Heidi in the Alps Inspires Love of Nature

And Bliss is Our Birthright

I can’t overstate how blissful it is to pray into other realms in sync with the movement of a cosmic body.

Happiest day beloved Joy Train Rider! If your locale observes Daylight Savings Time, I hope it’s a good transition for you. We don’t observe DST in Jamaica or I’d have to fill an hour between when I wake up and sunrise. instead of being able to synchronize my meditation to the sunrise as my first activity.

In my spiritual studies this morning I learned that bliss is our first birthright, even before love. Somehow I’ve always known that, from childhood choosing to do what made me happy even if no one else was interested. My husband Frank, who I love and honor like life itself, knows that in my world I come first. How can I make someone happy if I’m not happy? And putting myself down would disrespect God in me. Being clear on that has helped me avoid many common problems.

Today the Joy Train is taking us back to the days of my carefree childhood in the Swiss Alps, enjoyed with my friend Heidi, the orphan girl brought to live with her reclusive grandfather in the most spectacular mountainscapes of the Swiss Alps. In this magical place she doesn’t notice how rustic her grandfather’s hut is, as it’s set in a veritable heaven on Earth.

Exploring the higher realms of the mountains with her friend Peter the goatherd and the fleet-footed goats, she discovers a world even more beautiful where the meadows are covered in the sweetest smelling, most brilliant flowers. Her uncle requires the goatherd to take his two goats to the places where special herbs grow that will result in healthful milk that forms most of their diet.

The whole setting is so glorious and the story made such an impression on me when I read it as a child that it has stayed in the background of my mind all these years. Last week it became insistent so I bought the book on Kindle. It took me rapturously back to the mountains where Heidi thrives in harmony with her grandfather and a small close community, learning more and more the secrets of nature, the name of every tree and bird, mountain and animal from her grandfather.