Airplane Fast Month Three

It seems quite easy to not get into an airplane. It's much harder to stumble into flying than to break a food fast with a midnight cookie. But by not flying for a year I am forcing myself to look at what needs travel fills and how to fill those differently. It's not easy for a travel junkie to stop.

I'm seeing that travel - especially to distant places that require flight - fills so many needs that it's no surprise that I say yes so readily to invitations to go elsewhere. Here are a few:
stimulation (hear new people, ideas, languages)
a break from routines
admiration and respect (when I speak)
socializing (conferences are a big party)
aimlessness (reading novels, poking around)
perspective (i see my life through the eyes of a different culture)
inspiration (i often change direction from insights on my trips)
gratitude (for what i have at home)
new friends (the delights of beginnings and discovery)
learning (history, culture, language, art)

Getting all these needs met locally can be quite a challenge! Color me chuckling.

You see, my life metaphor has been "on the road". I actually lived on the road for 10 years in a motorhome and even after living in Seattle for 16 years I thought of it as temporary. I considered it a spiritual truth - we are all brief travelers on a journey from birth to death and all stability is an illusion since everything changes.

But it seems my signature is changing from "on the road" to "less, local and love" which are my guiding principles for the future when Climate Change and Peak Oil and Resource depletion will require us all to settle down to a smaller footprint. It's also, probably, a recognition that at 62 my will for novelty and adventure is being balanced finally by a desire for rootedness and stability. So this "airplane fast" is actually a crucial practice for this life shift.

As my stone stops rolling I'm gathering a bit of moss and it feels good. I live in a community where many friends have the means and the careers that send them traveling for work and pleasure. Being a homebody this year I notice how hard it is for community to become really solid, regular and predictable. The people here become all the more important to me when I am not out and about collecting new ones.

In this month I've started one new friendship and deepened some others intentionally. A group that was a work group has evolved into a monthly witness group, holding one another's journeys. I've come to appreciate even more those who host regular events I can attend and contribute to - my choir and ecstatic dance class - and have started with two friends what will become a regular local Conversation Cafe (thus becoming a source of stable quality connection for others). Over Easter Weekend I participated in several spiritual opportunities - all the more precious because they were on my doorstep and available. One friend hosted a Day of Mindfulness, others hosted a sweat lodge and others an Easter Service and I drank deep and appreciatively of them all.

Seattle has become as exotic as it gets! I'm volunteering with a team of facilitators to host a "space of compassion" during a five-day Seeds of Compassion event during which the Dalai Lama will inspire and educate tens of thousands on the art and science of compassion, especially how to teach it to our children. Meeting with these people who've been on my radar, but peripherally, for years and planning how we will host the space is quite moving. I feel grateful to have such mighty colleagues within a short drive and want to give more energy to working with them. I'm also speaking at the Green Festival here (did it last year in DC).

For those of you who have stayed put most of your lives this must seem pretty ho-hum, but for me these normal activities like making local friends, going to local events and serving on local committees with the intention of my life belonging to a people and a place is quite radical. I get antsy and want to start planning my next trip - and then channel that energy into yet one more quality experience within walking distance or a short drive.

My friend Kurt Hoelting inspired me last Fall with his "circling home" intention to not get into cars and to bike or bus or kayak his intimate region. We are starting to compare notes, seeking whether we are learning similar things and have something to offer from the experiment. But we're only 3 months in. Check me out in November. Mossy. Maybe bored. Possibly pale as a ghost. Narrow minded. Who knows. How are you going to get them back to the farm after they've seen Paris... and Madrid, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Beijing, Dharamsala, Quito, Macchu Picchu, Cuba and...

It's also been a cold month - we had hail on Easter and snow two days ago. It takes a bit of endurance to stay put when the world closes in a bit and isn't hospitable to expansive outdoor play. So the pleasures I am finding are smaller and more contained. The stay-put-ness is actually digging my inner well deeper.