen Hitler in sunglasses…but if tyrant of the 3^rd reich did ever wear sunglasses, I imagine they would have looked like those worn by the Deputy Superintendent of Police in Fatehabad)

After successfully dealing with our fourth policeman since this saga began, and learning in the process what Hitler’s fashionable eye-wear might have looked like, we returned to the office of DPRO Sahib to find that he had taken advantage of the totally unnecessary nature of our visit to gather into his office a group of journalists who wanted to ask us some questions. We then proceeded to expound upon the differences between Indian vs Western education, what we liked about India, and of the challenges facing the world that the right type of education can help to solve.

From what we have been told via translations of the papers the following day, it seems they used anywhere between 5-85% of what we said…and then wrote a fairly generic article based on what they thought we should have said. All good though, it publicised the school’s name and it was an enjoyable penultimate event in a journey that was certainly unnecessary, but which was swiftly turning out to be useful.

This was certainly the case with our next and final stop. In the previous instalment, I tried my best not to blame a visiting dignitary whose interruption of my concentration may or may not have led to my woeful performance in a cricket game. The evidence of further cricket tournaments points to the fact that he certainly was less culpable than I might have wished.

This dignitary was Mr Shubash Sharma, the director of one of the main colleges in Fatehabad. During my previous visit he had sought me out to see if I’d be willing to speak with his students about my perspectives on education. Unfortunately my heart had other ideas and I was flown home.

Evidently he had not forgotten our agreement and cricket match or no cricket match, he found us and asked if we would still be willing to deliver the program we had originally planned. As it turns out, this opportunity has dovetailed nicely with our delivery of the teacher training at GMMCS. The students we will be lecturing are all doing education degrees, so pretty much the only thing we’ve had to change from our presentations is the name of who it’s being delivered to. We know the content works, and are very much looking forward to Tuesday when we are scheduled to deliver the program.

Round the Houses…

Today we agreed to accompany two of the teachers (Miss Pooja Sharma and Mrs Rani Devi) back to their village – Dharsul, which supplies about 150 pupils to the school. There are two Dharsuls; Dharsul Kalan and Dharsul Something Else. One Dharsul is mostly populated with Punjabi speakers and the other Dharsul with Haryanwe speakers (Haryanwe is the local dialect of Haryana).

We made another food related error today, though thankfully no policemen came this time. Our mistake was to eat a hefty lunch just before we headed to Dharsul with our GMMCS colleagues. We should of course have remembered that in India they have a phrase which roughly translates as ‘guest is God’ – meaning the host will try to feed their guest both as a way of being hospitable and as a way of having a topic of conversation. By the time we reached the second teacher’s house, we were both feeling pretty sick. Trying to explain that we really were full and not just being polite in declining the food  met with about as much success as trying to convince a George Bush loving red-neck that 9-11 really was an inside job. We tried to use the example that our stomachs were like of a glass of water that is full, in which it is impossible to fit anymore liquid without making a mess. The end result of this effort was that our hosts tried to convince us to force more fluids into our already tumescent bellies.

One amusing thing to note was to see the teachers’ reaction to the furore our visit to their village caused. I think they were quite unprepared to find a stream of suddenly inquisitive neighbours beating a path to their doors. Miss Pooja actually began to get a little stressed by the whole affair. What now for us was water off a duck’s back was for them definitely disconcerting. I guess trying to have some tea while there is a crowd outside your window all jostling for a prime viewing spot would be sufficient to distract anyone from their PG Tips.

By the time we reached the third house on our whistle stop tour of Dharsul Fan’s stomach was beginning to actively protest (in a quietly active way rather than a projectilely active way) and I had to take one for the team by downing two cups of frighteningly sweet coffee. Even my usually sweet tooth was by now leaving the biscuits well alone.

Dharsul is notable as the village with the largest collection of shit cake towers I’ve yet encountered (I’m sure it’s notable for many other things, but we did not have time to find these out…and it’s fairly hard to miss 1½ football pitches worth of shit cake structures). Shit cake towers are literally towers made of shit cakes. Imagine a small garden shed made out of bovine excrement and you are 95% close to having the actual structure in your mind’s eye. Actually you’d be at about 90%. A further 5% would come from adding in that one could also imagine them as squared turd igloos. The final 5% of the fecally fertile mental image would come from my enlightening you that the building blocks for these excretal monuments are formed by mixing together dry grass and buffalo/cow turd and forming from the mixture little dung flying saucers about a foot in diameter. With sufficient artistry I am sure one could fabricate a fantastic excreta embodiment of a turtle, complete with actual turtle’s head.

To finish this instalment, I offer you two poems I wrote on my last visit. The cotton picking season is nearly finished here, and these poems were inspired by the beautifully coloured dresses the women wear to pick the cotton…and by shit cakes.

