Doorways ….. memories manifest …..beginning moments of this new year 2014

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 .