Update from Santa Barbara

I know it's been a while...Hope Everyone is Enjoying a Very Happy New Year!

I am currently working a full-time temp job with Jordano's one of the largest food and beverage distribution companies on the west coast.  The family run operation has roots in the Santa Barbara community going back over 100 years, and has a well established reputation for excellence in customer service and for taking good care of their employees, many of whom have already worked there for 20+ years.  I actually feel quite privileged to be working for them, even in what is currently a temporary capacity as a front-desk switch-board operator. (And thanks to "Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory Program" - I had the 100+ extensions of the two main consoles memorized in about three days!)

This full-time income means I may be able to finally get enough money together for that ticket back to Florida, where I can then take care of all of the rest of my household goods and - hopefully, by no later than some time in April, re-start my bicycle trip from Texas, probably Luling as that was my last "official" pit-stop before the trailer break-down on the way to New Braunfels.  I may actually ride down from Weatherford, TX, just depends on where I can stop along the way.  My goal though is to possibly pick-up cross-country walker, George Throop's path through Southern Texas - including contacts, as I am figuring if he could walk it, I should be able to bike it!

I will offer that one of the benefits of this whole life journey has certainly been to make me much more conscious of what I "need" to live day to day, or week to week. Simple things really, like, yes I need a blender if I am going to continue to make my green smoothies, but maybe it doesn't Have to Be a "Vitamix". Yes, I need a certain quantity and style of "business clothes" to get me through the work week, and I really like having a drying rack to hang those (sometimes slightly sweaty) clothes on after riding my bicycle home on a warm day. While being here in Santa Barbara, and having been generously loaned a bicycle to ride while I've been here, I now know that I can actually get around most of this area by bicycle without too much difficulty.  That was never really an option while I was living in Maryland.  I've also learned to sleep on a couch, regularly or as necessary, in all kinds of different settings, and being the particularly light sleeper that I tend to be, I'm gaining a little more confidence in my ability to "sleep anywhere", and to accommodate lights and noise as necessary.

I've also developed more confidence in my ability to adapt fairly quickly to a new community.  In this case, Santa Barbara has a great focus on community anyway, so finding a way to become a part of that was not that difficult.  Between the NAPF, Veterans for Peace, MeetUp groups, connections made through the SOLFood Festival (especially the Santa Barbara Time-Bank), the "Conscious Evolution Network", the bicycle shops - "Bici Centro" and Bicycle Bob's, and even by applying for various jobs in the area and concentrating first on temp-work, so I could get to know even more about the community through working for the various businesses here, I've readily made personal connections that have sustained and supported me - and kept me motivated to arrange things so that I could eventually settle here permanently.

Though challenging at times, both personally and practically, it has been a really great experience.  Of course the highlight has been volunteering for the NAPF, getting to know Paul Chappell better and having the opportunity to internalize a great deal for the benefit of my own writing by observing him through the last few stages of the writing process of his upcoming new book, The Art of Waging Peace (due out in July).

It has been quite a "ride" so far and I am looking forward to seeing How the Rest of My  Ride (and Life) Turns Out!

Hedges

So...Still here in Santa Barbara.... : )

Walking to and from the NAPF offices most days, I have come to notice how tall the hedges are around some people's houses. They've become so tall in some cases that anyone on the sidewalk can't even see the houses on the other side. In other words, the hedges have completely walled in the house.

I imagine that the hedges were not always that tall. They were probably more like the height of a picket fence when they started out, but they've kept growing taller and taller over the years, and the home owners have let them. I can imagine, maybe decades ago, neighbors actually interacting with each other from either side of those hedges, complimenting each other's homes and gardens, talking about the latest current event, or new family that's just moved in down the road.

But not now. No, I don't see how there could be any interaction at all. The tenants of these houses move from the "box" of their home, to the "box" of their car, to the "box" of their work cubicle, and back again, never having to interact with their Neighbors, the people living closest to them, at all, if they don't want to. They don't have to know that there is a poor woman living around the corner who is struggling to raise her daughter alone, and is often so frustrated that she is inclined to yell at the child rather than patiently instruct her. They don't know about the couple with the beautiful black and white Great Dane who walk past their house every day. And they don't know that one of their neighbors has taken in a temporary boarder, who also walks past their house every day on her way to the NAPF offices downtown! : )

No, those hedges have come to insulate them, protect them, from their Closest Neighbors, and even from Reality Itself.

