Ezra's Explanation of Creation

In the beginning there were only two things: Space, tons of it, and The Spirit.

The Spirit is neither living nor dead, neither loving nor hating, neither human nor animal. It is simply, The Spirit. It comes in many different shapes and sizes; sometimes it doesn’t even come as a person -- but rather in the shape of a thought.

To some he is known as God, some people call him inspiration, while others pray to him through nature; but in this story, The Spirit is all of that and more!

The Spirit is earth, water, fire, and air. The Spirit is your mother and father, your brothers and sisters, your friends and enemies. It is yours (and everyone else’s) past, present, and future.

Yet often The Spirit is misunderstood —- life doesn’t happen because of The Spirit, The Spirit happens because of life!

Thus, life started with only Space and The Spirit.

The Spirit was everywhere and everything, and in the vast nothingness of Space, it called together all the smallest bits of something. From the vast corners of the endless Space came everything that was, and at the moment these met, The Spirit came into being at that moment in the shape of destiny.

In the moments that followed (whether it was a second or many years no one knows for at this age time was an irrelevant quantity), the greatest explosion of destiny ever was set loose by The Spirit.

A mass creation of everything we know followed. Suddenly, stars flew into place; solar systems roared into existence, planets blew into shape, and life slowly began its ascent to complete environments of living multi-cellular organisms.

One of these environments is known to us as our home, we call her, Mother Earth.

The Great Separation

this evening, we are watching the 'seven up' series made by granada tv & michael apted. they began filming in the sixties young seven year old english children from a wide range of social and economic classes. they then followed the kids from every seven years into their late forties to observe the changes in them, their societies and their values. i've had it for a couple of years and not seen it. this week, it's a good way to provide some needed perspective on our own lives & children...

our first son, joshua shumshere, left our garden home in budhanilkantha and his familiar world in kathmandu on sunday morning to start 11th grade at a respected, progressive boarding school in massachusetts near the vermont border.

this is a deeply felt time. i call it, 'the great separation'. it's full of pain, reflection and knowing.

as ezra, our second son, said after dinner on sunday, 'life will never be the same'. i couldn't even look up from my food knowing that josh wasn't there again and unable to look at everyone else.

if you had asked me before this year, i would have said that i would never have agreed to let my children go away to boarding school. when the boys were small and shakun would speak of her experience at boarding schools in the kathmandu valley, i would say, 'if you send them to boarding school, i will go there to teach.' i was the 'runaway bunny' parent. there was simply no way i wanted my sons away from us as long as i could avoid it.

but, a combination of joshua's rapid maturity, the continuing political/economic disturbances in kathmandu, limited petrol & electricity (they say eleven hours of power cuts per day come march), the fact that he'd spent his full sixteen years in this sequestered world, his evolving dreams, his soccer ambitions, the departure of many of his friends already to colleges in the states and, possibly, the knowledge that he would need to leave this comfortable valley to face the larger world soon enough, so why not start early, a young american coming home to a country, an identity, a world, he's never really known.

yet, in truth, i don't think any of us are quite prepared for this natural division -- this great separation -- b/n parents & children. particularly in comparison with how easily, as youth, we left our parent's adolescent homes. now, over the past weeks, i have come to know how traumatic it can be for us, parents, who have gradually, naturally, almost unconsciously, built a life around our children and families with all of the daily joys, anxieties and togetherness that we almost take for granted as a birthright, nearly forgetting the lengthy and, at times, troubled, path to finding this docile and domesticated security.

as a friend at work said, quoting a nepali expression, "parents pour all of their love on the heads of their children while the children pour their love on the top of a stone.' in truth, our children are not quite that harsh -- as i can only imagine how josh feels leaving us, as well, with his deep sensitivity, affection & kindness.

after all, exhausted as we were at six thirty in the morning by the emotions of the event, we were so proud of him sunday morning, tall, confident full of hope & anticipation as he began his solitary, epic journey across the oceans toward his own future. how mature. how courageous. how solitary.

yet, we wonder how easily it will be for him to settle in to the brave, new world of new england, america and his expectations for himself...

when my mom & sister claudia say goodbye to him tomorrow on the campus of northfield mount hermon at his new dormitory, how will he feel? will the excitement of new horizons, new challenges & new opportunities fill his sails through the immediate squall of separation? will he feel the loss as deeply as we do? or, will the lure of his beloved soccer pitch, new friends and multiple stimuli excite his sixteen year old mind?

there is so much for him in that cloistered, lush, ambitious hill top world.

