All This Beauty

Manta Ray from our 1st dive day
Blue Holes Drop In
Clown fish
Jaws
Another Clown Fish
Nautalis

Mandarin Fish

Nuedabrach

Nurse Shark

There is a song by the Weepies "All This Beauty" and the first verse starts:
All this beauty;

You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide
All this beauty;
We traveled all night
We drank the ocean dry
And watched the sun rise..."

There have been several times as we have traveled these past three weeks, where we found ourselves blinking against the beauty... too, too much to take in...

Sunsets over the River Kwai

Rice fields in Kanchanaburi
The wrinkly flesh of an elephant
The golden eyes of a tiger
Smiling, waving children
Smiling people of all different hues
Laughter with people even when the language of words is unavailable
The kindness of strangers
The generosity of other cultures
The purity of a faith that is not our own
Comfortable beds
Great food
Clean water
A roof in the rain
Old friends
New friends
The hearts of those we love and love us that somehow beyond time and space are with us... always

And then there is the OCEAN...

The Ocean... with billions of people on the planet yet only a few who ever float beneath the waves and God didn't just make it pretty. He made it GLORIOUS. Glorious for just a blessed few... What abundant generosity!!

In one of the earlier blogs we wrote about climbing the steps of the Doi Su Thep Temple... over 300 stairs and that sacrifice bring forth the blessings of Buddha. At the end we said something about if the three of us won the lottery you should book yourselves a ticket and start climbing the stairs.
The truth is, we have won the lottery.

In a world where the vast majority of people never go more than 10 miles from the place where they were born...
Many will never know the stillness after a heavy snow, and others will never hear the thunderous cacophony a countless insects in the jungle night.
Many will never drive a car or even a bike.
Many will never know what it is to run across a vast desert called home and not be tired.
Many are overjoyed at one small meal a day and are vagabonds without a real place to call home and they are happy. (What are the lyrics from the Sugarland song? "Having so little and yet having it all.")
A very few are blessed with an epic abundance. They are ever seeking but never satisfied, living with a scarcity mentality.

We three feel the abundance. We know we are blessed. We don't know why; but we are grateful and like the Buddhists we rubbed shoulders with this past month, we seek to make merit.

"All this beauty;
You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide
All this beauty;
We traveled all night
We drank the ocean dry
And watched the sun rise...
You can ask about it
But nobody knows the way
No bread-crumb trail
To follow through your days
It takes an axe sometimes
A feather in the sunshine
And bad weather
It's a matter of getting deeper in Anyway you can
All this beauty;
You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide
All this beauty;
We traveled all night
We drank the ocean dry
And watched the sun rise...
I can see you're new, awake
Let me assure you, friend
Every day is ice cream and chocolate cake
And what you make of it
Let me just say
You get what you take
From it, so be amazed
Whenever you stop...
You gotta be brave.
All this beauty;
You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide (all this beauty)
And watch the sun rise."

Here's a link to the song: The Weepies