Much love.

X

The Flowers of India

My eyes scan the cotton white

For sight of India’s most beautiful flowers

That bob and billow among the budding bushes

Dazzling by their petals radiant raiment hues

Of pinks, yellows and greens

Lit up by shining pearl-white smiles

Theirs is a grace none but the Goddess can muster

And my unbounded joy it would be

To walk in fields of India’s flowers forever

India’s Flowers seek nourishment...    

The dawn mists have barely burnt off

And already the Flowers of India

Are making shit cakes as though their lives depend on it...

Because they do

New Years...New Stories...

So dear readers, we’re on the cusp of 2012…that’s right…it’s New Year’s Eve.

(or rather it was… :-)

I could be looking forward to a night of wild partying and getting lashed. However, my experience with the above (which at one time was a little too extensive) suggests that if wild partying and getting lashed is your new year’s eve plan, you’re probably in for a disappointment. The reality tends to play out something like this:

1. Spending too much money on a rushed and highly substandard meal
2. Getting increasingly irate as you queue at the bar of a packed public house desperately trying to consume enough drinks so that you are even mildly inebriated once the clock strikes twelve
3. Queuing in the freezing cold/pissing rain (delete as appropriate) to get into a club before midnight…the waiting time and the weather conditions guarantee that you’ve sobered up almost completely by the time you enter the club
4. Getting even more irate as you queue at the even more packed bar of the club to buy soul-violatingly expensive drinks that then get knocked from your hand the moment you try to leave the bar…and so the irritation merry-go-round starts all over again.
5. By about 3am you’re still pretty much sober and are now too broke to buy anymore drinks, you’ve had to stop your mate from starting a fight with the bouncer and your best mate’s left because his girlfriend took offense at the fact another female happened to breathe whilst your best mate was in the same room
6. You walk home, failing to even muster the energy to throw up as you realise what you thought was a kebab is actually a load of turd shavings covered in chilli sauce…or you hope it’s chilli sauce.
7. You wake on new year’s day £100 quid poorer, with only a disgracefully unjustified hangover to show for the night before. Sadly you’ve completely lucid recall of just how spirit-crushingly shite the previous night was…and to top it all off, you discover, having made your way downstairs for some breakfast, that there’s only enough in the box for half a bowl of Coco-Pops. The only other option is Bran Flakes, which you’re sure they stopped making in 1997, but which are somehow still in your cupboard.
8. You top your cereal bowl off with Bran Flakes, cover it all in Nesquick and sugar – to ensure the milk at least turns sweet and chocolatey – and walk into the living room to watch a suitably ridiculous film like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Mary Poppins, before letting the rest of the day slip by as you gorge on a feast of scrappy premiership football supplemented with twisters and packets of malteasers from the local shop.

Now that we’ve got my NYTSD out in the open – that’s New Year Traumatic Stress Disorder…which is a lot like Post Traumatic Stress, except it tends to only manifest itself around New Year – let’s turn our attention to the coming year…

Stop Press: Addition @ 1.08pm New Year’s Day:

As many of you will know, Fan and I drink very rarely, if at all. In our wisdom we decided that since it was new year’s eve and we are pretty much in the middle of a gigantic field with nothing but tractors and stray dogs for company, we would have a cheeky glass or two. A bottle of Old Monk rum was clandestinely acquired…or as clandestinely as is possible when you’re the only white people in a 50 mile radius and everyone in the village knows who you are and what you’re doing in their locality.

Fast forward through a very enjoyable evening complete with peanut related drinking games and failed attempts to make chocolate filled chapattis…it’s New Year’s Day and we have just about woken up. We are in the process of realising that even if you only drink rarely you still wake up with a stinking hangover and a mouth that tastes like a badger died in it…died in it after voiding its bowels is probably a more accurate description.

In this state, what is the last thing you want?

I’ll spare you the suspense. The ultimate answer is probably being told you have run a marathon barefoot through Death Valley. Coming in a pretty close second is receiving a phone call from your Indian father to tell you that he forgot to mention how he’d arranged for you to be the chief guest at the local cricket tournament…and that they were now all waiting for you to arrive and cut the ribbon to officially open the tournament. Jovially brushing off any attempts you make to avoid the situation, he tells you he’ll pick you up in five minutes, so get ready.

A younger George would probably have got very angry at this point. Thankfully, perhaps my few grey hairs have endowed me with the ability to laugh at such sublimely ridiculous situations…so 10 mins later, having just had time to eat half a guava by way of a token breakfast, I was whisked to the village sports ground feeling like a young Tyson was using the inside of my skull as a punch bag, and smelling like I’d had a serious badger related brewery disaster.

