Thanksgiving

                                                Camino de Santiago, 2007
We experience your abundance,
your light,
in our summer.
In our autumn we feast on the harvest, 
the fruits of your love,
even as we store them
for future nourishment and savoring
in the cellars of our memories and feelings.
We prepare for cold,
coming darkness and dormancy,
our winter, with our roots deeply embedded
in the ground of your love.
We await 
the resurrection and healing
of our spring.
All in all,


Thank you.
                                                      Written by my friend Tim P. Kochems

Stones

How is it that Elephants can walk across the Namibian desert every year knowing where to go, following the same path? Or million of birds, without compass, can go south in the Winter and north in the Summer, returning every time to the same nest left months before? But we, human beings, need signs, maps, guides, and GPS to not get lost? Usually on Pilgrimage pilgrims follow yellow arrows, they mark at every intersection the way to go. They are a great help, a great comfort to all of us that walk, and very soon they turn into friends that at every corner wait patiently to you to wave where to go. How in the ancient time pilgrims could do without them?

Probably the biggest fear for a pilgrim is to get lost, and also the most common thing people ask about a pilgrimage: “did you follow a trail? Was it well marked? Did you get lost? Was it hard to find your way?”

                               My partner Tom - Following Saint Francis's Footprints - Spello, Italy, 2009

Paths are marked. Mostly very well marked. And rarely one gets lost. When you are in these kind of situations, when you rely mostly only on yourself, on a guidebook and on a path to follow all your senses awake, little signs that before you will never have noticed now will not passed unnoticed. On the first couple of days you still find yourself reading over and over again your guidebook, but after a while, you put it away in the backpack. And you just start to trust yourself and the path.

The funny thing is those fears will come back on the last days of your pilgrimage when you will start wondering how you will cope once you return to the ‘real’ world, where the signs that you have to follow are not longer simple arrows, gentle friends waiting at the corner to wave to you. 

But like on a trail also life is full of signs for us, the problem is that we have become almost immune to seeing them. We often miss the signs that have been in place for generations to show us, to guide us the correct and honorable way to go through life. They are around us, but somehow we keep missing them. And when it happens, the rare times that we let us be guided by our intuitions, we call it: coincidences or luck instead of giving credit to ourselves for having recognized a sign and have follow it.

We are also afraid to adventure all alone. We prefer to follow others. We call them hero or leaders, they are the ones who adventure into unknown territories, the rest of us are the seconds, the pack that prefers to take the backset.

When you walk on the Camino of Santiago you cannot miss to notice neat piles of stones placed on the edge of the path, you can soon figure out that this is part of a ritual in which almost everybody participate. The stones are not placed to show you the path, although they help you to understand that yes, you are following the right direction. The real meaning of those little minarets is different. It is said, if you pick up a stone and put some of your sorrow into it, when you place the stone down you leave your sorrow behind. And leaving your sorrow on the Camino you create more space in your heart for love.

                                                           Camino de Santiago, Spain 2007

One year later when I was walking in Madagascar on the mountain of Zafimarany I noticed the same piles of stones. I stopped and show them to Tom, who had already noticed them and wondered what they meant, I asked to our guide if he knew what they meant and told him the Spaniard belief. The meaning here was different.

Malagasy belief in the existence of close ties between the living and the dead. Malagasy peoples have traditionally accepted the existence of a supreme God, known commonly as Zanahary (Creator) or Andriamanitra (Sweet, or Fragrant, Lord). The dead have been conceived as playing the role of intermediary between this supreme God and humankind and are viewed as having the power to affect the fortunes of the living for good or evil. The spirits of our ancestors populate our lives. They live all around us and influence our lives. When you walk on the top of a mountain you are more likely to meet them. They most of the time do not like you disturb them by passing by. So you hold in your hand a stone and start talking to them, letting them know that you come in peace and that you will leave them in peace, then you put down the stone on the path as symbol of peace and leave it behind you.

                                                                       Madagascar, 2008

I picked up a stone, and started to converse with my ancestors. And like other before me I put it down leaving it behind. After this very simple gesture I felt light. The day was a beautiful sunny day; the breeze on the top was refreshing, flowers were everywhere, the mountain was very green and the view was just unbelievable.

