Goodness, Truth and Beauty Come First

Morocco

“...Miss Mackay…believes in the slogan “Safety First.” But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.”

~ The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Cautiously I follow. Granted I am always afraid but I don’t let it stop me now. Though I am slow like a tortoise, I used to be fast like a hare. Though my world had become the size of matchbox that I shrunk myself into and slid shut tight, I no longer abide diminishment. I practice spaciousness like a full breath. Wide open like Sundays, sunrises, night skies, coffee. When I am aggrieved or anxious I take a nap. When I am fearful I walk. When I am fearless I walk farther.

I too believe in safety.¹ Seat belts, charged phones, checking in. Wearing my blaze orange hat I carry water, a rechargeable headlamp, food and an extra battery for my phone.

There was a time emergent from Covid when I’d resigned to never venture too far from Vermont in the wake of two abdominal surgeries in 2021 (a consequence of diverticulitis and a perforated colon), an emergency colostomy and its subsequent reversal months later that left me living in a frozen unscrupulous fear. Safety First meant never leave home.

I had an inkling that I was teetering on an agoraphobic totter, which at the time, seemed completely unreliable and reasonable as I approached my 59th year. But for the grace of god and good animals, I worked with it, through it, step by step, day by day. Blessed with loving family and deepening friendships, bridges that hold. Care and health insurance. Privileges of therapies: somatic, pelvic floor, money healing² and equine.³ Buddhist nuns abound in my audio library, the reading of the cards,⁴ train travel, a diligent private writing practice. It’s all part of the process, the work is the work.

Despite safety first—accidents like slipping hard on ice and ego-clinging can happen anytime: in the driveway, feeding the sheep, or in an ignored feverish fit of piercing pain, stranded on a rural road with no cell service, with only Good Samaritans to thank for helping to avert a worse fate. An emergency room nurse told me on that 18th of August in ‘21, “You have no idea how sick you are,” as I arrogantly argued for a second opinion and against emergency surgery because I had my son’s birthday cake to bake. It astounds me still to this day—how completely disassociated I was from my body—that while I had survived nearly a full day ignoring a perforated bowel and peritonitis and was two hours away from full-on sepsis—I still thought I was needed in the kitchen; that if they just gave me a course of antibiotics I’d be on my way, all while I argued against a life-saving surgery. Just, like…Wow.

Taking a bow at sunset in Essaouira, Morocco, April 2024, photo by Deb Holway.

It was Deb, my traveling companion, who chose Morocco for her own reasons and light. Morocco, in turn, became my providence. Her invitation could only be accepted because of the many steps I took in these last years—slow persistence, cautious within my capacity—to heal in the ways that I came to understand what healing means to me. I could only accept the invitation because I’m learning discernment. Boundaries. Titration of my energy. Renunciation. Attention that is akin to worship.

These days, my gut and I are quite happy together. We make a good team and I stay in close consultation with its wisdom, with an appreciative deference knowing that my gut has impeccable instincts and intuition. The day Deb’s invitation was extended was the day my journey to Morocco began and it was the same day I came back home to myself again.

Selfie: Rizki Guest House, Taghia village, Zaouiat Ahansal Province of Azlial, Morocco, April 2024.

Accepting the invite meant I had to wrangle the emotional wrenches it took to give myself permission to live my life, as opposed to what other people thought about how I should live. It turns out that my ego-mind is very susceptible to conditioning, projection, gaslighting and people pleasing. On giving away my strength and agency. All of which leaves me insecure, anxious, vulnerable and weak. But I am not weak. Not at all. Traveling again means I feel safe in my mind and body. Traveling again taught me the difference between living in the world and being cautiously fearless as opposed to being stuck and restrictively fearful.⁵

This journey, audacious to some, happened only with help from beloveds, guides,⁶ strangers and spirits. In particular, my mother’s. And I awoke in magic—scrubbed clean and rubbed in oil⁷, in conversation with donkeys along rivers that run uphill, songs sung in valley echoes, water springs from rock and gnarled fruit bearing desert trees, lost shoes and found glass, the vastness of the Milky Way spilling over ancient ribbons of geology, pattern, architecture, smoke and spices. Beautiful generous kind people and the intimacy of laughter and languages I don’t understand yet.

Morocco awakened things that made me: My NOLS semester in Kenya in the ‘80s with my then-boyfriend and still dear-friend, John Teaford, the writer/director/editor/logistics man in adventure sport film production the likes of Warren Miller. Subsequent studying Kiswahili at the UW-Madison led me back to coastal Kenya and a research position with an archaeologist on the island of Lamu. Living in a Muslim community, welcomed into the privacy of their homes. Family travels with Sam and our boys to Zanzibar and to my dearest Dennis, may his memory be a blessing.