Before I get back into the original blog I wrote yesterday, I might as well take the opportunity to regale you with a sketch of what being the chief guest at a village cricket tournament is like…

If, by some strange trans-dimensional twist of fate Indian formalities somehow appeared on Catchphrase, they would almost certainly induce Roy Walker to comment, “it’s good, but it’s not right”. Let me give you some examples. Look out for the words ‘except that’ – I’ve had to use them a few times to give you the essence of the almost, but not quite nature of the proceedings.

As chief guest, it was my duty to cut the ribbon…except that the ribbon reminded me of piece of police crime scene tape embossed with the word ‘Welcome’. Then the scissors to cut the ribbon…at first I was handed a plate heaped with flower petals. I didn’t know if I was expected to eat them or throw them in the air a la confetti. It transpired that the petals were the garnish for the tray that held the official ribbon cutting scissors…except that the ceremonial scissors were about the size of a pair of nail scissors, which just about managed to hack through the crime-scene-welcome ribbon.

After cutting the ribbon and saying a few happy-New-Year-good-luck-to-all-the-teams type words, I was ushered onto the dais upon which were some sofas from which the chief guest and other dignitaries could view the game in comfort…except that the dais had canvas sides that completely obscured any view of the mid-off and cover point areas of the ground. Should I have wanted to enjoy watching all the action I would have been completely stumped (excuse the pun).

Don’t think I’m just using the tournament as an excuse to mock. Trust me, to organise anything in India can seem like a minor miracle if it actually happens, so the fact that both teams were on time, had eleven players and a pitch to play on is a cause for serious congratulation. Add in a working PA system for ball by ball commentary, two umpires, and artistic pitch decorations and the residents of Lehrian have achieved an event that is massively praiseworthy.

And now…back to the blog….

If you believe the disaster movies and certain interpretations of the Mayan Calendar, 2012 is the year the world is going to end. If you believe certain of my predictions made in private to friends, 2012 is the year when Extra-Terrestrials will make themselves known to us. If you believe others, 2012 is the beginning of a Golden Age in which Humanity as we know it, and indeed all life on earth will receive a cosmic upgrade.

One thing is clear…there’s a lot of opinion around the significance of 2012.

You may recall from my first 2011 blog from India my expressed wish:

“To establish myself as the world’s leading personal development poet and HOST (Human Optimisation Story Teller) by the time I’m 31.”

I have detailed from my experiences in Myanmar the steps I have taken on the Personal Development Poet front. Now, as we enter the seemingly portentous epoch of 2012 and beyond, let me pour out a little on exactly what constitutes a Human Optimisation Story Teller.

I will be upfront with you. I have a little homework for you. I insist that you watch either one of the following movies:

http://www.videoweed.es/file/f2jcttwjhzj4c   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nR-klTa1y54

The YouTube URL links to a documentary film made by a researcher and speaker called David Wilcock and details little known scientific breakthroughs and discoveries that have profound implications for life on Earth. The Videoweed URL links to a film about the work and views of Raymond Kurzweil – an inventor and futurist thinker who is one of the leading voices concerning ‘The Singularity’ – a point in the fairly immediate future where thanks to the advances in Genetics, Robotics and Nanotechnology, Humans will cross a threshold where man and machine become mutually compatible and our intelligence is so vastly augmented that predicting the future beyond this threshold (singularity) point becomes near impossible.

The relevance of the above to my goal of becoming an established Human Optimisation Story Teller may be clear. If not, let me expand. The two films are part of a broad spectrum of research I have been carrying on since late 2005. Around that time I was witnessing the sabre rattling from both sides of the Middle East conflict (even before learning of the corporate colonisation agenda behind so much of the western activities and media spin) and was hearing the increasingly doom and gloom revelations from the climate change campaigners…and one overwhelming feeling would not budge from my heart: “it doesn’t have to be like this”. Little did I know, this nagging, beautiful thought placed me firmly on the path that today I recognise as Human Optimisation Story Telling.

In those early days there was a lot of righteous anger…and a lot of ranting…I was beginning to regularly attend PGR (one of the midlands’ longest running Poetry open mic night) and managed to earn myself the nickname ‘Angry George’. For about a year or so I tried to beat people around the head with the problems. Here’s a sample:

