More on: homosexuality and the community of faith

I worked at Hume Lake Christian Camp in the late ’90s. This is the largest Youth Camp in CA, and likely in the US, and quite evangelical/conservative. While there, one man, “came out” in private to me. Why me, I don’t know. Perhaps I felt safe. He was fired when his “status” was made public. Shortly thereafter, one of the longtime and revered leaders of the Camp, a single man in his 50s, came out, likely in response to the ousting of the homosexual man earlier that year. This man was also fired. What it showed to me in part is that “they” are amongst us, often in hiding, and often the very best amongst us. We all struggle and are perplexed by something in our life. Secret indiscretions that make us feel less than worthy. To spotlight the homosexual as the one with the problem that disqualifies seems somehow naive. How many divorcees are in your community of faith? How many who have cheated on a spouse? How many commit sins of pride, covetousness, untruth, adultery - in the sense that Jesus taught. Those of us who are heterosexual can throw the stone at homosexuals when our lives are perfect. How many raise their hand to that? The point is not whether or not homosexuality is wrong but when we, as a community of Christ Followers, are going to stop trying to control right v. wrong and let the Healing Shalom happen as we submit to God’s shaping and healing hands. We likely won’t any time soon because despite our claims that God is Sovereign, we like to be in control. We prefer to wield authority with certainty. Theological discourse is much more preferred to the life of prayer and the "passive growth" growth of listening and responding to the Spirit of God. I exhort us to embrace that if there are problems and misdirections with each of us, and there are, God will begin the repair as we seek him individually and together. In the meantime, we might try humility and lovingkindness as a trump card to Definitive Theological Stances. We might try allowing God's sovereignty in each of our own lives and allow the same for others. If we err, lets err on the side of generosity and let "he without sin cast the first stone." If you rally that the homosexual is a sinner, meet and know one or two before you silence them in explicit ignorance to their plight. Become familiar with the lives of many homosexuals. Typically opinions shift, and/or, become less adamant when we are faced directly with an issue. It is so easy to be an arm-chair QB. As in my last post MILK, I recommend to you a film that communicates to the emotions of the matter: The Dead Poet's Society. Take note of the boy who wishes to be an actor (he is not struggling with homosexuality), and his father will not abide by it. This is just the sort of occasion that reflects the common treatment of homosexuals. That is, we know how all things should go, and we cannot abide with disonance and things we disagree with. Each of us should strive to be an authentic reflection of Christ in a confused, misdirected world. When we try to coerce the world in the way that we see right, we will become embittered through failure, or hate filled and retributive, or isolated - as a group or individual. In any of these cases, the love, mercy, justice, and righteousness of Christ will not be seen or felt.

Fans of Track and Field

Track and Field = Globally Aware
Of all sports fans in America, track and field fans are arguably the most globally informed. Think about it. If you were to give a test on matters of foreign affairs, which fan base do you think would score highest?
Soccer fans immediately strike as strong candidates for being globally on the ball. Yet, Major League Soccer remains largely ensconced within our American culture; and though American soccer fans might well watch Premier League English Football or Primera División de Mexico on satellite television, is the U.K. or Mexico really foreign in terms of world affairs? Hardly. Cycling pops to mind as an internationally savvy sport, but it is largely limited to athletes and fans from Western nations - not exactly global.
To be a track and field fan is to be, by definition, globally aware. You have no other choice. The runners at the top of the sport hail in preponderant numbers from Africa, who each year come to America and routinely win the New York, Boston and Chicago marathons. The most intriguing thing for me as a boy and a fan of track and field in the 1980s was the strange names connected to the runners who were native to obscure places such as Mozambique and Romania, competing in what seemed to me exotic locales such as Göteborg, Oslo and Zurich. I learned about Apartheid by way of South African Zola Budd who was born in the Orange Free State and made headlines for her world championships, world records and bare foot running, along with the controversy of running for the Apartheid suffering nation that in turn made her ineligible for the Olympics. She resolved this by immigrating to Great Britain.
In 1984 the Moroccan track star named Said Aouita became as familiar to my ten-year old mind as Magic Johnson. This was not because my elementary school specialized in teaching the current events of Morocco, nor was it because Moroccan culture is popularly known in the U.S. I knew of Aouita, and therefore Morocco, because I am a fan of track and field. Aouita dominated the middle-distance events from the 800m-5000m throughout the eighties, winning the 5,000m gold in the 1984 Olympics, the 800m bronze in ’88, and for several years held both the 5,000m and 1,500m world records. Aouita not only captured my young imagination but also the imagination of the young Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj, who shares my birth year of 1974. It is said that El Guerrouj was inspired to run by watching Said’s performance in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It makes me wonder: where did he watch the race? Did his family own a television with rabbit ears wrapped in aluminum foil, or was there a favorite café that hosted for soccer matches and track events?