To me, these hedges are kind of like all of our current national "defense systems" - they've just kept growing and growing over the years. Much like all of the "things" we tend to accumulate in this world, they build bigger and bigger walls between ourselves and others, and ourselves and reality, and, maybe most importantly, ourselves and the threat of change and especially the changes of death. Supposedly, they are making us more, and more "secure", but the problem is we have simply grown more and more disconnected from other people, disconnected from reality, disconnected from death. In the absence of direct, experiential knowledge, fear arises and persists.

For instance, everyone likes it when love "feels good". There's that feeling that you get when you "fall in love" - that kind of ecstatic, blissful love feeling. There's the feeling of love that people have for their children, especially when they are newborns. There is the love that may be experienced just in a moment, in the pure pleasure of an intimate encounter. There is the love that exists between close friends and close family members; that love feels comforting and consoling, and brings with it feelings of security. There is the unconditional love we feel when being charitable to another being.

But how does love feel when someone doesn't love you back? Or when someone leaves a relationship before you are ready to let go? Or when someone dies? Especially if you loved that person deeply?

That's when love does not feel so good. That's when love and loving hurts. That's when it seems safer to love things, than it is to love people. Things generally do not reject you. Things do not grow legs and walk away on their own (although, they may still be lost in other ways, they certainly do not have the power to "walk away" as much as other people do).

Sometimes, in the midst of rejection or loss, the pain of loving others can make us hesitant to ever love again; we become afraid of change, afraid of loss, afraid to ever be that vulnerable to "The Wound of Love", again.

And yet, we live in a world of Constant Change and one of the greatest changes we will experience is our own death, and prior to that, the deaths of many whom we love, both human and non-human.

To love someone means we are also vulnerable to feeling their pain as our own.

For all these reasons I think people tend to avoid loving one another.

And they build "hedges" around their homes and around their hearts.

And yet, one of the things we human beings most want to be able to do is to give and receive love.

So, that means we must overcome our fears of rejection, of loss, and of death. Most of all, death - because death is inevitable for ALL of us at one point or another.

As I have been struggling to find my own way in this world recently, essentially jobless (except for writing this blog?), and homeless, I have been counseled to look into possible VA benefits (since I am a Navy Veteran), or other social services. As I explained to one friend recently, I have philosophical issues with being supportive of or supported by the "welfare system" of this country I live in. In effect, I have become, a "non-statist", in spite of the fact that "the State" continues to exist all around me. I have acknowledged on the most fundamental level that the actual costs of being part of such an inherently violent system are far, far greater than the benefits.

Furthermore, I really, really believe that as individuals and communities we need to learn to rely on each other more voluntarily and directly rather than relying on "the government" to mediate what should be caring, mutually supportive, relationships. In effect, "the government" is yet another Very Big "Hedge", and like the hedges around some of the houses here in Santa Barbara, it has just kept Growing and Growing. But can it really ever be "Big Enough" to protect us from the reality of suffering and Death? And that applies to both the "rich" and...the rest of us!

You see, when we are not in direct contact with the people who are suffering and even dying, when we can pay our taxes and let "someone else" be there for them instead of ourselves, then we can protect ourselves from the hurt we might otherwise feel. When "the government" takes care of the poor, and the sick, the mentally ill and the aged, that means We don't have to. We don't have to suffer the very human "Wound of Love" through the empathy we might otherwise experience if We were Actually In Relationship with those people.

The problem is...so many people suffer and die, very often alone, because no matter how much we may pay in taxes, there will never be enough "other people", other "government employees" to go around to take care of those people.

But there Are Enough of US to go around For Each Other.

Part of my being on my bicycle, really outside of "the system" for the first time in my life, (and, by the way, really Free, for the first time in my life) was to conduct an experiment. I wanted to see if my friends, family, and even strangers were willing and able to support me voluntarily and directly as I undertook the mission to ride my bicycle across the country and share the message of Peace that has been so eloquently spelled out in Paul Chappell's books and embodied in the mission of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

As of right now, I can say that experiment has been partially successful. I have been officially "un-employed" for well over a year now. I was able to get about half the distance across the country by bicycle and the rest of the way by plane. However, over the last month or so, as I have indicated in previous posts, I have gotten enough support to stay here, and provide for my food, etc., but not enough to leave (i.e. fly back to Texas), or enough to consider re-starting my bike trip. It is easy to see the glass "half-empty", but I can also see it as "half-full". And I really am grateful to every person who has offered their support thus far. They are part of the "success" of my journey.

