Day Thirty Four: Goodbye Ordinary Life, You Sucked Anyway

I am amazed again by how easily life becomes "normal" wherever we go. Arambol feels strangely like home. It's amazing that we've already spent... how many days here? They all sort of blend together. Most of our days so far have started with early morning prayer walks on the beach, sometimes with some sunrise worship thrown in there. (Not worshiping the sunrise mind you, that would be a silly mistake, but the one who created it.)
The mornings and afternoons have been quite different each day. We've made a lot of friends here so we all split up and go to hang out with whoever we planned on meeting that day. Whether it be for swimming, slacklining, cooking courses or just sharing meals and playing games together... whatever we can do to convince people to spend time with us... mwuhaha. This afternoon Katie and I headed down to the juggling convention in Mandrem. At least, they called it juggling. Really it was any sort of hippie circus act you can imagine... and possibly more. They had a bunch of workshops going on so Katie spent a lot of time working on her fire poi. I tried my hand at some new juggling tricks and did a little rope walking but mostly hung out in the bar area trying to strike up some conversations. Unfortunately everyone I talked to was quite unresponsive and it never went anywhere. It was really quite a depressing day to be honest. The atmosphere was the most spiritually oppressive that I have felt so far on outreach. I felt like my mind was really clouded and I had trouble thinking straight. I kept trying to pray but my mind kept drifting and going blank. It was really weird. I knew that it was something spiritual but I couldn't quite place my finger on it. That's the way it is with New Age spiritually, I think. It dulls the senses and leaves you dazed and confused. We had been planning to stay the whole day but decided that it would be more profitable to spend our time back in Arambol, where we've had open doors all over the place. As we walked out of the compound I could tangibly feel the cloud lifting from my mind. A weight was off my chest that I hadn't realized was there. On the 4 or 5 kilometer walk back along the beach we ran into our friend Paul, who is a perfectly ordinary man leading a wildly radical life. He is a firm believer in Jesus and is seeking hard after God's perfect will. It was so refreshing to walk along the beach at sunset and get all worked up talking about our mutual passion. Which is to love God and love people. It was such a strange contrast from the rest of the afternoon, and left me so thankful that God has given me the life that he has and the opportunity to share it with others.
Which brings us up to the evening I guess. Again, they've been different each day. Quite often we've started fires on the beach near Cocoloco, which is the most popular dance club, and just welcomed people to join us and enjoy having a chinwag together. We usually stay out quite late, I got to bed at 1:30 this morning, but we often have the opportunity for a quick nap in the afternoon. Anthony, Katie and Lydia are planning to go out with some local fishermen at 3:00 am tomorrow. I think they're crazy... but kind of cool as well, I will admit.
All right, time to hit the beach again. Keep praying!