El Guerrouj, dubbed the King of the Mile, is the current world record holder in the 1,500 meters (and the mile, 2000m and indoor 1500m/mile), wresting it away from Algerian Noureddine Morceli who dominated the event through the nineties, winning gold in the ’96 Olympics, the same race that El Guerrouj made his Olympic final debut, only to trip and fall at the gun lap. He would have to wait until 2004 for his first Olympic victory that came in a pair, becoming the first Olympian since Finland’s Paavo Nurmi won both the 1,500m and 5000m in the 1924 Olympic Games. Following his twin victory, El Guerrouj acknowledged the Flying Finn as one of the great legends who marked the history of athletics, “He left his name at his point in time. Now I’m able to put my name with his. He is from another time, a time when my grandfather was watching him. To stand alongside him now, how can I express it? There are no words.” The intimate respect of a fellow runner is tied together by the bonds of knowing the same distance raced and the pain and glory that goes with it.
Aouita, Morceli and El Guerrouj are all men of small stature, sinewy and light boned, built for running speedily and with endurance, each 5’8” or less, no more than 140 pounds. Three men descended from tribes of the Atlas Mountains on the fringe of the southern edge of the Mediterranean, home to the ancient Berbers and more recently Arab tribes that includes luminaries such as St. Augustine, born in present day Souk Ahras, Algeria; Tertullian, who coined the term Trinity in reference to Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Arius, who generated the famous theological battle with Athanasius that shaped Christianity; and Ramses the Great, a Pharaoh of Pharaohs. Anthropologically, these North African tribes are related closer to Sicilians, Egyptians and Spaniards, then Nigerians, Ethiopians and Saudi Arabians. These athletes wear on their singlet the red star and crescent of Islam (Algeria), and the interwoven pentangle star symbolic of occult law in ancient days and the five pillars of Islam today (Morocco). This is a people with a long and variegated history who have weathered centuries of hardscrabble living as farmers and herdsmen over rugged land that has developed a tenacity of mind and body. These intangibles of genetic lineage and adaptation cannot be prescribed by a coach standing on an all-weather track holding a stop-watch, but they do arguably help produce world champions in the sport of track and field.
My familiarity with these North African track athletes made possible an appreciation for Muslim people when the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and despots like Libyan President Momar Khadafi were the types of Muslims popularly featured in the news. Because of track and field, I know Muslims to be amongst the greatest of athletes in a sport I cherish. I watched Abdi Bile of Somalia compete long before the Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in the Battle of Mogadishu. This is not to say that my appreciation for Somalia’s superb miler changed the impoverished and violent horrors of the country, but it changed me. It expanded my perception of who a Somalian could be outside the realm of guerilla warlords, terrorism, and politics.
When Hassiba Boulmerka, the Algerian middle-distance runner was forced to move to Europe to train because of the fundamentalists at home who deemed her running attire unacceptably immodest, I realized just how significant the Muslim culture war with the West is. Through exposure to the international competition of track and field, nuanced aspects of the Muslim culture were revealed to me long before the Taliban and Al-Qaeda became household names and popular signifiers of the Islamic faith. Despite opposition, Boulmerka went on to win gold in the 1,500m at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Most recently, Moroccan born Rashid Ramzi, competing for Bahrain at the Beijing Olympics, won gold in the 1500m, perpetuating the long-line of gold-medal middle-distance runners from the Maghreb nations of North Africa. In these days of protracted struggle with the Muslim world, we in the West would do well to familiarize ourselves with the story and lives of individuals who cannot be easily vilified as Evil Doers. Recognition and gratitude for athletes such as Rashid Ramzi gives a human face to the diversity of Muslim people who are relatively unknown and often misunderstood by Americans. When we can acknowledge people for something more than the politics, religion, economics, and leadership of the nation states in which they live, the people become human and therein of value. By virtue of being a fan of track and field, and a friend so to speak of the sport’s greatest runners, my global awareness of troubled and little known nations is enhanced, leaving me more astute in matters of foreign affairs and sensitive to world events. In the words of the Glasgow based indie-pop band Belle and Sebastian, “the stars of track and field are beautiful people.” Indeed. How has your sport influenced you lately – on a global scale?

