Love miles

I was planning to write at least one more full-length entry before I leave home, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. So apologies to all my regular readers. It will probably be a month now before I have time and energy to write again.

Christine and I leave home on Tuesday for 6 months, until early September. For the last few weeks we’ve been slowly organising ourselves for departure, sorting and packing away our personal possessions to leave the house clear for the friend who will be renting it in our absence. It’s been more unsettling than we expected, and I found I simply wasn’t in the mood for blogging. I like the security of routine and a well-established home, and become anxious about the uncertainty of travel.

For 4 months, I will be a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia where I used to be on faculty. On the way to Perth, we will spend 8 days in Thailand at the Wongsanit Ashram. I will be running a weekend workshop on my book, “The Science of Oneness” and giving a lecture on “The Crisis of Civilization: A 10,000 year perspective”. Christine will be talking with local healers about her work, and giving some healing sessions. In Australia, I will be helping to run 9 public evenings on community action for climate change, as well as doing research on sustainability. Christine will also be involved in healing work.

George Monbiot is a regular columnist in the highly-respected Guardian newspaper in the UK, and author of the book “Heat: How we can stop the planet burning.” In that book, he talks about ‘love miles’ and how love may destroy the Earth. Love miles occur when people are separated from those they love – whether just across the city, or across the globe.

It’s hard now to travel without guilt, even though we will be contributing to action on climate change and sustainability in Thailand and Australia. Our journey to Australia is mostly love miles. Both Christine and I have family there – our children and, in Christine’s case, her grandchildren. Having chosen to live in the Findhorn Community a decade ago, where we feel at home and can make a worthwhile contribution to the future, we now face the dilemma of either not seeing our families, or accepting our contribution to love miles. As we prepare to board the plane, this awareness is never far from our minds. There doesn’t seem to be any solution.

Such dilemmas will become common for many of us as action to curb climate change gears up.