Otra vuelta

Drops pounding down on an unusually rainy day in Brisbane, the perfect company to a day spent 'home' in quiet recovery and gratitude for a magical three weeks of travel with family. Where to begin... could mention the places-- sailing on the Whitsundays and experiencing the mystical madness of the Great Barrier Reef; petting kangaroos while spooked by emu and heart-warmed by koalas; the layers and layers of immense and absolutely inexplicable beauty discovered as we circled South Island Aotearoa (New Zealand), the land of the long white cloud-- hot springs, lakes, ocean, glaciers, waterfalls, kiwi, kea...

Or those precious moments of tear-jerking laughter that were in such abundance, simply basking in the idiosyncrasies of life as mom, dad, cousin Steph and I experienced it all together in our unique ways...

Or the people who shared their homes with us-- the two Rotarians that had hosted me before, kindly re-opening their doors to the four of us, and old family friends taking us in for the Christmas holiday as if we were of the same blood clan...

If only it could be so simple, but our lunacies arise as we battle between such 'light' and the 'darker' of what we deem to be ours and therein selfishly defend. And sort of along those lines is where I struggled, as I always do on vacations, about how such free spending and travel speaks to my integrity. It's this voice that I've come to lovingly recognize as me, that keeps always present in my conscious mind a reminder of those pained by injustice... which is all of us, at one time or another. But some disproporitionately so, and as I move into my "in-between trapeze" phase of life, I can only pray to hone in deeper to this 'me' and further empower it to guide me along.

My cousin and I began the new year by leaping out of a plane at 12,000 feet, plummeting down over the Marlborough Sounds. Trust and faith, faith and trust, breath and balance, on we go...