Prayer beads from everywhere

Before we began this journey, Patrick Adams gave us this Buddhist mala

…which we 've carried all along our way.

The figure is a Thai bhikku – a forest-wanderer.

“Perfect,” I thought even then.

And the mala has felt like a talisman of our whole good journey.

You may remember the Turkish women on their way to Mecca who gave us their Muslim tisbehs -- while Debi gave them her ring-rosary in return.

So we have had a portable home altar with us all this time.

And this is an altar that our friend, Big Sur artist Missy Lofton, made for a workshop at Esalen.

But don’t we find prayer-beads and altars everywhere we go?

Some point towards a wild unknown -- even as they bear our own form

…while others lead us into the center of ourselves

…and into the center of everything.

But we aren’t observers of these cycles.

They move within us, and we move within them, too – like prayer beads our fingers,

…keeping time for us

… and remembering who we are – even when we might have lost track of that ourselves.

Pilgrims leave them at St. Brigid’s Well with prayers and tears for loved ones,

...and we have been leaving our prayers for Jeannine

...at all these holy places, too.

You see a tisbehs with verses from the Qu’ran on a cabby’s windshield on the busy streets of Cairo

…and swinging from a rear-view mirror heading out into vast desert spaces.

A rosary-ring helps a farmer in monastic fields in Tanzania remember,

…and they sway as gracefully with someone’s stride in Nairobi

…as they do in Istanbul.

And sometimes they don’t need to move at all.

So, considering this, we were delighted to visit Kazuri Beads in Nairobi,

…especially since we respect their mission so much.

The clay for Kazuri’s beads comes from around Mt. Kenya, and women shape it

…by hand

…to create forms

…like these.

They make pottery out of the same clay

...and paint the pottery and beads lead-free glazes

…and fire them,

…sometimes as many as three times,

…since some beads are re-painted with layers of glaze

…to produce iridescences like these.

Then the beads are strung

…according to patterns that the women have also devised.

The morning before we went to Kazuri Beads, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, idly spinning Patrick’s mala on my finger. Suddenly, the mala burst apart and beads went flying everywhere.

Since we were at our crossroads then, I couldn’t help wondering: did this mean that our whole journey was bursting apart at this same moment, too?

But the bhikku-wanderer wasn’t worried. He had lost none of his own humor and resolve.

And anyway, the scattered beads spurred Debi to a new idea.

“Hey, let’s make Red Egg prayer-beads,” she said,

…and so the designer many of you know so well

…went right to work.

And we called our prayer-bead board of advisors into session.

This is Debi’s brother Chris, the central of these three Zen priests. He has just been ordained at Sonoma Zen Mountain Center.

And we consulted Patrick Adams, too – and Camaldolese friends Cyprian Consiglio and oblate Yvonne Rose.

…and Lama Rodney Devenish (Lama Karma Kunzang) -- on the right,

...our friend who's the head resident lama at the Tibetan Buddhist hermitage of Kunzang Samten Yangtse on Denman Island in British Columbia.

With their advice, we happily went back to Kazuri Beads

…to search for the right forms and colors,

…and once we had found them, women at Kazuri strung three prototypes for us

…for a Muslim tisbeh, a Buddhist mala, and a Christian rosary.

We know there are many other possibilities from other traditions, and in future years we can create them -- because there are prayer-beads everywhere we go.

A few weeks ago our friend Pam Peck emailed about the eventual ending of this journey...

“You have given me a world I didn’t know existed, a world I never would have experienced except for your eyes and your stories. With you, my senses are on point. I taste, smell, hear din and solitude, revel in the hues and colors, watch sparkling eyes and shy smiles and take people I never would have known, to heart…

We don’t have a photo of Pam right now, but this is her beau Mike Caplin, at their home at upper Rocky Creek in Big Sur, our neighborhood, too.

“Do you know how amazingly and wonderfully you are imprinting us with your vision of a world we never would have known otherwise? Thank you. As glad as I will be for your return, I will be sorry when you are home – my adventure will be over.

“But that’s not true, right? Thee will be more pictures and stories and maybe a dinner or two, and a treasure to hold in our hand from a special place, and…”

And…so these women at Kazuri weren’t making prayer-beads just for us.

