London Travels

For me, voyaging to different places now has a different meaning. Less concerned with the tourist sites, inspired by the journeys of many others, now I want to meet each places’ people. The easiest way to do this is to share smiles of course. Not hard, right. I mean I’m loud, outgoing, I can do this. But frequently, I found myself hesitating. That’s when Rev Heng Sure came back to me (found in heart songs from friends unknown- thanks all).

Being brittle and hard is easy,
It takes courage to be kind.

As I walked the streets, his words rang in my head when I found myself hesitating. Only through giving, can one develop one’s capacity to give. It does take courage to be kind, funny how it takes courage to express love, which is our Being’s true nature, but it is comparatively easy to stay within our own little bubble, which is not even true reality.

Thursday, after calling friends and running back and forth between making plans, I took matters into my own hands. I was going to visit Stonehenge. As weird as people thought it was, I took the trip alone and I’m glad that I did. It was the day after Summer Solstice, so I saw the order of the Druid perform a high noon ceremony honoring the sun. Over 50 Druids dressed in white descended upon the stone monument, which is not only an artifact of the past, but a temple as well. As I walked the perimeter, I tried to recall all the tales from the book Sarum. Indeed, if I hadn’t read the book, Stonehenge would have been just a pile of rocks.

The English countryside is beautiful, it reminded me of the countryside outside of Toronto.

If my travels thus far has shown me anything, its that you will stumble upon the most interesting people along the way. On the train ride home, I met this amazing family who was just coming back from a week long festival celebrating the solstice. Their 3 year old daughter had a blast drawing smiles to make smile stones and telling stories about what she saw (brown and black horses, and no silly, there were no green ones). The couple is involved with creating this community where families can come without worries of negative influences. Once a month, they have a club night with music, etc. where they can all get together and hang out. There is music and dancing and children can come too. They don’t publicize the club, people come by word of mouth. The husband is involved with helping websites post streaming audio and video and they both work to create community events for families and kids. Great people with huge hearts and their daughter was sooo cute =) The conversation was a tad difficult to follow with the accents, but we understood each other enough =)