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| The Wild Coast of the Transkei, South Africa |
I’m looking out over a vast ocean that sprawl’s effortlessly
from the southern tip of Africa and careers on forever, until presumably it
bumps into icebergs in a far off world. Its magical pulsing bewitches me; an
eternity of water with bolshie waves that dash themselves deafeningly upon shore’s
strewn with dying shells.
In my consciousness thoughts bob untethered and unformed.
There is something deeply challenging and disarming about
being close to the sea – as if it won’t let you go or off the hook. I feel it calling
me into an easy vulnerability.
Being this close to an un-fathomable, un-tameable, awesome
mass of ocean has a strange affect on me. It appears to dare me to a bigger
self…I wonder suddenly what it’s like to sail the oceans for months or live
permanently in sight and sound of the honest sea.
The past 5 months in South Africa have brought me a plethora
of unexpected experiences and growth opportunities. Like the sea it’s never
been calm…always moving and changing.
Together, Trevor & I have chartered some crazy rapids and
wondered at times how we got so close to rocks without knowing it.
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| Wendy and her ‘adopted’ boys, with Trevor & Lennox |
I remember standing in a soggy shack with Wendy from
Mbekweni and listened to her story of deprivation & struggle and thought my
heart would actually break. Hearing about the 9 abandoned children she had
adopted and how she feeds 67 children every evening (she had no
electricity, running water or sanitation). They come to her because there is no food at ‘home’, only violence and abuse. And her neighbours even steal the
meagre possessions she has and how she tried to stand up against the
brutality and sexual abuse of the gangs, even when her own life was threatened:
a story of raw and gritty courage.
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| Filming for the LEAD NOW children’s Leadership programme |
And there were wild, ecstatically, joyful moments for us,
when we heard stories of transformation and change in the lives of people who
took our training and did something with it.
People who literally turned their
lives around by taking up their own pen, for the first time, and started to
write a story of hope and liberation for themselves. People, who then got their
families back together, pulled their communities together and are now writing a
story of prosperity (Prosperity = Towards Hope)
What is surfacing and re-surfacing while I write and think
about the sea is this…
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| The sun arriving from India |
"We’ve got to stop trying to do life alone…TOGETHER we can
achieve great things, but not alone. We’ll do SO MUCH MORE TOGETHER…so let’s get together,
and use our awesome talents for good. Let’s connect and then CONNECT BETTER and
fight and struggle TOGETHER and… when the going gets tough, let’s pull more
people into the story and make the battle for a more just world winnable”
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| The sun leaving.... |
A few months ago we heard a talk by the extreme sportsman
and social activist David Grier (he ran the Great Wall of China and the whole
length of India…yes, from top to bottom).
In his punchy and unforgettable talk
he said, ‘we need to challenge ourselves by asking’:
1 1. Do I have
the ability to CHANGE & ADAPT? “Embrace
change…it’s the only way”
2 2. Can I
improve my ATTITUDE? “Get the right dam
attitude – wake up every day with a hopeful attitude – with the right attitude
you can achieve almost anything”
3 3. Am I
trying to go it alone? – You can’t do
life alone. “The journey is greater than the
individual”
And that last point is my message.
At the end David told us a story of a wise old man he met in
India who looked him in the eye and asked him, “Are you in a negative space…?
Remember, all you need is already in you to complete your journey well…. you
have all that you need, but you need the right people around you.
Don’t go it alone”
Shalom
- JB
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| ...and we all get to be a part of this amazing world!!! |
