Friday Fun Flier XXXVIII

Some delicious pre-weekend nibbles :)

Quote of The Week:

“To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive- the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”

-Don Miguel Ruiz

Hello, all you beautiful people :) I hope you’re having a deeply connected week wherever you are, listening to music, hanging out with your people, robbing banks (if you’re doing it with the people you love, obviously).

Things have been hectic down here! But hectic in a way I can’t complain about since my biggest scheduling question is “how do I do all of the awesome stuff I want to do?”

I’ve been attending salsa classes, jamming with acroyogis, getting thrashed by waves that seem determined to break me, and playing beach volleyball. And somewhere in the midst of it all, I’ve been writing.

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A beautiful memoir I read last week:

Image Credit Goodreads

River of Stone, River of Sand

In one of those “The universe is looking out for you” moments, I found this book in a cafe adjacent to my hostel. It’s the story of- get this- one of the original physicians for Peace Corps Nepal (if you’re new to the blog, I was briefly in Peace Corps in Nepal before covid evacuated my cohort).

I was in disbelief when I found it. Of all places, of course I would find a memoir from a fellow Peace Corps volunteer on the south Pacific coast of Mexico! Where else, I ask you?!

It was a beautiful story from a different era. The isolation and extreme, un-prepared for medical situations that this man faced are mind-boggling. The man had to perform an emergency appendectomy on a Tibetan monk who’d been smuggled out of Chinese-occupied territory in a high-altitude village, without sufficient medical equipment or sanitation, and that’s not even the most interesting part of his story.

I highly recommend this book. It’s a nailbiter from the archives of history and aligns well with my “read the doers, not the thinkers” theory.

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A podcast episode I’ve been re-visiting:

Shamanism. What does that word mean in the modern world?

For Wendy Mandy, it has meant studying the old ways of connection with the earth in indigenous cultures, and trying to bring some shadow of the beautiful traditions and plant medicines she’s found there to the western world.

Mandy has been a shaman to the stars, but you’d never know it. She’s kept a low profile for the last 30 years, and has only begun to teach publically now because she believes the world is ready to hear what she has to say.

Absolutely worth a listen!

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Thanks so much for reading today, friends :)