"I'm not one for Change"

Our new neighbours popped round for a play

Journaling is a great way to try and make sense of cloggy-thoughts that aren't going anywhere - like the dull, un-attractive Kenyan skies right now, that just hang from the heavens, not knowing why they are there.

Journalling can take us into some of our leadened-thoughts and offers us the opportunity to have a good look around at what's going on up top. This kind of writing might be likened to hopping on an exercise bike, where you're forced to place your feet on the pedals and just get going... and trusting the body to do its thing.

Making a sack garden with Daniel and James

Diving into your thought-life, as I have discovered, can be both un-nerving but also very liberating.

Reflective writing takes you to the mush of your unfocused thinking and gives the opportunity to ask, "OK, so what's going on here then?"...and can provide you with some surprising discoveries

Purity inspecting our first crop of coriander 

I read the other day that over 90% of what occupies our front cortical, thinking brain every day is repetitive, boring and quite frankly un-challenging.... I'm sure our poor grey-matter was designed for so much more. But it turns out that we love to stay un-challenged, because it's comforting that way and we somehow feel safer in our fixed and often lazy thinking. It's a predictable place, snug and cozy. I have to add that the article said that the older you get, the more risk adverse you become and fearful of change, new thoughts or challenging ideas. "HELP", I thought ..."save me from a fixed way of thinking, that only takes me round and round the same neural circuitry "

Extract from my journal -  29th July 2014:  Thoughts on 'Change' and why is it so hard?
Why is change so damm difficult? Why do I resist change with all my might?  - I live as if I know I'm so right.
I have fixed views on almost everything and cling to personal views with dogged determination, as if my life depended on it. Yet Jung said we should allow life to open us to change and that when we do, a new level of consciousness will birth within us. Sounds fascinating and scary.

Stephen Grosz wowed me with these words, "At one time or another, most of us have felt trapped by things we find ourselves thinking or doing, caught by our own impulses or foolish choices; ensnared in some unhappiness or fear; imprisoned by our own history. We feel unable to go forward and yet we believe that there must be a way. Many of us want to change, but not if it means changing"

These words rumble into my mind like a thunderstorm of epic proportions. I think about the harboured hurts I nurse, the wounded pride and arrogant attitudes I carry...oh yes, and the ever demanding tender-ego that is ready to defend itself to the death.

Rohr said, "The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling or changing or dying. The ego is that part that loves the status quo, even when it is not working. It attaches to the past and present and fears the future".

I read these words and know that some of my thinking is certainly not working for me, but CHANGE will always be hard and unattractive...and yet something tells me that it will be utterly liberating too.
So, why not try??

Roadside children - if you look closely some are wearing TOMS shoes

Without changed thinking unhappy family conflicts remain un-resolved and tragically stuck, without the willingness to change, anger reigns and Gaza and Israel continue to blow each other apart. Without the willingness to part with the status quo in our heads we continue to hold to our entrenched prejudices, our feelings of offence, our niggles and angers and pet fears.

"CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE"

                                                                                                                                                    - JB

Trevor relaxing at 'home' with his journal

The Secret Trail

Traveling on the main road into the Dandora slum to train some young people - the photos chart our journey

 A few years ago some famous authors were asked to nominate the top ten books that they felt that children should read before leaving school. Ben Okri decided to respond in a wonderfully individual way by coming up with what he called his “10½ Inclinations”. These were his 10½ bits of advice to children (and adults) on reading.

1.  There is a secret trail of books meant to inspire and enlighten you. Find that trail.

2.  Read outside your own nation, colour, class, gender.

3.  Read the books your parents hate.

4.  Read the books your parents love.

5.  Have one or two authors that are important, that speak to you; and make their works your secret passion.

6.  Read widely, for fun, stimulation, escape.

7.  Don’t read what everyone else is reading. Check them out later, cautiously.

8.  Read what you’re not supposed to read.

9.  Read for your own liberation and mental freedom.

10. Books are like mirrors. Don’t just read the words. Go into the mirror. That is where the real secrets are. Inside. Behind. That’s where the gods dream, where our realities are born.

10½ Read the world. It is the most mysterious book of all.

I just discovered these a few days ago on the wall of a toilet in a delightful new coffee shop near where we live in Nairobi. (Toilets often have good sources of light reading)

Jane and I try and read all the time if we can. The greatest joy is reading out loud to one another. Reading out loud makes me slow down, to enjoy the words twice over. Some books we have even read twice over – literally. John Green's The Fault In Our Stars is one such book (I’m hesitant to see the film –only about 2 or 3 films EVER have hit the magic of the books they come from). Richard Rohr’s Falling Upwards is another ‘second time round’ read.

What else has been part of our journey, our secret trail over these months in Nairobi? The Cellist Of Sarajevo was simply breathtaking in the quality of its writing and the understated capture of that famous siege. Elizabeth Gilbert’s (Eat Pray Love lady) book Committed is a book that should be giving to every couple considering marriage. It is the most honest, wide-ranging exploration of the topic and it’s written with such depth and humour.  Al Gore’s The Future is for anyone in any position of leadership who needs to ‘read the world’.  Rabbi Joshua Abraham Herschel opened my eyes to the simple beauty of the Mitzvot – the small acts of kindness that put this often-crazy world back together again.