The Dalai Lama

Three days with the Dalai Lama

The first time I recall hearing the name Dalai Lama was while watching the 1980 comedy film classic Caddie Shack that made the Tibetan-guru a house-hold name for millions of Americans. The Vietnam veteran assistant greens-keeper at Bushwood Country Club, played by Bill Murray, told a fellow young greens-keep how he had jumped ship during the war, made his way over to Tibet and got on as a “looper” at a course in the Himalayas, “So I tell them I’m a pro-jock (pro-caddie) and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama himself, the twelfth son [sic] of the Lama, the flowing robes, the grace – striking. So I’m on the first tee with him, I give him a driver and he hauls off and whacks one, big hitter the Lama, long, into a 10,000 foot creváce right at the base of this glacier. You know what the Dalai Lama says? Gunga Galunga. So we finished eighteen and he’s going to stiff me, and I say hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, and he says, oh there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your death bed you will receive total consciousness – so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.”
Since that time the Dalai Lama, or literally the Ocean Guru - the teacher who is spiritually deep and vast as the ocean, respectfully referred to as His Holiness, has remained for me a relatively undefined religious celebrity; over the years I knew he could fill auditoriums in the U.S. and was generally considered a highly respected figure and a wise voice for peace and mutual tolerance. Not until I traveled to India would I have the opportunity for a first-hand encounter, not on the golf course, but at the Namgyal Monastery in the hill station village of Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan Government-in-exile since 1960, known as the little Lhasa in India.
During my one month stay in India, I learned through travelers’ word of mouth that a three day teaching by the Dalai Lama was scheduled at the Namgyal Monastery by request of Singapore Buddhists. The teaching was open to the public and only required registration and being present in the remote hill station in Northern India. My girlfriend Lydia and I happened to be within an overnight train and bus ride to the village of Dharamsala, a Hindi word that translates as rest house, a name I came to learn was quite fitting.
Determined to attend the lectures of the Ocean Guru, Lydia and I caught an afternoon train in the holy city of Haridwar situated along the banks of the Ganges River. At three in the morning we stumbled out of the train at the Panthankot station and found a large number of Westerners waiting on the steps of the station for connecting transport to Dharamsala, a three hour bus ride into the Himalayan foothills. The closest bus station was in the neighboring village of Chakki Bank, only two kilometers away, but a vast darkness confused the direction and rather than walk the dark dirt streets we hired one of the many squabbling cabbies who sought our business. He dropped us at the bus station where a chaotic jumble of white and green Himachal Pradesh Transportation Company buses jockeyed to get out of the tight confines of the parking lot. Despite an unattended bus office we managed to determine which bus was headed to Dharamsala by watching for the Japanese, Israeli, German, Australian and other Westerners to fan out to each bus for direction. Predictably, one came back with a match. We marched like ants in a line towards the bus that was a moving target as it negotiated out of a pinned in position at the back of the parking lot, the driver hollered in agitation for us eager back-packers to clear the way. When he stopped, we hefted our packs up the ladder to the metal roof and affixed our bags to the metal rails. I had brought a long cable lock for train rides and occasions such as this, assuring our bags remained attached over what was certain to be a bumpy ride into the Himalayan foothills.
We had a few hours to wait for departure; people slept, read, stretched, or just plain waited. I went to find a bathroom that was in the adjoining train station. I came back in time to see the diesel engine of our bus choke to life and rock on its wheels in preparation to leave. I quickened my step into something short of a run and managed to climb aboard and find my seat moments before we chugged off into the night, thirty minutes prior to scheduled departure. Travel in India is always filled with surprise, such as the bus door that remained open for the entire three hour trip to Dharamsala, despite the protests of an Israeli woman sitting in front of me, who had four children, bags and a husband on the bus, and was leery that any of the above would be bounced out unawares. We discovered that the door stayed open because Indians like to jump on and off the bus at a moments notice anywhere along the route. I had a front row seat to the open door, and at one point caught the glimpse of a black haired man in the doorway, only to disappear from view save his right hand that was gripped to the interior handle. He slowly pulled himself back into view and onto the bus with a slight wobble of the head as if to say all is well, despite the bus going somewhere between ten and twenty miles per hour and gaining speed.