They’re making them for you as well.

Kazuri will create a custom Red Egg “guru” bead,

…and we’ll need to find three talismans.

But we’re not worried about that.

Perhaps we’ll find them in Ethiopia

…or in India.

Or back home -- or anywhere else in the world where you, or we, might go.

Since Kazuri will have our prototypes and will custom-make the Red Egg “guru” beads, once we send them the talismans, they’ll send us back the completed malas, tisbehs, and rosaries in the fall.

The proceeds of sales will benefit Kazuri Beads and Red Egg Gallery.

The second side of the gift card will say something like:

“When you purchase art through Red Egg Gallery, you are supporting and participating in a connection among local communities and their traditions all around the world.”

Because, yes, Pam, this journey isn't meant to end. Or at least it's not supposed to end just because two of us come back home.

And these prayer-beads can be one way to remember – and to practice – connections that include us everywhere.

And just to let you know, we’ve been taking your financial suggestions to heart,

…and have even implemented a few.

So now the saddlebags are loaded up, and we’ve hit the road again,

…for Tanzania

…and Ethiopia,

…and, in fact, we’ve just landed in Pondicherry, India.

Patrick’s mala is intact again – not that anything had ever disturbed that bhikku-wanderer,

…and the home altar only grown.

And always…

…the circle of connections has been there ahead of us – before we could even imagine what form it wanted to take next.

The God-trodden mountain – Sinai

Some places feel like dreams now,

…both faintly written, as day turns into day,

…but also with a haunting vividness should one have the courage to summon up the images again.

Perhaps that’s one reason for our reluctance to glance backwards

…because there are beauties and questions that linger on, and which at any moment can break your heart again,

…and who is so eager to open that Pandora’s box?

But, of course, dream-images are also gifts.

(You didn’t know that Debi was thinking of becoming a nun, did you?)

She’s just not quite certain to which order she’ll belong.

As long as she has been writing icons,

…in fact, perhaps as long as she’s known what an icon really is,

…she has wanted to come here,

…to St. Catherine’s Monastery

…at the foot of the God-trodden mountain,

…Mount Sinai.

It is the oldest continuously existing Christian monastery in the world,

…built upon the site of the Burning Bush.

It is also the only Christian monastery in the world to have a mosque within its walls.

God might not be descending quite so dramatically right now.

Still, you might want to take your sandals off. Isn’t everywhere holy ground?

Sometimes it must sound like only rhetoric – the way we speak to you in the second person

…as if you’ve been on this journey all along.

Except…hasn’t this been true?

This is Judy Delany. She and Debi have known each other for forty years -- and in addition to her friendship with both of us and emails brimming with energy and support, she makes comments here as "Schweetiecakes."

Notice her "Red Egg" necklace.

Since our last blog, many of you have sent generous notes and new ideas.

Sometimes your ideas seem like they’re arising at the same time as our own, and sometimes, like with Peggy, it seems you’re half a step ahead of us.

Here is Peggy O'Farrell two years ago in the Philippines.

Dennis Gobets has been keeping the home-fires burning – and doing his own gallivanting, too.

He's been helping keep an eye on Rocky Creek and

...inviting us to go with him to the southwest when we return.

So while we’ve been at our crossroads, he’s been contemplating his own descent into a canyon.

Steve Tryon has been with us from the beginning, every step along the way. Without him, the Red Egg website and these words and images wouldn’t be appearing – or not the way they do.

He writes, “I think you are in the perfect position…”

…and offers to help even more what he calls the beginning of “a yours-become-ours journey through mind, matter, and connectedness.”

Shall we say that again?

It has become a new mantra for us.

Or better yet, can we keep saying it to one another – because we are saying it to you just as so many of you have been saying that to us.

This is Debi’s neo-Coptic icon teacher Stephane Rene and his wife Monica – when we were with them in London.

We had assumed that crossroads meant: that either we’d come home earlier than we had thought, or we’d travel on awhile more.

But what if you’ve been teaching us

…that somehow it’s possible to do both things at once?

But enough of that for now. We still have a mountain to ascend.

Our Bedouin guide Nasr understood at once and had chosen the least-traveled path to the mountain.