 

Who are my ‘one or two authors”? It has to be John Le Carre and Kazuo Ishiguro. Every time we pass through airports I glance up at the Airport Exclusives’ in WH Smiths looking out for the latest from both of these guys. Gary Haugen’s latest book The Locust Effect was a challenging reminder to keep on doing what we are doing here - “why the end of poverty requires the end of violence”. 

Nairobi has plenty of both!

Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly did a great work in us - subtitled “How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent and lead”. It left us knowing that ‘we are enough’ and that ‘it is not the critic who counts, but the person who is actually in the arena.”

The joy of reading is what the books do in us both, the conversations that they spawn, the learning they give, the world they open us inside ourselves, the new lens they give us to look at our world.

"Books are like mirrors. Don’t just read the words. Go into the mirror. 

That is where the real secrets are. Inside. Behind. 

That’s where the gods dream, where our realities are born"

- TW

Arriving in the Dandora slum 

Doing nothing...just being

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is...."
- A meditation on doing nothing… just being.

Elephants at Amboseli - part of a huge herd making their way to the swamp for breakfast

Oven-heat is pulsing across my face, but it’s a comforting heat that delights the skin as long as you don’t get out into the full rays. As I glance down from the keypad I can see a labyrinth of acacia shadows dancing on the scrubby grass all around my feet. And if I stop typing and bring my eyes to the horizon, to the miles and miles of flat savannah I can immediately see dozens and dozens of elephants in every direction.

Behind me, teams of hefty baboons are playing mischief on the Lodge roof and trying to keep their distance from the Masai guard and his catapult.


We are in the heart of the Amboseli National Park on the edge of the Masai Mara, Kenya. It’s become famous for the hundreds of elephants who thrive here. For me the elephant is the most beautiful creature on the planet. Everything about them leaves me in a state of deep awe and wonderment.

Have you ever watched elephants walking across a landscape as old as time, strolling with an unhurried mystical rhythm. Walking in the silence with purpose and dignity. And from time to time the matriarch of the herd will stop to let the little ones rest or catch up and then they press on in search of the 150kg they must eat every day (40% trees and 60% grass). These mighty beasts know the terrain that looks all alike to me, like the wrinkles of their trunk and they can remember a track or a route they took 10 years previously.

This morning, while on an early morning game-drive, we came across a family of 15 elephants on their way to the swamp. They saw our jeep and hesitated for a couple of seconds to see if we would pass in front of them. Their gracious leading mamma eyed us without fear and then led her troop past us, tantalizingly close. So close we could hear them breathing and hear their footfall on the dusty earth….it was utterly awesome!


Thompson gazelles on their nimble feet skipped away on the other side of us while our driver said, “they are feeling lucky that they survived another night”.…gosh, I thought, now that’s a thought to wake up to. Or rather, “That’s a tough thought to live with every second of every day”. Out here on the plains they make a tasty dinner for lions and cheetahs.

We spent the week with the backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro

I’m sipping ginger beer now, in the noonday heat. The unsettled violent troubles of Nairobi are a short 35 min plane-hop away, but they could very well belong to another continent. My mind is absorbed by the elephants in my immediate vision feasting on tender shoots in the swamps 300 yds away, the bulls look more reminiscent of wooly mammoths in the dazzling heat….and I feel deeply still within. Still, and I might even say, peacefully empty, and yet overflowing with the utter raw beauty that cradles me.

Maybe this is what being ‘mindfully IN the moment’ means. Mindfully open to being empty so one can be filled in a fresh way.

Richard Rohr, the Franciscan monk, in his latest book Immortal Diamond – the search for the true self, talks about the “contemplative sit”; to sit in silence, refusing to produce or perform. He speaks uncompromisingly about the benefits of meditation: taking time each day to realign ourselves.
He describes this as a ‘letting go’ and explains how the vast majority of us are trapped inside our False Self; the person we think we are. But through meditation and reflective practices we can learn to define ourselves a different way and he calls this finding our True Self.

Anyway, if you are interested in such things then do get this book or his other infamous work, Falling Upwards.

Back out on the savannah the hordes of zebra that had pitched their tents for grazing like the Children of Israel on the plains of Gilgal, have munched their way towards the shadow of Mt Kilimanjaro. Their stripy haunches have nibbled their way to pastures new and in their place a lonesome wildebeest saunters past rolling his shoulders in a slightly comical way; a bachelor in search of a mate. It’s truly a sad sight.

We learnt that some of these ‘old men’, can wait for years hoping that a 'gal might pass his territory so he can steal a moment of pleasure with her. Poor chap!



On the far off inky horizon, strange twisters of dust spiral upward, sometimes as many as 6 Wizard of Oz sandy vertical tubes can be spotted. Spinning round and round they pick up speed like mini tornadoes, then collapse and dissipate into dusty smudges.

It’s all part of the glorious drama of here, the exquisite, uncomplicated stillness that calls me into a different internal space. To explore what it means to discover a truer, richer more authentic self. An undefended self that isn’t afraid to think new thoughts, process hurts and wounds differently, reframe old internal narratives and is prepared to send a fragile ego packing when it takes me to unhelpful places.

In this colossal vista I can hear myself and I feel restored ....and thankful for finding the space to just be - without agenda, purpose or need to achieve.   - JB





 Buechner said, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the hidden and heart of it, because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace”.

Sunrise over the Amboseli plains