As dawn broke the Himalayan foothills slowly became visible and stood as a wall before us. In short time the bus began to snake upwards along a hilly road and arrived in the small village of Dharamsala pinned between the plains and the rising Himalaya. Seven kilometers up the road from Dharamsala sits McLeod Ganj, also known as Upper Dharamsala, home to several thousand Tibetan refugees, scores of maroon-robed Tibetan monks, one nunnery and seven monasteries, including the Namgyal Monastery – the personal monastery of His Holiness. For these last seven kilometers we hired a minute sized taxi, the size of a V.W. Golf. Our back-packs squeezed into the hatch-back leaving not a square inch of light coming through the rear window. The driver used his horn all the way up the winding road wide enough for one vehicle to travel sanely, but in fact made to accommodate two-way traffic, along with pedestrians, cows (both walking and lying), dogs, bicycles, and many others things you may or may not imagine could be traveling a road. Our driver gave credence to the oft-quoted saying of three things needed for driving in India: good brakes, good horn and good luck.
Upper Dharamsala, besides being a refuge for Tibetans is also a Western enclave, attracting seekers of the Free Tibet movement, Yoga, meditation, alternative medicine, and Buddhist studies. It also offers opportunity for trekking, along with restaurants and coffee shops that make special effort to cater to Western standards and tastes. McLeod Ganj has indeed become a place of rest for exiled Tibetans and weary Western travelers seeking relief from the grind of India. Although there are cows eating from trash piles, polio victims and lepers who line the street begging, McLeod Ganj has a mellifluous quality about it that draws and makes you want to stay, as if finding a safe corner of the world in order to slow down and consider what it means to be human. We intended to do just that by listening to three days of the Dalai Lama, which would require registration with our Passports at a small outpost in the center of town. In so doing, we came into contact with what seemed to be every Westerner in northern India. The registration was done in typical Indian fashion, everything hand written, money scattered on the table, similar to what I had seen in every Post Office wherein the agents stored money in an open suitcase or box. We completed the registration process and anticipated the lecture that would begin the next morning at nine.
With ambition to find a seat within view of His Holiness, we arrived early at the gates of the monastery only to find that many others shared our ambition. The line was long as we shuffled slowly towards the security check point. Because there were far fewer men, I was jumped ahead to be patted down by male security before passing through to the temple grounds. Inside I found two stairways that led to the second story where the Dalai Lama would teach seated before a golden statue of Sakyamuni. The inner-court was reserved for the Singapore delegation, and other prime seating was reserved for monks and nuns. The outlying area was available to foreigners. Much of the floor space had already been claimed several hours before the lecture was to begin. I claimed a modest space for two towards the outer reaches of the Temple amongst mostly Westerners who looked stereotypical of new age hot spots such as Boulder, Santa Fe, Eugene, and Berkeley. I began to refer to the look of such Westerners as “going fully native”, which entailed carrying a simple woven bag with a long strap and flap, similar to the type carried by monks. The clothing invariably had a home-spun hemp look, with simple footwear – usually sandals of some kind, and more times than not a name brand fleece accentuated. One such man who had “gone fully native”, German I surmised by his accent, plunked himself down directly in front of me and Lydia, and made a great display of sitting himself up on two rather thick cushions and crossing his legs as if preparing for a bout of meditation. Ironically, having taken the trouble to gather into his enlightenment pose, the large German began squabbling with a Tibetan monk over seating space. The German had effectively requisitioned the space of four for he and one other, and in so doing had spilled over into the space reserved by a slightly built monk who needed but a sliver of space. Liebensraum sprang to mind sardonically. I scolded my prejudiced thoughts but watched incredulous as this man, so intent on soaking up the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, acted in utter insensitivity to his neighbor.
That first morning I saw very little other than the broad backside of the German man sitting cross-legged and straight backed, seemingly attentive to every word of His Holiness and yet obtuse to putting the wisdom to work in the moment. Coincidentally, from my hotel balcony I could see this German man on his hotel balcony each morning as he ran through a series of slow-motion Tai Chi exercises. It caused me to reflect on the efficacy of “spiritual” exercise if not seated in authentic recognition and compassion for others. The Dalai Lama had taught that compassion to neighbors has results. But I wondered how this was true or if it was simply the right thing to do despite lack of visible results. Had China responded to compassion? Would the German man sitting in front of me respond to compassion or would he continue on his selfish way, gobbling up compassion in pursuit of his own ends? Then I stopped to consider the Dalai Lama’s teaching and that perhaps the results of compassion, in a twist of logic, are as much for oneself as for others.
