Still on fire from the @elizabethwarren rally, Monday night. Signed up for several canvassing and training events here in the city. Excited and committed. Join us as we stand up and speak out for our country and our values! (There are training opportunities listed on her website. Go to www.elizabethwarren.com/join-us and put in your zip code. Find online training and events near you!

I interrupt this regularly scheduled Portugal-focused thread on my instagram to fan-girl mention that I spent last evening with 20,000 of my friends, being inspired by @elizabethwarren in Washington Square Park, NYC! I’ll be joining her team of volunteers tonight, to begin some training. Excited for our future! #I’mWithHer #mywarrenselfie

My love for nature and “levels of land” as well as my passion for education are amongst my favorite things. This view from Paço das Escolas combines them both, to perfection. Portugal: you have stolen my heart!

For me, there is magic and healing in exploration - when around every corner, one discovers architecture and energies that span so many different centuries and cultures...it is impossible not to see and believe in the essence of our Oneness with the infinite. Grateful for the beauties of the world and for the human need to create in reverence to that which lifts our souls.

We had a choice. Walk up the narrow cobblestone streets from the riverside to Coimbra University...or take the stairs. Both were (literally) breathtaking AND led to breathtaking views! Grateful for the opportunity to explore our amazing world.

I was a very young child when I took to heart my lessons from Sunday School that “God was everywhere and in every thing.” And so, while raised with a firm love for my faith as a Jew...I always saw God everywhere - not only in man’s architectural expressions of faith - the sometimes achingly beautiful synagogues, churches, mosques built over centuries...but also in the ceremonies of different ways of showing faith and reverence - sitting in meditation with Brahmin masters, receiving puja and flower baths under Hindu prayers...and most particularly - in the glories of the natural world, all around us - the gift that Gaia, our Mother, has provided for us. She is the essence of God as well. We carry, within our own hearts, the power to bring reverence to every day. Make the magic of the Sabbath last not just one day - but all day, every day - concrete in how we treat each other. The beauties and marvels of this ancient church in Tomar were breathtaking...and yet also confirmed for me that mankind is capable of so much love, so much Light and so much power for Good in the World...but that we are each responsible to utilize that power of faith and God within us to bring Love into the World. To accept each other, regardless of how we choose to pray or discover and nurture our faith, as One in God’s eyes. Each soul must find their own path, to find their own well of faith, within. Blessings, all.

And suddenly, I turned around, and the centuries melted away. With no signs of the modern era in front of me, the voices of my companions lost in the breeze and only fortress walls, standing as they have been for nearly 1000 years. Like standing on the edge of eternity. Grateful for journeys that transport my heart and soul.

And sometimes, when you are being rushed towards another doorway...you choose to pause and pursue a hallway not taken. That’s where the magic happens.

Sunset over Évora. That the tranquility and beautiful views from this edge of the city wall is encompassed at a spot of eternal historical significance moves me deeply. On this same spot - the Roman ruins of the Temple of Diana, the domes of churches from two separate eras and a museum memorializing the square itself - where, at the beginning of the Portuguese Inquisition in the early 1500s, those Jews of Évora who were not willing to convert, were burned alive at the stake. History swirls all around us. And while it is not always pleasant or kind...its lessons enlighten and inform and hopefully move us to reach for what is the best in mankind, and to mourn and effect change of our deep social, cultural failures. Wake us up to the singular truth that we are ALL One.

One never knows what is on the other side of doors, gates and walls that challenge and seemingly block our way. Lean into faith, not fear. Knock on that door, open the gate, climb over that wall - and discover the magic that is waiting for you, on the other side!