In fact, sometimes it appeared to be no way at all.

But hasn't that been the point all along?

This has never been a tourist-trip

…even if sometimes it might appear that way.

After a few hours, Nasr led us up a draw where he knew rainwater would be pooled.

We gathered brushwood for a fire there.

OK. Two of us did.

Debi and I have backpacked and hiked a lot -- but we have never had a hiking-lunch like this.

Nasr kneaded and rolled wheat-flour and water on the stone

…and built the fire.

The bread went right into it – because in the Sinai, if you’ve gotten the sand hot enough

…it will not stick to even bread.

He roasted eggplant for the baba ganoush – and cut peppers and tomatoes and lemons,

…while Debi helped with the garlic.

Nasr always brings black tea with him,

…but he also gathers herbs to add to it.

His tobacco is from the desert, too. He knows all of Sinai’s plants

...and Sinai is the most bio-diverse place in Egypt.

Nasr gathered more plants after lunch

…and made our soap as well.

“Food always tastes better in the mountains,” I said afterwards.

“Everything is better in the mountains,” Nasr says.

We did pass a few other pilgrims along the way, it is true,

…but they were all occupied more or less as we were.

Two days later I went up the mountain on my own. It wanted to take the Sikket Saydna Musa, the steepest route, the one tradition says Moses had taken himself when he climbed alone to meet the one who had told him here, I AM.

Byzantine monks laid down the stones of this path fourteen hundred years ago.

Why have stones been so prominent all along our way?

Stones and sin. Gathering them sometimes

…and at other times casting them away.

Remember Iona then?

The Sikket Saydna Musa is also sometimes called the “Stairway of Repentance,” or the “Stairway of Forgiveness.”

There is a repentance gate as well that you must pass through,

…and both before and after this gate, pilgrims have built cairns everywhere.

So I built my own as well.

How can you not be mindful passing through a repentance gate, especially since beyond it Elijah stayed, and that beyond even that, Moses still climbed?

(Please excuse the photographs in this little stretch. They’re the best I could muster on my own.)

The real photographer was occupied otherwise at the time. She and Nasr had gone to visit Bedouin families.

Impossible to choose who had picked the better route, isn’t it?

But I was hurrying on then. I wanted to make the sunset from where Moses stood.

And sometimes you’re just in places that take the photographs for you anyway.

And each of us – Debi and I – ended up where we were meant to be that day.

Do you believe that -- that each of us is always where we’re meant to be?

There are no photographs for my descent at night. Actually, I got lost for a little while. But a Bedouin saw me and put me on the right path again.

Up by the summit, there are Bedouin huts that offer pilgrims tea and coffee by day. Most of those were closed up by now, but from within a few, firelight spilled out across the path, and soft voices rose in prayer and conversations.

And, oh, the stars.

I wish we could pour those stars into one another’s open hands right now.

Certainly, if there is any solitary journey, it must be this one, the Sikket Saydna Musa, where Moses walked alone to meet his God. The mountain had been cordoned off for Moses’ journey, and it had been decreed that anyone else who touched the mountain then must be killed.

What could be a more solitary way than this?

We had asked Nasr, “How many nights a month are you out in the mountains away from your family?”

He thought awhile.

“Most nights,” he said.

But even this solitude is a kind of illusion, too,

…because actually Nasr rarely goes out into the mountains alone.

“Bedouin like to talk,” he says.

After climbing the mountain, we told Nasr we wanted to go even deeper into the desert. We presumed we’d have to be driven from one place to another and make day-hikes from where we stayed.

“Why don’t we just walk the whole way instead?” he asked.

“But what about our travel-bags?”

“Schnapps can carry them,” Nasr said.

But that’s a story for another day.

Let’s go back to Moses’ journey one more time -- when the mountain was cordoned off to everyone but him.

Isn’t even this journey, which seems so absolute in its solitude, only a thread in a story bigger than any single life can ever be?

How big a story is Exodus after all?

And how many people, for how many centuries, have seen their own lives writ large in it?

Like this man.

“I have been to the mountaintop,” he said. “And I’ve seen the Promised Land.”

“I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people

“…will get to the promised land.”