yet, for us, the loss is profound. sixteen years together and, as ez says, our lives will never be the same. a major passage has swept over us. a profound stage in our lives as individuals, parents and a family crept up on us while we were still indulging ourselves in simpler, almost unrealized, rapidly passing joys. our boy, to our great pride, seemed to become a young man. our apprehensive child matured into an explorer, an adventurer, a discoverer. from a passenger on his parent's ship, he was quietly building his own craft to set sail on his own, away from us, beyond us, ahead of us, leading us forward to unknown seas.

still, shakun & i are fortunate to have ez & ms. leah in this home with us still, at least temporarily. for that reason, i spent the day in grade one today w/ ms. leah prajna rose and her friends. primary school is soothing that way. reassuring, calming with the implicit joy of children.

yet, that 'great separation' looms somewhere on the horizon, over the rainbow and dark clouds. for not even the beauty and peace of our garden home can replace the raw, rich, penetrating reality of parenting and the easy love of caring for a child, your own child.

alas, there is more profound loss ahead for all of us. knowing that in the deep heart's core does nothing to lessen their impact or pain...

for such metamorphoses are the nature of our existence.

bless you, joshua shumshere, you have given us more than we would ever have imagined when we first met.

you have been a gift to your parents. thank-you.

Casablanca Verities: A Cynic's Idealizm

Captain Renault: In 1935, you ran guns to Ethiopia. In 1936, you fought in Spain, on the Loyalist side.  

Rick: I got well paid for it on both occasions.  

Captain Renault: The winning side would have paid you much better...  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ugarte: Too bad about those two German couriers, wasn't it?  

Rick: They got a lucky break. Yesterday they were just two German clerks. Today they're the "Honored Dead".  

Ugarte: You are a very cynical person, Rick, if you'll forgive me for saying so.  

Rick: [shortly] I forgive you.  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rick: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for.  

Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.  

Rick: Well, what of it? It'll be out of its misery.  

Victor Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart.  

Ma Joad on Suffering

'And Ma went on,

"They's a time of change, an' when that comes, dyin' is a piece of all dyin', and bearin' is a piece of all bearin', an' bearin' and dyin' is two pieces of the same thing.

"An' then things ain't lonely any more. An' then a hurt don't hurt so bad, 'cause it ain't a lonely hurt no more, Rosaharn.

"I wisht I could tell you so you'd know, but I can't."

And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Rose of Sharon's eyes, and flowed over her eyes and blinded her.'


John Steinbeck
"The Grapes of Wrath"

Another Cyclical Saturday Up On the roof at Home with Mom Nature

A Saturday afternoon at home w/ Josh downstairs finishing his Eagle Scout stuff, Anita cleaning inside somewhere, Shakun & Leah off to Fatima's for their massages, Ez at Phora to play soccer or basketball and me, the Dad, taking a few hours of relaxation upstairs after cleaning the overgrown ivy and a summer's debris along the rooftop molded gutters.

When Ez came home from Lyle's about 11 am and found me up above the living room, wrestling and tearing the slender, elastic lines of ivy that had overwhelmed the rooftop defenses, he chuckled and said, "you're still on the roof!"

As I had been about 8 pm last night, when the electricity was out for a couple of hours, lying on the cotton pillows on the wooden bench in the open loggia toward the backside of the living room roof.

Ez'd called, "Dad, where are you?" When I answered, he asked, "Do you have 20 or 50 rupees?" "No," I responded, "I'm up here in my boxers; the money's on the desk in front of the computer."

"Ok, I'm going down to Budhanilkantha w/ Lyle to get some momos for dinner. Then, we're going to Lyle's house."

So, a day later, Ez was amused to find his occasionally misplaced Dad still up on the roof, where he'd left him 15 hours earlier...

But, when you have such a plethora of flat roofs with verdant, rugged hillsides all around & the wide open Kathmandu valley below, lights twinkling in the darkness, or billowy day-time clouds on the horizon, well, methinks, that's there's hardly a better place to contemplate the wonder of it all while continuing one's perpetual struggle with the fierce, lush, semi-tropical invasion of monsoon foliage that seeks to swarm the ramparts of our precious homes, drain pipes and existence.

Nature will win, of course, in the Prime Mover's final, epic teleological, ontological & metaphysical cinemagraphic end -- but that's a long way off yet from today's Saturday, and the day to day struggle is often full of joy while Ms. Bountiful Naturette is agreeable enough to temporarily bend her ineluctable florid ambition to our thoughts and desires in creating a bit of horiticultural beauty around us.

After all, without Mother Earth's eagerness to keep spreading her tendrils, leaves, seeds & roots, we'd be a lonely race of lonely people in a very barren world, indeed.

Now, back to the barricades!

But, first, where did I put my pruning scissors?

A Magical Link...

I am now convinced that... a magical link exists between man and bamboo.