Glamorise This

I’ve got a bomb called truth and it’s strapped to my back

Cos the best defence I know is all out attack

That’s why I won’t slack, I’ll never throw in the towel

Cos life stinks now like a egg gone foul

All the wrong things promoted, still getting bought

As the ones in power seek control of our thoughts

Glamorising greed, to make us idolise fame

Believing we aspire but it’s all just the same

Cos their hatred’s hidden in the consumer schemes

Of celebrity heroes selling materialist dreams

That’s why we hear the screams of paranoid despair

The drugs get blazed and we say life ain’t fair

Well why is that, let me examine in this tract

They can glamorise life but can’t hide the facts

So lets change perspectives, and open up minds

To the ignorant ways of these ignorant times

Cos we see all their lies and the system’s glitches

That’s why my words are aimed at those arrogant bitches

The powerful wealthy who think they’re running our lives

That’s why our revolution’ll be a surprise

They won’t see us coming, and they’ll never see us running

If we don’t live a life trapped by their money

And no doubt they think it’s funny, invading more lands

But we see through their façade and we know their plans –

Destroyed Afghanistan for control of the heroin trade

And their NATO forces keep the pipelines laid

This I’m afraid is the truth that they hide away

As more of the Middle East burns with each new day

Yet on the TV tell me what do we see

Except Islamic terror starting World War 3

But Bush blew up the towers, that much is fact

So we can either be slaves or we can stand up and act

I realised if I genuinely wanted things to be better, it was no good ranting and making people feel shit. I did the thing that is perhaps the most powerful thing any of us can do in our lives if we want something to change: I asked a better question. I began to ask myself: ‘How can this be improved?’

I saw that for all the power wielded by the moneyed corporate elite, their power was of a very inflexible nature…and that the power truly lay with the billions who wished for a better world…and the essence of that power: Storytelling.

We are each a vital part of the great story that is playing out right now called ‘life on earth’. Through the internet and every other means of instantaneous communication we now possess, we have the capacity to tell a story with a happier ending. There are tools in our tool-shed so incredible that we can barely conceive of them…and the two films above outline many such tools.

The upsurge of support for the likes of the Occupy movement…and the sheer raw energy expressed by the Arab spring and the London riots show that there is a desire for a better story to be told. My research to date has focussed on what that better story might look like, and on how it might begin to be told.

The one consistent thing I come back to time and again as being the most essential ingredient of an optimised story of life on earth is Love. I appreciate it sounds cheesy and too easy to just write down…and perhaps frustratingly intangible. But there is an unbelievable power in making what you love the fulcrum around which everything else in your life orients itself. You may say, ‘I can’t do this or that, I have a job, family, bills etc’ but you have only to take small steps…and the first steps can be as simple as giving yourself 5 minutes a week to do what you love…and shifting your awareness so that everything else in your life – family, job, duties – is regarded as a blessing that allows you to appreciate and enjoy that 5 minutes. Just that 5 mins and change of mind-state alone can furnish incredible benefits for you and those you love.

Have an amazing New Year, and do please do your home-work when you get a moment. I shall leave you with some words from my other blog on Love. I have two perspectives on doing what you love. One is that when you do what you love, you are living your reason and purpose on earth, and the world cannot but change for the better as a result. The other is that when you do what you love, you become part of a more loving world…and your day to day life continually and amazingly affirms this truth. As 2012 kicks off, remember that every tiny step you take toward doing what you love is an invaluable contribution toward a better story of life on earth…a story we all are eager for!

One Love.x

The Flight of Love

(taken from www.PoetryYouthCafe.tumblr.com )

As the words spill forth form wherever they arise, one thing becomes clear. The need to speak about love. Love. We hear and see the word thousands of times a week. How often do we feel it? Know it? Just as the embedded correspondents and gratuitous virtual brutality have desensitised us to the plague of violence leeching our existence, so we have become desensitised to Love. It is too commonplace. As common as muck…as common as fuck.

To bring back the truth of Love, to feel once again its magical presence in our lives, we need only consider that age old conundrum: Love or Fear?

Which would you choose?

Why do we ask this question? Because every day, every moment that choice is presented to us. It may come in infinite shades of colour. It may be dressed in strange clothes. The choice remains the same…needle or notebook, speak or stay silent, stab or smile, forgiveness or vengence.

Like the onion, Love has many layers…and many layers within those layers. But all and every part of it is love. You are reading the Myth of Love. It is an expression of Love (as talent) in celebration of Love (life) offered with love (gratitude) to Love (you…god…the children…our planet)

I chose Love. This does not mean I am forever free of fear…the skin of my onion still has to deal with the same kinds of bullshit we all do. The difference is that I have reinforced the skin of my onion with the Kevlar of forgiveness. So yes the bullets of fear hurt when they smash into me…can knock the breath from me by their force…but they can never penetrate to my loving heart because I choose Love.

How do you choose Love?

Listen to your heart. Feel your joy. Everything that puts a smile on your face is a feather. Your talents take the feathers and create your wings. Your heart knows how you fly. You simply have to walk to the edge of the cliff. There far, far below you the winds of change stir the waves on waters of love. Here is where you truly must choose. Love or fear. To fear is to listen to that deafening voice that tells you cannot fly. That shouts at you for being so foolish as to dare to dream. To fear is to step back from the clifftop and let your wings waste away. The only other course of action is Love…to listen to that tiny whisper that tells you were born to fly…that your wings are like no others and if you listen to your heart you will soar.

