Thursday 16 June 2005

Learning from Forrest's grandfather.

We're always on some path. Every breath is another step forward, right? Yet we're so focused on where we're going, or where we want to be. I'm beginning to see that the travelling is more important than the arrival, and that seeking inward is more rewarding than seeking outward.

This is pilgrimage.
Journeying not to, but with.
Destination: me.


I'm reading a wonderful children's book, The Education of Little Tree; a true story by Forrest Carter, who was raised by his Cherokee (Native American) grandparents, and there is a lot in that book to inspire me. The grandfather - what a grand grandfather he must have been. I'm awed by the wisdom of his spirituality, I'm humbled by the depth in the simplicity of his ways.

Afterthought: why must the original inhabitants of that continent be called "Native" Americans? Why aren't they called Americans, and the others called Immigrant Americans? They were there from the first. Every one else arrived.

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