Because even this repentance-and-forgiveness path,

…this whole pilgrimage, in fact,

…even for the stretches we experience as a stony, narrow path,

…even then,

…it is not really a journey we are making on our own.

Notes

1. The title of this blog-post is stolen from the title of a beautiful article/reminiscence written by our friend, the Dingle peninsula artist Maria Simonds-Gooding (cf our March 21, 2009 blog-post) -- "On the God-Trodden Mountain" -- based on her own experiences at St. Catherine's.

2. And for a beautiful account of people finding their own stories within the frame of Exodus, you can listen here…

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/exodus/

3. Our blog doesn’t discuss political and economic realities for Bedouin people. But we recommend an excellent story on the subject that was appearing in the March issue of National Geographic just when we were in the Sinai ourselves.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/sinai/teague-text

East or West – what comes next?

Why this reluctance to begin to take a backward glance?

Is it because the future still beckons with promises and hardship?

A rainbow and a Kenyan post-election refugee camp – what could be more ambiguous than that?

Or is it simply because the present has such pressing requirements

…that none of us can afford to take our eye off that?

Still, here we are like a dancer with one foot inclining home

…and the other still needing to complete the arc it’s begun.

We’re also out of money, which isn’t beside the point, but it’s also not the only reason for this natural pause...as we plot how to raid our own slender retirement

…either to come home sooner than we might have thought

…or else to take the next turn ahead of us -- towards the east, towards India.

Our friend Cyprian emails: “…while everyone else in the world is worrying about the financial situation, you’re liquidating your retirement fund! That’s my kind of living!”

Or else it’s just plain foolishness.

We’ll find out, won’t we?

Either way, it seems like the perfect time for another yarn-- full of radiant faces

…and exotic topography.

So load up the saddle bags

…and brew yourself a tea or coffee.

A story from the Sinai desert is coming next.

Red Rhino Orphanage, Kenya.

This is a contemporaneous blog. That is, right now, we’re right where we say we are: in Kenya.

Specifically, we are in Lukenya, Kenya – about 45 minutes outside of Nairobi -- with our dear friend Dave Saunders.

Dave is the on-the-ground lead person for creating Red Rhino Orphanage here.

The mission of Red Rhino Orphanage is to create a sanctuary for orphans that provides children with the safety, housing, medical care, and education that they need “in a loving, structured environment on a long term, permanent basis.”

The west often presents itself with a face of Africa that is the face of a suffering child.

There is truth in this image

...but no more truth than the face of beauty and promise and strength.

Dave has been a close friend for 25+ years. Chris and Dave taught together at Bellarmine in San José. Our sons Matt and Nate virtually grew up with Amy and Allison, Dave (and Pearl’s) daughters.

And there are layers and layers to our friendship.

And yet as well as we know Dave, we are amazed to see in person the dimensions of the work he is directing here…through all the bureaucracy and corruption and colonialist history – and through the sheer weight of the need.

Dave has been here working on this project for 3+ years now.

There has been an amazingly intelligent and industrious base of leadership and support back home – specifically in the community of Stockton. We can’t adequately describe that whole matrix here.

But we heartily recommend to you Red Rhino’s own website and Dave’s blog. It is perceptive, sharp, witty, literary, hip.

http://www.rrop.org/

Brit Stockert is also here, volunteering for four months. Brit was formerly in the Air Force, but has been moving from that experience towards pacifism. Here in Kenya she is working towards achieving NGO status for Red Rhino, and she has also been volunteering in an existing children's home.

Today on Good Friday we prayed the Stations of the Cross through the streets of Nairobi

...and spilled into the basilica until it was filled with several thousand people.

We remembered and venerated Christ's passion and death

...and prayed that by accepting suffering ourselves

...we might grow into a community

...who would serve one another more lovingly.

We are connected with the Red Rhino orphanage project not just because of our friendship with Dave and other friends at Red Rhino, but because of this shared belief that we need to build communities in which we each support one another more lovingly.

We have been traveling for 6 months now. From the very conception of this trip, no single place on our map has been as earmarked and dog-eared as being here with Dave and the Red Rhino Orphanage has been.

God willing, nothing else was going to stop us from getting at least this far.