Perhaps the first two or three times you step back. The volume of doubt drowns out completely the voice of the choice of Love. But you keep returning to the clifftop. Something true inside you draws you back, draws you back. And that tiny voice which tells you were born to fly has become a little louder now, a little harder to ignore. You convince yourself the time is now. You leap…the wind catches in your wings and you spiral upward, elated, free. But this wasn’t yet a pure flight. You had to convince yourself to jump…still the belief was not quite there, so after a successful start you lose sight of why you are flying, you try to fly for flying’s sake. You try to perfect the perfect flying technique. Before long what was a perfect harmony of flight has been lost. What came so naturally now is being forced and you begin to doubt if ever you knew how to fly. The crisis of confidence really kicks in. Your wings are heavy, they flap discordantly. You start to fall. There is no rescue now. Your wings have become weights. You plummet. Faster, faster, faster, before crashing headlong into the rock strewn waters below.

Barely alive, you drag yourself to the shore, your battered and useless wings lolling useless behind you. You vow never to attempt flight again. You know you cannot risk the wounds. But time is a great healer. And as you return to the life you once sought to be free of, time gradually washes away the memory of your fall, of your broken wings. It cannot dim the memory of your flight though, of that feeling as the wind first caught in your wings and sped you heavenward.

And one day perhaps something happens that changes everything. You cannot return quickly enough to the clifftop. Because of what has happened, you see two things so clearly now. One that you have nothing left to lose. It is flight or die. There is nothing else. You were born to soar and your are come to claim your birthright. You have also learnt that there never were any rocks…that you never fell…that you never stopped flying. You just stopped believing…so you created for yourself a reason not to believe.

This time you are wiser. You have nothing to lose. You have given up everything you were ever told mattered and have arrived at the place where the only thing left is your truth. A truth shared only between you and Love. This truth is your wings. They are more powerful and radiant than before. They are ready. You stretch them in the sunlight, feeling the wind dance through their feathers, feeling an unnameable power course through every cell as you reach them toward the sky. You pause then. A moment of stillness to listen to your heart. You feel it thudding in your chest. It is ready. It calls to you from beyond the cliffs, bidding you begin your journey. It offers a final exhortation…words that become the final catalyst you need to hear, ‘let your what-ifs become wings, that the song of your soul may soar.’ You know in that moment that all that has been before has brought you here. To this now, this place and time. There are no regrets any more, just an overwhelming and joyous gratitude. So much endured… transformed in an instant of grace into a meaning beyond words. Everything a lesson, everything a blessing. And now you are running. New lands await, new challenges, new ecstasies. The laughter of your soul bursts forth as the clifftop nears. Your wings are poised. You are here. You will soar. You leap…

Freedom, Fog and Wolly Mamouths...

Ah the joy of a blank page!

In the last two blogs I’ve had a certain structure around which I built my prose – namely our experiences in Myanmar, and our work at the school.

Today I have a remit as free as the bowels of an incontinence sufferer who’s just chewed through a packet of laxatives.

I thought it might be a good thing if I gave you some verbal photographs – some snapshots of the India we are experiencing and some character sketches of the key people who are a part of our story here.

First of all, since it is gushing in the window as I write…let me tell you about THE FOG. At the bottom of the blog you can see two pictures of a school assembly. One with fog, one without. Even though a picture speaks a thousand words…you’d need reams and reams and infinite typewriters staffed with infinite monkeys endowed with the literary capacities of Proust and Chaucer to do justice in words to the nature of this fog. At its worst, you cannot see 5m in front of you…today it’s at about 70%, with a visibility of about 10m. It’s the kind of fog that can hide things so well, it’d be no surprise to find lurking within it the progeny of a warped union between the Hound of the Baskervilles and a Yeti – the result would be a being so gruesome, the only way to describe it is to ask you to imagine what the result would be if John Terry copulated with a woolly mamouth…and then the genes of that offspring were spliced with a rabid donkey (this being according to Fan is otherwise known as Fabricio Collocini). Pretty Horrific no? Well if they made a horror film starring this Wild Woolly Donkerry…the only fog that would be fit to cloak it, and add menace to the overall film would be the fog of India’s Bread Basket.

The Fog is so thick, it actually pours in through the window in a way that seems for all the world like Ravy Davy’s disco is outside and the smoke machine is pointing directly at your window.

That’s enough on the fog and John Terry’s beast-demon children.

Now…let us appreciate human alarm clocks.

