If It Looks Like A Local, If It Walks Like A Local, It Sure Doesn´t Quack Like A Local!
December 5, 2011 by rtwsenior · Leave a Comment
Abadiania, Brazil – I´m sure that anyone following this blog regularly must think that I have either fallen off the face of the Earth, or gone blind as a result of my eye surgery, here at the John of God Healing Casa in Abadiania, Brazil. Nope! Nothing like that! I am fine, well, and happy….just incredibly busy loving life….and writing many posts for my other blogsite In Secret Diffusion. The spiritual atmosphere here is so rich that many new subjects occur to me. Plus, I invite questions for The Holy Spirit from friends and that has kept me very busy answering them by taking dictation.
Two days ago, I moved into a beautiful `Casita`(little house) in the lovely back garden of my new dear friend, Z`Eva Singer, to dogsit for a month while she is in the United States. It is pure Paradise and Gracie, the psychic brown hound, is such a delight. We dance together and talk with eloquent eyes, as well as explore the town and surrounds on long morning and afternoon walks. Like I said, when I first arrived….I´m in Heaven! And it keeps getting better all the time.
My pousada San Martin was a lovely place too and I made so many friends, whom I still see if they are still in town. There´s always a turnover. But, now with a little house and a yard and a dog, I feel as if I am really at home.
Now, what about that title? I am making every effort to `Quack Like A Local`by taking Portuguese classes for two hours, three times per week, but I´m not producing a great many results yet, aside from having a laughing good time as our talented teacher, Edeilson Albuqueque Wanderly, leads the six of us in the lovely sounds of this lilting language. Knowing Spanish (not much) doesn´t help at all, because all of us try to throw those words in the mix and nobody here understands them. A few, but Portuguese really is a different language. Mostly, it´s giving me a better comprehension of things going on around me…and a chance to laugh with the locals, who appreciate the effort.
I´m rushing this blog writing now because I am sensitive to the needs of my Gracie child, waiting at home for her afternoon walk.
More soon! Quack, quack!
To Fill In The Blanks On Abadiania, Brazil
November 14, 2011 by rtwsenior · 2 Comments
My last blog was designed to convey the atmosphere of this place (John of God´s Healing Casa in the small town of Abadiania, Brazil), where I have deliberately landed on my second stop in this current, year-long, around-the-world journey of mine; embarked upon just three weeks ago tomorrow. So now, I shall attempt to describe my surroundings a little more clearly:
The Portuguese language is a mouthful for all Americans…..well, truthfully, all languages are for me, as my multi-lingual sister, Ann, will attest. Even the name of this little town was once a challenge, back when I called it Aber-dane-eeya. Wrong! It´s pronounced Aba-jhan-ya. Knowing Spanish, which I don´t really, doesn´t help very much either; but as usual, there´´s a lot of English translation going on here, so we dummies can float along as we always do internationally, because the whole world studies our mother tongue.
Anyway, picture a highway running west from Brasilia (Brass-see´-lia) on the way to the pretty big town of Anapolis (500,000). Abadiania is a pit stop along the way, with local businesses lining that six-lane road. `The Casa,`as John of God´s complex is called, sits about half a mile off the highway, at the end of a ten-block, paved-but-mildly-potholed strip of asphalt lined with casual businesses sprung up to serve the spiritual tourists who flock here from all over the wold; most seeking healing.
Many small walled pousadas offer rooms facing inner gardens and hammock-strung shelters. These charge between $17 – $25 per day, depending upon the meal plan selected, fanciness, and proximity to the Casa gates. They usually have kitchen facilities for those who wish to patronize the grocery store and breakfast or snack right there. Some nice hotels here can charge up to $60 per day, often with some meals included. Plus, there are most beautiful homes and apartments for rent for longer term stays or families and small groups. Anyone, healthy or handicapped, can find accommodations to suit them and their budget.
Food in Brazil is SUPERIOR to food that I have found in the rest of the planet! I have not met a meal here that I didn´t adore! And that is saying something, because in the large neighboring country to the south, whose name begins with an A…. on a different trip, I could never find any meal that I liked…and forget the beef they are so famous for, unless you want to spend $50 for a plate of it. Anyway, food here being so wonderful, there are miraculous little restaurants all along this roadway to the Casa, where one would like to spend all day, drinking Acai Berry shakes and tasting every single menu item, priced between $4 – $15. So, who would elect to cook? I settle for coffee and granola at the pousada for breakfast and then yum-yum….try to figure out where to take my tastebuds for the other two meals.
When the Casa is open for the Healing Sessions every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we are all served a delicious bowl of soup and a good chunk of bread as guests of the Casa every noon. But that shall be the subject of a future blog. The town has been very quiet for over a week because John of God has been in Germany, conducting a huge four-day healing event. I was here two weeks before he left, so I have experienced much; but I shall wait until the end of this week when things are back to normal to report on the details of life in a day at the Casa.
Now, after that aside about the soup served at the Casa three days a week, I shall continue my description of the great restaurants in this tiny, but cosmopolitan place. Beautiful Moema, a fashion model, runs the home-cooking-delicious, Alchemy Buffet, with her Mom; and an Irish man owns Frutti´s, a true health food hangout where you can sit for hours consuming acai puddings and smoothies and hailing your friends as they go by. I went with my pousada mates yesterday to where the locals eat across the highway and enjoyed an unlimited buffet for $3. Unbelievable! I was python-full of salads and veggies when I left.
My pousada room with its own shower bathroom, costs $16.67 per day, and food costs, (with the help of the excellent local grocery store) could be kept as low as $5 – $10 per day. So, I can live on a budget of $25 per day….less than being at home. Life is Good! I had a backache, so I splurged on a $40, one-hour, full-body massage, which was heavenly. Attractive white and bright-colored clothing is temptingly displayed from small shops along this avenue and many, including the Casa, sell lovely crystals, large and small.
