An intention for what is written in my blogs is that they will touch someone spiritually in some way unknown to me . They are , for me , like one thousand first chapters ( the title of the novel I always wanted to write of which for years i only have the beginning paragraph and the ending written).  Yet I never really plan these writings. They come to me like the ocean waves of Hawaii , three rolling in and breaking followed by a long moment of calm and then three more as the surfers gaze into the horizon line waiting .

Three remembered humans , three faces alight with surrounding halos , none of which I had shared a spoken conversation with but who changed me : the woman from India , the old man on the streets of Mexico , and the spark that caused the lucid memory of them to return to me , the man in Bulgaria.

I did not know that he was a well revered character until two months later having followed a thread on the internet . That first day of my arrival in Sophia I saw him on the street , he looked at me. I stopped and watched . It was a strange moment of longing for all of life to just stop so that I could watch a little longer . This is what I later found out about him : His name is Dobri Dobrev . He is 99 years old , a man who lost most of his hearing in the Second World War . He has travelled 25 kilometers every day for decades from his village in his handmade clothes and leather shoes to the city , a trip he makes by foot , where he spends all day begging for money . He is well recognized around the cities churches , known for his prostrations of thanks to all donors . He has donated every penny he has collected, over sixty thousand dollars , towards the restoration of decaying monasteries and churches and the utility bills of orphanages and living off the kindness of others .

The woman from India … Six years ago :

After having ended a most heartbreaking time of near ruin , deceit and betrayal , I was brought to a spiritual awakening . Soon after , this beautiful woman came into my life for a glorious moment on a winter day the week my grand daughter , Sequoia was born . I was in Ann Arbor on that snowy day and took the bus to town , going to the book store . Once there , I followed a sign pointing upstairs to their coffee shop and a notice about palm reading. The cafe was noisy with holiday chatter . I ordered tea and sat down . She sat alone in humble quietness  , dressed in silk with a red bindi on her forehead. Our eyes locked from across the small room and something unexplainable happened …. A strong moment of recognition …. Eyes of fire yet calm like water . That night my third eye ( ajna chakra ) was activated and I believe manifested thru her , thru the Divine …. A gift of such beauty like many peacock feathers swirling in the wind of sunshine falling from the sky above . I smile right now remembering the name of that book store , Crazy Wisdom . Some days , under my bangs , between my eyebrows , I paint a red bindi . My little grand daughters know of it’s meaning.

The very old man in Mexico … seven years ago

He was moving so slowly with an old walking stick, up the steep cobbled hills of Puerto Vallarta where I lived . The neighborhood boys were laughing at him taunting with words I did not understand . He looked at me ….. I took his arm …. I thought he was Jesus . His weathered feet were caked in dirt layers thick , he smelled like the earth , pungent after a spring rain . We walked together in silence, him patting my head and holding my hand, arm in arm . I didn’t know if he was newborn , 100 years old or from the beginning of creation . I  never saw such beautiful old feet , or felt such compassion directed toward me and with eyes like the first light of dawn …….

Poem by William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy

does the winged life destroy

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

lives in eternity’s sun rise .