If Fan and I could understand old Punjabi, we’d both by now be fluent in certain parts of the holy text of the Sikh religion - the Guru Garant Sahib. Every morning at anywhere between 5-7am we are woken by the speaker-amplified voice of the Babaji of the nearest Gurudwara (sikh temple). The tradition appears to be that every morning at dawn and every evening at sunset, the Babajis (Sikh priests) of the Village Gurudwara recite aloud passages from the holy book. Just in case anyone was in danger of not hearing and being grateful for this service, the Babaji’s words are broadcast at significant decibels for all to hear. Escape is utterly impossible. The land here is so flat, that the words from one Gurudwara sail over the fields and merge with the words from another, setting up a resonant frequency that morphs into a standing wave and decimates all heathens in its path…ok, so I made the last bit up…but sometimes it can get a little much.

Most of the time it’s all good. The sound kind of merges into the background noise of trucks and buses unnecessarily blaring their horns, labourers shouting at each other  when normal volume conversation would suffice and groups of dogs barking and whining as they rape some unfortunate bitch or attack some stray that happens to have wondered into the wrong urine demarcated territory.

At other times however, it’s sufficient to say that if this blog wasn’t being monitored by the powers that be, I’d write something along the lines of ‘it’s enough to make you want to take some C4 to the f**king speaker system’ … especially if it’s Sunday, and you’ve no reason to get up…and fancy actually sleeping until at least 7.30am!!

On the flip side, if there were no Gurudwaras and no Babajis, there might not be any Prasad, which would be a definite wounder to someone with a tooth as sweet (and spiritual) as mine. Prasad at its best is a skilfully combined mix of sugar, flour and ghee. It’s like eating a mixture of warm gooey nougat mixed with a type baby food I used to like as a child. Any mothers/children out there remember Milupa 7 Cereal breakfast? That stuff was awesome! I actually only stopped eating it when, as an 11 year old, I let peer pressure convince me it might be a good idea to switch to conventional Kellogs cereals. Thus began a wonderful relationship with Coco-Pops…but that’s another story.

Incidentally, I don’t believe Milupa 7 Cereal is any longer in production. If I am wrong, and you know where to get hold of some, please do buy me a couple of packets and I’ll drop by when we land back in the UK with the necessary reimbursement and a very grateful heart (and tummy).

Animals…

Make a lot of noise. Especially the parrots and the dogs…and some bird which is yet to be identified, but which makes a noise like a dying banshee most nights around 11pm.

As soon as it gets properly dark, the dogs seem to begin a contest of ‘I bet I can bark louder than you…bet you can’t…you call that a bark…this is a bark!!!’ and so on.

At least the parrots are fairly quiet after dark. Around sunset though, they compete with the Babajis of the Gurudwara for the attention of our ears. Their squawk can be genuinely ear-splitting, especially if they happen to swoop low overhead. It is rumoured the Japanese B-movie makers took inspiration from the parrots of India when they were searching for a suitable sound for Godzilla’s roar.

Yesterday I saw a crow stealing a chapatti from a dog. I have a particular affinity for crows, so I was mightily pleased. If you’ve not seen it yet, google a video called ‘the intelligence of crows’. It’s badass. Also on the topic of animal videos, ‘The Honey Badger’ and ‘Hippo in the House’ are also well worth seeing…as are many of the videos of Caplin Rouse – formerly the world’s only domesticated capybara. Capybaras are awesome…and if anyone knows how to (legally) acquire one as a pet, my siblings and I would dearly like to know.

They have Capybaras at Bristol Zoo. When we were last there we the keeper informed us that  he hoped the capybaras would soon mate. My sister Clare, ever the go-getting type, said, ‘oh that’s fantastic, can we leave you a number so that when the babies arrive you can call us so we can come and collect one.’

The zoo keeper, not quite sure she was joking (she wasn’t) and not wanting to sound too dismissive replied, ‘errr…it doesn’t quite work like that.’

Back to Indian animals…One of the least pleasant types of animal in this region is often known as a husband. The husbands in question appear to live in the nearby village and do absolutely F**k all…with a capital F – that is unless one counts as ‘doing something’; drinking, playing cards, lying on a bed in the sun and occasionally coughing and spitting your guts up while either shitting and pissing by the side of the road or sneering at someone who may actually be trying to do something with their lives. To top of the peerless qualities of this animal, they are content to let their wives and daughters work their knuckles bare either in the field or at home…and still expect supper and sex to be served on demand.

Gaze vs Gays…

This was one of those moments the uber politically correct will say I shouldn’t have laughed at…but it was such an innocent mistake…complete with accompanying actions that I could not help but share the laughter of the moment. Here is the context:

Earlier today I was covering a period of 8^th Standard English. We were running through any words that were unknown to them in a story about a mountain that looks like a stone face. In the story a mother and child were ‘gazing up at the venerable face’. I paused the reading of the story to check that the students understood the meaning of ‘gazing’, whereupon one hand shot up and said ‘yes sir…like this sir?’

