From Vienna to Colorado Springs
This follows my 2nd intro post in this series here, and follows on here in this three-part mini-series about what really happened actually…
This is a note to my sponsor at the Diocese of Colorado Springs US, as I plan to move from Cambridge UK to co-found an orphanage as a non-profit non-charity venture. The background is that I recently left my wife and took to stacking shelves on night shifts at local Tesco superstore to support me financially on short notice in the new year. I had had a Community Interest Company (non-profit non-charity) in Cottenham just N of Cambridge, to address East Anglia elders’ and youths’ isolation in light of Climate Change then COVID Pandemic — wrapped up last year amid the Brexit and Pandemic confusion — that prepared me well for running this venture… In fact my second non-profit and seventh in total after CalCAD (1986) and Axion Spatial Imaging (1990) in Canada, and GeosolvIT (2008), Interactive Net Mapping (2009), zolnai.ca (2014) and cottenham.info (2019) in England! I also spent six months in Milan in 2008 and over a year in Kuwait 2010–2012, both times as local contractor.
Update 1: working online has its risks as my sponsor’s account was hacked twice, meanwhile we discovered a prayer-friend mentioned previously was in fact a fraud… My sponsor and I thus left social media that was the source of the hack. She is also now my new prayer-friend guiding me back to my original faith, thus complementing the image here of two cathedrals book-ending my life…
Update 2: follow an new three-part mini-series, A natural World Order.
The next instalment on this series, A new/old World Order, can be found here
… You may like to see more on this topic in the third main entry here (Late 2019…), on an exhibit on migrants of which I was a subject
Update 3: I no longer stack shelves, and have an October departure date 😊
Update 4: see more on why I’m quitting social media here
Update 5: see an all-series recap here
Update 6: ending my recap: I no longer plan to move back to the US! My sponsor plans to join me here instead… over six months since we’ve been trying to meet.
Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, 2:57AM BST 05/04/2022:
[…] I was shattered both from day night sched changes my body isn’t adjusting to, and from the enormity of the decision for my new life… Meant in a good way, but I know my body reacts like that to sudden change, good or bad, many of which I had in my life, some my choice & others not!
For I’m not averse to making hard choices with incomplete info at hand, but I learned not to ignore my body’s flight-fight responses. Taking Echinacea to boost my immunity — I’m fine and I know it’s part real part psychotropic (worked coz I believed it did) — to help me stay healthy. And finally, God be my witness, He is my best ally!
“We plan, God decides” has never been truer, when I think of small and large matters that got me here, which are mo. def. not coincidental. And I have mostly [my immediate family, Cambridge Quakers coffee group and US prayer friends] to thank for direct and indirect influences.
“This is an amazing change for you and a wonderful new stage of your life, enacting this Ministry in Action.” (a Cambridge Quaker Friend and friend)
Coming up to Easter, I found it fitting to share this at my Quaker Meeting in Cambridge, where the quote above cam from, to mark my faith transition.
Cherry Hinton, Cambridge, 3:28AM BST 05/04/2022:
PS: for info, this be in fact my 4th momentous occasion.
So my first momentous move was 1982 marrying Kathryn my first wife [in Calgary CAN], when my Dad said “It’s us or her” … and I basically left my parents!
My second one was leaving her and joining Sandra [my second wife] in a not insignificant decision to stay in Calgary, when I was set to return to France […] all within a year or so around 1990.
My ground zero was my parents’ decision to leave Budapest after the 1956 Uprising (no, it wasn’t a Revolution… nothing changed!) 8 mo. pregnant with me on New Year’s eve 65 yrs. ago this last St. Sylvester, as it’s called in Hungary — a Catholic region like Poland and Bavaria but unlike other surrounding countries — I was born in Vienna at the Semmelweis clinic three weeks late as described in my vintage 1996 website.
And I s’pose there was a third momentous occasion foisted upon us in 2006, when we were kicked out of So. Cal. and we repatriated to the UK. My H1-B visa’s third renewal faced me with a decision, to stay stateside and get a Green Card, or to return home to Canada, UK or FR — that’s fair enough under normal circumstances — Green carding and naturalization stalled, however, for 7 yrs. after 9/11, and we were given a month to clear the decks… May 1 will be the sixteenth-year anniversary, how weird is that!
Further to being born in Vienna ‘on the way out’ as Hungarian refugees, our then sponsor who picked us up at the Semmelweis clinic also helped me get baptised at the Stefansdom. It was my first step in my faith journey — go to Disclosure in this post — and the cathedral atop bookends my life so far neatly, doesn’t it?
