Dateline: Bukit Lawang, Sumatra. On the edge of the Gunung Leuser National Park, where orang-utans still swing in the trees, gibbons sing out for mates, pythons slither and corpse flowers stink. Brown-eyed boys tout jungle treks and strum lovelorn tunes on their beat-up guitars. They roll their r’s and they adore American rock ’n’ roll – Guns N Roses above all. (It’s hard to hold a candle in the cold November rain.) For breakfast we eat fruit named dragon and passion. We sit on the veranda and watch the jungle across the river. Most days it rains. For a thrill you hop in a truck inner tube and float down the riba and bounce over the rocks, and there’ll be a monitor lizard on the bank sliding by. The smiles are genuine, the showers are cold, and the wifi is fast, until the power cuts out. Then you listen to the boys play their guitars and watch the jungle or go tubing. All good.
Author: Patricia
I'm a freelance writer and editor traveling long-term, currently in Southeast Asia.
A Matter of Perspective: Michaele Cozzi: Three Decades As a Documentary Photographer
Michaele Cozzi’s photography studio in Superior is a study in black and white. The cinder-block walls are painted white; the concrete floor is dark and glossy. Attached to the walls, floor-to-ceiling panels of concrete reinforcement mesh serve as a vertical work space. Clipped to the wires with clothespins and black metal clamps are black-and-white photographs – hundreds of them. Some are small enough to hold in your hand, and some are large, as wide as a door.
Writing about living off-grid
For six years I lived on a farm in the wilderness with a man named Peter Bigfoot. My Life with Peter is about life on an off-grid farm six miles from the nearest neighbor, where every day brought lessons about life, death, integrity, and happiness. I write about how I came to live there, and why I left.
… unknown …
What’s next: Teaching or tutoring in Asia? Back to the USA? Something entirely unexpected? What’s behind Door No. 2? Don’t you love a mystery? Stay tuned and you’ll be the second to know …
The Robert James Lees Study Site
Robert James Lees (1849-1931) was a spiritualist who wrote six books about the “undiscovered country” beyond death and the workings of God’s Laws and Love in that world and our own. Three of these books – Through the Mists, The Life Elysian, and The Gate of Heaven – describe the experiences of a man named Frederick (later Aphraar) as he arrives in the spirit world, explores and learns about it, and moves through his spiritual progression toward the Kingdom of God. These three books are sometimes referred to as “the Mists trilogy.” The other three books, The Car of Phoebus/The Astral Bridegroom, The Heretic, and My Books, were, according to Lees, “more of the nature of supplements to matters which arise out of questions discussed in Through the Mists.”
Lees states that his role in the writing of these books “is very fully and suitably described as Recorder.” He was one of a quartet of co-workers on these volumes: the other three came from the spirit world, including Frederick/Aphraar himself. The method by which the books were written is detailed here.
For any person desiring to understand God, the spirit world, and what happens to us after we die, R. J. Lees’ books can provide a great deal of information, inspiration, and encouragement.
This site provides texts of the “Mists” trilogy and study resources from a Divine Truth perspective. Audio recordings of the three books are planned, beginning with Through the Mists in March 2016.