The boy in question then proceeded to slip his arm around his classmate and smile at him suggestively. I think it was the credulity of his body language that did it, and the confidence he had in his definition…I’m afraid to say yours truly cracked up, before heading to the blackboard to correct the misunderstanding of gays vs gaze. Given the amount and volume of laughter which accompanied my latter explanation, I can at least rest assured that this is one linguistic pitfall none of the students will be falling into again any time soon.

Cast of characters:

Saudagar/Sodagar…

There are certain things that can happen only in India. Saudagar is our Indian father. Sodagar is also Gilly’s cousing and the Managing Director of the school. There are no typos. SURELY one would have one’s name spelt the same way on your passport and your birth certificate? Not in India. Saudagar is Sodagar…depending on which identification document you are looking at.

The man who owns the name has done nothing to shake the impression I first had of him – namely that he has the spirit of an absolute warrior. In time this impression has been fleshed out by coming to know that what I had thought was a slightly control freakish nature was simply him being seriously dedicated to my well being…and a tiny bit of a control freak. He is one of the most dedicated and caring people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. He is constantly busy, not least because he has to manage the demanding life of a farmer with the now more demanding life of school managing director, but also because he has the kind of determined, generous heart that guarantees most people with any kind of serious issue will come to Sodagar for help in solving it. Such issues may range from the resolution of violent disputes – like the recent incident in which two villagers got into a drunken argument with some people from another village and managed to nearly hack one of their arms off with a sword – or disputes of a more ridiculously stupid nature – like helping the guy who shot himself in the foot to make his case for being the victim of assault a little more believable.

I’m not joking…or using a clichéd metaphor. He actually did shoot himself in the foot. Can you imagine the thought process?! ‘I know…I bet the judge’ll really believe me if I shoot half my foot off. What a fantastic idea! My foot will grow back, and I’ll be laughing all the way to bank with the compensation money.’

You could understand it if the situation in anyway resembled Escape to Victory, where the main goalkeeper allows Michael Caine to deliberately break his arm so that Sly Stallone can play in goal and lead the escape operation. There’s taking one for the team…and then there’s being so greedy for the equivalent of about 100 quid that you cripple yourself for life with no guarantee of actually getting the cash.

Sodagar’s warrior spirit feels similar to the water that carved the Grand Canyon. It is soft, soft soft, and yet utterly unstoppable. It is probably helped by a temprament that can be about as patient as Tigger on speed. Not in any quick-to-anger way, but more in a way where the urge is to make a decision now, so that immediate action can be taken. On occasions this can mean offence is taken where none is intended, or a road is taken where there is a significant blockage to be navigated. Without doubt though Sodagar is someone it is a blessing to have on you side…and someone I consider myself seriously lucky to know.

Three days later:

I am currently in the process of coming to terms with the fact that I may be witnessing the last legs of my Mac’s original harddrive. As a result, I’ve been a little distracted from writing up all I wanted to in this blog. I’ll pick up the cast of characters in our next instalment.

For now, let me just update you on what we’ve been doing over the Christmas period. The winter term ended on Christmas eve with a Christmas celebration at the school. There were no less than 3 santas, a real white covering on the ground and a whole school rendition of the Hokey Kokey – which we appropriated as a carol in order to avoid having to sing.

I was entrusted with telling the story of Christmas…and I summarily managed to forget that Jesus was born in Nazareth…in fact, I might as well include the unabridged version for your delight/horror at the end of this blog.

Christmas day for us was the first day of the 4 day sports camp we are running. Initially we despaired at how we could keep 20 odd kids entertained and coached successfully without chaos reigning. Fan has been forced to over exert herself…meaning she is being an absolute star…enduring, courtesy of her back problem, the kind of pain that laughs at childbirth or being kicked in the balls.

Three days into the camp, however, there is at least a reward for Fan’s efforts. We are starting to see definite improvement in both the standard of football and volleyball. We also tried out handball today, and this was met with much enthusiasm…probably as it required slightly less technical proficiency than the ultimate Frisbee we had been playing as a warm up game on each of the preceding days.

Tomorrow we will have a day of tournaments – football, volleyball and handball – using the handmade goals we have made together with the students. True they do need guy ropes to ensure they are solid and sufficiently right-angled to serve purpose…but they are made by the students own fair hands, and so are priceless gems.

We are currently house-sitting for our Indian parents, so have the pleasure of being able to watch the majority of the Xmas premier league football program – allowing us to feel very at home…especially when munching on some English chocolate received courtesy of a Christmas care package from my family. Mmm…chocolate…

Enjoy this fairly unique take on the nativity…

Until next time. Xx

The Story of Christmas

Once upon a time, so we are told, there was a good woman whose name was Mary.

She lived with her husband Joseph who was a carpenter.

