Leonard Cohen is a poet. At least I think so. His song title above makes me think about constantly moving on from one place to another. It’s like the film from the 60’s
“It’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium”. Well, last Saturday we were on Cape Town’s Waterfront, Sunday we spent the day on airplanes flying to Kenya in stages. On Tuesday night we fly back to the UK. Wednesday until Sunday we are in UK and then on Monday it’s off to Peru for 2 weeks. Hence the feeling
“It’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium”
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| Our group of CBO Leaders from across Kenya, working for World Vision |
Kenya is so different than South Africa. We feel very different in both countries. The past week has been full on and head down, training 90 local leaders of community based organisations from across the whole of Kenya (it took some of them 2 days to get to Nairobi from the North –remember
The Constant Gardner film? Lake Turkana?.....it’s a long, long way from Nairobi). These were people we first trained in Leadership for Hope in August and this week we were training them to take that training back to their communities.
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| Tea break for the attendees |
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Some of our Team of certified trainers
- from left:Vincent, Stephen John, Millicent, Purity (up), Anna (down), Peter |
When life gets so busy it is easy for the nourishing things of life to go by the way side. After a few days of no journaling, reading, table tennis, meditating, walking…you really begin to feel yourself bending out of shape.
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| Happy attendees |
Today (Sunday) we stopped. You can feel balance returning as those important parts of life get rediscovered. I have long believed in reading widely and deeply. Reading what will stretch and challenge my perspective on any aspect of life. What I noticed today was how everything I am reading at the moment is so different, such different schools of thought. And yet everything seems to be saying the same things from different perspectives.....
- Richard Rohr’s
Immortal Diamond
- Russell Brand’s
Revolution
- Deepak Chopra on
Consciousness
- Ken Wilber’s
One Taste
They all seem to exploring how, in the first half of life, we build up a version of ourselves that makes sense according to our parents, culture, schooling, environment, careers etc and yet there’s a more true and lasting version of ourselves that sits patiently awaiting our discovery. Heavy? No, actually the more I read, the lighter I think I become, the more I realise there’s nothing I need to defend.
Anyway…..remember our table tennis idea. Remember the photos of the wine cellar? We are back under ‘house arrest’ in our hotel in Nairobi because there is no where we can go, no where to walk, no street we can easily browse the shops, no games room and no table tennis table (yesterday saw another pointless massacre in northern Kenya) …….except that there now is! I asked the concierge Angelina if she could work a miracle and find a rectangular table or bit of wood and set one up some where. She’s sorted it!! A table in a little tent in the hotel grounds….but today it’s our table tennis room!!
(and Jane thrashed me….again)
- TW
