Monday Moanings - October 21, 2013

It's dull.
It's dreary.
It's raining.
It's a Monday moaning, BUT nobody really wants to hear a morning report full of whining, especially the whimpers of someone else. So I'll get on with it; get on with the business of life in this great wide world, one that allows me to trod in her forests, splash in her rivers, lakes and streams, bask in her sunshine and even be drenched in her refreshing rains. Mother Earth gives me so much more that I give back and I am blessed and deeply grateful to be living at this time, in this place.

Labyrinth, Lucca, Italy

I have the privilege of being able to travel the globe seeing marvellous places and faces, experiencing sights and sounds, flavours and fragrances, and touching of my fingers to ancient stones where so many other fingers have lingered long before mine. How awesome is that? Yet there is still so much more to explore.

The Library at Ephesus, Turkey

Street Child, Mumbai

Prayer Offering, Mumbai

The Spring of 2014 will see my love and I heading to Asia; a cruise from Hong Kong to Shanghai with stops in Taipei, Nagasaki, Busan, Jeju, and Tianjin, and then a river cruise on the Yangtze from Beijing back to Shanghai. This trip has the scent of pilgrimage about it. My mother loved China and walked the Great Wall. I want to walk where she (and so many others) walked.

Thinking, dreaming about this next adventure is my sunshine today.

©2013 April Hoeller

Monday Moanings - July 8, 2013

Ever had one of those days when what you thought you were going to write, what you had mapped out, annotated and all but written, falls apart? I'm having one of those mornings. I had planned to write something about how two accidents this weekend coloured my thoughts in the drab hues of lament; how a plane crash in San Francisco and train wreck in Lac-Megantic underscore the fine line between happiness and horror, security and vulnerability, life and death; how accidents always disrupt, disturb and destroy our neat, comfortable lives.

But then I saw this video by Sandra Meroz about Lac-Megantic and it says so much more than I could say, and with so much more eloquence. Thank you Sandra Meroz for creating this very poignant montage. Any moaning I might have done this day would be an affront to the people of this small Quebec town.

My heart goes out to you, the people of Lac-Megantic as you struggle to live again amidst so much destruction and loss, so many questions without answers. May there be many hand holds and hugs for you in the coming days and weeks.