travelers and tourists - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: open road

"So in a word, what did you think your son learned from his trip abroad?" asked my cousin. I love questions like this, when you have to distill all kinds of experiences and ideas into a word. "I think that he became a traveler," was my almost automatic response.

Let me explain.

A tourist is one who brings all of what they know into a new experience. Each new experience is compared to what they expected; perspectives and prejudices are confirmed, and if not, the experience is usually held at fault.


A traveler leaves themselves open. They know that they don't know what they don't know and so they enter each new experience unconditionally, with an expectation to learn and with a willingness to step out of their comfort zone.

Mark Twain, rascal that he is, has some great things to say about travel and what a true traveler is:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.- Innocents Abroad


...nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people.- Letter to San Francisco Alta
California, dated May 18th, 1867; published June 23, 1867

Mary Baker Eddy, a much less rascally person, wrote, "Meekness and charity have divine authority." I think that's what my son experienced.

He fit comfortably into the family he stayed with for a year in Germany. He listened. He appreciated things.  He let go of pre-conceived ideas.  He saw his own country in a new light; he was able to see that there are many ways to do things: zip a zipper, travel in a car, eat chocolate, as well as understand politics, experience new uses of space, success, and time.  He felt the presence of history in the castles and architecture. He saw how much in common we all have - much like the Harry Potter book he bought in Germany: the cover was different , but the inside was all the same.

And best of all, it stirred in him a desire to possibly become tri-lingual and to continue to explore more broadly, learn more deeply, and find one's place among humanity. And in my book, that's a traveler.


To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

prayer at the airport

Spiritual resource to share: love and connection


It's been an airport kind of week. We saw our very fun and much loved Korean "son" off on his flight back home to South Korea. I dropped another son off on his way to see his best friend and then went on to pick up my other son who was coming back from Germany.

I have to say that one of my favorite places to be and to pray is right in the middle of the bustle of the international arrivals part of the airport. It is such a hopeful place.

For all of the variety of races, languages, dress and greetings - there is the undercurrent of energy that fuels the reason for all of this activity. And it is happiness. "Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it."

I get to the arrivals section a little early. I like to do this when possible. I watch people as they wait for others, then see their faces light up when they find who they are looking for.

We (those who are waiting) are supposed to stay in a designated area behind a rope, so that when they (the passengers) arrive, they have an unblocked walkway. This all makes sense. Except when some people have been waiting so long for the people that they love so much, that no barrier is going to effectively hold them back one second longer from hugging the ones they have been waiting for as soon as their faces clear the doors of the entry.

So, I watch and wait and feel a little of what MBEddy talks about in Science and Health: "Hence the eternal wonder, — that infinite space is peopled with God's ideas, reflecting Him in countless spiritual forms."

More faces, some tired, happy, searching the sea of faces. I think: we are all so connected. We are all children of God, who is Truth and Love. One Truth. One Love. One family. I feel such hope. So, I ask myself: Can I reflect in some degree the infinite depths of God's love to embrace all of humanity? Can I echo Jacob's humbled response to his brother "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God." I am so engaged in this life lesson of love and connection. I know I'll be spending my life finding ways to answer yes over and over again.

My questions are interrupted as I see a tall young man who is looking over the crowd gathered behind the rope at the arrivals gate. It is my son. He seems taller, more confident. I wave, we hug and so begins the long ride home and hearing of adventures, new perspectives and the plans for bringing this all back home.











To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.