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.

If you light a light for somebody it will also brighten your path – Buddha

It has been a while since I have posted. October 2015 to be exact. However, there certainly has not been a lack of excitement or intrigue from our side. In December Ian and I made the long trip home to Michigan….and Minnesota and Tennessee. Our carbon footprint was not small, to say the least.  Of course it was good to see family, some we have not hugged in person for almost two years. Far too long for those who we call Loved.

Ian and I both remain ever so busy with school. Ian completed his most difficult semester yet, one that was shrouded in statistics and the hieroglyphic type symbols that mathematicians call logic. He also ran IQ tests and personality profiles on several friends and myself; thankfully he remains neutral in all judgments and has promised to remain married despite the results.  The little smarty also continues to receive book after book in the mail….I wonder if there is a DSM diagnosis for closet book reader or hoarder of knowledge. It is actually quite beautiful to watch him smell the books as they come in, opening them with fascination and respect He is a book whisperer, I swear.

I have been trotting along in my program as well. It seems somewhat unfair that Ian has had so much work and mine feels like a natural extension of what I would already be reading and of myself; It has proven to be my hearts desire and calling. 

I recently returned from Guatemala serving on another medical mission with the organization Salud Y Paz (health and peace).  We traveled to villages high in the Guatemalan mountains where access to health care is extremely limited. As a matter of fact, our highest clinic was at 8,000 ft. so it felt very much like Nepal. Perhaps this is why I also felt an immediate connection to the traditional culture and geography.  With only three providers, a pediatrician, an ER doctor, and myself, we saw over 750 patients. As you can imagine it was extremely busy, but profoundly rewarding.

Prior to departing I stumbled across an organization called Lucky Iron Fish (luckyironfish.com) which makes a cast iron fish that helps fight anemia. By simply cooking with their fish a family can receive all their daily requirements of iron each day. And better yet, the fish can be used over and over again for up to 5 years. Knowing that anemia is a major cause of illness and health disparity in low resource settings I set out to get as many fish as I could. Thanks to generous donations from my Clinic I was able to take 25 fish with me to Guatemala.

 

This is the first time I have ever done something like this so I really had no idea how well this concept would be accepted or adopted within a new culture. Well.....I can now say that in Guatemala, it was extremely accepted and appreciated. The thought of providing their families with ongoing "vitamins" was very exciting to the Guatemalan mothers who received the fish.  I loved watching my Spanish and Quiche (Mayan language) interpreters explain what the fish was for and how it was used. Smile after smile (but not often caught on camera) the mothers thanked me for the gifts of health. Silently I thanked the donors and the Creator for allowing me to be in a position to provide. Who am I after all?

Another popular gift I brought was my now famous (or at least famous with the group I travel with) purses and seemingly endless supply of donated MatchBox cars.  A nurse from my office gave me about 50 cars that her son no longer needed and another staff member bought several to donate as well. In addition, our phlebotomist and her mother made several little purses to give to the children. I whipped out about 50 myself prior to leaving; some purses and Iron Fish bags were even made of Ian's up-cycled jeans; the Guatemalan's got a kick out of this. 

Regardless, the outpouring of love from those in my life is always tremendously touching. I get to physically experience the excitement and smiles when I give a little boy a car or a little girl a purse, however, they only get to hear. Still, words cannot express how thankful I am for their generosity and selfless donations. It is a rare exception that you find such genuine goodness and love expressed so automatically and without question as found in them. In a world of turmoil, goodness not only still exists, but it is still very much alive. 

What really struck me about the Guatemalan / Mayan people was that they seemed to have no concept of poverty.   As a Western outsider avoidance of this discomfort was been taught from a very young age. As a matter of fact, we all make great strides to acquire more, store more, and secure our future through complicated bonds and retirements.   However, when we want to understand something, we cannot just stand outside and observe it, we have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in its entirety. To understand a person living in poverty we have to feel their feelings, suffer their sufferings, and enjoy their joys. We have to allow them to penetrate our entire being. So thats what I did. 

When a little girl excitedly asked if the stuffed animal was for her to keep (Is it for me?! Is it for me?!), when a little boy races his MatchBox car with his brother, both laughing and giggling in pure happiness, when an older women cries at the early loss of her son and her husband due to the irrevocable diseases of poverty, or when I see the tired eyes of a man who works in the fields all day long for $3 per day, I tried to experience them and all of their feelings, sufferings, and joys. Truly in our life, being in the skin of another is perhaps the greatest form of understanding. 

And in this meditative form of awareness I remembered that "want" and "desire" create the duality of suffering. So for a person who has neither, their experience of life is different and even more, their poverty may not exist at all. When I looked at the tattered clothing of all the children we saw, the pants we call floods, the shoes we call useless, the hands we call dirty, I only saw peace. They may lack power and choice, but they do not lack intellect and joy. 

It was watching the children play that I realized they truly have no idea that they are living in poverty. As a result, they are free to Be and free to elude the sufferings of want and desire that plague so many of us in the developed world. Priceless. 

So, my aim is to longer to view them as marginalized or less than due to their outer presentations, to no longer see the negative and make a judgment or calculation based on exteriors but to change my hardwiring to experience the person in understanding and enter into the deeper realization of what it means to be human. For that is where the Kingdom of riches is found.

At this very moment what do you need to be full of joy? How uncomfortable can you be with the tattered materialism that hold little value in life? How radical can you be in another's skin? How radical can you live in your own? For you I pray that this year be one of spiritual growth, renewal, awareness, and most of all understanding.