I can also feel that they are with me during this more challenging time, one that I have yet to see my way through completely.

So what needs to happen for things to change?

The way I see it, the only thing We have to do is to confront our own fears of change and death, and get to a place where we can Simply Love One Another and Take Care of One Another, Directly, and in each of those moments be vulnerable and willing to suffer The Wound of Love. As Terry Gorski said, "We have to see reality for what it is with little or no denial," and as Jesus said, we have to "...love our neighbors as ourselves."

And I will add, that means we have to start Trimming Back Our Hedges.....! : )

Texas Time-Out and the NAPF Workshop In Santa Barbara, Part I

Once I returned to New Braunfels from visiting with my friends in San Antonio, I began planning my bicycle ride from there to San Marcos and then Austin, thinking I would be continuing from there to Weatherford...until...it started to rain again. :p

Seems the rains that had pestered me through Louisianna and the early days of my travels through Texas, were still hanging around, and given the challenges I had faced already, I was feeling pretty spent. It became clearer and clearer to me that I was not going to be able to get to Weatherford in time by bicycle, so I called my aunt and uncle and they graciously drove down to New Braunfels to pick me up and drive me back to Weatheford instead. I spent a few more days relaxing with them. My friend, Alisa, in Jacksonville, FL sent me the extra clothes I needed to attend the workshop (Thanks, again, Alisa!). Then my aunt and uncle drove me to the Dallas area where I stayed with another couple of friends until it was time for me to fly to Santa Barbara, early, early on Sunday, July 22nd.

On the plane, I was fortunate enough to sit with a pleasant young man named, Joel. We conversed the whole way to the plane's one stop in Albequerqe, NM where Joel departed, but not before I had him signed-up as another NAPF member! : ) For the remainder of the flight, I tried to rest a bit, as well as continue my re-reading of Paul Chappell's book "Peaceful Revolution" (part of our "home work" for the upcoming workshop).

Once I arrived at LAX, I caught the Santa Barbara bus shuttle to Goleta. During the bus ride I had a chance to speak with a couple of other riders including one who was at his five month mark being sober. He appreciated the encouragement I had to share with respect to Changing the Pattern-Patterning and the Really Long-Term Effects that might have for him, and even other people he knew. (And if you have not read it already, you can find out more about that in my "Why Bother?" blog below).

I also spoke with another passenger, who, interestingly enough, had the unusual experience of sharing the company of Israelis, Iraquis, Iranians, and Arabs in their mutual love and appreciation of Arabian Horses! I know there is a more broadly accepted recognition for the way music and dance can bring people from all walks of life together, but this was my first exposure to the idea that Love for Arabian Horses could do that as well, especially in a region as contentious as the Middle East. I was grateful that he was able to share from his very positive experiences, and also appreciative that he felt generous enough to offer me a cash donation before we "went our separate ways". (Thanks again, Jay!)

Arriving in Goleta, I was chauffeured by one of the NAPF interns to the beautiful and inherently peaceful La Casa De Maria. There I saw Paul again briefly, before he was off to pick-up more workshop attendees from the Santa Barbara airport. Well ahead of my check-in time, I wandered the grounds for a while with other early arrivals, Mary and Cori, and later found myself drawn to a refreshing nap in the Sadako Peace Garden.

Most of the rest of the workshop attendees gathered by evening for the first of many wonderful meals served by the La Casa de Maria staff. As the facilities have served as a spiritual retreat center for decades, there were gardens and orchards that continue to provide fresh produce for all who come to visit. Following our meal, we all gathered in the room that would be our workshop space for the remainder of the week. There Paul "Set the Stage" for what we would be learning and sharing during our time together.

Even during this first evening, I was struck with a profound feeling that this workshop was going to be a "seminal" event. That this "small committed group" of people were going to, eventually, help "change the world", and I have continued to have this feeling ever since.

Granted, it may be many years or even decades, before any of us will know if I am "right" in that intuition, but I'm not afraid to confess it here and now, "for the record". : ))

No matter what, we are living in a particularly unique time. Not only are we Participants in "history", our own "history" as well as the "history" of the world. Via the internet, we are also Observing, Documenting, and Sharing that "history" every step of the way. Did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have the same sense of what his impact on the world might be? Did Gandhi? Did Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Did Frederick Douglass? Can you imagine all or any of them as "bloggers"? : ))

As I would find, there was much more to experience ahead, and much more to learn, and therefore much more to share with you here...some of which I will be covering in "Part II" of this series.

So...stay tuned!... : )