We flew into Hatay on a Turkish Airways flight. The seats and draperies of the plane were a friendly, but antiquated, pink and baby blue and, between passengers and crew, the plane had a rather jovial feel.
Far below us – the images of central Anatolia: hot earth, checker-patched agriculture interupted by rocky ridges and winding rivulets, a lonely mountain standing tall above the dim plains and then, appearing suddenly, the newly hewn landscape of a vast city: generic grid-block buildings radiating out in endless circular rings – always a mosque at the center and each with a tall, solemn minaret rising skyward – spindly roads weaving through the brown landscape, joining in arteries and mega arteries – an ever widening delta of humanity: the city of Adana, 2.5 million people.
All these images mix in my mind and I’m left thinking: I hope this world knows where it going to get its water.
More on Hatay soon – a fascninating city.
Tomorrow we’re up at 5:30…off to chance the Syrian border and see if they’ll let us through.
Reed Summers 
What river flows
When running rivers
Now thinly pass
And hot Necessity comes
To peer upon the Earth?
Where from that Source of Strength,
Which now lost in Earthly body,
Ever running hosts
In Earthly hearts?
So disparaged, the Earth
Makes literal of what wan hearts do love and long,
For there in them rivers run–
Rivers bearing strength the spirit drinks.
Beautiful! Was going to ask what well-known person penned this sacred reminder but stopped….was this written by you?
Reminded me of The Deeper Current of Your Life and the place it was received – the deserts of central Iran, bleary to the eyes but fed by running water from beneath.
Oh, yes– the deep well, the deep current– sometimes I feel it as a great rolling grassy field somewhere within my heart. Blessings upon your journey, Reed. May your feet be soundly trod. And yes, it is mine– an inspiration of your journal entry.
“If you find yourself having a critical or a condemning attitude toward a nation or group of people, you should go visit them and talk to them and hear about their experience and understand about how their point of view has arisen given their circumstance and their history. It is easy to condemn, but it takes real work to understand. It is easy to dismiss others, label them, reject them, cast them away, consider them worthy of punishment… That is easy. That is following the voice of condemnation within yourself. But to really understand someone else and their circumstance– that is difficult.”
New Message on Forgiveness
http://www.newmessage.org/special-teachings/audio-index.php