The news coming out of the backdoor at Fukushima is alarming -here is a good doco to watch.  The stories swirl around incompetence an unwillingness to tell the truth, reluctance  to ask for help and a populace still reeling from the huge losses and grief suffered at the time of the tsunami and reaching their physiological and emotional limit... it does not  make for a safe brew.

I find it is easy to go into overwhelm. I find myself wondering what have i let my girls in for.  How much of this precious rain has radiation in it... what must those people be suffering what must the ground the water the plant be enduring on and on...

And in the face of this overwhelm I often want to turn to ignoring the news.  To focusing on my own difficulties and work...

But since i joined with Deborah and we made Praying True i feel like i have an obligation (the obrigado Dr Estes talks about) to turn up in whatever way i can to offer up whatever i can.  In this moment.  On this day.  To practise returning to love.

It is not fancy or clever.  It is not unique.  I want to offer it up though to encourage others to turn away from the overwhelm and into love.  To show up in whatever state they are in and offer up their version of love to a world that is hungry for it.  If it is prayer then pray.  If it is dance - then dance.  If it is song - then sing.  Art - make it.  Food - prepare it.  Loving attention - focus it.

Whatever it is please offer it up.

Here is my offering.  With love.

Nelson Mandela.  Revolutionary. connector.




I have a long love affair with South Africa which began when I went to live there as in exchange student in 1982.  Back then, cosseted in white society I learned to fear the ANC as a party of terrorists hell bent on hatred.




In the following years I learned about what the ANC were largely fighting for (there is seldom one vision in any movement being as it is run by humans - many varied flawed and fickle as we are) I could see that rather than terrorists, the ANC were fighting for a new vision, for justice and freedom.




I was lucky enough to be in South Africa on the day that they voted the ANC to power.  I stood with my friend for hours in the hot sun, with the line of people snaking into the shimmering heat.  All waiting patiently, with smiles and subdued joy, at the chance to raise their country up.  Begin in a new way.




I was there to hear a white man, steeped as he was in the history he had marinated in, listen to Mandela offer his acceptance speech and whisper "Man, this kaffir can talk"  That is offensive yes. But he was also, possibly for the first time in his life hear a man whom he was programmed to dismiss because of his race, speak with vision, clarity, and immense power.  It was  a moment I will never forget.




Now that Mandela has passed, thankfully, the months of limbo are unimaginable, there is a sanitisation going on that alarms me.  I understand the very human need to have heroes and heroines.  But in only remembering the sweet parts of the man we deny his wholeness.  We need to remember his belief in the need to have an armed struggle.  In support of powers that the US does not like.Here is a link that begins to talk about some of this.




And I believe we need to do this not only to truly honour Mandela but to honour ourselves.  When we hold someone up in a saintly light we remove them from our reach, our ken.  When they are so far removed from us in their state of pious we can do no wrongness, we relieve ourselves of the responsibility to step up with an "oh but they were special and I am so flawed I can't ...." 




To honour Madiba we must claim our ability to do as he did.  To be a whole human being reaching for the very best offering we can make.  To do what it is we are called to do to make the world a better place. 




To rob him of his wholeness is to dilute his legacy.  I will not do that.




Go well Madiba.  Thank you.

i knew a man, H, who had lived in abusive situations all his life.  He was damaged.  He was blind and his body was covered in scars from laying next to uncovered radiators.  They said he could not feel.  I first met him when i had to tend to second degree burns on his arm.


He was huge.  About 6 foot 4 and very strong.  And his looming scarred presence was kind of terrifying. 


He lived inside.  Going outside had never been offered up to him other than by accident.

One day i was with him when he inadvertently got outside.

Out into the courtyard,  into the sunshine.  into the air.

And i saw him lift his face to the sun,  unable to see but instead feeling the light on his skin.

His head began to swivel slowly, face tilted to the light.  Side to side.  Back and forth.

Soaking in this gift.

A soft breeze came.  His whole body seemed to attend to the shift in the air.  

And he began to make a sound i had never heard before.

A giggle.  A chortle.

This huge man mountain who supposedly could not feel came alive with the softest of touches - the unseen sun and the kiss of a breeze.

And as i walked outside today and the soft rain was falling and i raised and swivelled my face to greet it i remembered him.  And that gift he gave me that day.

P.S. I tried to take him outside as often as i could after that.  Much to the staff's dismay as they had to help me manhandle him back inside where he was very understandably reluctant to return.  But knowing how much it meant to him meant i had to try.