His Holiness, citing scientific studies, made a correlation between selfish “I” acts and heart attacks. He pointed out that love and compassion are indeed the message of God. Therefore, living as a person of compassion cultivates peace and health in ones body, mind and soul, and is the expression of God. He advised that proper teaching is vital to growth and that an audit must continually be taken of the teaching being received: If your teacher is not reasonable with reality then do not follow the teaching, while continuing to respect the teacher. He gave the example that an obscure Buddhist Scripture asserts the world is flat, but he rejects this teaching in favor of science that tells otherwise. He advised that discerning the right view on a subject comes through meditation and experience wherein the wrong view gets successively weaker. In sum, we must experiment, investigate and experience in order to find the right path.
In a warm disclosure of transparency the Dalai Lama shared memories of how he learned compassion from his mother, attributing great value and weight to the action of his parents. He told how as a young boy, already identified as the Avalokiteshvara, he would sit at the family dinner table and watch his father eat his beloved pork, and he being the holy boy, was not allowed to eat pork, but he waited like a dog for a scrap anyway. Routinely his father would get food caught in his moustache and one day the holy boy reached up and touched the moustache to get at the pork. His father got very angry initially, and then he laughed uproariously at the antics of his young son, who while holy, was still only a boy.
The next morning I elected to sit away from the Western crowds who congregated at the open end of the inner temple, opting instead to sit directly behind the inner temple court that would afford no chance of seeing the Dalai Lama – or so I thought. The Temple is bordered on the second story by balconies that look out to the stunning scenery of the valley and mountains that surround. The back side of the Temple looks up to jagged grey cliffs, and on this morning several hawks effortlessly rode the thermals in circles. I seated myself amidst the rows of the maroon-robed monks who happily included me in their tight rows beneath the bronze cylindrical prayer wheels that lined the outer wall of the inner Temple court. Roaming monks with large metal tea kettles poured rich butter tea for each of us accompanied by dense flat bread. Our breakfast would bridge us through the morning lecture to a lunch of rice and lentils, also passed out by monks with pales and ladles.
Out of the shuffling noise of people situating themselves, a voice reverberated through the hall at a voice tone lower than I have ever heard. The monks around me joined in creating a musical halo that enveloped us all. The chanting transformed the atmosphere with a sacredness intended as an offering to the Tibetan Buddhist deities and enlightened beings, at once an invocation for the entrance of the Dalai Lama and intercession for the enlightenment and salvation of every sentient being. I would later find out that what I was hearing was a throat singing tradition based on one of the lowest fundamental pitches of any of the world’s throat singing traditions, a replication of the voice of the Yaks, the source of labor, fine wool, and all around sustenance for the Tibetan people throughout the centuries living in the Land of the Snow on the Roof of the World.
As the vocals slowed to stillness, a palpable energy remained in the room and suddenly a man appeared from a doorway carrying a large automatic weapon followed by a consort of men who could not be mistaken for anything other than the body guard attachment for His Holiness. At the center of the v-shaped entourage walked the Dalai Lama, taking time to stop and acknowledge his fellow monks with a warm smile, palms together in greeting of each soul. I felt conspicuous in my yellow t-shirt that stood out against the sea of red. His Holiness paused and looked down my short row and smiled widely, before moving rather quickly down the narrow aisle and around the corner towards his place of teaching at the feet of the golden Sakyamuni.
After eliciting a prayer-song of devotion from the Singaporeans, His Holiness began by reminding us that whatever we are, whatever we believe, we are all human beings, and we all have our own unique and important experience – he just happens to be a descendant from a most holy people. He told of how in the eighth century an Indian yogi guru called Rinpoche came by donkey over the Himalaya to give the Buddha Dharma that developed into the reign of the Dalai Lama by the Fourteenth Century. His Holiness alluded to the notion that our ability to reach our final destination – buddhahood – is not achieved by effort but is given by nature. This surprised me, for my perception has been that Buddhism is a tradition of karma wherein earning release from suffering is solely dependant on the effort exerted through many lives of upward mobility. I found this sentiment provocative because it suggested, albeit in different words, the Christian concept of grace: salvation is not earned but actively received through the mercy of God. His Holiness further explained that buddhahood means all the potential of our subtle mind, fully present, and that this comes step by step, each step a transformation that is vitally dependant on proper teaching for anyone desirous of pursuing the life of faith.
