This Place In My Life

Reflections Upon Returning From A Vacation

I have reached a place in my life where I absolutely know that traveling with OTHERS to AWE is not only so much more fun than by myself, but totally possible with untold numbers of people. So I am always on the lookout for these OTHERS.

On the other hand, these days, I think that many people are not feeling as encouraged as I am about finding these OTHERS. Either they don’t want to take the trouble to look more persistently for them (Who has time these days to make much effort in this direction anyway, right?), are carrying too much resentment and hurt from the past to open new doorways or are just plain too scared to risk the ups and downs of the process New Horizons calls Climbing the Mountain of Awe.

Anyway, if you are allowing me to be one of your OTHERS I thank you wholeheartedly. I/we, the members of New Horizons’ Board of Directors, are truly committed to this objective that we call Climbing the Mountain of Awe (i.e. building “exceptional community”). We have been learning and developing better and better ways to do this with others since 1976! And, we’ve got it down to a formula; a co-created formula (i.e always a work in progress).

The only obstacle we seem to have not yet overcome is that our Trip-Tik asks us to, occasionally, get down in the dirt with others and do that within certain parameters, in a nice clean way. Lots of people say they want to be community with one another but they don’t want there to be any guidelines, boundaries or rules for the building. But, exceptional community-building needs a bit of structuire so this lack seems a bit like anarchy to us, albeit on a small scale, "neighborly" basis.

As for my take on the absence in this area, allow me to say only this: I haven’t yet seen or heard of any enduring configurations that were successfully put together without some kind of blueprint or inherited guidelines, albeit even minimal ones. (Take a look at the Sphinx or Stonehenge, for example, or the whole universe. Something or somebody or whatever had/has some kind of plan, dontcha think? And, certainly one that is far beyond any one of our limited perspectives though we may be assigned to take up the role of tour guide from time to time.)

We want to travel with you. And, we do have a definitive map (not of our own making by far, yet with a significant amount that we’ve contributed in our close to thirty-five years of experience of trial by fire. So we hope you will take time to get on board and travel with us with our well-worn, time-worn map. Destination = AWE!