We continued to the poorest village I have ever visited. I was not expecting that day in that village I would have met and felt such sadness in my heart.

The level of poverty, the lack of everything: education, hygiene, privacy, respect for life and development of it was overwhelming. I felt the situation was hopeless, and that day, that beautiful sunny day, full of blooming flowers I felt such sadness in my heart.

On my way back I took another stone in my hands… this time I did not asked to any ancestors permission to pass I, instead, try to put all my sorrow into it to leave them behind. Unsuccessfully. 

The Rose Bush

 A good friend of mine wrote a very nice entry on her blog. I loved it so much that I wanted to add some reflections to it.

-        On the the sidewalk of a walk there was a beautiful rose bush, she (Angela) was enjoying watch it blooming. Everyday she was going to the spot where the rose bush was growing with her camera in her hands, waiting for the perfect moment to take a picture. She loved that rose, she was talking and smiling at this plant and felt the plant was smiling back. It was a true relationship. Yes, we can have relationships with a rose bush… (my neighbor Dani, who has an amazing garden, talks about her plants with the same fervor parents talk about their children, she knows the latin name of each flower who grows in her garden and even the latin name of each weed). But one day the bush rose was gone… some tourist who passed by had cut it down to make a bouquet to bring to the refuge where Angela was working at… Furious and hurt Angela told to the tourist that she had just killed something that belonged to everybody. The discussion escalated where the  tourist’s attitude was kind of “How do you dare? You servant, to tell me that I killed something…?

I think this story is very touching and deserves to reflect on.

First I hate people who go around picking up flowers, wild flowers especially, to make bouquets… Why????? For God sake, if you want a centerpiece for your table go to Kabloom and buy it!!!!!! Wild flowers whom can last for days in the field, once one cuts them they will die in a couple of hours.  What a waste of life is that?????

                                          Madagascar, 2008

But beside this point the real point is much deeper. It is how people behave in front of life, life that is not a human being.  When we were children our pre-school teachers thought us that a flower has life, feelings, that a worm or a spider deserves to live as much as we do… We all listened to them and deeply believed in them. Try to kill a bug in front of a child and you will see the reaction… So what goes wrong when we grow up? 

Unfortunately human being never grow out of the “this is mine” phase. We think that only children, toddler in particular, are ego-centrist… But isn’t true, actually the older we grow the more we feel the need of possession. So if I see a flower on the side of the path… well it is mine! If I see a bug crawling crossing my path I turn into the Imperator Cesar and play the old game of giving permission of life or sentence death to him.  A tree is just there to give me fruits or some kind of shade, and if I do not need any shade… Well I cut it down, not big deal!

                                      Celle Macra, Italy 2008

But it is also, in a bigger picture, how people behave in front of beauty. Beauty also is mine… I consider that rose nice: I let it grow, or I will posses her, bring it home for my own pleasure. I consider that bug creepy I kill it. 

Ten years ago in Montreal, Tom and I took a walk on the isle (Iles de Bouchervill) … Where we saw a mother with two young children chopping a cherry tree to make bouquets that, of course, did not last 2 minutes in the hands of her 3 years sons, I could not resisted I stopped and started to argue with the woman telling her that the tree was everybody’s property, that what she was doing was a shamed and it was a terrible example for a mother to show… She trying to play the game: “I don’t understand you… I speak only French” basically answering me “Qua? Qua? Qua?…”. And so she got me! I truly gave her a piece of my mind (in French!) starting with  -Do NOT dare to give me your silly “Qua? Qua? Qua?”

