Much love to all the fellow travelers, hosts, and dear sweet people I've met along the way - thank you for your hospitality, warmth, generosity, and spirit.
Also, I'm sending out a special prayer out to a street kid named Sean who I met in New Orleans. I have no way of thanking him or his family, but if you don't mind, I'd like to invite you to send a minute of warm wishes out to kind-hearted and down-on-his-luck young man who took me in and under his wing, despite having so very little to call his own.
I didn't blog about it, but I spent a homeless night in the Big Easy, and it actually was easy due to Sean's hospitality. When my lodging plans fell through, he took me under his wing and gave me a guided tour of the side of the city I wanted to know but would never have gotten to see withouut his protection. Gritty, archetypally roiling, and Dickensian in the way I imagine most cities' underbellies are, the streets of the French Quarter are an intense place; a purgatory of dark magic and old energy - and kind-hearted dancers in the dark.
A Prayer for Sean
Sean, I hope that you're ok this Christmas season. More than ok, I pray that you are safe and reunited with your family. I pray that you're warm. I pray that you have enough to eat. I pray that you're healthy. I pray that you have a new guitar, and that you're playing it for your little girl, and it brings you both joy. May you find happiness. May you find sobriety. From one traveler to another, I wish you a way in from the many cold winds of your life; a pathway out of the purgatory you've been traveling through and into a place of peace. Thank you for befriending a stranger on a rainy night. May the Universe hold you sacred and loved, and surround you with people who treat you kindly and love you for your inner Godlight. Wherever you wander, wherever you are, may your feet find the path that leads you Home.
