What a long hiatus from blogging; a sure sign of the external demands that have diverted my attention elsewhere over the last year.   I suspect that few cannot relate. 

I wanted to start the blog with an explanation of the pictures. Ian and I recently returned from vacation in Costa Rica. We stayed near Arenal volcano at the most beautiful resort, Nayara (it is worth checking out their website as my pictures just do not do it justice, www.arenalnayara.com)

Built into the rain forest canopy it felt as if we were living in an untouched jungle paradise of mutual companionship with birds, lizards, frogs, monkeys, and sloths. 

What I found most inspiring about Costa Rica were the people and their commitment to preservation. For one, the government has decided to forgo having a national military since 1948. Instead, funds are used to finance education and health care for their citizens. As a result, 97% of the country is literate and more than 80% are considered middle class. 

Second, they have made a commitment to sustainability and have a goal of zero carbon foot print by 2020.  Owning to their phrase, "pura vida" or pure life, Costa Rica exceeded my expectations as a country whose values are worth exporting globally. 

However, the most significant experience was seeing Ian reconnect with the Costa Rican family he lived with while studying Spanish 18 years ago.  After many years of no contact a serendipitous event lead to their reconnecting.  

While we had planned on finding the house and knocking on their door unannounced, our hotel driver had his wife google one of the brothers and found his phone number so we could call first.  Upon finding the right Juan Carlos of Costa Rica who knew a "foreign guy named Ian Niecko," their reunion was imminent.

While many stories were shared and memories rekindled, it was the re-establishing of a once lost connection that brought much gratefulness. 

The family is wonderful and Ian and I are both very happy to have been able to find them, reconnect, and continue the friendship.

The other pictures are of our trip to Seward in July. After Ian's class we drove from Anchorage to Seward for a quick weekend hiking-get-a-way. I always feel my best on a trail, and while Ian enjoys hiking as well, I think he would rather have his nose in a book. 

I don't think I have ever met someone as well read as him, or an older soul who more willingly embraces their spiritual walk and journey more compassionately. I often tell him it is an honor to bask in the light of his shadow. Perhaps it was thinking on him this morning that re-inspired me to blog again.  

Or perhaps my re-entry into the blogging universe has been hastened this particular morning because, well, today is my birthday, and as I sit here drinking my tea am also reflecting on the last 36 yrs (or at least the last 25 that I can truly remember) and imagining what lies ahead. 

So many emotions come up. Some unwelcomed, others embraced, however, I suppose this is what it means to be human - our ability to connect to something deeper and consciously give it meaning. 

I ready a great quote by Albert Einstein this morning: 

A human being is a part of the whole called the "universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

I can only speak for myself, but suspect this will resonate with many, that there is a unanswered hunger for the lost element of experience yearning in my heart. That there is an dimension of reality that exists beyond the material plane, and because it evades the senses, it becomes the most authentic experience a human can have. 

Somehow we feel enslaved by conditions that should have no power to bind us, and powerless before forces over which we have been given dominion.  Somehow I have forgotten about this other reality, the omnipresent, omnipotent one that marks us all for greatness and calls us to be fully human and wholly Divine. It asks us not to complete the work that was started, but to recognize the fullness that already exists. To take daily inventory and question if our path is truly the "narrow way."

While physical life is often centered around preserving youth, it neglects the inner rejuvenation of Soul. This mis-focused attention unknowingly propels us into the arms of a daily spiritual deadening, where one morning we look at our aging self in the mirror and ask, where has it all gone?

What a beautiful thing to be able to answer back that it has gone to developing an inner Kingdom; spiritual brick by spiritual brick, founded on forgiveness, compassion, and love, and glued together by grace.

It would truly be a happy birthday to be able to look in the mirror and know that age is not something  to hide, but stands as an outward reflection of inner time given. Not a rejection of youth, but an honor of time allowed for us to prepare an eternal place of final peace.  This is the my new motto for year 36, to embrace that time is a gift and with the small amount we are given, should be used in large ways.

If I can embrace this fullness, at the time of physical departing all I will have left in my hands is what I have given away, and my inner kingdom will finally have been built.

I think one of the many ironies in life is that through building external prisons (and walls!) we are limiting our ability to widen compassion and grow in love. Through or personal decision to continue our mental enslavement to a material god we miss out on the real human experience and blindly build a prison-kingdom with room only for one.

I believe that the liberation Einstein speaks of is a spiritual one. The One way that can truly create inner security.  It does not ask us to be free, it tells us we already are and demands us to remember. It declares that we no longer be enslaved to the artificial, to fear, or violence, but to truly walk the narrow way. To continually ask ourselves daily what kind of walls we are enforcing and what opportunities we are preventing from coming to fruition.

If we are honest with each other, I believe that we can all admit we cry deep inside for ourselves and our world. We can all attest to the deep longing for true liberation, authentic experiences, and most importantly deep connection with something beyond ourselves; to regrow our wings and soar above the limitations of our physical world and become eternal and immortal once again.