Whether he is a gardner, a craftsman, a painter, a poet, a philosopher or all of these things, the sight, touch, shade and rustling of bamboo calms, inspires and enriches him.

Certain civilizations have known it for thousands of years. In our western countries, we are just beginning to discover [this] now...

Yves Crouzet
Founder, La Bambouserie

Mysticism 101 w/ Ms. Leah Rose

"Daddy, you know that everything comes from the world for us. I know that. Even everything in the garden, the birds, the rocks and the flowers all come from the world for us.

Even your big bamboo tusa. They all come from the world for us.

You know where it all comes from, Daddy? The sun! I learned that. Everything comes from the sun -- even the moon, the grass and the clouds. They all come from the sun. I know that.

All the things we like come from the world for us. Everything! We don't make anything. No one in the family does. Not Mommy or Josh or Ezra or even you. Not even Lapsi or Gumbi (our dogs) make the world. No one does.

Only the sun makes everything. Even the Earth comes from the sun. I've seen it! Honest."

Leah opens her eyes wide and shakes her head knowingly at me as she sits on my lap in the big, white, overstuffed chair in the living room as I'm trying to finish the last pages of Harry Potter.

"You know it's true. Everything comes from the world for us. Really it does!"

Reflections w/ A Distant Friend on Time Alone

nice to hear from you! amazing how a bit of open space in our lives can do to raise our momentary anxieties while permitting us, at the same time, the opportunity to reflect upon the normal limits and perceptions we allow ourselves... hmmmm....

yes, i know the feeling when the office isn't beckoning, the family isn't nearby and the world seems both more malleable and uncaring. it's amazing how comforting it can be to have a title, office, emails and kids to keep us in line, fulfilled while allowing the heavy weight of time & expectation to dissipate in exhaustion and
achievement. good stuff while it's there!

but, the spaces between the notes, the breaths b/n the action and the moments to reflect amid the chaos can be equally as valuable for our hyper-modern lives. although, questions are not always as comforting as answers... as we know... but with a certain equanimity (that may come from age as much as anything higher form
of intelligence or wisdom), it's good to pause, whether at the kitchen table, digging in the garden mud or standing thoughtfullly on a friendly street corner.

major changes, i guess, provide some of these opportunities.

as you know, i went through a fair share of this reflection & observation of my life & experience when my save the children world in nepal suddenly foreclosed on me last summer. then, i've been able to get more perspective while sitting here in the national human rights commission during the week gazing into the 19th C. rana overgrown courtyard. not to mention, meandering in our flourishing botanical garden on the w/ends or while occasionally writing on this 'bambuddhism in nepal' blog to record my own personal thoughts & meditations.

it's not that i've come up w/ any major theoreitcal 'breakthroughs' or profound insights into the human condition. most of that, as we know, has already been
expressed by our poets. philosophers & theologians over the ages. but, as we equally understand, each of us needs to explore and find these natural & self-evident truths for ourselves as we meander our limited years on the world stage, through work, friendship, marriage and parenting. for each identity/role/mask offers innumberable opportunities to observe, reflect and grow. (unfortunately, of course, we're usually too busy to notice...)

to start, how about a journal where you can write to yourself. it's a document for the ages, for your children &, someday, grandchildren (g-d forbid!!) where you describe to them your feelings, thoughts & experiences as you make your way through the maze of life that lies ahead for them, as well. i did that for a few years and a few books, and always smile when i think of josh or ez or leah reading them some distant day when i may no longer be here...

then, there's literature, harry potter, even! i've gone through all the young wizard's volumes this summer and have loved the fabulous story & ms. rowyling's imagination -- particularly when she began book three and four as her writing & complexity of the characters & story began to move to more fantastic, yet enchanting, realms.

or, is there a book you've been wanting to read, music you wanted to download, a park you wanted to visit or a friend you wanted to see or an afternoon movie you wanted to see or merely an email you wanted to write? these modest touches of our lives can often educe more emotion or attention than the larger tasks we have often set for ourselves. the pointallists and impressionists taught us how much a single stroke of their brushes can do to educe feeling from our deepest, submerged longing.

there are, after all, so many small things and moments that embellish life yet which we often neglect b/c our work & family responsibilities overwhelm us.

these days, i sometimes look back at my 25 years w/ save the children in nepal and wonder what appears in retrospect as MOST important for me. i ask myself how all of those days and nights disappeared & dissolved in the mists of monsoons past, so that i cannot easily perceive the differences, much less the accomplishments. it's a little frightening, no?

so those memories of people or events that do stand out over the years become even more important as i realize that when i stepped out of my norms or routines, particularly to value a specific friend or child or place, i remember those days or moments with most affection, and tender loss...

is there a lesson here?