I was teenager and I was in Paris to study ballet. Poor as a student can be. My mother, who at that time did not see my going into ballet so happily, had given me a round trip train ticket, a phone card and some money saying “ This is it! When the money is over do NOT call me for more. You will come back home. And do NOT dare to do any stupid things, I will NOT bail you out!” I went to Paris, find a friend where to stay for free, ate bread and butter, I was quite talented in ballet so I got a scholarship to a beautiful and good dance school, But I want to take some very expensive master classes with a Russian teacher and I needed money to keep going so I decided to dance in the street. Every afternoons, after class, with a friend of mine I went in front of the Beaubourg (Centre Pompidou) turned on a boom-box and danced while my friend was walking thru the crowd with a hat asking for donations. We did very well, actually so well that not only we were able to spend a full Summer in Paris taking classes with the expensive Russian teacher, but also were able to improve our regime from bread and butter to French patisseries! We loved to go to eat our lunch in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. It is such a lovely spot. One day my friend Virginia eating her croissant and starring, as usual, to the beautiful façade out of the blue said: “Oh my God look Luciano, look how beautiful is this façade. I could spend hours watching it and I am never tired to do it, I always find something new to watch, some new little details that I missed to watch yesterday. It is so beautiful that if it would be possible I would love to run into it and turn into one of the stone that form this merveille!” – I know that my translation doesn’t do any justice to her words, neither to the expression in her eyes. She was sincerely in love and touched by the beauty of the moment. But I got it! I totally understood what she meant with that: “I would love to run into it and turn into one of the stone that form this merveille!”.

And that is how we should all see beauty. We should all try to harmonically be part of it. And I repeat harmonically, because that is the key word of what I want to say here.

                                              Madagascar, 2008

Why Everest?

Many people asked me: -Why have you decided to go on Mount Everest? What does this have to do with a project in Madagascar?

Well if we think only geographically: yes, Mount Everest has nothing to do with Madagascar and apparently there is no link between climbing a mountain and helping children to get a better education. And I understand that for so many it looks just like a great vacation.

The link lies in the symbolic aspect of climbing a mountain.

        2008 Celle Macra, Italy - Hiking with my family to the village where my father was born

When I founded A Bridge of Roses, my idea was very simple as I explained on my web site ABridgeofRoses.com:

-“I will do 4 challenges and ask to family, friends and all who I know to sponsor me. I pay for my trips and expenses and all the donations will go to the project.”

Then I started to think at which challenges to do. From that very first moment I decided that Mount Everest should have been the last challenge.

Why? Very simple: it is the tallest mountain in the world. And to climb it is, symbolically, the ultimate challenge.

I am actually not attempting to climb to the top but only to Base Camp (5,360 metres - 17,590 ft).

                                          2008, Mamma Rosa hiking

The first person with whom I spoke about A Bridge of Roses and the challenges was, of course, Tom. He loved it and supported me. Then I wrote a letter to my brother in Italy asking his support and to join me on this last challenge.

My brother and I, although we have very different personalities, we are very close. My father died when I was young. When we were children he not only took his role of big brother very seriously, but many times he substituted that father that I did not have. He was, and he still is, my special mentor. So it was natural to ask him to help me to raise money to build a school in honor of our mother Ponte Rosa (Rose Bridge). In that letter, while explaining him why I wanted to do this ABridgeofRoses project and why to climb the Everest, I wrote him this:

… I just finished to read a fantastic book, so many things touched me in this book but one more than anything else: -Thousand of children from the shore see a boat crossing the horizon, but only one asks himself where does it go? And only that child one day will try to find the answer.  I like to think I am that child.

-Since I was a child I ask myself the same question: What am I looking for? I am still looking for an answer. Sometimes I feel like I got it, but then I have doubts again and the question arises again in my mind.

I hope you can understand me. And deep in my heart I know that even if from a different experience… you understand me. You had always understood me. I know it. For this reason I asked you to join me to climb the Everest, and for this reason I am hoping you will agree to come with me.

So many times I saw you “climbing” the mountains of your life, so many times I tried to follow your steps. I always admired you and I always knew you where looking at me when I was “climbing” the mountains of my life. For once let’s climb together and let’s chose the highest: the Everest.

Will we finally see the “other side” when we will have reached the top? Will we see what is hiding in the other side? Will we see where the boat comes from? I am afraid not, but maybe, maybe yes. And it is that possibility: the hope to see finally where the boat comes from and where it goes that will give us the strength to climb, as it always did.

Love, Luciano

So Mount Everest will be!

             Rome, 2006 - My family: Luciano, Tom, Luciana, Giorgio, Cesare e Mamma Rosa