He observed how Westerners are typically fully alert to his teaching, but that Easterners find the teaching a little boring. This is so, he speculated, because it is not fresh and novel for the Easterners, having gone stale through familiarity. He admonished this kind of attitude, characterizing it as a poor excuse for not engaging in faith meaningfully. He recognized that the way of faith has many traditions and that Westerners are not Buddhist by tradition and should not aspire to be so, specifying the importance that Westerners not run from their own tradition, which he cited as primarily Judeo-Christian. With this remark I wondered how my fellow Westerners would respond; individuals who had in effect made pilgrimage to learn from the Dalai Lama and ostensibly grow in their budding Buddhism. I had several Western acquaintances in the crowd who I knew were intentional about integrating Eastern faith into their life after presumably finding Western faith void of meaning. I wondered how this gentle rebuke was sitting or if it was shrugged off as inapplicable because they didn’t self-identify as Western so much as spiritual ex-patriots of the West. Indeed, the West has largely moved away from Christianity and Judaism which is perceived as boring and irrelevant. Many of the faith communities that have survived and thrive in the West have blurred the line between faith, entertainment and bold consumerism.
Just as I was getting worked up in my antagonism towards religion gone array in the West, His Holiness reminded that interdependency is a key factor in right spiritual living. He explained, “When we develop anger we get the impression that the object we feel anger towards is 100 percent negative. 90 percent of this negativity is mental perception by me. 100 percent negative perception of my enemy means no consideration that this entity could ever be a friend. Negativity hinges on many factors, including oneself, which chips away on the 100 percent negativity of an enemy.” Interdependence, he noted, is the hinge for infinite compassion and non-violence. This, he noted, is the essence of Buddhism.
He then addressed his primary audience, the Asian delegation, specifically the Singapore contingent. He observed that Asia is traditionally a land of many different faiths, yet all of the major philosophy in Asia, including the Buddha Dharma, comes from India. He stressed that just as it is important for Westerners to keep their own religious tradition, it is also important for Asians and Buddhists to keep their tradition. I got the sense that the Singapore group had requested the teaching from the Dalai Lama because they were under the influence of not only the West, but more so materialism that tends to lead away from the life of faith. He emphasized that those seeking the way of faith must know the structure and system of their faith and that one drawn to faith should first thoroughly study a particular religion before taking the step of faith that is ever supported by a life of study. For, without diligent study one will surely lose the way in a world offering so many easy alternatives.
The end of the three day teaching was not dissimilar to the end of a three day revival meeting in the evangelistic Christian tradition where those in attendance are exhorted to recommit their lives to Jesus and the way of faith, coming to the altar for confession and prayer in order to get back on the straight and narrow way of salvation. The Dalai Lama led the room in prayers and prostrations to himself and the Buddha statue in reaffirmation of the five refuge vows: refrain from harming living creatures (murder); refrain from taking that which is not given (stealing); refrain from sexual misconduct; refrain from false speech, and refrain from intoxication which leads to loss of mindfulness. This was a moment of spiritual decision, one that I watched as if from the bleachers at a baseball game, thankful that I had the opportunity to feel what it was to be the spectator and outsider at a religious venue, as so many have been at the Churches that I have led worship in.
My visit to Dharamsala and the Namgyal Monastery was invaluable in appreciating first-hand the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, what Tibetan Buddhism espouses and how the community functions on a day-to-day basis. Before I left the monastery I was serendipitously given a Zen-like koan that would utterly confound everything I had perceived over the previous three days. I stepped into the monastery bookstore to browse for or an item as a token of remembrance. Not surprisingly books by the Dalai Lama and other leading Buddhist leaders lined the shelves. I looked them over with cursory interest as I wasn’t particularly interested in lugging books through the remainder of my travels. I turned for the exit when I spotted a long shelf of books in the back corner of the shop filled with romance novels by the queen of the romance genre, Danielle Steele. Why were these here? Was it in fact an unspoken koan or simply sign that we are all humans, even Buddhist monks. The more the mystery of life is searched the more it unfolds with clues and perplexes with facts.

Given that practically everyone in New Hampshire either had their child's hair mussed (or one near them) by the Arizona Senator's hand or heard him speak at a town hall meeting during his extended stay there last year that saved his campaign, and yet not one county went red in the General Election - is startling. Rural goes red but New England does not, except one county in Maine called Piscataquis.