Lisbon to Madrid

I arrived in Lisbon a couple of hours ago and am wandering around this massive and busy city in search of something to fill the 8 hours I have before catching the night train to Madrid.

I ended up wandering in here to say hi to y'all.

I'm trying to find a movie theatre...haven't seen a movie in quite some time and thought there might be an American movie at the Cineplex. It's a few blocks up the street, so when I'm done here I'll see. It's Monday and most of the museums are closed. I also have my backpack with me which loads me down and makes me feel vulnerable, so I don't like to wander too much with it on. I'll be back here for a couple of days before I leave the continent and will get in a decent spate of sightseeing then.




Went to one of the Fatima shrines this morning before getting on the bus. This place, unlike the massive sanctuary, is set in the oaks not far from the childhood homes of the little shephards. I was wondering yesterday where the greenery was in all this shrinedom. Mary did appear to shephards who were grazing their flock...and yet the sanctuary built around her appearance seemed to be have no natural life to it.

But I talked to a guy this morning and he pointed me in the right direction and I found another site where She appeared and enjoyed the setting much better. Except I was so saddened to see that even here, there was cigarette butts, candy wrappers and toilet paper (!!!) littering the area right around the statue and marker of this sacred site.

We have soooooo far to go.

I want to read more about Fatima and the words of St. Lucia...but it seems the basic gist of the messages she received were that we were all to pray for the sinners and convert to Catholicism. In this the world would be healed. That's a pretty thumbnail sketch.

I'm not converting to anything today...I like the broad spectrums of faith out there too much to bow before one idea. But I do agree that a deep conversion needs to take place if we are to ever evolve. Maybe we're not really supposed to...it seems like an unmanageable task to shift our consciousness at this point. We still call each other names based on skin color and the flavor of each other's accents for pete sakes. We still traffic in the slavery of humans, four-leggeds and our winged ones. We value money over land, river and sea. These all seem to be base concepts that we are pretty far from changing globally.

There are a lot of American programs on T.V. here in Portugal. But they seem to show an episode of National Geographic every afternoon. It's heartening to see all the good work happening out there, and I know there's a lot of it...but my goodness we are digging ourselves out of a deep, dank hole.

That's what I was thinking about this morning as I was wandering the paths in those Holm Oak groves.

My time is just about up here. I'll probably find a spot in Madrid to write again.
I'm looking forward to having more than thirty-sixty minutes of writing time when I come home!

Lots of love.