What Morocco rekindled was lightness, my calibrated fearless spirit and a sensuous sense of adventure. Semi-nomadic relatedness and trust. A remedy for a chronic condition of cynicism. The quietness of presence, giving one’s attention. The rhythms of an Islamic culture. Of witnessing new friends and entire communities go through the difficult and joyful, contemplative upside-down month of Ramadan and its release—the relief and rest of sweet gatherings afterwards. Bartering with taxi drivers (uncomfortable at times) and bantering about camel bells and jewelry over mint tea with Hassan and Abdul in the Fondouk Sarsar on the bustling Rue Mouassine in Marrakesh.

In service in Zawiya Ahansal Deb and I taught English to school children and spent time with Amazigh women as they sang, carded, spun and weaved wool into carpets, including us in their women-only gathering as part of the Atlas Cultural Foundation’s Gender Equality, Women’s and Girl’s Empowerment Initiative.

Zawiya Ahansal in the province of Azilal, Central High Atlas Mountains, Morocco. This is Deb. April 2024.

I am always a tourist and a traveler. I unabashedly rode a camel on the beach in Essaouira wearing my new purple djellaba and I thanked Marge⁸ and the universe for being there. I shined bright as much as I stumbled. I tried to be kind, good-humored and culturally respectful and by the end of every day, I was bone tired yet vividly awake as my mind unrelentingly spun, unraveled, processed and dreamt. I keep weaving these bits of gathered wool into my own common and magnificent tapestry of a kaleidoscope that is my life living.

Moon over Zawiya Ahansal, April 13, 2024.

Moving on. It’d been too long since I grew tired of my old voice and skittish about publishing anywhere, much less into the paradigm of status quo and its machinations of acceptability. “Safety First” served its purpose yet stifled my psyche, struck down my confidence and undermined my creativity. Because I ego-clung to the thoughts that there was no place nor purpose to using my voice any longer. As luck would have it, a sage friend, teacher and author Sofi Thanhauser reminded me, “But it doesn’t work like that.”

Now back home in Vermont, the tulips are blooming, ramps fragrant, trilliums triumphant in the woods, and the lambs are bombastically cute. This season of rebirth is a recalibration of my time and values as I metamorphize into crone: My mother is in hospice and my status as grandmother is pending the end of June. Beacons both burn bright in this prime of my life.

On our last day in Zawiya Ahansal, I bid aideu to our host family with a ridiculously Google translated English-to-French speech: To say shukran to our wonderful Atlas Cultural Adventure guide SiMo and his father, Chaikh Ahmed Amahdar, his mother Aïcha and their family for our homestay. After my benediction I presented my time-well-served blaze orange hat to Ahmed, then Deb and I gifted all of our other blaze orange, scarves and maple sugar candies to these beacons who are like lighthouses in the mountains with their generosity, warmth and wisdom. “Next year we’ll meet again, Inshallah”, we all said laughing, hopeful, tearful.

Our Atlas Cultural Adventure guide SiMo, his father Chaikh Ahmed Amahdar, his sister Saadia, April 2024

In those high arid lands of the Ait Abdi and the Ait Atta, amidst sharp ridges and plateaus of time and space, darkness and light, where hardness begets softness, I allowed myself to be embraced and to move on and out of the matchboxes I’d outgrown. The world is vast and welcoming. If you need permission to participate and unfurl, consider this your granting: Follow your one and only light and I will follow mine. For it’s only just a precious short amount of time we have to live our lives on this beautiful planet. For goodness, truth and beauty. For love, guidance, fearlessness, in protection and peace, it is here for you. Alhamdulillah.

The Central High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Zawiya Ahansal now refers to a rural commune under the province of Azilal. This mule didn't have a name but I called him Salah. April 2024

1. By my own definition, I feel most safe now by being what I describe as radically sober. Because everything is more clear including my gut, my health, my spiritual, physical and emotional state and in all its parts including discomfort. My drugs of choice these days are caffeine, sugar, and good flour in moderation, with the exception of nitrous gas and novocaine in the dentist’s chair. Twice gold crowned, I am.

2. Lyndsey Harrington’s Wingmakers Holistic Financial Education

3. I’m now certified in EAGALA’s Equine Therapy (Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association)

4. Jessica Dore’s book, Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance, and Growth is perfect for the curious. I also highly recommend her on Substack newsletter, Offerings. Her work like seeds sown are rooted throughout this essay.

5. Gratitude and shoutout to travel writer and my old friend Laura Beausire for her steadying support about fear and venturing out again.

6. Atlas Cultural Adventures and its twin, the NGO Atlas Cultural Foundation are stellar and the most reliable, trustworthy guides and community members. I cannot overstate their multitude of virtues nor recommend them more highly.

7. Hammam with Fatima, Essaouira, Morocco

8. My mother-in-law, Marjorie Ettenheim Berlow, April 19th, 1925 - Dec. 18th, 2023 עליו השלום