The following article from MSIA travel photographer, David Sand, reflects his unique take and perspectives on his travels with John Morton. It does not represent the opinions of the NDH or MSIA and is published for the enjoyment of those who are entertained by David’s idiosyncratic writing style.
Landed in leafy London and staying in cozy Kensington, where the white, elegantly columned homes closely resemble the residences in heaven. Traveling from Turkey to France to London is like being a deep-sea diver gradually coming up for air, where each successive stop brings me closer to the light-bubbled surface of freedom.
My creative energy probably doubled in the Paris patterned paradise, and doubled again when I arrived in London, where I got into a spacious purple cab with the driver playing some kind of cheery 80s pop-rock, instead of the incessant trochaic tape-loop hypno-trance fake-cool mechanical voodoo sex-and-death-cult music (uuunnn-chk, uuunnn-chk, uuunnn-chk, uuunnn-chk) that dominated the decadence-darkened hotel hallways of higher-end Turkey, and then my small boutique hotel in Paris…and then unexpectedly oozed its perversion into our hotel even in German-stiffened Strasbourg.
Finally in London my hotel is quiet and I’m unperturbed by this auditory authoritarianism. People on the street look so awake here, their eyes revealing evidence of having been jailbroken from political/religious/intellectual/aesthetic loops. The security at the big tourist monuments is present but not obsessive, and always incredibly polite. There are no-photo areas but there isn’t always someone around enforcing them, and it makes me want to cooperate with the rules even more. I do miss the warmth and kindheartedness of the people in Turkey, for which British politeness is a not-quite-satisfying substitute, and I miss the warm harmonies of French creative expression.
But even that warmth has a slightly co-dependent emotional hook in it—in Turkey, a “we’re-all-losers-together-in-these-unalterable-circumstances” element of victimhood, and in France an unconscious expectation of the continuity of habit in the pursuit of perfection, and the rebellion against it—which show in the faces of the sullen, self-absorbed cyclists on the streets, and in the ubiquitous graffiti. Most people don’t look like they’re having a very good time. Somehow British culture grasped the spiritual principles of non-infliction, neutrality and personal responsibility, and it shows in the comparative level of joy, spontaneity, and all-around positive, idiosyncratic expression of people I see. It feels like I’m in a more mature culture.
FYI, the spiritual maturity of a culture can generally be measured by the immaturity of its cuisine. Britain is all about soft comfort foods that appeal to children…custard and clotted cream and fish and chips and huge, soft protein-soaked breakfasts. A large variety of high protein and high-fat comfort food is indicative of (1) wealth and abundance, which tends towards protein and fat, and away from cheap carb fillers (2) liberation from lack-inspired rules around food, which are both the cause and consequence of suppression of the human spirit which naturally creates abundance everywhere it’s let loose, and (3) a rising above the need for sensory stimulation and overly-refined demands, tending away from connoiseurship and towards the unsophisticated tastes of a little child. (I think that John-Roger embodied this in his taste in food.) Britain and the U.S. have reached this gastronomic nirvana (and to some extent Italy, although it is still somewhat carb-bound). And don’t forget that Jesus said you need to become childlike to enter the kingdom of heaven, and he never said food (or any kind of sensory indulgence) was an exception.
I didn’t know what I was going to do in London on the days where there were no MSIA events, so I got up on my first morning here, opened up some websites about things to do, and Westminster Abbey immediately jumped up and down and screamed at me, even though I’ve been there multiple times. I spent around five seconds looking at those websites, and I headed over. There were no questions or doubts, just clarity. I didn’t know about 12:30 pm Mass at Westminster Abbey, but everything seemed to conspire to put me in it, including having to find other things to do for an hour or two because 12:30 was the first ticket slot available in my ticketless condition; and being let in a bit early so I ended up in the area for Mass right at 12:30; and one of the guide/guards singling me out of the crowd and telling me Mass was about to begin so I couldn’t take photos. I took that as a sign and sat down with seconds to spare, duplicating my repeated Mass attendance at Notre Dame a few days ago, and did spiritual exercises.
I’m either so inept at spiritual exercises that I constantly require inspiration, or I was put there to bring some sort of Light infusion. I tend to think it’s both. It seems to me that looking for single-cause explanations and restrictive formulas like Occam’s razor are some of the biggest blocks to spiritual understanding, because they limit the abundance and multi-dimensionality and freedom of God. God is big enough to cram a quintillion causes into a single effect…and why not? The more causes you can stuff into a single event, the more people to whom you can impart the perfect experience for their spiritual growth. And I think that God has a higher purpose than just managing a set of mathematically parsimonious laws for the operation of a physical universe.
Then I was similarly guided to a tour of the houses of Parliament after I left Westminster Abbey. The timing was perfect. It all felt like Light work. The House of Lords felt more psychically junked up and stuck than the Commons, so I lingered longer with the Lord in the Lords. Did you know that you can actually walk around and approach those gold boxes that the front benchers and prime ministers lean on when they’re answering questions in the Commons? I asked God to stuff them with Light like He/She/It stuffs every event, every effect and every moment. Let’s hope He/She/It can manage it.