One day an angel visited Mary and told her she did not need to know anything about the biology of the Human reproductive system, since God had chosen to give her a child with out any of the usual formalities.

Mary and Joseph were very happy. God told Mary that she should call the child Jesus. It is possible that Mary had wanted to call the child by another name…but when God tells you to do something, it’s usually a good idea to obey.

Meanwhile, there was a King whose name was Herod. His astrologers predicted that a child would be born who would become much greater than the king.

The King’s ego did not like this one bit, so he instructed his soldiers to travel throughout the land and kill every newborn baby.

Luckily, Jesus had not yet been born and Mary managed to hide the fact that she was in a family way.

After some months, very close to the time when Mary was due to give birth to Jesus, a census was announced and all people had to return to their place of birth to be counted.

Since Joseph was born in the town of Nazareth, Joseph and Mary had to travel many miles on a donkey to reach the town. When they arrived at the town all the accommodation had been taken by people arriving for the census. There were no rooms to spare.

In desperation, Mary and Joseph asked the owner of one of the guesthouses if they could stay in the stable with the animals. The owner was reluctant to agree, but seeing Mary in a family way, he agreed.

In another part of the land, there were 3 wise men. When they heard the prediction from the king’s astrologers they said to each other, ‘we should go and visit this child who will grow into such a great person’. They did not know where the child would be born, but luckily an angel came and spoke to them and said, ‘follow the star, it will lead you to the child.’

It so happened that an amazingly bright star began shining over the stable in which Joseph and Mary were staying, so the wise men easily knew in which direction to travel.

The wise men had nearly arrived when Jesus was born. There was no bed for Mary to lie upon, so Jesus was born in the manger of the stable. A manger is a trough from which the animals eat their food.

At the same time as Jesus was being born, an angel visited some shepherds in the fields. She told them that the person who would save their nation was being born in the town. The shepherds were very afraid, for they had never seen an angel. The angel told them not to be afraid…and that they should follow the star in the sky, which would take them to the child.

Both the shepherds and the wise men brought gifts for the baby Jesus. The wise men brought gold, frankincense and myrrh. The shepherds brought a lamb. It is for this reason that Jesus has the nickname ‘the lamb of God’.

It is said that all the animals knew Jesus was a special child, so they kept quiet and made no noise when he was sleeping.

Jesus grew into the founder of the Christian religion…and it is said by some scholars that he received his spiritual training from wise gurus in Northern India and Kashmir…

The story of Jesus is called the Nativity. It is a very popular play for children to perform at Christmas time.

This story is also remembered by the singing of Christian Bhajans called Carols.

Carol singing is one of the most popular activities at Christmas time, and groups of friends will travel round their towns and villages knocking on the doors of their neighbours and singing carols together.

Over time other religious traditions and folk stories have influenced the celebration of Christmas…and some have become an established part of the Christmas festival. Two of the most well known are Father Christmas and the giving of presents, and the decoration of the Christmas tree.

The decoration of the Christmas tree is a tradition taken from the ancient Northern European religions who worship nature. At Christmas time, which they call the Winter Solstice, or Yule, they sing songs about the trees, the sun and the moon, and decorate pine trees as a way of saying thank-you for the gifts of food and fuel which nature provides.

The giving of presents and the story of Father Christmas comes from the Lapp people of Finland and Scandinavia. You may have seen pictures of Father Christmas, who is traditionally dressed in a red and white jacket and trousers, with a red hat and a long white beard.

This costume is actually based on a type of red and white mushroom named Amanita Muscaria. It is believed to be poisonous, but if prepared correctly it can become a powerful medicine.

In days of old, the tribal elders of the Lapp people would consume the mushroom and would use its medicine to help them heal people and discover information about the weather and the crops. For this reason people felt the mushroom was giving gifts to the community.

Over time, this story has developed into the story of Father Christmas. Parents tell young children that if there are well behaved throughout the year, then on the night of Christmas eve, Father Christmas, who travels on a magical sleigh pulled by reindeer, will visit them and leave them a gift while they are sleeping.

It is said that on the night of Christmas eve, which is the night before Christmas day, Father Christmas visits every child in the world to give them a gift. And who knows…today is Christmas eve, and maybe he will even visit GMMCS.

One sadness is that as the world has become more and more modern, and TV has become more and more influential, Christmas, like Diwali, has become more and more about shopping and spending money. The real traditions and meanings are being forgotten as businesses try to make money and make you believe you are less of a person if you do not buy their products and spend crazy amounts of money just so you can look generous.

As we close this tale of Christmas, perhaps it is best to remember the gift of the shepherds to the baby jesus. They were simple folk who had little, but they gave what they had with a loving and grateful heart. Even when we have nothing, we can still give someone a loving smile…and that may be the best present they could receive.

Merry Christmas