In last month's newsletter, I put out an invitation to readers: 

 

If you could take your ideal summer vacation with anybody in the world (living or dead) in any place in the world, who and what would you choose?

 

Here are the responses:

 

Autumn Van Ord, Baltimore, MD: I would choose to be many years younger and be transported back in time to the mid 60's. I would be on the Greek Island of Hydra with Leonard Cohen soaking up the Aegean blue waters, the blackened night sky awash with stars, the sensuality, the creativity, the sense of being on the cusp of one's life ready to flower.

 

Tracy Cochran, Somers, NY:

I would visit Beatrix Potter at her farm in the Lake District and talk about the beauty of letting things--old farms, land, creatures--be just as they are, the beauty of stepping off the treadmill of consumerism.

 

RhiONA Wren, Wayne, PA: My ideal summer vacation would be to be Patrick Swayze's partner in Dirty Dancing and have him teach me to dance with him and jump off that stage in that summer hotel in the Berkshires, and be caught by him. And spend that very special time with him in his room  and be able to say to him, like Jennifer Gray did,  "Afraid...  I am afraid of everything, but what I am most afraid of is walking out that door and never  feeling this way ever again."    

 

Steve Brown, Hyannisport, MA: I would travel to the island of Ithaka with Homer. 

 

Sara Harris, Sebastapol, CA: I start off in the West of Ireland with John O'Donohue and a dear mentor and friend of mine, Regina Reilly, and my husband Ken. John would show us around, tell us amazing stories, and introduce us to his townsfolk. We'd sit around a lot of hearths and pubs listening and talking, with the conversations of our heritage melting into our souls! Then David Whyte would drop by, and some spontaneous poetry and more wild stories would begin to unreel themselves! A few more friends from the states would suddenly start wandering by too: Sahara Chaldean, Deb Green-Jacobi, Roy Remer, Cazeaux Nordstrom, Joseph Lazenka, Sue Smile, and a few others I can't even think of (part of the surprise) and a rollicking good time would happen. We'd hike the land and drink and read poems  and dream together and with our new friends we've met along the way.

 

From there, once back in the US, I'd  join up with Terry Tempest Williams, my co-guide Cazeaux Nordstrom, Joseph Lazenka of The School of Lost Borders and his partner Petra Lentz-Snow, Trebbe Johnson, Merdith Little and my husband Ken Smith in some sweet spot in Canyon Country, southern Utah. We'd cultivate alot of silence, going off for solo time in that blessed, deep and mysterious land, and re-convene for delicious dinners (with Joseph grilling) and then we'd sit in deep council for the evening. We'd open to the conversations the land brought us, and see how we are each asked to move next to serve our our souls and also our people.

 

Kim Skipper Corbin, Novalis, CA: I would bring back my Grandmother and we would go on a cruise around the Greek Isles.

Yves Chavanne, Dublin, Ireland: I'll take Eileen and the children back to Corsica, fishing, hunting and foraging, celebrating and appreciating the gifts of mother nature.

 

Mike Beck, Navarre, FL: I want to spend my vacation in the the library of Alexandria during the age of Poltemy II reading Socrates or the writers who had the wisdom attributed by Plato and Aristotle to their teacher and trying to find someone who can fix me up with a date with Cleopatra. And, oh yeah, I would want a window air conditioner for the reading room after I taught them how to invent electricity.

 

Sherry Rogers, Annapolis, MD: I would like to travel to all the beautiful and mystical places in the World, with who, I can't give a name, because this individual would come from the future. Because I am an ancestress to future generations, I would seek insight into how action or inaction of this time has influenced their world.

 

Avo Kuber, Saugerties, NY: This is sort of selfish. My dad whom I have great memories of as a 5-year-old when he shot himself.I would love to have a walk with him on some lovely beach...

 

Daniel Dancer, Mosier, OR: I am living my dream vacation every summer exactly where I live here in the Columbia Gorge of Oregon with wildness all around along with my very own Marilyn stand-in, (my partner Mimi who embodies some of her qualities) and I am very content exactly as things are. There is no bigger dream out there than exactly what I am doing now, today, tomorrow, the rest of this summer.

 

Reggie Marra, Naugatuck, CT: I would like to spend my vacation time with the highest manifestation of my Unique Self...anywhere in the world...location wouldn't matter, and then come back and live more competently into that manifestation with the people I love.

 

Ursula Glunk, Maastricht, Netherlands: I'd like to be in Italy, walking, writing and exchanging letters with Rilke and Dostojevskij. We would converse about the deeper questions of life and about experiences that are hard to put in words. Then after a couple of weeks (no need to hurry), we would meet somewhere around Pisa and continue the  

conversation live. 

 

Bev Slattery Hatford, Bloomington, IN: I'd like to go on the pacifist walk with Gandhi.

 

Marilyn Kauffmann:  I'd like to spend some time with Sir Edmund Hillary so he could tell me about his adventures and that part of the world. Mother Theresa would also be someone I would like to spend time with. What a legacy she left us.

 

Dale T. Wilson, Jamaica Plain, MA: A summer afternoon riding the ferries on Lake Como with Oriana Fallacci absorbing her courage and strategy to confront political abuse and how to expose delusional power mongers.

 

Trebbe Johnson, Thompson, PA: I want to walk along the beach in Oran with Albert Camus and talk to him about how his philosophy relates to the environmental crisis.  

  

Barney Mayse, Overland Park, KS: I would like to tour the Middle East with Rumi and learn more about that part of the world and the Sufi philosophy.

 

 

 

When it came time to plan what he would do for the Global Earth Exchange this year, Jay Stearns of Annapolis, Maryland thought he had a conflict--of interest as well as scheduling. The worldwide event was taking place on the same day as a family reunion.

 

Jay writes: I can stand aghast at the pictures of oil coating the feathers of pelicans as it washes up on their gulf shores.  I can look with horror at the video accounts of radioactivity spilling into the ocean off the coast of Japan.

But what about a family reunion, and joining the traffic jam of boats and other gas-driven vehicles of recreation as they surge through the waters of Deep Creek Lake?

 

Click here to read Jay's story and join him in reflecting from a different perspective how we relate to wounded places... and to the people we assume are wounding them.   

 

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My book, The World Is a Waiting Lover: Desire and the Quest for the Beloved, with a foreword by Thomas Moore, author of  Care of the Soul, is now available as an e-book!

 

It's also available in the original page-turning form, as well, of course. So after you've considered the question above, of the dream person you'd like to go on vacation with, you can read about what infatuation and allurement have to do with spiritual lust.

 

I wrote this book when I experienced an unexpected and powerful attraction to a younger man when I had been happily married for twelve years. I knew I faced a choice: run off and have an affair, try to ignore what was happening to me as inappropriate and dangeous, or explore what desire and passion had to teach me. The whole story and the consequences of the choice are what this book is about.

 

You can order it for your Kindle or your Nook. 

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