One must make a 40-minute bus trip to Anapolis to do any sort of banking, such as ATM withdrawals, and that takes the better part of a day. It makes sense to get enough Brazilian Reals (pronounced hey-eyes) to last a month. With two trips to that big city under my belt, I´m becoming a little more savvy about how to navigate, especially as to how to find the Onibus station for my return trip home. People are very willing to humor someone who is willing to make a fool of themselves for information. We laugh a lot, but it gets the job done.
The internet now closes for lunch…so I will finish when I return at 1:00 p.m.
Well, I´m back at the computer, but have decided to spend my time blogging on my other website, www.insecretdiffusion.com It will be muy interesante, so better go over there for a looksee. Get on that RSS feed, if you haven´t already done so. That´s where many of my spiritual new understandings are going to be posted. Just now, my posada is full of some very curious women from all over the world who are plying me with fabulous questions to ask The Holy Spirit. We spend our evenings in the hammock shelter discussing the answers I´m getting….with simultaneous translations into Slovenian and Portuguese, no less.
I Have Utterly Disappeared!
November 4, 2011 by rtwsenior · 1 Comment
Sixteen days ago, I flew from Tampa to Brazil. By now, I can hardly remember that frantic afternoon spent doing last minute errands before catching the plane to Brazilia, the capital, in the very center of the country on the high altiplano. I then hit the ground running with a five-day `13 Indigenous Grandmothers`boot camp (my word) where we got up before dawn to be bused 1.5 hours from our rural coffee plantation hotel to the big council tent in a lovely peace park called Unipaz. It was a loving and fanciful, free-form blend of ancient tribal truths involving council fires and the four directions, sage, and New Age; although it was orchestrated by true Western organization skills and modern technology. I feel as if I have glimpsed the shape of where our next religious revolution is taking us: back to the early past and into the spiritually-individualized future, all at the same time.
For five days, we learned a lot about ourselves and each other; as well as beginning to consider this planet as a living being. The Grandmothers wisely reminded us of our total dependence upon water, which was the theme of the event. We share that characteristic with the Earth, herself. If our tissues, (hers and ours), dry up, they get cracked and eventually, we will die if we don´t have enough to drink. So will our planet, with us on board, if our global water is not protected. They reminded us that each human being also arrives wrapped in its own little bag of pure liquid; though I suspect that the comparison with the planet stops there.
The Grandmothers are all respected tribal shamans and elders from deep in the Amazon; the plains and coastal regions, and far north in Alaska of America; Japan; Nepal; New Zealand, Australia and Africa, who have been meeting several times a year all over the world, bringing their ancient tribal wisdom to our modern population… which could certainly use a dose of it. These old ladies keep a pace worthy of a whole troop of Green Berets – meeting in council with each other, as well as spending hours meeting with us; conducting State ceremonial visits to branches of the Brazilian Government, and many, many other claims upon their sleep and restorative alone time. Lovelight flowed from faces of the mostly-women crowd, who always fly from far-flung places to glorify the importance of Grandmothers… and not in your usual Hallmark Card, syrupy way.
But, I have to confess that my very best moment came when the conference was over…at least for me. Some participants were soldiering on, to canoe deep into the Amazon. I needed to find a ride to the bus station to travel to Abadiania and the John of God Healing Casa, where entities have, for 54 years, been entering the body of a simple man, who has been called the greatest spiritual healer on the planet.
Distances in this recently-manmade city of Brazilia are so far-flung, that it would have cost $80 to taxi into the city, but only $50 to hire hotel manager Raphaela´s, husband to drive me to the station so I could catch a $20 bus for a two-hour ride. I dropped the idea of city sightseeing in favor of heading into beautiful, rural Brazil. My driver turned out to be a professional soccer player (they call it football here), on his way to his practice session.
Ladies and Gentlemen! Eat your heart out! I got to spend an hour driving in fast traffic with Eduardo Jose Turges. At least, I think that´s what he said, in our Portuguese/English attempt at communication. I don´t know sports worth beans, so I probably got it wrong. I can´t find that name on any list of their teams, so I´m sure I did misunderstand. He´s a goalie and the teams on top and they soon fly to Europe and he´s madly in love with his new wife of three months and a baby´s already on the way. Eat your heart out, Enquirer!
Eduardo soon realized that I couldn´t uphold my end of the conversation about any sports, let alone, his…..so he tried modern music. Nope! Í´m Just as dumb on that score. But things changed quickly when I pulled out my laminated topographical map of South America, with a profile of the human spine displayed beside the continent, making the obvious comparison of the Andean Mountain Chain and a human spinal column. Oh my God! I´ve never looked at it that way! May I take a picture of this map, so I can show my teammates?` Of course, this had to happen in heavy, six-lane traffic. A car shot dangerously across our bow just as he was balancing his iphone for the shot, but after the danger was past, I complimented him for his champion, game-winning reflexes.
What would Brazil do to me, I wonder, if I had crashed their star goalie by sharing a bit of my far-out thinking?
Even though he was late for training, Eduardo carried my bag into the station, explained my needs at the ticket booth, and later, came back to make sure I was headed for the correct bus slot. By now, we were such good friends, hugging goodbye, that the ticket lady probably thought I was his mother-in-law. Surely, recognizing him for the sports figure that he is, she came out of her booth and carried my extra bag through the terminal; even introducing me to three other people headed for Abadiania so I´d know when to get off.
But, it was sometime during the next two hours, traveling through that gently rolling countryside, that I truly died and went to Heaven! You´ll have to read about that in my next blog.
